this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. just before 11:00 p.m. on the east coast, we have new developments tonight. president trump ramping up talk about the investigation, accusing mueller's team who have conflicts of interest. is there any truth to his claims. plus we're just hours away from the president announcing if the united states remains in the iran deal. if he attempts to back out, what are the potential consequences?

the attorney general resigning tonight amid allegations of sexual abuse by four women. more on all of that throughout the hour on cnn. this hour ahead with president trump turning up his efforts to derail the russia investigation. i'm joined now by cnn national security analyst julia cayan, mike shields. mike, i'm going to start with you. the president came out swinging today against the russia investigation and the special counsel. he falsely tweeted this, the 13 angry democrats in charge of the russian witch hunt are start to go find out that there was a court system in place that actually protects people from injustice. and just wait till the courts get to see your unrevealed conflicts of interest. robert mueller is in charge of the investigation.

he's a decorated vietnam veteran and former fbi director. why does the president keep saying this? >> well, he's attacking mueller's team because this is a political fight. there is obviously some legal components to this, but in the end, this is a political fight. if you look at what the clinton team did with ken starr, james cargo came out and declared war on starr and the investigation and dick morris wrote an entire game plan for how they were going after ken starr. they went after al domada who was investigating whitewater at the time. these are political fights. if you look at what's gone on with what rudy giuliani has done in the last week, it's clear they've shifted to a stance to politically talk about this and try and play off it. that's what the president said this morning, this is called me fighting back, and that's because in the end this is a political arena they're fighting in, and he believes he can prove there are members of the team that have given the democrats and are therefore conflicted and this is a partisan witch hunt. that's his message.

>> rick, did the clintons or the clinton team, did they send out false allegations about kenneth starr, or did they just say it was a political witch hunt? because the crux of my question was about the president tweeting false information. >> well, i think the difference here, and what the clinton folks were not exactly fighting marcus of queensbury rules every day. they were certainly able to shift people when they had to achieve their political ends. this president, however, has taken it much, much further. the clinton folks -- not even the clinton folks went out and said, oh, ken starr is part of a sinister carval trying to destroy us and he's part of this gigantic conspiracy. >> yes, they did. >> not to the same degree as this where they're just absolutely making statements of fact that are so disconnected from reality.

but look, this is the president doing professional wrestling, this is the president doing -- he's talking to one narrow silo of his voters, the fox news, fox & friends audience in the morning, making sure they're revved up on this thing, that their hepped up on this thing. in the normal strategy, everybody is entertained. donald trump has a unique, generous level of being a liar in chief like we've never seen before in any president in history. >> i know that you want to respond to that, mike. julia, stand by. mike, the people you mentioned were not the president of the united states. you were talking about carval and others. those were his associates doing that. why is the president of the united states doing it? >> the president is tweeting things. he doesn't have his entire white house and surrogates outside the white house attacking the investigation the way clinton does. >> of course he does. >> really.

who is the james carval going after mueller and talking about the conflicts of interest -- >> isn't that giuliani? >> you've got an entire organization in the white house invested in pushing this. kellyanne conway does nothing else but serially lie on the position on mueller. they have an entire white house staff dedicated to one thing only. they're not talking about the business of the country, they're talking about the business of protecting donald trump. you also have a lot of members of the house who have decided their oath to the constituents, the constitution, comes second to protecting donald trump. and oh, by the way, there is a certain television network that has dedicated 24 hours a day to running stories of the most lurid conspiracies and the most egregious statements of fact about folks like robert mueller and his investigative team. the president isn't standing alone holding his iphone in one hand tweeting violently against the hoard --

>> this is -- >> mike, let juliet go. >> i think all the president has left is the tweets. they are what they are. he doesn't have much of a legal defense. people are indicted, people are making plea arrangements with mueller. you have the whole mike cohen thing which is unfolding in ways that have got to be terrifying for trump, not just on the stormy daniels front but on the russian front. so in some ways this is all he's got left, and we should just tweet it as sort of the last lying statements of someone whose legal strategy is clearly unknown. the only legal strategy we've seen so far is a bunch of lawyers quitting. and so if he thinks he can win this way, it's not just convincing mueller, it's actually convincing judges who have these cases before them, grand juries who have already determined that indictments are

allowable, men who have voluntarily pled to testify against the president of the united states. they're not all going away because of tweets. >> julia, you mentioned michael cohen. the "washington post" published an extensive story about michael cohen. it includes stiff royalty penalties, that includes doctors with whom he helped establish medical clinics and lawyers with which he worked, adding that he spent much of his personal and professional life with immigrants from russia and ukraine. what does that tell you? >> it tells me that the narrative of michael cohen as some innocent, sort of dufus guy who fell in love with trump is it a lie. michael cohen has an enterprise that he actually was sort of the legal brains, in quotes, behind. what we have learned about michael cohen is that he

willingly engaged in the kind of contact that is absolutely illegal, so this notion of him as a dupe is just ridiculous. he's an adult male who should be judged that way. one other quick thing about michael cohen. we have been talking about michael cohen in the context of stormy daniels. i just want to remind viewers that michael cohen is mentioned four times in the steele dossier. the idea that michael cohen is a fixer on the stormy daniels front for trump but not in some ways implicated in the other stuff mueller is looking at is ridiculous. he's a key player across both sides of all the troubles that are facing the trump white house. >> okay, i want rick and mike to weigh in, but first, rick, i'm going to get you. this is from -- this is the "wall street journal." this is a quote from them talking about preparing the president for a mueller interview. an informal four-hour practice session, mr. trump's lawyers were only able to walk him through two questions given the

frequent interruptions on national security matters along with mr. trump's loquaciosness. mike, what do you think of that? >> the idea that donald trump has the attention span of a toddler on espresso does not surprise anyone. this is not a man who is able to focus on things for much longer than the a-block of fox & friends in the morning. i'm not convinced donald trump is trainable in terms of preparing him for testimony, which is why any attorney with any sense of reality wants him to stay as far away as he can from the grand jury, and as far away as he can from robert mueller, because they recognize the immediate peril which will occur as soon as donald trump opens his mouth. >> mike, go ahead. do you want to respond? >> i understand where his lawyers are coming from. they don't want him to sit down for that reason.

that's a far cry from saying, we don't want him to sit down because he's guilty of collusion with the russians and it's going to come out if he sits down and answers these questions. there's a huge difference there. it has been 14 months and going, and going at $17 million and going and going, and the real reason they don't want him to sit down is once you start talking to an investigator, if you say something incorrect, even if it has nothing to do with what the investigation is about. he got confused about someone signing a lease on something and then he corrected himself. if mueller had him on something, that wouldn't be the direction they would go, they want to have him on something. they want him to talk and get in trouble from that, not from what the original purpose of the investigation was, which was russian collusion by the trump campaign. >> we have no way of knowing that. >> we have no way of knowing any of this, but we spend hours on here speculating as if president trump is guilty, and someone

tries to point out that maybe we don't know anything because he's not guilty. >> julia, he was talking about during a deposition that it wasn't true whether he signed a lease or not. your memory is not 100%. >> memory, and chances are whoever the lawyers are at the time this conversation happens, his lawyers will go back and fact-check it. so the idea that the president is going to go to jail or be guilty of collusion based on some mistake or error, whether it was 1979 or 1986 when he signed the lease, is just absolutely ridiculous. i actually think people who supported donald trump should applaud bob mueller for wanting to interview the president. this is actually a really serious investigation that we have to remember was approved by donald trump's justice department in terms of the mandate, and i think mueller is actually showing trump incredible respect in many ways to say, look, there are big accusations here.

already people who have pled to serious, serious things. we have indictments both here and in russia, and so tell us your story. tell us what you knew. because there is a lot of evidence out there that shows that -- whether it's collusion or the money laundering or the sex or whatever it is, a lot of that information is getting very close to you, president of the united states. and so i don't get this whole idea that the trick notion of they just want to trick donald trump. maybe they're actually treating him like an adult and the president of the united states to say this is serious stuff, explain yourself, because we respect -- we respect the office, right? i think you should view it that way. i think it's weird that you think that his silence in any way helps his office. >> have him do written answers, then, so he doesn't have to sit down for an interview. >> thank you, rick, thank you, julie, mike. i appreciate your time. the new york attorney general quitting amid allegations of emotional and

physical abuse. david axelrod is going to talk to us about schneider's resignation. plus explanation on rudy giuliani. the first survivor of alzheimer's disease is out there. and the alzheimer's association is going to make it happen. but we won't get there without you. visit alz.org to join the fight.

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to deliver up to 7 hours of sleep support. number one sleep doctor recommended remfresh-your nightly sleep companion. available in the natural sleep section at walmart. here's breaking news tonight. new york's attorney general resigning amid assault allegations. i want to bring in senior commentator david axelrod. david, thank you for joining us. eric schneiderman has resigned after four women accused him of violence. they called for his resignation. two of the women spoke on record saying he had hit and choked them. both sought medical attention because of the alleged abuse. two others asked to stay anonymous. in a statement schneiderman denied assaults to anyone. it's a developing story. what's your reaction to this news? >> well, he resigned, so obviously he felt that there was a problem here. you know, i read "the new

yorker" account. it was pretty well reported. so i think he did the right thing by resigning, and i think others who called for his resignation did the right thing as well. you can't ride the white horse and then, you know, when the mud comes, it really shows up. these are terrible allegations against him, so i always believe people are due their day in court, but in the court of public opinion, it's very hard to read this and not say, you who called yourself an ally of the me too movement should stay in office. >> again, he's denying it, but he says allegations unrelated to my professional conductor the operations of the office. they will effectively prevent me from leading the office work at a critical time. he's saying he's doing it because he won't be able to -- i guess there will be such a cloud over him. >> i understand that.

eric schneiderman is a battler. he's a pugnacious guy. if he thought there was a way through. he wouldn't resign. what a i read was pretty damning. >> >> the president has been griping at associates that giuliani has failed to shut down the stormy daniels hush money saga, and he says his media appearances are raising more questions than they are answering. has giuliani done anything other than make life more difficult for president trump right now? >> was that a job, don? was he supposed to put out the stormy daniels fire? because i think instead of grabbing the water tank, he grabbed the kerosene and he just heated the whole thing up. he has been a mitigating disaster for the president, and

i'm sure that amid the president's legal team, among his white house staff, there is nothing but consternation. and i have to believe he's going to pull the plug on rudy's show. he reviews these things, he throws people on tv and he sees how they play, and then he pulls this. this has a mooch feel to it. this feels like a scaramucci moment to me. >> they said nobody knows the justice department as well as him and the support on his side. do you believe that to be the case with what happened last weekend and this weekend? >> i don't doubt he's knowledgeable about the justice department. he obviously knows about mueller. but he didn't look like a very proficient lawyer. i'm not questioning his legal credentials, but i don't know any lawyer i've spoken to will do anything but mess his client up in the last five days. he went out to clean up the last round and he made more mistakes,

made things more complicated. >> even more. >> so i think rudy was glad to be back in the fray. he had been kind of sent offer -- off to the side by trump, he wasn't given a job, and he wanted to make a splash. instead he made a mess. >> the president is going to make a decision on the iran deal tomorrow, a few days ahead of the deadline. we know the president doesn't like that deal. reading the tea leaves, do you think he'll get out of this? >> i would be stunned if he didn't. we know that there were reports he was very frustrated with rex tillerson because tillerson didn't think he should pull out. we know the defense secretary has said much the same. you know, what's been clear about donald trump in the last few months is that he's pretty much decided to go it alone. he makes his own decisions whether it's on north korea or

trade, and he's indicated this is the thing that he wants to do, and he's going to do it. i think it's driving a wedge between our allies and it's only going to accelerate iran getting a nuclear weapon. i don't know if he's studied the details of the policy. this is something he promised was an obama achievement or viewed as such, and we know how he feels about that. i think he's going to take an ax to it. >> let's draw down a little bit more on that. talking about the implications of american foreign policy and those alliances with other members of the deal if the president won't stay in this deal. >> yeah. no, i think the french, the brits, the germans have all expressed themselves on this. we had two leaders come here to

the united states to implore him not to pull out of the deal. you know, when you lock arm in arm with your allies on something like this and then just idly walk away from it, it creates doubt. it creates tension. it creates problems. and that's what's going to happen here. it's going to be interesting to see how they react, because he may exit the deal but they may not. so we will be on separate sides of this. then of course we have to see how the iranians deal with it. they've indicated they may take it as an abrogation of the deal and go back to working on their nuclear program. that remains to be seen. but i think this is being done for domestic political content, not as a means of securing, you know -- securing the nuclear potential of iran or capping it. i don't think that's what this is about at all.

this was something that played well to the crowds when he was running for president, and now he wants to follow through on it. and the fact that it was associated with obama makes it a tempting target for him. >> david axelrod, always appreciate your time. thank you, sir. >> all right, don. good to see you. when we come back, a new poll says a majority of americans think things are going well, but what do think about whether the president is personally doing his job? we'll tell you next.

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tell in the way of his election victory and that the forgotten men and women are forgotten no longer. so people who don't support the president, because we know why they support him, right? we had this poll. but why should they read this book? >> this book has something for everyone in it because it explains what this coalition is and it takes it beyond the sort of, you know, trump voters are angry and they're this or they're nostalgic and their stuck in a place that isn't there anymore. and it looks at seven different archetypes that we found going to the traditional blue states that went red, and we went into the counties that voted obama, obama, trump. 600 voters we spent time with out on the road in michigan, kansas, minnesota and iowa.

all of them are completely different from each other. it's a very interesting coalition. but one of the things i think that's really important is that this is a movement that people still aren't listening to what it's saying. and it doesn't just impact the ballot box. it impacts spending, it impacts how we watch television, sports, the way we buy things -- >> i've never seen you so excited. >> i am, i'm really excited about this. >> we'll talk more for sure about what's in this book and much of what you've talked about on this program and other cnn programs, including this book, i'm sure. let's talk about the polls now, because we had this new poll out today, bill, and how do you explain the success of a president who has a disapproval rating consistently higher than his approval rating? >> i think it's an interesting poll, actually. look, the country is at peace and is prosperous. 57% of the public generally

approve or are happy with the way the country is going. the president's approval rating is only 41%. if you had this pretty good 15 or 16 months in the economy, quite good, really, and no foreign policy disasters yet, the president should have been in the mid-50s and he should have expanded his coalition. people were asked if they would rather have hillary clinton for he hasn't expanded his coalition at all of the normally the president wins and then tries to convince the people who didn't vote for him to vote for him. you have a pretty good chance of bringing people over to you. the way trump conducts himself in office, i think, limits his ability to appeal to more people. and if you're a trump supporter, you have to think, what if there is a recession? what if there is a foreign policy crisis?

that number for the president, which is already low, could go down a lot. >> we talk about evangelical support for this president. an overwhelming number of people believe the president had an extramarital affair. he holds steady support among white evangelicals, and yet this 1988. the god of the bible says that what one does in private does matter. if he will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he's most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the american public? >> we call them king cyrus followers. ku had nothing to do with the israelites, but they did follow him out. they didn't have shared values,

they didn't have any shared religion, but he would protect them. and the evangelicals made a decision in 2016 somewhere in the beginning of the primary that they were going to go with -- they were going to be more pragmatic with their vote. they were going to go with someone who had their back. >> they weren't going to do what democrats who didn't have a litmus test -- >> right, they were reflective. what's most important to us? protecting religious liberties and the second amendment and the supreme court. >> bill, quickly i want to get your response, because many people just see this as pure hypocrisy. what do you think? >> i think the supreme court is very important to them, but it's one thing to make a tough, hard-headed calculation and say "i'm jewish." we don't worship king cyrus -- i don't know how much we know about king cyrus but he's not necessarily a model for personal behavior. about president trump, he's doing good things, and my

evangelical friends are pretty unhappy what's happening with the evangelical movement. it's not my religion so i'm not getting into that, but it's one thing to make a hard-headed decision to say he's better than clinton. another thing to hold him up as a model >> the hundreds of people we interviewed, we only brought out three and brought their lives to life. but they don't -- there's no worship there of him. they don't hold him up on a pedestal, but they do like how he has their back. and they don't like his personal behavior. >> there's very little, if any, condemnation of this president. >> oh, yeah. his behavior, yes. what he brings to the table for them, they made this decision, we're going to be pragmatic. >> let's talk about the nra and what happened last week at the nra. the president made this claim. watch this. >> kanye west must have some

power because you probably saw i doubled my african-american poll numbers. we went from 11 to 22 in one week. >> so polling among black americans is actually at 7%. talk about the numbers of voters about the president and race, and they say this. they say, the professional left focuses heavily on the race-related questions in analyzing the trump vote, but they were rarely sighted by trump enter viewers in this book. he talks about very old people in charlottesville and upcoming it's pretty interesting. there are several archetypes within the book who are white but they have adopted black children.

and so they have this different world view, so yes, some of the things that he's -- again, it's not that he's personally popular, it's as though he is the result of this but he's not the cause of it. ask he's the one that brings -- this whole movement is not about him. this whole movement is not about him. >> bill, i have to go, but can you understand why that infuriates many african-americans? >> yeah, it infuriates me. he's downgrading the races. it doesn't excuse it. >> it's called "the great revolt." good luck. when we come back, the senate thinking the white house is worried could book roy moore on steroids. every fire department every police department

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>> mitch mcconnell has created millions of jobs for china people. while doing so, mitch has gotten rich. in fact, this china family has given him tens of millions of dollars. they are now running false ads against me. they're also calling me despicable and mentally ill. in order to drain the swamp and start jobs in west virginia is has begun. i will ditch cocaine mitch for the sake of the kids. >> that is republican senate candidate don blankenship, a cold barron who says he's being trumpier than trump. opposed by the president. matt lewis and scott james. every time i see it, scott blankenship clearly seems to be taking a page out of the ad.

do you think it's going to work >> i don't think so, because i think that's one the republicans need to keep on the board. i was watching this ad, though, that someone from out of the country used to say years ago. i realized they're looking for the craziest sob in the race. running against him splitting that vote. i take -- they would be willing to toss away good opportunities. >> in a tweet this morning, asked about the possibility of him winning. senator john thune said, quote, let's hope and pray that does not happen. it would not be good. why are republicans so afraid of blankenship running.

are they afraid we're becoming maybe the new normal gop? >> remember, donald trump endorsed louis strange and you ended up with roy moore instead. donald trump in the eleventh hour and saying anybody but him. it doesn't necessarily carry that much weight. the voters decided that roy their guy. even though trump didn't endorse him. i think there's a couple reasons why cucumber doesn't -- this would em bolden. as scott said, >> you know, manchin has a much better chance at winning if blankenship is the republican nominee.

i'm paraphrasing here, wackiest of wackiest. i was quoting a congressman from kentucky. running to be the craziest in the race. you calculate a third of the people want the craziest person. that's not a good recipe to win elections. i think donald trump should go to a full manchin if blankenship wins the nomination and beg him that they will promise to support him against blankenship in a general election. >> joe, you sat by patiently. >> let me go with an even bolder idea. blankenship wins and mitch mcconnell says, it's better to be in the country. what's striking here is in a tweet this morning.

because he went to jail. he's a convicted. he's a raisist. vote for the other guy we don't want to lose the seat. i get that from political players and people in the race. from the president of the united states, do we have -- any mystery why things are screwed up? >> i think it might have been a rare moment of self-awareness when he realized the glass house he currently lives in. but i don't think he thinks that way. i don't think a criminal record means anything. i think he likes those kind of candidates. i think it goes to the craziest s.o.b. in the race. the great part about his tweets is you know exactly what he

thinks, and in this case it was, it doesn't matter if he was a when we come back, has the president created a new low bar when it comes to the presidency? you don't want to live with mom and dad forever, do you? i'm making smoothies! how do i check my credit score? credit karma. don't worry, it's free. credit karma. give yourself some credit. you'll make my morning, buty the price ruin my day.ou? complicated relationship with milk? pour on the lactaid, 100% real milk, just without that annoying lactose. mmm, that's good.

president trump running his administration in his own fashion. has he transformed the presidency? joe lockhart, matt lewis and shawn jennings. you write in "the daily beast? " -- he has, in short order, created the low bar presidency, an administration in which we have grown to expect that the spokespeople mislead, the cabinet officials are corrupt and that the commander in chief is learning on the job. the existential question is whether the low bar presidency ends when trump's leaves office. you're a republican. why are you writing this? >> i try to be honest. past presidents have done things that change the trajectory of

america. and they have done things that have led us to the point where we are. but donald trump has broken a lot of new arms, and we're really inundated every day with these different crises and scandals and tweets, and, you know, we have to cover them, but i think it's interesting to take a step back and think of the cumulative effect and impact that donald trump's presidency is having on us and what we'll do when he's gone. i think there is a danger of two things happening. number one, i think there is a danger of a new added competence in some cases is changing, our expectations are changing. and then, the second thing that concerns me is, i worry that there are other future presidents and possible demagogues who are watching how this works. now, the next guy could be fine. the next president, you know, sometimes there's a backlash,

but i think that the trend is linear, and i do worry that the genie is out of the bottle and somebody is watching what donald trump is doing, maybe somebody who is more competent and potentially more dangerous. if you care about defending liberal democracy, as i do, this is something to be worried about. >> i just hope next president, whenever that comes if it comes in the next two years or six years, is really boring. >> a return to normalcy. >> and doesn't blow up my show every night at 9:45 or 9:59. but scott, listen, i want to get your take on this, because i believe you believe that trump didn't create our culture, our culture created trump, but in that scenario, where is the accountability for this president? >> well, the accountability will come at the ballot box. matt raised a good point, in that presidencies do create a backlash. joe can weigh in on this, after the clinton years, we had a reaction to that, we went with bush. we've had reactions to

presidencies over time, and so, the question for the trump era is, are we going to have a complete backlash against what matt argues is a stretching of the norms? i have great confidence in american institutions, i have great confidence in the institution of the presidency, and presidency have certainly treated it in ways i wouldn't have preferred them treat it in the last 50 years in some cases, but we typically bounce back. we typically see people come in and then put their own stamp on it, and often that stamp is a reaction or an overreaction in some cases, to what came before, so, i think the biggest issue facing trump is on the trust issue, and clearly they have had some issues with trust, during the campaign and during the presidency. the biggest issue will come in a crisis. if there is a true, deep national crisis, that is when people are going to expect the truth and nothing but the truth. >> and will they believe him? >> all day every day. that's when the rubber will hit the road. >> the question is, will they believe him? since taking office, trump has made, according to "the washington post," over 3,000

false or misleading statements. my concern is, in all of this, is, does the truth matter? do facts matter anymore? >> they don't in this current environment. they absolutely don't. >> that's sad. >> the irony is, trump ran on draining the swamp and has made corruption the hallmark of his administration. if you strip all of it away, he's seeking to enrich himself, cabinet officers are seeking to enrich themselves, you know, a quarter of them are gone already. we've got one that's got 11 different federal investigations he's apart of. but to the bigger question that i think matt properly framed, politics is a game of imitation. people imitate what works. so, that's why the midterms and the 2020 elections are so important. if it works, if trump succeeds, then i'm not confident going forward. it will be our liberal democracy under attack, but it will give voters a chance to stand up and

say, this is, we're rejecting this. this isn't what america is all about. i think you'll find what will be a positive overreaction. i mean, the classic case of all-time was probably, you know, nixon and then the ford short presidency with jimmy carter running on a platform of, you can trust me. i'm not richard nixon. so, i think the next candidate will, you know, i think whether it's in the republican primary or the democratic candidate will build it on trust. it's going to be up to the voters. if we go the wrong way, it is very difficult to see in the short intermediate term how we turn that around. >> if you're talking about the elections, especially in the midterms, because matt, you write, the long-term danger of americans becoming complacent, that voters will keep sub standard elected officials in power. do you think the upcoming midterms as a good indicator of that? >> i think that right now, we are at a crossroads.

and, you know, i think that what -- the kinds of candidates that get elected are going to tell us something about the american public. if people like blankenship not only win the republican primary, which i think would be bad enough, but go on to win the general election, that is not a good sign for this great experiment. >> i think it's interesting, though, you know, i talk to people about, do facts matter, they say, well, all presidents tell mistruths or whatever, which is true, you know, things don't turn out to be true, and the one answer that they always give is, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. i say, give me another one. there are 2,999 more that this president has done, why doesn't that bother you, and there is never an answer to that. >> but to matt's point, this is an experiment, this democracy, and experiments can go the wrong way and what trump is doing to undermine democracy with an

authoritarian overtone, that's why the elections are important. >> the answer to that is ideology. thank you, gentlemen. that's it for us tonight. thanks for watching. i'll see you right back here tomorrow. . . .

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