any time you help a customer, it's a really good feeling. it's especially so when it's a customer that's doing such good and important work for the environment. together, we're building a better california. ♪ i'm michael smerconish in los angeles. we welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. the immigration issue tearing at people's hearts and minds to the point the president made a rare concession. what is the solution on the border mess? governor john kasich is here. toil in secrecy, his poll numbers are dropping. is america tiring of the russia

probe before mueller releases his findings? trump's numbers in the gop is record setting highs, is that because those who oppose him are abandoning the party all together. steve schmidt is the one who chose sarah palin as it has running mate. now, george will is advocating everyone vote democratic in the midterms to quarantine trump. and the current culture of instability is blamed on everything from the president to hollywood, social media and the politically polarized country. what can be done about it? i'll ask film maker, actor and activist, rod rider. the images are as upsetting as the policy. immigrant children housed in tent cities and transported around the city. i will not defend separating children from parents. i'm pleased, for the first time,

the president yielded public opinion. that's a good thing. people who despise donald trump ought to note on immigration, he listened to reason and changed his mind. people who don't like what the president is doing on other issues, try to replicate. try to realize, the border crisis is not of trump's creation. we cannot allow people's antipathy toward the president and images and sounds of kids to overshadow the reality we have a crisis that requires resolution. how to control the borders and make immigration an orderly, legal process. as rich lowry pounted out in national review, there is a significant moral cost to not enforcing the border. there's obviously a moral cost to separating a parent from a child and almost everyone would prefer not to do it. under current policy, the only practical alternative is letting family units live in the country for the duration. not only does it make a mockery

of laws, creates an incentive for people to keep bringing children with them. if an adult files an asylum claim, they are detained longer than the government can hold their children. it is overwhelming the system to house and sort people and the administration's system keeping changing. the answer cannot be to allow individuals who arrive with kids to gain the system. last night, i discussed the roots of this whole crisis on realtime with bill maher. >> the drug war is the heart of this. the reason why people, even when they know they are going to face horrors like donald trump at the border are willing to make the trek is because their own countries are just unlivable. >> our interdiction in mexico and columbia caused the rerouting of the drugs through central america and created this horrific environment. i know where you are headed because you have been on this a long time.

>> yeah. >> the nation is getting ready for the conversation you want to have because of opioids and heroin. >> right. >> heroin is something you used to see on television. now everybody is within one degree of separation and having a person at risk. >> i want to know what you think. this is a provocative question at smerconish.com. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america, should drugs be decriminalizeed? should drugs be decriminalizeed? i spoke with ohio governor, john kasich. welcome back. did the border issue cost republicans control of the house? >> well, i don't know about that, michael. i think that, you know, this one has been very, very difficult. i think people understand this, when you have children who are

separated from their family and crying and wailing, this one gets kind of to the heart of things, as to whether there can be a recovery, i don't know. there's a lot of things i thought were going to result in a republican beginning to question some of what the administration has been doing. you know, this one kind of changed things. i understand there were only 58% approval on this policy, as opposed to 85. i'm not sure how much the 58% is. if people really understood what is going on. michael, here is the problem. the problem is, in the country, we are so divided up into our own team, i wear red, you wear blue, go to the game, we cheer. it's not helpful, not just on the issue of immigration, but across the board on so many issues that need to be addressed that are not being addressed because of partisanship. i must say, what people saw was really breathtaking. this is not the america,

michael, that you and i learned about not only from our parents, but our grandparents, a welcoming, caring, loving country. we didn't see it. that's why i believe the people of all stripes were agast of what they were witnessing. >> i agree with the statement as you framed it. i also worry that antipathy toward the president in some quarters and images and sounds from the kids obscured the real issue that we have a problem on the border. there are folks coming here and not playing by the rules. that can't get lost in our analysis. >> there's the humanitarian crisis. you know, when you think about this, if people feel as though their families are being threatened by a drug lord, gang members, they are going to leave. you would leave, i would leave. there is a process to come here. it's called that asylum process. when you don't have enough

people, enough asylum judges, a way to take families, things break down. here is the way i look at this. this is a humanitarian crisis. when you get a crisis like this, you need all hands on deck. you need to have everybody that could touch this issue, not just the border patrol, not just national security, national health. all the people that touch this thing need to be put in a room. then what do you need to do? forget the politics. think about the people. that's what the lord wants us to do, think about the way we would want, that we should treat somebody else, the way we want to be treated, then put a policy together that deals with the crisis. if you do this, considering who is going to yell the loudest or what the politics are, who gains politically or loses politically, it's a terrible way to do anything. we went through a little smidgen of this in ohio when we thought we had a major ebola crisis, we

got doctors, nurses, public health people, everybody that could be involved. we sat down and said, what is the right thing to do? this is different than that. just to illustrate, when you have a crisis like this, you can't do it piecemeal. you can't leave it to somebody else. the leader of the country has to say, let's get together, figure it out, forget the politics. at the end of their lives, they will be remembered as having done something positive for human beings. >> he is pointing a finger at congress. you served in congress. >> time to stop points fingers! you have to stop pointing fingers. whose fault is it? let's fix it. we should have fixed daca long ago. michael, here's the problem. here's what has everybody upset. i'm worried about my primary. i'm worried about my general election. the country? that's secondary. let me take care of me, first.

no, it's his fault. it's their fault. michael, in your family, if you operated like that, your family would fall apart. i'm not interested in who is pointing fingers. we are talking flesh and blood and humanitarian crisis on the border of the united states of america. fix it together, everybody. final question, if i ask you your plan in 2020, you are not going to give me anything, so i'm going to ask a different question. when will you decide -- when will you decide your plan for 2020? that you ought to be able to answer. >> i have no way of determining that. look, i'm governor. i have six months to go. by the way, we are up over a half million jobs in our state. we got a couple billion dollars in the bank from 89 cents when i came in. the beauty of ohio, the people not just at the top, but top to bottom have the opportunity to

be hopeful and think they have a better life. that's what i'm thinking about now, michael. i can't tell you the political side of this because, frankly, i don't know. even if we were alone, talking about our old days in pittsburgh, i would have to say, michael, i don't know. if you get ideas, give me a call. >> i will do that. governor thank you for being back. >> michael, you're the best. thank you. >> thank you. so, i want to know what you think. go to my website, smerconish.com, answer this provocative poll question. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america, should drugs be decriminalizeed. results at the end of the hour. tweet me at smerconish. go to facebook. i will read some during the course of the program. smerconish, are you selling cocaine or heroin today? typical left wing socialist statement. no. i'm not a typical left wing socialist. i'm none of those.

what i'm saying is think smart about this. what is driving the crisis? the crisis are our efforts in mexico and in columbia. therefore, rerouting all the drugs into central america and it's that drug trade and the violence that results from it that is causing these families to want to flee where they are coming from. i mean, you might have said the same thing if i said ten years ago here, isn't it time to decriminalize marijuana, you would have called me a typical left wing socialist then. so far, i think it's working out. i'm only asking whether we are ready have that conversation. okay? up ahead, at robert mueller grinds it out, polls show he is losing favor with americans. and the poll finds 90% of republicans approve of president trump. is that because of the growing number who are abandoning the party affiliation all together like former mccain presidential campaign manager, steve schmidt

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the polls. that would be robert mueller. approval of how mueller is handling the russia investigation stands at 41%, down from 44% in may and 48% in march. many continue to believe it affects the 2016 election is a serious matter to be investigated, the constant criticism by president trump is taking its toll. this morning, he tweeted poll number plummets on the democratic inspired witch hunt. mueller's is 42%. james comey, 28%, president trump at 40%. while this investigation obviously isn't a popularity contest and he's been operating in utmost secrecy, could it impact impeachment debate if there were to be evidence of high crimes. joining me now, tom feuntez. what are you looking at?

>> i think it reflects to me, this investigation and all the investigations regarding this issue have dragged on way too long. you know, the fbi almost two years ago began the, what we call the collusion investigation of the trump campaign. then, now, over a year ago, mueller takes it over as a special counsel and where is that at? we have seen the charges mueller brought. manafort for violation ten years ago of tax violations. we see 13 russians indicted that, you know, are never going to stand justice in the united states and we don't know who, if anybody they directly colluded with. so far, after all this investigation, we have seen no real evidence or no charges that actually prove the original allegation that the trump campaign or members of the trump campaign colluded with the russians. i think the public is fed up with not just the mueller investigation, but the fact of all these investigations seem to bring no real resolution.

there's all kind of activity and investigations and committee hearings and ig reports. my term is dynamic stagnation. we have all this dynamic activity, but the results are stagnant, nothing changed. couple it with the fbi solution to a handful of senior agents that appear to have botched or deliberately obstructed the clinton investigations, e-mail and foundation. his answer to that is conduct training for all fbi personnel about the lack of bias. that's absurd. >> put up on the screen, the favorables, unfavorables for the president. there you go. i find this interesting. so, the president's favorable rating is higher than that of mueller and comey, but his unfavorable number is much higher as well. bottom line is, there are some people who are undecided about comey and mueller. tom, i think this strategy by

the president of delaying whether he'll sit down with mueller while, meanwhile, and today, he's up early and at 'em again with a twitter feed, banging him down in a public way, might be part of a calculated stat -- strategy. the american public is not going to believe it. >> it's true. the president is getting conflicting advice from various advisers and legal scholars saying he absolutely should not be interviewed by mueller. others say do it and get it over with or set certain parameters on the types of questions. i think he's getting conflicting advice and, you know, he's going to do as he's going to do as we already know about the man. we have to wait and see with that. the longer it drags on where there's no resolution, particularly in the mueller investigation or the igs investigation, that doesn't help

anybody, including the president. and, we don't know whose investigating what. is the clinton foundation e-mail investigation reopened and ongoing? we don't know. the fisa issue, whether false information was given to fisa in the trump campaign. is it under investigation? we don't know. the utah attorney has been brought to washington to work with the ig because the ig has no authority to have a grand jury, under cover operations, wiretaps, anything that is routine for the fbi in big cases. this u.s. attorney, is he a de facto? we don't know. now, going on almost two years of investigations, what do we really know? and is any real discipline or real action being taken against any of the culprits that have been named such as mccabe or

comey? >> i'm going to leave you with a final thought, you, tom fuentes, when it comes to the fbi put in my head nine months ago, all this criticism of law enforcement, i worry about the long-term implication. i worry that desire to bring in the feds, because the reputation of the federal government and fbi was on a pedestal. i hope that's not being tarnished in a permanent kind of way. we'll come back and have this conversation. thank you, tom. >> thank you, michael. let me see what you are saying on twitter and facebook. what do we have? who care ifs people are tiring of mueller. time to grow up. i'm not sure what that means. i guess, hang in there for as long as it takes. perhaps the president's game is a rope-a-dope. remember the robe-a-dope, wear out your opponent.

mueller is toiling and trump is banging him publicly, you saw the numbers. it's having a huge impact among americans. one more, quickly, if i have time. poll on mueller, meaningless. we don't need jobs by popularity post. no, no, no. bill, i need to take a second and explain this. this is where you are wrong. to the extent, remember what's going to happen. mueller is going to hand rosenstein a report. rose enste rosenstein is going to hand it to congress. the poll numbers are indicative of the public tolerance, willingness to be fair when they judge that report. in other words, if the cake is already baked and people don't want to hear it because it's fruit of a poisonous tree, this is all very relevant to where mueller ends up. i dnidn't explain that so well. hopefully you understand what i'm thinking. still to come, when i left

the republican party in 2010, i was ahead of the curve. steve schmidt who ran the campaign and chose sarah palin as the running mate declared his defection. joining joe scarborough and others, is it time to re-think the two-party system? the immigration debat went fast when hollywood celebrities joined the war. do they help or hurt the cause? i'll ask veteran actor, rob reiner. ♪ ♪ raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens ♪ ♪ bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens ♪ ♪ brown paper packages tied up with strings ♪ ♪ these are a few of my favorite things ♪ ♪ ♪

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and became a member of the republican party, which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life. today, i renounce my membership. it is the party of trump. he likened them to the evil that separated families in slavery and dislocated tribes. he quoted ronald reagan's tombstone and wrote reagan would be ashamed of mcconnell, ryan and the rest. any independent voter aligned with the party left in america that stands for what is right and remains to the public, objective truth, the rule of law and allies. that is the democratic party. in later interviews, he cited trump's friendliness with kim jong-un and criticizing allies like canada. schmidt was following in other

gop media figures who pled the party including joe scarborough, mary madeline and george will. will wrote an op-ed in the "washington post" that advocated voting against the gop to quarantine trump. yours truly was ahead of the curve, switching back in 2010. i switched from "r" to "i" and publishes in the "washington post" explaining the party is over. i wrote the gop is a party of exclusion and litmus tests dominated with the right with zero disearnable outreach to the party that doesn't fit neatly within the parameters. the gop expanded to the fringe, throwing under the bus long-standing members. i explained why i was not comfortable joining the democratic party. schmidt now joins the 45% of us who don't id as "r" or "d."

i say it's time our voices are represented in closed primary states, on debate stages and in the media. joining me now is kansas gubernatorial candidate, greg orman. he left the republican party to become an independent and ran a close race for the senate in 2014, lost to pat roberts. you didn't beat, you didn't lose to the evangelical leader, greg, i stumble on that. your back reacted to the news of steve schmidt. >> we have seen a lot of high profile defections from the republican party, but, frankly, they are lagging indicators, not leading indicators. you mentioned you left the party in 2010. the fact is, americans have been leaving both parties in droves, really since 1998. they are doing it for a range of reasons. most notably, because this

system of government just isn't working for them. you know, the average american household hasn't seen a pay increase since 1999. think about that. the amount of time it takes a child to go from being born to graduating from high school, that's how long it's been sinls the average american has seen household income go up. so, obviously, they are dissatisfied with both parties and reacting with their feet. >> there are some who will look at you, study your record and say, greg orman is a smart guy, princeton educated, successful businessman, entrepreneur. i don't want to waste my vote for him. i had an exchange on this issue last night with bill maher. roll the tape, then let greg reply. >> in this country, we have two choices. we have tried many times to change it. if we were parliamentary, it would be different. third parties wind up making the better party lose to many times.

>> i have radio listeners who hold me singly accountable for the election of donald trump because i admitted on the air i didn't vote for him and i didn't vote for her, either. i voted for the libertarian ticket. i'm still proud of that vote. take it up with the 102 million who were eligible and didn't exercise the franchise. >> you get this criticism. what is your response to those who say you are a smart guy, you would be a great public servant, but i don't want to waste my vote. >> if you look at what's happening in the country and we see this as we travel throughout kansas, voters want something different. they want leaders who are going to tell the truth, who are going to serve them, not special interests and party bosses. invariably what happened is both parties have done a lot of work. it's the one thing they agree on, in keeping out competition. so, we are working not only to get people elected, but also to break down those barriers that

both parties use to deprive voters of legitimate choices. you and i have had the opportunity to talk about the things we are working on. the biggest barrier is psychological. 44% of americans are politically independent. if they just got behind independent candidates, independent candidates would start winning, we would create a third force and be in a better position to hold the parties accountable to meet the needs of the american people. >> if we could just establish a beachhead in the senate, it would only take three or four eyes to be elected, then they would have to play ball with you to get anything done. all of a sudden, an independent caucus could hold the cards. am i nearaive in think thag? >> no, that's what we were trying to do in kansas in 2014.

we weren't solving problems as a nation, our standard of living and middle class was at risk. if we could get a few people elected to the u.s. senate, who could mediate between democrats and republicans and ult natalie determine who the majority leader is and who holds the gavels, we could get the senate back on a problem-solving agenda. s we are looking at the same thing in kansas. the gazette editor said when anything is going to happen in america, it's going to happen first in kansas. so, we are looking to make that happen. >> let me say in closing, we may not be a majority, but we, the "i"'s are a plurlalty. the passion exists on the fringes. that's why, you know, we have seeded the debate. they are the loudest voices. that's what has to change. all the people watching us who say, i don't feel comfortable as

an "r" or "d" need to get off the sofa and into the game. good luck. thanks for being back. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to remind you to answer the survey question at smerconish.com. it is a provocative one. i cannot wait to see how this is going to turn out in 25 minutes time. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america, should drugs be decriminalized? still to come, more and more celebrities are going low instead of high. does it diminish their message? i'm about to ask rob reiner. ♪ now fight both fast new tums chewy bites with gas relief all in one relief of heartburn and gas ♪ ♪ tum tum tum tums new tums chewy bites with gas relief i'start at the new carfax.comar. show me minivans with no reported accidents. boom. love it. [struggles]

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super poligrip, helping you enjoy the foods you love. the dialogue in america keeps getting increasingly coursened across the board, but most publicly visible in politics and hollywood. robert de niro dropped the "f" bomb against president trump. anger is not the way to win the midterms or defeat trump. he set off a debate. more recently the times

attributed this area of incivility to trump himself dating back to the campaign trail. the president is definitely a bad influence, i'm not letting him off the hook. i trace it back to the early '90s and a polarized media. technology ratcheted things up, the ability to behave badly a m anonymously or at least not in person. it's made people more defiantly in their corners. i'm big on the time and place in life. there's a time and place for behaviors and opinions. it's not a popular stance these days. however we got here, we are here now. how do we get out. since we are in hollywood, i said let's check in with rob reiner, the actor from "all in the family" and director of "this is spinal tap" "stand by

me" "when harry met sally." the latest, "shock and awe" the weapons behind mass destruction. great to be here. great to be with you. >> thanks for having me, michael. >> i would be derelict if it didn't ask about "roseanne" without roseanne. >> i'm curious what they do about that. there is room for a red state/blue state kind of show. nor manley and i were talking about this the other day. as you said, we are more polarized now than ever. there's definitely room for that. i would be curious how they handle it. >> in all the states i flew over to get here from philadelphia, there's a perception when you get to this town, it's about ideology, more so than money. put that to rest. >> well, i think it's about issues, for sure. i don't know about ideology. i mean, you are in liberal hollywood and there's a reason

why i believe that artists and film makers and actors are liberal because to be a liberal is to have your mind open. you have to have your mind open to experience all of life, to be able to process it and communicate it in whatever media you are communicating. so, there is a liberal vent here and we are liberal on certain issues. i wouldn't call it ideology, necessarily. >> do some of your neighbors and colleagues take it too far? i could go through a laundry list of bad behavior that helped the president. the most recent is this horrific peter fonda tweet of baron trump in a cage. >> i didn't see that, doesn't sound good. i would say you are on to something here and that i wouldn't put it at the feet of hollywood. i wouldn't put it, necessarily, at the feet of trump. it has been coursening over the

years and i think social media plays a very big part of that because you can tweet something out or put something on social media and you are kind of hidden, you know? you kind of don't, you are not right out there, not having to take responsibility for it. that gives people license to go further than they might go and certainly, this president, has given us a license to say all kinds of things. >> right, but do you subscribe to the michelle obama logic when they go low, we go high or fight him on his own turf? >> you have to go high and at the same time, fight. it's a very difficult thing. you have to do both. you can't just be in the mud. you have to hit hard back, but you have to have a high standard. >> you run the risk of tossing the midterm elections to the gop, if, in fact, it's perceived as people are beating up on him unnecessarily and unfairly. >> you have to energize your

base, no question about it. what you don't want to do is energize the other side even more. there's ways of energizing the base that doesn't energize the other side. again, you have to strike that balance. >> how do you walk that fine line is the challenge for people who see the world as you do, politically. >> attack what needs to be attacked. there's a lot to attack in president trump, but you have to offer a positive message of what we can do to make things better. you can't just say things are bad, things are bad. i used to say, satire. satire is always tearing things down. it's fine. you tear things down that deserve to be torn down, but you have to say, what would you put in its place? what would you say would be making the world better? you have to present that as well. >> your movie "shock and awe" a tribute to those who were sounding the alarm about the iraq invasion, but nobody was

listening. you must have made this film because you worry it could happen again. >> yes. you know, i was of draft age during the vietnam war. i was against that war as i was against the war in iraq. i, you know, i couldn't believe in my lifetime, we were about to go to war. this is back in 2003, based on a lie. again. it was happening twice in my lifetime. so, i wanted to get this story out of how does this happen? how does the government -- i understand propaganda, every administration needs propaganda to sell a policy or a rational to go to war. but, to lie, to know you are lying about things, that, to me, was too much. i worked for a long time to figure out the best way to tell it. i found the four journalists who got it all right. they figured it out. they couldn't breakthrough. >> you know, i'm a bit embarrassed. i consider myself to be fairly well read, until i watched

"shock and awe." i didn't know of their efforts. >> i didn't either. that's the problem. four journalists doing the principle thing you need to do in journalism. my character says it, if the government says something, you have one question to ask, is it true? that's the job of journalists. so, the fact that these guys were getting it right, were asking those tough questions, getting it right and nobody listened, to me was astounding. that's why i made the movie. >> congratulations. thanks for being here, i appreciate it. >> thanks. thanks for having me. still to come, your best and worst tweets and comments like this. what do we have? does vulgarity minimize the message? quibbling over a dictator metaphorically. frank, unless you think i'm prudish, you should hear me on a

commercial break. i don't think it's effective as a political strategy because it adds to the perception that is held in some red states of the piling on of the president, especially by the hollywood elite. still to come, we are about to give the final results of the survey question. the last chance to vote at smerconish.com on this issue. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis from central america, should drugs be decriminalized? and non-24 can make me show up too early... or too late. or make me feel like i'm not really "there." talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424.

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if we legalize heroin, won't people still flee to the u.s.? the flee, as lamar was expressing last night, you're undermining the illegal drug trade in central america and, therefore, the stability that would result would cause people to stay in their native country. it's time to see how you responded to the survey question at smerconish.com. if the drug trade is partly to blame for the migration crisis, should drugs be legalized? 8,000 votes cast. thanks for that. wow, 59% say yes. now that's really interesting. lamar would be thrilled with that, wouldn't he? 59% say yes, if this is what's driving it, then decriminalization is something we should be considering. maybe that says something about our audience. i don't know. here is what else you've been saying throughout the course of the program. hard drugs should never be

legal. does anyone want them as common as cigarettes and beer? i think it would usher in an unprecedented era of addiction. can i recommend a piece from "the dpardian" on what's go iin on in portugal because catholic conservative portugal did exactly this. treatment is a big part of what they're offering. it's not just, hey, let people do drugs. treatment and recognition of what drives it is a critical component but thus far they've had a very positive result. so do some reading on the portugal experiment and see what you think. hey peach pie, do you know what's so funny? to you my republican comes through loud and clear. i could fill screens from tweets from this hour of people that

says i'm so sick of you, the lefty, that put on cnn. over the span i think it comes out somewhere in the middle. smerconish, why have you not joined the democrat party? i'll give you a great example. what exactly is the democratic plan relative to fixing the border? i get everybody kicking the crap out of the president for separating families. i don't want them separating families. as you heard me say, the underlying crisis is not of his doing. the under dlying crisis was created by 20,000 apprehensions at the border going to 50,000 apprehensions this year. that's not because of donald trump. i don't like his solution but where is the democratic alternative? because i'm paying close attention and i haven't heard it. catch up with us on cnn go and cnn on demand. see you next week. and whiskers ♪

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