that day will come. >> reporter: dana bash, cnn, phoenix, arizona. >> as the memorials continue for senator mccain and move to here, washington, d.c., the nation's capital, stay with cnn for complete coverage, including the service at the washington national cathedral saturday morning. erin burnett outfront starts now. outfront next. breaking news. trump calls robert mueller's investigation illegal while insisting what he said on camera about the firing of james comey isn't real. also breaking. president trump saying attorney general jeff sessions has a job possibly only for a few weeks. and mccain's homecoming. the late senator john mccain making his way back to d.c. his arrival at joint base andrews expected in minutes. we're going to bring you the touching ceremony live. let's go "outfront." jim sciutto in for erin

burnett. illegal investigation. president trump telling bloomberg tonight he views robert mueller's investigation as illegal, refusing to say if he will comply with a subpoena to answer questions. this as mr. trump is now claiming inexplicably what he said on camera about why he fired former fbi director james comey is not real. the president claiming in a tweet that reads in part lester holt got caught fudging my tape on russia, they were hurt badly. fudging his tape on russia. what trump is referring to is his may 2017 interview with lester holt, an interview in which he contradicted his own white house. his administration had claimed the president fired comey due to a recommendation from deputy attorney general rod rosenstein, criticizing comey's handling of the hillary clinton e-mail investigation. but that is not what trump told lester holt two days after removing comey. here's a clip from the extended

interview which nbc released. >> he made a recommendation but regardless of recommendation i was going to fire comey knowing there was no good time to do it. and in fact, when i decided to just do it, i said to myself, i said you know this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. >> reporte >> he isn't offering evidence that that tape you saw is fudged because there is no evidence that nbc fudged or altered that tape in any way, and the president is not offering any evidence to back up his claim. he is also making this claim fifteen months after the interview aired. a time during which his own attorney, rudy guiliani, referenced the tape repeatedly as fact. >> so he fired him and he said i'm free of this guy. he went on lester holt.

lester holt's interview was as good as anybody could do, better than any of the people around mueller could have done. >> so why lie now? the answer is almost certainly special counsel robert mueller. trump's firing of comey is central to the question of whether the president obstruct justice. advisers to the president are worried what a democratic controlled house would mean for trump. one aide saying it would be, quote, like a perfect storm, with hearings, investigations, and possible impeachment proceedings. that may explain why this president expanded his campaign to undermine the russia probe, now going to the extreme of claiming what we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears somehow does not exist. >> stick with us. don't believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. what you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's

happening. >> novels have been written about this kind of thing. jim acosta is live outside the white house now. jim, any indication from people you speak to at the white house what the president was alleging with this claim against nbc? >> reporter: the short answer, jim, is no. we have gotten no explanation from the white house as to what the president was talking about when he said nbc was fudging that lester holt interview which was backed up by rudy guiliani already as part of the conversation of all of this. i will tell you, jim, i talked to a source close to the white house earlier today who said listen, the attacks on the media are going to continue. they're going to continue to hit the media harder in weeks to come. they see this as part of their midterm strategy, and jim, it is not just going after nbc or cnn or the rest of the mainstream news media, earlier this week the president was talking about going after google and twitter and facebook and social media companies because he is upset about what shows up in google search results. so it is this attack on

information and information sources that the american people have been relying on for some time, and jim, he is doing this as he is also making things up. it is not only the claim he made about nbc which is obviously false but remember a couple of days ago he was saying at the white house to a group of evangelicals there would be violence in the midterm elections on the part of democrats. when i asked the president about it yesterday for explanation about that, he didn't have one. he did not explain what he was talking about. so this is part of that comment that you played earlier where the president was telling veterans don't believe what you're seeing or reading, believe me. the president would like to replace news outlets all over the country with one news outlet, that's his twitter feed, but obviously that's not going to happen. jim, it seems this untethering from reality we're seeing from the president now is going to continue, and there's a lot of angst behind it as you were saying a few moments ago.

they were greatly concerned what would happen if the democrats take control of congress. i am told by sources close to the white house the president has been explaining by his advisers, impeachment proceedings, democrats taking over key committees that can hold hearings, issue subpoenas and so on are motivating angst on the part of the president tonight. >> jim acosta at the white house. we're going to keep doing our jobs. outfront, john dean, former nixon white house counsel during watergate hearings, laura coates, and david gergen served as adviser to four presidents. david, you advised four presidents. the president cannot possibly believe nbc doctored that tape. why would he make such an outrageous claim? >> because he thinks he can get away with it. listen, what we have is a fundamental strategy of assaulting the truth and this is a very dangerous road. there's an interesting book out by a woman long associated with

"new york times" on the assault on truth, and she points out based on work some 60 years ago that the two big toe tal taearin regimes, naziism and communism both were based, predicated on leaders destroying any sense and despoiling the truth, so people were wary, cynical, no longer knew what to believe. she makes the argument that it is the ideal person of totalitarian society, not a convicted nazi or convinced communist, ideal person to have as citizen was someone who no longer knew what the truth was. that's what the road to totalitarianism is. >> keep repeating the lies. >> yes. >> john, it is a pattern from the president and it appears to be a pattern with intent, with a goal here. he tried to discredit facts over

and over, there's the "access hollywood" tape, we heard it weeks before the campaign. listen again to his voice there. >> get some tictacs in case i start kissing them. i am automatically attracted to beautiful. i just start kissing them. when you're a star, they let you do anything. grab them by the [bleep]. do anything. >> the president initially apologized for the tape, saying he was using locker room talk. then a year later he reportedly suggested to adviser to a u.s. senator the voice on the tape just wasn't his. and twitter, another forum for this just in the past two days, several baseless claims, the president tweeted a story from a conservative news outlet claiming hillary clinton's private e-mail server was hacked by a chinese owned company. the fbi run by a trump appointee

had to tell cnn and other outlets there's no such evidence of this. i suppose, john dean, you worked with and witnessed a president who often told lies. are there consequences for this president for this kind of thing? >> well, it is hard to say yet. one wonders who he is telling these lies to, who he thinks believes them. maybe some of it is baseless, but i can't believe in totality base is as gullible as he thinks they are. richard nixon, yes, he did tell lies, but he told big ones, whoppers, not a part of daily life and small minutia that trump will get into, and blatant contradictions of fact. so it is hard to be sure if this man is continuing what he sees as a con he can pull off. i don't think he is smart enough to try to become some sort of

dictatorial leader. these are his natural proclivities playing out, and being an adult child trying to get away with these things. i think he will get his come uppance though. >> laura, on the investigation, the president just a short time ago told bloomberg he views the mueller probe, the president said this, views it as an illegal investigation. rudy guiliani, his personal attorney, said trump's legal team is working on its own counter report which he says will look at whether the investigation was legitimate when it started. of course, you have a claim now about some of the evidence in this, the nbc tape. is this part of a coordinated effort by the president to undermine both evidence and potential witnesses in this investigation? >> certainly seems to be. he has gone from the term witch hunt, now he has gone to a term of a legal investigation, hoping

that will catch on in a way to immunize him in some way, but i think he will be unsuccessful in that. while he is trying to crack the narrative, change the narrative, he's walking into additional conversations with robert mueller if he were to have even the first one. the president of the united states should no longer wonder why they're seeking to interview him, why they're prolonging the investigation in his mind unnecessarily. every time he spins a different version of the truth or different version of recollection or tries to crack a different narrative, whether it is now illegal investigation or some basis of it, he prolongs their ability to conclude whether or not he had nefarious intent or had some other role in terms of the intimidation, influence, or obstruction of a witness. he prolongs unnecessarily. on the idea whether or not it is an illegal investigation, even if that weren't his tag line at this time, you have andrew miller who was the assistant of roger stone who was trying to

make that very argument in court and to the very reason he is defying the subpoena, has been held in contempt in washington, d.c. for that very reason, because he is trying to establish that because robert mueller in his mind has not o day to day oversight by rod rosenstein, he is a man with very little oversight, zero accountability, which means this is an illegal act, he is always going outside his mandate. that's his argument. it will fail because of the language of the statute as written to protect him. all of this is spaghetti on the wall and he is using the media. what john is talking about, his perception of the gullible as a focus group. >> i tell you as i said earlier, we're going to keep doing our jobs. david, the president had 15 months to claim this nbc interview was false. he didn't, overtim time, guilia referenced it as fact and to support his arguments. >> yes. >> several times. do you see a reason for this now

and is it possible that he, his lawyers, learned about a line of inquiry by mueller which makes them nervous, therefore they go on the attack? >> absolutely. i'm not sure we have it all scoped out, but it is clear to me that they're going to use the next ten weeks from now to midterms, do everything they can to smear the press, to bring this over. the president is not spending a lot of time being president, he is spending a lot of time running for office, running to protect people, sending out tweets. if he wins the house, he will feel more protected. if he loses the house, he has an alternative plan, he will get rid of sessions after midterms, he will appoint someone who can fire mueller and in effect john dean has been pointing out in the past, it is not clear under the law what exactly is going to happen with the mueller report, whether it will go public.

a new attorney general can potentially block that from ever going public. might be lengthy, but to see the whole thing which the american people richly deserve after all this, to understand what went on is a serious danger. the president wants to get it, win or lose midterms, i want a strategy post midterm. >> no question. he can block release of that report. thanks to all of you. outfront next, breaking news. president trump says jeff sessions' job is safe, but not for long. and trump reportedly tried to buy decades of dirt directly from national enquirer. just what could they have have on trump? a national enquirer insider will be my guest. and standing by for the late senator john mccain, making his final flight to washington. the ceremony on arrival expected to take place in minutes. we'll take you there live.

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have him do a great job. this as senate gop sources tell cnn trump is increasingly venting about sessions for months now. outfront, democratic congresswoman sheila jackson-lee of texas, sits on the house judiciary committee. thank you for joining us tonight. give you a moment to get that earpiece back in there. >> thank you, jim. >> can you hear me okay? happens to me all the time as well. >> good evening. >> good evening. thanks for coming on. you of course opposed session' nomination for ag, claiming at the time he was one of the most far right members of the senate, that he lacked commitment to equal justice or rights. march of 2017, you said he should step down immediately for failing to disclose meetings with russian ambassador to the u.s. i wonder if in current circumstances would you be happy to see him resign or be fired? >> jim, first of all let me

offer my deepest sympathy to the family, friends, to the congress, house and senate for their loss of senator john mccain. >> sure. >> who truly is an american hero. and as well, let me offer to the american people we have lost the queen of music, not soul music, the queen of music for her genius, her spirit, and her commitment to the struggle in civil rights, and that's aretha franklin. all of us celebrate their lives and their contributions to this nation. >> no question. >> let me say to you i stand by what i said in terms of his confirmation hearings. i do think he was and is one of the most far right attorney generals ever nominated and his stance on civil rights and empowerment of people, most vulnerable people, is not one consistent with my views. in addition, his lack of candor as relates to his meetings with

the russian ambassador was disappointing and unacceptable for an individual who is going to ascend to the attorney general. and i also believe in the rule -- >> the point on that is him not being forthcoming, he recused himself from the investigation which trump holds against him. are you concerned who might follow sessions into that role and if he might be, he or she might be less protective of the special counsel, less protective of the russian investigation? >> i think all members who believe in oversight should be concerned about that. as i was saying, i believe in the rule of law. i made those statements and i stand by them. what has happened to sessions by the president of the united states who doesn't believe in rule of law has been untenable, almost taken us to a

constitutional crisis. i haven't seen this in the four presidents i had the privilege of serving under. i wouldn't want to be dispensed with the way this president wants to dispense with, and that's because he is not following and doing what this president wants him to do which is to dismiss mueller, dismiss the special investigation, and stand on his side that this is a witch hunt. for that reason, i'm glad that sessions has one, recused himself, and recognizes he cannot involve himself, and that the deputy attorney general is appropriate in the appointment of special counsel mueller and also in protecting special counsel mueller. i think congress should pass legislation we introduced inl t -- in the senate, it had 150 co-sponsors. and the question as to whether or not i want a different person, in a normal set of

circumstances, certainly a president has a right to select his or her cabinet. this is not a normal circumstance. you have the chairman of the president's campaign indicted, convicted last week of 8 counts, ten hung jury, and long time personal lawyer who admitted to campaign violations. this is not a normal set of circumstances. why does he want to get rid of general sessions? if he was, then it would have to go through a major confirmation, but he still has the power to not do that and to appoint someone that's been confirmed by the senate. i think that's dangerous. >> who could that have been. others made this point that he could make sort of the equivalent of a recess appointment if sessions were to step down. who do you believe are the possibilities? >> that's dangerous. i said we're on the brink of a constitutional crisis at any

moment with this president. to be honest with you, might i say eric holder. i don't think he would bring general holder back. i don't have a nominee that i feel confident would be selected by this president and this administration that would believe in the effectiveness of the role and responsibility of the special counsel, the responsibility that the special counsel has to finish his investigation, and of course the role of the congress, if the report is submitted to us that indicates that the congress should act. i do not feel confident. so i am watching what the president does. he has already given notice to the nation and to the congress that he will hold onto general sessions until after the midterms. then all bets are off. some would say all bets are off. what nominee will he offer and what will be the litmus test he will ask the nominee to abide by? will it be you do what i do?

because the president believes the attorney general is his lawyer. he is not. he is a lawyer or she is the lawyer for the nation and abiding by the laws that allow them to protect the nation's legal business. >> right. seems that loyalty is the number one judgment there. congresswoman, thanks so much for taking time. >> unheard of in other presidential administrations where they put the litmus test, except for richard nixon of some 40, 50 years ago almost that indicated that when his attorney general didn't follow his instructions, but no modern day recent president, jim, has ever asked for that kind of loyalty because you don't understand what the role of an attorney general is. he is the people's lawyer, the people of the united states of america. >> thanks so much for joining us tonight. >> thank you for having me. outfront next, trump reportedly taunted by decades of dirt by the national enquirer. why did the deal fall through.

a national enquirer insider will be my guest. senator john mccain about to make final return to washington as friends pay tribute to the late senator. >> i'm a democrat. and i loved john mccain. people confuse nice and kind.

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new tonight, president trump reportedly tried to buy three decades of dirt that national enquirer collected on him. "new york times" reporting trump and his former lawyer michael cohen devised a plan to purchase stories from american media, the parent company, but the plan was

never finalized. the plan corroborates a tape obtained by cnn that reveals cohen and trump discuss how to handle transfer of information and money. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david so that -- i'm going to do it right away. i have spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up. >> so what are we going to pay? >> funding, yes. and it is all the stuff because you never know where the company or he will be. i'm all over that. >> i'm all over that. outfront now, former l.a. bureau chief for national enquirer, jerry george. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> dirt going back decades to the 1980s, this just in run up to the presidential election in november, 2016. do we know what kind of details,

what kind of scandals, et cetera, accounts we're talking about? >> we know that the national enquirer was no tore yusly slow in entering the digital age. when i first joined the company, we wrote stories on typewriters. later, word processors were reduced, turned hard copy into editors, who would edit, then production, someone would type it into the system fand that resulted in physical inventory of files going back 30 years. so any stories written about donald trump from the '80s to early '90s that aren't online are stored in a warehouse somewhere. >> you're saying this was not new information that had now become public, it was archived material? >> it is material that some had been published, some hadn't, but

it all still exists. >> why would they have been interested in making a deal. michael cohen there said formulate a company, found a company to make the purchase there. why were they so concerned. we know they paid a lot of money to stormy daniels, to karen mcdougal to buy their stories. what to your understanding was so incendiary about this information? >> i think it, you know, based on president trump and david pecker's friendship, the trump organization was comfortable in probably making the approach to saying hey, why don't you sell us everything you have on the president and we'll make a deal on that. >> understood. last time you were on the show i know you talked about how close trump and pecker were, that he was essentially a silent editor, trump that is, of the enquirer. if trump trusted pecker on tape, it sounds like he and cohen

wanted an insurance policy, perhaps in case pecker went away or no longer controlled the company, trump on tape says if he's hit by a truck, is that what they were looking to do because they trusted him but didn't trust what might follow. >> i think they wanted a clean slate. i think the president wanted peace of mind of being able to sleep at night and that there were no surprises awaiting him in archives of the national enquirer. for david pecker's purposes that was very appealing. at first blush it probably looked like a blank check. it would give him the money to continue acquiring additional titles in publishing. >> to be clear, the deal didn't happen. was that a matter of money or pecker didn't want to sell it? what do we know? >> i suspect that probably in the end someone from the board perhaps even cfo wisenburg sat

down pecker and said you're opening up the company to a lot of exposure, and i think at that point their friendship transitioned from a favor and sloppy journalism to potential organized crime. >> understood. last week again on the show you said that you knew buried stories about marital discord about donald trump, infidelity, et cetera. here's what jay goldberg said on this topic. have a listen. >> i don't believe that he had that kind of attitude where he was picked up women randomly, i don't think so. he wasn't the kind of character you would expect of a person who has no regard for women. that was not his approach.

>> to your understanding did the enquirer appear to have reporting that suggested otherwise? i'm trying to get why they would have been so concerned, why he would have michael cohen setting up that company, perhaps making a payment. >> yes, definitely. from what i observed from story leads coming in, married or not, david pecker was -- i'm sorry donald trump was quite the ladies man. there were a series of marital affairs. >> and you're suggesting to your knowledge that would have been the information that the american media had and that trump and cohen would look to suppress? >> correct. >> understood. certainly more to explore there. thanks very much for joining us tonight. >> my pleasure. outfront next, we are standing by for the late senator john mccain's casket to arrive at joint base andrews. and hispanic americans reportedly being denied

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breaking news. you are looking at live pictures. this is joint base andrews where john mccain's family, his casket just landed in that plane there, a u.s. military plane, carrying him back to washington, d.c., following a funeral in his home state of arizona. this before a series of ceremonies here and in the washington, d.c. area to honor his extraordinary legacy. outfront, we have lieutenant general mark hurtling, se cupp, and author of the biography, john mccain, american maverick. we are going to be watching, keep up live pictures as we watch this ceremony as the plane taxis there. it will be met shortly by the secretary of defense, general mattis. that will come in the next few

moments. as we watch, s.e.if i can come to you first. they accompanied the body to d.c. how are they handling this? >> well, you can imagine this has been a tough year followed by a tough couple of days at the end here. as we watch these humbling stirring ceremonies, honoring, celebrating a man that was important to us all, you have to imagine how much more emotional it is for all of them. as i have been saying they've had the gift of time to prepare for all of this and yet it is obvious to anyone that's been watching these ceremonies that there wasn't enough time and it is still at least for megan, my

friend, she is not ready for this. she's incredibly close to her dad and is obviously having a very difficult time, you know, grappling with this end of his life. she's 33 years old. that is young to lose a father. you know, it is easy to think he was 82. he lived a full life. that is true. he lived ten lives. but for some of his younger children, this is all too soon. >> i'm sure we and many folks listening and watching can identify with that. there was never enough time. elaine, again, as the plane is going to taxi to a stop, we should note this is where air force one lanlds, the same air because outside washington. arizona his adopted home, saw enormous outpouring of emotion from people that worked with

him, served with him, and also members of the public. now he is back in washington, served six terms as a senator, was a congressman. washington is certainly a home for him as well. >> absolutely. now we are seeing the second half of his life. the first part was in arizona where we saw the deep love of the state that he has but washington was really where he may his mark. this is where people know him. this is where everybody in the city knows him. he is friends with everybody. he feels comfortable here. you know, he went to high school here, a little known fact about him, he went to episcopal high school across the river. he knew washington a long time ago. and then when he came back from vietnam and became the navy liaison to the senate, he somehow fit right in. he felt very, very comfortable here and he made people around him feel comfortable. this was a place that he moved

gracefully through, taking people with him, enjoying every single minute of it. >> just to set the scene again as the aircraft carried him, this is a c-32, a military version of the 757 this part of the honor that the president signed an order to carry out. the plane to bring him back here, lying in state at the capital tomorrow, which is an honor reserved for i believe just 31 americans have had that honor, most of them presidents. you're going to see his staff, dozens of staff through the years greet him in addition to the defense secretary. general hurtling, his time in the military, there as defense selkt no secretary. he is a retired general, he retired when he took the job as defense secretary walking up there. you tweeted an image of you and the senator in iraq where you commanded forces, you tell a

story he chewed you out because you tried not to let him visit mosul because of the danger there. senator mccain was not shall we say skiddish in situations like that. >> he wasn't, jim. and that was sort of a serendipitous meeting between the two of us. we had met once before in baghdad in 2004 when i was an assistant division commander, then he had come to the northern part, i commanded the northern part of iraq from baghdad up to the syrian border, and we had all sorts of fights going on in different locations. the one that was most harrowing was what was going on in mosul. this was during the surge. there were politicians wanting to come over, i am out of the military, they were the bain of our existence when the congressmen and senators came in. we tried to push them off on the public affairs guys, and we could do that with most of them. they could go to some lesser known areas where fighting

wasn't as intense or didn't exist at all. they could get their visit in for a day or two, meet their constituents, go home, speak on sunday morning talk shows, say how they had been to iraq. but not mccain. i tried to persuade my bosses at the time not to let him come to the north because we were in pretty tough combat in mosul, and i guess that word got back to him. first thing he said as he got off the c-130 as he landed at mosul airport, they said he is coming, you have to take him for a couple of days. first thing he said to me, i hadn't met him or seen him since 2004, probably didn't know who the hell i was either, he said so general, i understand you didn't want me to come to mosul. it puts you on your heels a bit. i am stumbling, saying no, sir, it is not that, i think i said it is a little sporty out there, an expression we used in the military. >> let me interrupt you a moment. the late senator's wife walking

down the stairs to be greeted by defense secretary mattis. behind her you can see his adopted daughter, i imagine, behind him, the rest of his children. there you go, a hug. jim mattis. he knew mccain well. he made quite an emotional tribute to him on his service and about their personal connection here. you can say that this is a personal loss for him. he knew him well. behind him there you can see the late senator's two sons from his more recent marriage, two older sons from a previous marriage, jim mattis, of course, escorting them. earlier you may have seen on the other side of the plane there was a black truck there called a loader. that's where senator mccain's casket, you can see it there on the left will be taken out of the plane and lowered and taken to the hearse as well.

again, emotional moment for all involved. but really a tremendous honor here. what you can't see on camera we may as the camera pans here, are dozens of his staff bussed from capitol hill here to greet the late senator's body. that explains all of the black cars there. there are a lot of people that wanted to be there for this moment. mark preston, you spent a lot of time on the hill. this is a -- here's the honor guard approaching the loader there with his casket. there are a lot of folks in this town, democrat and republican, who had admiration for senator mccain. >> yes. you know, they were, jim. as we watch, this is a very sad moment for the mccain family, but i'm trying to take a little bit of good out of it, a little bit of happiness. i have to tell you, the past couple of years, the divisiveness we have seen in this country and the anger and really all being inflamed by

politics, and then this week we've seen this outpouring of support for somebody who not only gave his life when it comes to mentally, he gave his body to the country, shot down and came back. he learned to forgive those who inflicted that pain upon him when he was a prisoner of war. and then on capitol hill he was somebody who was able to forge a deal. now, i'm not going to pretend john mccain wasn't difficult to work with because he was very -- he was a hard guy to deal with. if he didn't like what you said, he would come back at you very hard. and general hurtling had to be on the receiving end of that. i myself was on the receiving end of that many times in hallways of capitol hill. here's the thing about john mccain. he never lied. you always knew that whatever he told you was true. and he was always a gentleman. and i know a lot of people

talked about his relationship with the media, i think he saw the media not as his buddies, didn't look at it as his friends, but looked at it as part of a process that made america great. >> forgiveness. here's a man that could forgive his vietnamese captors, imagine the model that sets for there's not lot of forgiveness going on. you see what's called a loader, which will carry his casket down from the military jet, a military honor card representing all branches of the military. there are eight members there that once it comes from the plane there and the family waiting as well. there, we see them, an emotional moment for all involved. elaine, help us place -- there's been a lot of talk about this the last several days.

help us place his legacy as a senator, as a politician, as a military leader. have we seen his equal in recent memory? >> not at all. he is a singular individual. he is rare, he is unique. you know, we don't usually do this sort of thing for failed presidential candidates. he ran not once but twice and did not achieve the highest office in the land, and yet he commands such respect because of who he is and what he's done and his life story. it's interesting, you know, the family, not these folks standing here but his mothers and brother and sister thought they lost him back in 1967, when his plane was shot down. they believe that he had died. when i talked to his brother, joe, and joe told me the day he learned his brother was a prisoner and had in fact not died, he was the happiest he

could be and people were coming up to him saying, joe, joe, your brother has been captured, aren't you upset? no, i'm as happy as i can be. this is a military family that understands come bat and understands death. >> sacrifice. >> to see this tribute to him, i think what his legacy will be more of service to country than any specific piece of legislation or the fact he was able to work across party lines. all of that is important. but i think his service to country and the role model that he set for young americans, probably will be his lasting legacy. >> no question. we should remind people in this history cheating death when he was shot down and then captured, he was involved in what i think was the deadliest friendly fire, if you want to call it, incident during the vietnam war, he was on a jet, on the deck, enormous fire there, barely survived that. if you talk about risking your

life, body, life and limb for country, john mccain has done that a number of times. you see the honor guard now approaching the load are the. we saw this in arizona as well. he had a number of moments a military honor guard was carrying his casket, each planned, practice, each full of symbolism. they will take the casket off the loader at chest height. on command, lower it to waist height and do an about face and carry it to the hurst there. see the family there. there are still tears. you know the family well, you've been talking to them. how have they taken the reception to his loss? there have been a lot of kind words from all quarters in the last several days. >> well, i haven't spoken to them specifically, to any of them specifically about that, but i know meghan and i know

that hearing kind words about her father, she never took that for granted, she never felt entitled to that. she fought very hard, on a daily basis, to remind people how proud she was of her dad. so i am certain that the outpouring of memories and support and love for this man is part of what you're seeing here, this overwhelming sense of reality that she has not only lost her dad, to whom she was incredibly close, but a man that was so important to so many people, that must create a real -- a real mix of emotions there. >> we're going to listen in for a moment here. this is one of the most solemn cemetery ceremonies the u.s. military prepares for.

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. general hertling, you commanded forces in combat and lost more than you'd like to count or remember, help us understand the symbolism here. >> i was thinking as it was going on. in most formations or most ceremonies, soldiers are told by their command sergeants to look sharp and stand tall and come together. the self-pride of every sailor or marine does that. the transfer is the equivalent of that as we bring soldiers home from combat that have given their life are these kinds of ceremonies. the conversation before them

says something like this is your last honor to pay for this individual. it becomes different when you stand in a ceremony like this. you're not standing there for yourself or your formation, you're standing there for the individual who has sacrificed so much for their country. and in this case, senator mccain is certainly worthy of this kind of tribute. jim, all i can tell you is there is something different informations like this. you have to understand it -- you have to experience it to understand it. watching this honor guard with their sharp salutes, their precise commands, that everyone is in step and align, it is just different than a normal military ceremony. >> no question. you're seeing here now some of the senators and senate staff that have come to greet the late senator's body on arrival here. the family greeting them. you can see lindsey graham giving a hug. he had a very emotional tribute on the floor of the senate.

they were close friends and there were tears in that tribute as for many of his former colleagues. i believe that's jeff flake, former senator from arizona as well. greeting this extraordinary senator on his return to washington. coverage continues with my colleague, john berm. >> all right. john berm in for anderson tonight. you're looking at live pictures in for the base at andrews where the casket has just landed. you're looking at the mccain family greeting members largely of senator mccain's senate staff, some 75 people, part of his extended family and members of the senate. we see jeff flake and lindsey graham in that lineup