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Don Lemon Tonight
Trump Stokes Immigration Fears Ahead Of Midterms; Millions Have Already Cast Ballots In Early Voting; Oprah Tells Story Of A Man Who Walked 18 Miles Trying To Vote; Jews And Non-Jews Urged To Attend Shabbat Services In Wake Of Pittsburgh Attack. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired November 02, 2018 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Well, I'm going to come in too then.
CUOMO: Sunday?
Yes. I'm going to have to -- if you have a show, I've got to have a show.
CUOMO: Now that's a party. That's a party.
LEMON: Yes. I will be, and we'll be doing it from the place it's all happening, right?
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: We'll be down in D.C. I'm sure you're staying in a better hotel.
LEMON: I have a home there.
CUOMO: Of course, you do.
LEMON: Kidding about that. Hey, Chris, you know what I think that really warmed my heart. We're going to talk about little bit on. That show up for Shabbat. Did you see that where--
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: Yes, I did.
LEMON: -- people from different faiths from all around the country are asking people to come together and share today is a Sabbath, but all weekend throughout the services to remember the people in Pennsylvania who lost their lives and the people there who are in mourning right now. I think it's just fantastic. I've seen it from Protestant churches to Muslims, were all having, and we're going to talk about it a little bit later.
CUOMO: Yes. I love it. I just hope that people see what the message was in the murders. That man was trying to stamp out the instinct to do for others. He was trying to stamp out that ethos in these 11 people. You can't reward that with quiet. You can't.
You got to get loud and proud, and you have to do exactly those things that he was trying to stamp out. That's how you honor the legacy of who was lost and the commitment we should have to one another no matter what your faith is.
LEMON: Hey, let's put up some of the pictures. I just want to show it if we have a picture of it.
CUOMO: Go ahead.
LEMON: Can we put it on? There it is.
CUOMO: Yes. Look at the line.
LEMON: Yes. I think this was -- that's the one in D.C. There was one in Boston too. There it is. There's one in Boca Raton, Florida, as well. It's just really, really amazing. You know what? Here's what I say. This is one in New Work.
This is what I say. When anyone who is in a marginalized community or anyone who has a history of being discriminated against, Jews, African-Americans, Muslims, women, whomever, we must stand up for each other with the passion that we stand up for our own group because otherwise when you attack one, you attack us all. And if we don't do that, it's the end of America. It is the end of this democracy and with some big holes in the fabric of our society.
CUOMO: Amen, amen.
LEMON: Yes. Have a great weekend. Thank you for your fantastic work. I'll see you on Sunday.
CUOMO: All right, bud. I'll see you.
LEMON: This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon. Thank you so much for joining us on this Friday.
And if you had any doubt at all that the midterm elections, just four days away by the way, that it may be the most important one of our lives, well, take a look at your screen now. Here's the proof. Not one but two presidents out on the campaign trail, making their closing arguments.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You're going to decide maybe which party controls the United States Senate. It's a very powerful vote. And a vote for Joe is a vote for Schumer. It's a vote for a majority leader who will be not good. If that's what you end up with, it's your fault, not mine.
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say we don't just lie with impunity. It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say we don't just punish our political opponents trying to use a justice system, that we don't threaten the freedom of the press because they say something we don't like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: What a contrast there. Two presidents taking aim at each other. President Trump, of course, mocking former President Obama's name.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's no surprise that Joe Donnelly is holding a rally this weekend with Barack H. Obama.
(CROWD BOOING)
TRUMP: I watched him speak today. He had a very small crowd. They don't talk about that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Barack H. What do you think that meant, huh? The 44th president calling the 45th a liar.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: What we have not seen the way we're seeing right now is politicians just blatantly, repeatedly, baldly, shamelessly lying, just making stuff up. That's what they're doing right now all the time. Don't be bamboozled. Don't be hoodwinked.
[22:04:58] When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn't matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can't work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Let's compare and contrast their approval ratings, shall we? President Trump at 40 percent in the latest Gallup poll. The former President Barack Obama at 63 percent. But both have seen their share of hecklers. Let's also compare and contrast their reactions.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: We're OK. We're OK. We're OK. You know what? This is what I look forward to is having a few hecklers to get me back in the mood.
(CROWD CHEERING)
OBAMA: You know? I enjoy that. You always got to have a few in order to know that you're on the campaign trail.
TRUMP: You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. I'd like to punch him in the face.
If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously.
(END VIDEO CLIP) LEMON: So, the last one is a president who in spite of encouraging violence himself, today actually tried to blame reporters for political violence. I guess he forgot that this network was targeted along with top Democrats by an alleged bomber who is a Trump supporter.
And in case you think this is all just politics, in case you think it's all just talk and it doesn't affect real people, here are some pictures that will show you how it's affecting everyday Americans.
These are teachers at an elementary school in Idaho dressed for Halloween as a stereotype of Mexicans and as President Trump's promised wall labeled make America great again.
The superintendent ended up apologizing for their costumes and their actions today, saying, quote, "we are better than this," that he was deeply troubled by what he called the clearly insensitive and inappropriate costumes.
If only our president had the integrity of that school superintendent in Idaho. It's no accident that this is happening under this president who, don't forget, started his chain campaign like this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So that kind of language, language that divides us. That's not what this country is supposed to be about. Come on. Can't we all just admit that? That's not who we should be. We aspire to live up to the words that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Since this country was founded, many people fought to expand those rights to cover more Americans, people of color, women, LGBTQ Americans. But along with our rights, every one of us also has a responsibility right now, OK? I hope everyone is listening. We all have a responsibility. It's a responsibility that's at the heart of our democracy.
We have to vote. It doesn't matter whether you're Republican or Democrat or an independent. You've got to vote. And don't let anybody on any side tell you that this election is in the bag because it's not, that your vote won't make the difference.
Millions of people in this country have already cast their ballots in early voting states. Plenty of them support the president, and plenty don't. And no one will know who wins until after election day. So you've got to vote. You've got to make your voice heard. And that's a message that's especially important for young voters, young people.
Listen to me. I have to be honest because too many of you have been, let's say, unmotivated about voting in the past. Just 17 percent of citizens under 25 voted in 2014.
But there is some good news that may be turning things around this year.
A Harvard poll found that 40 percent of people under 30 say they'll definitely vote in the midterms. It should be higher, but 40 percent is better than 17 percent. Of course, saying that you'll vote and actually voting, that's two different things.
So, if you're tempted to skip going to the polls, I want you to imagine this, right? Imagine how you'll feel on Wednesday morning if the results aren't what you hoped for. Imagine how you'll feel when it's too late because by then it will be too late.
Lots to talk about now with Mark McKinnon, Jelani Cobb, and Max Boot. We're going to dig into it next.
[22:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: The president's lies and fearmongering reaching a new low. Tonight, he claimed that Democrats want to turn America into a giant sanctuary for predators and MS-13 killers. There's obviously no truth to that. But the question is four days before the midterms, will it matter?
Let's discuss now. Mark McKinnon is here, the executive producer of Showtime's The Circus. Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker. And Max Boot, author of the "Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."
Good evening. So good to have all of you on. Welcome to the program. I've got to -- as these words are coming out of my mouth, you know, MS-13, you know, they want to turn into sanctuary cities, he's sowing hate and division and fear. The question is will America go for it on Tuesday?
JELANI COBB, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, I mean, America went for it in 2016. And, you know, we've kind of seen that even as we had the conversation where we kept trying to avoid what this actually was, you remember the age of the economic anxiety argument. And then what people have done in the aftermath is seen time and time and time again that people were attracted to the very thing that people found on the left found most loathsome about the way that Donald Trump ran his campaign.
And so, the question -- and also it helped that there was a kind of disaffected Democratic voter on the other side. So, the question is really now what we're looking at is in some ways a referendum on the current presidency. Certainly, that's what midterms tend to be. We're also looking at a kind of referendum on issues that people care about, but in a way that is very atypical and uncommon.
[22:15:00] This midterm is a referendum on human nature, that are people going to be motivated and captive to fears. Every single -- it's like -- almost like -- it was like a cameo from the most recent Halloween movie. Like everything that could terrify you is coming out now. They're predators. Then we're talking about the caravan, at first,
they were saying these were people who were trying to invade America. Then they were saying they were unknown Middle Eastern people. It was like pick a stereotype. It was like, are they coming to take our jobs, are they coming to, you know, commit terrorism. It's every kind of thing that people could fear rolled into one.
LEMON: Yes.
COBB: That's the question of whether or not that actually work.
LEMON: I kept thinking as I hear him say that at the rallies, it's like a marauding gang from an old western movie carrying torches trying to break into your houses. That is never, ever, ever going to happen.
Max, I want to bring you in here because President Obama also made the case tonight that no matter what your party, that you need to vote for Democrats. Here's why he said that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: It shouldn't be Democratic or Republican to say that we don't try to monkey around with the rules of our democracy.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA; That we don't threaten the freedom of the press just because they write something about us we don't like.
(APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: It should not be a matter of partisan politics to say we don't target certain groups of people based on what they look like or how they pray or who they love.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Max, you left the Republican Party, but you're still a conservative, is that correct?
MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Yes.
LEMON: So, you make the same case. So, you said and you write in the Washington Post, "vote against all Republicans, every single one." Why? Does what the president say, the former president, does that resonate with you?
BOOT: Absolutely, don. You've got to send a message. I mean, this is so unconscionable what Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing now. This kind of fearmongering, this kind of racism and xenophobia that they are playing on, we have not seen this in modern American politics. I don't think there's any precedent for it until you go back to the dark days of Jim Crow and the way that southern segregationists would compete with one other for bashing African-Americans.
I mean, this is so blatant, so over the top. The ad that we were discussing a few days ago that Trump released with the cop killer immigrant, he blames Democrats for that when he was actually he entered the United States under President Bush and he was arrested and released by Sheriff Joe.
But I mean, the whole thing is such a pack of lies to suggest that there is some kind of invasion of illegal immigrants going on when, in fact, illegal immigration is down 80 percent since the year 2000, or to suggest that this caravan of these poor refugees is this marauding hoard of criminals and terrorists financed by George Soros.
I mean this is so crazy. This is so offensive. There is no way that Republicans should be allowed to get away with this because if they do get away with it, you're going to see more of it in the future. And we don't want to live in a country where fearmongering and racism and hatred that's a way to win an election.
LEMON: You just took the words out of my mouth because it's in some way, he's not hiding it anymore. It's this sort of behavior is becoming normalized. Is that -- are you--
(CROSSTALK)
MARK MCKINNON, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, THE CIRCUS: No question about it. It's back to the old playbook that we saw in 2016. You know, I'm waiting for a video to surface of Steve Bannon handing out $100 bills in Central American to immigrants to join the caravan.
LEMON: Yes.
MCKINNON: You know, this is so perfectly to his script, right? The thing that I'm struck by is that there's such powerful economic news every single day these days.
LEMON: The jobs numbers are--
MCKINNON: And so, I think what would Ronald Reagan do? Well, it would be morning in America, right? But instead we have midnight in America. But I harken back to one of our episodes with Steve Bannon where Bannon was saying the problem would be if people were content, if they are, you know, if the deplorables are leaning on their shovels say things are great, so crank up the fear machine.
LEMON: Let me ask you something as a Republican. This is something from Fareed Zakaria. And he, you know, Fareed is very serious person.
MCKINNON: Yes.
LEMON: He doesn't take these things likely. He wrote this. He said "The Republican Party has many good people and good ideas, but none of them matters while it houses and feeds fantasies, conspiracies and paranoia tinged with racism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism. Republicans are now squarely the party of McCarthy," he says, "and until that cancer is excised, they should not be entrusted with power." On the one hand, you can say that that's not fair. On the other hand,
have Republicans done enough?
MCKINNON: No, clearly not. And you see -- you feel like so many members of Congress, of the Republican Party, they seem like hostages, you know. And the only people speaking up are the people leaving office.
BOOT: Right. And all these other Republicans, I mean they're complicit. They can't escape this because they're taking part in it, and they're not repudiating what Trump is doing. A lot of them are even imitating it.
LEMON: Yes.
COBB: That's right. And to carry the McCarthy point forward, it's crucial that we remember that McCarthy's fall came about in part because he alienated himself from the Republican Party.
[22:20:00] It was Eisenhower. He didn't fall under Truman. It was the Eisenhower presidency where he said this is actually corrosive and we have to put a stop to this.
And so, it was not simply a pre-ordained thing that when you have a demagogic figure in your party, you are obligated to toe the line and support this person, defend this person time and time again, yet we've seen feeble, at best, criticism of Donald Trump from within the Republican Party, and partly because of the nature of the populist swell he has, kind of cult of personality that he's constructed, that no one's willing to take the risk of the political fallout of criticizing him.
MCKINNON: Well, part of the reason they don't is that Trump exercises his political power. I mean, he is not shy about going into districts in primaries and taking people out if they don't toe the line if they throw the Trump agenda.
COBB: Which brings us back to gerrymandering.
LEMON: Yes.
COBB: These districts weren't heavily gerrymandered that you might not have to -- have that same.
LEMON: Well, I just wonder if they're safety in numbers. I mean, aren't they smart enough to realize if enough of us come together and say, you know what, this is -- I don't think it would matter so much. I think -- I think it's up to them to help pull the voter along and get them somehow out of their fog and really tell the truth about this presidency.
BOOT: I think these politicians need to realize there's more about being a political leader in this country than simply doing whatever it takes to win the election.
LEMON: Exactly. BOOT: You have to have some larger principle.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: How cute of us to think that way.
BOOT: Beyond your own self-interest.
LEMON: I know we have to get a break in but let me just do this one thing and get this in for Jelani before we go to break and then we move on to talk more about this. This is the current president talking about the former president. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's no surprise that Joe Donnelly is holding a rally this weekend with Barack H. Obama.
(CROWD BOOING)
TRUMP: Barack Obama.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: What do you think? H., emphasizing the H.
COBB: Sure.
LEMON: Hussein.
COBB: Hussein. That's right. We can remember that this person introduced himself to American political life by lying, outright lying about the origins of the first black president of the United States. That's what he's doing again and kind of whipping up this idea that the person who is named Hussein, you know, how much can you trust them? Are they in league with people who are enemies and so on?
And this has been. And we've never seen that level of contempt and disrespect between one presidency and a prior one. You didn't see that between Carter and the Nixon administration or Ford, you know, who for all the excesses and violations that happened during the Nixon administration, yet we see this between Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
And so the one thing that he did say is that he had a much smaller crowd. He said Obama had a really small crowd. You know where Obama had a bigger crowd?
LEMON: At the inauguration.
COBB: In the electoral college.
LEMON: In the electoral college. And the inauguration. OK. Stand by, everyone. Stay with me because the president is also talking up the good economy today. But he does -- I'm going to talk about the economy is boring, but then he didn't say that. But if he truly believes that his party is the reason for the country's success, why is he also admitting Republicans could lose the House?
[22:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: So, the last jobs report came out today, and the last one brought before the election, it brought some good news. Jobs created, 250,000 jobs created, and hourly wages growing at the fastest rate in nearly a decade.
Could the strength of the economy provide a boost to the president and his party?
Back with me now, Mark McKinnon, Jelani Cobb, and Max Boot. So, I got to ask you, you know, we undoubtedly saw some good job numbers today. There was good news for the economy. The economy is booming, that he inherited from President Obama. The interesting thing, he keeps criticizing that president, but I'm wondering if the thing that is shielding him for the real repercussions of his actions is the Obama -- is the economy that the former president created for him. That may be the thing that's lifting him and keeping him at least somewhat above water.
MCKINNON: Well, I would say this. You know, at what point do we say it's his economy?
LEMON: Right.
MCKINNON: It's two years in now, right?
LEMON: That's a very good question. When do you?
MCKINNON: So, and I remember when people say that about Obama to Bush, you know.
LEMON: Right.
MCKINNON: So it's two years in now. I think at a certain point you have to say, OK, it's his economy.
LEMON: There's a difference, though, that when you inherit like one of the worst--
(CROSSTALK)
MCKINNON: Yes.
BOOT: For sure.
LEMON: Right? Since the Great Depression and one that's already booming. But you on.
MCKINNON: Well, you could also say coming out of that Wall Street fall had nowhere to go but up.
LEMON: But up, right.
MCKINNON: So, I would say--
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Well, I don't know about that. You remember the emergency meetings--
MCKINNON: Yes.
LEMON: -- where they called Obama in before he was even president, saying this economy is about to go off the cliff.
(CROSSTALK)
MCKINNON: Well, I'm just saying.
LEMON: You should know that. We could be Greece.
MCKINNON: There was nowhere to go.
LEMON: We could have been Greece, right?
MCKINNON: Yes.
LEMON: Sorry. Go on.
MCKINNON: But I mean, to everybody got together and made some very hard decisions.
LEMON: Right.
MCKINNON: But I would say at a certain point start giving the guy credit. But I think Max calls it a sugar high. You could also call it day trading on deficit numbers. Donald Trump says I love debt, and I love debt, I love debt, and he does. And so, at a certain point, is there going to be a price to pay for the short-term benefits?
LEMON: OK. So, let's talk about that because, Jelani, you write here -- you said "The country has been fixating on Trump for over two years." You write in the New Yorker about "Trump has both promoted and profited from the racial siege mentality." What happens if there is no reckoning for that?
COBB: Yes. I mean that's the real kind of terrible scenario because what's happened is let's say Donald Trump decides in 2020 that he won't run again. Let's say he runs and loses. The inescapable difficulty is the fact that he has already created a template for the ideas that were once on the margin, these ideas that were once beyond the pale through a lot of work, a lot of effort through the 20th century, people trying to push these ideas out of mainstream acceptable political thought and rhetoric.
He's still created a template to make those things work. The Trumpism can exist outside the presence of Donald Trump. I think that's the thing that we should be really concerned about, especially as we look at the demographic change that's afoot in the country. Because that's really the prime vehicle--
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: That is the prime vehicle as you said, and study after study has shown it's not economic anxiety as people said.
[22:30:01] COBB: Right.
LEMON: It's really the changing demographics.
COBB: Right. That's what it is.
LEMON: Yes.
[22:30:02] BOOT: It's going to be a massive multi-era for Don, to detoxify American politics even after Donald Trump leaves the scene. I mean I think we're going to have to have some kind of public health campaign like we had to stigmatize smoking. We're going to have to have a campaign to stigmatize racism, xenophobia, all these things I thought were already stigmatized, but Donald Trump has brought them out of the closet, brought them out into the open, he is using them to his political advantage. And we as a society have to signal that this is not acceptable.
LEMON: So, what happens Tuesday if the House goes to the Democrats? Is that a lesson for Republican?
BOOT: Yes. Absolutely, that is the only lesson they will understand, if they start losing vote, if they understand that this is not the way to get ahead of American politics, because if the other thing happens and if they actually win, you're going to see this dialed up to 20. If it's like at an eight or nine now, he is going to dial it up even higher. It's going to be disastrous for our social fabric.
MARK MCKINNON, THE CIRCUS ON SHOWTIME CO HOST: If that happens, the President is going -- if he wants to get anything done in the next two years, he is going to have to find areas of common ground.
BOOT: The only thing he wants to get done is to avoid impeachment. That is going to be his number one priority.
LEMON: Really that is why he is trying to shore up the Senate, right? He is so focused on the Senate, because that is where the real impeachment problem lies, because if you have to have two-thirds of the Senate.
MCKINNON: He just has to hang on to 16, 17 Republican Senator.
JELANI COBB, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Presumably we don't know what is in the Mueller report. We don't know --
MCKINNON: I do. I've got it right here.
(LAUGHTER)
Keep it under your hat, right. LEMON: This is a-- you know what I find interesting? The former
President brought it up today. You see all of these ads now with Republicans saying, you know, I will secure pre-existing conditions. I will protect pre-existing conditions when they have been fighting for years to undo the affordable care act or Obamacare. What gives here? Why lie about it? Because they realize that people actually do care about this?
MCKINNON: They do care and they've discovered it's a huge liability and that is what Democrats have been running on and making a lot of ground on it. And the striking thing to me about the whole health care debate with Republicans over the last four, six, eight, since Obamacare is that we've always been against Obamacare, but never really put forward a credible solution. You know, there's just never really been a Republican plan that is credible or works.
COBB: Except for Obamacare.
MCKINNON: Unless you get rid of pre-existing conditions and lower the insurance markets and those are the kinds of things they say they aren't doing now.
LEMON: And they never replace. But the thing is if you have something -- and actually people are -- honestly are finding out now, like, actually this is not as bad as it's been made out to be. So if it's not, why can't -- this is our Pollyannaish thought again. Why can't they say this isn't perfect, let's fix this part of the affordable care act and jettison this and fix that part?
BOOT: That is based on the supposition that people want to get stuff done instead of just politicking. These lies about health care I find almost benign because that is kind of standard issue American political lies, but lies about like George Soros financing the caravan, those are not standard lies. Those are off the charts or lies about Latino immigrants and the caravan. All this stuff is much more corrosive and I think much more dangerous.
LEMON: Yes. So I got to get this in for Mr. Mckinnon because I can't wait to see "The circus" on ShowTime. I want to play this clip from Sunday's episode, the circus. This is from an interview with Andrew Young, a civil rights icon and former Congressman. I want you to hear what he had to say about this election.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDREW YOUNG, FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: In some white people that black progress is going to come at the expense of white people. It's actually the other way around. Dr. King used to say that if you're going to keep somebody down in the ditch, you got to keep one foot down there to keep them down, but why don't we all just get up on the curb and sidewalk and try to walk together? I got elected when nobody thought I had a chance, and it poured down rain. Everything was going against me. And suddenly we had a 74 percent black turnout, and I was trying to get 10 percent of the white vote, and we got 14 percent.
MCKINNON: Yes. YOUNG: And lo and behold, everything changed.
MCKINNON: Yes. You think that kind of thing can happen again?
YOUNG: I think it will happen.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Is he right? He says we need a multi-racial coalition. Do you think we'll see that come this election this year?
MCKINNON: I love the kind of campaigns that Stacey Abrams and Gillum are running in Florida, particularly Stacey Abrams. It's like a nuke Democratic playbook where she is saying and others are saying to some extent, let's not just go and try to find, you know, more sort of centrist independent soft Republican white voters.
Let's enfranchise the people of color and others who haven't been coming out to vote. Let's expand our own coalition and get the people out who are being affected, who haven't been voting. And I think that message is getting through, and I think we're going to see that in Georgia and Florida and across the country.
[22:35:04] LEMON: Don't you think Republicans can take a lesson from this in two ways? One, the diversity of the Party if they have a bigger tent. Number two, under diversity, I mean youth, right? If you look at -- and I'm just using this as an example, because it was a stark contrast. At the pictures coming from the Kavanaugh hearings where you see all of these older guys, older people of the same ethnicity running this country, if you're a young person, especially a diverse person or a person of color, you go, what's in this for me? I'm not represented in this. I think both parties --
BOOT: That was the lesson that Republicans took away from 2012, but then Donald Trump turned it on its ear and said we're not going to go for minority votes or young votes. We're just going to get crank up these angry old white people and turn them out with these kinds of appeals and it worked.
COBB: There's one quick thing I want to say about this. We've seen the worst kind of populism in the last two years, and people have called it populism. They're trying to be euphemistic about the racism, the homophobia, the misogyny. We said we don't want to say that explicitly so we'll just call it all populism.
And populism has this terrible strand in which all those things are very prominent, but the thing that to Mark's point, the think we don't pay enough attention to is there actually is an inclusive tradition of populism in this country. That is what Dr. King was talking about in 1968 with the poor people's campaign. We've talked a whole lot about George Wallace. We don't talk about Henry Wallace and his Presidential campaign in 1948, which was cross racial, looking at people who were all at the bottom of the economic pile and saying that we have much more in common than we have that separates us.
And there is that kind of legacy, even what we saw with the Reverend Barbara William Barber doing, you know, recently incredible work. That is the tradition that we should be thinking about. It doesn't have to simply be the Kavanaugh hearing versus everyone else being excluded.
BOOT: Make populism great again.
LEMON: Thank you all, I really appreciate it, you guys coming in on a Friday. Thank you so much. Can't wait to see "The circus" on ShowTime. Kick it. Kick it hard.
Oprah, heard of that name? Heard of her, telling the story of a man who inspires her to vote, a story about a man turned away from multiple polling places and who walked a total of 18 miles only to be told the polls had closed. That man's son joins me next.
[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: With just four days to go before the midterm elections, at least 27 million Americans have already cast their ballots in early voting, but if you still don't think your vote matters, I want you to listen to a story that Oprah tells.
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OPRAH WINFREY, OPRAH SHOW HOST: I didn't take voting seriously until around my mid-20s. And around my mid-20s, I had the privilege of hearing Reverend Otis Moss Jr., who is a preacher. You all know him? Preacher. Preacher in Cleveland, Ohio. And I heard him tell the story of his father, of Otis Moss Sr., who right here in Georgia's troop county got up in the morning and put on his only suit and his best tie, and he walked six miles to the voting poll location he was told to go to in Le Grange.
And when he got there, after walking six miles in his good suit and tie, they said, boy, you at the wrong place. You at the wrong place. You need to go over to Mountville. So he walked another six miles to Mountville, and when he got there, they said, boy, you at the wrong place. You need to go to the Rosemont School. And I picture him walking from dawn to dusk in his suit, his feet tired, getting to the Rosemont School, and they say, boy, you too late. The polls are closed. And he never had a chance to vote. By the time the next election came around, he had died. So when I go to the polls and I cast my ballot, I cast it for a man I never knew. I cast it for Otis Moss Sr., who walked 18 miles one day just for the chance to vote.
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LEMON: Joining me now, Reverend Otis Moss Jr. and Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP. So glad to have both of you on. Reverend, you first. Thank you for being here and thank you to your father, because his story speaks to what so many people of color and women and other disenfranchised people went through to vote. REVEREND OTIS MOSS JR., OPRAH TOLD HIS FATHER'S STORY OF VOTER
SUPPRESSION: And thank you, Don. And thank you for the work you do.
LEMON: You know, she is telling that story, reverend, and I think about when I was born, I am the first person who is I guess with full rights to vote born in that time, because everyone born in my family, my sisters were born before the voting rights act. I was born after the voting rights act. So I have full rights and the civil rights act of 1968. And here I am. I mean it has not been that long ago. And I think about my mom, who tells me the story of my grandmother, who used to have to count the jelly beans, the things in the jar, but those stories are real, and, you know, you were 11 years old when your dad walked those 18 miles. Do you remember anything about that day? What do you remember?
MOSS JR.: That is correct. I remember it well. I remember that early morning when he got up with enthusiasm and determination to go and vote, really to vote against a racist governor of Georgia who used the n-word as though it was an obligation in his vocabulary.
[22:45:05] And we sat at home waiting enthusiastically with great anticipation for our father's return, because we knew what his determination was and what our aspirations were. And when he returned home and gave us the report, there was a sadness, a kind of heartbreak that one carries to some extent for the rest of your days, because by the time of the next election, our father was dead, having been killed in an automobile accident not too far from where we lived.
And of course our grandfather was born enslaved. So he was born when it was illegal for a black person to vote, and my father lived through that era when the enforcement of voter suppression by clan and by other kinds of serious and evil means, and to come through that period and then participate in the civil rights movement and the voting rights effort and to share with Dr. King in the March from Selma to Montgomery, and to witness what has taken place is quite a moment. And today it is to me a sin not to vote if you are eligible to vote.
LEMON: You are absolutely right. Can we put the picture up? This is your father back during -- around that time that we have a picture of him.
MOSS JR.: That is -- that is actually some years earlier. He is quite a young man, yes, but it's very much his likeness. He was quiet, determined, man, all of his life.
LEMON: And very dignified in that photograph. Which Oprah I think spoke oh, you know his dignity and his tenacity to try to make a difference not only for his family, for you guys, but for the country. I want to bring Derrick in here. You know, this is a decades old story, Derrick, of voter suppression. Yet today we're still hearing examples of this happening all over the country. What is going on? Why is that?
DERRICK JOHNSON, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE NAACP: Well, that story there. That is a story of the south. That is a story of an African- American's journey to fully participate in this democracy. As a result of that story, and so many others, we had a voting rights act, but unfortunately the Supreme Court gutted section five of the voting rights act, and that has results in the NAACP and many other organizations having to file lawsuits in Georgia to ensure that 53,000 voter registration applications are processed.
Today we had a court ruling in North Carolina where they gerrymandered districts for racial reasons. Last week we filed a lawsuit successfully in Tennessee, because they didn't want to process voter registration applications. And this week we had to file challenges in four counties in Georgia and reviewing a potential challenge in Texas, because individuals are going to the polling place, casting their ballots, but the ballot is not reflecting the actual vote they cast. And so the story we're hearing there, touching story, is the true journey of African-Americans to make democracy work for everyone.
LEMON: Yes. Derrick, I need to ask you about Michael Cohen's -- you know, the President's former lawyer and fixer, his account of some of racist conversations alleged, racist conversations that he said he had with President Trump. In particular he says the President says black people are too stupid to vote for me. That is a quote. Do you believe President Trump would say such a thing?
JOHNSON: Absolutely. He is demonstrated at every turn, both in word and action, that he is in fact a racist. The comments about African nations being s-hole countries, his creating false equivalencies during the Charlottesville, Virginia march. I believe that this President lacked the ability to see anything outside of his own image and to respect people for their human self.
LEMON: Yes. Reverend, in the short time we have left, and I apologize for that, you have any final thoughts for us, please?
MOSS JR.: Well, actually, when we look at what happened to my father 72 years ago and what is going on now, not just in the south, but throughout the nation and the majority Congress, the Senate and the Congress are actually bowing to that supporting it, making it possible.
[22:50:17] So, it's not just a regional issue. It's a national issue. It starts at the local level, but it is approved at the national level. And we must teach and insist from the generation to generation that everyone should become a part of the voting process and if there is any kind of impediment there should be protests and action.
As I said earlier, to refuse to vote when you can is a sin, but to be prevented from voting is a crime and a sin. And we have hate, crime and sin uniting in this election. And we must overcome that and we can. And I believe we will.
LEMON: Thank you, reverend. Thank you, Derrick. I appreciate your time. Have a good weekend.
JOHNSON: Thank you.
LEMON: We'll be right back.
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LEMON: Tonight at sun downtown marked the start of the Jewish Sabbath. It was at a service just last weekend that 11 members of the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh were shot and killed. Now a social media campaign Shabbath is calling on Americans of all faiths to join Jews at services this weekend. People are responding in solidarity.
A long line formed early tonight outside one synagogue in Washington, D.C. In Boston, over 1,000 people packed into a service. In Boca Raton, Florida, over 2,000 jammed into a synagogue. Right here in New York, a group of Muslim women holding signs and white roses greeted worshipers and visitors outside one synagogue.
I want to bring in now, Mark Hetfield, he is the President and CEO of HIAS which was founded as a Hebrew immigrant aid society and now helps rescue refugees around the world. HIAS was targeted in the hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric by the alleged Pittsburgh gunman. Mark, thank you very much for joining us. I appreciate it.
MARK HETFIELD, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HIAS: Thank you, Don.
LEMON: You know, it's been a week since the massacre in Pittsburgh. You haven't heard anything from the President or Jared Kushner or Ivanka Kushner. I mean, that is extra surprising considering the personal connection Jared has to your organization. Tell us about that relationship.
HETFIELD: Sure. We are disappointed. HIAS works in partnership with the United States government and specifically with the State Department to resettle refugees to this country and we have received a lot of words of support from many elected officials, but many -- and many others, but not a word from the White House nor has any political appointee at the State Department contacted us and certainly Jared and Ivanka have not either. Even though HIAS, I mean, Jared Kushner frankly wouldn't be here were it not for HIAS. We rescued his grandparents and brought them to this country.
LEMON: Mark, HIAS became the focus really of Robert Bower's rage, because you help immigrants from all over the world. He wrote on social media that HIAS likes to bring invaders in and kill our people. Where do you think that kind of hate comes from?
HETFIELD: Well, you know, I think it comes from fear originally. And the problem is that if you don't deal with fear, fear deteriorates into hate speech. And then hate speech deteriorates into hateful acts. What we have now in this country, instead of having leaders that address fears and tell us that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself, to tell that our fears are not rational, instead they stoke them. And they lie and they mischaracterize and vilify refugees, people who are fleeing terror and say that they're bringing terror, but they're not.
LEMON: Mark, can I ask you something, and you know, of forgive me if you think it's inappropriate. I mean it for -- with all the best intentions. What has this done to Jews, especially in America? Has it in an odd way is there more solidarity or is it just a sense of overwhelming grief and loss. Like, what is -- talk to me about that.
HETFIELD: You know, that is one of the few good things that have come out of this horrible terrorist act. And that is that we have got be so much support from Jews and from others. And frankly, we were getting a lot of support from Jews before that. Because you know, there was one thing this terrorist was right about is that American Jews were welcoming refugees. We had celebrated the first ever refugee Shabbat. And this was to show solidarity and love for refugees, because American Jews realize that there would not be an American Jewish community, but for those times when America opened its doors to refugees, including to Jared Kushner's grandparents.
LEMON: Mark Hetfield, thank you so much.
HETFIELD: Thank you, Don.
LEMON: Thanks for watching. CNN's special report democracy in peril, the war on voting rights begins in just a few minutes.
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