step of the way. don't miss our daily interaction newscast on facebook. you get to pick some of the stories we cover week nights 6:25 eastern. the news continues. i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." i am chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." hurricane michael's just hours away from slamming into the florida panhandle, now a category 3 that's stronger than florence. we have new information on what to expect and when. the big question is whether or not florida is ready. there are lots of eyes on tallahassee. mayor andrew gillum. and nikki haley, surprise or not? her staff, bolton, pompeo, all reportedly caught off guard. why did the u.n. ambassador announce her exit weeks before the midterms? we'll dig deeper for you. and if you're watching this show you know chicago has a

unique gun violence problem. is stop and frisk the solution? the president is pushing for it. is it what he says, or is it a recipe for a new problem? it's that time again, my friends. let's get after it. all right. we know this as a matter of fact. hurricane michael is barreling toward the gulf coast. it's not weakening. it's gotten stronger. florida candidates are putting a pause on politics with only four weeks until election day but they have a job to do and it literally could be life or death. on monday president trump didn't take a break. he called out one of the candidates, nominee for governor andrew gillum for being corrupt. gillum is mayor of tallahassee. what does he have to say about this in the midst of a category 3 hurricane, headed his way? andrew gillum, thank you for joining us.

how are you doing in terms of preparation? >> well, we feel good about our government's preparation and we're ready for this storm. we're, unfortunately, over the last threeafter years well practiced. this being our third storm that we've had to encounter. we want to make sure our residents are making the proper preparations to deal with what will be a life threatening event. this will be the strongest storm to hit our area in over a century. we want to make sure people are making the right preparations. >> here is the problem. one, people get complacent with time. you haven't been hit this way in a while. the memory gets short. people think it was easier than it was in some cases. second, you have a lot of poverty in and around this area that's going to be vulnerable. there are rural places jo you had pla-- outside tallahassee.

how do you deal with those chal snengs. >> we have had to be a welcoming place in times of natural disaster and this time is no different. we have opened up five shelters so far all around our community. i believe a sixth may be online as early as tomorrow morning. we know that we're already receiving guests from some of the lower lying areas along the coast given the storm surge they're going to be facing. we're welcoming those folks and trying to make it as welcoming a stay as possible. what's at stake here is the life and the safety and the security of people, and if they're in the low-lying areas, here in my own community, if you're in a modular unit or a mobile home, we want to you get out of harm's way and go to one of our shelters where we can ensure your safety. listen, we can put houses back together. we cannot replace a life. we're hoping people will take advantage of the sheltering opportunities available to them. >> amen. now registration window is about

to close. the storm could very well complicate efforts to get people registered to vote. people in your party are calling for a delay where they can reopen the window after the storm. your position? >> well, i think we want to do everything we can to assure people have the opportunity to register to vote. you've probably seen the spikes reported on the final day of voter registration that occurred just in the last 24 hours. we know people make a rush towards the end. and i would plead with the governor and on those in charge of this process to extend the opportunity for as many people to get involved and get registered in the process as possible f. you're worried about your life and safety, you're probably not thinking about voter registration at this moment. a little bit of grace for those folks is in order. >> now 2016 you guys in tallahassee got blame put on you for not accepting the governor's

offer of help. you say you have an answer to that. that it's a false charge. what's the reality? >> unfortunately, we had a storm that was politicized. that's the last thing you want when you're trying to keep people safe. we woke up to recognize over 90% of our public infrastructure had been devastated. our entire sewer system knocked out. what we said, we would work as diligently as we could to get our community up and going. over 90% in my community had their power restored. we worked over the remaining days to get people back connected. i think what president trump did by attacking me, attacking my city, i don't think we've seen a sitting president go after a sitting mayor in a community preparing itself for a near

category 4 hurricane to attack it. we don't need partisanship, we need a president, a partner, someone who is going to come to our aid when we need it not throw cheap political shots. >> mr. mayor, for those who didn't hear it, here it is. >> if you look at ron desantis, he's done fantastically well. i backed him from the beginning. he's doing a fantastic job. his opponent runs a place that has a lot of problems, and i know it very well, but it has a lot of problems, tremendous corruption, tremendous crime. this is not what you want to run florida. his opponent is, i think, a horrible choice. >> so is this a reflection of our new normal? nothing is sacred. nothing is above politics. nothing is apolitical. it's all go all the time. >> well, i find it unfortunate. i find it most unfortunate, obviously because of the timing and, secondly, because of the fact it's not true.

i preside over a city experiencing a five-year low in our crime rate. the hard-working men and women who you may be able to see behind me, they deserve better from their commander in chief. they don't deserve to be reduced to partisan politics. they're trying to keep the life and safety of the people they have charge over protected in what will be a pretty major storm. the president should have taken that opportunity to encourage people to get out of harm's way to prepare themselves for the storm and then offer his unmitigated support not just to me but my state in the aftermath of this disaster to help us get back up and going. regardless of that, i know that we're ready, we're prepared, and we'll do what it takes to make sure our community gets up and going. >> let's hope everything is a little bit exaggerated. let's hope it's better. as i was saying to anderson, it's the only time a journalist wants to be wrong. i hope these estimates are wrong. i hope i don't have to be down there face-to-face with you 36

hours from now because we're dealing with such a terrible aftermath and we see president trump, you know, taking jump shots with paper towels to people who are desperate in our own state of florida. a lot of your people and citizens in your state watch the show. what is your message? hopefully they'll have power when the storm comes through but the window is closing. what do you want them to know? >> first off, if you're one of our neighbors along the coastline, the storm surge is life threatening. it is deadly. if you have not gotten out yet, do not assume you can ride this storm out. get to higher ground. come to your capital city in tallahassee. we will do our very best to accommodate you here. for my residents here in the area, know that we're ready for this storm. you're government is ready. we will be able to repair and get back up and going in our

communities. what's most important at this time is that you keep yourselves and your families safe during this storm event which will begin in earnest in just a few hours here. >> all right, mr. mayor, as we say with all local leaders when this kind of event is headed their way, use this as a resource. if you want to coordinate getting people the help they need, we're here for you. that's why we have the job. >> thank you. thank you for that. really appreciate it, chris. god speed. >> be safe. i hope it is better than expected. mayor andrew gillum, good luck to you. we also invited his opponent, congressman desantis, on. he declined the offer. just so you know. hurricane michael is closing in as we speak. who is at the greatest risk? where is the most vulnerable? why is this one different from florence? there are answers to all those questions. we have them with the latest forecast next.

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read reviews check hotel prices book things to do tripadvisor florida's governor is warning of, quote, total devastation when hurricane michael strikes, and with good reason. it was just a few weeks ago that we were talking about florence, another hurricane that made landfall, that one in north carolina. but the superlatives you're hearing now, monstrous, historic, don't dismiss them as hype or hyperbole. let's bring in cnn meteorologist joining us right now, and you can put me on the bones of why it's not hyperbole. let's start with two facts, the category 3 storm has only

strengthened as it's gotten closer to the panhandle, and an area, this area where it's going to get hit, hasn't seen a big storm in a dozen years, right? >> that's true, dennis 2005. october, chris, ranks as the number one month for hurricanes to make landfall in the state of florida. however, there have been very few category 3 or higher hurricanes to ever hit the panhandle. the last one was dennis. we're looking at something historical here. this is not just going to be the strongest hurricane to make landfall since 2005, 13 years ago, but we went back more in history and we believe that within 40 miles of panama city, this is going to be the strongest in recorded history. that says something because there's a whole generation of people that never had to go through something quite like this. there's a whole entire area of real estate that has never been tested by the winds and surge of a storm like this. >> we hear a lot of contractors and municipalities talk about

things being hurricane proof and windows and different aspects of construction. we'll see now, 2004 hurricane ivan, hurricane dennis. ivan and dennis will be painful reminders for people in that area. you remember living those pictures, horrible. now that's not the big problem, though. wind, as, tom, you instruct us all the time, wind isn't what kills you. water is in hurricanes, storm surge. please, tom, explain to us the different aspect here of dealing with the shelf, low-lying areas in terms of feet above sea level but, also, the shelf, the continental shelf. why does that matter? >> great question. big difference between the atlantic coastline on the outer banks and the gulf. we do have a continental shelf off the coast and we also have barrier islands. the intercoastal area, but the

continental shelf in the gulf is much broader, much more of an area that the water is shallow. this is ivan, by the way, 2004, when they moved to the region the wave height grows with time. the tsunami last week following the earthquake in indonesia, the reason it was so high is the water went through a narrow area shaped as a submarine so the tsunami grew with time. there's the ivan you were talking about. this is dennis. ivan actually made three landfalls but dennis came through all west of panama city. to get more and talk about that surge, because i want to get back to history for you. we had it up here. here it is. the surge inundation map. we talked about this, of course, when florence was coming on. let's get in closer. there's a lot more red on this

map than we had in parts of the carolinas. where you have apalachicola, the curve is going to catch the brunt of those forward moving wave heights so, again, with that shallow continental shelf you're talking about, apalachicola will get hit hard. this little inlet, there are some homes and there are some barrier islands but panama city, destin, we just don't have that protection. you have that gradual slope of that ocean floor slowly rising and continuing. so this will inundate several areas of the big bend region. if there's an area to be hit it will be this one. it's a nature land area, a lot of wetlands. >> two other things real quickly to button up tom's point and then i want to ask something else. here i showed you what he's talking about in terms of gradation of the shelf. as it gets more and more shallow, it will allow wave,

amplitude and volume to increase and that will create a bigger surge effect. also a lot of the folks who live around here, yeah, you have money in and around here living on the coast, beautiful homes and all that, there are lots of pockets of rural communities as well and poverty. those people don't have the same access to emergency relief. they're going to be harder to reach. it will be harder to know what's going on. those are unique challenges here. >> good point. >> king tides, what are they? when are they? relevance? >> king tides typically, it's hard to give a scientific definition because there's some discrepancy. some say it's once a year. some say once a month. but we're already seeing flooding. we see it in miami but now in tampa, st. pete, dauphin island. it adds about an extra foot to that incoming surge of water. that is taking into consideration when the national

hurricane center puts out its surge warning which, by the way, they use life threatening inundation and the word historic mainly because all the storms have been west of panama city since 1950. we haven't had them this close into the east. you were talking about building codes. andrew in '92 changed the way many homes were built. it changed the codes. there were so many homes built before 1992 that do not have those supporting hurricane brackets or the way they adhere their tiles. this will be a whole new test. i wouldn't be surprised if this does become a 4 before landfall. >> god forbid. i hope that's wrong. i hope 36 hours from now you're not coaching me through an ifb that's wet and windy because we're dealing with an aftermath way worse. tom, thank you very much. we're definitely going to come back to the storm. the information is changing and we want to get it to you as quickly as possible. i want to keep the rest of you

connected to your brothers and sisters where the storm is going to come because they will need help just like the people in north carolina. the kids just got back to school. they need books, they need clothing, they need essentials. go to our website. you'll find a way to help. another big story, u.n. ambassador nikki haley, she didn't really have an answer for why she's stepping down. is there something about the timing? was this intentional before the midterms? a great topic? let's have it next. ♪ my love has come along ♪ my lonely days are over at last. applebee's new neighborhood pastas. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood.

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the speculation of what

prompted nikki haley to resign, but to be fair they should have given more information. what did they think was going to happen if she does this right after kavanaugh, before the midterms, and they don't say why. the truth is no one besides nikki haley know what is truly motivated her to quit. she tamped down speculation that she was going to challenge trump in 2020. listen to this. >> i will say this for all of you who will ask for 2020, no, i am not running for 2020. i can promise you i'll be campaigning for this one. i look forward to supporting the president in the next election. >> because we're dealing with politics, can you really believe that answer? and thanks to the man sitting next to her, do we really trust what politicians say at all? so the more important question is not whether she has presidential ambitions but what does this mean for the administration? let's ask our great debaters. good to see you both. angela, what's the premise of this question, the premise is she's good for the

administration. she's a strong, independent, female voice most of the time in this administration. she doesn't just do whatever trump says. even when that rankles and she gets sideways. if she leaves, how big a deal? >> i think it's a big deal because of the number of vacancies donald trump's administration has seen since he won the election and was sworn in during the inauguration. the reality is he has not been able to keep a whole lot of folks whether we're talking about people right next to him at the chief of staff level or someone as distant as this u.n. ambassador position. many would argue nikki haley has made that position very strong because of her ability to be independent from the president and push back when she disagrees with him. the question i'm wondering, this is less than a month after the u.n. general assembly this is just a few days after the kavanaugh nomination vote. sure there may be speculation

around 2020 and to your point, chris, i don't believe much of what politicians tell us. she sounded pretty convincing in that meeting. i would say the other flag that we have is that there's an ethics investigation requested by the citizens of responsibility and ethics in washington into seven, not one but seven free plane rides on private jets from businessmen in south carolina. so the timing is eerie there. that was just yesterday. >> that's true. by trump standards, that's nothing compared to what other cabinet people have -- >> i'll give that you. >> the timing is not good, dave. i don't know why she left now. the timing is not good. >> our colleague put out a piece, and i agree with him, that says ambassador haley's timing is impeccable. she had an incredible two-year run. quinnipiac poll just out in late april, early may, had over 60% of the respondents had a

favorable opinion of her job. >> 55% democrat. >> 55% democrats. that's unheard of in this administration. she's been there coming this january will be there close to two years. that's a long run in this business. it's a grind job. she finished up successfully. if she left after the midterms it would be like she's running off the midterms because of the house flipping or something. there will always be an excuse. there's never a good time. >> she could have just said why. >> she could have said why. >> she's going to say i want to spend more time with my family. >> she could have said, i need to make some money. i did a great job. i want to leave on top and make money. listen, chris, she's going to go spend time with her family and kids. look, this administration this is one position where you have a very strong bench. powell is a very capable woman, can step right in tomorrow and fill those shoes. without missing a beat.

>> you raise an interesting point. >> the president on air force one this evening said there's only one -- the only name mentioned so far said rick is not on the list. the only person he's mentioned is dina powell. you say she's not real. >> i didn't say she's not real. i said i don't want to criticize her now. just because trump says something on an airplane doesn't mean i think it's something invested with a lot of thought. >> david, why are you so defensive? >> i want to give her some time before we critique her. >> okay. that's fair. she's long served in two administrations. >> she's also not nominated yet. >> neither was nikki haley before she took the job. >> well, hold on.

she was an independent voice. she was not a huge fan of trump for a long time and i think that to his benefit and hers. if he doesn't replace nikki haley with someone like her, do you think he takes a step backwards? >> i think he'll pick the best person for the job. you're not going to find another nikki haley. she's a unique individual, very well qualified. i think she left at the right time to preserve lots of things for her future. i think deena is quite capable. >> he has a penchant to pick yes people. if he now picks a yes person to fill the spot, do you think he winds up losing on the trade? >> i think donald trump needs people around him who can hold him accountable to help him find the higher ground because he struggles to find that whether it's on twitter, in a press conference or some other venue.

david, david, david, david, david, you talked. >> you can't talk all night. >> one point at a time. >> we should run that back just on time today. i can't wait. i cannot wait for people to run that moment back. let's compare -- >> let's make a new moment. all right, let's make another moment. >> cut the crap. >> let's make another -- let's get a response to it. >> the point was already made. he just didn't like it. the floor is yours. >> i'm sorry. a three-second delay. the point being no one will get through the senate who is not tough and will push back. questions will be asked. this is going to be a cake walk. >> how do you stop somebody? >> they'll have a tough time. >> did you just watch the nomination that happened this weekend? >> i did, yeah. okay, all right, all right. this is interesting.

twilight zone tonight, chris. >> people are not getting through who are qualified. deena powell, whoever is going to push back, chris, on this president. i assure you of that. >> you know deena real well. >> he's surrounded by people who don't push back. >> at least you think so. >> i think i have some good sources. >> first of all, kellyanne -- anyone there a long time does not make the president uncomfortable on a regular basis. he would not say and tweet the things he did if he had a real strong political hand at his side. no self-respecting politician who understands messaging and the role of that office, if they had the ability would allow in terms of the rhetoric.

republican or democrat. >> you want to call kellyanne weak -- >> you can put words in my mouth. you're not great at this messaging thing. you just throw stuff out there with no basis in fact. >> you just said no basis in fact. >> i feel like i'm watching the great debate tonight. >> you said the president didn't have anyone strong next to him. kellyanne is very strong. you said, no, she's not. >> no, i said nobody lasts a long time if they don't tell him what he wants to hear and you have to find another way. angela, final point? >> i would just love to see david name three to four people in the white house who he thinks regularly stands up to donald trump. it just doesn't exist. i like kellyanne. i remember when she was a commentator here on this network. that's a different kellyanne that we have now. that doesn't mean she never stands up to donald trump. kellyanne is regularly on message, david. you can shake your head.

>> she's on message. >> if he listened to kellyanne, he wouldn't be saying the things that he says as often as he does, that's all i'm saying. and he's the president and should be the last word. that's the way the system works. he'll be held to account the most as well. angela, thank you very much. dave, always a pleasure. >> chris, thanks for having me. all right, from all of that to an actual storm. hurricane michael is coming. it's just hours from making landfall. now you'll keep hearing it could be the most destructive storm to hit the florida panhandle in decades. why? they haven't gotten hit this way? a long time. we'll talk to a congressman who is on the ground, his area, his district is especially vulnerable. he has a message to you who are down in florida in the path and beyond next.

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warning, california. a handful of billionaires have spent over $70 million on campaigns to undermine our public schools. and electing a former wall street banker named marshall tuck to superintendent of public instruction is all a part of the billionaires' plan to take money away from neighborhood public schools and give it to their corporate charter schools. that's why tony thurmond is the only candidate endorsed by classroom teachers for superintendent of public instruction. because keeping our kids safe

and improving our neighborhood public schools is always tony's top priority. hurricane michael is intensifying as it gets closer to the gulf coast. that is a fact and this part of the country is particularly vulnerable. florida congressman neal dunn's district is right in the middle

of it. congressman, thanks for being with us. i'm sorry it's under these circumstances. you have a lot of people from the florida area in the path of the storm who watch us this time of night. are you ready for what's coming and what's your concern? >> thank you very much, chris, and thank you for helping us get the word out about this storm because it really is a catastrophic storm. i think the win dope of opportunity to evacuate has almost closed. people need to be getting in their car or going to a shelter. there are four shelters opening, many across the 19 counties affected and trailing off to our east. >> a quick question, are all the shelters equipped for this level of storm because there's reporting on the ground that some of the shelters you have shelters but they're not open and they're not equipped for this. >> i can't address all of the

shelters but we have four in bay county and i came from our center. they're ready for this storm, for a cat 4 storm which this could be. >> right. that's what we're hearing. it could get stronger. tom sater, our meteorologist, just told us that. you have shallower water. it holds temperature differently. we'll wait and say. i always want to be wrong about hurricanes. i always hope they're weaker. your district, you have a lot of pockets of poverty and you have rural areas, harder to access, harder to check on, harder to get to places that will safe for them, slower to leave in a lot of cases. how do you deal with that? >> so, you're right, it's a rural district and a lot of communities are out at the end of the road. they're not necessarily seaside type resorts and people are

fishing and oystering. they are a little hardtory pry out of their homes when the weather hits. >> what do you do about that? >> well, we've developed over the last few years a much more active preparation for storms, much more robust response right after the storm. we'll swarm with all the you till trucks and everything you could imagine, first responders to try to help everybody who is still there. this is a surge probably higher than anybody has ever seen in the panhandle. >> what do you know about how people have responded to the call in the areas mandatory evacuation? are they listening? >> not as well as we would like. that's why i appreciate you doing this. i think there's still room for people to get out of harm's way. we wish they would because it's a lot easier to take care of

people who are out of the way of the storm surge than to get them out afterwards if they stay. congressman, as i told the mayor when something like this is headed their way, if you need to get the word out, if you need to say what is needed our brothers and sisters even up in wilmington are getting their kids back in school, they have a need for all kinds of essentials and hopefully the storm doesn't exacerbate that for them. >> thank you. we appreciate that very much. it's important and people get complacent. they think they're old hands. this is a totally different critter. >> ivan, dennis, 2004 and 2005, it's been a while. congressman, be well, stay safe. i'll talk to you soon. >> thank you, chris. you've heard president trump talk a lot lightly about due process. now due process is very

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isn't it weird the same day the climate report comes out and all the problems we're seeing in systemic changes in climate and we're talking about all these storms and nobody connects the two? isn't that odd the president says i'll look at it but i can see reports either way. no, you can't. it's called science. innocent until proven guilty. it is one of the most sacred principles, of course. when president trump's supreme court nominee was accused, it was a regular refrain right up until his confirmation from the president. listen. >> our country, a man or a woman, must always be presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty and with that i must state that you, sir, under

historic scrutiny were proven innocent. >> now look, i don't know who wrote it but the presumption of innocence is a valued, valued construct in a court of law. we were not in a court of law. this was a kangaroo court. politicians fighting over a position on the supreme court. so proven innocent, the president said. a perfect time for mark twain's quote, lies, damn lies, and then you have statistics. it is a lie to say that the presumption applied here. we're not in a court. trump knew this would be a political measure so it's a lie. it's a damned lie to say he was found innocent. we don't know that kavanaugh was blameless on all fronts and then there are statistics which take us to trump's latest statement about crime in chicago. >> stop and frisk, it works and it was meant for problems like chicago.

stop and frisk. >> again, i don't know who wrote it but it runs counter to innocent until proven guilty. the key statistic, in chicago officers stop blacks 72% of the time. what percentage of the population are they? not 72%. 32%. the controversial policy was previously implemented in new york city, right? allowed officers to stop anyone they believed was about to commit a felony if there was, quote, reasonable suspicion. the policy was so selectively enforced that it was criticized as little more than racial profiling in practice. and a federal judge ruled methods discriminatory and unconstitutional. but the president, he keeps citing stop and frisk, insisting that it works. this is a man who said the central park five were guilty and relied on anecdotes over evidence. notwithstanding that new york city's murder and overall crime

rate have continued to drop since the policy all but stopped. and to this point the mayor in chicago says that gun violence was down 30% last year and that's when the policy was curtailed. how does trump's call for the presumption of innocence make any sense? simple. he hands out innocence if it seems to be politically useful. let's bring in don lemon for his take. where am i wrong, don? >> you're not wrong anywhere. and i wrote something similar to what you said about stop and frisk years ago and people said i was condoning the practice and that wasn't it. i was simply pointing out what a difficult choice it is because some people think as the president does that they're actually safer when people are stopped and frisked. okay, put that aside. let's say it's true. it's not. but we know from the numbers that you've given, and just from the facts, that police don't stop people who are not of color

at the same rate they stop people of color. >> right. >> they don't dole it out to everyone. if they stopped every person regardless of color, hey, i need to check your bag, because it's stop, question and frisk. i need to check your bag. you know they're not going to do that. they're going to say, get on the ground. what are you carrying? that was so to make your point, statistically, there's no relationship between stop and frisk and crime seems to be apparent. new york remains safer than it was 5, 10, or 25 years ago. the murder rail is still going down with no stop and frisk as it was on the previous mayors before bill de blasio. >> look, the statistics don't lie. of course it always gets complicated. you have multiple measures going on at the same time. who knows what's to blame for a crime going down? sometimes criminologists will even argue it's simply a metric of the economy, that the better

the economy is, the less crime because there's less necessity. here's the problem on this for trump. he says things that he doesn't apply consistently. due process for kavanaugh! innocent until proven guilty! when it doesn't apply and if anything that process was rigged in favor of kavanaugh. then he'll apply the same logic to stop and frisk just like he did with the central park five. it feels right to him. these guys looked guilty. they gave confessions. that's good enough. when you confess, you're always telling the truth. then he just pops it out there and lets everybody else justify it for him. >> well, that is my same problem -- the same problem that i have with kanye west. he likes to give these platitudes like the president. they're one and the same really. but they don't do their homework. they don't do their research. it sounds good, but none of it's true, and none of it makes sense. and we're going to discuss that as well. again, as you said, central park five, lock her up, what about due process when it comes to

that? never happened. >> d. lemon, big fan. see you later. >> see you soon. ambassador nikki haley's resignation stunned a lot of people today. the one thing everybody wants to know is why? enter chris cillizza. he has not one, not two, but three possible reasons, and he'll lay them out and be tested, next. ball. because here, you can choose any car in the aisle, even if it's a better car class than the one you reserved. so no matter what, you're guaranteed to have a perfect drive. [laughter] (vo) go national. go like a pro. see what i did there?

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in a nothing shocks me anymore political environment, this did the trick. nikki haley resigning as u.s. ambassador to the u.n. without explaining why. chris cillizza has three theories. chris, theory number one, she got edged out by the likes of bolton and pompeo. explain. >> okay. quickly, remember nikki haley is sort of the golden child of the first year of the trump administration. but while she was sort of publicly very sort of strong in

the way donald trump likes on the world stage, she's more of a moderating influence behind the scenes. pompeo, the secretary of state, former cia chief, a noted skeptic of the u.n., but the national security adviser are the newer sort of baubles in the trump cabinet. reporting suggests they were having a heavier hand in decision-making than haley. so maybe she saw the writing on the wall that this wasn't going to get better. that's my option one. >> that's one. i was looking for a place to write. i was going to write meh on this. you get a meh on number one. thab maes true. maybe that isn't. theory number two, she needed to make some money. >> yeah, okay. so this one i think we always forget that these are really people. they're not just politicians. nikki haley in 2015, the year -- the second the last year she was governor, the year before she becomes u.n. ambassador, her family makes combined family income $170,000. she has a kid in college, a kid going to college in the next few years. she made more than that.

she made $190,000 the year before. the point is this is not a person of significant means starting off. and, two, she's got a lot of debt. >> got a lot of debt. >> we know from her 2018 financial disclosure, a $1 million plus mortgage. >> that's an important factor, chris. >> yes. >> 200 grand, that's good money in most places in the country. but with a million dollars in debt to service and a line of credit -- is that how much she has out, or is that how much she has access to? >> well, we know she has access to somewhere between $250,000 and $500,000. but the point is, $1 million mortgage and over $50,000 in credit card debt. somewhere between 25 and 50. so we know the broad, but it suggests someone with real debt. remember, nikki haley in the private sector makes a lot more than nikki haley in the public

sector. >> especially with all the glow that the president seems to have until theory number three. theory number three is the one we're going to get after. she wants to run for president. she said she's not running, cillizza. can you not hear? >> she said she's not running in 2020, which is smart because she would be very dumb to run against donald trump in a primary in 2020, and i'd say that about literally any other republican. people focus on trump's approval numbers broadly. fine. not very popular. will be vulnerable in 2020, but not in a republican primary. >> mm-hmm. >> his numbers are hugely positive among republicans. so nikki haley is smart to rule that out because that would never work even if she wanted to do it. but what's the next race after that? i know people say you're getting ahead of yourself. politicians, good ones, plan. the next race after that is 2024. and whether trump wins a second term in 2020 or loses, the 2024 republican nomination is open as in no incumbent. >> why did she have to leave now

to get ready for that? >> she doesn't have to leave now, chris, but i think she's got those two years of trump service. she's good enough with the trump folks, and now maybe she spends time making some money. i do think that matters. and also sort of doing, well, i can be a trump person but also the establishment doesn't like me. don't forget, her approval, 67% in a quinnipiac poll. name we one other trump official with anything close to that. >> 55% were democrats too. thanks for watching. "cnn tonight with don lemon" starts now. cillizza took me over time. >> that's okay because i was sitting here with one of my guests coming up. but chris cillizza, if you're still there, that was impeccable and analysis. i say that, chris -- >> i gave him all the answers. he just presented them. >> everyone is like analyzing. there you go, chris cillizza. >> hold on. >> great