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Don Lemon Tonight

"Washington Post:" Mueller Looking At Late Night Calls From Trump To Roger Stone In 2016; Trump Ramping Up His Attacks On Mueller Investigation; Trump's Spin Campaign; Barack Obama On The Loss Of Our Common Set Of Facts; GOP Gender Gap In The House; Historic Midterm Elections for Democratic Women; Senate Votes to Advance Controversial Judicial Nominee; CNN Special Report: The State of Hate; Meet CNN Hero Luke Mickelson. Aired 11-12a ET

Aired November 28, 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'm Don Lemon. And we have lots of news in the Mueller investigation to report to you. "The Washington Post" is reporting the Trump organization turned over phone logs to Mueller's team detailing multiple calls between Roger Stone and then candidate Trump in 2016. Stone claims this list is not comprehensive since Trump at times called him from other people's phones.

We're also learning more about a joint defense agreement between the President's lawyers and notorious conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi. The agreement allows them to share information with each other. Corsi recently rejected a plea agreement with the Special Counsel which would have required him to admit that he lied to federal investigators. He is known for pushing conspiracy theories from birtherism to claiming explosives brought down the World Trade Center on 9/11.

CNN has exclusive reporting tonight about the written answers from President Trump he provided to the Special Counsel. Trump claims that he had no knowledge of any contacts with WikiLeaks. He also says he knew nothing about the 2016 Trump tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., senior members of the campaign and Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Lots to discuss now. Let's start with CNN's National Security Analyst, Matthew Rosenberg and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman. Good evening to both of you. Harry, you're up first. Does it seem like Mueller is tightening the screws and the investigation is closing in?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, yes and no. I mean, he is about the last part, the big chunk that to date had not been actually delineated, the whole sort of American side of the Russian interference, but there's been some slippage in these screws, right? I mean both Manafort and Corsi came to the table near cooperating in a way that would have zeroed in on Stone and probably others.

And now they've taken a step back. I think he has -- it's clear he is got all the information for this last building block, but you know, I think he is going to have to possibly approach it differently now that Manafort's imploded and that Corsi also. By the way, I think Corsi probably, Mueller probably bounced him rather than vice versa. But in any event, he is no longer a potential cooperator.

LEMON: Very interesting that you should say that. Listen, another question for you, Harry. Manafort's lawyers were apparently telling the Trump team everything that was going on with the investigation. You wrote a great piece in "The Washington Post" and it is titled "The Manafort witness deal implosion is a very big deal."

Here is what you write, you said, Mueller is fully entitled to subpoena Manafort council Kevin Downing and whichever Trump council spoke with him. One trusts it wasn't Emmet Flood who is too savvy for such shenanigans and force him to reveal every word of the discussions. I mean, Mueller could subpoena them all, right?

LITMAN: Tomorrow. The argument that the communications were confidential is really very weak now. Once Manafort started to cooperate, there was no common interest between them and there was no privilege. Now, it would be a detour.

Here's where Whitaker's oversight might come into play whether he would try to prevent it. It could ripen into a political battle. Charges of witch-hunt as a legal matter, it's an impeccable step. As a political and practical matter, it's a tactical question for Mueller. And my best guess is he will shy away from it. But it's very ripe for the pickings if he wants it.

LEMON: Mr. Rosenberg, you've been sitting by very patiently. So my next question is for you. CNN is reporting that Trump told Mueller in writing that he wasn't told about WikiLeaks and wasn't made aware of the 2016 Trump tower meeting. You had been covering this story for all along, does that jibe with what you know?

MATTHEW ROSENBERG, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": I mean, that is always been a huge question. We know his son was there. We know Paul Manafort was there. And we know that the Russians advertised that we may have dirt on Hillary Clinton we want to talk to you about. Who knew, how far up it went? Whether Donald Trump knew at the time has been the big outstanding question.

[23:05:00] But I also want to step back from it and like step away from the legalities for a second. And just keep in mind, this is a truly astounding moment where, you know, we are talking about you know, plea agreements, people dropping out of plea deals.

These people were like a chairman of the Presidential campaign that won. You know, people, conspiracy theorist, who is a joint defense agreement with the President's lawyers who believes 9/11 was an inside job. Who, the U.S. government? I don't know. I mean, it's pretty amazing.

LEMON: Well, that and the whole birtherism thing. And a number of other things. I mean, Matthew, "The Wall Street Journal" is reporting that Manafort lied to Mueller about his communications with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business contact who prosecutors allege has ties to the same Russian military intel service that hacked the Democrats. How significant would that contact be, do you think?

ROSENBURG: I mean, that is hard to say. You know, there's always a theory that Manafort was somehow a middle man here or the plant in the campaign or provided the avenue through which Russians worked with Trump. I mean these things remain, you know, in the air.

And though it is a big question, you know, why was a campaign chairman brought in who did have these incredibly close contacts? You don't normally walk around Washington and find somebody in bed with Russian oligarchs and you know, Russian President's allies for years. It is an incredibly unusual kind of profile. And then to have that run a campaign.

LEMON: I want to talk about this, Harry, the "Journal" is also reporting that Mueller has questioned witnesses about a boat trip that Manafort took after he was fired from the campaign with Tom Barrack, who is a longtime friend of President Trump. They want to know if Manafort met with Kilimnik on that trip. What does that tell you about how much Mueller knows and how much he knows?

LITMAN: Right. I mean, the whole fact that he was able to blow up the Manafort agreement, it's clear he had evidence independent evidence that will showed Manafort was lying. He gave him that last sort of 10 day chance to come clean and he didn't. How does he know?

He said himself or the team did in the sentencing memorandum, he is going to give chapter and verse. That means he is going to give the facts and evidence that he knows that shows Manafort was lying.

And to Matt's point, remember Manafort, he was desperate for this job. Right? He goes hat in hand to the campaign and offers to work for free. If he possesses some information about the Russian side, you've got to imagine that he was saying here's one of the reasons to hire me. I've got this valuable information that might actually turn the dirt on Hillary. I mean, it hangs together based on what we know about his sort of job interview that he was so desperate to acquire.

LEMON: Yes. I want to get some more reporting here Matthew that I want to ask you about. This is from the "Washington Post," also reporting tonight that Mueller is intensely interested in calls Trump made to Roger Stone in 2016. I just want to read this. It says, in recent months the Trump organization turned over to Mueller's team phone and contact logs that show multiple calls between the then candidate and Stone in 2016 according to people familiar with the material.

The records are not a complete log of their contacts, someone 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 the importance of any phone call and any phone records saying unless Mueller has tape recordings of the phone calls, what would that prove. So what's Mueller after here, Matthew?

ROSENBERG: Let's take a minute to appreciate Roger Stone who kind of fills in the picture. Actually, there are even more calls that you don't know about and then makes a vague comment. What does he mean? If Mueller had tapes, would it be incriminating? It's wonderful -- wonderfully frank.

Look, Stone was tweeting about, you know, John Podesta, Hillary's campaign manager was going to have trouble. He seemed to -- these people anticipate WikiLeaks had information that was coming out. Whether he was telling the Trump campaign about this, warning them, has been another big question in this investigation. Now we know that he was talking to the President a lot.

They go back years. Stone kind of prides himself, I mean this Republican dirty trickster who, you know, probably thought he could help Trump win the election. Maybe he did. But it is a big question. What were they talking about? Was he told? Was Trump told that hey, WikiLeaks has the stuff, it's going to come out? And I think that is one of the things that we hope we're going to find out pretty soon too.

LEMON: Matthew, Harry, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

President Trump trying to counter the Mueller investigation with his own spin campaign in right wing media, but can alternative facts help him in the face of actual facts?

[23:10:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: President Trump upping his attacks on the Special Counsel Robert Mueller blasting him on Twitter for a third day in a row. The President's increasingly frantic attacks on the Special Counsel, a sign that he is warming up to the right wing echo chamber?

Here to discuss, April Ryan, the author of "Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House," and Max Boot, the author of "The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."

Good evening to both of you. So glad to have you on. April, the President knows that he can rely on Fox and other right wing media outlets to echo his message. Is this all part of an alternative set of facts that he wants to push out?

APRIL RYAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALIST: Of course, but you know, Don, the crazy part about this is that there is one mind-set on one side of the aisle and another mind-set on the other. And some people really on either side really believe what each side is saying.

[23:15:03] And at the issue, at the center of all of this is the truth. And then how you spin it or how you try to make it an alternative fact, but the sad piece about it is that you could put something out there that the President says and you know, let's say we say it's this way and it's fact when we say it, but then you have someone else that says well, he said this.

But this is what he meant and this is how it was and this, this, and throw alternative facts and people will believe it and people will believe the conspiracy theories and all sorts of things now. Times have changed. I remember when it was that is the way it was. Remember Walter Cronkite. It's so different now.

LEMON: Yes. It certainly is. Max, I just -- I want to play something. This is the former President Barack Obama what he said last night at Rice University.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Whether it was Cronkite or Brinkley or what have you, there was a common set of facts, a baseline around which both parties had to adapt and respond to. And by the time I take office, what you increasingly have is a media environment in which if you are a Fox News viewer, you have an entirely different reality than if you are a "New York Times" reader.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And it is interesting, Max, I think because admittedly the folks at Fox will tell you in primetime I'm talking about, they don't have to work with -- they work with opinion. They don't have to work with facts in a way that news organizations journalists like here at CNN do.

They don't have to do that. Although their viewers don't know that, they think what they're saying is fact when it's actually an opinion. How dangerous you think are these information silos? Do they help someone who wants to be spread false information?

MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's incredibly dangerous what's going on here, Don. This is really corrosive of our democracy. You know, my friend Garry Kasparov said something very interesting as a Russian dissident. He is seen this in operation in Russia where Putin has taken over the country by controlling all the sources of information and basically feeding a propaganda line to the populace.

Now in this country, thank goodness most of the media is free and independence and we try to tell the truth as best we can, but simply by having control of Fox News and these various social media websites and radio networks, Donald Trump is able to force feed an alternative reality to about 30 percent of the country. People who actually believe that Robert Mueller, a lifelong Republican and independent prosecutor, is leading a, quote unquote, gang of angry Democrats on some kind of, quote unquote, witch hunt against Donald Trump which is ludicrous.

I mean, it is so farfetched for anybody who knows anything about Robert Mueller and his universal reputation for integrity, but this is commonly believed among Trump acolytes. I mean, just today, Trump tweeted this image which is insane even for him. Retweeted it, made up by somebody showing with the claim being that the Russia allegations have been disproven.

Now it's time to lock up the traitors and you know, showing the traitors who need to be locked up including everybody from President Obama to Secretary Clinton. There it is right there on the screen to Rod Rosenstein. Donald Trump today actually said that Rod Rosenstein his own Deputy Attorney General deserves to be locked up, because he appointed a Special Counsel which is his legal obligation to do to investigate these credible charges against the President.

And, but it's stunning to me to see how so many of Donald Trump's supporters are buying into this absurd and malicious propaganda line that he is feeding to defend himself against this investigation.

LEMON: It is just shameless. I have often said, what does it say about us that we have gotten to this point? April, listen, the President has also done a series of interviews since yesterday with "The Washington Post," with Politico. The "New York Post" trying to get his version of reality to a wider audience. Not just to the right.

RYAN: Yes. Well, you know, it's important that the President puts out what he puts out beyond Fox News, because he understands that he has to play to the court of public opinion. And he has that base. He has his base, but he is trying to go beyond that to try to make his point. The problem is that the well has been poisoned by his own pen and his own tongue and words.

So what he is trying to do at this moment is make himself look better in the public eye, the broader public eye than what he is because right now you know, with Paul Manafort and everything else that is happening with Russia and Ivanka and these e-mails, he is trying to change and persuade people what you see is not what you're getting. It's this way.

[23:20:03] The problem is that this President, he has -- he is like the kid who cries wolf. You know you say it so many times, you don't believe it anymore. And listening to him, people are -- there are a lot of people who are not his base who are using more critical thinking when he speaks versus his base who we're supporting him saying that we are not giving him a fair chance, but this President is trying to change opinion and moving out. I hope he grants me an interview at some point.

LEMON: I would love to see that.

RYAN: Excuse me.

LEMON: I would love to see that.

RYAN: I would love to see that, too.

(LAUGHTER)

BOOT: I would pay to see that myself. April, I think the danger is even though a lot of people a lot of people realize what Trump was saying is ridiculous, I think what he is basically doing is sowing doubt. There are going to be other people who say I don't know what to believe. Donald Trump claims that Robert Mueller is an angry Democrat. Other people are saying that Robert Mueller has integrity. I don't know what to believe. He is basically trying to create some doubt in public opinion. That is I think a lot of what he is after.

LEMON: It is really unbelievable.

RYAN: Exactly he is like Johnny Cochran, if it didn't fit you must acquit.

LEMON: That is why I would love to see that interview. Before I go, guys, can you guys help me say so long and farewell to one of my producers? This is her last segment that she will produce. Yasmin Khorram, we just call her Yas, and wish her luck. And we're going to miss her.

BOOT: Good luck.

LEMON: Good luck.

RYAN: Thank you, Yas.

LEMON: All right. Don't forget about us when you're rich and famous. That is not a word. Thank you guys. Have a good one. Republicans in Congress are actually widening their gender gap after this year's election. Why when Democrats are electing record numbers of women to the house? Are running falling behind?

[23:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We're getting a clearer picture of the new congress, lots of diversity on the Democrat side of the aisle. But what about the Republicans? Let's discuss now. Van Jones is here, Alice Stewart, Tara Setmayer. This America is my dream team right here. So good evening. Let's talk. Who am I going to start with? Tara. I hope you guys had a great thanksgiving. I haven't spoken to you since. I hope you had a great thanksgiving. Let us move on right now.

Tara, you know, with the loss of Mia Love, there are now no Republican African-American women in Congress out of 53 Republican Senators, there's one black Senator out of 200 Republican House members, there is one black house member. What's up with that?

TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, this has been a problem for decades for the Republican Party. It's been very difficult to recruit candidates that can win and that are more representative of what the country looks like as a whole. And it was a shame that Mia Love lost. She was a good member of Congress and the way that Donald Trump treated her was really atrocious and I was glad to see her speak up and have some choice words for him.

And even she said that you know, the way he is behaved and the way the Republicans have basically given Donald Trump a pass on a lot of these racial indiscretions is one of the reasons why the party continues to have these problems with minority voters and also recruiting quality minority candidates to run.

LEMON: She said it was transactional, right? She said the relationship with people of color was transactional.

SETMAYER: Yes, so you know, -- I don't think you're going to see much improvement moving forward during the era of Donald Trump just based on the way the party has handled how despicably he is handled race relations. It's going to make it very, very difficult.

LEMON: Alice, what do you think? This is a problem, obviously, you think it's a problem, right?

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Sure. Not only if you look at the class photos of the House and Senate Republican and Democrat, clearly the Democrat picture is much more representative of the American population. It's not just more women in the Democratic side. There's also more people, minority members, and they clearly did a better job of recruiting minorities and female candidates.

And that is something that the Republican Party has acknowledged and recognized and I would like to think, I know that efforts are under way to make a correction, course correction on that moving forward to 2020, because we not only need to have the best candidates moving forward, we need to have some that represent the American population with their policies, but also in how they represent in Washington.

LEMON: Alice, can I ask you something?

STEWART: Sure.

LEMON: Because I just want to -- Frank Bruni wrote a column about this today and he pointed out that Mia Love was once appointed to as a symbol of major progress for the GOP.

SETMAYER: She was.

LEMON: And now, you have a President who is attacking her. So that she is on the way out. What gives here?

STEWART: This unfortunately, the President's style. Tara was exactly correct. Mia Love was a tremendous member of Congress. She did a fine job and she was someone that had not just the, in my view, the policies reflective of the Republican Party, but also the correct tone and tenor. She was someone we could look up to with great pride and respect, but her situation as many have, if you don't jump fully on board with this President, you are fully off board. And --

SETMAYER: She was --

STEWART: He will attack you.

SETMAYER: She was the daughter of Haitian immigrants. She was truly the representative of the American dream of what can happen here when you come as an immigrant and live with the dream. And she embodied that. So it was really even more shameful that way that President Trump attack her.

LEMON: Van, listen, we both know this. There are good amount of black conservatives, right? Many opportunities for inroads. Traditionally, African-Americans are pretty socially when it comes to religion, conservative, right? So there are inroads that conservatives can make in the Republican Party thusly so. Has Donald Trump blown it?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, looks like it so far. You know, it's really interesting. I remember, there was one shot during 2016 where you had -- I think it was Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio on the stage together, and a chill went down my spine. I said -- SETMAYER: Mine, too.

(LAUGHTER)

SETMAYER: It's for different reason, probably.

LEMON: For different reason.

SETMAYER: I was there at the South Carolina primary. I was actually in the room.

JONES: Yeah, I mean, I said, listen, short term who knows who wins. But long term, that's the Republican Party that would be very, very tough for Democrats to beat. And, you know, fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, that's not the Republican Party right now.

Listen, you know, Mia Love, you know, just a beloved person, you know, respected on on both sides of the aisle, she certainly didn't deserve to be treated the way that she was by President Trump. Here's what I think is interesting. Nobody talks about it though.

Tim Scott, only African-American senator who is just awesome, doing awesome stuff. He got the opportunity zone put into the tax bill. I mean, anytime there's something positive happening, this one African- American senator is doing double duty, triple duty. Why wouldn't you want five, six more people like that? I mean, it's not like the one guy you've got in the Senate isn't a superstar. So it's a bizarre thing.

Last thing I want to point out is, for those pro-Trump black conservatives who have been sticking their neck out for President Trump, this issue around prison reform, criminal justice reform, you have seen Pastor Scott and Candace Owens and others out there saying for god's sake, you know, Republican Party at least passed something.

LEMON: I got to say though, Van, when you bring up those folks who are so extreme.

SETMAYER: Yes. They're not a good representatives.

LEMON: They turn off African-Americans and maybe even more so than some of the people who are not of color in the party. Because they are so extreme, so they're so out of the mainstream --

SETMAYER: Right.

LEMON: -- and they're so not clear.

SETMAYER: As a black conservative, they don't represent real black conservatism or conservative in general.

LEMON: I know what you're saying. Listen, I got to get to the break, Van, but just quickly, can you comment on this part? Have you seen the numbers, the studies on the Republican Party moving forward? Look at what happened in the midterms, what happened in the suburbs and on and on. They're going to have to do -- what was it after the 2000 and --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Have you seen those reports, Van?

JONES: Yeah, it's -- it's --

SETMAYER: Brutal.

JONES: They are on a pathway that's not a positive pathway for them long term. They have to do something different.

LEMON: Yeah. All right, stick around. We got a lot to talk about. A controversial Trump judicial nominee is one step closer to confirmation tonight. We're going to talk about Thomas Farr and the many accusations of voter suppression against him.

[23:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: A controversial judicial nominee is one step closer to becoming a federal judge. Van is back, Alice is back, so is Tara. Listen, I'm going to start with you, Van, but also Tim Scott played into that, and we'll get to that in a moment because you mentioned him in the last segment.

JONES: Yeah.

LEMON: Today, the Senate voted to advance Thomas Farr, is his name, to be a district court judge in North Carolina. Civil rights groups say that Farr is a disaster, that he led voter suppression efforts that disenfranchised African-American voters. How did you feel about today's vote?

JONES: I felt terrible about it. I think one of the things that we are dealing with now in the country is the sense that democracy itself is on the line. This idea -- there's no constitutional right to vote, but there is a sense in America that everybody has a right to vote and that it is right to vote.

When you put a referee, that's what a judge is, supposed to be the referee on the bench and that person does not believe that everybody has an equal and fair shot at the democratic process, it reduces everybody's belief that the system can be fair.

And I think that, you know, that's very dangerous in any society, when people start to believe that the deck is stacked against them, that there's no justice, there's no fairness, then, you know, you wind up in a very volatile situation. I was very disappointed that someone like him -- by the way, there's a lot better people in America to be judges than him.

LEMON: OK. All right.

STEWART: Don --

LEMON: Go ahead, Alice. I'm sorry.

STEWART: Look, taking a look at this from the big picture, when President Trump came into office, there were 108 federal vacancies with regard to judges.

His commitment to the Supreme Court and transforming the power of the courts was the number one reason I voted for him and many other Republicans because they wanted to see him put in the justices that he wanted to put in. Democrats have obstructed this at every opportunity. Judge Farr is no exception.

JONES: No.

STEWART: His record, Judge Farr, if you look --

JONES: No.

STEWART: -- at his record, it is about defending congressional lines that were put in place in North Carolina. It was about defending the voter I.D. It was about making sure we had security in our elections. However, Democrats have now taken that to make it look as though he is someone --

LEMON: Many people called voter suppression though, Alice. I think that's what Van wants to weigh in.

STEWART: He's defending the security of elections but Democrats are using this as an opportunity to stop him from being appointed to this position.

JONES: I just can't --

LEMON: OK, first, let Van jump in, Tara. I promise you will get --

[23:39:58] JONES: Tara, if you don't mind, listen, here's the thing. First of all, you talk about these vacancies that were there like somehow, you know, by some magical spell, Harry Potter created these vacancies.

The Republicans obstructed President Obama's his right to appoint justices for years, held up and created those vacancies, and they're now rushing to fill them. So don't act like it's the Democrats are the obstructionists here. The Republicans were slow walking obstructing the whole time that they had control of the Senate. That's number one.

Number two, listen, if what you're saying is true, if all he was doing was impartially trying to help Congress with different lines, you wouldn't have this level of outrage. We are not equally outraged about every judge.

This judge is extremely hostile toward voting rights for minorities. He's extremely hostile toward the voting rights acts. And that's why you're getting this reaction. Don't act like every judge is getting this response.

LEMON: Before you respond, let Tara go. Go ahead, Tara. What do you want to say? SETMAYER: Van actually made the point that I was going to bring up. It is true that Republicans played this game too when Trump was in office, including --

LEMON: When Obama was in office.

SETMAYER: I mean, when Obama was in office, specifically for this judicial nomination. They had two African-American women who were nominated that Obama put up that Republicans blocked. That is part of the political game. That's the advantage of being in the majority when you're in the Senate.

Harry Reid also changed the rules. You don't need 60 votes to nominate judges or to confirm judges. You only need 50. That was under Democrats. Now that's coming back to bite them. So, that is the political side of this. The other side of this is, there's nuance here.

Alice is partially right, in that some of these voter I.D. laws are not necessarily trying to -- aren't voter suppression. Some voter I.D. laws are. And in North Carolina, the courts there determined that what Republicans were trying to do there didn't pass the smell test. There was disparate impact affecting African-Americans. So of all the judges in the world, they have to pick someone like this --

LEMON: OK, I'm running out of time. Go on. Go ahead.

SETMAYER: The perception here is that you have someone, whether he is or isn't hostile to voter I.D. and hostile to minority voting rights and all of that, the perception is that he is.

LEMON: OK.

SETMAYER: So, putting someone else, that's the problem here.

LEMON: I've got 20 seconds left. I want to get this in, because Van mentioned Tim Scott earlier. He said he's doing a great job. He's the only black GOP member. He voted to advance Farr. He said he wasn't sure and then OK, you know, I'm going to do it. Quickly, please. Is that doing a good job if you proceed this voting someone in?

JONES: I don't like everything that Tim Scott does. I don't like everything any politician does. But Tim Scott has done more good than bad --

SETMAYER: He has.

JONES: -- and they should more Republicans like him.

LEMON: That's it. Alice?

STEWART: And he's doing the right thing in regard to with these allegations that came out. He's reading everything very carefully and making sure he makes the right decision. He voted to advance the vote. I expect him to vote to confirm him tomorrow. He will make the right decision. LEMON: OK.

SETMAYER: And in defense of Tim Scott, really quickly, who has talked very openly --

LEMON: I got to go.

SETMAYER: -- about his experiences as a black man in the Senate, he did do his homework. He found that there was not a paper trail that he was actively involved in any voter suppression.

LEMON: Thank you. Thank you all. I appreciate it. On Saturday, Van has one-on-one interview with his guest, Andrew Gillum, who was narrowly defeated in the Florida governor's race. Saturday, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, right here on CNN. Make sure you tune in. Again, thanks to my dream team there.

Hate speech seems to be getting louder and more public since President Trump took office. What's behind the increase? We're going to dig into it with a new CNN special report on the state of hate. That's next.

[23:45:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Shocking statistics from the FBI show that hate crimes in America are on the rise, jumping 17 percent in 2017. Why is this happening? What is behind the spike in these crimes? CNN's Sara Sidner looks for answers in her special report, "The State of Hate."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to kill all of you.

SARA SIDNER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Across America, racism and anger once hidden in the shadows, now pouring out into the light. In Santa Monica, a racist tirade over a parking space, a message for Muslims in a car in North Dakota.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to kill everyone of you (bleep) Muslims.

SIDNER (voice over): A black army veteran targeting and killing white police officers in Dallas. A landscaper abused in Los Angeles.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why do you hate us?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Because you're Mexicans?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because we're Mexicans?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Your Sharia law don't mean (bleep) to me.

SIDNER (voice over): Words of hate which seem to be vanished, now brandished more and more often. The FBI says in 2017, hate crimes shot up 17 percent. The motivation for nearly 60 percent of those, the government says, was race ethnicity or ancestry.

KEVIN DUNN, AUNT KILLED BY GUNMAN: She didn't see it coming.

SIDNER (voice over): Kevin Dunn's favorite aunt, Vickie Jones, had beaten cancer, but she could not survive hate. Sixty-seven-year-old Jones and 69-year-old Maurice Stallard, shot dead while grocery shopping, targeted because of their skin color, police say. They were black, the alleged shooter white. A white witness armed with a gun told his son what the shooter said while fleeing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said, please don't shoot or I won't shoot you. He said that whites don't kill whites.

SIDNER (on camera): What do you think about what was said?

DUNN: It hurts. It's sad. It's terrible. People have the right to just exist.

SIDNER (voice over): The suspect, police say, could have caused far more carnage. Pastor Kevin Nelson says a parishioner saw him earlier at their church door.

KEVIN NELSON, PASTOR, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF JEFFERSONTOWN: He bangs on it and pulls on it, then he backs up with his hand on the gun. So, whoever would have opened it would have possibly gotten shot and killed.

[23:49:56] SIDNER (voice over): His church began locking its doors after white supremacist Dylann Roof entered this predominantly black church, massacring nine people as they pray.

(CRYING)

SIDNER (voice over): Ken Parker knows something about the hate that motivated Dylann Roof. A Navy veteran, Parker says he was out of work and without direction. He joined the Ku Klux Klan and later a Neo-Nazi group. Their biggest selling point, making him feel he was important, part of a bigger cause.

KEN PARKER, FORMER NEO-NAZI: They were looking at it as like, we're going to have a race war one day and the more people on our side, the better.

SIDNER (voice over): At the time, Barack Obama was president. Some white supremacists touted the first black president at the number one threat to white people.

PARKER: And we would even joke amongst ourselves like, hey, we're going to send President Obama a honorary membership to the Klan because he's our biggest recruiting tool.

SIDNER (voice over): Then came the election of President Donald J. Trump. White nationalists cheered his anti-immigration rhetoric. Racists who feared what they called the browning of America began believing President Trump was an answer to their prayers.

PARKER: They want to have all white ethnostate where white people just live by themselves.

SIDNER (voice over): Seven months after Trump's inauguration, Parker virtually broke, paid $30 to help fill a bus of racists headed to Charlottesville, Virginia for a protest about a confederate monument. They dubbed it the "hate bus," reminiscent of a bus from the 1960s created by another Neo-Nazi.

PARKER: On paper, we were just going up there to like stand off for the white race, but, honestly, I think everybody was just going to, you know, fight.

SIDNER (on camera): Violence does happen and a woman is killed. What did you think at that point?

PARKER: Well, when I found out that she died, I was happy at the time.

SIDNER (voice over): He and his cohorts giddy (ph) when an alleged Neo-Nazi sympathizer killed counter-protester Heather Heyer. In their minds, the race war they wanted was beginning to materialize. But when the president condemned the attacks, he added --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.

SIDNER (on camera): How did that play in the group, the good people on both sides?

PARKER: Honestly, some of them were real happy about it and then Trump back-pedaled on a little bit and then others in the movement, they got angry at Trump. Trump wasn't anti-Jewish enough, he wasn't doing enough for white nationalism.

SIDNER (voice over): Michael German spent 16 years trying to counter domestic terrorism as an FBI special agent.

SIDNER (on camera): There's always the countered argument from this administration that the leftists are violent, that Antifa is violent, and there's some evidence of that.

MICHAEL GERMAN, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: How many people has anyone associated with the Antifa movement killed? None. How many of this side of white supremacists killed? Many.

SIDNER (voice over): According to Government Accountability Office, since 9/11, while radical Islamists were responsible for 27 percent of extremist-motivated deaths, the far right wing accounted for 73 percent of the deadly incidents, far more than any other group.

In Parker's case, it wasn't law enforcement but love that thawed his hate.

(on camera): So you decided that animosity wasn't the way and shunning wasn't the way but the opposite.

WILL MCKINNON, PASTOR, ALL SAINTS HOLINESS CHURCH-HOGSIC: Absolutely. I fight for peace and what better way to start than your own community?

SIDNER (voice over): His neighbor, Pastor Will McKinnon not only opened his arms, he opened his small predominantly black church to Parker. His outreach washed away the hate.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: And Sara joins us now. Sara, have you gotten a sense from your reporting about how much of this hate stems from the current political environment and how much comes from other sources?

SIDNER: So what's interesting about that, and you know this full well, Don, you've been reporting on this sort of thing for a very long time. What is interesting is, the political rhetoric does not create racists. It doesn't. That's already in somebody.

What has happened when you talk to those who do track this sort of thing, which by the way, the government doesn't track this like they do many other statistics. They're leaving that up to, for example, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Anti-Defamation League.

And when you talk to the people who research this stuff, who are paying attention to it and have been for decades, they say it is the political rhetoric that has emboldened people who already have those strong feelings that they have kept quiet because society said this isn't OK, you're not going to act like this. Now all of a sudden it's coming out, and that's why we seem to be seeing it more and more and more often.

LEMON: Eye-opening reporting. Sara Sidner, thank you so much. We'll be right back.

[23:55:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: When this week's CNN hero learned that kids in his close-knit community were sleeping on the floor, he went from businessman to bed maker. And what started as a single good deed helping one family in Idaho, it soon spread to helping 3,000 children across America get a good night's sleep. Meet 2018 top 10 CNN hero Luke Mickelson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LUKE MICKELSON, CNN HERO: Mattress and sheets.

I'm just a farm kid from Idaho. I grew up here. What I didn't know was there's kids next door who are struggling. There are kids sleeping on the floor.

[24:00:01] I was making six-figure salary but I fell into this need that I discovered wasn't being fulfilled by anybody.

These bottoms are tough.