given opportunity. everyone's different. everyone just needs a chance. >> i got the job! it might take us a little bit longer, but we'll get the job done. >> we're incredibly grateful to cnn heroes, to subaru, to everyone who made a donation so that subaru could match those donations. because of that, this is happening. good evening from washington. there is breaking election news. is polls just closed in mississippi where cindy hyde smith is facing democratic underdog mike espy in a runoff. the race has gotten national attention for the history it could make tonight as well as the ugly historical chapter. if elected espy can become the state's first african-american senator since reconstruction.

whoever wins will claim victory after a campaign that saw shadows of mississippi's segregationist past resurface, most recently in the form of nooses hanging from trees. we'll bring you live updates as the totals start coming in. president trump has given a new interview. he has made news doing that. first, keeping them honest. potentially big new questions in the russian investigation and the corresponding lack of answers from the white house. the latest developments center on former trump campaign chairman paul manafort and wikileaks founder julian assange, who is still holed up in ecuador's embassy in london where he's been hiding for years. when we left you last night manafort had just been accused in a court filing of repeatedly lying to investigators thereby breaching his plea deal with the special counsel. britain's "guardian" newspaper reporting manafort met secretly with assange several times in london. according to the guardian one such meeting took place around march 2016, months before

wikileaks released democratic e-mails believed stolen by russian intelligence officers. "the guardian" says it's unclear why manafort saw assange or what was discussed. both wikileaks and manafort strongly, strongly deny the meeting ever took place at all. manafort says he doesn't know assange. separately cnn has learned team mueller has been looking into a meeting manafort had last year with ecuador's president. a source with personal knowledge of the matter telling us investigators specifically asked manafort whether they discussed assange or wikileaks. clearly any possible connections between the trump campaign and wikileaks appear to be a focus for the special counsel. we already know what the president thought about wikileaks during the campaign. in short, he was kind of a vocal fan. >> this just came out. wikileaks, i love wikileaks. this wikileaks stuff is unbelievable. another one came in today. this wikileaks is like a treasure trove. getting off the plane they were just announcing new wikileaks

that i wanted to stay there but i didn't want to keep you waiting. i love reading those wikileaks. >> the president had nothing to say about wikileaks today nor about the specifics of the case against paul manafort. something appears to be weighing on him. this morning he went online and said the phony witch hunt continues but mueller and his gang of angry dems are only looking at one side and not the other. wait until it comes out how horribly and viciously they are treating people. ruping lives for them refusing to lie. mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue. a few minutes later tweeted this. the fake news media builds bob mueller up as a saint when he is the exact opposite, he's doing tremendous damage to our criminal justice system where he is only looking at one side and not the other. heroes will come of this and it won't be mueller and his angry gang of democrats. look at their past, look where they come from. the now $30 million witch hunt continues and they've got nothing but ruined lives. where is the server? let these terrible people go back to the clinton foundation and justice department.

keeping them honest, whatever you think of him, robert mueller actually is a war hero decorated for bravery in vietnam, a registered republican. the justice department has investigated hillary clinton's e-mails. you might remember from it the days, weeks, and months of coverage that we and others gave it at the time. in any case, the tweet certainly came up at today's white house press briefing. >> if he has no concerns why is he tweeting so vociferously about it? >> certainly the president has voiced his unhappiness from the beginning. this has gone on, this ridiculous witch hunt, for more than two years. still nothing that ties anything to the president. we'd like to see it come to a conclusion. >> nothing that ties anything to the president, she says. throughout her answers, these two words come up again and again, no collusion. she worked them into her answer when asked about the new manafort stories. >> sarah, "the guardian" is reporting today that paul manafort met with julian assange around the time he was coming on board to the trump campaign.

i'm wondering if you know that the meeting took place and if you remain confident in the white house's repeated denials that no campaign officials were involved in the discussions about plans to release john podesta's e-mails? >> certainly i remain confident in the white house's assertion that the president was involved in no wrongdoing, was not part of any collusion. the things that have to do with mr. manafort i refer you to his attorneys. >> no collusion. when cnn's jim acosta asked this next question, listen to the answer. >> would the president recommend that mr. manafort begin to cooperate, offer full cooperation, to the special counsel's office? >> we can only speak to what our role is in that process and not only has the president but the entire administration has been fully cooperative with the special counsel's office providing hours and hours of sit downs as well as over 4 million pages of documents. we continue to be cooperative

but we also know there was no collusion and we're ready for this to wrap up. >> no collusion. we have heard that many times from the president, the white house. it remains to be seen if we will hear that from robert mueller himself. just a few moments ago, as if on cue, at least to bookend the day the president tweeted another verbal attack similar to the ones from this morning. jim acosta joins us from the white house. sarah sanders kept responding no collusion. we know that phrase for a long time. she appeared to be making a point of defending only the president this time and not his campaign. >> that's right. i think that sound bite you played demonstrates that pretty well. when she was asked whether or not they are still sticking with the story that there are no campaign officials involved in collusion with the russians, she said we are confident in the white house's assertion that the president was not involved in any wrongdoing or collusion. that seems to leave some space, some room for what may be coming. that is possible new indictments of the mueller investigation and that full report which may lay out exactly what happened.

my sense of it all day long during that briefing was that sarah sanders was being very careful, perhaps more careful than i have seen her before in answering the questions. >> sarah sanders says they are ready for the mueller investigation to wrap up. she didn't say whether the president would encourage paul manafort to cooperate. >> that's right, i asked that question. she very studiously avoided recommending that paul manafort cooperate with the mueller investigation. she went on to say that the white house is cooperating and feel like they're cooperating in producing documents and answers and so on in this investigation. but no question about it, anderson, a cynic out there could look at that answer and say, okay, not only is she not recommending that manafort cooperate with the mueller investigation, she could be sending the signal that he should not cooperate with the mueller investigation and that is the reason why there is so much speculation and conversation here in washington that a pardon offer has been dangled over paul manafort's

head in some way, shape or form. when sarah sanders was asked about that she said she knew of no conversations about pardons going on inside the white house. >> jim acosta, thanks very much. we have breaking news on all of this, here is what the president's tv lawyer rudy giuliani, told the "wall street journal." he said, i'm quoting, right now would not be the time. it's my job as his private lawyer to tell him he should not consider it now because it would be misunderstood. it doesn't mean you give away your presidential prerogative to do it at the right time. manafort, he said, should get the same consideration as anyone else. we've got quite a group to talk about this. carrie cordero is here, malik henderson, former senator rick santorum, jen sakki. nonlegal term. is this a non-sketchy reason paul manafort would have had meetings? this is "guardian" reporting, we

can't verify it -- with julian assange? >> it's a good question. why else would he be there? what would he be doing? it was right about the time one of the meetings alleged to have taken place in the spring of '16. right before he jump joined the trump campaign. wikileaks had for several years been in the business of releasing classified information, so facilitating the unauthorized disclosure of really sensitive and high volume of classified and very sensitive u.s. government diplomatic and classified information. so that is what we know and that is what he should have known at the time about wikileaks. whether or not there was some other nonnefarious reason to be there, who knows? also with respect to whether or not the meetings took place, he denies them. "the guardian" has his reporting. i would say these are verifiable facts. >> right. >> he was either -- so investigations whether it is news organizations' investigations or whether it is law enforcement and intelligence investigations when that information is revealed will determine whether he was there.

>> you say verifiable. it should be pointed out, julian assange is holed up in the ecuadoran embassy. there are british police still outside that embassy. they want to see -- if julian assange ever leaves, and i would assume they would know whether anybody goes in and out. >> right now we don't know the answer to whether it is true or not true. we have denials and reporting. it is verifiable and some point when the public will know whether or not this took place. if it took place it is significant. >> the president does seem to be fuelling, i don't know if it's more than usual, but certainly at a high volume. >> very much so. i just spoke with somebody who spoke with the president recently and said he noticed that he is acting more scattered these days and i think it's all related to the mueller investigation. how much the president knows about it and what is going on internally in that investigation, we do not know. we know he and his attorneys finished writing this round of answers to mueller questions.

he didn't like the questions. i think that was difficult for him. now he sees what is going on with manafort. he sees what is going on with roger stone. he sees this whole notion of roger stone and wikileaks and the questions being raised about what he knew about what roger stone knew about wikileaks. i think it is really troubling to him because he doesn't know how this is going to spin out because nobody does. >> it is interesting, the 24 hours since mueller revoked the plea deal saying that manafort is a liar, the president hasn't thrown manafort under the bus at this point? >> he hasn't. a lot of speculation about whether he is thinking about pardoning him. it was interesting, it was in "the washington post" interview here, josh dossy asked that question, are you planning to do anything to help paul manafort? trump says let me go off the

record because i didn't want to get in the middle of the whole thing. he speaks off the record. josh dossy says, is there any version of that that you are willing to give us on the record? trump said i would rather not. at some point i will talk on the record about it, but i would rather not. who knows what he is saying off the record? at some point we'll obviously know. what we do know on the record from what trump has said about paul manafort is he called him a brave man and compared him to michael cohen and said he didn't break in the way that michael cohen did. he said he had been treated unfairly, worse than alphonse capone. and so yeah, that's the million-dollar question. what is trump thinking in terms of paul manafort? whether he's thinking about pardoning him? >> one point on the pardon issue. this has happened before over the course of the investigation where we learned that the president is obtaining advice from his personal legal counsel about an official act, the act of using the pardon authority of the executive. that is actually significant. this is an official act. the key according to the rudy giuliani information you played

earlier is, is he making official decisions using his executive authority based on his personal legal exposure? and that's actually a really significant thing when we think about the role that the president is supposed to play and the use of his executive authority, is he making decisions in his official capacity based on his personal legal jeopardy? >> is that a crime? it's not a crime for him to do that, right? >> impeachment -- whether or not someone is impeached is a political factor. certainly the improper use of executive authority is something downstream members of congress should take note of. >> senator santorum, again, we have not validated the reporting by "the guardian." if your campaign manager when you were running for president was having meetings with julian assange, would that be appropriate in any realm? >> i can't imagine my campaign manager meeting with him or being in ecuador. but no look, i wouldn't have anybody meet with julian assange, only because of the

harm that he's done to the united states over the years and leaking classified information. i wouldn't want anything to do with someone like that who i saw as someone who is a threat to the united states and our own security. so no, i wouldn't. >> do you see the president pardoning manafort? >> i would say if i was advising, i would say not to do so and not to even speculate about doing so. i think the president gets upset about these things. everything as this investigation winds down, they are going to get closer to him because that is part of the whole process here. if he doesn't keep some modicum of temperament, it's just not going to play out well for him. i don't believe the president has been involved with any collusion. i don't think he knows anything about any russian -- i agree with sarah sanders and i don't think they have done anything to impede the investigation.

the president has relatively clean hands other than the tweets out there criticizing mueller. i think he needs to let this process play out. it is going to whether he screams about it or not. >> i think when your former campaign manager and many former senior people who you have been affiliated with are under investigation you do have your hands dirty. we'll see what happens. the interesting player here is julian assange. he has been for a long time. he hasn't come up in a while. these e-mails were leaked through wikileaks. which we've long known. there has been a leadership change in ecuador. so there is a question raised in a little bit of reporting as to whether julian assange is extradited back to the united states. if he is maybe there is more we can know. also in the reporting was a reference to russian operatives also visiting him there. there's maybe connections there, maybe not. there certainly is more there. if he is extradited back we will probably learn more. >> there is the whole timing of the releases of the e-mails in the wake of the "access hollywood" tape. >> yeah, there certainly is.

as we remember from the timing as you were reporting from here, the timing of when the meeting was, when the tweets were going out about a reference to troubling e-mails coming out. this was all leading up to the convention. a lot of this was dumped in times that were convenient for trump. if you line up the timeline, a lot of this looks not great for them, to put it mildly. >> we also know that roger stone was -- said publicly that he had a conversation with donald trump. that was a day after apparently he was e-mailing with mr. corsi about julian assange. so again, to the president's temperament or mood or whatever we were talking about before, i mean, the circle is closing here. i think it has to worry the president because he did communicate with roger stone. unless roger stone is lying about it which is a possibility. >> that is the counterargument

that roger stone has a lot of bluster and issues that he may not have direct knowledge. >> and not a lot of credibility. but that just adds to the list. now paul manafort has no more credibility as a witness at all because -- >> there is an entire cast of characters here who are not credible. these are not truth telling people. they have repeatedly lied to investigators. nearly everybody charged in the special counsel's investigation has included some kind of charge of lying to federal investigators or prosecutors. paul manafort experienced back before his virginia trial he had been pulled back from his supervised release because he was accused of witness tampering and making false statements. he had been witness tampering, writing op-eds when he was in detention -- >> does it surprise you the number of people who have lied to investigators in this case? >> it has been a number of people charged with lying. it speaks to the type of people.

these were many people affiliated with the trump campaign. one has to look at the campaign and say, wow, that is really a lot of people who have lied to -- >> it seems out of the ordinary. i'm not a lawyer but you hear one individual lying or something. but it seems like that was the kind of go-to thing, to just lie. >> it is and knowing that this is a major enterprise investigation, the fact that all of these people and this far into the investigation continue to lie to investigators i think is definitely notable. so that is definitely a pattern that has taken place. >> we are going to take a quick break. coming up next, we touched on it a bit. the breaking news the president made when he spoke with the "washington post" including why he does not believe his own experts' report on global warming. later, the polls are closed and we'll get our first live look at the senate runoff results in mississippi. (horn honking) okay, okay, okay... (clatter)

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included with your internet. plus, get $200 back when you when you buy a new smartphone. xfinity mobile. it's simple. easy. awesome. click, call or visit a store today. president trump sat down with the newspaper he loves to hate and gave it a scoop on news, "the washington post." he shifted responsibility for the falling stock market and gm layoffs blaming federal reserve chairman jerome pal, his hand-picked chairman. i'm doing deals, he said, i'm not being accommodated by the fed. the president said they're making a mistake because i have a gut and my gut tells me more

sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me. the president said in the wake of the conflict between russia and ukraine he's yet to decide whether he'll meet with vladimir putin of the upcoming g20 summit. maybe i won't, we're going to see. he refused to blame saudi crown prince mohammad bin salman in the murder of jamal khashoggi. skepticism on climate change, it runs long but i want to read it so you can make up your minds about what the president said about climate change. i quote, one of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence, but we're not necessarily such believers. you look at our air and our water and it's right now at a record clean. he continued, when you look at china and you look at parts of asia, when you look at south america, when you look at many other places in the world, including russia, including many other places, the air is incredibly dirty. when you're talking about an atmosphere, oceans are very small and it blows over and it sails over. i mean, we take thousands of

tons of garbage off our beaches all the time that comes over from asia, it flows down the pacific, it flows and we say where does this come from, and it takes many people to start off with. our political director, david chalian, joins our group. senator santorum, he's currently a paid cochair of a biofuels advocacy group, americans for energy security and innovation. david, as a whisperer of the president, can you interpret what he is saying here? >> i can't really interpret this other than to say that he i think more vociferously than i've ever heard him do before expressed skepticism that man has anything to do with climate change. >> he's said it's a hoax in the past. >> that's true, but he's walked back from hoax comments. to me -- if you want to disagree, give me a second.

>> go ahead. >> he i thought was pretty clear here that he does not at all agree with the notion that it is agreed upon by all these scientists that man contributes to climate change. >> i think it is clear what he was saying, making some assumptions here. he is saying we have done a good job in this country reducing air emissions and cleaning up things. the places that are really bad, india, china, these don't apply to them. treaties and things. they are not doing anything on that front. have them clean up their act instead of trying to impose incredible restrictions on an economy that is pretty energy efficient and clean economy. i think that is the point he is trying to make and it is a legitimate point. >> it's not legitimate. the united states and china are the two largest emitters of greenhouse gas. it's a universal global problem. that's why we were the leaders in the climate change effort. we were the only country now not signed on to the paris climate agreement.

what he's saying shows he doesn't understand the issue. his reference to other countries and their emissions shows he doesn't understand that like the sky covers all of us and what they do impacts us. what we do impacts them. so -- >> the fact that the united states doesn't sign on to this doesn't stop china from doing things. >> but the united states is one of the world's biggest emitters, we're in the top two in green who is gas. >> just from an economics standpoint, the administration's own report does go into great detail about the economic costs. they say hundreds of billions of dollars lost. farms being hardest hit. you don't buy that? >> it's absurd. at the worst-case scenario they say, it's a 10% reduction in economic -- you can't even tell us what the gdp is going to be next year. and they're predicting because of this there's going to be a 10% reduction? let me tell you what it is. it's like 0.05% per year reduction in economic growth. >> so you do nothing? >> but the point -- the point is, it's speculative. it's almost -- i said 0.05% change in economic growth.

that can be from any kind of elimination of regulation, improving the growth rate. look what donald trump has done in the last year to improve growth in this country. he's blown away any impact of climate change over the next 100 years -- >> there is a reason that 97% of scientists feel this is a huge emerging problem. not emerging, it's been a long problem. you talk to people -- >> all the predictions have been wrong. all of them. >> the reality is people are seeing the impact already. it's not a problem we haven't seen. if you talk to people in the everglades, in california, in parts of the middle east where famine is rising because of the heat, i mean, these are real issues that are happening now. this report -- >> we have had famines before, we've had heat waves before. >> the report was mandated by congress it's increasing -- >> no, they're not. you go back and look at weather history. there are no more hurricanes now than 100 years ago. we have had fluctuations in weather patterns forever. the idea that the california wildfires are because of climate change, the california wildfires is because they didn't clean the floor of the forest.

they didn't manage the forest. >> you're with the raking scenario -- >> it's not a matter of raking, it's a matter of going in there and managing the forests which republicans have been talking about for a long, long time and the strict environmentalists have said, no, leave it alone. you leave it alone. guess what happens? >> that may be a part of it and i think it's something everybody ought to investigate, manage the forests, but you need to look at other issues. this is the president's own government saying this in a unanimous way. >> what is the motivation? are they all just lying? >> here is the reality. i said this the other day. i have gotten -- i have become a very popular man on twitter for the comment i made about scientists making money. there would be no chair at the head of climate studies at every university in america if we didn't have a crisis. these people make money because there is a crisis. >> i don't think climate science is a big high money area.

>> 20 years ago there were no chairs of climate science. >> your critics will say you are also making money off of this. >> i am involved in promoting it follow which reduces s co2. i am involved with a waste energy company that tries to do something productive with our waste instead of sticking it in a landfall. i believe in green technology. i support green technology. it has to be market based. the great thing that we can do is keep the economy of this country thriving and produce more technologies. i want my kids to live in a very clean and wonderful world. i don't want climate disaster. putting government regulation over industry is not going to solve the problem. innovation will solve it. >> we will talk to one of the scientists who is involved in the report. it is interesting when you hear the president talk about his gut. it seems like a minor point but i think for this president he does believe his gut tells him

more than many people's brains. >> the one thing he points to is how he won the election which is that all of us were wrong. he wasn't going to win the election, the polls were wrong. in his gut, there were moments of doubt although he would probably never admit it. he said i was going to win because i knew how the people felt out there. don't forget, he is a very successful entertainer. he knows how to attract audiences. he knows the works and the place. he trusts himself probably for some good reason, but when you are talking about science, who can really trust your gut? you have to know things. i don't pretend to know all of these things. neither should the president of the united states. you have to learn. >> the other thing he does in this interview basically takes no responsibility for the gm layoffs, also the falling stock market, laying it at the feet of

the fed. obviously took a lot of credit for the rising stock market. is that how it works? >> i think he recognizes that the gm layoffs are a huge problem for him. he knows his own brand and his brand was when he was running in 2016, he promised to bring back manufacturing jobs, that none of these offices that are closing would close. that's obviously not true. and so he recognizes that and that's why he is trying to push off the blame onto gm and to the fed. the economy and the economy booming and having a good economy is the way he gets re-elected. he certainly knows that. i would say i worked on many presidential elections, but a first election and a re-elect. it's hard when you run for re-election for a couple of reasons. one is that people look at what your record is and what you promised and whether you did it. this is a place where white collar workers are going to look at his promises and say my factory closed. i don't have a job. >> isn't that old fashioned?

do people actually look at the record anymore it? doesn't seem like it. >> i think that this is one of the reasons why he got elected and this is the core of his substantive message and he knows this is a huge problem. >> donald trump shouldn't worry so much about gm. factories will close. i don't think he can -- he didn't campaign and say no factory will close. what he said is -- >> he did. >> he did, yeah. >> he said that manufacturing will come back. everybody has to agree. manufacturing has come back. we have seen a tremendous growth in that sector. i think he should have pivoted which is not something donald trump is particularly good at but pivoted and said, look at the numbers. look at the manufacturing. look at the job creation we've created. not worry about every single factory. >> he wanted to act tough on gm because i think he understood you can't promise that. it's not necessarily donald trump's fault that this is happening. he understood that it was politically perilous. >> our thanks to everybody. the polls are closed in a runoff election.

in the reddest of red states. john king with a preview of what he is watching tonight in mississippi. ♪ [baby laughing] [baby crying] [baby laughing] [baby crying] [baby laughing] [baby crying] we hide hotel names, so you can find four star hotels at two star prices. ♪ h-o-t-w-i-r-e hotwire.com not in this house. 'cause that's no so-so family. that's your family. which is why you didn't grab just any cheese. you picked up new kraft expertly paired mozzarella and parmesan for pizzahyeah! kraft. family greatly.

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we do not expect it to be complete within this hour, one element that's ramping up the suspense. the other is the relative lack of polling going into this, and the trump factor, and race and history and a whole lot more. john king is here to tell us how it could come together. the polls just closed. what are the results so far? >> very, very, very preliminary results. about 1% of the precincts reporting. you see right there -- it went up a little bit. 9,000, 10,000 votes. mike espy holding a narrow lead. 56% to 43%. that's a big lead. it was smaller a bit ago, but at 1%. read almost nothing into this, except take a look at what we're going to see here. a line over here, you see the little bit that is in over here is coming in blue. that's what has to happen for espy. his old congressional district, he was a former clinton cabinet member, he was in congress in the '90s. three weeks ago, remember, we're having the runoff tonight. cindy hyde-smith, the republican incumbent, got 41%.

mike elsepy, the democratic challenger, got just below that, 41%. the other candidates finishing below that. mike espy did run it up in this part of the state three weeks. go. this is what he has to do again tonight and i would argue by bigger numbers. if you look at the republican vote, 41% for the incumbent, cindy hyde-smith. 16% for chris mcdaniel. if those republican votes go to the incumbent, it's game over. espy has no run up the african-american vote, find a way -- come back to tonight's map -- find a way to cut into the white vote ala doug jones in alabama last year. that's a complicated challenge. so we look at the map now. it tells us just about nothing. go back to way before this technology existed to find a competitive democrat statewide in mississippi in a senate race. we can't give you historical comparisons. up here, de soto county shy of 6% of the state population, 17% cindy hide smith, interesting if it holds.

fit holds. we are very early in the night. why is it interesting? let's go back three weeks ago. mike espy got only 34% in this county. you see the tea party vote was 24%. chris mcdaniel. you'd assume most of that would go here. if it goes there, mike elsepy can keep it competitive. i want to say, again, we're at 17%. could come in -- could be mostly from a democratic precinct. he's running close so far. in five minutes, two hours, it could be very different. we'll watch it throughout the night. republicans think, anderson, they think they will win this race by 6, 7, 8 points. but they're nervous, that's why the president went in there twice last night. >> john king, thanks. we'll check in with you shortly. david what are you looking for in terms of the results as they come in? >> john was saying about if the african-american turnout could be supercharged in a way, that would be one thing that could keep espy in the fight here. so that's one place i'm looking for. those heavy predominant

african-american portions of the state. because what we saw in the midterms, what we saw quite frankly throughout 2017 and '18, is this ability for turnout, especially on the democratic side in some of these contests, to be supercharged. if that can happen here, elsepy has a chance. but it is -- i just can't wrap my head around it. three weeks after the election, we are just after the thanksgiving holiday weekend. for voters to be back in the mindset of what we saw three weeks ago with record-setting kind of turnout? to me i think it's a very tough challenge. >> also, obviously issues of race have been involved in this campaign throughout. >> yeah. in mississippi's history, right? race has been involved in campaigns, involved in politics. it's basically the dividing line in that state. it essentially determines why republicans switch from the democratic party and why they're

republicans now. you saw mike espy in the first campaign get about 15% of the white vote. we've just seen democrats unable to get anywhere near that in a lot of races. doug jones was able to get that in that race in alabama. in these southern states, it's just hard for democrats to get white voters to vote for them. it's also true that democrats don't really have any infrastructure down in a state like mississippi. it's not a state like georgia that has been doing some groundwork there registering voters. it's really left for dead by democrats. i think that will really affect them tonight. >> there are obviously democrats hoping for a doug jones' style victory. this is a different race. >> it's a very different race. i mean, first of all, you look at roy moore who was accused as an adult of having sexual relationships with teenage girls. that is a strike against you. even though cindy hyde-smith has

been a very imperfect candidate, there is nothing reaching that. that was a real problem for them. this is a more rural state. also, the rnc, to your point, has been really getting a get out the vote effort. there was a report that they had more than 100 people on the ground today trying to get out their voters because they don't want this to become alabama. it's not likely that it will. they are really making sure that it won't. >> this is not going to change the balance of power in the senate. >> i think sinky hyde submit is going to win this race but this is not going to be a great night for republicans. if we end up winning this by 6 or 7 points, that is just more of the same from election day. so again, message to the white house that this sideshow that goes on every day in the white house has a corrosive effect on our ability to win races.

and i think one of the reasons many republicans would love the mueller probe to just be over is just so we can get this huge distraction which preoccupies the president's time and drives the media, all of us. we would be talking about a lot of different things. we spent most of the time tonight talking about donald trump talking about mueller instead of other issues that may have fit in that could have been important to drive a different message on the white house. message to the white house, the president, that the continued fixation on this scandal is having electoral consequences now with 40 house seats. up to 40 house seats. that's a wave, ladies and gentlemen. that's a wave. this race is close. warning signs. danger, will robinson. >> regardless, history will be made tonight. if she wins she would be the first woman elected to the

senate, to congress, from mississippi. obviously, if he does, he would be the first african-american u.s. senator since reconstruction. >> that's true and it's a really interesting race for a number of reasons. one, it as little bit of an echo. there is not a lot of democratic activism there that has happened over the years. espy is running in a conservative state. even though the race is a lot about race he has been very careful about how he has gone after cindy hyde-smith. he's not gone after her much. even one of his closing ads was about how she might embarrass the state, it wasn't about how she was a person who was racist, who we were going to send to the senate. as i think everybody on the panel has alluded to he needs to have huge african-american turnout, he hasn't tapped into that issue. he is an african-american candidate which would make history. he's brought in kamala harris, he's brought in cory booker, barack obama did a robocall. whether surrogates can energize the african-american population there right after thanksgiving is very difficult to do. >> i want to thank everybody.

we will keep watching. keep you posted obviously on that race. coming up, why wouldn't the president's national security adviser listen to the audio recording of the killing of the journalist jamal khashoggi? you'd think maybe that would be something he'd do. he says he didn't do it because he doesn't speak arabic? does that make any sense? we'll ask former director of national intelligence james clapper next. 't need? no. and do you want to get things you love for free? who wouldn't? exactly! right. that's why verizon decided that everyone in the family should get the unlimited they want, without paying for things they don't. and why it now comes with six months free apple music. dad, apple music. he gets it. this guy gets it. (vo) this holiday, get the gift you want. the music you love, on the network you deserve. switch now and get $300 off our best phones.

the national security adviser, john bolton, dismissing the idea that he should hear a

key piece of intelligence involving the murder of the murder of jamal khashoggi. he isn't going to listen to the audio tape saying it's a suffering tape. today, at the white house press briefing, bolton was asked if he listened to the recording. >> no, i haven't listened to it. i guess i should ask you, why do you think i should? what do you think i'll learn from it? >> you're the national security adviser. you might have access to that sort of intelligence. >> how many in this room speak arabic? >> do you have access to an interpreter? >> you want me to listen to it? what am i going to learn from it? if they were speaking korean i wouldn't learn any more from it either. then i can read a transcript too. >> joining me is former director of national security intelligence and senior national security analyst james clapper. does what john bolton said make sense to you? though he may not speak arabic, it's not pleasant, but it may be

informative in terms of learning actually what happened. >> as an intelligence guy, i would certainly want to listen to the tape. not for voyeuristic purposes, but as important as this incident was, seems to me if you were pursuing every scrap of information, every morsel of data that would cast light on what happened, that you would want to listen to that tape regardless of the language, just to hear the emotion and the atmospherics of the last moments of somebody's life. >> even from a journalistic standpoint, from a transcript, you don't get the sense of how quickly it happened, how long it went, whatever. >> the point he was trying to

make, i guess, in literal unemotional context that he doesn't speak arabic, well, i think you would learn something, and, again, as an intelligence guy, i would want to dwell on every morsel of information i could that would cast light on the whole event. >> one of the things that the president has said in that interview with "the washington post" is he asserted the cia did not affirmatively say it was the crown prince who ordered the killing of khashoggi. that's not necessarily how the cia works, is it? >> no, it isn't. and i think this is illustrative, a pretty good illustration of the evidentiary bar often used by the president. when the intelligence community comes out and says they have high confidence in an assessment, you can take that to the bank. short of a video reflecting with audio of mohammed bin

salman giving the order to kill the journalist, you're probably not going to get that. but i'm sure that the compilation and correlation of data from several sources, plus an understanding of how things work in saudi arabia, it's going to -- it led to that high confidence level that mohammed bin salman was not only implicated, was knowledgeable, but directed this killing. >> it's unthinkable given how saudi arabia works that this huge team involving a surgeon, a hit squad, would have carte blanche to walk into an embassy with people who are the right-hand people of mohammed bin salman. >> on its face the circumstantial evidence in and of itself is very compelling, and it's just completely unrealistic or people are gullible to think that didn't have some connection with mohammed bin salman, who

oversees all things big and small in the republic. >> bob corker basically is calling on the cia director to come and brief senators on the killing. there's no indication that she's going to and bolton was asked about that today. he denies she's being blocked from doing so. but should she go? >> absolutely. any time there's an event like this that has huge implications for the relationship, as heavily dependent on intelligence for our insight into what happened, there should be a senior, either gina or dan coats. >> why don't they want her to go? >> you can surmise that perhaps the intelligence evidence is so compelling that the administration doesn't want to share that with congress. >> they want to bury this? >> that's one inference you can draw. i don't know, but that's the obvious conclusion.

>> george clapper, thank you for being with us. i want to check with in chris for "cuomo primetime." >> we're going to piggyback on the election results. we're about an hour past the polls being closed in mississippi, so the numbers are going to start coming in. we'll follow your lead and will be reporting that for people in realtime. we're also going to go very deep on these e-mails that cnn obtained and these pleadings from the government about mr. corsi, dr. jerome corsi, a friend/associate, let's say, of roger stone and what pieces of the puzzle of the probe we now understand much better. and then of course there's a massive speculation surrounding paul manafort. we'll get into that as well. >> chris, about four minutes from now, thanks. the 12th annual cnn heroes coming up december 9th.

you can find out about the top ten cnn heroes and vote at cnnheroes.com. since today is giving tuesday, we also wanted to show you how you can help some of these heroes continue their work. so, take a look. i'm anderson cooper. each of this year's top ten cnn heroes really proves that one person can make a difference. again, this year we're making it easy for you to support their great work. just go to cnnheroes.com and click donate beneath any hero to make a direct contribution to that hero's fundraiser on cloud rise. you will get a receipt of your donation which is tax deductible in the united states. no matter the amount, you can make a big difference in helping our heroes continue their life-changing work. cnn is proud to offer you this simple way to support each cause and celebrate all these everyday people who are changing the world. you can donate from your laptop, tablet, or your phone. just go to cnnheroes.com. your donation in any amount will help them help others. thanks.

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>> we're incredibly grateful to cnn heroes, to subaru, to everyone who made a donation so subaru could match those donations. because of that, this is happening. we began the hour with the russia investigation. we end with new breaking news. the "new york times" has it. maggie haberman shares the byline. the lede is striking. one of paul manafort's attorneys repeatedly briefed president trump's lawyers on discussions with federal investigators after he agreed to cooperate with robert mueller. the "times" attributes it to one of the president's lawyers and two others familiar with the conversations. now according to the "times" report, some legal experts speculated this was a bid by manafort for a presidential pardon. a reminder, don't miss full circle on facebook. it's new. you get all the details, watch

it weeknights, 6:25 p.m. eastern orphan facebook.com/anderson cooper full circle. news continues with chris cuomo. "cuomo primetime" starts now. welcome to primetime on another big election night. no more speculating. the polls have closed in mississippi. the vote is coming in right now. this is the final senate race of the 2018 midterms, and it will be decided likely on our watch. the big question, can republicans keep a crucial seat in what is certainly a ruby red state? or is there going to be another historic update tonight? and we'll going from that story and you'll see on the bottom of the your screen what the vote is as it comes in. however, we're going deep on this other story. new information and reporting from cnn that shows new pieces in the robert mueller puzzle. what we now know about one of trump ally roger stone's -- i don't even know how to put it