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Don Lemon Tonight

A Pardon Not Off the Table for Manafort; Trump Denies All Accusations; Trump Night-Owl Calls To Roger Stone In 2016 Draw Scrutiny In Mueller Probe; Interview with Sen. Chris Murphy (D), Connecticut; Senate Backlash Against Trump; Blue Waves Rattle Congressional Republicans. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired November 28, 2018 - 22:00   ET

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

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

[22:00:00] DON LEMON, CNN HOST: And people are going to learn from this. But I do have to say, it's a complicated problem, but it is solvable. It is fixable if we can all get on the same page with it and stop politicizing it so much.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: True. However, you could let in none of them. And still salvage the dignity of what is the mandate of this country by how you help those people where they are right now.

They're a mile from our border, and they might as well be a world away in terms of what we're doing for them right now. For the U.N., for UNICEF to have to come in and help with something that's a mile from our border.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: That's not who we are. It is who we are. Got to expose it because we should not be this way.

LEMON: I'm glad you said that because do you remember a while ago when you said, this is not who we are. And I said, Chris, sadly, I think this is who we are.

CUOMO: What I said is this is not who we were when we're at our best.

LEMON: It's not who we should be. But sadly, this is who we are now. And I know. The thing that -- this is the thing that galls me the most. Every time you point out something that's happening now that is -- that should not be happening, the knee-jerk response is, well, Obama did it. Well, somebody else did it. You know, well, Hillary Clinton.

And no one wants to take responsibility for what's happening now. None of the people that they always blame, the knee-jerk response to go back to about well, this person did it back in this, and this happened in this administration.

None of these people are in power now. When the previous administrations were doing it, if they were, then people took notice. Maybe they did for some instances. Maybe they didn't. But the outrage in that time was seen, and it happened then. That was then. This is now. Can't we deal with what's happening now?

CUOMO: Yes. I mean, look, it's an excuse, Don. I mean that's what it is. It's just politics. It wouldn't work in any other phase of your existence. You'd never get away with that, you know, here at work or at home as a rationale. That's politics, and it's a poison politics, and it also happens to not be true. We've never seen caravans amassing of this size in this way. We've never heard a president, not in our lifetime, talk about people they way like man does.

LEMON: OK.

CUOMO: We never had a president like this.

LEMON: OK. You hit the nail on the head because people say, well, there were -- what do you call it? Tear gas or those bullets, right?

CUOMO: Right.

LEMON: They said, well, you know, that happened under Obama. It may have happened under Obama. The instance that I read about it was one border agent who was there, and he had to defend himself because there was a crowd and did it.

But no president has stirred up hate. No modern president that I know of has stirred up hate against people like this, has stirred up controversy against people and just stirred up anger. And so there is a difference.

Most administrations doing their job to the best of their abilities. When they got something wrong, usually they apologized, or they say, you know, we can do it better.

This administration always points to some other thing, and they don't want to take responsibility for it. Then they double down on it, and they marginalize people by stirring up hate and anger and division. I just don't get it.

CUOMO: Right. It's not even a they. It's a he. I think that a lot of his administration certainly--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: He has enablers.

CUOMO: -- the men and women.

LEMON: He has enablers.

CUOMO: Yes.

LEMON: I mean--

CUOMO: Well, a little bit.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: A little bit. But I'm saying the men and women who are doing the work on the border.

LEMON: No, no.

CUOMO: They're not echoing his sentiments. And look, you know, the guy I had on tonight with his little cheap trick about saying that I was disrespecting the CBP. That's tired. That's not going to work on my show.

But the idea of well, they have to own what the president says, that's not fair to them as well. And the idea that this is a Democrat type of things, these kinds of problems, this is what Democrats cause -- you know, this isn't Republican. What the president is saying, that's not Republican dogma. You go back to Bush, George W. Bush. You go back--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Reagan.

CUOMO: -- to George H.W. Bush. You go to his debate with Reagan about what to do and whether kids who get into the country illegally should have school. Go Google or YouTube that debate and see how they spoke about it. That was Republican orthodoxy. There is no heartlessness in conservatism inherently.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: This is unique to this man and what the president thinks works for him. It's as simple as that. And I'm telling you I know for a fact that wall was made up on the campaign trail as a metaphor gimmick. It resonated, and he went with it. And he used immigration because he saw it as a good lever, a good lever issue for him to get people angry and develop his base, and it worked. But that doesn't make it right.

LEMON: Well, again, I hate to say I told you so. You've proven my point. When I tell you that this is not about politics, this is not about ideology, this is not about right and left. This is about right versus wrong.

We can deal with conservative principles. We can deal with liberal principles. We can deal with libertarian principles. But I don't think that this company -- this country is equipped to deal with lying, distorting of facts and reality.

[22:05:05] It's just -- it's just not something -- it's not American. And I think that we have to point it out every single time even though it gets frustrating every single night. But I'm telling you, for me at least this is not about ideology. I don't.

This is the first time honestly, Chris -- I'll be honest with you. This is the first time ever in the past couple of years that people have said, my gosh, you're a liberal. People used to say, you must be conservative. You're a black conservative because when the Obamas were in power, I would challenge them the same way that you do. You call it testing people, right?

Because they're the people in power. So, people would say, are you against Obama? Are you some sort of black conservative? But it wasn't my job to agree with everything the Obama administration did.

Now this administration -- and I've been here since the Bush administration by the way. Same thing happened under Bush. But my role is much bigger now, much more -- I have a bigger platform.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Don't hurt yourself patting yourself on the back.

LEMON: No, no, no. But I mean, seriously, but now that you -- now that you -- now that the Trumps are in power, the Trump administration, you challenge them, and this is the first time that anyone has ever called me some bleeding-heart liberal.

I don't -- and it has nothing to do with it. I am anti-lies. I am anti-falsity. I am anti-alternative facts. And I think what people don't get in this administration, the supporters of this president don't understand is that when you tell a journalist that facts don't matter, that reality doesn't matter, it's the same thing as telling a Christian the bible doesn't matter because that is where we live. We bring people the facts and the truth. Otherwise, why the hell are we here?

CUOMO: Well, we're here to do the job. I mean, I'm not bothered by the idea of, can't -- does the truth matter anymore? Of course, it does. The testing of the president is a reflection that the truth still matters. If that weren't going on, then you'd have a legitimate concern. It is his choice to try to mitigate, to devalue what truth is about and what matters and what's real and what's fake. That's his play.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: At some point, you know, we just saw what happened in the midterms. I grew up in that game. The idea of getting that kind of beat-down and not learning for it is anathema to good politics.

LEMON: yes.

CUOMO: That's why you rarely see a president in a second term go down even when they get beat up in the midterm.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: The first midterm because they learn. Will this team learn. we'll see.

LEMON: Yes. And even if that the next day, we had a great showing. No, not so much. I got to go.

CUOMO: Good to see you, pal.

LEMON: You as well. you as well. See you tomorrow from the border. Looking forward to it.

This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. And there's really no other way to say this. No other way. The

president of the United States is having a meltdown. Yes, again. And the reason is very clear.

Robert Mueller is getting under his skin. The president using an interview today with his hometown paper, the New York Post, to send a public message to his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. A pardon is not off the table, saying this, and I quote.

"I wouldn't take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?" The president has been dangling a pardon for Manafort for a while, but the timing of this tells you a whole lot.

Coming just two days after Mueller accused Manafort of lying repeatedly to him and to the FBI. And just days after Trump's legal team submitted written answers to questions from Mueller.

CNN has learned that the president told Mueller he didn't know about that 2016 Trump Tower meeting with his son, campaign officials, and Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. He also told Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks.

ABC is reporting that the president also said that he was not aware of a change to the GOP convention platform in 2016 that watered-down support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine. Vladimir Putin sure must have been really happy about that.

And there's more from that interview with the Post. The president blatantly trying to intimidate Democrats in their -- in the House, trying to scare them out of investigating him with the bare-knuckle threat that he's going to declassify documents he claims would be devastating to them.

It's not clear what documents he's referring to or if they even exist. Does that sound to you like a president with nothing to hide?

And please can we talk about the president's re-tweet this morning of an image that comes from the depths of the Internet fever swamp? This is president, the president embracing his inner Internet troll, slamming a who's who of prominent people the president and his supporters think of as enemies, and accusing them of treason, which, mind you, can carry the death penalty. He's showing them behind bars.

[22:09:59] There's his predecessor, former President Barack Obama. Also the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Former FBI director James Comey. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was FBI director under President George W. Bush and President Obama.

Even this president's own deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is there. The president doubling down on that image tonight, telling the Post that he thinks his own deputy A.G. belongs behind bars because, quote, "he should have never picked a special counsel."

It is impossible to overstate just how shocking it is for the president of the United States to re-tweet something like this, or it should be. And anybody who says it's just a tweet, I want you to remember this.

The White House has told us that this president's tweets are official statements. And since this is the world that we're living in now, I need to point out that it is absolutely false that Russian collusion has been proven a lie. It has not.

He also tweeted a completely baseless accusation that Mueller is telling witnesses to lie and comparing the investigation, which is a search for facts -- he's comparing it to McCarthyism. Facts apparently won't stop this president from lobbing false accusations at anybody who crosses him.

But he's happy to have joint defense agreements with convicted felon Paul Manafort and notorious conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, who pushed birtherism and swift-voted John Kerry. The company he keeps.

Yet in Trump world, everyone else is guilty. They are never in the wrong. And one blatant example of that comes from first daughter Ivanka Trump, who incredibly told ABC today there was nothing wrong with her use of her private e-mail account to conduct government business even though her father has never stopped slamming Hillary Clinton for e-mail woes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVANKA TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: Well, there really is no equivalency. All of my e-mails that relate to any form of government work, which was mainly scheduling and logistics and managing the fact that I have a home life and a work life are all part of the public record. They're all stored on the White House system. So, everything has been preserved. Everything's been archived. There just is no equivalency between the two things.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It's actually hard to believe she could say that with a straight face, especially after her father made this a key part of his campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CROWD CHANTING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: But there's a method to the madness for team Trump. This is not a random denial of the facts. This is a denial of facts that threaten his presidency. He targets the people who does and uses the language he does to circle the wagons as the threat from Mueller grows. And at the heart of all of this, President Trump needs to see himself as a winner. He's told us what I just said himself over and over again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to win, OK? You know, we like to win.

You people are going to get sick and tired of winning. You're going to say, please, please, President Trump, we can't take this much victory. Please stop. We don't want any more wins. And I'm going to say to you, we're going to win. I don't care what you say.

One by one we're winning. We're winning, winning, winning.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, here's the question. If this president feels more threatened by Mueller, if he feels his presidency is threatened, what will he do next?

Lots to talk about. Asha Rangappa is here, Jack Quinn, and Garrett Graff. We'll dig into it next.

[22:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So, tonight, we have a CNN exclusive. Sources telling CNN about two key answers President Trump gave in writing to questions from special counsel Robert Mueller.

I want to bring in now Asha Rangappa, Jack Quinn, and Garrett Graff who is the author of the "Threat Matric: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror."

Good evening. Let's get right into this. Asha, you first because CNN is reporting about these written answers, the one that the president reportedly gave to Mueller.

He says Roger Stone didn't tell him about WikiLeaks. He wasn't told about the Trump tower meeting between Don Jr. and the Russians and others. Two questions for you. Do you believe it? And, two, can Robert Mueller prove otherwise?

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I don't believe it, but my understanding is that he's couched this in legalese, which is to say to the best of my recollection or I don't recall.

This is the Reagan defense. And that does make it harder to pin him down as lying. As far as whether Mueller can prove it, I think that Mueller has way more information than he understands.

The statement of offense that Mueller was drafting for Corsi in the plea agreement actually notes that Corsi was in touch with person one, who was frequently in contact with then-candidate President Trump, person one being Roger Stone.

So, I think that there is information there. As far as the Trump tower meeting, you know, there are ways to corroborate whether he knew, like phone records, whether Don Jr. called him before or after. So, I think that there are ways to prove it, but whether he can pin him down remains to be seen. LEMON: So, Asha mentioned the - to the best of my recollection. He

sort of, cloaked himself in this, Jack, so let me ask you. Does that make a difference? Is that enough to save him legally by using that sort of defense because that's pretty standard.

JACK QUINN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's absolutely very standard. That said, it's not a complete defense because there may be other evidence that gives the lie to that. So, you know, if there are records, including e-mails of phone conversations that took place between other people who might have contrary information, notes from, you know, Don Jr. or anything of that nature, anything.

[22:19:56] In fact, he's now really put himself on the line here in a sense because if there is significant contrary information that would go a long way toward undermining everything he said in that statement.

LEMON: Yes. Let's talk about some of the Wall Street Journal reporting. Garrett, I want to give that to you because they have details that they said that led to the special counsel ending their plea agreement with Manafort.

They're reporting that Manafort lied about the communications with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business contact who prosecutors allege has ties to the same Russian military intel service that allegedly hacked the Democrats. What does that say about what Mueller knows?

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, one of the things that is odd is, remember, this is the third time this year that Paul Manafort has been caught lying to the special counsel. You know, first ghostwriting that op-ed in his own support and then trying to do some witness tampering and tried to align his stories with one of the potential witnesses.

The constant across all three of those instances is Konstantin Kilimnik and sort of this Russian/Ukraine business intelligence nexus that does seem like Paul Manafort has some dark secrets that he's trying to keep in that world.

LEMON: Yes. Three times that we know of, right, that you mentioned. So, Mike--

GRAFF: Yes. Three times he's been confronted in court by lies. So, you know, the Wall Street Journal, you know, makes clear tonight these are just some of the areas where they believe that Paul Manafort was not being fully truthful with the special counsel.

And remember again, in every one of these instances, Paul -- Paul Manafort has been confronted with very clear evidence of his lies by the special counsel's office. You know, and Asha sort of said this at the top. You know, Robert Mueller knows a lot more than we think that he does, and everyone who forgets that finds themselves on the wrong side of him in court.

LEMON: Well, I was just going to say, Asha, don't you think it's naive to think that the special counsel didn't know that Paul Manafort may not be, have been, you know, on the up and up with them and may not be sharing information with the other side? I think that they probably knew that. It may be a big revelation to people that, my gosh, he has the you know what to do it, but I'm sure it's not surprising to the special counsel.

RANGAPPA: No. He was sketchy from the get-go. As Garrett mentioned, you know, he was ghostwriting op-eds. He was witness tampering. So, he's not the person that you're going to put all of your trust in.

LEMON: Right.

RANGAPPA: So, yes, I think that they were circumspect when he came to the table. And the fact that he came to the table very late. I mean, he did this after he went through an entire trial, was convicted on eight counts, and, you know, normally somebody who wanted to plea would have done this much earlier to get the full benefit of it.

LEMON: Yes. I want to talk a little bit more about this Wall Street Journal reporting. Jack, let me ask you this because they're also reporting that Mueller has questioned witnesses about a boat trip Manafort took after he was fired from the campaign with Tom Barrack, a longtime friend of President Trump.

Remember, we talked to him so much around the inauguration because he actually headed up the inauguration and helped with that. They want to know if Manafort met with Kilimnik on that trip. What's your reaction to that?

QUINN: I don't know anything about that trip, whether Barrack may have met with him. But, you know, Barrack is connected to lots of sovereigns around the world, particularly in the Middle East.

And remember that, you know, there's a little bit of a linkage between the Seychelles meeting, Middle Eastern interests, and Russians.

Look, I frankly think, going back to your earlier point, that, number one, the special counsel -- the only thing that would be surprising is if Mueller and his team didn't expect Paul Manafort to do what he did, namely lie. I think they fully expected him to lie. I wouldn't be surprised if he said things in the course of his dealings with the president's attorneys that have put them in a very potentially in a very awkward position. So, I think they expected him to do what he did because, as you said, he's done it repeatedly.

And I think that, you know, this could be a serious problem on the Russian front. I also think that Paul Manafort is driven here in part by his fear of the Russians he crossed up.

LEMON: Interesting. OK. I want you guys to stick with me because we have some new reporting that we need to talk about, about phone calls between Donald Trump and Roger Stone on the other side of this break.

[22:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Asha, Jack, and Garrett are back with me. So, let me ask you about this, Asha. This is the Washington Post's new reporting about Robert Mueller -- about Mueller scrutinizing calls that Trump made with Roger Stone. This is in 2016.

So, let me read it. It says, "In recent months, the Trump organization turned over to Mueller's team phone and contact logs that showed multiple calls between then-candidate and Stone -- the then-candidate and Stone in 2016 according to people familiar with the material. The records are not a complete log of their context. Stone told "The Washington Post" on Wednesday that Trump at times called him from other people's phones. Stone said he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump and diminished -- excuse me -- the importance of any phone records, saying unless Mueller has tape recordings of the phone calls, what would that prove?"

Then there's an extra detail that I need to point out here. According to Christopher Ruddy -- you know, Christopher Ruddy is a friend of President Trump. He's at Mar-a-Lago a lot and talks to him. One of the phone calls may have come from his phone. Does that spell trouble for Trump at all? What does this say if anything?

[22:29:54] RANGAPPA: Well, I think as Jack mentioned earlier, you know, these kinds of details can be corroborative, and Mueller has a trove of information. We know that Roger Stone was e-mailing about WikiLeaks, in contact with WikiLeaks. So you can put a time line together. What an investigator is going to do is take what they know about the known contacts, and then place them against other contacts he was having to create a picture. You know, it's true they won't have the contents of those calls, but it might go to proving more likely than not that there was some communication about it.

LEMON: Garrett, it's interesting to me, because you said one reason that you believe Mueller's end game may be in sight is how the screws appear to be tightening on Jerome Corsi, who is a friend of former Trump adviser Roger Stone. Talk to me about that.

GRAFF: Yes. So this is this whole nexus of Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Julian Assange, that we're sort of seeing all of the simultaneous movement around all three of them. We know that Robert Mueller has been laser focused on Roger Stone since the spring. He is up to, I think, seven or nine Roger Stone associates who have testified in front of the grand jury. Corsi is going around, you know, talking about being indicted, leaking these documents that were related to a plea agreement that appears to have fallen apart.

And then in London, remember, over the last week we've seen some significant new movement around Julian Assange, that the Ecuador -- that Ecuador has removed the ambassador who has overseen the embassy where Julian Assange has been hiding since 2012 and is blocking access to Julian Assange's lawyers to the embassy. So that is leading to some speculation that perhaps the embassy is preparing to hand over Julian Assange and that it sort of is all about this group of people, Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, and Julian Assange, who appear now to have been in some sort of regular contact around the time of these WikiLeaks dumps of the stolen e-mails from the Russian military intelligence GRU.

LEMON: But they never talked. Stone says he never talked to then- candidate about it. OK. GRAFF: Although go back to that quote, though, for a second that you

were reading, Don.

LEMON: Let's put it back up.

GRAFF: It's a really fascinating quote where he says -- where you have him saying, well, I never discussed it with him, you know, unless they happen to have tapes of us discussing it.

LEMON: Yes, last part. Stone said that he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump and diminished the importance of any phone records, saying unless Mueller has tape recordings of the phone calls, what would that prove? That is the quote you're talking about.

GRAFF: And I'll bet Asha really didn't take that as innocence from suspects she was interviewing.

RANGAPPA: I'd call that a deceptive statement.

LEMON: Jack, I want to talk -- let's talk about Rudy Giuliani confirmed to "The Daily Beast" that there is a joint defense agreement between Donald Trump -- or President Trump and Jerome Corsi. How surprising is it that the President has this agreement with a conspiracy theorist? This was one of the biggest pushers, saying that President Obama wasn't born in the United States.

QUINN: Not just that, he says 9/11 was an inside job, suggesting that the United States government had something to do with the worst terrorist attack on this country ever. He says that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't shoot John Kennedy. I mean there is not a high-profile criminal case that he thinks was correctly prosecuted.

He questions everything the United States government has done, but Corsi, of course, is pretty close to Stone. And, you know, look, what they're trying to do here is to establish this link. Remember, going back to basics, Mueller's mandate is to determine whether or not there was coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. And the Special Counsel seems focused on the people who are most likely to have provided that linkage, now focused on Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, you know, conceivably Paul Manafort, a and tying all of that together. It's no accident that Roger Stone predicted that the e-mails would be leaked when they were.

It's no accident, I think, that the e-mails were dumped on the day that the "Access Hollywood" tape was released. That suggests coordination with the campaign. There are any number of things that suggest linkages here. And as someone said earlier, the Special Counsel knows a whole lot more about these linkages than we do.

LEMON: Right.

[22:35:00] QUINN: So he is hot on that trail.

LEMON: Well, you said coordination, and we have to remember it also said within that, and anything that arises from that --

QUINN: In connection with.

LEMON: Yes, in connection, so that is a big scope. Thank you both. I appreciate it.

Senators, even some of the President's allies furious tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I changed my mind because I'm pissed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Why a briefing on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi backfired and had even Republicans voting against President Trump. Senator Chris Murphy tells us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A remarkable moment of bipartisanship in the Senate today, and it was a backlash against President Trump. The Senate voting to advance a resolution imposed by the administration ending U.S. support for the war led Saudi-led war in Yemen. It took place just hours after Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went to the Hill to defend the administration's response to the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and urge Congress to stay out of the way in U.S.-Saudi policy.

[22:40:10] Not on the Hill, though, CIA Director, Gina Haspel. The administration declined to send her to the briefing with those Senators where she would have no doubt faced tough questions over the CIA's assessment of the Khashoggi case. Joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Why do you think they declined to send CIA Director Gina Haspel to the Hill today?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D), CONNECTICUT: Well, I think the answer has been pretty simple as has been reported openly, the U.S. Intelligence Services have come to the conclusion that it's likely that Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, ordered the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. And if that is the case, then why has the administration not taken any action against him?

Why has the administration not taken any action against the regime? I think they knew that ultimately they wouldn't have answers to those questions if she showed up today. So instead they sent the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, who, you know, tried as best they could to play dumb about the intelligence. Ultimately they lost 14 Republicans later that afternoon.

LEMON: But they're saying there's no smoking gun. You don't buy that?

MURPHY: Well, there probably isn't a smoking gun. There's almost never a smoking gun. What the intelligence community does is piece together lots of different pieces of information to come to a conclusion, and that is the conclusion that they have come to here, that he was likely involved in the decision-making. And of course it just stands to reason that this unit that he put together to go up and round up dissidents that has always been under his control would have likely also been under his control when it was in Turkey.

LEMON: Let's go back to something that you just said moments ago. You mentioned 14 Republicans joined Democrats to advance that resolution ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Do you think that is a sign of how angry some Republicans are with the administration's handling of Khashoggi's murder?

MURPHY: I think it has -- it has to do with that, but I also think that Republicans are waking up to the changing reality inside Yemen. You know, the civilian casualties are getting worse, not better the deeper that we get involved. And for a long time, I think many Republicans were willing to believe the Saudis when they told us, hey, we're not killing these civilians on purpose. We're killing them by accident even though all the evidence suggested that they were killing civilians on purpose.

The Khashoggi case has laid bare the fact that the Saudis lied to us. They lied to us for two weeks about what happened to that journalist, and the Republicans in the Senate came to the conclusion that they probably were also lying to us and have been lying to us about who they're trying to hit and target inside Yemen.

So I think it's not just a vote that is a rebuke to the handling of the Khashoggi case. I think Republicans are legitimately worried that we are helping the Saudis perpetuate war crimes inside Yemen.

LEMON: I want you to listen to this, Senator. This is Senator Lindsey Graham, his strong words today about the administration not sending the CIA Director.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRAHAM: I get Yemen. I understand the strategic relationship between us and Saudi Arabia, but I'm not going to blow past this. So if that briefing is not given soon, it's going to be hard for me to vote for any spending bill.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're talking about the spending bill being what you would --

GRAHAM: I'm talking about any key vote, anything that you need me for to get out of town, I ain't doing it until we hear from the CIA.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So just a few hours later, he said -- this is a quote -- pissed, and then he voted to advance the U.N. resolution. Are you surprised to see such a strong ally of the President stand up to this administration?

MURPHY: I'm not surprised. I've spent a lot of time with Lindsey Graham on this issue over the last four years. I forced four votes on the floor to try to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen. And for the first three of those, Lindsey Graham was the chief defender of the Saudis. I think he feels very personally burned by the Saudi regime given how they lied to the United States and to him about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi.

And I think it has caused him to wonder whether they've been telling the truth to him about the war inside Yemen. So, I spent a lot of time with him on the floor today. It was a tough vote for him to vote against the administration and vote against his friends in the Saudi regime, but I think he is, like many of us, rethinking the whole nature of our alliance with Saudi Arabia and whether we can trust an ally that has been lying to us about one big thing, which means they might be lying to us about a lot of other smaller things.

[22:45:04] LEMON: Senator Murphy, thank you for your time.

MURPHY: Thanks, Don.

LEMON: Is the senate's vote today a sign that there are cracks in the foundation of the President's relationship with his own Party and could his 60 percent disapproval have anything to do with it?

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LEMON: This President has gotten used to getting his way in Congress but with the midterms giving control of the House to Democrats and rumblings of discontent among Senate Republicans, that could be about to change. Let us discuss now, Susan Glasser is here and Evan McMullin as well, good evening to both of you.

Evan, let me start with you. Between movement in the Mueller investigation and the coming resistance in Congress, are we entering a new era of trouble for Trump?

[22:50:05] EVAN MCMULLIN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think we are. With every passing day, we see more news, post midterms about the Mueller investigation and about linkages between his campaign and WikiLeaks and Russia and all of that. And I think there is a sense in Washington and Congress that this is going to continue and look worse and worse for the President. And, of course, with a House under Democratic control, even more will come to light, but I think there's also another dynamic. And that is Republican Senators in particular are now thinking ahead.

Those who will be up for reelection in the next cycle and especially those among them who will face competitive races. They've got to look ahead to think you know, how will their actions now vis-a-vis Trump especially as the investigation moves forward and given situations like this whole Khashoggi situation and with Saudi Arabia, how will what they do now reflect on them in those election situations. And that is going to increasingly be a dynamic as we get closer to 2020.

LEMON: Susan, we saw a crack in the President's Republican support today in the Senate over the handling of the Khashoggi murder. Senator Lindsey Graham was especially angry. Are you surprised by that? SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know it strikes me

that the administration really overplayed its hand and what they did I think was at a minimum tactically disastrous in sending the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis up to brief Senators who demanded to hear from the CIA, because the CIA Director had personally heard this horrifying tape of Khashoggi that the Turks supposedly had. They refused apparently directly on the orders of the White House to let her come.

So, number one, the Senators were offended that they weren't being given their due as a separate branch of government. Also, Pompeo really seems to have gone in hard. He publish an op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal" accusing them of cater walling up on Capitol Hill. You know, Senators are very prickly about their own prerogatives. They don't like to be insulted in that manner especially when you're asking for their vote. I thought it was a dramatic flip. You just had Chris Murphy on, he has been working for years on this, and the last three years he has been trying to get this through.

A few months ago, the last time they had a vote on this, they had only 44 yeses. They went up to 61 today. So, I don't see how there's any other explanation than it is a vote to reprove the administration for its handling of the Khashoggi affair. Like, two months ago, the White House was acting like the Saudis' lawyer in this case. And what's amazing to me is that even as this horrifying evidence has been produced and we have an enormous amount of evidence now, they've continued to act as the Saudis' lawyer and in fact had doubled down on it. It seems politically to be mystifying.

LEMON: You know, Evan, this President has done and said so many outrageous things here at home and globally. Why account congressional pushback over the Saudi story you think all of a sudden?

MCMULLIN: I think Senator Murphy had it right especially about Republicans starting to see our support for the Saudi effort in Yemen as something that leaves the country vulnerable to quite a bit of exposure given the Saudis' prosecution of that and the civilian deaths and very large scale humanitarian catastrophe that it's become.

I do think that will Senator Murphy's right that Republicans themselves are starting to reassess our role in that effort and then overall, our relationship with Saudi Arabia and our relationship with Saudi Arabia is always one that is troubled. There's a lot of actual distrust among some Republicans on the Hill of the Saudis for long- standing reasons. I mean, some has to do with 9/11. Some of it has to do with the Saudi government's promotion of more extreme version of Islam around the world, but there's not a lot of trust, a lot of deep trust there to begin with.

And now that we discover that Mohammed Bin Salman and the others in the Saudi government have been lying to the American people, lying to Congress, lying to the world about their role, their murder of Jamal Khashoggi, then I do think that all those things combined bring Republicans in Congress to a tipping point where we're going to see the kind of action that we saw today, but more of that. And I think especially coming with the funding bill due in early December where I think we'll see more action against Saudi Arabia.

LEMON: Before I let you guys go. Susan, I want you to respond to this. I want to put up the President's disapproval numbers, this is from the Gallup weekly tracking poll. 60 percent for the first time. Do you think Republicans are feeling the weight of an increasingly unpopular President right now? Especially considering to what happened in the blue wave in the midterms.

[22:55:10] GLASSER: Well, there will certainly wasn't the red wave that President Trump often talked about.

LEMON: Sixty percent disapprove? I mean, that is not good.

GLASSER: Look, his approval ratings up till now have been remarkably stable that they mostly hovering in the 50s of disapproval and around 40 percent approval. And you know, what you're seeing is a weakening, not a dramatic cratering and for Trump to be in serious jeopardy with his own caucus, I think you'd have to see something that was a much more dramatic shift than we've seen so far.

I'm struck by is that 60 percent disapprove before there's any Mueller report, before there are a next wave of indictments or charges in the case, before there's more information that sheds light on what we know to be an enormous and troubling pattern of contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians in 2016.

So that is the number that you're starting out with before any of this becomes public. And I do think it helps to shed light on why the President has seemed so frenetic and frantic over the last couple weeks. He is clearly extremely worried about what's coming at him next.

LEMON: Susan, Evan, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. President lashing out at Robert Mueller. So just how rattled is he by the Mueller investigation?

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