the wounds of the campaign were long-standing. >> i think he cost me the election and i don't like him. >> perot ran again for president in 1996, though he didn't fare as well as he had four years before. he largely faded from public life and was devoted to his family, business. ross perot showed that in politics anything the possible. ross perot was 89 years old. >> and he definitely made his mark. the news continues to chris for "cuomo prime time." >> and he created an option that we may see come again, a viable third party candidate. thank you for that. well done. i am chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." there's new information about how many are being held on our border and the conditions they are in. can the president's acting dhs

secretary give us confidence that this situation is under control or getting there. this is his first interview since his department released numbers just hours ago. and when can we see the conditions for ourselves? and rosie is in the ring. she's here to talk about whether the democrats have what it takes and who it takes to beat this president. rosie has answers that may surprise you on that and a plan to help the border mess, a big event we're going to talk about. storm clouds hovering over another trump cabinet member. this jeffrey epstein case reeks of deal making. we have the journalist who followed the consent all the way to the latest prosecution. what do you say? let's get after it. a 28% drop, that's a sizable decrease in the number of enforcement actions at our southern border in june. this was just put out by

homeland security tonight. more than 144,000 migrants had been encountered or arrested in may. a month later in june, that number plunged about 40,000 to 104,000. that's still a massive number. the acting secretary, kevin mcaleenan, initially forecast a 25% decrease. he credits trump administration initiatives for the decline. of course he stresses the humanitarian crisis is ongoing and growing. welcome back to "prime time," sir. >> good to be back, chris. >> so the latest numbers, you see them as improvement. now where do they put us in terms of the norm? >> we're very much still in a crisis mode. but what we see in june is that our strategy is working. the president's engaging with mexico, the deal to enforce immigration, security on their

southern border, to partner with us, that's clearly having an impact on the flow. >> in terms of how you are keeping these people, what will you tell us about what the breakdowns are, how many kids, how many unaccompanied minors. how are you doing in terms of being able to keep them to the standard of care that this country expects. >> the effort with mexico has made a real impact in the last four weeks, as has the supplemental, which you've been covering from the beginning. our requests on may 1st for the resources we needed to save the situation for children moving to hhs custody. we have under 200 unaccompanied children in custody and only a few of them are staying with border patrol stations over 72 hours. and usually those are medical cases. hhs now has the funding from congress to create additional bed space and move those kids out to a more appropriate setting. >> you also have june. historically, june, the numbers drop. at this point we're all for progress. but in terms of what policies

work, it's hard, mr. commissioner, to say -- mr. secretary now, that this is about the changes in policy. we still don't know what the long-term plays are here. not because of you, but you are a piece in a larger machine. you shut down funding to the triangle countries, you don't have the right types of relationships, this can't get any better, whether it's june or not. so what do you need going forward to make this system work? >> first, i would say that we can attribute it to the partnership with mexico and our efforts to tackle the criminal organizations doing the smuggling. two years we went up from may to june, in two years we were flat, a 28% drop is not consistent with seasonal efforts. that's due to the mexican partnership. we're working further in the region. i've been in central america twice in the last two weeks

working with the governments on the source of the migration and the criminal organizations that are exploiting people to enter this cycle. but we also need congress to act. we're very pleased to be hosting the senate judiciary committee with the vice president on the border to talk about those targeted fixes to the immigration laws that we think would have prevented this crisis and can help us address it fundamentally and permanently now. >> the narrative has changed from congress. now they are aware -- and they've gone down there and say shame on you, secretary, for how you guys are treating these people. they're hearing horrible things, seeing and smelling the conditions and they don't like it and they say this is on you. let's look at this two different ways. first, what are you doing in terms of investigating whether it's these chat groups with people saying ugly and stupid things as members of people under your watch and conditions of these places that congress was complaining about? >> let's talk about the conditions first, chris, you've

been on this all year. you've heard me talk about the crisis at the border, the humanitarian crisis. on march 27th, i said we were past the breaking point and the conditions were unacceptable. in june, i said our facilities are overflowing and no american should be comfortable with the way the conditions are. we've been sounding the alarm. we've been doing more than that. we've been taking action. we've provided additional medical care from 20 certified providers to over 200 today. we've built 200 beds. we've moved those children out to hhs over the last four weeks -- >> you should have gotten more help and sooner. you'll get no argument on that from me. are you making sure there's no cover-up that any man or woman under your command that is doing this the wrong way, that is giving the wrong message to people or the wrong treatment will be exposed? >> absolutely. we have very high standards. their enforced with five layers of oversight.

we have independent oversight within the department of homeland security, we have a juvenile coordinator that does unannounced visits and we have the court and attorneys who visit the as well. and this is of course the jao -- these facilities are some of the most visited and seen sites that we have. 55 delegations to see our facilities. we have a ton of visibility. we have good supervisory oversight -- >> no cameras, though. >> i'm glad you raised that because i think it's imperative that we get cameras in those facilities. and i appreciate the president directing that this week. that allowed us to work with doj to look at our policy and see that the public interest here in showing what's happening in our facilities is at least equal or outweighs the privacy interest -- >> it's never worked for me as a

rational as a lawyer or journalist. again, i don't hang this on you. i know this situation, i know the facts, i've been around your people a lot. i hold you to account that's the job and you would expect no less. but the idea that this is your fault doesn't make any sense to me at this point. but what doesn't make sense is, so we're going to separate the families, we're going to put these kids in these situations that we all hate, abuse the standards of care, but we have to respect their privacy, so the only time that they get the absolute best of the american government reckoning of their situation, it has to come from the media. >> i understand, we're not doing any of those things that you listed, but we have had overcrowding in our facilities and it is not appropriate that we haven't been able to show the inside of our facilities because i think that will demonstrate the effort our agents are taking, that will show our efforts to clean them. i invite you down to the border

this week because we have that change in policy. we will be able to show with the vice president the situation and what is still our busiest sector. >> you know cnn is going to be there and we're always ready here to tell the truth about the situation. my biggest concern is this, mr. secretary, at this point. you got some money, you got some resources. you and i could go back and forth over a beer for two hours about whether or not june is helpful to you or not. but this isn't over. asylum is a civil matter but you can't be flooded with asylum cases and not wind up holding people. you've had to catch and release more people than we've ever seen in this country right now. so the policies aren't working. you can't fix that. the president can't fix that. i also disagree with you about the emergency declaration. i think that's not about a fence either, historically, why

doesn't he use some of that to help you more. argument for another day. would you like to call on congress to do more than they've done already in terms of what you need? >> absolutely. we've offered three targeted fixes to our immigration laws that would address this crisis. allow us to keep families together as they arrive at the border through a fair and transparent immigration proceeding. allow us to provide a safe way for children to seek protections from their host countries or a neighboring country, not to make that dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers, but to repatriate them and allow us to modify the standards so initial barrier is more consistent with an ultimate finding from a judge at the end of the proceeding. but we're going to work with mexico, we're going to work with our central american partners, we're going to try to address this at the source and increase our border security at the same time. >> the more investment we do abroad, the less need for people to come here out of desperation. please, mr. secretary, stay on the accountability, if there are things that need to come out,

keep it clean. and if you can get me in there to watch, i'm there. i promise you that. thank you for coming on the show. >> thank you. >> i know it feels like they fixed it and now they know they fixed it. that system is far from fixed. it maintains that way and it will be that way again if nothing more is done. okay. rosie o'donnell has a lot to say about what's happening at the border and what she thinks it means and she thinks it should be the biggest issue in 2020. but first, she has some news about who she thinks should take on this president. and we have our wisdom of odds breaking down all the numbers of who stands the best chance and why, next.

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at this point, former vp joe biden's best case for the nomination is, he has the best chance to beat trump. it's the same case all of the democrats need to make. lucky for us, we have the wizard of odds, harry enten to sort it out. good to see you. everyone can claim it, but what is the best case and why? >> there was a poll that came out over this weekend and what it essentially did was it matched up trump against the different leading democrats. you see biden running the strongest against trump leading by 10 verses all the other democrats are in a dead heat with trump. harris only winning by 2, sanders leading by 1, and elizabeth warren tied with donald trump. >> spin, spin, spin. these numbers are basically the same place they are in the state of play. he's plus five over her and about dead even with the other two.

it doesn't mean he's better suited. it's a state of play at this moment in time. it doesn't give him enough to say -- >> here would be my answer to that. i think this is a rather key point. basically our cnn poll asked do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the candidates and what i did here was take the net favorable, favorable minus unfavorable. and we see among the democrats, the net favorable ratings are basically the same. and we see that biden has the highest net favorability rating and sanders and warren are way down there and harris at minus 46 here. the reason why biden is leading so much in these early matchups is not because of his standing among democrats, it's because of his standings among all other voters. and that's a key point. those general election points are taking into account these other voters. >> all other voters is a metric of least/worst.

how do they see democrats in terms of they would like the most considering they don't like any of them. >> exactly. the republicans and independents who aren't part of the democratic primary process. you're just trying to win some of these voters. it's very, very early, this number indicates that biden at this point at this point is in the best position to win a few of these voters. >> that's why we keep inviting all of these people on the show. there's a lot of time and you got to make your case. politics is about persuasion. we ask, ask, ask. no, no, no, no. biden recently came on. you got to come on, you got to make the case. last point. >> this would be my last point and another point that i think is important. the poll also asked, okay, if you had to choose between, say, donald trump or a democrat you considered a socialist, look at this, trump is leading this matchup by 6 points.

>> socialist and democrats -- >> no. this is asking a democrat you considered to be a socialist. >> that's the sanders case. we think there's a difference between the two. >> this is saying democrats you consider socialist, trump is leading and that is a key question going forward. can democrats go too far to the left. if he can say that these democrats are socialist, that's his best shot to win. >> and that's why he's saying it all the time. thank you very much. >> shalom, my friend. >> inside those numbers there's peace, but also peace of mind. rosie o'donnell, whom does she want in her party? i know she would take any of them over the current president. but that's not what it's about. what is the best her party has to offer, whom is the best her party has to offer?

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look, we should all know what democrats want, it is natural for them to see this president has a one-term president. and if you believe the latest polling, as you just saw with the wizard of odds, joe biden right now is their best person to do it. does rosie o'donnell agree? she's an avid supporter of the left. she says, nope, that's not where her party is headed in to 2020. here's her take. great to have you on the show. >> thanks. nice to be here. >> it's an important time. thank you. >> thank you. >> let's talk politics, small "p," and then let's talk about people.

>> okay. >> your party, the democratic party, where is its head versus its heart? you can't want joe biden and all of these ideas that are being pushed out by the persons in second, third and fourth in the polls. >> i agree. i think joe biden should say i'm going to sit this one out. i'm going to advise and whoever is the nominee should think about how to best use somebody with the experience that joe biden has. he's not the future of the democratic party. and i think we have now until we get a nominee to figure out who that person is. in my opinion, it's either elizabeth warren or kamala harris. >> you backed warren. >> yes. >> is that fixed? or are you open to either one being the -- warren or harris, rosie is in? >> either one of them i would be thrilled to stand behind. i'm really for elizabeth warren. i think the plans that she has

for just about everything, all that she did with the big banks, corporate shakedowns, she was a leader in so many ways and still is, and i think she's formidable against trump and all of the money she's raised from nonlobbies, you know, it's pretty astounding to me. >> politics is not plans, it's not persuasion, you know this. the metric is who beat this is president. every poll that comes out says joe biden beats the president. and the latest round, really, it's head to head with everybody else expect joe biden. so how does that not make him your future? >> well, he's antiquated in a lot of his beliefs. because a lot of his history is long time ago. it is time to pass the torch. and i don't think 80 years old is an age to be starting a presidential job.

i think you have to be 35 and there should be an ending point -- >> he's 76, but i take your point. help me with this. you're very practical also. he's the only one who beats the current president. >> that's what they say. but i don't believe that's true. your time has passed in terms of being the president of the united states. that's my personal opinion. >> now what i care about more, frankly, people on the border. you want to help. you're going to have an event soon. i think this friday? >> yes. >> what is it? >> i'm not the one who put this together. i'm just a mother who was horrified to hear about the conditions and the detention centers, all of the statistics of how many children are there alone, the kind of trauma that that puts on a child's psyche, on their heart. it's a trauma tattoo that will never go away. and you see these small reunification videos of the parents and child wailing and sounds that you never even hear. >> it's the worst thing you can see with a kid and you know this because you're a parent. the worst thing you can see with

a child, blank stare, you don't know whether to cry or scream. here's my problem, you're finding out about it. but your party, congress on both sides, this president, they've all known for months, rosie, this guy who's the acting head of dhs who's leading the show tonight, he was telling them, i don't have the money. november the resources. i cannot keep our standard of care. you have to help me. and they didn't do it. the left too. we wanted assurances that they would take care of them the right way. you've got a kid in crisis, are you going to delay it seven months or get it done as soon as you can. i don't understand why both sides didn't act on this. >> it seems as though the trump administration, cruelty is the point.

>> there is a message of deterrence with the separation of kids, but this isn't just him. he could do what he did with the emergency declaration. they say that's not for this. it's not for a fence either. but he used it for that. you could argue it's unconstitutional but he has it if he wants to keep going extra power, he might as well keep doing it. there's a consistency issue with this president. kids don't sell fear. why didn't everybody else in congress jump on this six months ago? >> i think they were shocked. everybody was appalled. it took whistleblowers to come out and say what the conditions were. it took people seeing children being pulled from the arms of their parents and as a parent in the country, i didn't know what to do. i called down to el paso. i talked to some of the people there on the ground. i said how can i help. they talked about this candlelight vigil, it's this friday the 12th and it's in 660 different places in the states. including areas they're going to have people speaking outside of the homestead florida detention

camp. >> and the message is what? >> the message is we care. you must stop. we will not endorse this on our watch. >> here's my one suggestion, as you go forward with this, because you carry passion and a big stick with your voice and energy and contacts, it's not as simple as close the camps. you need places to keep these kids. i would argue you don't have enough. i just want more capabilities, more resources, more people, and congress to do its job and look at the rules of what they want in terms of how you can apply to get in, what is asylum, what isn't, how long, they have to do their job, rosie, otherwise this isn't going to end -- >> asylum is not a criminal matter. it's a civil matter and 98% of the person who leave there come back for their court cases. >> you'll get different numbers. but i accept your point. i've seen situations where it's bad policing, where it's abuse, where they had the wrong men and women on the job.

i haven't seen proof of that here. >> you haven't? >> not in large scale. the conditions suck -- >> there's no water, there's no fresh water. >> i don't know what is true and what isn't in terms of these -- congress members coming out of there pretending they learned all of this is true bothers me. they knew it was true, rosie. >> until you see it. >> for you, yes. for people who don't live it all the time, i agree with you. not these people. they had people coming up, showing them things. there was some politics at play that i think are malignant and part of our overall product. but i applaud what you're doing, getting more regular people to care and pay attention will make a difference. >> this has to be the issue of the election. >> i wish it were, but i don't know. >> i think it's going to be. because mothers and fathers across the country are going to say enough.

>> we need to have people come together and come up with ideas that make us humane and someone who respects justice. i'm telling you, the thing that you're doing this friday and getting people to care so they start pushing congress to do their jobs and make sure there's oversight, that is a key ingredient in making it better. >> and we hope we can make nancy pelosi do hers. >> they all got to step up. >> this is not how you deal with trump, relentless, unending abuse from him, this is not how you deal with him. you don't let him go and give him a long lead. you got to confront him at his own level. and to turn around and say we're not going to have an impeachment inquiry i think is a gross injustice and nancy pelosi is making a future mistake. >> we'll see what happens. they're going to have to decide soon. thank you so much. >> great to see you. >> always, always a pleasure. another big story, the president's labor secretary is in a lot of hot water for his

role in getting convicted sexual predator jeffrey epstein a cushy plea deal. the investigator, what she sees coming next, how we got here, all coming up on "prime time." you're having one more bite no! one more bite! ♪ kraft. for the win win.

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♪ ♪ so now we're hearing calls for labor secretary alex acosta to resign. but he is not going that way. today he defended his handling of the epstein case on twitter writing now that new evidence and additional testimony is available, the new york prosecution offers an important opportunity to more fully bring him, epstein, to justice. facts first, yes. investigators have more on epstein. they must or they wouldn't have gotten the new warrants. you can't get a warrant now based on something that happened

in the early 2000s. they do have new information and now they say they've seized thousands of nude photos of young-looking women or girls from epstein's home. let's be clear, there was a lot of evidence back then to pursue charges and that's why julie kay brown, the reporter who relentlessly dug into this case, decided to look at it because i didn't make sense. welcome to "prime time." it is no small feat to have journalism lead to a prosecution. it usually happens in reverse. good on you. the secretary's statement, i'm glad there's new information, good, interesting play by him. your assessment of the case. while they must have something new, was most of this back there at that time. >> yes. a lot of this information was not only there, the palm beach police did an excellent job with

this, they had an enormous amount of not only witness statements but corroborating evidence such as phone records that showed that there were communications between these girls and his schedulers or even in some cases him, himself had called some of these girls. >> what was the understanding at the time that made the leniency that happened the right move? >> well, i think it was in their mind, i mean, his lawyers, you know, he had kenneth starr and others, he had an all-star team, and i think they were trying to wear down the prosecutors. they had one agreement that they were going to go with and then it would get torn up and start over. and the whole process just kept going over and over and over again. to some degree, i think they wore the prosecutors down. >> as we both know, they don't drive the process. the other side does and you have the former police chief say i've

never had political pressure like this, you have acosta saying we've never seen pressure like this, that they were investigating us. i've never heard that kind of narrative. usually prosecutors are like, they can bring all the money and power they want, this is going to get done. in fact that's what you're hearing from the southern district right now in bringing this case. what do you make of this? >> you know, political pressure is a strange thing. back then, you know, this was well before the me too movement. there was no political incentive for them to really prosecute this case. if anything, there probably was none because there were so many high-powered people involved. now it's a time when the prosecutor who went after bill cosby, for example, he was

elected on a platform that he was going and prosecute cosby. we're in a different time period now. >> this kept coming up with people who were involved with human trafficking, led you into this brilliant journey of discovery that you went on. we're talking about kids. and not just, you know, women who say it wasn't consensual and probably wasn't, these were kids, and he got the lightest sentence i've ever heard of. it wasn't just 18 serve 13. it was work release six days a week, 12 hours a day. i've never heard of anything like that before. now you get to a why now? what do you think has changed. whom do they have that they didn't? >> well, i think a lot of people who maybe weren't willing to talk before are now willing to realize that what happened was wrong. hopefully some people found a conscious in all of this. with the passage of time, they've had their own children and they say, i have my own daughter and i don't want her to

face something like that. >> people who knew about it and didn't come forward, but not necessarily the victims. >> correct, correct. and also i think that -- you know, the case has been nagging at a lot of people for a long time. there were people who knew about this and so when my story came out in november, the end of november, beginning of december, people just looked at it and said, yes, finally someone really looked at this because i always wondered how did this happen? so i think it was a combination of things. the girls -- i should really mention the girls who are now women who came forward and had the courage to talk to me on camera. that was very, very difficult for them to do after all of this time. they felt betrayed -- >> they were betrayed. they weren't told about the deal. they sued. congress is now involved. that's one thing i wanted to ask you before we go. i want you to give me what you

think the big questions are going forward, but also the aspect of this being prosecuted by the public corruption, they don't usually handle these kinds of cases. what does that mean and what are the big questions? >> keep in mind that many of the prosecutors that were handling this case, including acosta, is no longer with the justice department. the justice department has an investigation under way by the office of professional responsibility. my understanding from talking to people who, by the way, worked in justice at the opr, was that they're not going to have any jurisdiction over acosta or over any of these attorneys who no longer work for the justice department. so what's possible could have happened is since their hands were tied, they could have referred it to the southern district of new york to look at the handling of this by the prosecutors. and that's just a theory, but it is a pretty -- from what i understand, unusual thing to

have the public unit attached to a sex trafficking case because they have a unit that handles those kinds of crimes. >> it would be the first time we ever saw a secondary prosecution not of the underlying crimes, but the who knew and perverted justice, no pun intended. julie, please, i will come back to you for more help on this because nobody understands this situation better than you. but it is good to have it now and congratulations. >> thank you. before this president, there was another populist businessman and he gave a road map to where i think we're going to go still. his name is h. ross perot. he died today. we're going to bring in d. lemon for that, next. ♪ ♪ award winning interface. award winning design.

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h. ross perot, two-time presidential candidate, billionaire businessman. his life ended today at 89. he had a five-month battle with leukemia. we all remember his first presidential campaign in 1992. it remains one of the most successful third-party bids in modern presidential history. he was folksy, memorial.

he spoke with a texas twain, his famous, let me finish line was fodder for "snl's" dana carvey. >> could i finish? are you still there, larry? is any of this penetrating your head of yours? >> yes. >> larry, please let me finish. >> let's bring in d. lemon. he'll be remembered for so many reasons. but i believe the most impressive part of his legacy is what is still yet to come. a third-party person, america's ripe for it. >> i also think that a big reason that president trump is where he is is in large part because of h. ross perot. they were very similar, a successful businessman -- >> he actually was a successful businessman.

>> i know. that was going through my head as i said it. he was a successful businessman who said why are you sending another politician to washington. we were a couple hundred million dollars in debt then. think about now with trillions of dollars of debt. that seemed quaint back then. but we're showing our age. if i can remember -- i remember the debates with ross perot in them. i remember him and george h.w. bush walking out on to the podiums and bill clinton. and it was amazing to see him there with bill clinton and with george h.w. bush. >> and george h.w. bush believed he cost him the election. >> after he dropped out, he had good things to say about bill clinton and his running mate. >> perot was tough on him. i'll tell you the big difference

to me, the decency that he brought to his disagreement. he was tough on them. he thought they didn't know what they were talking about when it came to fiscal responsibility and that's why he used all the charts. but that's what's changed. we're going through a cultural tone period. >> this person -- the person we have now and the election of 2016, it was -- you know, i don't know if i'm romanticizing times past but it seems like people were a lot brasher, a lot more brash in this election in 2016 than back in 1992. listen, ross perot was not perfect. as he would have told you. he was also interesting because he dabbled in conspiracy theories. remember the whole thing about prisoners of war and blamed the bush people -- president george h.w. bush for hiding information about prisoners of war and he also dropped out of the election, then he said

republican operatives tried to infiltrate his daughter's -- it was just odd. he dropped out and then he came back in. it was interesting. we have gone through this before. at a different level. but tonight you want to tune in to the show. you know why? because i've got chris ruddy. friend of the president. i've got john kasich, who ran for president in 2016 and can offer more on this than either of us. and i have cory booker, who's running this time. action-packed program. >> that is stacked, my friend. >> life is like a cobweb. not an organization chart. inventories can be managed but people must be led. if you see a snake, just kill it. don't appoint a committee on snakes. >> that's my favorite line. >> you have to find them one at a time. >> if you see a snake kill it. don't form a committee on snakes. that's good. d-lemon, i'll see you in a second. >> see you. >> all right. talking about conspiracy theories.

one of the wildest ones that came out of the 2016 election was peddled by the president's pals over there on state tv and within the walls of his own white house. now the really ugly truth of its origin is known. you remember the name seth rich? of course you do. but for all the wrong reasons. and we know more about it now and where it started and what it was about and how they have never owned what they did. but that's okay. we're going to expose it in our closing, next. discover elvive protein recharge leave-in conditioner. our heat protecting formula, leaves hair 15-times stronger. ♪ in just 1 use elvive revives damaged hair. in just 1 use bleech! aww! awww! ♪ it's the easiest because it's the cheesiest. kraft for the win win.

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so four months before the 2016 election a 27-year-old dnc staffer is murdered on his way home from a bar. police investigate and conclude it was a botched robbery. the young man's name, seth rich. you know the name. but why you know it goes to the

ugliest kind of b.s. conspiracy spin there is. fox was all over this along with fringe righty sites. hollow notions that deserve no repeating here. why did they do it? to distract from russian interference, to tar hillary clinton. but now michael isikoff with yahoo news, friend of the show, is reporting at the root of all of the efforts was russia. he spoke to a former federal prosecutor who worked on the case. she says three days after seth rich was killed, russian intelligence agents planted a phony report saying he was gunned down by assassins working for clinton. b.s. amplified by the same troll farms that pumped out propaganda disguised as real americans in the leadup to the election. why did they do it? the prosecutor says russia's plan was simple. if seth is the leaker to wikileaks, it doesn't have anything to do with the russians. may 2017 the same week mueller

was appointed as special counsel donald trump's pals over on state tv ran with the story bigly. >> explosive developments in the mysterious murder of former dnc staff seth rich that could completely shatter the narrative that in fact wikileaks was working with the russians. >> there's a possibility this is a guy who provided to wikileaks all those dnc e-mail. >> and he was shot in the back. >> turns out it wasn't the russians. it was this young guy who i suspect was disgusted by the corruption of the democratic national committee. >> they can qualify it with all the language they want. they knew what they were doing. they had a bogus hook. a source who said they could link rich to wikileaks through information on his laptop. fox news essentially had to issue a retraction. the claim has been debunked over and over including by the mueller report. did they apologize? no. they said it was not up to their standards editorially but that

it was all protected by the first amendment. maybe so. but this isn't about the legal right. it's about doing what's right. and you have? really self-satisfied sorts over there who just love to judge others and see attacking others as currency. it shows they're strong and smart, right? well, where's that sense of indignation that they were duped by russians and helped that toxic cause of disrupting our election and our national dialogue with russian propaganda? roger stone tweeted a picture of rich. "another dead body in the clintons' wake. coincidence? i think not." or he thought not at all. people who support this president attack anyone with anything they can. quick to cry foul when exposed. quick to see themselves victims of those who return their vitriol. quick to blame the political opponents for being the bad guys. but what will they say about this? the family begged them to stop. they never had any law enforcement buy in or support

for the stories and their punditry. they had to back off. and now unless it's yet another grand conspiracy they have been exposed as hungry helpers of the russian cause. maybe now they'll own the reality of russian interference and the obvious efforts that continue. the saying they were too anxious to empower. oh, the irony. or they can do what they do best. attack me and others for calling it out. blame it on another conspiracy and wait for the next nonsense to pounce on. but know this. as yahoo makes plain for all to see, what was done was ugly and obvious, and everyone knows it. allow me to say what they have not. i am sorry for the rich family and to the rich family. i wish them the best going forward. thank you for watching tonight. "cnn tonight" with d. lemon starts right now. >> good for you. glad you said that. and for some over there all they got was i'm not going to talk about this story anymore. and that was