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Don Lemon Tonight

At Least 44 Killed In California Wildfires, About 100 Others Missing; President Trump Keeps Low Profile On Veterans Day; White Supremacists Celebrate GOP Wins In Midterms Elections; Mississippi GOP Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Facing Criticism Over Comment About "Public Hanging." Aired 11-12a ET

Aired November 12, 2018 - 23:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[23:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: This is CNN TONIGHT. I am Don Lemon. And I want to begin this hour with the devastating and deadly wildfires in California. CNN's Nick Watt joins us now. Nick, good evening to you. We have seen this devastating destruction, the fires that are happening in California. Give us the very latest, please.

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, sadly the news is just getting worse. The death toll from the so-called camp fire up there in northern California has just risen to 42. They found 13 more bodies up there today.

And that makes the camp fire now the deadliest fire in the history of California, in the last 100 years since they've been keeping track of these sort of things. It's also the most destructive. 6,500 homes have burned up there. Now, 10 of those bodies found on Monday were found in the town of paradise, which used to be home to about 26,000 people and was pretty much burnt off the map.

You know, the death toll could still rise even further. You know, the sheriff up there has asked for more search and rescue teams to come in tomorrow, cadaver dogs to try and find more people. You know, part of the reason why this fire was so devastating is its being whipped by these Santa Ana winds that come off the deserts this time of year. The flames just moved so, so quickly. People died in their homes. People died in their cars trying to escape.

Now we're down in Malibu, the so-called Woolsey fire. Two people dead so far down here. 370 structures, but the winds up north have died down. The winds down here are going to keep on blowing through Tuesday. Some places into Wednesday. It's going to be Friday before we get a turn and get winds coming off the ocean bringing some humidity.

You know, a slight sliver of good news down here. We were driving around today, surveying some of the damage. It's supposed to be mandatory evacuation. We saw one man standing by the side of the road, an older man. So we stopped to talk with him.

Turns out he is David Franzowni, he is Hollywood screenwriter, wrote Amistad, wrote Gladiator, he was about to evacuate his home when he saw the flames lapping, licking at the side of his property and he had previously prepared for this. He'd bought a pump. He'd bought a big hose. And he has a swimming pool.

So he basically became firefighter, he and his wife managed -- they stayed behind, they risked their lives and they fought off the flames and saved their home, but that is one very small good news story in what is a terrible, terrible bad news story overall. Don?

LEMON: It is awful. And we have been watching you guys cover it. Please stay safe. Nick Watt, we appreciate your reporting.

I want to bring in now Frank Bruni, Max Boot and Doug Brinkley. It is unbelievable. Good evening, gentlemen. It's unbelievable to watch this. Can we just talk about too what is happening with the President of the United States incorrectly claiming that the wildfires in California were caused by -- I want to get this right. OK? "Poor forest management," he said.

Some of the firefighters have called the tweets reckless and insulting. People are dying. Others are losing their homes. Max, where is the empathy here?

MAX BOOT, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: It is utterly lacking, but there is no running empathy. I mean, this reminds me of, you know, when you had the horrible shooting, the massacre in Pittsburgh, you had the mail bombs being sent around to various places including CNN and Donald Trump's chief concern was that this was going to stop his political momentum. So, he has very little feeling for people who are suffering here.

[23:05:01] And even if what he said was true, it would be wholly inappropriate to say in this situation, but it is not true, because this has nothing to do with forest management. These are not even forest fires. And oh, by the way, it's the federal government that owns 57 percent of the forests in California. It's not the state. So this is utterly divorced from reality. And it's utterly divorced from anything that we would recognize as normal human emotion.

LEMON: So is he blaming himself?

BOOT: No, he is definitely not blaming himself. One thing you can be sure of, Don, is he is not blaming himself. Always somebody else's fault.

LEMON: You know, you're right when you talk about this. Because remember he said what happened at the synagogue. Sadly it stopped the momentum, they stopped talking about it. The whole caravan, caravan thing anymore. Do you hear him talking about that anymore? So, if you're at home and you believe that, then you've got to wonder something.

Frank, here's what the President tweeted tonight. OK, in he says, "I just approved an expedited request for a major disaster declaration for the state of California. Wanted to respond quickly in order to alleviate some of the incredible suffering going on. I am with you all the way. God bless all the victims and families affected." Cleanup? Is that going to work --?

FRANK BRUNI, OP-ED COLUMNIST, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, he found his way to what he should have been saying right at the very beginning. And that is frequently the case with Trump. You know, either he'll say something right at the beginning and then he'll drift off too quickly or he won't say something right at the beginning and he'll finally find his way there, but it just clearly always does not come naturally, because as Max said empathy doesn't come naturally to him.

Donald Trump cares very deeply about one person. That person is Donald Trump. And when it comes to other people, when it comes to a President's normal role, you know, as sort of the moral force of the country and as someone who ideally reflects and speaks to our emotions, I think it's on that frontier that he flails the most miserably as the President.

LEMON: The fact that it wasn't to the firefighters or thanking the firefighters or I'm so sad for the victims, I mean, that is telling.

BRUNI: Yes. It's who he is, though. I've made this argument many times. He is probably our most transparent President. Because he cannot fake it. And so you always ultimately see who he is. And you saw it in this case. He is a man who really can't think beyond himself and consider what others are going through and be any kind of emotional consolation for them whatsoever.

BOOT: And you've got to wonder what the appropriate tweet whether that was actually him or whether his staff wrestled the phone away from him and sent it in his name.

BRUNI: You have the image of Ivanka yanking it away and saying here's how to do it, dad.

LEMON: When he gets in front of a microphone or in front of microphones, then we'll know exactly how he feels if he is not on teleprompter. Doug Brinkley, hello to you. I want to bring you in now. The former President Barack Obama sent out a tweet saying that he and Michelle Obama were heartbroken over what's going on in California, said that he was grateful to the heroism of the firefighters. That is what is needed now. Right?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, absolutely. And Barack Obama was great at empathy. We have with Donald Trump an empathy, you know, disorder. He doesn't seem to have it at the right time. Particularly if its states that aren't pro Trump. You know, I'm here right now at Rice in Houston.

And during hurricane Harvey he was quite responsive, but when he goes to Puerto Rico he starts saying these are Democrats. He is looking at California, it's not my state. He is basically trying to blame it on Governor Brown, who has said we've got to bring climate change into the conversation, because California is being nailed by the climate issues. The winds are whipping.

We had a summer of wildfires all in northern California. Now this devastating area around Malibu. And the President doesn't -- once he pulled out of the Paris climate accord. He is a climate denier essentially. So that can't even be brought out.

So he quickly before the word climate change gets brought out, he tries to blame it on the men and women that are actually combating and fighting these forests and all the wonderful people in forest management in the state of California.

LEMON: That is what I was going to ask you. Do you think he is that concerned politically? Just a factor -- climate change is not directly causing the fires to spread quickly, but it has created conditions conducive to feeding fires such as dryer air and plant life. Do you think some of this is to debunk the whole climate change thing, Doug?

BRINKLEY: I do. Because you know, Barack -- everything he is tried to do is undo Barack Obama. And Obama was a climate warrior. He talked about it many times. I spoke with President Obama in the White House once where he said all game off, if climate change really kicks in around the globe it's all bets off, it's a whole new ball game. Well, Donald Trump took a 180 of Obama.

He is a climate denier. And so he never likes to associate freakish storms, changing weather conditions, but I go to California a lot. I speak in Berkeley. I speak in Santa Barbara. I've written books on conservation and the environment.

California is ground zero on the global climate wars. And we have a President that is just closing his eyes, an ostrich approach to it. So that tweet that he originally did was to get out in front of it, don't blame me, it's not my fault, getting very defensive, and then trying to blame the people that are actually putting out the fire. It was absurd, ugly, but typical of Trump.

[23:10:03] LEMON: He often blames the victim. As he did with the pipe bombs. Blaming the media after we had received pipe bombs here.

BRINKLEY: Same thing.

LEMON: All right. Everybody stick with him. We have lots more to talk about. President Trump, the commander in chief did nothing today to mark Veterans Day and he skipped a ceremony to honor Americans killed in France in World War I. What is going on here? We're going to talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So is President Trump revealing some wear and tear in the aftermath of the midterms on nerves influencing decisions as he prepares for life at the White House for the first time with a divided Congress, maybe a check on his administration?

Back with me now Frank Bruni, Max Boot and Doug Brinkley. So less than a week ago, President Trump fired Jeff Sessions, and now it's breaking tonight the "Washington Post" is reporting that President Trump has decided to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen. That is according to five current and former White House officials I spoke to. He wants it done ASAP. [23:15:01] I think she wants to serve out the year they are reporting.

So, Frank, as you put it, you said is this President undaunted or unhinged post-midterms? Did you say that right?

BRUNI: I did. I asked that question. With most President that would be an either/or. With Donald Trump, I think the answer is both. He is about half of each, but I think, you mentioned some things that I think are very relevant. The firing of Sessions. Now he is going to change Homeland Security. You know, the ratcheting up of his attacks on individual reporters. He is like one of those birds that expands and puffs out its chest to seem bigger so that its predators think it's bigger and more fearsome than it is.

That is Donald Trump getting ready to deal with the Democratic House majority. He is saying I'm not scared, I'm super potent, I'm not worried, and he is hoping that illusion will become his reality because the truth of the matter is everything has changed since the midterms. Once the new incumbent members of Congress are sworn in, you know, Democrats could turn this into a subpoena--Palooza.

LEMON: The sight of -- the image that you created in my mind with that was is it a puffer fish? No, it's a bird. I know exactly what you're talking about, but it means just the opposite. It doesn't mean I'm strong, I mean it means --

BRUNI: It's an illusion.

LEMON: Yes. He is nervous about it. So Max, the President was criticized for missing the World War I ceremony this weekend. The White House says, you know, the weather made it unsafe for him to fly. We spoke to people in government and they said there's always a backup plan, there's always a plan b. The President the next day addressing veterans in a different ceremony. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You look so comfortable up there under shelter. As we're getting drenched. You're very smart people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Your latest piece in -- I know. What do you say? But your latest piece in the "Washington Post" was that President Trump showed contempt for the men and women in uniform.

BOOT: That is right, Don. I mean, he postures as being pro military, pro veterans, but it's just that. It's just posturing. He doesn't actually deliver when he needs to do the things that he needs to do, like go and honor America's war dead in France. He didn't do anything on Veterans Day.

I mean, this is remarkable that he didn't commemorate Veterans Day, which was a routine event for previous Presidents. He has spent 150 days at Bedminster and Mar-a-Lago and he has not spent one hour with the troops deployed out in the field, and instead of you know, spending time with the troops he is using them as a political prop.

He deployed them to the southern border. You're going to have troops spending thanksgiving without their families and without a mission, for no good reason except to try to deliver the midterm election for Donald Trump. And oh, by the way, last week when there was the shooting in Thousand Oaks carried out by a marine veteran of the Afghanistan conflict, Donald Trump basically blamed his military service, even though there was no evidence for that, and veterans groups hate that.

They hate the implication that veterans are ticking time bombs who are about to go off simply because they went to war. And you have Donald Trump furthers that image. So please, spare me this notion that Donald Trump is pro military. He doesn't act it. He doesn't appreciate the sacrifice or the service of the troops.

LEMON: You believe really because you write this, that he is peeved at not getting his military parade?

BOOT: I'm sure he is. And it wouldn't surprise me that he holed up in the White House today because he was hoping to have a military parade in Washington. He didn't get it. And so he doesn't want to show his face, because he is stewing over the fact that he feels like the Pentagon denied him --

LEMON: Oh, my gosh.

BOOT: Surely a President can't be that petulant.

BRUNI: Who are we talking about here, come on?

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: Hey, Douglas, I've got to ask you something because Max brought it up. You said he hasn't been to a military facility -- by this time, Douglas, have most Presidents been to a military facility or if not a war zone?

BRINKLEY: Well, absolutely. It's been a stunning that Donald Trump hasn't gone and visited our troops, hasn't embedded with them. We have images and memories when George Herbert Walker Bush went in and was with the troops and George W. Bush. He just doesn't meet the troops, but worse, the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I is when you play the role of statesman.

I wrote a book called "The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc." When Ronald Reagan, the U.S. Army 2nd rangers and D-day when Reagan went over in 1984 and gave these incredible speeches given by Peggy Noonan and Tony Dolan, but with Reagan's wit and charm and sense of memory in these speeches --

LEMON: One of the greatest speeches of all time.

BRINKLEY: One of the great speeches. This was an opportunity for Donald Trump to go and talk about World War I and about the Trans- Atlantic Alliance, about we will not tolerate belligerent nations, but he did not use it as a unity moment. He came off looking very small. And I felt very bad for General Kelly. There he was standing at the service, kind of the replacement for Donald Trump, who just seemed to be out of touch, couldn't go 50 to 60 miles in a motorcade limo to do what we flew him over there to do --

LEMON: Hey, Douglas, let me put this up, because I want you to finish your thought.

[23:20:00] This is President Bush in 2002. This is just for comparison. OK? President Bush in 2002. He is in the rain at the Vietnam memorial. And then President Obama in 2016 laying a wreath at Arlington cemetery. However, this President, you know, observing the federal holiday holed up in the White House shooting off tweets.

BRINKLEY: Shooting off tweets and not taking the time. Not just did he botch it in France, but now today he could have gone to Arlington cemetery. He just ignored it. Vice President Pence on a foreign travel did do some appropriate remarks up in Alaska, but the President of the United States just holed up. And this is the day to honor veterans. And the President seemed AWOL on it.

I found it stunning. And I don't know why they couldn't make more out of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, but he is just not in a statesman role, because he is tied up with the Mueller report, he is tied up with Democrats coming in, he is saying irresponsible things about fraud in Florida right now. I mean, he just seems untethered.

LEMON: Frank, I want to put up this image of the world leaders in Paris walking together over the weekend there in the pouring rain. There it is right there. While President Trump opted to head directly to the (inaudible). Why is the President MIA, missing in action, everywhere it matters here?

BRUNI: Because he has never seen the presidency as an obligation and as a responsibility. He sees it as a sort of lark. A lark that satisfies his own vanity. So I think from the beginning if you really look at the whole of his presidency he does those aspects of the job that suit his mood and flatter his vanity at a given moment in time. And the rest of it, well, you know, he just goes by whatever he wants to do.

We've seen this time and again, though. Remember before where he was in the golf karts and everyone else was walking. He sees, he thinks, that when he is separate and apart from everybody else that means he is at a plane above them, that he is not beholden to the same obligations. What he doesn't understand is the rest of us look at that and we wonder why our President is, as you said, missing in action and what that is doing to our place and our standing on the world stage and what it says about us as a people. I'm embarrassed.

LEMON: And what that alliance has done for us for decades.

BOOT: Absolutely. And once again, I mean this is the smallest scandal of his trip, but once again he is trashing NATO and saying that our allies are taking advantage of us. By the way, this summer he was claiming that he had turned NATO around, they were suddenly contributing all this new money and it was suddenly a wonderful deal.

Now he is back to his old complaint that it's a rip-off, they're taking advantage of us. This is just not how you expect a statesman to behave. This is not how you expect a President of the United States to behave. And you would think after all this time in office he would have gotten it, but he is incapable of learning on the job.

LEMON: Max, Frank, Douglas, thank you all. I appreciate it.

BRUNI: Thank you.

LEMON: White supremacists cheering on the Republican women in the senate. Why they're viewing it as a win for themselves.

[23:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: New questions tonight about the reach and influence of white supremacists following the midterm elections. While the fate of the Senate seat in Florida hangs in the balance, Nazi sympathizers are cheering that the Senate will remain in Republicans' hands. They see this as a win for President Trump and a means to push their race war forward and its agenda of hate. CNN's Sara Sidner has the story now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It was a meme for the midterms on a website visited more than 2.5 million times a month. "Us if we lose," it read, depicting white men ready for war. Followed by "them if we win," showing Jews being led to their death.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're begging their followers to go out and find ways to get Republicans in office, because they believe it will be easier for these policies to sail through.

TRUMP: It was a big day yesterday.

SIDNER: When President Trump celebrated the Senate victory, so did white supremacists. This changed history, neo-Nazi Andrew England said on his site, the Daily Stormer, which is the most widely read neo-Nazi website in America. "This is a race war, period." They also reveled in the re-election of Congressman Steve King who has a history of making racist remarks like in this 2017 anti-immigration tweet saying, we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies or his unsubstantiated claim about immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.

SIDNER: If last night was a referendum on Steve King's white nationalism as the Democrats are trying to frame it then white nationalism won. England wrote on his site. Both King and President Trump vehemently deny they are racist or enable white supremacists. Trump pushed back at a recent press conference when asked if the Republican Party was seen as supporting white nationalists because of his rhetoric.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What do you make of that?

TRUMP: I don't believe it.

SIDNER: But purposely or not the President speaks a language that racists and neo-Nazis embrace. Like his habit of linking immigrants to crime.

TRUMP: They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.

SIDNER: The government accountability office says right-wing extremists are responsible for the vast majority of deadly terror attacks in the U.S. since 9/11.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was involved in the movement at the very dawn of the internet.

SIDNER: Tony McAleer is a former skinhead. He says white supremacists look for any sign of approval from politicians in power.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The whole goal of people like me back in the day was to mainstream. Mainstream the idea.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It doesn't take an overt slur for these individuals to basically become emboldened.

SIDNER: Take the President's threat to tell the military to consider rocks being thrown by migrants as guns being fired.

TRUMP: When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say consider it a rifle.

SIDNER (voice over): Those comments cheered online by racist trolls. "Hopefully they throw stones," they write. The Daily Stormer's Web master, Andrew Auernheimer, is clear about their purpose.

ANDREW AUERNHEIMER, DAILY STORMER'S WEB MASTER: We are trying to make a racist army.

SIDNER (voice over): White nationalists swooned at how the president described himself.

TRUMP: I am a nationalist.

SIDNER (voice over): Translation, he is one of us.

STEVE MOORE, RETIRED FBI HATE CRIMES INVESTIGATOR: It doesn't mean necessarily that he's saying that. It's just that he hasn't said anything to convince them that he disagrees with them.

SIDNER (voice over): Critics of Trump's rhetoric believe his reluctance to rein in the radical side of his base has only empowered them.

Their hateful agenda gaining speed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: So disgusting. Sara, thank you. Incredible report.

SIDNER: Thank you.

LEMON: Sara joins us now. This isn't just dog whistles. Right? And you -- you have spoken with several Nazis, KKK members. What are they saying about the president's rhetoric?

SIDNER: He's their best hope. He's their great white hope. Now, those who don't like him, which you often hear, oh, they don't actually like him, they actually say bad things about him. Usually, it's because he doesn't go far enough. He's not racist enough. He has Jewish family members. Those things are things that bother the neo-Nazis or the KKK members.

But the truth of the matter is in talking to them, many of them, those who are still in the organizations and those who have left, will say to me that when they hear his words, it sounds exactly like the same words they use in their group settings when they talk about especially immigration.

The browning of America. That phrase is used a lot. So to hear him say "I'm a nationalist," they were bursting with pride because to everyone who heard that, it was "I'm a white nationalist." The president said he didn't know anything about that, he hadn't heard of white nationalists or however he put it, but that is how it was read by almost every white nationalist out there.

LEMON: So, let's talk about this threat of white nationalism. Law enforcement missed the mark, underestimate it?

SIDNER: I talked to several FBI agents who are out of the FBI now, but who infiltrated some of these groups, and their answer is yes. What has happened with law enforcement? They went after 9/11 and rightly so. They started going after, OK, what is the biggest threat? And to them right after 9/11, it was Islamic terrorism, period.

Fast forward, and if you look at the numbers, from the government accountability office itself, there are more attacks by far right-wing groups than there have been by anyone who is Muslim. If you just look at the simple numbers, law enforcement has really missed the mark.

And how have they missed it? If you look at Charlottesville, some of the people who showed up there had criminal histories already. Some of those same people were allowed to go to Charlottesville, act violent, leave. Right? Leave. They weren't -- some of them weren't arrested and show up at the next rally or the next rally, the organizers of that got to keep showing up.

If those had been Muslim groups that had been waving an ISIS flag, one of the FBI agents told me, it would be a whole different ball game.

LEMON: Yes. The numbers are there. When you read the numbers, you give the truth, people still get upset because they don't want to hear it. They don't believe when you talk about terrorism and radicals. They don't want to believe that it's actually white American men who can be responsible for most of it. What is that?

SIDNER: I think in this country and you're no stranger to this, there is still a sense of trying to protect your own. And if you look at the way that this country was built, there's a sense of you can't say that about good, solid Americans.

But these Americans are targeting people of color. They're targeting Muslims. They're targeting Latinos. They're targeting blacks. They're targeting anybody. They're targeting gays at times.

But some of them are also targeting law enforcement because they don't believe law enforcement is doing enough to stop the browning of America. They are dangerous. Period. Ask anybody who has been investigating these guys as part of their career, and they will tell you, they are truly a danger to this society and they need to be held to account.

LEMON: Great reporting.

SIDNER: Thank you.

LEMON: Thank you, Sara. Well, we've got a lot more to talk about. Scott Jennings is here. Nina Turner, Rick Wilson. We're going to dig into it, next.

[23:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: White nationalists are cheering Republican victories in the midterms. The question is, why? Does it have anything to do with President Trump? Does it come down to him? Here to discuss, Scott Jennings, Nina Turner, and Rick Wilson. Rick is the author of "Everything Trump Touches Dies." Good evening. So you heard Sara's piece, right?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

LEMON: You were sitting here for much of it, right? This is for Scott, not Rick. Sorry. For Scott. What do you think? They were cheering on Republicans in the midterm, the victories. What does this say about your party?

JENNINGS: Well, first of all, I reject these people. I don't want their support. I don't want Republicans to be associated with them. I think in many cases these folks try to attach themselves to the people who are in power because they want attention, and they want to make it seem like that somebody is championing their cause.

[23:40:01] Well, I'm here to tell you that's not true. Nobody that I know is championing their cause. They want to make it seem that way, but I don't think it's true. And I think every Republican has an obligation to reject these people at every possible turn, because what these folks espouse has no place on our political spectrum. Right, left, whatever you want to call it. These people don't register for me on our politics --

LEMON: What do you think about what Sara said about -- she said when she speaks to Nazis and these white nationalists, they say they hear themselves in the president in what he says and some of these politicians?

JENNINGS: I think they are --

LEMON: The exact language they use in their meetings.

JENNINGS: Yes, I know. I think -- I think these people are in some cases telling themselves stories, like, oh, finally, maybe somebody sort of gets us. And then she said others don't think he's gone far enough, but they don't like it that he has Jewish family members.

I think these people are very demented individuals. And they are constantly groping for relevance. And they would love to attach themselves to anyone in power. But it doesn't really matter, as far as Republicans go. And this goes to the president on down. We all have a responsibility. Denounce, deny, and do not give these people any quarter --

LEMON: Would you like to see the president do more denunciation and not say nationalist?

JENNINGS: Yes, I would absolutely love to see the president denounce these people. Absolutely. At every possible turn.

LEMON: Let me bring some other folks in. So Rick, the Southern Poverty Law Center says that white nationalists are begging their followers to put Republicans in office. Is that because of President Trump? Does he have anything to do with it?

RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, Donald Trump has given these people so many nods, winks, nudges, you know, rubbed their feet under the table at dinner. He's given them every signal in the world that he is at least sympathetic to them, that he at least comes from a similar sort of feeling about, you know, the type of people who should be considered Americans and the type of people who, you know, come from the blank hole countries versus -- versus Norway.

You know, this is not a guy who's been subtle about this. This is the guy who is the architect of the Central Park Five. He was the architect of the biggest -- he was the biggest promoter of the overtly racist birther scam.

This is a man who for a very, very long time has done everything he could to tell these people with a wink and a nudge, you know, I'm going to make this country safe from the dangerous brown people in the caravan coming to kill you.

He led off his campaign with a racist blurt about the Mexicans are sending their rapists and drug dealers here. This is a man who couldn't come out for weeks on end and fully denounce David Duke. When he finally did, he used the following phrase, he goes, "I disavow, OK?" I mean, this is not a man who has been clear enough about this at any point. Teleprompter Trump who reads the occasional thing Kellyanne writes for him is not the real Donald Trump. The real Donald Trump is the one who says that people from Haiti and Africa and other places where they happen to be brown or from S-hole countries.

So, I'm sorry. I have very little pity for Donald Trump in this one because he could -- he recognizes what he's doing, he plays this game to stoke a particular segment of the base, and it's an ugly, ugly behavior for a president to engage in.

LEMON: Nina, a former skinhead says -- and you saw them in Sara's report, right? You heard some folks saying similar things. This skinhead says that white supremacists look for any sign of approval from politicians in power. So I'm wondering if this -- they must be seeing it in President Trump. And is it all about votes?

NINA TURNER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's obvious that they are. And amen to everything that Rick had to say. We can have no tolerance for this kind of behavior in America. We are supposed to be a nation of progress, not regress. And what President Trump is doing with all of his rhetoric is taking us backwards.

And he should stand up post-haste -- I mean, Don, he can come on your show tonight, President Trump, because we know you're watching, and to denounce this kind of behavior --

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: -- in America. It is flat out wrong. It's wrong for our country. And, you know, the thing that Scott said about all GOP -- all of the members of the Republican Party have a moral obligation to stand up loud and proud against this kind of behavior and this kind of activity. It is diminishing us as a country and it is dangerous. People are actually losing their lives because of this.

And you know, the symbolic nature -- I mean, you know, back -- there was a time in this country when we had the colored water fountain and the white water fountain. The president is bringing that back symbolically, and we see the delineation, the difference, the division in this country and his rhetoric is stoking it. They have found their savior so to speak, and they see that in the president. He has to know that.

LEMON: OK. Obviously, Scott disagrees. I saw it there. Listen, I kind of --

TURNER: Scott disagrees with that?

LEMON: No, no, no, he disagrees with what you said. He just shook his head no.

TURNER: Oh, wow.

LEMON: In our next block, listen, it's going to be shorter, but I just want to say, why is it -- Scott, why is it so tough for -- when I asked Sara this question, when you look at the numbers here, why is it so tough for people to accept that when you look at these sort of attacks, it's white men?

[23:45:07] And even more so than Islamic terrorism. And you get criticism. All you have to do is look at the facts and look at the numbers. Something should be done about it. We should take this seriously.

JENNINGS: I agree. We should take it seriously. I don't think it's mutually exclusive. We don't have to take one seriously over the other. I think the American government since 9/11 has done a great job --

LEMON: Both are an issue. But when you say one, it is completely outrage. If you say Islamic terrorism, nobody gets mad every time something happens. Was it related to terror? And usually people think terror is something that relates to a Muslim. But this is domestic terror that doesn't relate to Muslims. This is white Americans doing it. Why are people -- why is it so hard to say that and to own that?

JENNINGS: Well, I don't know that it's hard to acknowledge it. I mean, when these attacks happen and we see it on the news, we see the law enforcement move in and take care of it, I mean, it's clear who's doing it and it's clear who the culprits are.

I just think we've been so focused on Islamic terrorism in this country since 9/11 that that has taken up most of the space for the word "terrorism." But there are absolutely people in this country who wish us harm. And I don't think they're political actors. I think they are -- they are terrorists, but that doesn't make them political actors as part of a party.

LEMON: I've got to get to the break. Stay with me. We're going to talk about something -- a U.S. sitting senator made a terrible joke about public hanging. We'll talk about that.

[23:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A sitting U.S. senator refusing to apologize for joking about a public hanging in a state that has a history of lynchings. I can't believe that I'm about to say this in 2018. I'm talking about Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. She is seen in this video posted to Twitter praising a cattle rancher and thanking him for his support.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CINDY HYDE-SMITH (R), MISSISSIPPI: If he invited me to a public hanging, I would be on the front row.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Wow, Hyde-Smith is still fighting for her Senate seat, and it's worth mentioning her opponent is an African-American. She is facing former Democratic Congressman Mike Espy in a runoff election in November 27, because neither received 50 percent of the vote. Well, Hyde-Smith responded with outrage over her remark in a statement saying, "in a comment on November 2nd, I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement. In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous."

But today at a news conference with Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant, reporters asked questions about the comment, and I just want you to hear how it all went down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HYDE-SMITH: We put out a statement yesterday and we stand by the statement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Could you expand on it then why you said it, what you meant by it, and why people in the state should not see it as offensive?

HYDE-SMITH: We put out the statement yesterday, and it's available, and we stand by the statement.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): Did you know Mississippi had a history of lynchings?

HYDE-SMITH: I put out a statement yesterday and that's all I'm going to say about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Governor Phil Bryant --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice over): You mentioned it shouldn't be viewed with a negative connotation. Could you at least explain how the statement could be positive?

HYDE-SMITH: I put a statement yesterday and we stand by the statement, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Is that (INAUDIBLE).

HYDE-SMITH: I put out a statement yesterday. I stand by the statement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Governor, you appointed her as United States senator, you have a huge black population that are looking for answers on why she used that kind of language, and you have worked to try to make it known that Mississippi no longer has that past. When you're hearing her say, I put out a statement yesterday, and that's all --

GOV. PHIL BRYANT (R), MISSISSIPPI: I think she's certainly addressing the fact that she has put out a statement. I can tell you all of us in public life have said things on occasion that we could have phrased better. When you make as many speeches as we do in public life, that does occur.

But I know this woman and I know her heart. I knew it when I appointed her. I know it now. She meant no offense by that statement. There was nothing in her heart of ill will. Now in a political campaign, people can make anything you say what they want it to say. They can spin it. They can go on social media and accuse you of all sorts of things.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice over): Governor --

BRYANT: She feels certain that I believe, I won't speak for her because her statement spoke to it. Absolutely, we have been sensitive to race relations in this state. I brought the president of the United States here to open the civil rights museum. An African-American leadership that would fail to even come to the event because of the president of the United States was there.

Today I talked about the genocide of over 20 million African-American children. You see in my heart I am confused about where the outrage is at, about 20 million African-American children that have been aborted. No one wants to say anything about that. No one wants to talk about that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(LAUGHTER)

TURNER: Now, what are we going to do with this?

LEMON: Wow. OK, before I get back to -- is it possible the press conference made things even worse for her? I mean, why couldn't she apologize? Why can't she just admit it was a very unfortunate word choice? Mississippi has the highest number of lynchings in the nation between 1882 and 1968, according to the NAACP. I mean, Nina, go on.

TURNER: You hit the nail on the head, Don. Exactly 4,800 lynchings, 73 percent of those were African-American. This wasn't unfortunate. This wasn't no slip-up. This woman said what she said, and she won't even apologize. Nina Simone. Don, you know where I'm going.

[23:55:00] Her song. Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam. That was the words in her song. This -- this woman is unfit to serve in the U.S. Senate. It is a travesty.

LEMON: Alabama got to be so upset (ph). Tennessee --

TURNER: Tennessee, yes. But everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam.

LEMON: Everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam. Yes, go ahead, Scott.

TURNER: Yes.

JENNINGS: Yes, I mean, it was thoughtless, careless in this time when we have such -- well, any time. But particularly right now, politicians of any level, U.S. Senate on down have to be more careful and understand their words have ramifications beyond -- you know.

I mean, it was pointed out by the governor, you know, anybody can take your words, yes, that's the point. I mean, anybody can be recording it and it can go all over the world.

LEMON: Yes.

JENNINGS: So, I take about their word about what's in her heart, but you can't be so thoughtless and careless because it hurts people and hurts situations.

LEMON: Rick?

WILSON: If what was in her heart, though, was innocent, she would have shown some sense of repentance about it, some moment of awareness, some scintilla of understanding that the ark of history includes a very ugly chapter in Mississippi where an awful lot of people associated the words public hanging with a certain late night pointy white hat social club that did terrible, terrible murderous damage throughout our country for a very long time.

If she had had some sort of sense of that, some -- just some fraction of goodness in her where she would have come out and said, you know, I spoke so wrongly and cruelly, this was an idiotic thing on my part, I will do my very best to be mindful and to listen to what I'm saying more closely and to reflect the better angels of our nature in this state.

But unfortunately, she said, I put out a statement yesterday 14 times in this press conference --

LEMON: Yes.

WILSON: -- and that comes across as essentially the Trumpian stiff arm.

LEMON: Yes. Thank you all. So much to talk about, but we're out of time. Thanks very much, everyone, for watching. Our coverage continues.

[24:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)