still walking that line, protecting the rule of law, and that's robert mueller. >> could not have said it better. that is our list. that is the most for 2018. >> thank you for watching. next year we'll be on the ice. >> not a bad idea. >> announcer: this is an msnbc special presentation. i'm very consistent. i'm a very stable genius. touchdown confirmed! so [ bleep ] proud of you guys! >> 2018 has been a wild ride. >> bipartisan. >> irrational. >> obstruction. >> the whole thing is ridiculous. >> paul manafort -- >> michael cohen -- >> rick gates. >> all the president's men are guilty! >> everybody gets a vote! >> this is the fight of our lives. >> we're going to washington, everyone! >> we are counting down the most unbelievable --

>> tonight, all the boys make it out alive. >> -- unpredictable -- >> parts of california are hell on earth. >> we just left pleasure. >> paradise. >> or paradise. >> unimaginable. >> it's just chaos out here. >> we call b.s.! >> controversial. >> caravan. >> caravan. >> caravan! >> this border is not open. >> -- and compelling stories of the year. >> this is ripping the country apart. >> my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed. >> if he don't look good, we don't look good! >> it's been a tumultuous 12 months. >> a gutless, anonymous source. >> i did nothing wrong. >> and we're about to relive it, right now. >> robert mueller. >> mueller. >> mueller. >> nancy pelosi. >> stormy daniels. >> khashoggi. >> witch hunt. >> felony. >> i am sick of all the chaos. >> i say bring it.

with "the year's 10 most." >> and with that, welcome to "the year's 10 most." i'm brian williams. >> and i'm nicolle wallace. >> as you may know, we tried this last year, thinking what could be worse than 2017? what could be more eventful than 2017? surely they won't ask us to do this again. >> but here we are. >> here we are. we have been compiling our list of ten items that were the most fill in the blank. >> yeah, we cover these stories night after night after night, but there are some that stay with you, that you go home and you're still thinking about them. you talk about them with people outside of the business. that's usually a good indicator of what broke through. >> it is hard to believe what we witnessed and lived through. >> and it's why they feel like dog years. so much happened. >> and we should be honest, this was difficult, because we had way more kind of honorable mentions, people, places, moments than we had firm

categories. >> so before we start our countdown, let's look at the list of people who didn't quite make our top ten, but they're worth an honorable mention. >> this was the year we learned two names. >> let me tell you a little bit about stormy daniels. >> stormy daniels and michael avenatti. >> my attorney and i are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth. >> stormy daniels now part of pop culture. >> thank you to everyone. >> michael avenatti, for his highs and lows. >> that statement was misquoted and out of context. >> he's ending the year on a low, but what a year he had. >> there were the authors like michael wolf. bob woodward. >> the michelle obama book. >> yes. >> michelle obama had a big political year. i think people are starving for her sort of high-road politics. >> it is not about the leader. the power of our democracy is in us. >> everything she said this year got tons of attention. >> from the world of tech, we have the ongoing saga of elon musk, the ongoing saga of facebook. >> so, how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service?

>> senator, we run ads. >> let's not forget the rescue of the thai soccer team. and we had a royal wedding. we had prince harry choosing an american, meghan markle, as his wife. >> it was so extraordinary. you know, this message, all you need is love, i assure you, everyone here feels it. i'm blown away by this. >> it's certain that the british royal family will never be the same. >> yeah. >> from the world of sports, lebron james found himself caught up in a mini fox news debacle. >> you're great players, but no one voted for you. shut up and dribble. >> shut up and dribble. >> thank you. that's also what they said to lebron james. >> i'm a tennis fan, so i had serena williams on my list. >> yes.

>> she came under fire for conduct that, you know, raised a lot of questions. and i just think serena doesn't get enough credit for all that she's accomplished. and then we have sdny, the southern district of new york, the u.s. attorney's office once headed by rudy giuliani, once headed by jim comey, an office that's prosecuted terrorists, mobsters, and martha stewart. at this moment, in december of 2018, sdny represents the gravest legal threat and potential criminal threat to donald trump. and a prosecutor told me this week that there is nothing stopping that independent office from sending its investigation and its conclusions to congress. >> that should get everybody's attention. all of which somehow brings us to this year's 10 most. >> three, two -- >> number 10, men we are calling the good fellas. >> that's michael cohen, paul manafort, and mike flynn. >> just because the word "good" appears in goodfellas, we should probably point out to our more sincere viewers you mean the

opposite. you mean the scorsesean ideal of goodfellas. >> donald trump is in fact a great unifier. >> michael cohen pled guilty to eight federal charges. >> he's a man of great intellect, great intuition, and great abilities. >> so he's lying very simply to get a reduced sentence. okay? >> michael flynn, general flynn, is a wonderful man. >> michael flynn, who served as president trump's national security adviser before being fired walked into court to plead guilty to a charge of making false statements to the fbi. >> he worked for me for a very short period of time. but you know what, he happens to be a very good person. >> are they as bad as they seem? are they as corrupt as they seem? lying. and the fact that they are is, you know, at one level an a-ha moment. and the fact that they were the closest people to the president, the man who became the president is still stunning. >> this guy is as mobbed up as maury the wigmaker was from "goodfellas."

>> we learned way too much about what paul manafort spends on clothing in the average year. the ostrich jacket stands out. >> paul manafort paid $15,000 for an ostrich jacket. everyone now just wants to know more. >> michael cohen has become an unbelievable figure in the trump saga. the president's one-time fixer and personal lawyer. >> is he still your lawyer? >> no, he's not my lawyer but -- >> your personal lawyer. >> but i always liked michael. >> he stared into the abyss and decided to cooperate with both the mueller probe and the investigation out of the southern district of new york. and it's the michael cohen case that the president, remember, reacted to with the most vitriol. >> so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man. it's a disgrace. it's frankly, a real disgrace. >> let's not forget the awkward scene on park avenue in new york. >> outside the regency hotel, where mr. cohen is staying

temporarily, he joined some friends who are apparently cigar aficionados, to coin a phrase, and in his plaid blazer with no tie on the street corner like it's a normal day in a normal life in new york city. >> it looked like a macabre fashion shoot for the legal jeopardy collection for men. one of the bizarre scenes of this year. >> and we haven't talked about mike flynn. he was someone with an extraordinary military career, who went into the trump orbit, and on day one had some conversations with russians that he then lied about when the fbi interviewed him. so all of these people lying, all these people now convicted of felonies, all of them trump carnage. coming up -- >> when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. >> when "the year's 10 most" continues.

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welcome back to "the year's 10 most." as we march forward, number 9. our planet. >> it felt like every week there was another story on tv and in the newspapers about another calamity. a typhoon, record rainfalls, floods. >> add to that the earthquakes, the volcanos, the ring of fire that remains in the pacific. something we covered a lot, as live television, on your broadcast, on my broadcast. a rainstorm just days ago blew up into a hurricane named michael with winds at 155. we witnessed hurricane michael come up and over the florida panhandle. and as we tried to point out in real time, it hit a lot of

folks, a lot of small towns, moderate to low-income folks with very little to lose lost everything. and we really saw a different face of mother nature in that storm. >> it seems that the pace is quickening of a rate that makes it hard to believe that we still debate climate change in this country. i'm from california. the worst fires that that state has ever seen, towns wiped out, more people killed in fires in california this year than any fire season in recent history. >> our president blamed california -- >> yes. >> -- in part for what happened to california. >> that should have been all raked out -- >> what about the argument -- >> you wouldn't have the fires. >> what about the argument that it's climate change, that it's drier, it's hotter and that's contributing to it? >> maybe it contributes a little bit. the big problem we have is management. >> the president's conclusion or diagnosis was in part that we didn't rake our floors. >> notoriously dirty forest floors in california. >> it's ridiculous. the victims don't care at all what political party you're in. and i think when you show up as

a representative from the federal government you have to just be sensitive of what people have just gone through. >> we just left pleasure. >> paradise. >> or paradise. >> i don't know that we've seen the devastation we've seen this year at any time in my life. >> the suffering was hardly limited to the united states. >> turning now to climate change. global trends this summer have scientists all over the world starting to sound the alarm. >> it's human nature to want to think this certainly couldn't be anything bigger than us, but the scientists keep saying, no, this is something very big, caused by humans on the planet. >> it is clear to anyone with eyeballs that something very dramatic and very scary is going on. switching gears now to number 8, a category we are referring to as child separation. >> i have put in place a zero-tolerance policy. if you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you.

and that child may be separated from you, as required by law. and so this department, under president trump's leadership, is enforcing the law without exception. >> i think i speak for a lot of people around here that there came a moment that this landed on my radar. rachel maddow was in the middle of her broadcast. >> i was thinking the exact same thing. and i got chills just remembering that moment. >> trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children -- hold on. -- to at least three -- can we put up the graphic of this? >> her covering that story and emoting in the way that all of us did was extraordinary. and that story, it's so hard with the trump administration,

which does a volume business of extreme politics and policy on immigration. >> when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. >> it's so hard to really explain how that story was different, but there were babies, there were children, there were young people whose lives will never be the same because of a terribly executed, cruel policy. >> there was a cruelty to it, and i think it crossed over for a good many people. >> i mean, the pictures were as disturbing or more disturbing than the story and there was that day that the undercover audio files got out. and i was on the air when that came out. it was a propublica report. >> this is what the white house is going to have to answer for. [ children crying ] >> if you're a parent, if you're

a human, the wailing of a child, jacob soboroff, mariano atencio, cal perry, they were all down at the border bringing us unbelievable reporting. >> all families that enter just like the edwins did are going to be separated and the kids are going to come to a facility, check this out, just like this. >> her children could be taken from her. >> there are 326 children inside that camp right now. >> you've been trying to get some answers on the full location of them. what is the -- what do we know right now? >> it gives me the chills when you say that. let's just remember why we're all standing here right now. inside that building, in that building right there with the metal siding, there are over 1,200 people, 1,100 children in this sector alone have been separated from their parents. this is the one with the cages this is the one with the mats, this is the one with the mylar blankets. >> it's a heartbreaker every day. >> it's heartbreaking, and you know, melania trump is such a fascinating, sometimes maddening figure in this trump era. her trip to the border to witness this memorable on many occasions for what she wore, for what she said. >> critics are blasting the

green jacket she wore with this message written across the back, "i really don't care, do you?" >> the first lady is asking questions that there are no answers to. the first lady of the united states is asking the president, where are the children? how are they? how are they going to be reunited? she goes in public, and this is embarrassing for him. >> and i also like to ask you how i can help, to these children, to reunite with their families as quickly as possible. >> and to the degree that the trump white house admitted a mistake, a little bit. >> we're going to keep the families together. i didn't like the sight or the feeling of families being separated. >> and it's important to note that all of these families are not reunited. >> we want to go home! we want to go home! >> when we come back, we'll talk about the individuals we are calling the rogues.

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welcome back to "the year's 10 most." as we march forward, number 7. legal eagles. >> so this is my favorite. this might be one of my favorites. these are the people that are on our shows every night, they're the people we cover outside of courthouses, the lawyers. >> busy season for them. i look at this as three buckets. the prosecutors -- >> the grand jury in the district of columbia today returned an indictment presented by the special counsel's office. >> the defenders. >> president is entitled to pay hush money to anyone he wants during the campaign. >> and the explainers. >> even if there aren't other recordings, any recording is like a smoking gun. >> let's begin with the prosecutors. >> we are holding yet again new charges. this time coming out within just the last two hours in the mueller probe. >> well, we're still covering robert mueller and his prosecutors and -- >> his name may come up later. >> exactly.

but i think that the prosecutors who went to trial for the manafort case were tight-lipped and invisible. but there's still these figures that loom large over all of our politics. and if you don't believe me, just check out donald trump's twitter feed. >> the defenders get a little trickier, because these are people who have stepped forward and said, i'll help you walk through this mine field. one of them stands out as being more famous than the rest. >> rudy? >> yeah. >> put up or shut up, what have you got? >> show us. something. >> it's somebody's version of the truth, not the truth. >> he didn't have a conversation about -- >> truth is truth. i don't mean to go -- >> no, it isn't truth! truth isn't truth! >> rudy in another life would have been in a category called the mayors or the prosecutors. he was the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, famous for terrorism cases and other such things. but now he is donald trump's most public and most audacious defender. >> he didn't do anything wrong. he didn't obstruct. >> okay. >> and we're willing to sit

there and argue that out with the special counsel, if he has, you know, an open mind about it. >> he also was interesting in this category, defender doesn't really do it justice. it's defender and spokesman. and i don't think there's anyone in more danger of donald trump's whiplash than his spokesman. >> our third category, i think, should be the men and women who we ask every afternoon on your broadcast. >> every day. >> every night on my broadcast. to help us explain this story. >> this is the precise reason that lawyers advise their clients not to talk when they're under investigation. >> because we know he does not have a history of listening to his lawyers, so he is fighting his lawyers or he's not getting very good advice. >> to see them process these breaking events that are really opaque to non-lawyers, also, the day that the cohen sentencing memos came out. trying to read an 85-page memo on the air, these are people that are able to see and point out for us, the non-lawyers,

where all of the significant developments are. i think they'll be around, no matter what turn the trump administration takes, because i think a lot of these investigations, a lot of these legal questions, a lot of the assault on the rule of law really demands their expertise. >> which brings us to number six on our list, mohammad bin salman and vladimir putin. individuals we are calling the rogues. >> british prime minister theresa may officially accusing russia of attempting to murder a former russian spy and his daughter living in england with a banned nerve agent. >> this is not the first time that the russian state has acted against our country. >> as soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn russia or whoever it may be. >> we didn't have theresa may's back when it happened. >> i keep asking you and all of our other guests this question on the air. and it begs another round. how far is this from the normal

conventions of how the united states used to behave in the world? what would we have done in normal times, with a vladimir putin or with a khashoggi murder? >> i talked to a lot of former intelligence folks who say they're not so unrelated. i'm also thinking about mbs, the crown prince of saudi arabia. who came to america and put on a very convincing show. he presented himself as a reformer. >> thank you, mr. secretary, for this warm welcome. >> one of the relationships he forged was with jared kushner. the president's first foreign trip was to saudi arabia, where they wowed the pants off of him. >> i have always heard about the splendor of your country and the kindness of your citizens. but words do not do justice to the grandeur of this remarkable place. >> the dance of the swords, the glowing orb, the president's likeness beamed up on the side

of the wall. it was all there for all to see. >> that relationship, flattering donald trump and his family, protected them when the u.s. intelligence community came to the conclusion that mbs had directed this brutal slaughter, brutal slaughter of a saudi journalist and u.s. permanent resident. >> turkish authorities now believe that veteran journalist and "washington post" columnist jamal khashoggi was killed at the saudi consulate in istanbul. >> the crown prince is a wrecking ball. i think he's complicit in the murder of mr. khashoggi to the highest level possible. >> we are going to leave nothing uncovered. with that being said, the king firmly denied any knowledge of it. it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. who knows? >> maybe he did, and maybe he didn't. with those seven words president trump made a stunning break from his own intelligence community today. >> there's not a smoking gun, there's a smoking saw.

>> and i think the conundrum is that trump in his mind thinks that being a loyal friend to mbs and putin projects strength. it's the opposite. u.s. foreign policy doesn't run through riyadh, nor does it run through moscow. so it is really the weakest and most un-american thing he does. to look at the rogues as really being on top is not an unfair and unrealistic analysis. there's a picture that i think has to go with this item. mbs, the crown prince of saudi arabia, high-fiving vladimir putin, and who's their best friend in the west? donald trump. when we come back, we'll dig further into our "10 most" list, including some young people changing the face of the intractable gun debate in this country. and later in the show, the man still holding all the cards.

here are your top stories.

senator elizabeth warren said good-bye to 2018 by diving into the 2020 presidential race. the massachusetts senator's bid is the first of many expected in 2019. in north korea leader kim jong un warned washington not to test the country's patience. he said in a new year address that he is willing to meet with president trump in 2019 but may seek a different path in the u.s. makes unilateral demands and pushes sanctions. now back to "the year's 10 most." we are back with "the year's 10 most," which brings us to number 5 in our countdown, and it has to do with what happened one night in november. the new wave. >> and the 2018 midterms are finally, finally upon us. it is judgment day. >> the stakes could not be higher. we could learn tonight whether

the blue wave is real or whether republicans will keep control of congress. >> the advanced billing was, would it be a wave. and in realtime for large portions of election night, it didn't feel like a wave. i'm speaking, of course, about steve kornacki's board. >> there could be surprises. things are going to really be picking up here in the next couple of minutes. >> put this together, you've got those two republican gains so far in democratic territory. >> then, as time passed, it looked like a more substantial victory. i had a moment where i realized what we were witnessing. it was, i think, after we got off the air and i got home, and the sun was threatening to come up the next morning. we worked a late shift. >> and you're a night owl. >> and i realized that in the kansas 3rd congressional district, a district that includes a municipality i've always kind of defined as the center of america, oletha, kansas. >> if democrats wanted any chance of flipping congressional seats in a deep-red state like kansas, they were going to need a fighter. they found one.

>> they had elected a lesbian native american mma fighter with a cornell law school degree. those aren't four people, that's one person, congresswoman-elect sharice davids. >> we know that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed. >> when you're looking for lessons, i think it's appropriate that the voters in kansas's 3rd said that's us. >> that's america. >> yes, that's america. >> it also shows that the ideology doesn't play as big of a role as we think it does. it's more the story. it was the year of the woman. >> more than a hundred women will serve on capitol hill the next term, first time ever. >> we voted and we won. and we did all of this together! >> we launched this campaign because in the absence of anyone giving a clear voice on the moral issues of our time, then

it is up to us to voice that. >> we're going to washington, everyone! >> what has become apparent is the size of the wave and the rebuke of the republicans. >> they made every republican in the country suddenly feel insecure. >> i loved some of the stories that didn't end well for democrats. the new faces in the democratic party. beto o'rourke was really fun to cover. from beginning to end, he gave a great speech, he dropped an f-bomb. >> i'm so [ bleep ] proud of you guys! >> sorry about the f-bomb. we have no control over what's in the concession speeches of various candidates around the country. >> i think beto coming as close as he did in red, red, red texas was still a big story. i think the stacey abrams race, the way she conducted herself. >> our fight to count every vote is not about me. it is about us. >> the way she rallied men and women and really people across the socioeconomic spectrum in that state to her cause.

and andrew gillum, being in a neck and neck race, a dead heat until election day. >> we didn't win this transaction, but i want you all to know that is just it, a transaction. that what we believe in still holds true today. >> i think those are candidates that the democratic party will keep an eye on. i think the difference right now between the democrats and the republicans in congress is that republicans have made their bed and they have to lie in it. >> we need to do a better job of recruiting women candidates and getting them elected. >> all the democrats have to do is what they were sent there to do, be congressmen and women, and they'll set a very stark difference. as we march forward, it's time for number 4 on the list. parkland. >> it has happened again. another deadly mass shooting at an american high school. this time if florida. >> 17 people are confirmed dead. >> we want change. we want change! >> we are watching a nationwide movement on the move right now. >> they say a good guy with a

gun stops a bad guy with a gun. we call b.s.! >> these young adults changed the gun debate in america. >> they did and they are restless and if you ask them, they haven't changed it near enough. they cannot believe that we have grown-ups in this country that behave the way they do. >> and just the tragedy in and of itself gutted me. but the bravery, the courage, and the fact that these students, and our colleague, steve schmidt described them in a way that gives me chills, still. they had machine guns pointed at them. they had weapons pointed at them. >> i think we have a generation of kids in this country who frankly feel hunted. >> they survived the unthinkable. and on the other side, they came out and wanted to change. they wanted to change the country they live in. >> in a powerful show of solidarity, tens of thousands of students all walking out of their classes across the country to protest gun violence. >> because of the systematic

failure of our government on every level, people are dying every day. >> in those early appearances, i remember the early rally in florida. it was pure anger. because they were reacting to what they had witnessed at this age. >> the people in the government who were voted into power are lying to us. they say that us kids don't know what we're talking about. that we're too young to understand how the government works. it's time to start doing something. >> these students with just such genuine emotion. faces you looked at and said, yes, our daughter, our son, we know those kids, could have been our kids. we met one kid named sam zeiff who had lost his best friend in the shooting. we saw him at the white house encounter. >> i turned 18 the day after, woke up to the news that my best friend was gone.

and i don't understand why i could still go in a store and buy a weapon of war. >> remember famously the president had one of his cards in his hand and the message was written on the card for our president was "i hear you." it's been said often that he was born without the empathy that a lot of people have and he needed to be told to convey that emotion. >> yeah, and i mean, we witnessed their anger, we witnessed their grief and the grief of their parents. and what was different about parkland was their durability -- they aren't going anywhere. >> we are not here for bread crumbs, we are here for real change. we are here to lead. >> lawmakers and politicians will scream guns are not the issue. but you can't look me in the eye -- >> and i think people who care about this issue and people who watched newtown and i think it was president obama's, some of his finest hours, where he sort

of grieved for the country and with the country after newtown, but the reality is, nothing changed in terms of gun laws. and i think that surprised president obama and vice president biden, to see these kids stare at the reality of the gun debate and sort of wade into one of the nastiest policy debates in this country over gun rights and gun restrictions and to do it so fearlessly and to do it so beautifully and to still be out there is really remarkable. they're a gift. >> welcome to the revolution. when we come back, the surprising feel-good moments of the year.

welcome back to "the 10 most." we move into number three. and it is all things kavanaugh. the hearing. >> brett kavanaugh is one of the finest human beings you will ever have the privilege of knowing or meeting. >> senate republicans will gavel in a hearing that will decide the feature of the united states supreme court. >> the nation got to meet dr. blasey ford. that is the woman who says that when she was 15 years old judge brett kavanaugh, as a high school student, sexually assaulted her in a room. >> an earnest woman from california came forward, reluctantly, raised her hand, was sworn in and gave for so many people what will always stand as some indelible testimony. >> the details that -- about that night that bring me here today are the ones i will never forget. i was pushed onto the bed and brett got on top of me. >> and remember, there were days between our first hearing the

name dr. christine blasey ford and then seeing what she was like, what she looked like, taking her measure. >> with what degree of certainty do you believe brett kavanaugh assaulted you? >> 100%. >> donald trump watched christine blasey ford in the morning. >> i thought her testimony was very compelling. and she looks like a very fine woman to me. very fine woman. >> she was that compelling, that the man who appointed him was taken by her testimony. >> indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense. >> the "me too" movement and everything about our politics made people choose. and i think the reason this story had just a painful mark on everybody who covered it was that you couldn't watch her and not believe her. >> i tried to yell for help. when i did, brett put his hand

over my mouth to stop me from yelling. >> but you watched the vigor with which he defended himself and he believed his testimony as well. >> i categorically and unequivocally deny the allegation against me by dr. ford. my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed. >> i think the hardest thing about this story and i think this crossed gender, this crossed politics, is that a lot of people had the reaction of believing that she was telling the truth and he was telling the truth. >> if the party described by dr. ford happened in the summer of 1982 on a weekend night, my calendar shows all but definitively that i was not there. >> we are just mere hours away from senate republicans and one democrat voting kavanaugh through onto the supreme court. >> i, brett m. kavanaugh, do solemnly swear. >> on behalf of our nation, i want to apologize to brett and the entire kavanaugh family for

the terrible pain and suffering you have been forced to endure. >> so help me god. >> dr. ford has now joined the list of people who have been mocked from the podium by the president at his rallies. >> how did you get home? i don't remember. how'd you get there? i don't remember? where was the place? i don't remember. how many years ago was it? i don't know. i don't know. >> a disabled reporter. >> you've got to see this guy. i don't know what i said, uh. >> an alleged victim of sexual assault. >> she made up the story! >> the list goes on and on and on. >> what a stupid question. but i watch you a lot. you ask a lot of stupid questions. >> number 2 on our list, a category we are calling farewells. >> and we're talking specifically about the public farewells for three towering americans. i am going to quote a friend of ours, the terrific writer with

the "new yorker" magazine who covers washington. susan glasser. her lead on a piece early december was, what does it tell you that the feel-good events in washington these days are funerals? let's talk specifically about the losses of barbara bush, senator john mccain, and former president george h.w. bush, and i note that what they have in common is these were all three people very close to you. >> yeah. look, on the personal level, you know, i miss them. >> my father was a great man. he was a great warrior. he was a great american. >> john mccain, we've talked a lot about how we're losing our world war ii veterans. this was a vietnam war veteran and more than that, a p.o.w. and that was an incredible loss

to witness. >> an incredible loss. he was also, until his dying day, one of the only republicans speaking out, not just against donald trump and his conduct, but against his chumminess with russia. john mccain was known around the world as someone willing to protect and stand up for russia's neighbors and fight against and guard against russia's aggressions in their own neighborhood. so his loss was felt here, it was felt in our discourse, it was felt in the republican party, but it was felt around the world. >> barbara bush filled our lives with laughter and joy, and in the case of her family, she was our teacher and role model on how to live a life of purpose and meaning. >> and i remember running out from barbara bush's funeral to talk to you. my face -- not a drop of makeup on after crying my eyes out for two hours and just saying, you know, it was the end of an era. the era ended officially with the funeral of her husband, the 41st president. >> and i think what susan

glasser's getting at there is that these celebrations, the lives of people whose whole careers and families and lives were about public service, felt so devastating. in washington there was a palpable sense of loss, of all that's been lost by our current politics. and i think it's impossible to divorce the way a lot of people feel about the current state of politics from the loss of those three individuals. >> and the optics and the theater surrounding the presence of the one man who stood apart from the five presidents, and that's our current president. from his entrance, handing off his overcoat to a marine military aide like a coat check, to his presence during aspects of the funeral service, during the eulogies, everyone was looking at him because the eulogies in praising this

lifelong public servant and decorated military hero couldn't help but reflect back on the current occupant. >> he recognized that serving others, to us his was the brightest of a thousand points of light. >> think of the conundrum. anyone that wanted to honor george h.w. bush by talking about his civility, by talking about his patriotism, by talking about his friendships with the men who defeated him, the person who defeated or deprived him of a second term, bill clinton, is a dear close friend. and think about how the current occupant of the oval office treats his opponent who he defeated. he wants to prosecute her. so i think the idea that you can't praise a lifelong public servant who had deep friendships on both sides of the aisle without drawing such a stark contrast with the current occupant that it sounds like a rebuke is all you need to know. >> these losses are sign posts, and they remind us about what

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welcome back to the 10 most. it's something i think that happens this time of year every year. you kind of sum up where we've been and where we might be headed. and every year it seems to me we say can you believe the big names that left us this year? though 2018 does seem like an

incredible toll. in the world of television and entertainment some huge losses this year. burt reynolds. harry anderson. margot kidder. robin leach. stan lee. in music we lost the great aretha franklin, the queen of soul, at 76. roy clark left us, as did hugh masakela. legendary authors and writers. phillip roth. the great tom wolfe. and neil doc simon. the designer kate spade. science and technology legend stephen hawking. and microsoft co-founder paul allen, who left us way too young at 65. winnie mandela died at 81 and former u.n. secretary-general kofi annan at 80. auto racing icons dan gurney and the great silver fox of nascar david pearson. preacher billy graham, gone at the age of 99. also remember the loss of anthony bourdain this past year. took his own life at the age of 61. and the global reaction to the loss of this cook, this chef,

this storyteller, this traveler i think surprised a lot of people. farewell. all of which somehow brings us to this moment. number 1 on our list. this year's list of the most is topped by -- >> bob mueller. >> robert mueller. >> mueller. >> bob mueller. >> robert s. mueller. >> s. stands for swann. robert swann mueller iii. >> and he still holds all the cards. and he still for a lot of americans represents all the hope that we'll get the truth about how our election shook out, who chose this president, if there was any influence from another foreign power. robert mueller this year in contrast to last year has been maligned by the commander in chief on a near daily basis from his twitter feed and by his surrogates. >> "there was no collusion," capital c. "it was a hoax," capital h. "and there is no obstruction of justice," couple of more

capitals there. "that is a setup and trap witch hunt." >> all we hear about is this phony russia witch hunt. that's all we hear about. >> in some ways he's a more remarkable figure in that he's still silent, in that he's still letting the legal machinations, the legal developments speak for what he has uncovered. and in that we still have no idea how the mueller investigation ends. >> i would defend our choice and further say that he may be the most important man in our country because of his impact and sway over the man we traditionally call the most important in our country and that would be the president. >> i was asked a series of questions. i've answered them very easily. very easily. you have to always be careful when you answer questions with people that probably have bad intentions. >> it is that power dynamic that donald trump doesn't know what to make of robert mueller. he doesn't know what to make of an entity that doesn't leak, an entity that can't be corrupted, an entity that can't be swayed or pulled off course by his tweets or his loudness or his

volume or his constant hammering on them. and robert s. mueller is that person. >> in many ways the antithesis of each other. if mueller didn't exist, something like him would have to be invented to lead this effort. >> if you went to a lab and tried to create two opposite organisms, you would create donald trump in one lab and robert mueller in the other. they have nothing in common other than perhaps their gender. and i think that the mueller probe this year has loomed even larger over donald trump. it scares him even more. >> the president watched this process play out but he also wants to see it come to an end as he stated many times. and we look forward to that happening. >> are you comfortable with the fact that it was our number one last year? it is our number one this year. and what does it say about the world we're living in? >> i think it says that for a president who at times seems totally out of control, like he's swerving way beyond the guardrails, there is one man still walking that line,

protecting the rule of law, and that's robert mueller. >> could not have said it better. that is our list. that is "the most" for 2018. >> thank you for watching. next year we'll be on the ice. >> not a bad idea. >> my attorney and i are committed to making sure that everyone finds out the truth. >> welcome to the revolution. >> adults listen to children demanding change. >> fight for your lives before it's someone else's job. >> in the last day or so the backlash over family separation exploded.