tv Anderson Cooper 360 CNN February 8, 2018 6:00pm-7:00pm PST
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of 360. on the table one of the rob porter's ex-wives speaking out. the effort the white house seems to be making to obscure how long top officials have known the allegations. the showdown over government shutdown and the budget drama that's been playing out for hour o s on the senate floor. omarosa issues a dire warning
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about where the president is taking the country. she does it on big brother house. is it big brother? yeah, sorry. i don't want it. i want to get to know one of women for whom this is not about damage control but hopefully a measure of healing. jenny willoughby is her name. she was married to rob porter from 2009 to 2013. she said she endured physical and emotional abuse. porter's first wife colbie holderness divorced him after years. rob porter denies the allegations calling them outrageous, false. he says the reality behind the pictures is nowhere close to what is being described and says quote, i've been transparent and truthful about these vile claims. with that said, i want to play you what jenny said in just a moment.
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first i want to two to pam brown standing by at the white house. >> reporter: at the white house morale is low about the handling of the rob porter situation with the white house so fiercely coming to his defense in the wake of these domestic abuse allegations. in fact, you heard today a rare admission from the white house saying that this could have been handled better. there's still a lot of outstanding questions here tonight about what john kelly, the chief of staff knew and when today the white house said that he was not fully aware until yesterday. then when pressed on that, the deputy press secretary said he didn't know about the picture of rob porter's ex-wife where she had a black eye. before there, there were on the record allegations from two of rob porter ex-wives that they were physically and verbally abused by him. john kelly, the chief of staff
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and other top white house aides knew months ago about some of these allegations. it raises the question why wasn't there an internal review. why was he able to keep his security clearance. the white house explains that away by saying it was allowing law enforcement, the fbi to continue its investigation to look into these allegations. we're told the president is frustrated with the handling of it but he will continue in his job. there's no consideration to let him go. he said he has confidence in him. yesterday they said porter resign and would be stag on for a while. today he was terminated yesterday and he just came in this morning to clean his desk. we should mention that rob porter denies all of these allegations. >> it was fascinate fing from t
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white house that shaw was asked did general kelly know about these allegations months ago. that's a yes or no question. he kept saying i'm not going to get into the timeline. using the reasoning there's some sort of ongoing background check of rob porter which doesn't make any sense. >> yes. he did not go through a tick tock because it could be too damming. you do the comparison, the president did not know about the allegations until yesterday. when it came to chief of staff john kelly, he only would say he wasn't fully aware until recently. that leads you to believe he knew something that was going on. some of these allegations and just for context here, even though the fbi has been doing the background check for more than a year now, it seems, they
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interviewed the ex-wives almost a year ago. it would be hard to believe that the fbi didn't flag these allegations at some level here at the white house. >> thanks. my conversation about whether she thinks her ex-husband has changed what gives to false account. the fear she has for his current romantic interest hope hicks. >> i wanted to ask you about a couple of things the white house said and what they have done or not done. john kelly said porter is quote, a man of true integrity and honor. that's what he said earlier yesterday. they now say they only became fully aware of the allegations yesterday and when asked today about what changed between the first statement was made and later statement, they said it was quote the full nature of the allegations particularly the images. do you think it should have taken the white house seeing
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images of colbie bruised and battered to come up with a different statement? >> knowing rob the way i do, he probably is able to even if his clearance hadn't gone through and they knew it was because of problems in his marriage, i think he was probably about to spin it in way it was minimized. i generally believe that chief of staff kelly thought that it was lesser than it was and seeing those photographs, i wish that my interview would have been enough but seeing those photographs sort of solidified this is an issue. >> it's still not clear because the white house won't answer what general kelly knew, when he knew it and to what extent he knew about the reports, the allegations that both of you had made. there's this new statement from general kelly where he said she was shocked by new allegations and there's no place for domestic violence. is it important to you that
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somebody like general kelly believes your story? >> it's important to me in general that anyone who is coming forward with a story like that is believed up front. it's not on the burden of proof for me or anyone else to justify those claims. >> the statement that rob porter issued, these outrageous al allegations are false. i've been transparent and truthful but i will not engage with a coordinated smear campaign. is this a coordinated smear campaign? >> no. i had no intentions of disparaging rob. i had been in contact with rob a lot many the last two weeks as he gave me some warning that stories might break and knew that people might be sniffing around my blog post. >> he warned you this might come out? >> yeah. >> was he concerned about that? >> yeah, he had asked me
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multiple times to take down my instagram posts. >> you hadn't named any names and talked in general about the experience. >> right. i had done so with the intention of reaching people who may need to hear that message and see what it's like on the other side to have that hope and rob was aware of that post when it went out a yiear ago and asked me to take it down two weeks ago. i think in anticipation of me being questioned about it. >> did he ever ask you to deny? >> no. we were in contact even a couple of days ago as he was asking me to release a statement about my blog post. i went back and forth with him about what language i would be comfortable with. the language he asked i wasn't comfortable with. he came out with that statement less than an hour later. >> can you say what he wanted you to say? >> i don't remember the exact
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wording but something along the lines that the post does not accurately depict my marriage. there was some other things that were associated with it. that just didn't feel right to me because it does accurately depict my marriage and he wanted me to say i had taken some liberties with the therapeutic post. the things i said were factual statements. >> it does sound like he was asking you to deny. >> he was asking me to down play it and asking me to emphasize more the relationship that he and i have now as opposed to what i experienced in our marriage. >> have you talked to him in the last couple of days? >> i haven't. i haven't since that conversation. >> he's in a relationship with hope hicks. do you think he's changed? >> i don't think he's changed.
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>> does that worry you? >> it worries me for a lot of reasons. it definitely worries me because if i'm being frank with you, if he hasn't already been abusive with hope, he will. particularly now that he's under a lot of stress and scrutiny. that's when the behaviors come out. if hi hasn't already, he will. >> you think he can't -- he has not gotten help. he can't stop at this point in. >> i don't think that he has done the self-reflective work to acknowledge this issue. i don't think that he has really taken the time to deconstruct why it is that he behaves this way and until he's able to do that, i don't know that he has control over it. >> you're saying you're worried about hope hicks? >> i am worried. >> we'll have more of the interview throughout this hour. in the last moments we learned of a new development from the white house. john kelly sending a lengthy
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memo to white house staffers. he writes while we're all processing the shocking and troubling allegations made against the form white house staffer, i want you to know we take matters of domestic violence seriously. it's abhorrent and has no place in our society. kelly says resources are available to the white house. let's bring in our panel. kirsten, i'm wondering what you make? >> that was an incredible interview. there's so many things. first of all, just for people to understand how hard it is for someone to come out and say all the things she said and definitely even the fact he's sort of pushing back against this is very hard for women who have been abused to even after their out of it to still push against somebody because the abusers convince the women they are crazy and imagined it and it didn't really happen. >> that's one of the reasons the
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girlfriend contacted both former wives because she said she felt crazy. >> right. people generally don't believe you. if you look at here we have this statement saying they take domestic abuse very sieeriouslyt the white house but i don't think you do actually. a story came out before the picture that said that this person choked, kicked, ex-wives, punched in the face. that wasn't -- he still had good integrity. the assumption was the women aren't telling the truth. it seemed to me it was a pr problem. you have this picture and it's too much to overcome but it's not the immediate reaction of oh, my gosh. this happened and we have all this reporting showing they knew the story came out. >> also, one of things that rob
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porter has said is i took that photograph of my then first wife and then she has come out and said he did actually take the photograph because i forced him to as an act of contrition to show what he had done. >> what you see is also what the white house is acknowledging and what we heard jennifer willoughby say to you is he's an extremely effective manipulatom. people who are in these positions are able to carry one face to the world and then have a really sort of secretive, dark side of their personality that nobody else sees. keep that sort of bottled in. the victims, even though she doesn't call herself a victim and they think they are crazy because he's a harvard trained lawyer. he uses rhetoric and language incredibly effectively against these women and probably against his superiors and the other people he's worked for including senator hatch. you sense there's a high level
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of frustration at the white house because they went to him and probably asked him and he probably minimized this in a way that was believable in enough key moments that the responsibility lies on them. you have to understand that you're dealing with somebody who has deep psychological problems and will do anything they can to avoid being held responsible. >> the white house said they could have handled things better but they were talking about just in the last couple do i haof da in the last couple of months. they jst ust refused to answer. >> that's a key question. how much did you know? there's a manufacturing truism that you have one person in charge of quality control and you have quality control. if you have five people in charge then you do not have quality control because everybody thinks the other four people are doing it.
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i think that could be part of the problem here that there was this assumption that somebody had looked at his background and thoroughly vetted it. that would be my only explanation that somebody would rely on somebody else. because of his charming nature, because he was a con man. because he could manipulate, i think he was able to make gloss over things. he was given the benefit of the doubt. it goes to show that when it comes to personnel, you have to have one person who looks at everybody's background, does the background checks and says this has a thorough one. >> what if all five didn't give a darn one way or the other? >> it wasn't work. you have to have one person. >> she says one of the things that in domestic violence women are told you have to come forward. you have to tell your story. they did tell their story. they told their story to the fbi.
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they told their story to the white house. they told their story to the mormon church and thnothing happened. nothing happened. the only time it mattered is when they told their story to the daily mail and the intercept. the white house was embarrassed by their egregious behavior. no one in the government cared. >> the white house treats this like they treat everything else. they treat it as a pr problem. just six weeks ago we were sitting here talking about the excommunication of stephen bannon and last week it was the memo and we had the hundred thousands dollars for the stripper, the porn star. they have treated all of these like pr disaster and nightmares when they have a cultural problem in the white house. john kelly doesn't care.
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the white house doesn't care. there were public posts up. the fbi knew and you have one job. you are literally, you are the chief of staff and you still do not know that someone who delivers the most important documents in the country to the president of the united states every single day is a horrible human being that puts his hands on women. >> we've got to take a quick break. we'll continue this discussion. also, the latest on the budget shutdown, ahead. ♪ if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not an injection or a cream. it's a pill that treats psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable after just 4 months, ... with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla.
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ncht we continue to focus on jenny willoughbys remarkable abuse she said she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband rob porter. we see at the white house they continued to spend the day muddying the waters. there's another development. let's go back to pam brown. >> reporter: we have learned that the ex-girlfriend of rob porter called white house counsel in recent weeks to inform him of some of the abuse allegations against robert porter. where that information went aened how high up is unclear. the source i spoke with said clearly it wasn't handled properly. clearly it didn't go up high
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enough because he continued to work here and the white house continued to come to his defense once the allegations came out in the public. the source i spoke with said that morale has been low in the white house today just given all that's unfolded and the fact that the chief of staff and other senior white house aides, the fact that white house ko counsel was made aware or received a phone call alleging that robert porter was physically abusive and verbally abusive and the fact the white house stood by him publicly for 24 hours, at least, before john kelly put out the statement acknowledging the domestic abuse has really impacted the morale here at the white house. one source called it communication malpractice the way it's been handled. >> i believe the girlfriend is the one who reached out to jenny
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willoughby and also to rob porter's first wife and talked to them about. it goes to reason that she was informing them not only about what happened to her but also about what the two ex-wives had also been through. it does sort of underscore just the way the white house was just not being honest today or just dancing around the truth in trying to cover up the fact this information had been there for a while using the terms we didn't know about it fully. john kelly only knew about it fully over the last 24 hours or so. >> reporter: i can tell you from speaking with several white house officials who say that rob porter in recent weeks knew the daily mail article was going to come out. there was stuff swirling around the west wing about this and rob porter was going around according to these sources and other colleagues saying that his ex-girlfriend kind of down playing the ex-girlfriend saying she's just upset because he was
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dating hope hicks, the communications director. this was her way of getting vengeance. some of these people felt like they were mislead but clearly, enough people knew in this white house early onto have been able to potentially do something and that did not happen. i also want to say from a separate official i spoke with in terms of the white house admitting today it could have done a better job. the president was watching the press briefing because it was the debut at the podium. i'm told by the source familiar with his thinking when watching it that the president was not happy that raj admitted the white house could have handled it better even though personally, i'm told that the president was not happy with the way it was handled and the negative coverage about the aid that took away from the white house everything he was doing.
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>> admit a human weakness, that's not something this white house does. >> did he know the fbi talked to you? >> because we were in contact, he had let me know the fbi was going to be dwakting me and got the information so they could -- >> just standard procedure. >> he asked me what i intended to say and what types of things i would say. i was honest about what i planned to say and after the fbi interview, we wanted the know what types of things did they ask and say. rob was aware of what i shared with the fbi. >> was he concerned about what his first wife said? >> yes. >> back now with the panel. it's so interesting to hear
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pam's reporting that the president is unhappy that raj shah dared to admit it could have been handled better. he was only talking about over the last couple of days. he wasn't talking about the months before. >> raj didn't get the memo that they never make mistakes at the white house. i think i would like to let us stop with this idea that nobody at the white house knew what was going on. i think that the reporting has worn it out that there was ample reason to believe they did not but a bare minimum when the story broke, their reaction was to talk about the integrity of the person who has been accused. once the story broke about a man punching, kicking, choking his exs, the reaction was to say he's man of integrity. we know that. we don't need to argue about the idea they didn't know what was going on and they care a lot about domestic violence. in the next statement that was
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made, general kelly said he stood by his earlier statements about the integrity of this person. i don't think that anyone is rotten to the core. i think everyone has good kwa qualities and bad qualities. this is not somebody that's shown a lot of integrity for taking responsibility for what he's done and by pam's account, mislead people he's worked with. >> i was re-reading raj shah's statement and it sounds like it was sort of half investigated. we know this is out there. what do you have to say. he charmed his way back into the good graces. he used the argument this was many years ago. i would never tole you it's thorough. >> the fbi is bias then maybe you believe background checks which are made by fbi agents. >> i'm not defending it. i'm saying it looks like they
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kind of felt like they had addressed it. >> raj shah says it's this ongoing investigation as if that information was being held in a lock locked cupboard and then they would have a big ri veal to general kelly. it just doesn't work that way. >> here is the part that's most troubling to me is somebody who works in the white house where the staff secretary was a hugely important person. all the information, all the top secret security, the highest level of clearance that anybody can have. you had to have in the bush white house, before you could begin handling these paper, the idea this individual was seeing all the information. most sensitive security information without having this degree of clearance while having major, by the way, not just moral failings, this is a national security concern because an individual like that is ripe to be able to take advantage, to be compromised, to be blackmailed by bad forces
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that want to undermine the security of this country. this is critically dangerous. >> to be extremely clear, this white house is a miss. this white house cultural is a mess mp you talk about security clearances. jared kushner is running about negotiating peace would you tell us a security clearance. this white house is a complete mess. >> is that a sign of how much of a mess they have to hold on the a guy who is a domestic abuse ir. >> the trouble i'm having is they don't care he was a domestic abuser. they care they're not fighting back well on the pr front. they don't care that they hired someone who has moral failings or could be blackmailed. they care that we're talking about it on cnn now. commune kag -- communication
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malpractice. this was letting a domestic violence repeat abuser in this job for months and months. it's not communications problem. >> first more or what margarwas about his security clearance. can you explain what it means that rob porter had only a temporary clearance from the white house. it must mean they knew he couldn't get an actual clearance. >> absolutely. i spoke to former senior intelligence officials who served both republican and democratic administrations. they said it's very unusual for someone at this level of a position to be acting on an interim security clearance for so long and because of the nature of the position he had. ta information flow includes an enormous amount of highly sense
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ti tive, highly classified information. this would not be an issue unless there was an issue for national security but to margaret's point, this is clearly an issue of national security because the background clearance are not just about whether you're a citizen with good character. they are whether you have risks in your background could open you up to risk of blackmail. this could be one of those things. very relevant to his security clearance and now we know why that security clearance was held up. >> to be clear, that means someone in the white house likely had to review the information from the fbi and decide to approve the temporary clearance any way. >> absolutely. >> the fbi made that clear today. they released a statement saying we do the background checks and pass on that information to the white house and it's up to the white house or whatever agency they're doing the background check. it's up to that agency, the white house in this case to make the judgment about the security clearance. interesting again, hearing raj shah today, he made 25
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references to the background clearance process. just have a listen to him as he was making his argument. >> the background investigation process, the tried and true process, the security cliereara process. the process was still ongoing. >> the decider in that process is the white house. the fbi does the background check but the white house has to make the decision. the process is the administration's process here. that amendment to throe it off on someone else really just doesn't stand up to the fact. >> thanks very mump. coming up, will the government shutdown again? has rand paul managed to te rail a compromise between republicans and democrats? that's ahead.
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the united states senate is grappling with the possibility of another government shutdown. it kboucould be a long night. what's happening on the floor now? >> the people are waiting and acknowledging at this point aides on both sides are saying there will be a government shutdown tonight. the issue in the senate is not
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about support for the bill. the support for the bill to move forward is there. instead it's about senate procedure and one senator made clear he's not going to agree to any type of time agreements to speed this process up. rand paul making clear that he wants an amendment to this bill. an amendment that would restore the same budget that the bill is trying to do away with. he's not getting that amendment and senate leaders have made clear they are not going to give it to him at any point. the reason why when i talked to aides is this. they know if they give one amendment to one senator, other senators will want them as well. that will unravel the deal. they have agreed to hold the deal as is. people are waiting. the vote scheduled for 1:00 a.m. you're right, it's going to be a long night. >> is this going to be short lived? >> looks like it will be short lived. an indication to where they think this is.
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it's how dames. still have not committed the number of votes to republicans to ensure the republicans have the votes to get this done. the issue has been about immigration. it's been about daca. it's about some resolution on that and until speaker ryan submits to a similar process, a process where there's no thumb on the scales, everything is created equally. democrats are not committed to giving him those votes. i was told this morning leader nancy pelosi who acknowledges democrats will have to come on board and her staff will help negotiate this deal told her colleagues do not telegraph where your votes are on this. we need to maintain leverage throughout the day. i can tell you that's been frufring houfrufr i -- frustrating house republicans opinion. >> we'll talk to vermont senator bernie sanders when we continue.
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there's more breaking news tonight. people on capitol hill said they will be a government shutdown. perhaps a short one but a short one all the same. objections from rand paul, senator bernie sanders is another key player and a lot else. i spoke with him earlier this evening before senator rand paul took the floor. >> senator sanders, how are you planning to vote on this budget deal? >> anderson, the irony is i spent a lot of time on this bill. worked very hard and there's a lot of very, very important stuff in this bill for the american people. we have doubled the amount of money for child care. we are making progress in funding the social skirt administration. we're dealing with the serious problem of student debt. we're dealing with rural
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infrastructure crisis. at the end of the day i'm going to be voting against this legislation for two reasons. the first is that when we are now spending more money on the military than the next 12 nations combined and when study after study shows there's been enormous amount of waste in the pentagon. they have not been able to do an audit. the only agent of government not to do an audit, i think it's wrong to increase military spending by $165 billion over two years. the second issue that concerns me very much as it does the american people is that in a several weeks some 800,000 young people who have lived virtually their entire lives in this country, who are going to school, who are working, in the military, they are going to lose their legal status and be subjected to the possibility of deportation. this would be a moral outrage. for those two reasons i'm going
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to be voting against a bill which provides a whole lot of support for working families in this country. >> is it fair to say you would not vote for anything that does not include a permanent solution nor for daca recipients? >> someone worked hard to make this bill something that will positively impact the lives of millions of working families, i think we have a moral crisis in this country that has to be dealt with. 80% of the american people in poll after poll say that we cannot turn our backs on these young people and leave them subject to deportation. this is something i feel very strongly about. i will do my best in the coming weeks to make sure that we do protect them. >> would you be willing to, the administration has asked for some 25 billion dollar for border wall and more board ir
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security. is that something you would agree to? >> i think the idea of spending billions of dollars on wall is totally crazy. i think my major goal right now is to priotect these dreamers. there's a majority of members in a bipartisan way, mostly democrats but some republicans who are prepared to support strong dreamers legislation. i know there's a strong majority in the senate. we're working hard to pass strong dreamers legislation. i'm sure if we can pass something there will be aspects of that legislation that i will not be happy about. my main concern is to not turn our backs on these leverage. >> there's only been the promise
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from majority leader mcconnell that an immigration debate would be taken up. there's fro promise from spiker ryan at this point. >> you're right. i think what spiker ryan has to do god is allow democracy to prevail in the house. the majority of people in that body want to pass dreamers legislation, they should be allowed to have the voit. it's rail wrong. here in the senate we do have a majority. i think mcconnell will play it straight and allow different amts to come up. >> do you believe the white house is going to release it? >> all i can tell you what i read in the papers and i'm told they will. i think a lot of what republicans have been trying to do is muddy the waters. divert attention away from the
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mueller investigation. has always had in this investigation strong bipartisan for what let the man do id job. that's about all i can say. >> appreciate your time. thank you. going to take a quick break. up next it's back to reality tv for omarosa. the former white house aide who got hir star on the apprentice. dishing white house dirt with tv personality. ross matthews. y, this is happening. there he i. your new brother-in-law. you like him. he's one of those guys who always smells good. his 5 o'clock shadow is always at 5 o'clock. you like him. your mom says he's done really well for himself. he has stocks and bonds your dad wants to go fishing with him. your dad doesn't even like fishing. you like your brother-in-law. but you'd like him better if you made more money than he does.
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she started in reality television with donald trump and she's back in reality television. omarosa is on celebrity big brother. living in a house with rudy huxtable. ross matthews is very nice. she said going to the white house was a call to duty and serving her country and not donald trump and it was bad. this is real life or reality television. we show you a clip where they are all whispering on celebrity big brother. >> like i was haunted by tweets every single day. like what is he going to tweet next. does anybody say to him, what
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are you doing? i tried to be that person and then all of the part-tieople ar him attacked me. it was like keep her away. don't let her talk to him. ja rjared is there. >> if i whisper into the microphone, nobody can hear me. what's going on? that's crazy. >> we should do a slow where everybody does that. it's a "saturday night live" skit. >> and who could have predicted this would happen? >> i know? >> so shocking. >> i'm mad though. i'm mad. black history month and we're talking about this day in and day out and sitting here talking about omarosa. i don't know what she is good at or qualified to do. i think that -- >> what's the game though to, you know, to worked in the white house and then, you know, i guess betray everybody you
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worked in the white house with to go on the show and, like, speak ill of the person who gave you the job. >> it doesn't count as betrayal if you're whispering. >> this is a hot mess. >> she is risk her brand. >> i was going to say something to omarosa's credit but zroint anythi -- but i don't have anything. this is indicative of this white house. you saw the press secretary go in & equate working in the white house to "the apprentice." we fired her three times and we had to fire her again. the people that are dloclose to the president is whispering and talking about international secrets. >> we only hire the best people. >> she is portraying herself -- she went on to say to ross that she tried to stop the president from these tweets. but then the people around, you know, got against her. >> she tried to be that adult. >> it's like she is suddenly now
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the central figure in the white house. >> so if you believe any of the reporting and by actually all of the reporting, she was one of the worst culprits of individuals that would walk in and have walk in privileges and walk into the president and hand him an outrageous story and fuel the tweeting that she supposedly living and hiding from. and then the other piece is she's actually sort of right. they ultimately did kind of gang up on her. john kelly came in and fired her. she was isolate the because she was a disruptive and really sort of polarizing figure that didn't do much other than serve herself and whine about the president. >> i don't mean to distract from the celebrity of the occasion, but it is true that omarosa was the only high ranking african-american in the entire trump white house. >> i got a question. what was her job? >> public -- >> see? she was so high ranking. >> but -- >> but she wasn't serving the president. >> but it does matter that, you
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know, no african-americans who work at high levels in the white house. the united states is not -- >> ben carson. >> i mean in the white house. he's a cabinet member. >> jerome smith is on the economic council. >> he is brilliant. by the way, he is brilliant. i hope they promote him and give him more duties. >> but he's low key. >> but he actually is raising a legitimate point here that, one, we don't flow if omarosa was qualified to do her job. we highly doubt that. we don't know what the qualifications for her job were. that's important. >> we don't know that there was a job. >> we don't know the metrics by which she was measured. we don't know if she showed up or what her job title encompassed. >> she did allow "the daily beast" follow her around for some time because she just wandered into offices and maybe realized it wasn't wise to have a reporter follow her around and cancelled the rest of the tour.
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>> she kept other qualified african-americans from working in the white house. we do know that to be a fact. there are a lot of people who were applying for jobs and who because she was the sole black person in there, here's the application. look at them. she kept a lot of qualified good people from working in that white house. that is exact. >> i got 90 seconds more. >> we don't have anything. >> well, i mean, talk about what she was saying though. she's acting like she's there to save america from donald trump. and she was begging to stay. she wasn't -- >> she's hoping for a book deal. ien into was her first interview coming off of the job intermating, you know, racism or something going on. and, you know, i mean that's the next step. the next step is a book deal, right? >> no publisher. do not give her a deal. this woman is -- if she's the only african-american woman there and stays through charlottesville and not saying
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anything, where is letter moral courage? don't buy it. don't buy the book, guys. don't buy it. >> did you get a gig for reality show? >> i've been on a reality tv show, by the way. it's not all that. i was on "love thy sister." >> who is the member of congress on a reality show? you got it. >> you answered it too quickly. >> we just have fallen apart. more news ahead. we'll be right back. there's a vacation at the end of every week with hilton. whatever type of weekender you are, don't let another weekend pass you by. get the lowest price when you book at hilton.com
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a quick programming note involving our friend jeffrey toobin, i read it, jeff, excellent book. excessive is executive producer of a new cnn original series about the case. it debuts this weekend. i'm very excited. >> it's kreally good in my unbiassed opinion. it is full of archival footage. and interviews with people who have never talked about the case on camera including the person who actually kidnapped katie hufrt and pulled her out of the house in berkeley. and it's still a mystery to a lot of people about what side she was really on. >> be sure to tune in for "the
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radical story of patty hearst" on sunday. thank you for watching. time to hand it over to don lemon. cnn tonight starts right now. and this is cnn tonight. i'm don lemon. thank you for joining us. breaking news. the federal government on the verge of shutting down again. at midnight. not so long from now. that's right, our government managed to stay open for a whole 17 days. congress so far unable to pass a spending bill to keep it open. we're going to explain exactly what's happening tonight on capitol hill. and then our other big story, the chaotic trump white house not doing a very good job of trying to explain its hand willingst debacle of rob porter. rob porter is the former top aide to president trump who resigned amid allegations that he abused two ex-wives. the white house spokesman and what i
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