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 right.

i'm going to lay it out for you how this jerome corsi fits in with roger stone, could wind up shedding light on wikileaks. it's complicated, but we can do it. so, what do you say? let's get after it. here's what we know for sure on the election front. democrats picked up yet another seat in the house today. that makes 39. that's a significant swing of power. it went along with a huge popular vote pounding for the president. he lost by millions despite having many millions fewer votes cast. so the spread was bigger even in a smaller pool, because midterms aren't going to have the same turnout as a general election. we are waiting on one more senate race still to be decided. polls closed an hour ago in mississippi, 8:00 p.m. eastern. republican incumbent cindy hyde-smith fighting to retain her seat after a string of

racial controversies that have rocked her bid, or not. we'll see if they make a difference in mississippi. the president added to the ugliness by saying her opponent, mike espy, an african-american, would not fit in in mississippi. the african-american vote is about 40%. if he can get massive turnout there, and he can get some support from white voters, he's got a shot. he would be the first african-american to win a senate seat there in over 100 years. so the results are coming in. let's get to john king monitoring it all from washington. an hour in, how much has come in? >> an hour in, we're just at 8%. cindy hyde-smith who was trailing in the early returns, chris, the republican incumbent is now open to lead. that's a pretty healthy lead, not if you go back in history. you just mentioned it. republicans normally, we

wouldn't be here tonight. this should be a republican blowout. if you're cindy hyde-smith you're saying great, you're also looking at this, 8%. number one, it's early. number two, 56% to 44%. but, to the point you were making, we have absolutely nothing from here. this is hines county. this is where jackson is, the most democratic area of the state. mike espy needs to run it up here. just to go back three weeks ago, the reason we're here tonight, this is in hines county. 72% three weeks ago. remember, we had four candidates in the race three weeks ago, the top two are in the race tonight. can mike espy do even better than that, as the votes come in tonight? nothing has come in yet. if you look at the early map, you're seeing what clues are we getting? there are some clues. if you're mike espy, you want this to be competitive. warren county, we have a win there. 100% reporting. if you're mike espy, you're winning this county. that's good, not big enough to change the overall dynamic. now you're waiting to see what

happens again. most important, not only run up the percentages, but the turnout, the raw numbers. then here in madison county, going back three weeks, hyde-smith gets 41%. can espy do well in the jackson suburbs here? but it's 8%, we're going to be counting a while. >> we'll be following this in realtime. can't ask for better help than you. john king, thank you very much. take a look at the bottom of your screen. as more percentage of the vote comes in we'll give you all the percentages in realtime. if it gets close enough to make it interesting, i'll stop whatever i'm doing and go back to john and he'll take us to the map and explain what's going on and why. right now, let's go to the implications on this.

dana bash, nia-malika henderson, and david chalian. good to see you three together again on another big election night. dana, let's start with what the state of play is here. to john's obvious point, usually, you would be home right now. and i would be texting you for help. but tonight we're here. why? >> because this is incredibly unusual as john was pointing out. mississippi, ruby red. there hasn't been a democrat here since before you were born, chris cuomo, pretty much, elected to the senate. we're here because, in fairness, cindy hyde-smith, there was a runoff, the republican vote was split. the other major republican candidate, chris mcdaniel, had a good base of support, he's run before in mississippi. but at the same time republicans are looking down at mississippi even from within mississippi

saying that this is a warning sign. no matter what happens tonight, obviously, if the democrat wins, it's more than a warning sign. but even the fact that we're here, it's a warning sign. having said that, chris, democrats i'm talking to tonight, they say they don't think they're going to get to the finish line. they are trying to play the same playbook that they did in alabama, but note that that the demographics there are very, very different, even though it might seem from new york and washington like there are more similarities than there are. >> even though hyde-smith should win this, it didn't stop trump from coming down there, going all-in on this, and making a play that i think has to be called out. him saying mike espy doesn't fit in. you tell me if we have the sound. listen to what the president said. >> cindy's far-left opponent, he's far left. oh, he's out there. how does he fit in with mississippi? i could go over this. but how does he fit in?

>> do you see this as just a left/right play, or was this an allusion to something else, also known as color? >> it's hard to give donald trump the benefit of the doubt in instances like this, but seems like in this context he was talking about the idea that mike espy is a democrat, he's describing it as a far-left democrat. but he's a moderate democrat, in the clinton mold. so that's probably what he was talking about more, and this would be the play they would make probably for any democrat, this idea that they don't fit in with mississippi values, they don't fit in with republican and conservative values. that's what he was saying there. if you're the president, you want to go to mississippi, you want to avoid a doug jones situation in alabama. it's a state that voted for him, i think, by 18 points or something like that. he won that state, so that's his crowd. the thing in this race to look for, obviously, is what the african-american turnout is there.

african-americans make up about 37% of the state. >> i wonder how that's being used by espy and the organizations and people on the ground because i know and you know better, in fact, i may have read it from you and that's why i think i know, but on the ground there, the current senator, hyde-smith, not owning what she said about the front row to a public hanging and saying, anything i said, i want to apologize. i grew up in politics. i know that rule, david chalian, which is, never repeat your mistake. apologize if you must, but never repeat it because they'll count it as you having said it twice. and that's what she did. and i wonder how that plays on the ground. did you really apologize or did you say what you had to because you would even own what you said? >> right. win or lose this race, i don't think there's a political operative in this country on the republican side or on the democratic side who would take

the way cindy hyde-smith has responded and say this is what you should do. you will remember she had the press conference standing next to the governor and said i put out a statement, she refused to engage on it. she put the apology out there in her voice, but she didn't do that herself. she was having the president do that as a validator for her because as you noted, she just didn't want to embrace what she said. >> dana, give me a quick take on something. another house seat goes over to the democrats. that's 39. election day seems like a lifetime ago. is it a wave, a current, a ripple? now, 39 seats. >> it's a wave, period. end of story. it's a wave. 40 seats, 40 seats, almost, could be 40 seats. we still have another seat left to see what happens in california.

but, 39, it is. it is a wave. we're going to see the results of that when it comes to the leadership tomorrow because nancy pelosi, who i know you talked to, is going to come up for a vote within her caucus to see if she's going to remain the leader and ultimately go on for a full house vote on january 3rd as speaker. with that kind of number, 39, perhaps 40, she's got a lot to go on and help propel her potentially to victory. >> interestingly, the bigger the margin gets, the more it helps nancy pelosi because of all she did with fund-raising and organizing to get them there. i may have interviewed pelosi the day after the election, but she was nowhere as revealing as she was with you in that women's series you do. very good reporting. just a better interviewer on that day. dana bash, nia-malika henderson, david chalian, thank you very much to all of you. if things get crazy, i'll bring you back. make sure to stay with us. we'll have the election results

throughout the hour had realtime. we'll put them up whenever it's relevant. i'm not going to just flood you with information when it's more of the same. straight ahead, we have more pieces of the probe that have come out. there's a huge what-if surrounding paul manafort. it's complicated, it's layered, but we have it all laid out for you, next. (honking) when your craving strikes, you need your wing nut. ( ♪ ) no one can totally satisfy a craving, quite like your wing nut. no one can totally satisfy a craving, at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your retail business. so that if your customer needs shoes, & he's got wide feet. & with edge-to-edge intelligence you've got near real time inventory updates. & he'll find the same shoes in your store that he found online he'll be one happy, very forgetful wide footed customer. at&t provides edge to edge intelligence. it can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on.

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and low costs, backed by a satisfaction guarantee. if you don't like their answer, ask again at schwab. all right. the "cuomo primetime" team burned a lot of calories to go through what we're going to do for you right now. and that's well worthwhile. there's a lot of reporting out today involving the mueller investigation. some of it is from cnn's reporting, some of it is not. and there are lots of questions, lots to sort out. so i had to break out the white board. it all centers around the middle. julian assange and wikileaks. first, i don't know why you spend any time distinguishing between these two. every time wikileaks is relevant within the special counsel's probe, it's because julian assange directed, received, or led the efforts of the same organization. that's according to the investigators. so, assange and wikileaks, put them in a circle. they're the same thing.

here's what we know. the main part of speculation here has been, what did wikileaks do? and the theory is that the gru, russian intelligence, the 12 that were indicted by the mueller probe, they were indicted for hacking the democrats' e-mails and passing them to assange. so that's why wikileaks becomes representative of factual information here because they wound up doing the distributing. assange has said he didn't get it from them, the u.s. government disagrees. we have reporting now that there has been a secret criminal charge filed against julian assange, why and for what, we don't know yet. but this is going to become relevant again in a second. there's another part of the intrigue that came out today we have to go through. the closest person to the president that we have heard caught up in all of this so far is roger stone. all right? how? because he seemed to be prescient on what was going to

come out and when. many wondered if he had contacted assange. you've seen me test him about this on this show. he denies it. he says he never did. then there was a second wave of the story, which is, well, i was guessing from what was going on, and who was called person number two in the draft legal filings that cnn has obtained? it was randy credico. radio host, gadabout in new york politics. he told me credico talked to assange and that's how i got the information, says roger stone in part. however, this never made a lot of sense. why? he interviewed assange after he had supposedly had his exchange with roger stone. so i "x"ed that out because it doesn't make sense that credico was with assange. he denies all of it.

that takes us to the big discussion that is coming on information that's new today. jerome corsi, who is he? he's a right-wing conspiracy theorist. he's someone associated with stone. i was being a little playful in the introduction, but not really. i don't know how to describe him vis-a-vis stone. corsi's got trouble. here's why. he told the u.s. government he never did anything with the requests for wikileaks information. what requests? hold there. roger stone says jerome corsi, says the u.s. government more importantly, stone went to corsi and said, go find out what you can about wikileaks over there in the uk. i guess he thought corsi had some kind of access. at first, according to the u.s. government in these draft filings, corsi denied it. stone never contacted me, i never did anything with the

request, i don't know what you're talking about. all right. new documents that cnn has show that corsi did get the message from roger stone, did pass it along to someone called an overseas individual. that's how this person is identified in the draft pleading. and that he led roger stone to believe that this person went to julian assange. how do they know? they say they have records. now, one of the reasons that corsi has some trouble is that corsi deleted a lot of communications that cover this period when they were talking about what might happen with wikileaks in october. that period was deleted. never a good sign, okay? but the u.s. government believes that this e-mail did happen, asking for the information. he did pass it along to somebody else, who did get some kind of information, which led corsi to go back to stone and say there are two big things coming, there's going to be a dump and

it's going to hurt. and he had all this other jazz he was talking about, but there was an exchange of information. all right. here's the problem. what he has suggested to stone, not unlike what stone was suggesting to the rest of us, is exactly what happened. so, what does that mean for roger stone? well, it means potentially from the u.s. government's perspective, he was lying to them, that he wasn't about randi credico, but he went to this guy and got information. so that is what's interesting there. corsi was offered a plea deal and is now walking away and leaking documents about the same deal. i don't know how that helps. that takes us through this circle you've been hearing about. all right? and again, it's all about how close does any of this stuff get to the president or his campaign? that's where paul manafort comes in. i want to put this in context for you here. before we get to this part of

manafort, manafort is already a known liar. that's part of what the probe showed about him, that's why he's in trouble and had to make a plea deal and a cooperation agreement they believe he violated by continuing to lie. put up the list of how many people around this president have been caught lying about something to do with the intrigue surrounding all these questions and the president. this is a president who promised to be different, who promised to be better, who promised to bring in only the best. what a pack of people who have had problems with the truth he has. and that takes us to paul manafort. he has one thing that we know and one huge question that we don't know. but we're going to know soon. here's the part that we know. the special counsel says manafort has been lying even after he made the deal. the big question, therefore, is what? about what? one of two things. one is he's been lying about where he had his money, how he

stashed his money, and how he got his money. we don't care about that for the purposes of this discussion. the other is he's had something to do with the campaign and the interference. the "guardian" comes out with a piece and says that's exactly what it is. he met with julian assange several times for many years back to 2012. why? this is what makes this part interesting. that's why i wanted to finish where we started. because of the work that paul manafort did in ukraine that made him very wealthy and in a lot of trouble with the u.s. government, he had access to these kinds of people, either directly or indirectly. and that is an interesting triangle of intrigue. if true. the "guardian" reporting is not mine. i cannot verify it, neither can cnn. however, it would also put all of this activity closer to the president than we've ever seen before, because his meeting, most recently as far as "the guardian" says, with assange, was in march of 2016. that was right before he became the campaign chairman. what the heck would he be doing having that meeting if it

actually happened? what's all this down here? here's the last important part in this puzzle right now. paul manafort has what we believe is a joint defense agreement with the president of the united states. there's nothing wrong about that. it happens all the time, usually the context is more like a mob trial where people in the interest of their own defense get to share information, including what investigators are saying to one about another so they can get their story straight. the law allows it. rudy giuliani confirmed as much today to "the new york times" saying i've been talking to manafort's lawyers and they've been telling me what the investigators have been asking and it's been very helpful. i'm sure it has. however, why is it in quotes? manafort's lawyer says it's not really a joint defense agreement, whatever, they're talking. here's why it's interesting. the president has submitted his answers to mueller. what if the answers submitted echo a common understanding with paul manafort, a similar story,

so to speak, that mueller knows to be untrue? that is a very heavy question in terms of what that could mean, in terms of what robert mueller puts out in his final report. there you have it, the best that we could do to make sense of a lot of new information. so, the provocative question, what did trump insiders believe? do they believe manafort would meet with assange or that he did? two big shots call him a rat in their new book that dropped just today. why? corey lewandowski and david bossie are here. they have a book that describes all the enemies from the president's perspective. am i in there? next. xfinity mobile is a new wireless network

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for all the mueller news swirling around in the last few days, you got paul manafort, roger stone, and despite the constant cries of a witch hunt from team trump, apparently the president also thinks the whole thing works for him. that is one of the messages in a new book that trump says i think may make my base stronger, a claim the vp backs up. the new book is "trump's enemies," how the deep state is undermining the presidency and it's written by two former campaign bigs who now help push the president's agenda. corey lewandowski and david bossie. good to have you here. >> appreciate it.

>> let me ask you about the news and then i want to get into the book and its message for the american people. paul manafort, i know you don't believe him. i know you don't believe he has the capacity to tell the truth on these types of issues. >> or any other issue, but that's okay. >> do you think there's a chance he met with julian assange? >> i have no idea. i think paul manafort's a bad guy. i think he ought to be in prison. he's not a guy i've ever done business with, don't know him, never met him, didn't work with him. so, he could have done any number of things. we now know from his guilty pleas from being found guilty that he was capable of a lot of things. i have no idea. >> he denies it for everybody who has stake in it, denies it. do you think if he had met with assange back in march, right

before he got made campaign chairman, that you would have heard something about it or did he keep to himself in a way that you can say he could have disclosed it? >> look, i wouldn't have heard about it. paul knew about meetings later. he took a lot of meetings in his apartment at trump tower and didn't work out of the office. i don't know who those conversations were with. paul and i weren't friends. he wouldn't have shared with me if he had one of those meetings. in paul's defense, if there was something he thought julian assange was going to give him, it would have to have been a monetary benefit to paul because that's how he operated or he would have sent one of his emissaries or cohorts to have that meeting. i don't know if paul had the meeting or not, but if he did, it was for a future business or monetary gain for paul. >> how bad is it for the president of the united states if it turns out this is true, that manafort met with assange and had some heads-up that bad stuff is coming and hope you remember this when i drop the information because i'm looking to have a better deal with the

u.s. >> it's a hypothetical. paul manafort was hired when corey left the campaign. paul manafort was fired and i came onto the campaign. we just didn't go through him, with him. we weren't participants with him. i don't understand how his thinking went. he wasn't very good at his job and it's the reason the president ended up getting rid of him. i don't think paul manafort was a good guy, i didn't like that the president brought him in. but at the end of the day the president recognized that and made a change. >> what do you make of that graphic i put up, corey? all the people that have been involved? >> you call that a graphic, the chicken scratch? >> be honest. that's a lot of information. with those arrows, my arm is hurting. that was a lot of information but that's what we do on the show. but this graphic, there are a lot of people that got close to this president, and i'm not saying they're his closest

advisers, other than michael cohen, who can't tell the truth. what happened to only the best? >> there are some people who probably never met the president, whether it's carter page or george papadopoulos, who may have sat through one meeting over the course of a two-year period. those people lied to the fbi and he's in jail because of it. that's what happens. but it should happen on both sides of the aisle. if the clinton people or mccabe lies -- we don't have it yet. >> we have an inspector general's report. and now this gets us into the book, what's going on. this falls under trump's enemies as one of the deep understandings which is deep state. these guys are going to make an argument to you in this book that there were people out to get this president before he was president. as you both know, i'm a seller of that theory. i don't buy it.

i believe that the ultimate act of interest by our department of justice through the fbi was comey coming out and giving a headshot haymaker to hillary clinton, not once, but twice, and i don't see any proof of anybody messing with anything that makes sense in a way that they also let that happen. that's the part i don't get. i would never let corey go out and crush -- if i want to hurt the president, i would never let him crush clinton the way he did twice. >> we've seen the strzok and page, all the e-mails that the mccabe information that has come out. we know that they were -- >> those were lovers. >> they were lovers, using their badges. chris, this is what they were doing. they were taking information and they were leaking it to reporters. they were then taking those articles and using them to expand their investigation. they were self-sourcing. and then they were going to the fisa court with false information to get warrants on

american citizens. this is not how it's supposed to work against your political adversaries. >> first of all, that's a good point. there were multiple judges involved, layers and layers. i don't think we know that they were being lied to. >> let's talk about the mueller potential report just for a minute. if mueller is going to fair in a report, let's see if he talks about those issues as well. let's see if he talks about the hillary clinton paying for the fake russian dossier. let's talk about what strzok and page and mccabe and comey did. >> two things, dave. don't be such a plant. the idea of what he puts in the report. one, we already know hillary clinton's campaign funded the dossier, so that's not like discovery information for mueller. but the point is -- >> we're finding out what those

folks were doing is important. >> why do you think we don't know what they were doing. >> i don't know. >> what we need is the declassification of those fisa applications. >> i'm a journalist. i'm all in favor of declassification all the time. why is it not a distraction, why is this not you trying to divert from what trump did and trying to make trump a victim? >> here's what it came down to. if the same thing would have happened to barack obama, in this book we do a sit-down interview with the president and we ask him, do you think barack obama knew of the fbi's investigation into members of your campaign, for political reasons, to spy on them on domestic soil. do you think barack obama knew? his answer is, yes, he did know, the president. number two, if someone did that to barack obama, what would that be called? that would be called treason and those people would be in jail for 100 years. >> hold on. the basis that if the president believes that, it's something we should take into account means nothing to me.

i'm sure the president does believe it, he believes a lot of things. hold on. >> we have sources that we absolutely know, have seen documents that outline who was in the meetings with crossfire hurricane was spoken about. it was comey and clapper and brennan, one name is redacted on every single e-mail and it's not susan rice. >> who do you think it is? >> the only name on there is barack obama that's been redacted. >> how to you know? >> our sources tell us. >> when i say it, you guys say it's fake news. >> most of the time it is. >> that's why you made the book and i didn't. this is what i'm saying. i'm not disparaging the president. i'm saying, you can't use what he believes as truth. the tap in trump tower. we know that was wild speculation. we know that a lot of effort was put into it. remember, this is a man who is a phone call away from the truth. he's constantly a phone call away from the doj and the fbi. he never has.

but still, it's come out -- >> you don't know that he hasn't. >> his team has been briefed. >> i'll tell you why he hasn't. he would have come out if he had better information. he says stuff all the time, dave, that's not true. why wouldn't he say things that are true? >> he's been briefed by the department of justice, by rod rosenstein. they've been briefed. they know what's in these documents. and the question is, why have they not released it to the american people? why did people who had fbi badges spy on american citizens? because they didn't like their politics. that should never be allowed. >> and you can't know. have you seen the fisa documents? >> no, and we would like to. we agree with you that we would like transparency, that's the best thing. sunlight is the best disinfectant. >> 100%, but that has not been the motto for this administration. you guys who defend the president, transparency has not been the rule for this administration.

i'm not even talking about the taxes. it's too easy a hammer to hit you guys with. that's obvious. look, you want transparency on this in a way that you don't always want transparency because i think you believe it will help you if it comes out. but you have to remember you had several different judges advance the surveillance with big offering sheets that were signed off on by layers and layers. >> chris, you have to remember the first time the department of justice went to the fisa court to ask for an application for spying on american citizens. not only was it denied, the judge actually stepped off the bench, it's in the book, and called a second judge and said have you ever heard of the government asking for an application like this? he said never, and it sounds politically motivated. you have to deny it. they denied the first application. they came back after stories had been written. and used those stories in the fisa application. >> this is why i love the book and i think it's provocative. you don't know if that's true what you just said. >> i absolutely know it's true. >> no.

you have to see the fisa documents to know. >> our sources who have seen the fisa document told us that. >> not impressed. a guy who went to the white house to deal with an oversight matter. he should have never done that. his credibility is in doubt. >> we know the first time the department of justice went to the fisa court to ask for an application to spy on members of the trump campaign, it was denied. they came back six months later. >> that's not unusual. that's the process working. it doesn't show political motivation. >> 2% is how often it's denied. >> i'm saying we're all on the same page on two points. one, let it all come out. >> yes. >> we don't want to hurt anybody or anything else. the second thing is, it's a provocative book. >> look, when the mueller report comes out, release the whole thing. >> that doesn't have to happen. the mandate right now is for rosenstein to get it. >> i understand, but we would

like to see the whole thing. >> good luck with the book, it's called "trump's enemies." no chapter on me. i'm insulted and surprised. next book, volume two. we're still following the senate runoff in mississippi. republicans want to hang on to this final senate seat in play. they should, but there was a runoff. that wasn't expected either. we'll show you the results in realtime. and the house just turned even more blue. will trump and the gop admit they got whooped? that would mean recognizing a fact. that's the great debate, next. stop shaking your head. ♪

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all right. the last big race of the midterms are finally about to end several weeks after the fact of election day. mississippi senate race, they're going to be coming in in realtime. the polls closed, 8:00 p.m. eastern in mississippi. here's what we already know about the midterms. it was a big win for the democrats. however, that is not something that the gop seems to want to admit. sounds like the makings of a great debate. we have political commentator jennifer granholm and washington lobbyist and cnn political commentator, david under.

how many titles do you have? i remember in one of the many briefings that cram so much information before the election, i remember hearing that if they get 35, 37, the democrats should be overjoyed. they're at 39. they could get 40. how is that not a whooping, brother? >> chris, as you know, let's look at history, right? historically, every president, every president in the midterms has lost big seats, big numbers. look -- >> not everyone. >> every president but two in modern history. >> and trump could have been like them. go ahead. >> they were two war-type presidents. that's an otherwise pretty standard scale there. look, all the punditry, the chattering class in washington and around the world that

examines these things all predicted between 35 and 45 seat loss. that was the range i heard. you end up with 39, that's squarely in the middle. we're not talking about pickups in the senate. which are far more important. >> should have gotten five or six with that map, far more important. we'll see what happens tonight. >> far more important. >> why, because they're good for you? >> chris, as you know, the senate confirms, they provided -- listen. >> and avoided what happened during kavanaugh. >> i don't think that's going to be an issue. they confirmed district court judges. circuit court judges. >> i get what the senate does, but you should have had a much bigger win. you lost senate seats in ruby red races. let me get jennifer on this. >> thank you. >> you don't agree with dave about his 45. i never heard a number like that. i never heard a 40 number. the wager i set was 33 as an over/under. everybody took the over, but no one wanted to play with me above 37.

there are 39, maybe 40. why do you see it as a big win? >> because historically it is. you're talking about history, you haven't seen in the history of midterm elections a number like 9 million votes that one party got over another. it is a wave of historic proportions. it will be 40 seats, it looked like. seven governors flipped. you haven't seen that for 24 years. almost 400 state legislative seats, 4 attorneys general, all these majorities and super majorities that republicans had in state legislators flipped. it is a huge win. and tonight, chris, just to focus on the mississippi race for one second, i think it is going to be -- we'll see what happens. republicans are supposed to overwhelmingly win this deep red state. >> a win is a win. >> it should be a race that she

wins. of course, by 20 points. if you just look at the makeup of it. but what it speaks to is that the democrats decided they were going to play in every place in the country. they weren't going to leave states or districts alone. >> good, you got to raise all that money, jennifer, you guys should play everywhere. i'm saying, there's so much money raised now, you should play everywhere. >> that's my point, is that this race demonstrates if you recruit good candidates and you play everywhere, then you can win. >> here's why i'm playing with you about the numbers. i don't care about 35, 40, it doesn't matter to me. it's not about the math. the majority is there. if they have a strong leader, the caucus will be in line or it won't. we'll see how it plays out. the old adage, what you ignore, you empower. you don't respect the history and learn from it, you're going to repeat it. the message is pretty clear. the president across the country got stomped in another popular vote, a bigger margin than in his own election. yes, dave. your head can move the other

way. >> the president wasn't on the ballot. >> he told everybody he was on the ballot, and when you talk to voters, 2 out of 3 said he was on their mind when he or she voted. >> listen, his name wasn't on the ballot. >> i know his name wasn't on the it, 2 out of 3 said they voted on him. >> democrats were despondent on election night. >> it's true. >> listen, chris, all the high-profile democratic races that oprah campaigned for, that barack obama campaigned for, beto o'rourke, the florida governor, georgia governor. >> for abrams or gillum to turn states like that would have been amazing. >> it would have been amazing. >> listen. that's what dominated the political discourse of this country for a month, how these folks were going to come in -- zero. >> not on this show. >> on this network and every network. >> not on this show. >> but every network. you lost.

outperforming doesn't matter. you lost. >> it does matter. >> if you want to cherry pick a senate seat that should have been never close with cruz, and you want to pick abrams and made it closer than she ever should have. >> how much money did o'rourke spend to get close? if you were to put that money on john james in michigan, he would be a senator today. >> i mean -- >> james is running against them. that's not my point. we would all have a beautiful christmas. i love that line. what i'm saying is -- >> if you put $100 million behind anybody -- >> if you don't accept what happens in this race, it's going to happen again. >> here's what i accept. democrats had great candidates in certain districts, you had incredible redistricting. pennsylvania was done by the democratic-controlled supreme court. you had key retirements.

>> they're your seats and you lost them. >> new jersey is not a republican -- >> i'm not saying new jersey. >> why did you have so many retirements, though, david? >> because they serve in a body that has a lower approval rating than anybody. >> no. >> and because they were serving under a president who has a horrible, horrible record and a horrible approval rating. >> listen, not true. >> if you think this election was bad, if he had been on the ballot, it would have been even worse. >> so, 2020 -- >> you have to acknowledge. >> so there's going to be 20 people running to the left in 2020. you're going to have 20 candidates running for 2020. and everybody's going to run to the left of each other because if they don't score early in the polls -- >> that's what you want. >> it's a fact, chris. you know that. you're a smart guy. political primaries are dominated by the extremes in their parties. >> i have no idea where that party will be, and i don't think they do either. >> come on. >> at this point in the primary cycle.

>> you think they're going to nominate some conservative republican? >> nothing in history. nothing in history suggests that the reaction to trump should be an equal opposite left extreme. >> okay. >> you usually see moderation after somebody who has torn on every piece of fabric he can find that will divide a nation. usually healing is the reaction. >> i will make a prediction that it is someone very progressive. >> i've got to go. dave, thank you so much. >> thanks for having us. >> jennifer granholm, always a pleasure. thanks, governor. see what he is doing? always cheap shots from that guy. lucky he is good-looking. back to the election in mississippi. he was talking about granholm, not me. when the president was working to shore up his base for cindy hyde-smith, i brought this up because i think it matters. what do you think he meant when he said this? >> cindy's far left opponent, he is far left, oh, he is out there.

how does he fit in with mississippi? how does he fit? >> in fairs on the me, there is more to that quote. and if you look at it, you can see the president was struggling about whether or not he really wanted to go somewhere. and remember who he is backing in cindy hyde-smith. remember what she said in that  election when she refused to apologize for specifically. the fool that he backed in virginia. what he did with roy moore in alabama. this is a president who hasn't shied away from supporting people who support causes that are way too akin to bigotry that we've ever seen with a republican in the modern era, a president back them. was it just us versus them of politics, or was it something else? let's bring in d. lemon. what did you hear in terms of the reference to mike espy, by the way, born in mississippi, family successful there, served in congress there? certainly he fits into the state. >> i didn't hear anything. come on, chris! are you kidding me? we got to stop pretending like, oh, no, they didn't -- that's

exactly what he meant. what's worse? that he didn't know what he was saying or that he did? i think they're equally as damaging. the fact that you can say it and you know it's a dog whistle, if it is, or it could just be a loud cry, or you're just ignorant of the facts. so you got he didn't know what a nationalist was, right, by saying he was a nationalist. didn't know the ramifications of that, didn't know the history of that. cindy hyde-smith saying i'd be on the front -- >> front row of a public hanging. >> okay. on a public hanging. she should know better than that, but it didn't mean anything. that didn't mean anything. we don't want to monkey this race up down in florida. oh, okay. i didn't know what any of that means. again, i go back to my original question. is it worse that you know what it means or that you're in a position where you're going to be leading people in this country, and you don't know what it means? i think they're both equally as bad. >> and i think that you win this

round because in context, it doesn't make the same sense that it would out of context. if the president had only said this, it would be one thing. but he's said too many things and backed to many candidates who believe too many ugly things to take it any other way. >> i'm a son of the south, chris. none of this stuff surprises me, the whole segregation school. none of it, none of it, none of it surprises me. your conversation before -- not you, but it just gave me a headache because dave was talking about look how much money. if you're in a traditionally red state -- >> you need money. >> it doesn't matter how much money you pour into it. it's about ideology. it's not about money. >> but it takes money to change people's minds because you've got to pound message. that's all i'm saying. >> but still. anyway, i'll see you in the top of the hour. we got a lot to talk about because we got mississippi. >> d. lemon, i'll be with you in a second. thank you for helping me out as always. >> yep. what's happening at the border right now? very bad. we don't need our president distorting what's going on. we need truth right now.

that's not what he's doing. he has a penchant for not doing that. he had to be contradicted by one of his own officials on this show last night. shouldn't have to happen. now it's time to call out some fact versus fiction where this president's involved, but there's a bigger message. there's something we all have to look out for, next. [sneezing] ♪ you don't want to cancel your plans. [sneezing] cancel your cold. the 1-pill power of new advil multi-symptom cold & flu knocks out your worst symptoms. cancel your cold, not your plans. new advil multi-symptom cold & flu.

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they're making a mistake because i have a gut. my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else's brain can ever tell me. try that in school or with anyone in any job anywhere, let alone try that as a leader of any kind. the truth is this. the president's not an economist. he's never been prized for his investment savvy when it comes to the markets. his immense borrowing would have ruined him if not for his father's money. and by juicing an already strong economy with a tax cut that balloons the deficit, he all but forced the fed to raise rates. then there was this on climate change. 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. record clean. he really means smarts, not intelligence. he means like raw brainpower because intelligence is defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge. knowledge, of course, being the

greek root for the word in science, okay? so intelligent people read and learn from science. this president ignores science in favor of his own version of reality, where the air and water are at a record clean. to the extent there is improvement, it is because of the application of science and policies and actions to improve the water and air. and trump is looking to get rid of those same policies. but, again, this is not a fair debate because the president offers no facts, just feelings. and then we have the fact checked that may be the most urgent right now. listen to this. >> first of all, the tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. it's very safe. >> tear gas is tear gas, right? >> the cs gas we deploy is standard law enforcement issue. >> there's only one kind. >> it's in our equipment inventory. it's trained.

all of our agents have to experience it like you did before they're even allowed to carry it, much less deploy it. >> he had to be fact checked by his own commissioner, a man with integrity, and that led him to own even what the president did not want to hear, and i respect that. all of these are examples of a very dangerous combination in this president, and he inhabits this combination in a way that i've never seen in a leader of any kind, let alone a president. and it's this. ignorance and arrogance. he often doesn't know or doesn't want to know the facts, and then he will lie or pretend he knows better when he does not. that's ignorance and arrogance. and the last one, this last example matters the most because first of president was trying to scare the hell out of you about an invasion to get you to vote. now he's trying to underplay the desperation that is a mile from our southern border, and that's not me attacking him both ways. there was never going to be an invasion. but there is an amassing population south of the border that are desperate, that have been led or misled to believe that they can get into this country. they don't know that the rules have changed.

they don't know that it's harder for them, and there's going to be desperation. there's going to be anger. and we know what's going to happen because we saw it on sunday. so now the president wants to play it down. he says, oh, we didn't shoot tear gas at men and women. yes, you did. at women and children. never children. yes, you did. oh, it was a safer tear gas. no, it wasn't and it's going to happen again if the situation doesn't change. the government did a lot of talking in the form of the president, but it did not prepare as it could. last sunday i fear, from what i'm hearing from those who know the reality, was just a taste and the worst may be yet to come. what's the message? we need the truth from our leaders right now. we have to know the reality of what's happening. we'll be there. the media is there, and we need our leaders to do it. if the president can't, those around him must step up. i know that is always frowned upon in government. i know that those in positions of power want to keep that power. but if we have, god forbid, situations like we saw last sunday, and if it's worse as the numbers get worse and the concentration of all those emotions get worse, we need

people that we can count on to tell the truth. and i hope that that happens for this country. that's all for us tonight. thanks for watching. "cnn tonight" starts right now. >> thank you, sir. a lot to get to, so i'm going to move it along. i'll see you tomorrow. all right. this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. breaking news. early results coming in in the u.s. senate runoff? mississippi. republican senator cindy hyde-smith has the lead over the democrat there, who is mike espy. there are still a lot of votes to be counted. you might be wondering why all eyes are on this mississippi race tonight a full three weeks after election day. well, the answer, three words. the blue wave. the blue wave that swept democrats into power in the house. as it stands right now, democrats have picked up 39 seats in the house of representatives. that is the biggest gain in the