recount. the president absent any evidence suggests foul play. plus michelle obama said she will never forgive mr. trump because his birther experience stirred anger and put her family at risk. as we learn more about the victims of the california nightclub massacre, this tribute from a survivor who said cody coffman was helping others steep when he was gunned down. >> i know he was put here to protect people. he was very -- that's why i keep calling him my hero. what he did last night, he made sure people were safe. now we all have a beautiful guardian angel watching over us. >> more tributes to the victims a bit later and we begin at the white house. with the words spoken earlier today by the man who lives

there. >> when in the white house, this is a very sacred place to be. a special place. you have to treat the white house with respect. you have to treat the president with respect. >> amen, mr. president. we should all agree with that. you should not lie on sacred ground. twisting the truth is not respecting that very special place or the presidency. calling journalists losers or their questions stupid is not respectful. lying and misleading and stoking experience theorys to keep your supporters riled up in the place they voted for you to call home. they are still counting the votes. the democrat has a narrow lead. that's how math works when you count votes. but the president sees a conspiracy. >> there is a lot of crooked stuff going on, but it is interesting. it always seems to go the way of

the democrats. now in arizona, all of a sudden, out of the wilderness, they find a lot of votes and she's -- the other candidate is just winning by a hair. >> not out of the wilderness, in the places they were cast. they are called ballots and boxes. >> the question was about matthew whitaker, but the answer went to robert mueller. >> look, mueller, a big complain people have, mueller was not senate confirmed. he is doing a report. he was not senate confirmed. whitaker was senate confirmed and he doesn't need this. he was senate confirmed at the highest level when he was the u.s. attorney from iowa. mueller was not senate-confirmed. why didn't they get him senate confirmed. because of all the conflicts,

they didn't want to bring him before the senate. >> wrong again. that's a misleading stunt. the special counsel was appointed by the deputy attorney general. there is no provision for senate confirmation. the man who says the white house is sacred and the presidency should be treated with respect never passes an opportunity to disrespect or smear any public servant or institution who fails to vow loyalty. with me to share insights or tell me i'm crazy is dana bash. why? that's just pieces of it. we will get to more of it. the white house is a sacred place. the presidency should be treated with respect. perhaps we can have a conversation about the tone of certain questions at times. but why? he lies, he misleads, and he spreads conspiracy theories

about the elections, about robert mueller and about more, standing on the ground of that sacred place. >> i don't know that we know fully the answer. this is the way he operated since the minute that he came into the white house. also before during the campaign, but think about the crowd size discussion at the beginning of this administration. that was a silly thing to argue, yet he wanted sean spicer to lie about what his crowd size was. it continued since then. part of it was a determined strategy to -- that they see as working with his base and working to deflect from criticism. it's clearly just inside him. he exaggerates by sort of rote nature. he exaggerates and lies and that's what he does. it's a combination of strategies and his personality that we have seen play out for two years.

>> the answer to why is -- it could be strategy, but it might be giving him a lot more credit. >> it's not clear. >> exactl lexactly. respect for the president is you don't challenge me. you say everything i'm doing is great. you say all of my policies are wonderful, and you don't ask me a question that i don't feel comfortable answering. by the way, since we are talking about the sacred state of the united states and the sacred state of the white house, what about the oval office and kanye west sitting across the desk and dropping the f bomb and the president saying nothing about respect. nothing about it. and that's just one example that comes to mind of a slew of examples. look, it's frankly exhausting to push back on this, but it is important to push back on it

because of his behavior towards those reporters and more importantly towards the truth and towards the very decency of the presidency that he spoke about. >> and his supporters, he disrespects his supporters by suggesting there is something crooked with robert mueller because he was not senate confirmed. the law specifically does not require that. he knows that. he is did disrespecting the people who put him there by putting wacky conspiracy theories in his head. >> all checks on him are opposition. there is the press. we report facts and context. he may not like what we do. there is his own justice department which he depicts as an enemy of him. he was acting in ways he thought purported or conflicted with loyalty to the president in a way that president expects that

loyalty above and beyond everything. the frameworks for him. if he depicts the just department opposition, many will hang on to his every word. >> another thing was we saw some of this at the press conference. he brought up april ryan's name and called her a loser. another african-american woman asked him a question. >> [inaudible]. the russia probe. do you want him to bring in robert mueller? >> what a stupid question that is. what a stupid question. you ask a lot of stupid questions. >> i'm glad you are watching. you watch a lot. your supporters should hear that, too. it wasn't a stupid question.

it was a fair question and a pressing question about what's happening in washington about matthew whitaker whose views about the special counsel before he came into the government are well-known. it's a dead-on question. he called an african-american woman a racist and april ryan a loser and said abby phillips's question is stupid. >> he decreed that maxine waters is the leader and targets. he is constitutional and be legal requirements that are not. he lived his life making up the rules as he goes along or assuming rules don't apply when it comes to tax law. he believes the rules are for everybody else and he can do what everybody pleases. the question is whether our institutions can stand up to

that. whether the courts or other institutions can enforce laws that the president doesn't want to heed. >> can i add one thing about that? the president always talks about the best schools. harvard university will probably be very surprised to hear the president of the united states talk about one of their esteemed graduates. abby philipp, our colleague and our friend as stupid. let's put that aside. the substance of her question, which was short, to the point, and probably the most important question to ask the president after the morning after the elections. fires his attorney general and instead of doing what he could have done which is keep rod rosenstein, he gives it the to guy who said a lot of bad things about the mueller probe. that was the question that abby philipp asked. it was not stupid.

it was important. >> it was calmly and politely asked. michelle obama said she was fearful for her daughters and family because businessman donald trump and candidate donald trump stoked the birther experience. he was asked about that. he didn't respond to michelle obama and he said she wrote a book and people put controversial things in books. >> i will never forgive him for what he did to our united states military by not funding it properly. it was depleted. it was old and tired and i'm in the process of spending tremendous amounts of money to fix it. >> that was an attack on president obama. thank you, president trump, for giving us another chance to check the facts and challenge things. let's put up numbers. yes, president trump, if you are a supporter of the president or a stronger military, he is spending more than president obama. let's look at the defense

spending under president obama. this is not that below what president trump is spending. then it goes down in 14, 15, 16, 17, and then it starts to go back up. what happened there? after the tea party election in 2010 and the republicans took over, the republicans back in a time when republicans cared about deficits, remember back then? they were pushing the president to bring the deficit under control. they came up with a so-called sequester. the budget control. this was a bipartisan agreement and yes, defense spending went down a little bit and started to come back up. it's not just obama. >> it was his party that demanded a massive deficit reduction program and they don't put tax issues on the table. what's left to cut? there is discretionary spending which is not a big slice of the budget. it went down as we can see and it's gone back up.

no military officer will tell you an officer has been deple d depleted. >> he knows better when he talks about mueller and he probably doesn't know better about that. i don't think he has any idea how washington works even though he has been president for two years. >> he does know that saying the military was old and deplete and creeky and not working is not true. it's important to get back to the previous point. that's at least policy. say what you will about the exaggerations. the thing that is so striking about this president is his personal attacks. president bush didn't like the media at times, but he -- >> neither did president clinton. >> they all get frustrated with how we ask our questions and the questions we ask. the kind of personal attack that he just did on abby, which as you know, is not at all a rare thing in this administration. it's absolutely amazing. and disturbing.

and as you say, a pattern. >> there is always been respect for the institution among presidents and politicians even if they don't like the press. >> one more fact check. he should be proud of the economy. the tax cuts and deregulation has something to do with the economy spiking up. he speaks as if i inherited a country that was dead and i brought it back to life. the final 21 months of the obama administration, 4.48 million jobs created. the first 21 months of the trump administration, 4.05. obama is a little bit ahead. that doesn't mean trump is not good for the economy, but facts matter. why did the president decide to put matt whitaker in charge of the justice department? of every great meal is always the potato?

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president distancing himself from matthew whitaker, the man he named acting attorney general. he said he did not speak to whitaker about the investigation before asking him to run the justice department. >> i didn't speak to matt whitaker about it. i don't know matt whitaker. he has a great reputation and that's what i wanted. i also wanted to do something which frankly i could have brought someone from the outside. i didn't want to the do that. when sessions left, what i did very simply is take a man who worked for sessions. >> sources telling cnn a lot of aides have been surprised at the criticism of whitaker's appointment and a lot of staffers did not know he repeatedly criticized the special counsel. maybe they don't have the internet. how did the president choose him to be acting attorney general. how did it come about? >> sources tell us don mcgahn

was the architect behind putting whitaker in for jeff sessions along with the federalist society head, leonard leo, a powerful ally well-known in conservative circles and he was also vouching for whitaker. the two of them together came up with the idea. sessions was also involved. he did interview whitaker and liked him. the idea that the white house didn't have a heavy hand in this is belied by the facts. the backdrop telling myself and all my colleagues is the president was tired of being be rated about what was going on at the jeff sessions justice department and wanted to put in somebody he thought could keep things on track, sources tell us. this idea that he doesn't know whitaker is belied by the facts that he has been to the white

house several times and has spoken to the president by phone. when rod rosenstein thought he was going to be fired several weeks back and "the washington post" reported that whitaker was trying to get his boss's job, jeff sessions. this idea that nobody knows him and he's not a known quantity is simply not true. >> appreciate that important reporting. let's come into the room. i talked about remember when the party cared about deficits. they create three coequal branches of government. we will see how he does in the job. among the many things and some inferior thing and shouldn't be treated as an equal branch of government. they want to reread looking for that. >> alexander will be smiling from the heches. >> he doesn't believe mar bury versus madison was a good decision. that is two centuries old that

establishes review. the new deal he said was bad law. this is important because the justice department has the solicitor general who files briefs with the supreme court and has been influential. the federalist society that doesn't like the new deal regulations that before that, things like federal child labor law and the minimum wage laws were unconstitutional. they want to go back to that. that's a fascinating piece. >> sometimes the label doesn't explain your organization. the president this morning on several occasions gave what i call the paul manafort treatment. i don't really know him. i don't really know him. go back and look how many times he said that. this is donald trump, the president of the us. i can tell you he is a great guy. i know matt whitaker. >> let's translate and me if you agree. this is a big red flag to

whitaker. you ain't getting this job permanently. that's what that was. i don't know matt whitaker. he is distancing himself. obviously whitaker from people in and around him despite reports about his potential issues with businesses, never mind what he said about the mueller probe, he wants the job. he is auditioning for the job in a big way. this is the president saying, i think, you ain't going to get it. >> i was going to say, i agree with dana about the likelihood that he will get the job in the future. what is confounding is this was completely slow motion decision to get rid of jeff sessions. sometimes in government and sometimes in politics, things happen at the last minute and you don't expect them. the government has to catch up to where things have been. people have known that the president and his aides have

known the president wanted to get rid of jeff sessions for months and months and months. they knew matt whitaker was there. they must have had google to find these things. they must have been able. you would think they would have thought this through. they would figure out what are the guy's political and legal liabilities? how do we roll this out so that it all -- >> if your goal is -- that's true. if you are hiring a baby-sitter and want to do landscaping and you use the internet to look for reviews. you want to put people in charge in the top law enforcement job. all these other things that go on, you think you would do a search. the white house is surprised? if you are the president and want someone who is loyal for two or three months, seems

convenie convenient. >> betting has not been a strong suit of this administration ever. what they concluded from that is it doesn't matter. they concluded and the president concluded that oh, sure, all of the critics that will carp about this or that. he will blow right through them. i had a flash back. remember when part of the reason he was already confirmed bite the senate. if the president fired sessions, the senate would be angry well that and wouldn't want to confirm someone new. if he took someone already in the cabinet, that's an end run. he decided that nicety is not required. it's clear there will be challenges keeping that. >> to that point, can i address the senate majority leader mitch mcconnell who just spoke to reporters and was asked about

matt whitaker. he said he has no advice on whether whitaker should recuse himself. he said and i'm quoting here, he expects it to be an interim appointment and expects a permanent replacement soon. he did not say more than that. >> very interim. that's all he needs to say. >> mcconnell's subtlety is always the name of the game. that's what he is suggesting. the president's conflation of mueller as not confirmed, there is no validity to it. that's different than those who report to the bosses. there is no legal case that they are the same. >> you were talking about this. if the president is saying matt whitaker was senate confirmed when he was u.s. attorney, so was robert mueller. facts matter. florida had an election and they will have recounts. we have seen this movie before.

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a potential week long manual recount of the race for senate. broward county, broward county, broward county, once again the source of a national headache. they are still counting ballots and unable to say how many more are out there. the nelson campaign filing a lawsuit to upload the final vote tallies. right now, here's where the numbers stand. this is statewide in the senate race. rick scott is 50.1. 15,000 vote lead for rick scott. you watch it play out and at issue, broward county. let me move this aside. look at the county vote totals. it's a democratic county. this is why bill nelson wants to double check and triple check. here's one of the issues. in broward county, there are 26,000 people who voted for governor, but not are in senate.

the campaign said that's suspicious. they want to know if there was a problem with the ballot. that is one of the many issues. as the lawyers rush into florida, the governor, rick scott, he has been governor for eight years. if you had a problem with how they are running. >> the supervisors are failing to give it to us. every floridian should be concerned that there may be rampant fraud happening in broward county. we have seen irregular counts for years. i will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great state of florida. >> no questions we have these problems a lot and these

questions in florida. why did he sit idly by as governor and not demand they move? here we go. here we go and all the lawyers have gone in and governor scott and the president of the united states saying the democrats are cooking the books. the broward county people do raise legitimate questions. is there any evidence they are cheating? >> i don't think so. not yet. part of the reason that you do the recounts is to make sure there are not strange things going on and there are not ballots that have been misplaced or purposely done with them. that's what you do in a recount or audit. there is no evidence of that yet. part of what the president has always done is failed to provide the kind of back up and confidence in our electoral system both during and after his own presidential campaign and here. what most presidents would do is

fry to go the other direction. try to express a level of confidence and for scott. whatever the result, the system falls apart. >> george w. bush begs to disagree. we had a recount and that's the point i was getting to. there was still people in camp gore who think they got screwed in the process. what did al gore do. with dignity. they said congratulations to george w. bush. that's different than the tone. they let the process play out. this is the current president. >> if you look at broward county, they had a horrible

history. if you look at the person, in this case a woman involved, she had a horrible history and all of a sudden they are finding votes out of nowhere. >> you notice the votes never go the other way? they hire lawyers and the votes don't ever seem to go the republican way. i don't know. you tell me. it's always gps fusion and crooked stuff. you have this guy elias who represented hillary clinton and a lot of shady things. what you ought to do is get smart. >> for those of you who have been strapped in for the entire trump administration, gps fusion involved in the dossier, mark elias is a lawyer for the senate campaign in the state of florida and did represent hillary clinton and the dossier work is being done and mark elias started that work and he did mark ups. part of the problem is as we try to say why are you saying it

this way? these characters emerge in every one of the stories somehow. again, what you would look for as this plays out, the 2000 experience was terrible. you are lawyers there. the parties get to have representatives and they go through this process when they argue. they go back to the process. you don't have people putting their hands on the scale during the count. they are planting the seeds of doubt who if it ends up going the other way. >> that was the end result. >> real quick, a historical

footnote. the talk of footnotes when i had color in my hair in 2000 and still had a pager. >> let me send you this and i need to look down to read this on my pager. this is from the gore campaign chairman. he said "al gore and joe lieberman are reviewing the decision by the united states supreme court. the decision is both complex and lengthy. it will take time to completely analyze this opinion." sometimes a cough gets in the way of a good night's sleep. that's when he needs vicks vaporub. proven cough medicine. with 8 hours of vapors, so he can sleep. vicks vaporub. goodnight coughs. hi, my name is sam davis and i'm

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topping our political radar,

president trump is slapping the decision that halts the construction at the keystone pipeline. he called it a disgrace. they did not carry out adequate analysis on the environment. democratic senator kirstin jill brandt for the 2020 bid for president. steven colbert, jill brandt was pressed on whether he plans to run. >> i believe that every one of us can figure out how to do what we can do to restore that moral decency and moral compass and the truth of who we are as americans. i will promise you, i will give it a long hard thought of consideration. i will do that. >> there you go. on the 2020 watch list just reelected to the senate on tuesday. a small group of democrats will retake the speaker's gavel. signed by nine house members

that seeks to change the rules for electing speaker nominees. now on the agenda for next week. pelosi said she has no doubts. >> what is your level of confidence that you will be the speaker of the house? >> total. 100%. i feel confident about what i am and feel overwhelming support that i will go in. >> does the public confidence support the private math? >> would never challenge nancy pelosi on her ability to count votes internally. particularly in her caucus. if she said she feels confidence, it is really hard for me to imagine that she will not be the next speaker. really hard. she knows what she is doing. i watched her count votes for 15 years on capitol hill. i never have seen her miss one.

>> there is a small group, let's be fair to nancy pelosi, but a group said no way, no how. do they have an alternative. >> the number of democrats that will vote against her, no doubt she will get the majority of her caucus. role call is looked at only three democrats incoming or returning have committed to voting no on the floor. yes, there will be democrats who voice opposition and vote against her in caucus and vote differently to other democrat who is said they want new leadership. at the end of the day, there is no alternative in the caucus for pelosi as they don't look legitimate, she is likely to get concerned. they have 225 members and that's likely to go up. >> we don't know all the democrat who is will be in the house yet. at least a few that have not been called are creating new members of congress and new

votes for or against nancy pelosi. she previously expressed confidence about things that did not come to pass. like previous elections. the wind at her back is number one, you can't beat something with nothing. some of the opposition to pelosi is sincere and some is member who is felt it was are in politically to express opposition because he is a polarizing figure. >> some have committed to vote on the floor and a lot have committed either way. she has a win and committed that and she won a big election. her strategy was vindicated by the scale of the win. >> i'm not a congressional or white house reporter so i look to my colleagues for the answer, but the thing i think about is, if you assume she does win and is able to essentially put down

any of these doubts that people have raised and the members have raised them among their own constituency. what does she do when she is speaker? how does she had been the members kind of address the real substantive thing they were talking about. a different kind of leadership going forward. >> she started with the diversity counsel for all of capitol hill. so that they hire more diverse people for all jobs. that's one way to do it. the younger members are coming in and they tend to be younger and a lot more women and diverse democrats coming in. >> do they think that's window dressing or are there substantive -- >> she has to make way for new leadership. >> i remember during the campaign, i talked to somebody who is now going to be a new member of congress who promised his constituents that he would not vote for nancy pelosi and privately said i never met her, but i understand how powerful she is and how hard it will be

to keep her from being speaker. >> here's the thing about nancy pelosi. she may be political poison in a lot of places, but she is really, really good at her job. with running the house of representatives, she is really, really good at that. republican who is came after that were not very good at that. she managed a fractured caucus and got a lot done. that's the final straw that gets people in her camp. there isn't anybody in the democratsde demmde democratic caucus who keeps it together the way she can. >> who do you trust to sit across from president trump? it's an incredibly important job. we'll be right back. d, you're a finally. you're still here? come on, denise. we're voya! we stay with you to and through retirement... with solutions to help provide income throughout. i get that voya is with me through retirement,

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breaking news from an interview published on the

opinion pages of the "wall street journal." that interview with the now former attorney general, jeff sessions. here is the lead paragraph. he said he is confident that robert mueller's probe of interference in the 2016 election will be handled appropriately and with justification. that's his only interview since leaving the justice department. let's come into the room here. that's not the way the president sees it. for the out going attorney general and everyone is wondering what is happening to robert mueller, confident and appropriately and with justification. hello, mr. president. goodbye, mr. president. >> that's not a particularly significant statement. it tells you nothing. this is what he wants to happen and he has no idea and he doesn't really talk to trump very much anymore.

they haven't been on good terms for quite a while. i spent time with jeff sessions for a profile earlier this year and had many extensive conversations with him and he said basically the same thing. he said nobody is above the law and said that he is confident. he also said as he said in this interview that he does not regret his recusal and believes it was the right decision on the rules of the justice department. >> they said it would be best to recuse yourself and he said okay. >> it's legacy time for jeff sessions. thinking about his future time for jeff sessions. the united states senate is a place he like and he place he might want to come back to run again and be a part of. it is not a surprise he said that. it is also important to remember that the president doesn't care what he says. that's probably the understatement of the year. >> he wants family time to let

his head clear. >> another thing he said is that the country is committed to this course. i'm quoting. you know who he doesn't say is committed? the president and the justice department that is succeeding him. he knows on some level that the future is uncertain. >> don't forget. the president uses the phrase common sense. think about why jeff sessions is gone. it's not because he didn't do his job or pursue the president's agenda. he was probably the most effective cabinet number in pursuing all sorts of stuff, not the least of which was their agenda. the only thing is the russia investigation. that's why he's gone. >> we had a good run and it has been an adventure. we'll be right back. ever since darrell's family started using gain flings, their laundry smells more amazing than ever.

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that's all the time we have for inside politics. hope to see you up bright and early and back here on a monday as well. have a great weekend. wolf starts right now. hello, i'm wolf blitzer. it's 1:00 here in washington. up first, firing fallout. the white house caught off guard by the backlash over president trump's choice for acting attorney general. the president thanked matt

whitaker for the position and he has come under scrutiny for comments criticizing the special council's russia investigation among other things. today the president defended him and distanced himself from him. >> i didn't know matt whitaker. he worked for attorney general sessions. he was very, very highly thought of. still is highly thought of. this only comes up because anybody that works for me, they do a number on them. matt whitaker is a very smart and respected man in the law enforcement community. actually the choice was greeted and still is in some circles. >> pamela, now we are hearing from sessions for the first time as