of service, five years combat duty, an entire year of his life ruined on a process crime, and all these other people go free. we are in the middle of a constitutional crisis, equal justice, equal application of our laws. let not your heart be troubled. laura ingraham, i had i had an extra hour tonight. i wish he would say, go ahead, i'm taking the time off. i am sean hannity filling in for laura. >> laura: if you know what i was looking at listening to your show tonight? sheryl mills, people forget their is so much stuff that happened from the fall of 2016 to today. obviously, mueller, all of what we are learning about with flynn in it, but it just swarms all this other stuff that happened and we are going to talk about it. >> sean: you know what surprises me?

this man's life, this is how we treat our heroes because he didn't remember a fact in the fbi didn't even think -- this guy lied. this is wrong, and i am worried that we have one justice system if you are a democrat or hillary clinton, and another for the rest of us. that's not right. >> laura: or cheryl mills. i agree with you. our viewers and people across the country, a lot of the stuff is complicated, their agenda, there is reductions and trying to follow what the substantial assistant flynn gate, we don't really know. it is all kind of x 'ed out. >> sean: this is all information they obtained illegally. >> laura: and it wasn't collusion before the election. russia, at least as far as we know, that is out the window. that is certainly nothing to do with flynn. people have to keep the frame of reference or brand in the timing of what they say. a false statement is never good,

you can't lie to investigators, but you also don't use the scam a special counsel investigations to go trolling on this magic mission to try to find wrongdoing where it doesn't exist. >> sean: i think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. i think he deserves better than that. >> laura: i agree. thank you so much for the fantastic show. i'm laura ingraham, this is "the ingraham angle." on a very busy news night in washington, this show has it all. we have politics, culture, startling rejection of history. but first. breaking news, as i just said in the mueller probe as the documents against former trump national security advisor michael flynn just dropped. these are heavily redacted documents revealing among other things that flynn, a former three-star general, provided substantial assistance and gave 19 interviews, set 19 times before the special counsel and other doj investigations. as a result of flynn

cooperation, mueller and his team are recommending no jail time. it's important to note, the documents presented tonight do not provide specifics about what exactly mueller has learned from flynn, only that he provided documents and communication. now, what issues those communications refer to tonight is anyone's guess. remember, this has been a saga that has enveloped the entirety of donald trump's presidency, and in the process, destroyed this a good man's life. even if even if flynn does serve no prison time, the judge agrees with the prosecutor, imagine how his life has been thrown into complete turmoil, and for what? was this 18 month process good for the country? are we better off? did we stave off future russian involvement in our elections because it former three-star general had to bow to the authority of the mueller and the special counsel? special counsel helpers?

i think we have to go through this methodically tonight, and we are going to do this. real questions remain and real questions must be answered as this investigation continues to move forward, although it looks like it is wrapping up. here now, two men who have been studying this report. former deputy and whitewater counselor, and former house oversight chair, jason chaffetz, and victor davis hanson is a senior fellow at the hoover institution and author of the forthcoming book, "the case for trump." let's start with you, your thoughts after reading this document? speak out my thoughts are first of all, the general would have received probation no matter wh. whether he cooperated a little or cooperated a lot. the key parts of how he assisted have been redacted. what stands out the most is that a lot of people thought mueller was going to use the sentencing memos to tell the world about his case because he is afraid

that his final memo may not be publicized. he didn't do that here. in fact, he showed remarkable professionalism by keeping redacted. he could have said, here is how he helped and it could've been a bombshell, and he didn't do that. to me, that is the big take away. the memo itself is kind of a dud because all the good stuff is redacted. >> laura: jason, here is part of the memo. given the defendant substantial assistance and other considerations set forth below, the sentence should fall below the guideline range that doesn't include incarceration is appropriate and warranted. i get guess it is the meaning f "substantial assistance." >> you can be polite, you can answer all their questions, donald trump has answered all their questions. but i think he is right, there is no bombshell because there is no bombshell! it's that simple. if they had him on collusion with russia to affect the election, absolutely they would have gone after him. >> laura: two counts, two

counts of lying to investigators. >> but this is a process crime. he should have filled out the proper paperwork. we are not here to excuse it but it is the inconsistent application of the law that drives everybody crazy. i can't tell you how many people came before the oversight committee when i was the chairman and they lied to us. we reverted to the department of justice answered, we are not interested. but with donald trump, and you bet they will go after him. they gave immunity to hillary clinton's closest advisor. >> laura: i was reading the cheryl mills stuff. i like forgot the stuff before tonight. >> but mueller, it is not his jurisdiction. you say it's unfair, but mueller has a specific thing he is supposed to look at. he is not supposed to look at cheryl mills. >> but this stuff happened after the election. >> laura: and i want to get you in on this because the actions we are talking about here, his conversation with the

fbi that they didn't believe included lies. they did not believe -- including peter strzok, who did the interview with flynn. he went back to headquarters and they didn't think he lied. those were the 1,001 violations. lying, reportedly, about his conversation with the russian ambassador. whether that conversation included a conversation referenced to easing up on the sanctions, or don't go crazy on the sanctions. in other words, we are coming in and getting rid of the sanctions. and apparently he either misremembered or wasn't forthcoming on that. it didn't go into, well what happened before this in 2016 20, where you setting up some deal to make it easier for russia to interfere in our elections? which again is what the special counsel was set up to examine. that type of collusion. even with the redaction's, when it comes to flynn, at least, there wasn't any collusion on

his part. the question is whether any of the figures associated with the trump administration or campaign that could be still caught up in this mess. >> i think i look forward to things in these mueller stories. one, does the logan act appear, and it was referenced in this, and one, does the foreign agent act appear and when that appears and tells me they really don't have anything only because there have only been two people prosecuted on the logan act. john carry all of september met with the iranian form ambassador in paris and admitted he was discussing the iran deal against the efforts of the presidential administration. nobody seriously called that a logan violation. everybody is dealing with foreign agents. i mean, they are representative government, , and christopher steele was not a u.s. that is in, he was a foreign british subject and he was supplying

data to hillary clinton, the clinton campaign for money. and he was feeding it throughout the government. nobody talked about the agents of their and more importantly, in that document there is worry that flynn was working in a way that was unethical with the turkish government, or really with the russian government, but it had no effect because when donald trump came in, when you look at russian sanctions, the oil pulse of the u.s., increasing production, arming the ukraine, attacking russians into syria, or whether it was ending the obama romance with turkey, we were much tougher on turkey in much tougher on russia. finally, if you want to reduce everything and get down to one point, all of these stories, the surveillance, the entire collusion comes back to the christopher steele dossier, and that was the source of the fisa warrant and that was used in part at least to correlate testimonies with surveillance. and we know now that although they said it was a bot document,

nobody ever told the fisa court judges that it was paid for by hillary clinton. nobody ever told them that christopher steele, the author, had been let go as unreliable. nobody ever told the fisa court judges that the news accounts they presented were circular and based on the dossier itself. that was kind of a poison tree, and a lot of these people had said things in numerous testimonies not knowing that that would be correlated with a surveillance, and then we get into the unmasking. then finally, this is a finally, 25 people in the doj or fbi have been reassigned, chosen to be retired or were fired in association to this entire mess. nobody is talking about. i can't think of any time in u.s. history where the two top intelligence agents and agencies, the head of both agencies, james clapper and john brennan, not only lied under oath to a congressional

committee, admitted they lied under oath, and had entire exemptions. i know it's not all the time, but that is really disturbing that we have this mueller drop, and all of these violations so when the mueller starts to be so sanctimonious and the logan act and foreign legislation act, and government officials have to be above the law. well, yeah, but that is not happening. >> laura: well, it is kind of rich. it wasn't mueller himself, but what preceded mueller to set up this entire investigation from the beginning. and we have gone over this meticulously, the reference to his military service, his exemplary public record, how common is that in a sentencing document such as this? taking that into account and mitigating circumstances -- it seems to kind of makes sense, but -- >> it is very common if you are

the defense attorney doing the memo and common if you are the government and the client has helped you. but i want to say one thing about flynn, there is nobody in town who really believes that flynn would have pled guilty unless mueller had something against one of his family members. >> laura: or threatened his family members. speak out right, and that is often done by prosecutors. i don't know of anybody who thinks flynn would have pled if that wasn't out there. and we just don't know what that is. i do want to say in mueller's defense, there is a mention of the logan act but mueller does not say in any way that flynn violated it -- >> laura: yeah. come on. to speak about the other thing to keep in mind is that mueller does say -- not what it is -- but he does say that flynn provided important information about connections between the trump campaign and the russian government, or attempts to make connections. all i'm saying is -- you're right, he doesn't say flynn did that, but he did say that flynn provided information.

again, if there is nothing there, that may be one reason mueller is not talking about it, or it may be that mueller is a professional and it's not appropriate to release that information. >> laura: the left tonight is going crazy. they are like, okay, downey jr., they are -- it is speculation overdrive tonight. the collusion is all in the reduction. collusion, delusion, all in the redaction. but again, we go to what victor davis hanson said, we have proven instances of blatant lying to cover up how this whole thing started in the first place. lying to federal judges -- and i say it's lying. when you don't reveal who actually started this whole ball rolling on the dossier, that is a lie. i still think the fisa judges should be a lot more angry about how this all went on from the beginning. from that respond to this entire

investigation. from that filing and that surveillance respond to this entire thing. period. >> it was an absolute fabrication. they planted stories -- remember, a big start of this -- >> laura: it's so circular! like, it's in the press. >> plant of the story, take the story, presented to the courts. i do think the house and senate judiciaries and lindsey graham will do their job to the fullest. have them explain how this process works. i was on the house judiciary when we were going through a hearing, they wouldn't even let us attend one of those meetings and wouldn't let us even talk to the judges, but there was clearly lying, misinformation. i know the inspector general is still doing an investigation probably until mid next year is best i can tell. it's going to take way too long. but the bottom line here with mr. flynn, he didn't have the financial means to -- >> laura: you referenced that, and jason picking up on it, he

doesn't have a lot of money. when a prosecutor says, you ever want to see your wife again? your son, your little grandchild? he's never going to see your grandchild. you are going to go to jail for the next 30 years -- don't worry. it scary for most people. >> but he had competent counsel, he never would have gone to jail. if he had fought this and lost he never would have gone to jail for a significant narrative time for offenses like this. >> laura: in an article he wrote for "the "the hill" about turkey? >> the guideline range of 0 to 6 months, he would have had that no matter what. that would have been his guideline range. so what's going on here, there was something else. there was a threat that was made against somebody -- >> laura: it's about his son. to speak about something else, you can believe two things at the same time. you can believe there was the seat of the fisa court and that i should be investigated and that people should be prosecuted if they were found to have lied about that, and you can also

believe that mueller should be allowed, even if you don't think he should have been appointed, that mueller should be allowed to continue his investigation and not be attacked every day by the president. you can actually believe those two things. >> laura: no, i don't think it's helpful to attack mueller every day. and i don't. i tend to look at what they produce. after 18 months -- and you've got this guy in a vice grip for 18 months, this? i mean, unless those reductions are really, knock your socks off, maybe they will be -- >> i don't think they are. >> laura: i don't think so, either. i think this is a big 0. i think this mueller thing and what they did to flynn is disgusting. what they did on the turkey issue, which is getting almost no play tonight on the other networks, they actually sided the foreign agents registration act -- what is it? the defendant made a second series of false statement to the doj concerning his contact with

the republic of turkey, specifically on march 7th, 2017 after he was no longer in the administration. the defendant made false statements and multiple documents that he filed pertaining to a project he and his company had performed for a principal benefit of the republic of turkey, and apparently the false statement was, well, it was more directed by the government of turkey then you let on. and he wrote a piece in "the hill" about that minister that the president of turkey wanted back in turkey. that came out in march! i find this to be -- like, this is it? i'm sorry, i just think this is ridiculous! i'm sorry. >> i don't believe you should attack the special counsel but what mr. mueller is doing, he is criminalizing the status quo behavior in washington. that is what washington people do. what you have to ask yourself, does it have any effect?

when trump came into office, they reported the so-called special relationship that obama had developed with turkey that gave us in part the muslim brotherhood in egypt, so the trump was harder on the russians, he is harder on turkey -- if you had said 18 months ago, $30 million ago, when we were told that there was a dream team, these were the all-stars, these were mueller's army. all of the gushing about the wonderful ivy league lawyers. if you had told him that we were going to start with this bang and we were going to end up with a whimper, they were going after jerome corsi of "info wars, and roger stone, perennial provocateur, i think "the new york times" would have wept and been humiliated. that is where we are now. 18 months later we are going after minor characters who have always been infringe activities and they are supposedly going to drop the bomb shell -- every day we hear a bombshell. bombshell, bombshell appeared >> laura: was.

tonight, it was the president was shaken, ronald by the flynn memo. every time something drops they have a camera and the white house and the president is rattled. i'm sure he doesn't like the investigation, i mean, who woul would? >> i don't think mr. mueller is culpable himself, whether he knew so or not, but what we have seen now, the impeachment early in the administration, we saw the 25th amendment, we saw the logan act, and now the mueller administration, psychologically feels the same date because we don't have any information that the trump campaign or administration did anything -- >> laura: collusion! where is the collision? i think you are judicious and prudent in your analysis. we don't know what is in these reductions. michael cohen has tape recordings that are -- we don't

know. this is like a slow roll. the question is when is this ultimately going to wrap up? do you have any idea? >> i think we are near the end but keep in mind, how do you typically determine what a prosecutor's office has is you look at every plea deal, you look at the language of the deal and the statement of the offense. that is where they say, this is what the guy did. and in every single case, you have nothing to indicate that there is a major collusion/conspiracy case involving trump or his lieutenants conspiring illegally with the russians, or conspiring with anybody to hack computers. now, i'm just saying, all i can do is read the tea leaves based upon what prosecutors and defense attorneys always look at. if you look at the documents, there is not going to be anything major there. that's just the way it is. >> laura: it's not what everyone thought.

trump is working, -- oh, putin, they are all going to steal the election from hillary. that is what the average person was led to believe at the beginning of all of this and we will see where we end up. fantastic analysis by all of you. thank you so much. there are a lot of stories we are going to cover tonight and one, the war against history? yes, next.

♪ >> laura: enemies of american history: that is the focus of tonight "angle." back in august, protesters at the university of north carolina at chapel hill took it upon themselves to rip down a confederate statue. it was the "silent sam" statue and honored students who had fought for the confederacy in the civil war. of the last few years, the statue has been labeled "a celebration of white supremacy" by some, and a piece of history by others. yesterday, the university board announced a plan to house the statue and a new $5 million history center where it will be properly conceptualized. even as she announced the plan, the counselor was clearly not entirely on board. >> i have a preference to move it on campus but like everyone

here, i worked to obey the law and sometimes you don't agree with the laws. but i don't have the privilege of choosing which laws i agree with and which ones i do not. >> laura: how brave. a 2019 north carolina law forbids agencies from permanently removing and relocating state owned memorials or stature is. and north carolina likely passed the law to protect what it's all happening across the country. what has been happening? nationally since 2015, more than 100 confederate monuments and strategies have been removed. students, protesters, and faculty members at unc want the same fate to befall "silent sam." the north carolina law be polemic . they announced a plan to house the statue in a new building.

[crowd chanting and bracket >> >> i'm disappointed to be part of an institution that continues to protect and glorify the white supremacists who love to hate us. >> to enable white supremacy, that is exactly what the board of trustees are doing right now. >> laura: it's funny how they are reading it off their phones. who needs paper? but history was so that cut and dried. there is a movement particularly among the young to hate the past and eradicate everything they find objectionable or troubling. look, every country, all history has its bad side and a good sides. good stuff, bad stuff. but this recall is a destructive mind-set of isis.

think about isis, what they did. they pillaged and wiped away a replaceable, historical, and religious monuments. syria, simply because they coul could. it's offensive to them. no matter what one thinks about the way this was all treated after the civil war, where they built these monuments, whether they should build them or not. this happened. the confederacy happened, and we awaited the future to leave history as it existed undisturbed. continue to debate it, have conversations about it, but why not allow future generations the opportunity to mark this history, process it, and come to their own conclusions? put up another statue can commemorating those who were abused and killed adjacent to "silent sam." but to destroy instead of two engage, to defy the law instead of respected, is no way to honor

the pastor of the future or to highlight all the gains america has made. by committing acts of violence to get your own way, and defying laws to remove a figure you find offensive, you start to look a little bit like the thing you are protesting. should you succeed, by the way, in the future, some other mob might well tear down your statue because they themselves find what you did offensive. so where does it all and? and you would have taught them that it's fine to destroy all trace of whatever we find objectionable in the past? let's hope the board of unc north carolina's historical commission has less of destructive tendencies. we can hope. and that is "the angle." joining me now, two students from the university of north carolina chapel hill. magdalena, who is a student supporter of the "silent sam" statue on campus, and alana

edwards, presidency of the unc young democrats, a group adamantly opposed to the statue statue's presence anywhere on campus. it seems the first step for critics of these statues was to move them out of the public square and into historical buildings. okay, so that happened -- or that was happening. but now that's offensive. so where does this ever end? what do you propose it be done with the statue? you can't have it out on the public where it always has been, can't move into the building, so what now? >> i think with the "silent sam" down it is time to start contextualizing the past of the monument, and one thing i would like to bring up is when you look at when this monument was elected, it was 1913, the height of the jim crow era, and the dedication speeches about white supremacy, and personally, i am a proud southerner and i had ancestors fighting on both sides of the war and i value the lessons to be learned from the

civil war, but i see this monument as destructive and a symbol of a different era entirely and not of the actions of unc student who served at that time but when it was dedicated in 1913, the era of white supremacy. and so while there is no clear-cut solution, i do think state law is very restrictive. i think it deserves a place off campus where it can be placed within the proper context of which it was erected. >> laura: let's go to you magdalena. what should happen to this statute? there is a law, a state law, passed unanimously, i believe, in the state. one chamber of the state house, but ultimately it was signed into law, that exist. you can't just remove things never to be seen again, these are state owned memorials, and it says very clearly, a monument, memorial, or work of art owned by the state may not be removed, relocated, or

altered in any way without the approval of the north carolina historical commission. they wanted to basically stop these things from disappearing in the middle of the night as we saw in places like new orleans, where statues have been removed never to be seen again. so what happens next? >> next of course, i feel that if the students are going to protest on the north side of campus, they are absolutely going to continue protesting to stop you being in the new museum and education center on the south side of campus. i feel that placing the monument on the south side of campus on the building allows unc administration to ignore the problem that is going on on campus, and that is liberal students feeling that they can run a university and encompass and overthrow the opinions of the majority and only allow the public to see the vocal minority that is taking place. as a chairwoman of the unc college republicans, i have said before i do not condone any kind

of mob rule or anarchist activity on campus, and for the students to feel that it was okay to take this statue down in august was absolutely not okay. the chancellor let them get away with it, unc police, chapel hill police, and the lack of consequences also made students feel that they could get away with something like this. >> laura: when you look at these images, this is like mob rule. i mean, you rip something down, you say it, i'm offended by it, and we are all supposed to throw you a parade. i mean, welcome to the world. again, i'm kind of tired of the "snowflake" line in all college students are snowflakes, but the real world is filled with complicated, very difficult dilemmas for everyone. you might not like the lyrics to a song you hear on the radio. maybe you like the tune but you don't like the lyrics. well, i guess you could say it

offends me, that should be banned. because it objectifies women as just a piece of, you know, gratification or something. pretty much everybody is offended by something. you know what i'm offended by? i'm offended by students who refuse to see that the progress has been made in the united states of america and seem to want to want to find soe kind of, i don't know if it's belonging or relevant in a world where moral relativism actually kind of reigned supreme. but it looks like it is kind of a social gathering almost. what can we tear down today? or how can we get on youtube? i'm glad you are on with us tonight to try to explain this. i think most people in the real world are like, kids, don't try this at home because if you try this at home you will be put in jail. try this in the real world you will be put in jail. go ahead. >> in the civil rights era i think people would have said similar things about people protesting then. i think civil disobedience and

peaceful protests -- >> laura: does not look peaceful to you? really? that's peaceful? >> two arrests. i would like to emphasize that there were two arrests and nonviolent isolated cases, and i think with any group that large there will be people who act in ways to get arrested, but what we saw last night, there was no violence. i think it was just students voicing their opinion. one point i would like to bring up, the democratically elected student body president voted no to this proposal, so i don't agree with the sentiment that this is what student want because clearly you see by the numbers gathering by the student body president, by these 5,000 letters and emails written to the chancellor, i think they are all pretty clear that students do not want to be 24 on campus. >> laura: final thoughts. >> absolutely not.

this action does not encompass what the campus needs to be. unc was founded on a light and liberty, and not one of these situations encompasses that appear >> laura: well, more debate. >> this statue belongs where it was. >> laura: more debate, not less debate. don't remove historical markers, talk more about them. something interesting, 2020 race. i am not for colds. i am not for just treating my symptoms... (ah-choo) i am for shortening colds when i'm sick. with zicam. zicam is completely different. unlike most other cold medicines... ...zicam is clinically proven to shorten colds. i am a zifan for zicam. oral or nasal.

>> who do you want to see run? >> we will have 30 or 40 great candidates running for candidate. >> that a lot. 40 candidates? >> there are a lot of u.s. senators talking about it, a lot of governors come a lot of people outside of politics. i think we will have a big fiel field. >> laura: and you thought the g.o.p. field was big in 2016. 30 or 40 people. wow. look at these recent developments. democrats continue to embrace beto o'rourke mania, old joe biden is emerging to say, weight and amtrak minute here, i

think i am the most qualified person in the country to be president, he said. there is a new twist on all of this tonight. just hours ago it was reported that beto o'rourke secretly met with president obama, who is said to be very excited about his potential candidacy. how bruising will a joe biden joe biden-beto o'rourke primary be? here to debate, former 2016 trump campaign manager, and political analyst, cohost of "the five," obama's old staff seems to be prepping an instant plug and play for o'rourke presidential campaign. your thoughts? >> not quite, you've got to win something. if he thinks the idea that beto o'rourke did not win versus ted cruz in texas means that he shouldn't be a contender here. he has got to prove that he can be a winner. but i see lots of obama people,

to your point, laura, saying hey, we haven't seen excitement, this kind of charisma, this kind of young people attracted to a candidate since 2008, and that is barack obama. and by the way, in iowa, they have just done a survey and it turns out that most iowa democrats say they would like to see a young, energetic new face on the scene. and i don't think there is anyone who fits that bill better than beto o'rourke. >> laura: but of course, the old vice president! joe biden clearly isn't feeling the love here. he is pretty experienced. he was vice president for eight years, and robert prentice does the shirt sleeve thing kind of like obama used today. a jump on stage, he is young and energetic, loved by a lot of democrats. i've never seen anything like it. someone who has never won a big

position, looks like the mojo and the energy is moving to him. never seen anything like it. >> it looks like raging bull, "i could have been a contender." next thing, two failed candidates, beto o'rourke will be one of two losers who will run when we have an "experienced" candidate like joe biden. experienced means old to the average candidate. they are both in their mid-70s, and then we got elizabeth warren and kamala harris, and all these others who can't get out of their own way who want to run to the far left, and the democrats are going to nominate a very liberal progressive who donald trump is going to walk all over. >> laura: there was another guy who ran and hasn't won anything, donald trump. he never won anything, a political offense, and he won

the presidency. >> trump is up in his 70s, joe biden is highly experienced. when joe biden says he is the most qualified, it reminds me of george h.w. bush. a very qualified, lots of experience. you cannot argue with joe biden joe biden's many years in the senate and also as the head of the judiciary committee. >> laura: they don't want biden! they want to beto. biden 25, bernie sanders 13, hillary clinton, 13, beto o'rourke 9%. i don't think any of that means anything right now because i'm telling you, although obama is meeting -- he has met with bernie sanders, he has met with elizabeth warren, and speaking of people who like to pull down statues in the middle of the night, mitchell andrew. obama folks and the former president himself, they are kind of running out of patience with trump. obama is like, let me show you

how it's done, and beto is kind of the, as he is described, as the "white obama." they are describing him that way. >> look, obama has seen all of his signature policies reversed under this president. he has seen the economy explode, he has seen the magician that he claimed it didn't exist which is donald trump, brings jobs back to this country. he has seen this president renegotiate bad trade deals and he wants anybody who can challenge him. the problem is, in the 2016 election, we had the adult debates and the children debates which were two separate stages. now we are going to have the geriatrics debate, the losers debate, and everybody else on the stage. it's amazing. 30 people, you've got to be kidding me! >> laura: [laughs] i want to get your thoughts on something else, because tonight we are mourning the passing of a presidential campaign that never got off the ground. michael avenatti announcing on twitter that he will not run in

2020. could we possibly get the porn star attorney to concede? >> only if we want to tickle you and corey, because you guys would have a field day talking about him. and stormy daniels and all of that. i think stormy remains on the scene is kryptonite to trump, but you guys as political people within, how ridiculous. i must say, he does reveal an instinct on the democratic part which is they want someone who would go toe-to-toe slugging it out with the heavyweight champ, trump. so michael avenatti says that is what he will do. the other people he says, they are wimps, they are going to get run over by the big heavyweight donald trump. but i think you are going to find that the democrats have a big appetite for somebody who is a fighter, but to me, michael avenatti has just too many deficits going in. he is too much of a target for you guys. >> laura: we talked about, you

need a fighter in 2020. weak at that, but you also need someone who comes with some level, i think, of gravitas and experience. who knows where we will be in two years in the economy, certainly hope it's doing well, but you're going up against somebody who has been through the meat grinder of politics over the last six years. and that's not easy. i don't care if you are young and energetic and good looking. you are from texas and you have a cool name, that doesn't mean you have the political talent of barack obama. he had an enormous raw political talent, obama did. and we will see whether beto does. corey, quick close it out. >> i agree, i don't think anyone who had the nickname of "creepy porn lawyer" had a chance. i think creepy porn lawyer had no real chance anyways. >> laura: all right, thanks so

much. and we have long warned about the dangers facing the caravan at our southern border. during the track and when they arrived, two shocking developments have proved us right. the report is a disturbing and the video next.

>> we've got a challenging and still potentially volatile situation in tijuana. over 7,000 migrants there. they were well organized, brought to the border by a group who told him they would able to cross into the u.s. easily to present asylum cross. we do see individuals trying to cross legally. we saw the scenes of families literally dropping children over the fence. >> laura: this is the video that the commissioner wasn't just mentioning. to the people throwing their children over an 18-foot border fence seem like the concerned parent? model parent? some of those kids, not surprisingly, were seriously injured. all the while, migrants at the border were demanding faster processing into the united states so they could disappear into the mainland. here to debate this, former acting i.c.e. director and fox news immigration attorney. tom, critics of the caravan are

told that we are inhumane forewarning of these dire conditions, but to see the numbers of people that are now reported missing from the original caravan, either dead or missing. their family doesn't know where they are and they are actually not at the border crossing. not to be accounted for. >> for the last year and a half i have said over and over again, illegal immigration is not a victimless crime. they hire an organization to smuggle them into the u.s. border, these are bad people. president trump has to do the right thing and take them to a port of entry by saying you cannot enter illegally. because of what the aclu did when they sued trump for that and the judge in the ninth circuit come up with them back in the hands of these smugglers, you saw that where they dropped the child over the wall, put them back in the hands of criminal organizations, more people will die because rather than being a port of entry, they

are getting help from an illegal organization. >> laura: the criminal organizations in part and other ngos promised these markets they would get into the country, and i think they didn't believe trump when he said, you're not getting in the way you want to. we are going to process you in the way we can. >> i see a problem here. telling everybody to just go through a port of entry and not having enough people at the port of entry is creating a problem for a problem. i'm not saying everybody should just jump the wall. but if you are going to tell people, this is the entrance, have people prepared to receive all those people trying to seek asylum here >> laura: 91% of them have fraudulent claims for asylum. a 91% is the government estimate given the past experience in the surge of asylum claims of the last six years. they have skyrocketed. >> i don't think fraudulent is the word. i think people come to apply for asylum and they don't qualify. there is no evidence of "fraud,"

there is evidence they don't qualify. >> laura: if i were at the justice permit, i would open up an investigation just into that group. sending representatives down there and in a very cute and kind of veiled way, this is how you apply for asylum. well i want to come work in the united states, okay, but you have to have credible -- it's a scam. >> it's not that simple. the interview is actually pretty tough. it takes a couple hours, i have seen the pages, i have seen tons of questioning. it is not simply saying, i want to apply for asylum and you qualify and you are in. >> laura: economic migrants, red? these people want to come to work. or join family members. they want to be in the united states for a variety of reasons but a very small percentage -- >> by 89% of them will pass the first credible test by an asylum officer but 90% will lose in front of an immigration judge.

you've just got to know what to say for that first interview. we have criminal investigations and it, american attorneys have been down there telling them what to say, that is just fact. >> i'm sorry, but the attorneys are not teaching them what to say. these are people running from a free, running from a country where they are being killed. their wives and children are being persecuted and killed. to you they are telling the same story. to the attorneys -- >> laura: i saw a lot of them being interview, they didn't say anything about being killed. they say they want to work in the united states. there is some really interesting freelance reporters down there, you two kids interviewing, and i think they are kind of on your side on this, but people just saying in spanish because obviously they don't speak english, and they are like, i've got friends there, i'm not threats. that is what they say. i believe most of them are not a criminal threat, but they have made the criminal organizations richer, and they have hurt the people of tijuana in this process who are, by the way i will play this, this 21

official. let's watch. speak out when they first got here there were like 350 migrants coming here. but things got out of hand because it kept growing and growing. this is not a municipal, we are carrying the financial load of keeping these people with medicine, food, shelter, blankets, and whatever. >> laura: tom, real quick. >> we should have done more on the southern border. you can't tell me they could not have stopped this caravan if they really wanted to have really tried. >> laura: come back, we will have a longer segment on this. thank you very much and we will be right back. stay there.

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wife, consoling them about h ws death even amongst all the heated political debates, that was a lovely moment and mrs. mrs. bush went over to the white house, saw the christmas decorations back in the white house where she spent eight years and i love this moment. we need to have more of them. thanks, that's all the time we have tonight. shannon bream and the "fox news @ night" team have all the latest developments. >> shannon: i agree with you, laura. thank you very much. we begin with a fox news alert. breaking news about president trump's former national security advisor michael flynn. what is behind the heavily redacted sections in the special counsel's findings tonight on the flynn. his cooperation apparently so helpful that speech -- those he shouldn't get any jail time at all. both sides are claiming victory but what does it actually mean for the president? catherine herridge is here live. meanwhile, president trump's staunchest critics noticed him dealing with tributes to former president george h.w. bush and on