this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. 1:00 a.m. on the east coast. breaking news. conor lamb declaring victory in the special congressional race in pennsylvania but this race is really just too close to call until every single vote is counted. we expect to get results from washington county's absentee ballots sometime tonight. so continue to follow. it is a nail-biter. i want to get right to cnn's jason carroll. he's at lamb headquarters. and back with me van jones and steve cortez. okay. so jason, you first. talk to me about this close

race, this niail-biter. minutes ago you're at lamb headquarters. he came out, he declared victory. we may get more outstanding votes even tonight. but he's confident. >> well, don, the campaign feels confident that they have the votes, that the math is in their favor. they waited and debated for some time before finally coming out and conor lamb declaring victory. he did his part to talk about the nature of his campaign, called it a grassroots campaign. he thanked the labor community, which the campaign really has felt all along has really given them a boost throughout this chain season. and he also talked about the need for the political climate to change. he talked about that, saying people are tired of the shouting on tv. he said, "especially in politics," he said, "our job is to attack the problems, not each other." the crowd obviously loved it. it's been a nail-biter all night long. in the beginning connor lamb enjoyed what some thought was a comfortable lead throughout the night and into the early morning we saw that lead erode.

throughout the night, though, the campaign has been checking in from point to point, felt fairly confident throughout the evening that the numbers were going to weigh in their favor. conor lamb has come out and declared victory. rick saccone says this race is not over, they believe once you will those final absentee ballots are counted things will end up weighing in the saccone camp, in the saccone corner. but as for now conor lamb saying the time now has come for democrats to regain their voice. they've been able to do some of that tonight. don? >> jason carroll at lamb headquarters. van jones, lamb basically ran as a republican light. there's not much daylight on policies even though is one a democrat and one is a republican. what is the lesson for democrats here? >> i think democrats have to release a certain kind of ideological stranglehold on people who want to run in

districts that are not like the districts in new york and california. new york and california, i've got roots in both places, love them to death but i also grew up in the rural south in a red state and you just can't have the same kind of litmus test in birmingham that you have in berkeley and you've got to be willing to back and to support candidates who can actually win in parts of the country. listen, it's very hard to remember, don, this country is so big we have three different time zones. it is as big as a continent. you've got to be able to raise money and run and support even if they don't agree with every single part of the liberal agenda. and i'll tell you what, that is going to happen. people keep thinking that in some of these districts you've got to be able to run left-wing folks like some of the people who they love to beat up on. but here's the reality. people are smart locally. and you're going to have a lot of smart local democrats who are going to learn from this and

they're going to put the right people forward. the republicans are not going to have it as easy this time because people know we're going to put up a big fight. >> four different time zones. it's that big. you said three. there's four. and if you count hawaii there's five. so it is a very big country. listen, i want to mark that because i do want to talk about at some point with my panel here in the studio about this litmus test that democrats have had for such a long time for their candidates and maybe things will change. steve, what do you think this race came down to? was it a referendum on trump or was it more than just that? >> you know, i think to quote tip o'neill, all politics i think is local. and this was a local race with a very good candidate in conor lamb and i think a lackluster candidate, to be honest, in saccone. the lesson to try to draw comparisons to trump is that saccone is not trump. to his discredit p and lamb to his credit is not hillary clinton. he's much, much better than hillary clinton. that's why there's a different

dynamic here. but i will you also say. p on a national basis -- and i agree with van, i think the democratic party is getting smarter. it needs to. it's been on its heels for the better part of a decade, lost 1,000 state legislator seats under the tenure of barack o'bam a. think by relying too much on hard left policies. it seems to me like the party is starting to find its footing and is going to tolerate more ideological diversity, people like conor lamb, that smart. but in terms of connecting it to trump when you're now talking about a national race within the democratic party, within the national primary, i don't think there's any way somebody like conor lamb, somebody of that ilk, can win the nomination, for instance, for 2020 for the presidency. so there i believe you are going to have an elizabeth warren or a kamala harris or somebody who is hard left taking on the president for re-election in 2020 and i think the results will be like 2016. >> you think, van, you're going to see more democrats running as republican lights from now on? >> listen, we're calling them republican lights but basically

what we're actually talking about is people who fit their district. that's something i think is important for us -- >> or moderate. >> more moderate people. right now the energy in both parties is on the wings. the right thing, the populist wing of the republican party has most of the energy. the left wing of our party has most of the energy. but that doesn't mean that in every district everywhere those candidates are going to be able to be successful. you're going to have that. when you say a kamala harris is hard left, i mean, that's part of what you're going to see also. i think you're going to have some people who republicans want to write off because maybe they're from california. kamala harris is going to have a great deal of appeal. she's a former prosecutor. she's no shrinking violet or ultra lefty at all. we've got some candidates. but i think when you're talking about 2020. but let's talk about 2018. in 2018 you've got a democratic party that wants to win, and it's going to want to make sure that there is a counterbalance to donald trump in the congress.

congress has been delinquent in holding him accountable. and i tell you what, these tweets every day and being depressed and stressed out every day by donald trump tends to focus the mind. you're going to have a much smarter democratic party in 2018 than you had in 2016. >> and focus about -- listen, i've got to run. thank you both. i appreciate it. i want to bring back mark preston now, bakari sellers, amanda carpenter and scott jennings. so listen, bakari didn't get to speak last time. so what do you think, bakari? >> i think bakari is very happy tonight. >> listen, let me go around. i have a lot of thoughts. i want to start first with mark preston. earlier today he regurgitated a comment that was made by barack obama about clinging to your guns and your bibles but he failed to acknowledge the fact that barack obama won pennsylvania twice and as amanda brought up in the break he won union households as well. it goes to a deeper point. fact that what conor lamb did -- and i hate to refute not just you, don, but also van and the

other gentleman. but there wasn't anything republican light. in fact, what conor lamb did was he ran to the base and the heartbeat of what the democratic party was. this is somebody who ran on protecting the aca and health care for all individuals. this is somebody who talked about the fundamental ineke waults of the tax bill that was just passed. but even more importantly he went out there and harnessed the energy amongst union households which many people believe to be the backbone of the democratic party. >> that was my point is he -- what the democrats used to be. and union workers and blue-collar workers. that's what i meant. >> and barack obama -- >> after hillary -- >> that's what we're seeing. it's not as if they've been gone for it for two decades. they just had a hiccup and they didn't vote in the same numbers that they voted for barack other bama. the last thing, and let me just point o'this out because what is his name again? steve -- >> steve cortes.

>> steve said we have a bunch of old social justice warriors and we're moving away from what conor lamb is. the fact is this. the democratic party has to be both. because what doug jones was was a social justice worker. what conor lamb is, he's somebody who's very pro union, going out there, and they can win in their respective districts. >> but you know what both doug jones and conor lamb, were they weren't anti-trump zealots. you didn't see them lighting their hair on fire about trump. they knew the anti-trump momentum was there on the ground and they didn't have to push the -- >> they ran on policy. >> disciplined about that. and while the unions were on the ground organizing which we have to talk about what is happening with the unions, what happened in west virginia with the teachers strike. they're getting organized in places like oklahoma, kentucky, red states where unions have a big presence. republicans better be on the lookout. >> i do have to say this before i let you get in. doug jones can win, but we have to remember there was a roy moore factor -- >> sure, but he didn't overplay

it and make it about trump. he was very smart and disciplined and i think democrats are getting smart about that. >> you know what's interesting about mark bringing up the clinging to your guns and religion, that's exactly what conor lamb did. literally. he was clinging to an ar-15 in the first ad that he ran in this race. so he was actually running the kind of race that republicans are being accused of running by barack obama. barack obama didn't win this district. mccain won it. romney won it. as has been pointed out by all these democrat strategists. and as a special election lamb was not subjected to having to run in a democratic primary. he was chosen at party level. but he can't run an ad shooting an ar-15 and win a democratic primary. >> why not? jason kendall won -- >> that's a statewide race. in a world where resistance is dominating -- i'm saying this situation set up for lamb but it would have been different -- >> first of all, he's a military hero. >> so your advice to democratic

candidates is to shoot guns in democratic primaries? >> if you're a military hero and you know how to handle a gun. the problem with this is that republicans are going to find every single excuse. i mean, you sat here earlier today and said saccone was a bad candidate. compared to what? what is he a bad candidate -- what did he not do right? >> three reasons. >> it's not a death knell to be boring. >> time out. time out. >> he did not raise money. you want to know why that's a red herring? because republicans, not just his campaign but special interest groups, they outspent conor lamb. so however much money he raised, the republican party spent more money in this race than the democratic party. >> saccone spent $10 million. lamb spent almost 2 million. >> but candidate saccone was far lazier. he got outworked by conor lamb. i'm not disputing that. that's a fact. >> i agree with bakari in this. i don't think rick saccone was the worst candidate. if he was boring, there's a ton of republican candidates who are

boring but don't have the benefit of being in a district with 20 points. if you're born republican in a district that's plus 2, plus 5, plus 10, you're dead. >> the local people will tell you of the three people seeking the nomination he was by far the worst of the three. so compared to what? compared to the other people he wanted to run. >> they -- >> you're like -- this is a circular firing squad because just a minute ago you were talking about -- >> let's stop the gun talk. >> you were talking about the fact that a good democrat couldn't win a primary, and now you're saying a good republican couldn't even win his own primary -- >> it wasn't a primary. it was chosen at the district. that's what i'm saying. they made a bad choice. >> this is a prototypical discussion that's going to happen in the d.c. bubble. and i want this to continue to happen amongst republicans in washington, d.c. because what we're seeing and something that -- >> we are in new york. >> go ahead. >> this is an r plus 11

district. keep saying it's all about this candidate or that candidate. say what you want to say. but there are 119 republicans tonight that should not sleep easily. >> let me cut off mark -- >> bakari, what do you think mark thinks? >> i actually think we're all saying the same thing. quite frankly, we're all on the same page. the bottom line is going back to the clinging to the guns and religion because you know i would not let you have the last word. the idea is, though, that the democratic party has pushed away folks from the midwest and from middle america. and they have pushed away against folks who actually do believe in the second amendment or the rights that go along with that. what we're seeing here, though, is conor lamb is somebody who pushed back against his party but not his whole party because he is a democrat. he's a bob casy democrat. for all our viewers who probably

don't remember who he is he was a pro-life governor from pennsylvania and got on the wrong side of the -- >> let me ask you this. this whole thing i said democrats have a litmus test for every single candidate. you have to do this, you have to do that. every single republican in the country, and i'm generalizing a little bit, was against donald trump. the moment he got the nomination everybody fell in line. and on the democratic side hillary clinton doesn't believe in this, she doesn't do this, she doesn't do that. bernie people were at the convention when she won the nomination screaming bernie, and democrats just sat there and let it happen. >> a litmus test is a fairly new phenomenon in the democratic party. it's something we're trying to push back on. there are many of us that don't want this checklist, the things you have to do. to your point and your point earler, i literally took my concealed weapons permit class with nikki haley. we took our class together. >> you failed, though, right? >> are we on comedy central right now? but my point is we cannot have a litmus test. we cannot have a litmus test as

democrats. >> how do you say that to people who are marching in the resistance and -- millions of people marching. >> what you saw in the women's march and what you're seeing across the country is people coming together on various issues. whether or not it's common sense gun safety regulations which you hear democrats talking about or reproductive rights or what's going on in our federal benches. there are a collection of issues. and we had that energy. democrats are not one thing. we are conor lamb. we are joe manchin. we are bakari sellers. we are everybody and everybody in between. >> we'll see. i don't know about that. i mean, hillary clinton faced sometimes bigger headwinds from members of her own party. >> and hopefully we learned that lesson. >> that's all i'm saying. stick around, everyone. when we come right back, our breaking news on pennsylvania's special congressional race. democrat conor lamb declaring victory but until every vote is counted this race still too close to call.

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here's our breaking news. pennsylvania's special congressional election, democrat conor lamb declares victory. but the race is foo close to call until every single vote is

counted. about 1,400 votes remain and we are waiting on some to be reported on tonight. president trump stumped for rick saccone this past weekend. watch this. >> go out on tuesday and just vote like -- you've got to get out there. the world is watching. i hate to put this pressure on you, rick. they're all watching. because i won this district by like 22 points. i really feel strongly about rick saccone. and i know him. i feel strongly about him. he's an incredible guy. number one, and i don't know that this is important, but to me it is. he's a very fine human being. he's a good person. he's a good person. personally i like rick saccone. i think he's handsome. >> i want to bring in cnn political commentator simone sanders and jack kingston. he won by 20 points and not 22 points, just to get it straight here. the president and vice president, the family, they campaigned for saccone over the weekend, and yet here we are.

>> you know, they went in there, they tried their best to prop him up. i actually was talking to a consultant, axiom strategies, earlier tonight and they said pretrump's visit he was down by six points. sought president did give him a bump. not enough. there's no question the party out of power is a little more motivated. i saw a lot of candidates like this in 2006. guys like john bocherry and glenn. i think symone was on the hill when they came in in that class of 2006. the democrats took over. they were really blue dog democrats just like -- >> but tonight, jack. >> -- conor lamb. but just like him. look at him. he's pro gun. he's personally pro life. he's pro tariffs. he's pro tax cuts. he's pro coal. he's really out of step with the democrat party. >> that's not true. so let me -- >> well, excuse me, symone. but those are all his positions. >> but it's not true that he's

out of step with the democratic party. so look, no one is anti-coal. no one is anti-tax cuts when it's -- when -- >> let mer finish. she was quiet while you spoke. go ahead. zbln tax cuts for the wealthiest americans, which is what this tax bill is. a tax bill that's not popular, by the way, which is why republicans, particularly in this pennsylvania district, started rining away from the tax bill. this is what i think folks are mission tonight, don. the democratic party is a party of a number of factions that have organized under an umbrella of a shared set of values if you will. not a shared set of issues. because you get five democrats in a room they may tell you they stand for five different things. the lesson is it's not an either/or as bakari was saying, it's a we can do it all. we have to run candidates that are authentic to their message in spaces and places that connect with the community. you can be pro choice. you can be pro working people. you have to understand the factions in your district. >> is that the party you want to

be? it's not the party you had been, especially in 2016. >> but here's the thing, though. the democratic party is always shifting and changing. it wasn't the democrats that passed the civil rights act. so the question on the table is what will the democratic party look like a year from now, two years from now, even five to ten years from now? and the answer to that question lies in which factions rise up. >> and what lessons are learned. because there's a lesson learned from this and all the other special elections we have been covering throughout the past year. is that democrats have to rejigger a little bit and figure out where they go and maybe they have to run candidates that are more conservative. go ahead, jack. >> but i'm just saying, and symone can disagree, but he is out of step with the democrat majority in washington, d.c. he's pro gun. he's personally pro choice. he's pro tax cut. meaning the trump tax cut. and he's pro tariff, meaning the trump tariffs. these are not sustainable positions for a member of the

democrat party in the democrat congress today. and don, we've seen it before because in 2006 many moderate democrats just like conor lamb were elected and they were all tossed out because they couldn't identify with either party. some of them got beat in primaries and a lot of them got beat in general elections because that's not what the leaders that they elected stood for when they got to washington, d.c. is he going to consistently stand for tim ryan over nancy pelosi? he may for a while. i mean, gene taylor from mississippi, who symone knows, he did that for many, many years. but eventually it catches them. >> look, i think that democrats should be excited across the country tonight. this means that the blue wave is real. i think we saw in alabama the blue wave is real. but i want to caution folks, there is no blue wave in this koirnt without black and brown people, without working people. so you have to understand who are the folks in this district.

and where national democrats mess up, where the d trip and the dga, when they drop in and they do not take stock of what the climate is on the ground, that is when we mess up. we took stock of the climate and i think we're going to do well come this fall. >> listen, dana bash threw out a number earlier tonight that's significant. she said 114 house districts that are even more competitive than tonight. more competitive. that's got to scare republican colleagues on capitol hill, jack. >> there's no question about it. and i'm saying i think this was a very significant victory for the democrat party. i would say that the democrats keep bringing up alabama. they're absolutely wrong on that. not only was -- >> how so? >> not only was it all about the good judge down therebying a terribly flawed candidate but that the attorney general race down there in the test between the governor and luther strange, that had so much to do with it. but symone, so what i would give you is you've won these state legislative races.

i think it's 36 or 37 -- >> 39. >> i mean, that's to me where the story is. >> jack, let me ask you something. so he won by 20 points and then tonight, you know, i guess, well, almost two years later you can say. not quite. a year and a half later. he possibly, the republican candidate possibly loses? that doesn't scare you? >> no, it does scare me. there's no question that our party's going to have to do what conor lamb does is sometimes triangulate between where the white house is and their own provincial politics. you have to do that. democrats and republicans do that in their own party all the time, where they have to triangulate and they have to get on the ground and they have to knock on every single door but they also -- >> while you're answering this i want to put this graphic up, jack, and i'm going to let you finish here. this is a graphic from the "new york times." the blue arrows show where voters trended from republican to democrat since 2016.

hopefully you can see it. that's a lot of blue arrows, man. >> it really is. and it shows a fickleness of the voters right now that philosophically they're out testing both parties to find out what works for them and they're adjusting. candidates have to be very, very attuned to their own grassroots sentiments. and one of the things we did learn, both parties in this election, is polling is not as reliable as it use the to be zblip don't think that's true. >> part of it is people are on cell phones. the other part is people on the ground couldn't figure out which way this election was going to go. >> symone, stand by because we're going to take a break. i want to bring you back on the other side. much more on our breaking news. conor lamb declares victory in the pennsylvania special congressional race but the absentee votes still being counted right now. nature's boo. at roundup®, we know they keep coming back. you never invited this stubborn little rascal to your patio. so, draw the line.

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our breaking news this morning, democrat conor lamb declares victory in pennsylvania's special congressional election. a race that's just too close to call. until all the votes are counted. but it should have been a slam dunk for republicans. back with me now mark preston, bakari sellers, amanda carpenter, scott jennings, symone sanders and jack kingston. >> you wanted to rebut something jack was talking about, symone? >> it's so late i don't even remember what jack said. i just want to say this. i want to reiterate that conor lamb did not run republican light. he did run as a democrat. and i think what this means for democrats in 2018 is that you can run good races with good candidates and solid messaging and great ground games. but we have to do the work to identify good candidates and to make sure we are going out there reaching people where they are.

in beauty shops, barber shops and bible studies. >> alexander marquardt is reporting in the morning saccone will be at home while his campaign team meets with legal counsel assess his options. communications director patrick mccain says that will include lawyers from washington, from the rnc, from the nrcc. no decision will be made until after the meeting. i can't wait to get my new glasses. i can't read this small type. what do you think? >> yeah, there's no automatic recount in pennsylvania law. so this is quite frankly the same meeting is going to be happening with conor lamb and all his lawyers because they're going to try to figure out how do we stop this, how do we just declare victory, how do we move on? this is not out of the ordinary. let me just say one thing here that a lot of people will draw a score and bring it on. i think this is a victory for both political parties tonight. and here's the reason why. >> bring the scorn. >> oh, stop, it symone. here's the reason why.

it is a very big wake-up call right now for the republican party at this point to get their act together. specifically the candidates. and everyone's kind of been talking about that tonight. and it's also a very big wake-up call for the democratic party that this isn't in the bag and if you are a democratic strategist right now what you're hoping for is you want your activists to be hungry. if they feel like they're fulfilled right now, then that's a losing proposition heading into november. it's a wake-up call for both -- >> but everyone says, you know, republicans need to get their act together, republican candidates. what does that mean? >> what i think part of this means, republicans have gotten very lazy in these races and running a cookie cutter campaign against democrats in which they tie the democratic candidate to nancy pelosi, they paint them as anti-gun, they're going to go in your house and take your gun away, raise your taxes, they're going to make anyone in the world who wants to be a u.s. citizen a u.s. citizen. it's cookie cutter. so when a democrat deviates from that a little bit and you can't tag them with bam, bam, bam, those hits, they don't know what

to do. so they're going to have to get smarter too. >> mike murphy, we've had him on before, he is a republican consultant and a trump critic. he said, "we should be able to elect a box of hammers in this district. if we're losing here you can bet there is a democratic wave coming." what do you think of, that scott? >> well, any district that has a significant suburban population is absolutely on the republican watch list right now. so there's a lot of districts like this. and you see what conor lamb did. you see what democrats did in the virginia governors rate last year in the suburbs, running up the score. so at the end of the day you have to put all these kinds of districts that aren't completely rural on the list of lei, if you've never had a real race you might have one this year and what does that mean. i'd say tomorrow morning the nrcc probably sending a memo to people who have suburbs in their districts saying last night you saw what happened to saccone, don't be the next saccone. raise money and get out and work a little harder than you used to. >> but mark is trying to snatch

victory from the jaws of defeat. >> i don't think -- nobody's listening. >> he said both parties. >> the expectations going into tonight was that conor lamb was going to win before the polls even closed. and guess what. that's not what happened. >> but the facts still remain. donald trump won this district by 20. the president of the united states was just there campaigning for this candidate. and they still lost. >> and scott just said raised tons of money. saccone raised $10.6 million. lamb 1.8. >> but can we -- he did not raise it. if they want to split hairs, he didn't raise it, but the republican party spent that much money. >> they're going to spend more -- >> let bakari make his point and then you guys go ahead. let bakari make his point. >> everything people are saying about the democratic party, and i'm very critical of the democratic party because i want us to be our very best selves, over the past year we have won everywhere in this country.

we have won in suburban areas. we've won in urban areas. we've won in rural areas. >> you didn't win in west virginia when the governor switched parties. >> jack, it's late. >> let him finish his point, jack. >> but democrats every single day -- mark was saying you don't want them to get comfortable with victory. but with donald trump being president of the united states democrats will not be comfortable. and there are a lot of moderates that will not be comfortable. >> i want you to hold that thought because i think that's very important. jack, make your point. >> conor lamb also had a message -- and i agree with, you know, all this -- this is good content. but he also had a message. and what his message was to the 70,000 union households in that district is i'm a traditional democrat, i'm going to stand up for union jobs. that's why he's pro tariff. that's why he's pro coal sxep also said i want to get to washington and not be a democrat or republican, i want to get what's right for pennsylvania and america. that's a message that people like to hear.

and i think that getting back to amanda's point, i it do think there has been some cookie cutter theme that people are tired of and this guy conor lamb had a message. >> republicans also don't recruit candidates very well. >> exactly. >> i think there's a -- >> they recruited me. >> okay. now we're making my point here. >> that's why we say former congressman -- >> we have a lot in common. don't worry. but if we go back and look at the history of todd akin, if we look at the young lady who was not a witch, christine o'donnell, we can go down the list of individuals. roy moore, for example. who are not good candidates. and that's going to be the problem. what the democratic party has done with these organizations that are not the dnc like emerge, like higher heights, like emily's list, they've gone out and they've recruit ed some amazing candidates outside the

normal parameters of the democratic party. one of the things going into this, not only will they have this momentum but i think we'll have better raw candidates. >> don, the last thing -- >> hold your thought. >> all right. >> we'll be right back. constantly interrupting you with itching, burning and stinging. being this uncomfortable is unacceptable. i'm ready. tremfya® works differently for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. with tremfya®, you can get clearer and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks... stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® works better than humira® at providing clearer skin and more patients were symptom free with tremfya®. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections, and may increase your risk of infections. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms such as fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. before starting tremfya®, tell your doctor if you plan to

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democratic candidate conor lamb declaring victory in pennsylvania. till too close to call. officially. back with me now mark preston bakari sellers amanda carpenter, scott jennings, symone sanders and jack kingston. symone, is it enough to just run against donald trump? >> no. no. i've been saying this since like august of 2016. no, it's not enough to run against donald trump. we have to have a message. and so folks want something to vote for. particularly millennial voters that folks are hoping will come out. reports that 70% of millennials do not strongly identify with either political party. which means they don't care tough a d, i, or r behind your name. they want to know what it is you're talking about. what i think we saw with conor lamb particularly in this district, he ran for working

people and told working people in that district, working people which can be black, white, latino, native american, asian-american and otherwise, by the way, what he would do for them and how he would support them because that was the faction that, you know, could get him elected. the last thing i want to note is i worked a governor's race in 2014 when we couldn't even utter the words obama or obamacare. and i was in nebraska. i say that to say donald trump matters in 2018. you're going to see republican candidates who are going to have to run away from the president to avoid getting swept up in this wave, this wave that is not necessarily anti-trump in some respects but a wave of folks that they just want to elect officials that are going to go to washington and get to work and do something for them. donald trump is not actively demonstrating that he can do that and neither are republicans on the hill for that matter. >> which brings me to my next point because you have all this upheaval in the trump administration right now. president trump now saying, at least purportedly, that he's going to start being more trump-like, more trumpian, and

go with his gut. so if that does happen, scott jennings, that doesn't bode well, does it, for 2018 or possibly 2020. >> well, if it manifests itself in the president having a cab nelt and a staff he actually gets along with and listens to and trufrts and can deploy, that would be a net positive. at the end of the day referencing the tillerson move today, or yesterday now, he wasn't working with the secretary of state. he calls up the south koreans and makes a meeting with the north korean leader and doesn't even tell the guy. if being more trumpian means getting a staff he gets along with and that helps them move the agenda, fine. the other issue is they've got to get back on the economy. the president did one or two events on the tax cuts and the economy that was like six weeks ago. we haven't talked about it since. the economy is blazing. friday's jobs report is huge. and no one is talking about this in the republican party except for a handful -- >> we have been. >> but that's what happens. you can talk about these things, but that was my whole point.

there's such upheaval in the trump administration that it gets drowned out for all these things. everyone says nothing to he soo her, move along, there's no chaos. well, you've got cohn, you've got tillerson, hope hicks, porter before that. >> donald trump and michael cohn stimulated the economy by giving $130,000. so we've been talking about this day after day. that's just an example of the chaos that this white house is bringing on. and people are tired of that. people are growing weary of that. in south carolina i have moderates, republicans, evangelicals that all come up to me and say i don't know how you do it on cnn, it's so much news, it's all the time. we are getting so tired of this. at first people found it to be cute. now people are tired of it. >> i get even trump supporters say i don't know how you do it every single night. >> i would just like to say that bakari won the bet, if anyone's wondering, how to get stormy

daniels in. >> but don't you think -- hold on, jack. i do think a lot of the headlines, some of the headlines, some of the shake-up, and this is just me, someone who's been doing it for a long time, is the trump folks are working overtime to try to push stormy daniels out of the headlines. >> i don't think they have a message. you do remember that this is infrastructure week. >> you are seeing donald trump take a hold of his presidency. i mean, forget team of rivals. he wants a team of dittoheads. he specifically said he wants mike pompeo because he thinks like me, we're on the same wavelength. he wants people who reassure him and will carry out whatever he wants with blind loyalty. the end. and that is the job qualification. >> does not want to be challenged or told that he is wrong. >> go ahead, jack. >> i don't believe that. i know it's very popular to say all he wants is blind loyalty but i don't think that's the case. i served with mike pompeo. he's an outstanding guy.

he graduated top of his class at west point. that's a big deal. went to harvard law school. he was a captain in the u.s. army. he started a business, sold out and started another business -- >> that is true, mike pompeo is a good guy, he is qualified, but let's remember that one of his first acts as the chief of the cia was to go chase down conspiracy theories about the dnc hacking. i mean, that was one of the first things he did to kiss up to trump. and now he's been promoted. the end. >> no. he's done an outstanding job -- >> let's stick to the topic. >> i don't have any criticism of him. but one thing people are also forgetting is he's 54 years old. that's a job that's a 70-hour-a-week grind and he is a guy who i think can put a lot of energy in it. tillerson is a fine man. i was a big fan of his. but i think that there will be beyond chemistry a new kind of energy that i think -- >> you just called rex tillerson old. i just want to know. you just said rex tillerson is too old to be the secretary

of -- >> they're both done, jack, because they weren't -- they didn't give blind loyalty to him. he publicly shamed them for it. it's not that their policies were terrible. most republicans, most people in the country agree with their policies. it was the president who didn't. >> the president did not want loyalty in his cabinet, i cannot think of one. bill clinton or -- >> someone resigned today because he was -- >> hold on. >> sorry. >> give me one that shamed so many members of his own cabinet including jeff sessions a s ans and on as this current president does. >> i can't do that. but let me say this. i don't know one that doesn't want loyalty. and stylistically, don, i agree with you. >> okay. go ahead, amanda. >> just one of the other stories that got lost in the chaos today was that an official at the immigration facility, he was being asked about the deportations happening in california and because he couldn't back up the

administration's assertion that a warning that the mayor in california had given to the immigrant community essentially to get out, that deportations were coming, didn't lead to a fewer number of deportations, he couldn't back that up because they had similar numbers they've gotten in the past. so instead of giving journalists the proper information he was told to just refer the journalists to previous statements that sessions had made. he didn't want to do that. he said listen, i don't want to pass on bad information, i don't want to deflect for this information. so he has to go. and he went. >> my biggest problem with these staff shake-ups is first of all there's way too much turnover. barack obama had two secretaries of state. each one of them served for four years. we're already on his second secretary of state right now, speaking of donald trump. but my problem delves a little deeper. i have a problem with the level of competence of the people that he's bringing into the white house and surrounding himself with. rex tillerson came with a great

background. rex tillerson was a horrible secretary of state. he hollowed out the department. but you can make a credible argument that he deserves to have that appointment and be in the white house. but people like scaramucci. people like omarosa. people like seb gorka. people like steven bannon. >> yeah, mutt the faput the fac. go ahead. >> these are individuals that have no business in anybody's white house. they have no credibility. and they do not have the level of intellectual capacity to do the job necessary. and i don't know if we want to -- i mean, i want to be as generous or as kind as possible, but this is a fact, that he does not hire the very best people. i mean, look at his secretary of education -- >> loyalty is a higher priority than competence. >> loyalty is a higher priority than competence. and that is very dangerous. >> thanks, mark, scott, bakari, amanda, symone. we'll be right back.

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back with our live coverage now. we need to report on something that we had been having in the news now. some breaking news out of the uk. stephen hawking, the brilliant british physicist who famously overcame a debilitating disease to publish wildly popular best sellers on the mist travel

office universe has died. that's according to a spokesperson for his family. he was 76 years old. matthew chance has the story now on his life and times. >> reporter: by any measure, stephen hawking's life was incredible. even more so because in the 1960s, he was diagnosed with als, or motor neuron disease and given just a few years to live. this rare form of motor neuron disease left him virtually paralyzed, unable to express his profound vision of humanity and science except a voice synthesizer. >> at one point, i thought i would see the end of physics as i know it. but i know i think the wonder of discovery will continue long after i'm gone. >> reporter: but this was never a man bound by his own physical limitations. he revelled in a zero gravity flight freeing him he said from the confines of his wheelchair. he also wrote a series of children's books about space with his daughter lucy.

he had two other children and three grandchildren. for more than three decades, he was a professor at cambridge university's department of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specializing in the study of black holes and revered as a member of the academic elite. but professor hawking also did much to popularize science, playing himself in "star trek." >> in the opposite direction. >> reporter: the simpsons. in 2014, his life and romance with wife jane wild was depicted on the big screen in the acclaimed film "the theory of everything." >> the universe getting smaller and smaller, getting denser and denser, hotter and hotter. >> you mean wind back the clock? >> exactly. wind back the clock. >> reporter: hawking zounltd drama which earned five academy award nomination, and the best actor win for eddie redmayne for

his portrayal of the physicist. hawking's most famous work, "a brief history of time" remains one of the best-selling science books ever written. and he was deeply concerned with humanity's survival. >> i see great dang forehuman race. there have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been touch and go. the frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. we shall take great care to negotiate them all successfully. if we can avoid disaster for the next few centuries, our species should be safe as we spread into space. >> reporter: he was as ever looking firmly to the future. constantly interrupting you with itching, burning and stinging.

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