jamie gangel's here, david gergen and david brinkley.nts bush and obama spoke about bigotry and hate today. take a listen. >> our identity as a nation, unlike many other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. we become the heirs of martin luther king jr. by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. this means that people of every race, religion, ethnicity can be fully and equally american. it means that bigotry or while supremacy in any form is blasphemy against the american creed. >> we saw what happened in charlottesville. but we also saw what happened after charlottesville when the biggest gatherings of all rejected fear and rejected hate and the decency and goodwill of the american people came out. that's how we rise. we don't rise up by repeating the past. we rise up by learning from the past. >> charlottesville, jamie, was a turning -- that was a bridge too far for both these presidents. >> absolutely. i just want to slightly disadpree with what da

. >>> joining me david gergen, senior political analyst and david rhodes global affairs analyst. david gergen to you, you are a communications expert. had any one of the four presidents you worked for communicated that there was an imminent storm, an imminent storm coming, and this was the calm before the storm, it would indicate maybe a cause for serious concern. when this president says it, what does it mean? >> well, he's got the great tease. he understand how to build an audience bs but i must say this is unprecedented for any president i know. typically, if you're preparing to go into a storm, the president is with this national security advisors in deep study, deep deliberations and a sense yes, he's studying an issue and you usually know what it is and if it's military action involved it's important for the president to get out in front of the public and tell them what he is doing. if you want to take us into a conflict, mr. president, make sure you have the country on your side first. otherwise, support can slip away from you very quickly. >> and as for that tease, david

david gergen, what do you make of all of this? this is someone the president thought would be the best fit to be drug czar in this country right now, amid the opioid epidemic. let's handle that. he's out. this is someone the president thought would be the best fit because of reporters, real reporting, real news, was anything but? >> well, listen, first of all, the president and congressman marino did exactly the right thing, cut their losses quickly, to try to move on as quickly as possible. frankly, "the washington post" "60 minutes" program in their combined journalism i think spared them an embarrassment down the road because this would have eventually come out and just think if he had already been sworn in. it would have been a bigger mess than it has been. journalism, fake news, came through for the trump administration. i think the big question of the day is, not only who's going to be the next czar, but how did they get this far? how did this nomination get this far without anybody picking it up? journalists could see it. t

david gergen joins us now. as someone who has worked in a number of white houses owe the years, how serious do you think today's developments were? >> sear. very serious. what we now know is the government is charging that an unregistered foreign agent for russian stoojz was campaign chairman for president trump. not for very long, but an important period of time. and that contrary to assurances from the president that there had been no conversation with the russians or his campaign had nothing to do with russians, we now know that at least one person who was rised as a national security adviser by the campaign who attended meetings with the president was in active activities with the russians. and what this suggests, anderson, is that bob mueller now has this young national security adviser, papadopoulos, he's now singing. he's now giving evidence of higher ups, and that's how he got a plea barring today and pled guilty. so i think this is quite serious. >> what's also interesting about this papadopoulos devel

david gergen, can you recall any other instance where a president has invoked a fallen service memberecessor while at the same time patting himself on his back? >> no, i remember none of that. typically a gold star relationship especially when a president is trying to console the family, that's kept private by the white house out of respect for the families. and you certainly try to keep it out of politics. so this was a most unfortunate set of remarks over the last few days. i can tell you we all know president obama deeply grieved for the people killed in his administration. he showed up. george w. bush having sent so many troops into combat went frequently to walter reed. this is private, but they do it to protect the fam els. >> the implication that any former president doesn't feel deeply of the loss of service members that very possibly they have sent into the field or kept in the field, it just seems to suggest that just seems deeply insulting to, you know, any former president. >> it is. look, this is the most profound, sobering responsibility a president has. i remember when

carl bernstein, paul callen, ryan lizza, alice stewart, maria cardona, also jack kingston, david gergen, laura cotes, michael zeldin, john dean, and on the phone cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. as you can tell, we knew it was going to be a very slow friday night. jeff toobin, how big a deal is this? >> it's an enormous deal. you know, remember, the whole idea of a special prosecutor is to see if there are any crimes to be prosecuted. robert mueller has decided there are at least one defendant with one -- you know with a crime. we will see whether he can make his case in court. we will see whether it leads to other people, but the fact is, this is an investigation of russia and collusion and now the prosecutor has brought some charges. >> david gergen, how do you rank this in terms of the magnitude? >> i think we're going to be held in suspense until the documents are unsealed, the indictments are unsealed. until then we can't really measure it. what we do know is the dam is breaking. we do know the mueller investigation, there were some speculations, and the trump white house wa

. >>> but i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst david gergen, kevin madden and scott jennings and terra set mire the former communications director for congressman dana ror backer. welcome to the program. david, a source told our white house team that the president is in high spirits tonight despite the fact that two sitting gop senators blasted him. put today into some perspective for us. >> well, don, it's a day like no other in that we've never had, at least in contemporary american history, two major senators break so sharply with a sitting president of their own party. it comes at a time when the republicans have a very modest over democrats in the senate. they need every vote, and they've not got at least two more, flake and corker joining john mccain and others, susan collins, ben sasse, people who can't be counted on for their votes. that makes the politics of this, make it harder to get their agenda through. but i can understand why the president is happy. he now is able to put a real trump supporter probably into arizona. but i think the stakes are higher than simply

symone sanders, john phillips, david gergen, thanks so much. >> also, california, a crisis along much of northern california right now. an inferno, strong winds making it even harder for firefighters. the death toll is rising. will those winds die down anytime soon to try to help firefighters contain this, next. and when youod sugar is a replace one meal... choices. ...or snack a day with glucerna... ...made with carbsteady... ...to help minimize blood sugar spikes... ...you can really feel it. now with 30% less carbs and sugars. glucerna. i'm ginnwith chantix.smoking it takes a lot of planning to be a smoker. it's like when am i gonna be able to sneak out of here and go have a cigarette? i just knew i had to quit, and chantix was the method that actually worked for me. along with support, chantix (varenicline) is proven to help people quit smoking. chantix reduced my urge to smoke. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hosti

kirsten powers and david gergen, former adviser to former presidents. us, margaret, thanks call. kirsten, you've been outspoken with your own experiences about harassment. when you hear sarah sanders say sag these women are liars, what do you think? >> i wish i could say i was surprised. obviously this is something donald trump has before and i don't expect sarah sanders to say something different ft this is sort of the typical response when men are accused of sexual harassmen harassment. if it was one or two people, maybe, but when you have so many people coming forward and telling consistent stories, it's just hard to believe all these women are making it up. and but i you know, the trump people have been more than comfortable obsessing over for example, accusations made against bill clinton, but and accepting them as completely true, but any accusations against him or anybody he likes aren't true. >> just remember that debate, david, where donald trump on st. louis, we were all there. like a press conference with bill clinton's accusers. he brought t

. >> david gergen, how do you rank this in terms of the magnitude? >> i think we're going to be held in suspense until the documents are unsealed, the indictments are unsealed. what we do know is the dam is breaking. we do know that the mueller investigation, you know, there was some speculation, and the trump white house was trying to make us believe there was nothing here. we do know there's something here. we do know that mueller has probable cause to believe that crimes were committed by at least one person. and that's significant. but how significant, i think it very much depends upon what charges are brought. i continue to believe that mueller -- it would be an odd thing, it seems to me, if you think about how you game plan this out, to go with a case only that involves a personal activity unrelated, collusion unrelated to the president, unrelated to russia against manafort. that would be an odd way to start. i do think as the reporting from the white house says, they're ready to pounce in the white house if it's simply about a manafort thing.

carl bernstein, david gergen, paul cal lesson, laura coats, done steen and jeff tu been.tive for us. what does this mean for the mueller investigation? >> well, what it means is that he's indicted somebody. we don't know whether it's to the core charge of collusion or whether it's to the collateral charge of money laundering or tax evasion. we can surmise from pamela's reporting if it was andrew wise man who was at the courthouse who was returning the indictment, wise man has been on the manafort case and that it therefore might beological to conclude that it is manafort. manafort has been under scrutiny for both collusion and also for his real estate dealings and for tax and money laundering investigatio investigations. so you could have an investigation of manafort separate from the collusion but which implicates his dealings with the monies that he earned in ukraine and elsewhere over seas. >> jeff, is what's your take on this from a legal standpoint? >> well, it's a peculiar situation because indictments are rarely announced without knowing who the defendant is or wha

cnn senior political analyst, david gergen, and betsy woodruff. we all used a lot of apblg steufsteu adjectives, remarkable, stunning. but what has really changed? >> i think what has changed, john, and it's significant, is that two senators have broken in a very, very complete way that invites commentary and more criticism of the president both within the senate and among conservatives and conservative pundits around the country. i think the real issue, though, is whether corker and flake have moved from fairly reliable to unreliable allies for the president as he pursues his agenda. as you know the trump white house can't lose more than two votes in the senate in order to get something through, and now you have corker, flake, mccain, susan collins all in this -- do you have them or not? so it could give the descenters more leverage go into the negotiations ahead over tax reform, which is always contentious anyway with the tax cuts. >> it's a good point, but the question becomes will they vote against something they believe in? corker has power w

i just want to slightly disagree with what david gergen said earlier when he mentioned jeb.question that was a difficult campaign. but i don't think that this is about jeb bush or bad feelings about that at all. george w. bush did not vote for donald trump. this goes back ale long way. he said during the campaign he thought he might be the last republican president. so there has been no love lost for a long time. i think there have been a number of inflexion points that led to today. i think charlottesville was one of them. remember, he and his father put out a joint tweet that day. i think national security is an inflexion point. i think that being presidential is an inflexion point in the bush family. words matter. tweets matter. >> yeah. >> and i think that there were a lot of things that led to today. >> yeah. and it wasn't necessarily the campaign. david, i want you to respond, but when is the inflexion point the one where they actually speak out and say okay, this is enough and start naming him by name? >> i think charlottesville is probably the turning point. it's har

today david gergen is head of the u.s. government's nutrition program and he's invited all over the world for a scientific conferences where he gives his experts point of view. totally independent. this week to. introduce reasons why the meat is important to the healthy diet it's been just. on that day he was in front speaking to scientists from around the world about meat and the link between processed meat and cancer in order to denounce backed up by a power point the climate of fear panic and even hysteria. then we know because we were there. it was right at the start of our investigation when we barely knew about nitrites and had the need of enlightened specialists to help us. and. so there are new reviews published this year that say nitrite is not harmful and others that say it is harmful. i don't think anybody really knows. definitively what the answer is. a few months after this handshake you can learn more about the industry and doubt bells started ringing. so we took advantage of our trip to america to ask him fo

you have david gergen say the dam is break.ged or what they are being charged with. he brings out money laundering. bottom line is you had paul bernstein saying someone could go to jail for 20 to 30 years. why don't you say 100 years. it could be jay-walking. howie: there were a few mentions on fox. everyone was trying to confirm it, and what is it. that's something we still don't know. francesca: it could be paul manafort, it could be michael flynn. one thing i can tell you is the white house received no indication that it is someone who works at the white house currently, jared kushner or someone who would be close to the president like don, jr. that's important to go to the sources and ask them, is it this person and getting a response. howie: when someone knows they are going to face charges, they put out a statement. and also who leaked this. there is a lot of back and forth about the president, bob cork, jeff flake and so forth. a reporter asked the president about this notion that maybe he's being a little too aggressive

. >> joining us now cnn presidential historian and cnn senior political analyst david gergen. david, does it make sense to you now that at the eleventh hour essentially it turns out they're not going to release everything? >> well, it's a surprise, certainly. the tweets coming out of the president over the last few days have certainly suggested it was going to be all. but in fairness to donald trump, he did say it may not be all. but i think the fact that we're getting down to 300 pages does give more weight to what most experts i had a chance to talk to, a pulitzer prize winning history other yap. he's now writing a biography of john f. kennedy and his basic conclusion is the big story -- there's not likely to be anything big, major, dramatic, bombshell that would change the basic story line that lee harvey oswald was acting alone. where the information may be new and revealing could be out of mexico city where oswald spent about six days, two months before the assassination talking to cubans, talking to russians. and that's where the professor may be the new story coming out

. >> joining us now, tim naftali and david gergen.11th hour, turns out not going to release everything? >> it's a surprise, certainly, tweets out of the president over the last few days have suggested it was going to be all. in fairness to donald trump, he did say it may not be all. i think fact we're getting down to 300 pages does give more weight to what most experts i've talked to, pulitzer prize winning historian here at harvard who is writing a biography of john f. kennedy and his conclusion is big story, not likely to be any major dramatic bombshell to change the basic story line that lee harvey oswald was acting alone. information that may be new and revealing could be out of mexico city where oswald spent time before the assassination talking to cubans and russians and that may be the new story coming out of the documents released today. >> tim, does it surprise you they held back some documents? >> no, actually i'm not surprised. part of this story is that this is a product of the conspiracy theories of the '90s, when people

chris cillizza is here, political analyst april ryan as well, senior political analyst david gergen.ood evening, all. let's have this conversation that's been so difficult for lawmakers to have, at least it appears to be. bob, 12 of the guns modified with this device called a bump stock, essentially turning them into automatic weapons and tonight the president, top republicans, even the nra appear to be embracing the idea of banning these devices. but do you think that's a way for them to avoid the meaningful debate on guns that they have successfully done in recent history? >> well, i think it's the nra seeing the writing on the wall that this is going to happen and i think it's remarkable. even though, don, this is very narrow, they're not going to get background checks any time soon but the fact that the nra sees that this could have prevented some deaths and some injuries is remarkable. whether it's attached to a fiscal deal in december, i think this is going to happen and this is a gun control measure that is significant. now, a lot of members hadn't heard what a bump stock is b

. >>> but i want to bring in cnn senior political analyst david gergen, kevin madden and scott jennings and

out front now, david gergen who served as adviser to four presidents. rumored to be on the short list for vice president. corker himself said he was on the short list for the secretary of state job. >> how significant is this battle for the president? >> i think particularly significant because of what corker represents. bob corker is a retiring senator, he will be gone before donald trump is gone, he will be gone at the end of next year. corker is someone who is very much a part of the establishment of the republican party, he was the mayor of chattanooga. he is someone who is the chairman of the senate foreign relations community. donald trump has feuded with this class before he said things about mitch mcconnell. he said things about lots and lots of senators. the very tree ole and i would point to the responses of senators like rob portman. that stuff matters, because to your point, this is a vote trump needs. you can be as out sider as you want and rally the base, this is the senate that donald trump currently has, that's not going to be changing u

. >> david gergen and jennifer reuben, thank you both for being here.e always appreciate when you come on ahead this hour, news threats, what's left of hurricane nate, spawning tornadoes across the southeast. plus, a week after a deadly massacre in las vegas, police are piecing together what they've learned. what a handwritten note in a gunman hotel room is revealing later, engineers in russia, what an islamic center in houston was created and planned by a controlled factory in russia. you are live in cnn "newsroom." ? is that whole thing still dragging on? no, i took some pics with the app and... filed a claim, but... you know how they send you money to cover repairs and... they took forever to pay you, right? no, i got paid right away, but... at the very end of it all, my agent... wouldn't even call you back, right? no, she called to see if i was happy. but if i wasn't happy with my claim experience for any reason, they'd give me my money back, no questions asked. can you believe that? no. the claim satisfaction guarantee, only from allstate. switchin

. >> david gergen, the speeches yesterday didn't feel like advice.like a takedown of trumpism, a specific takedown. honestly, trumpism specifically in its own way is a takedown of the presidencies of barack obama and george w. bush. these things stand in opposition and trumpism won the last election. >> but there are more elections to come. i think both former presidents have their eyes on the future. obama has his eye on the coming election in virginia. if the democrats lose that race, they're going to be demoralized, but if they can win that it's going to charge them up for the 2018 getting candidates. i want to go back to this. each one of these presidents over time comes to see himself as a link in a long chain, you are the steward of the office and of the country's well-being. for this brief period of time. they like thinking of themselves as stewards and they have a natural tendency to become friends after leaving office. definitely bill clinton with the bushes but look at gerald ford and jimmy carter. nixon of all people became the person that

i've heard david gergen say, quote, it looks like the dam is starting to break. i've heard speculation that this indictment may be targeted at flynn, maybe at manafort. we've already heard the president distancing himself from manafort, he was only with the campaign a short time. flynn was a stalwart, stayed with him. those two men have different exposures. >> that's correct. flynn was very much a part of president trump's campaign. he was a trusted adviser. he spoke at rallies, and was very involved with the campaign and with the president, which is why he was the original national security adviser. and his tenure was short because he was dishonest about contacts that he had had with people involved with the russian government, including the russian ambassador to the u.s. and the white house says that he was ultimately fired because he didn't tell the vice president the truth and then the vice president went out on television and said things that were not accurate. but flynn was part of the trump white house. that said, flynn was also, based on all of this repor

. >> perspective now from cnn's senior political analyst david gergen, also retired army -- general, you because you know how general kelly operates. so would it surprise you if the tensions between the president and the secretary of state were pushing the general to some kind of potential breaking point? >> don't know, john. but what i'll tell you is john kelly is a professional, and he's in this for his country and he's trying to establish processes for the good of the nation. he will continue to do that. he'll continue to try and lead up as best he can. but i'm sure it's frustrating at time of the i can only imagine some of the contests he's experiencing between the permits and the egos and the type of processes that mr. trump has brought to office that john kelly is not used to as a general working under several other administrations. >> you know, david, there was this idea that if anyone could bring discipline and order to the trump white house, it was general kelly and on procedural matters, memos, the president's reading material, he seems to have been effective. but if you ca