you can listen to our podcast on any major platform. search for anderson cooper 360. i want to hand it over to allison camera at a, "cnn tonight." >> thank you very much. i'm allison camerata and this is "cnn tonight." 9:00 on the east coast, 7:00 in wyoming, where as of this moment the polls are closed and liz cheney awaits her fate. cheney of course has to become face of republican resistance to donald trump and his efforts to deny joe biden's presidential victory. donald trump also awaits his fate in a way as investigations into his actions heat up. we have new developments on the search of his mar-a-lago home and those boxes of classified documents. but let's start with tonight's primary. wyoming is the least populous state but tonight it's the most popular for election watchers. we'll have results coming in throughout this hour, so keep it right here, and we will keep you updated.

congresswoman cheney is the last of the so-called impeachment ten, those are the ten house republicans who voted to impeach president trump after the insurrection. seven of them have either lost their primaries or chosen not to run for re-election. two of them won, and then there's cheney. you may remember congresswoman cheney was booted from her leadership post in the republican conference more than a year ago after trying to warn the country about the threat she believes donald trump poses to democracy. since then, she's continued to try to sound the alarm and call out her colleagues. >> to my republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible, there will come a day when donald trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain. >> none if she manages to pull off a win tonight against her trump--backed challenger, hater hageman, she will defy long

odds. but cnn learned congresswoman cheney intends to make a speech tonight saying her battle has just begun. she started talking about that this morning. >> look, i think today no matter what the outcome is, it's certainly the beginning of a battle that is going to continue, that is going to go on. we're facing a moment where our democracy really is under attack and under threat. >> advisers tell us that cheney's been working on her speech for several days, crafting a blunt warning about the danger of misinformation and lies. her aides say she will outline a plan to stay in the fight against donald trump and intends to wear the outcome of this primary, win or lose, as a, quote, badge of conviction. there's also been a lot of talk about whether liz cheney wants to run for president in 2024. we hear she's not expected to give a firm answer, but she's not ruling it out. let's turn to chief national correspondent john king, on whom of "inside politics" standing by at the magic wall waiting for the election results to come in. john, what are you seeing?

>> allison, you see wyoming on the map, it is gray. before i zoom in on the state, these are the primaries so far. a handful states left to hold primaries. you see the salmon color? those are candidates endorsed by donald trump. he has giant way in the republican party, especially in these conservative house races. now we'll pullde, one congressperson from the state of wyoming, cheney versus hageman, but it's cheney versus trump. her father, the former vice president and congressman from wyoming. liz cheney came to washington with donald trump in 2016. 40% in her first primary. 68% in her second primary. 73% in the republican primary just two years ago. so republicans of wyoming love or at least loved liz cheney. what happened? let's move from this map to this map. she defied donald trump, vehicle

code to impeach him, donald trump 70% in wyoming in 2020. you see only two blue counties. that's liz cheney's only hope. are there enough democrats, enough independents who will switch parties? there are indications that it's happening in wyoming, but is it enough? look at the map and all this red. liz cheney understands the odds are overwhelming. she expects when we come back to this map by the time the votes are counted, that will be salmon. >> yeah, i'm no mathematician, but that map looked very red. joining me now is chris wallace, host of cnn's "who's talking to chris wallace." also our chief political correspondent and "state of the union" co-anchor dana bash and scott jennings. great you have to here as we await the results. chris, what are you watching for tonight? >> well, frankly, unless there's

a political earthquake, excuse me, and we don't expect there to be and that liz cheney is going to lose, her statement, her speech and what she lays out as her path going forward. clearly it's going to be a call to arms against donald trump. what's her role in that army? is she -- what is she going to say? i don't expect her to say i'm going to run for president tonight, but how will she oppose donald trump and prevent him from being the republican nominee and the next president of the united states over the next two years. >> if she loses her seat, what can her role in that army be? >> well, it makes sense to me she would run for president. she's raised a ton of money into a federal account which can be used in another federal account. the president is a federal office. she has the capacity to mount a campaign for president, although it would be as much of a long shot to get the republican nomination than to say win this primary in 2022. it strikes me that this is more

than just a vote for her, the impeachment vote. this is crusade. if she wants to keep that going, that is the next most obvious thing that you would do and she would garner all kinds of national media and political attention and she seems to think it's her life's work t culmination of her life's work to keep donald trump out of the white house. that's what i expect to hear tonight. something short of a campaign, but something obviously building towards it. >> she started talking about it in that clip when she talk about the beginning, this is the beginning. that is the kind of tone and tenor we're hearing from inside her camp. it is what she has been sort of pretty much screaming from the rooftops since she made a very clear decision to be the anti-donald trump, not just to be against him, to call him out before the january 6th committee and then of course using her position on that panel as well. so she clearly has decided that

wyoming is likely behind her right now, and she's looking on a national level to be the most prominent voice she can be to speak out against trumpism and everything that he represents that she thinks is hurting the party that her family has been such a prominent part of. >> you know, al syn, not too big so tao cynical, in washington where people so much seem to play to what's their personal advantage, you do -- the line badge of her conviction, you do have to give her credit for the fact that obviously if you like donald trump, you're not going to like what she's doing, but she has thrown away a really stellar congressional career. she was the number three republican in the house of representatives, a real possibility of eventually becoming the first republican house speaker. and she decided donald trump was more important than any of that. she could have stayed silent

like a lot of other people and silently whispered, i don't really like this but i'm not going to say anything about it. she didn't, she stood up. >> it has made her somewhat politically homeless. all sorts of democrats really like liz cheney right now. >> they can't believe they're saying it. >> but there are a contingency. i spoke to one of them, a lifelong democrat who switched her party registration, and i said, so will you vote for her for president? and here is the response. >> would you vote for her for president? >> i doubt that very much. i don't think that i would. >> and so there you go. i mean, so they love her today, but they won't love her tomorrow. >> i mean, this is the thing about liz cheney. she's quite conservative, her voting record and entire career. when she was in the house while

donald trump was in office, she voted with his position 90% of the time. this is a conservative. it's not like she's gone off the reservation on issues. she's gone off the reservation on one thing, and that is her attitude and disposition towards trump and making her crusade getting rid of trump out of politics. i actually think she could have survived the impeachment vote if she had just ignored it, put it behind her. but that wasn't her choice and she knew upfront who the reckoning would be in wyoming. >> we talked to a republican last night who isn't going to vote for her because she felt that liz cheney had basically left the state behind. she no longer represented the people of wyoming and she wasn't focused on their needs. so here's that moment. >> while she has been a very conservative vote in the legislature, she just seems to be swinging a little bit more toward the left.

but even before that, in the last koum years it just doesn't feel like she really represents the state anymore. >> does she make this too much about trump? was there any way to thread that needle and be, you know, speak out for what they thought the i always -- ills were of donald trump but deliver for her home state. >> liz cheney hasn't moved to the left. this isn't about left or right. this is about donald trump or not. that's what it is. yet, it is true if you think about it through that prism, it is true she doesn't represent wyoming, which is a state where donald trump won in 2020. he had the biggest margin there than any other state. like, by far. west virginia, i think, was second. what that tells you is that wyoming is trump country, and it's not cheney country. and so that's why she made the decision, the very knowledgeable

decision, intentional decision to do what she did knowing that it could be, to use your term, a suicide mission. >> let's look at the scored of the impeachment ten and their fates. of the people, the republicans who voted to impeach donald trump, i mean, basically the bottom line is that donald trump vanquished most of them. >> absolutely. listen, there's even a stronger indication than that. "the washington post" had a fascinating story today where they looked at all the battleground states and all of the primary races. 54 of the 87 gop nominees in battleground states in offices, either state, local, or federal that would have some say in the next election, are to some degree or another election deniers. so, i mean, that's very much who's going to be on the ballot for republicans in november for governor, for secretary of state, for a lot of these key

races that will affect the 2024 election. they are election deniers. you know, they are trump supporters. >> scott, as a republican, what do you think that means for your party and your country? >> well, i mean, i tend to believe donald trump today is the most likely republican to win the nomination in '24, but the least likely republican to capture the white house. prior to this fbi issue, i think some republicans were starting to prepare themselves to turn the page on it. there's been maybe a temporary snap back to him, a reflexive defensiveness. if the republican party wants to win back the white house and beat joe biden or whoever runs, it probably should look elsewhere. donald trump's never won the popular vote, and i don't think his prospects have gotten any better since the last time he ran. >> do you think election denialism only applies to him or is that now fundamental that two-thirds that chris is talking

about won't believe outcomes if it doesn't go their way now? >> i think there are a lot of republicans who don't believe in the outcomes. respectfully, there are a bunch of democrats who don't think donald trump won the 2016 election fair and square either. there were a lot of democrats who didn't think george w. bush won fairly in 2004. >> popular votes, not because they think there was massive fraud. >> you don't think democrats still today cling to the idea that somehow donald trump had help winning the 2016 election? >> i think it's different. >> as a republican, i don't. >> you can't compare that to what we saw in 2020. you can't compare that to 2020. >> i'm not comparing it, but i think we have been on a 20-year escalator of people increasingly denying outcomes of elections. it got as hot as it's been in 2020 and in 2024, there will be republicans who don't accept it. >> i remember when joe biden was in the january 6th hearing in congress where they were

counting the electoral vote and some democrats were objecting to donald trump and he shut them down. i understand what you're saying, but it's apples and oranges compared to what went on in -- i mean, we're talking about a concerted effort to overturn the election in 2020. >> i'm not disagreeing with you, but i don't think you can deny the 20-year escalator that we have been on where partisans have increasingly been willing to disregard the outcome of the election in favor of their own partisan instincts. and it got as bad as it's ever been in '20. my fear is it's going to happen again no matter who wins. >> one of the differences is what the candidates say. there are campaigns where they don't accept the results. it's different when a candidate, especially when it is the president says, no, i'm not going to accept it, and has a concerted effort -- >> i agree with you.

what has hillary clinton said as early as this year about the 2016 election? i'm not trying to compare it because january 6th was a t travesty. i'm not convinced we're not still on that escalator. >> it feels like we're on a runaway in terms of the slate of election deniesers. friends, thank you very much. please stay close because we're getting results. developments about the classified documents being stored in donald trump's basement. what did investigators see on surveillance video that alarmed them so much? we'll be right back.

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in mar-a-lago. cnn has learned the fbi interviewed two former white house lawyers, pat cipollone and patrick philbin before executing the search warrant on the former president's home, and it turns out that they were among a group of seven aides appointed by president trump in one of his last actions as president to handle his presidential documents. i'm joined now by former fbi deputy director andrew mccabe and elliot williams. great to have you here. if pat cipollone and patrick philbin were tasked with being in charge of the presidential records and the classified documents, aren't they in trouble today? >> you know, they may not be in trouble today because they may have been doing their jobs and attempting to advise their colleagues to not break the law, right? and so they can provide a tremendous amount of very valuable information as to how documents were stored there, who did what, who saw what. i don't think they're in trouble

just yet. >> in terms of who saw what, maggie haberman reports that investigators obtained surveillance footage of the hallway outside of the storage room at mar-a-lago and saw something that alarmed them. and that's what sped up the process for getting a search warrant. what could they have seen on that tape, andrew? >> this gets to the core of what a counterintelligence investigation actually is. the purpose of a cia investigation is to mitigate a potential threat to national security. it's not to throw someone in jail or see somebody prosecuted. that can happen, but the primary purpose is to mitigate a threat. in this case, it's logical they would want to see that surveillance tape to understand the entire universe of people that might have had access to that room. if they were concerned by what they saw, that's not a good sign. they saw someone potentially access that go room who should not have been there, maybe even

someone they weren't aware of accessing the room. this is why you don't take top secret documents to mar-a-lago that's not approved for that sort of storage because you can put that stuff at risk simply by the people that have access to it. >> elliott, maggie haberman is also reporting when donald trump's advisers repeatedly tried to get him to turn over the documents to the national archives, he told them, quote, it's not theirs, it's mine. actually, it's ours, the american people own the presidential documents. and those are historical for posterity records. >> it's a gross misunderstanding of how records are kept in governments. i know this, you know this as a senior official in government, you turn over your documents at the end and as a president of the united states or senior white house staffer, there are additional rules governing how you ought to hand documents over. number one, as a body of documents generally, then on top of that, some of those are

classified documents. as you know, as i know from having worked with classified materials, they never have anyplace outside a secure facility, never belong in a private home, even if you are a former president of the united states. >> what do you say to his argument that he had declassified them? >> but he didn't and he couldn't. each document maybe declassifies future ones down the road. if he declassifies a piece of paper, there's probably 10,000 other pieces of paper around the country that are relying on that one for their own classification level. so if there's a document in some other doj office somewhere in fresno, is that declassified now too? it makes no sense and he couldn't just issue a blanket order. >> when we want things declassified, he asked others to do it. he had john ratcliffe declassify documents he wanted released. he had richard grenell doing the

same thing. you need other people to start treating that material as declassified. simply having the thought in your head as president and not communicating it to anyone else doesn't get the job done. >> to be clear, look, he has the power to declassify things, just like he has the power to pardon and do other things. but when we as a government put checks on presidents and people in power so that mistakes and abuses like this don't happen. >> andrew, explain this. so now pat cipollone and patrick philbin are involved in this classified documents investigation, as well as the doj investigation of january 6th. so just explain how complicated that is as an investigator, how you keep different investigations separate, when some of the same witnesses and players are involved. >> it's incredibly complicated. so you have entirely different streams of investigative activity likely overseen by different line prosecutors and most likely being actually worked on the ground level by different agents, different supervisors, all convening in on

the same witnesses. it's absolutely essential that stuff is coordinated at the very top. you don't want to keep asking pat cipollone or patrick philbin to come in on multiple occasions to answer different questions from different groups. you try to package those things together into longer sessions of interviews in one shot. >> they have their work cut out for them. >> they do. >> thank you so much. so we've heard from trump in statements online. but few people can guess what's going on on his mind right now better than our next guest. we go one-on-one with trump's former personal lawyer, michael cohen, ahead.. its activelift technology provides an n unbeatable clean on 24 hour dried-on stains. skip the rinse with finish to save our water. hybrid work is here. it's there. it's everywhere. but for someone to be able to work from here, there has to be someone he making sure everything is safe. secure. consiste. so l in from here. or here.

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safely and naturally. and it's odor free. i'm taking charge of my cholesterol with garlique. in. the first results from the wyoming republican house primary are in. 5% of the vote is now in. it's a small number, but hageman starts out with the lead of about 600 votes. so obviously they will it be to come in minute by minute. we'll keep an eye on it. donald trump has had legal trouble from stormy daniels scandal to his impeachment trials. trump has survived virtually unscathed. but now two grand juries are impaneled, two of his former lawyers have been ordered to testify in investigations, and his aides are having interviewed under oath by prosecutors. is this the closest donald trump has come to real trouble?

donald trump's former personal attorney, michael cohen, went to prison for, as he says, doing donald trump's dirty deeds, meaning writing a hush money check to stormy daniels who said she had an affair with donald trump. he's now the host of the "mea culpa podcast." michael, great to have you here in the studio. >> good to see you, alisyn. >> is this the closest that donald trump has come to being in real legal trouble? >> it's certainly the closest i've seen him come. as you know, donald trump has been like the teflon don. it appears now things have changed. you know, one of the things that donald has been so cautious about his entire life, took the suggestions of roy cohen, never have your fingerprints on anything, which is why he never had an email address, never texted, very little in writing. but he give that's going on now, especially when you're with

government, everything is documented. and so -- including like the conversation with brad raffensperger and the conversation he had with me about making a payment. that one if you see was for karen mcdougal. we're in a situation now where the documentary evidence and the recordings and all the information really appear to be closing in on him. >> let's talk about the classified documents that were apparently being stored in the basement in a storage room in mar-a-lago. you've been to mar-a-lago many times? >> yes. >> were you aware that there was a safe or a storage room or a surveillance camera there? >> i knew there were cameras because, you know, that's something that, you know, mat calamari at the organization does. they put cameras in all the buildings and all the trump properties. >> why do they do that? >> security. it's the right thing to do for members of a club like that. but i never knew about the basement or that he had a safe, which is very interesting that

whoever the informant was knew exactly where to go, knew exactly the information that was there, both in the safe and in the storage area. >> what does that tell you? >> to me, i believe -- i said it's my personal opinion, i believe it's jared kushner. i believe only family would know the existence of a safe, let alone the contents of that safe. and so who else could it possibly be? he doesn't trust don jr. he made it crystal clear that don has the worst adjustment anyone he's ever met. erica i can understand may possibly know. ivanka and jared as a team, especially since jared was, what t secretary of everything? >> so basically you're suggesting, but we don't have evidence of this, that it's somebody in his close circle and somebody in his family. what would donald trump's mind-set be tonight knowing that there are people who know this information that are cooperating with the fbi? >> this is a real problem for him. donald trump is like first

avenue when it comes to loyalty, it's one way. it's the most disloyal human being you will ever meet, but he expects 100% loyalty from everyone around him. now that his inner significantly in in his mind, who is creating that headache for him? this is driving him crazy because he can't figure it out. but he knows it has to be someone in that inner circle, and he really doesn't have anybody outside of that circle to trust. >> why do you think he had 20 boxes of classified, top-secret -- i mean, these things were designated as top-secret or higher sensitive compartmented info. what was he going to do with that info? >> first of all, shouldn't everybody be keeping it in the basement of mar-a-lago? you're asking the exact question that i was hoping everybody would ask, why? and i tell you my belief is he was going to use it as a bargaining chip. >> what does that mean? >> the second they would put him

in handcuffs, he would turn around and say i have the documentation showing, for example, where our nuclear launch pads are or where other information -- sensitive national security information. this is what i believe. he would use it and say, if you proceed with this, i'm telling you right now there's 20 of my loyal supports, you don't know who they are, but we will release that information to russia, to iran, to whoever it might be. because she doesn't care about this country. i've been saying that forever. the whole presidential election was supposed to be the greatest info measur shall in the historf politics. >> you don't think these are mementos? >> i'm sure some of it was kim jong-un love letters or a letter he may have received from vladimir putin about his miss universe pageant, something he could show off if he felt he

needed to have it documented. but i believe the sensitive information was going to be used by him as a get out of jail free card. >> just to recap t fbi searched your office, as you remember, as well as the home and office of paul manafort, roger stone, rudy giuliani, jennifer clark. why do so many people around donald trump get into legal trouble, but he doesn't? >> because, again, he doesn't put his fingerprints on anything and the rest of us are just stupid. our job -- mine was to protect him at all costs. whatever it is he needed. he did come out and make overt statements like, michael, this is what i need you to do. he would speak in code. this can't happen. and so you go out and run into the fire for him to protect him. yet he's the one that started the fire and he doesn't care if you got burned or not. >> muichael, great to have you here. thank you so much. >> good to see you, alisyn.

>> the first numbers are coming in as congressman liz cheney awaits her fate in wyoming. john king is he magic wall and we're life at cheney headquarters. so keep it right here. ♪ here's somethining, ♪ headquarters. so keep it right herere. for only one dollar with any steak entrée. only at applebee's. ugh-stipated... feeling weighed down by a backedup gut" miralax is different. it works naturally with the water in your body to unblock your gut.

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seat. harriet hageman is off to an early lead. let's check in with john king at the magic wall. >> first results are what we expected. still a lot of counting to do. but the trump candidate pulls out for an early lead. we have a long way to count. but if you are hageman, the only results from two counties so far, 53-45. that's a big lead. this one, you get into the rural areas, 77-15. no giant cities, if you will, in wyoming. long way to go. we still need teton county where jackson is, where cheyenne is, 6%. if you're liz cheney, if you want to surprise people, you wanted to see it from the immigration. but this map so far filling in as everyone expected.

>> let's check in now with jeff zeleny live at cheney headquarters in jackson, wyoming. what's the mood? >> reporter: al circumstances good evening. i don't know if you can hear the music, but there's country western music. the mood is celebratory. but there is an anti-climactic feel. talking to people here and cheney supports throughout day, they're focused on what is coming next, and that's what i'm told her speech is going to be about tonight, turning the page, looking ahead. they certainly are not acknowledging defeat or conceiting defeat by any stretch, but the speech this evening here outside jackson is going to be about continuing the battle against donald trump. so the margin of the victory for harriet hageman, if she has one, is going to be something cheney folks are watching. but the bigger question is what is she going to do next if she falls short tonight.

i'm not sure if i can recall an election-night party where a candidate is losing but there's a celebratory mood because there really is a sense of what's next for liz cheney if she does not win tonight. so this certainly is an arc of the cheney family. i'm told all the cheneys will be here tonight, former vice president cheney and her mother and sister as well. it's a wyoming picturesque evening, and the cheney supporters are waiting for the final outcome and her speech. >> that doesn't even look real, jeff. it looks like -- your backdrop is so majestic, it looks painted. tell us, what's the crowd like right now? how many people are there? is it packed? what's the scene? >> reporter: look, there are a lot of people here. dozens and dozens, maybe a couple hundred people or so listening to music, having some light bites, having a few drinks on this beautiful summer evening. and again, there is a sense of some longtime cheney friends have driven from across the state and this area where the

cheney family has lived for quite some time. some people have driven from casper where the cheneys grew up, so there definitely is a sense of -- i don't sense a dispirited sense from the crowd at all, a sense of possibility of what she may do next. it's an evening picnic festivity here, but the outcome, even if she doesn't seem to win, again, wondering what her speech will say and what she'll do, perhaps run for 2024 or not. i'm told she won't make a specific declaration of that, but certainly a festive mood about what her future might be, alisyn. >> jeff zeleny, thank you very much. thanks to john king as well. stand by. we're keeping a close watch on wyoming and what happens there tonight could add to a trend, and that is election deniers winning primaries around the nation. what does that mean for our democracy? and the risk of more chaos like what we saw on january 6th. all that's next.

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we could soon if congresswoman liz cheney will survive her primary challenge from harriet hageman.

if hageman wins, that's another primary victory for a 2020 election denier. she would join a wave of election deniers who are now just one election away from gaining power over election results in battleground states. as chris wallace noted earlier, a "washington post" analysis finds that nearly two-thirds of the current nominees for everything from governor to secretary of state have questioned the results of the race joe biden won. >> anybody who was involved in that corrupt, shady, shoddy election of 2020 -- [ cheers ] -- lock them up. >> i believe it was stolen, yeah. >> the election was rigged. >> we know it and they know it. donald trump won. [ cheers ] >> half of the nation believes that this election was stolen from president trump, and i agree with that. >> okay. let's bring in our guests right now to talk about this. we have dana bash again, john

avlon joining us, and scott jennings. so scott, i know we talked about this earlier in the hour, but i had to bring you back because i didn't answer my question. what happens when a full slate of election deniers win? i know you said that you've seen it on both sides and we've been on this slater for a long time, but what happens when they're in charge of the levers of election results? >> yeah, it's actually quite worrisome because we saw -- there's been reporting on some of the efforts that occurred between election day and inauguration day, you know, trying to copy the voting machines in georgia. obviously there are people who want to relitigate this or worse once they take these offices. it's a dead end for the republican party to make this the core animating issue with the party. it's worrisome that we could conduct a free and fair election, you could have outcomes and people would just simple deny those outcomes or disregard those outcomes. i mean, it's just not the way it works, not the way it's supposed

to work, and it is a dead end for the republican party in my opinion, not just this year, but as we go to 2024. >> yeah, but it's not just theoretical. it's happening. this is just arizona. let's look at arizona. the entire slate of people who would be in charge of elections. so here are the election deniers who won their primaries already, okay? so from the governor, kari lake, mark fitch ham and attorney general. every single person who would be overseeing it. you know, next time around, donald trump? in other words, they'll find fraud next time around because they'll fabricate it. >> there's something else, and that's states like arizona have changed their election law s --

more leeway to do what doug doocy did notcurrent governor o, because he said he could not is a place where the former president and people around him try to overturn the election. he said it, he said it on tape, looking for 11,000 plus votes. it did not happen because the law did not allow it to happen. and because people stood in the way, like governor kemp and others. the law has changed, and gives legislature more power to overturn and over -- step on the secretary of state. >> but in georgia, the center held. raffensperger was reelected, kevin was reelected again. what's happening in arizona something very different. this is republican party, former favorite son john mccain is impostor. and that is a sign of a real problem. that's a sign of a real sickness. the real telling thing about that too, they're, staff is that it's in battleground states.

that is not the total number, right? those are the people, these battleground state gop's, where you need to win over the reasonable opposition. you need to win over the purple you. base in such a state that has huge implications not just for 2022, but for elections. wet kari and others are saying, an election is not a fraud in less i. when >> john, i'm very interested to hear you say this. because, as you know, you have often told me is not as dire as i think it. is that you've come around? >> no, i'm still a determined optimist because i don't see a point being anything else. >> it's evidence, john. it's evidence. back when we used to have these theoretical discussions, you are like don't worry, they haven't won the primary. they have now. >> they have. >> they're one election away. but that does not mean they could win the general election. we were talking with scott, mitch mcconnell, senate democrats should remember, in 2010, you know sharon angles and the todd athens and christine o'donnell's. one republican party puts forward extremes in swing states, it usually does not and

while. bill we'll see what the overall turnout map is in a midterm election. is but that is the problem if. they do, and then that is bad for the republican party, and democracy, democracy dies in place. but bad news for the republican party in short order. >> yeah, these purple states that extraordinarily close, we do have candidates challenges. actually, all these states are going to be quite close, whether the candidacies are high quality or low quality. i think we are in for close elections in arizona, georgia, pennsylvania. a lot of these states which actually makes me quite concerned about what the period between november and january will look like. because if we have extremely close races across the country, i think it is pretty predictable what is going to happen. we are gonna be fighting over boat canals for many many weeks. look, all anybody wants is for the people who cast votes fairly to have those votes counted fairly. that's all that anyone should want. and that sounds pretty simple. but it will not be that simple, i guess, in the end. >> dana, let's just look at,

let's look at mark fischer. he is in arizona. he is a self proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the oath keepers. and, you know, he's filled with anti government conspiracy theories. our investigative team, the kfile, uncovered a pinterest account, in which he has collected a treason watchlist, as he calls it on their, filled with government officials and nazi imagery. and so, what if he wins? >> it's scary. i mean, it just is. not because of his ideology on -- tv, not his philosophy on policy, on taxes, on government spending. it's that stuff. that is scary, scary. stuff that is the kind of thing that would have gotten him ostracized, pushed out of 80 normal conversation, normal political discourse, never mind elected office, like this. not that long ago.

>> yes. >> and there he is. >> you don't hire a -- to run the fire department. >> and it's all part in parcel what we were talking about tonight, which is liz cheney. sometimes i think we focus on liz cheney, and her political future. but this is all connected. because her opponent is an election fraud. and so, -- >> yeah. and that is a feature, not about, within the republican base. the problem is we are going to see what happens with liz cheney here. but it is not for nothing that two of the ten house members who voted to impeach donald trump or the top two primaries, where you had a more representative election. because you have the independent vote and democrat electors. -- these numbers in congress, that is where folks can hijack elections to get these on representative results. you know, if liz cheney, if she won a general election, i don't know. but i think she would have a better shot than winning the -- >> terrence, thank you. we will have an update, a quick update, on the vote in wyoming, 8% of the vote is in now.

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thanks for watching tonight

everyone. join me tomorrow in the cnn newsroom with victor blackwell, from two to 4 pm eastern. and i will be back here tomorrow night. and with that, don lemon tonight starts right now. all yours, don. >> thank you very much, alison. you know, i would love to talk to. you but i have mr. john king standing by. >> that's. important >> yeah, and he's at the big board. >> i will let you know. >> thank you alison, i will see you later. big night. this is don lemon tonight. thank you for watching. we've got three big stories tonight, and they all intersect, and i'll explain in just a moment if you bear with me. right now, we are standing by for what is expected to be a doozy of a speech tonight from liz cheney. liz cheney is fighting for her political life in wyoming against the latest beneficiary of the trump revenge tour. and that is harriet hageman. the congresswoman, who is by the, way the vice chair of