while also protecting the environment. the natural world is a beautiful thing. the work that we do helps protect it. public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the powerlines. we want to keep the power on for our customers. we want to keep our communities safe. this is our community. this is where we live. we need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. together, we're building a better california. this is cnn tonight. i am don lemon. a little past 11:00 here on the east coast. live with all the new developments tonight. the president's pick before the

supreme court looking less and less certain right now. judge brett kavanagh going on tv tonight trying to fight back against accusations of sexual assault and sexual misconduct when he was a student. plus questions tonight about the fate of the man regarded as the firewall between the president and the special counsel robert mueller and the russia investigation. after "the new york times" reported on claims that rod rosenstein had suggested secretly recording the president, discuss the 25th amendment, many thought the deputy attorney general's days were numbered. this morning rod rosenstein met with the chief of staff john kelly expectsing to be fired. white house officials say rosenstein will stay in his job for now. president trump who is in new york for the u.n. general assembly says he is planning to meet with his deputy attorney general on thursday when he returns to d.c. so the clock, well, it is ticking. i want to bring in now erika, columbus, cnn official.

fbi senior intelligence advisor. good evening to both of you. so, phil, is rosenstein safe? >> i don't think he's safe, but i mean i find it amusing that we sit here and say "the new york times" and cnn are fake news and then people are saying well, rod rosenstein should be fired just because the fake news reports something. so what is it, don? i mean, i can't figure that out. obviously one of the aspects that we have to consider here is whether the president is actually strategizing saying i can't afford chaos, particularly on capitol hill when we're doing -- when we're in the midst of the kavanagh hearings. i don't think he's going to be fired unless potentially he sits there and admits what "the new york times" said to the president. in that case if i were the president you'd have no choice but to remove him. i don't think rosenstein did what the times said and he did and he tells the president, i think he's gone. >> well, maybe he has no intention of firing rod rosenstein and he knows it's a distraction away from kavanagh.

>> that's what i think is going on. clearly people including john kelly are walking in to the president saying, one of your signature, one of your signature gains, which the president has repeatedly talked about in political rallies, was the nomination of one chief justice or one supreme court justice already. and the president has to be saying, this will be a huge victory if i get him. i don't want kavanagh to divert attention. pardon me, i don't want rosenstein to divert attention. >> well, here you go. hey, eric, a source is telling cnn that rosenstein overestimated the president's anger over the situation, which is what led rosenstein to offer his resignation to the white house chief of staff john kelly. is it possible that he makes, makes -- that he comes out unscathed with all of this? >> that rosenstein comes out unscathed? >> yeah. >> well, i think no one ever comes out unscathed with donald trump. the best case he can muddle through. trump may well calculate that his least bad option is to leave

rosenstein in place rather than move on him. people talk about the hot stove theory of donald trump, that he's like a young child who will -- touches things until he gets burned and it happened to him when he fired james comey. and he may be far more restrained now to do anything that would lead to an uproar on capitol hill. especially with mid terms approaching. >> so, listen, if rosenstein does get fired or he resigns, supervision of the mueller investigation falls to the solicitor general noel francisco. do you think the russia probe would be vulnerable if that happened? >> if you're looking at me, i don't think it would be vulnerable. i've seen the stories through this morning about vulnerability. tell me what's going to happen here. you're going to have somebody sitting in a temporary seat looking at the most volatile investigation since watergate. typically somebody sitting in that seat is a caretaker.

ear going they're going to do a u-turn and say despite my predecessor, despite what the person in the seelt might say, i'm going to do a u-turn on the investigation and shut it down, i don't think that will happen. i think the attorney general, despite the recusal, would have a role in saying, slow down, son, you're just a caretaker in that seat. washington is talking about this today. i don't buy it, don. >> noel francisco, eric, was appointed by president trump, a long-time conservative lawyer. has argued in the past in favor of executive authority. how do you think francisco would approach the mueller investigation if he had to deal with it? >> well, first, i don't think he would be very happy to have to deal with it and he need not deal with it as much as some might want him to. he could well just let robert mueller do his thing and play very minimal role except insofar as mueller wants -- >> doesn't he end up becoming jeff sessions? meaning the president constantly criticizing him and saying, why

do i have an attorney general who is not going to do what i want him to do? >> it's quite possible. and yet jeff sessions is still there and is living his best life. living the dream, fulfilling every conservative priority he's ever dreamed of. and that's not a bad outcome for noel francisco if he wants it. >> one of the things mueller is looking into is whether president trump obstructed justice by firing the fbi director, former fbi director james comey. do you think -- could firing rosenstein, phil, bring about more questions of obstruction of justice? because that is what adam schiff is saying. go ahead. make him fire rosenstein and then it becomes obstruction of justice. >> i think that hinges on one really simple question. if i were the president, i'm sure he won't do this, but if i were him i'd have rosenstein in and say, can you please explain to me what the origins of that report were? and as i mentioned earlier, if rosenstein says they're actually accurate, then the question is not that the president is trying to obstruct justice. he's dealing with somebody who

is insboerubordinate. that is easily reason to remove rosenstein. i don't think that conversation will be that easy and i agree we might have a deputy attorney general who sort of faces the tillerson treatment. he gets abused in the media and on twitter all the time until the president decides actually now it's not that sensitive. i'm going to dump him. >> interesting. let's talk about what's happening with lawmakers, okay. because, eric, republican leadership has put the brakes on a bipartisan bill to protect mueller, but the majority leader mitch mcconnell is saying that he wouldn't even introduce it because it wasn't necessary. do you think congress -- do you think they need to act to protect the -- robert mueller and this investigation? >> i think it would be great if they did. i don't think it's going to happen. i think that -- focus on the bill maybe a little bit misplaced because for political reasons i think the greater danger is not that trump would do something drastic as shutdown the entire investigation, but rather that he might try to find ways to limit it, try to get

francisco to, to box in mueller in various ways, try to make him hurry up this investigation. that all carries its own risks, but it's easier for trump to try to pull off than something far more drastic like firing mueller. it's harder to prevent via legislation. >> i want to play this for you, phil. this is trump attorney jay sekulow talking about the possibility of rosenstein being fired or quitting. watch this. >> i think it's really important that there be a step back taken here and a review. and i think it's a review that has to be thorough and complete, and a review that has to include an investigation of what has transpired with all of these statements and all of these allegations going back to the strzok and page and basically a time-out on this inquiry. >> time-out. i mean, what do you think of that, phil? >> what the hell is he talking about? let's be clear here. can you explain to me what's

changed in the mueller team after mueller's been around since the spring of '17? he's had a couple of lawyers change, but the guy in charge of it, robert mueller, stayed in place. why would we change this now at a slow down? and furthermore, jay, jay, talk to me, brother. you told us we need to accelerate the end of the investigation. you're now saying because the general manager changed, we need to stop the investigation. so if the general manager on a football team changes, i guess we need to skip a few games. that is one of the dumbest things i've seen from what appears to be a smart lawyer. i don't get it. that is just ridiculous. >> eric, thank you. i appreciate it. it's a chaotic day in washington as the white house deals with the russia investigation, the kavanagh confirmation hearings. i want to bring in the chief white house correspondent for cbs news major garrett. good to see you, sir. >> thank you. >> by the way, he is the author of this new book. mr. trump's wild ride. the thrills, chills, screams and

occasional black outs of his extraordinary first year. i appreciate you joining us here this evening. >> we had all of those today. >> right on. okay, so, then, my question is does rod rosenstein, does he survive the end of the week, by the end of the week? >> it feels like he will. i really do think the white house preoccupation over the weekend was entirely about the fate of brett kavanagh working with senate judiciary committee chairman chuck grassley and the majority leader mitch mcconnell on doing whatever is humanly possible. there may not be much left to do humanly and politically possible to keep republicans linked arms about a process and an eventual vote to try to see if brett kavanagh can be confirmed before the mid terms. i think rosenstein and the story of "the new york times" caught the president's attention, but only momentarily. and he may have thought and the white house may have perhaps engineered this entire fire drill this morning, if you will, to take our attention away,

understandably, from the kavanagh scenario. >> i'm glad you said that. >> because it felt that way because of the rapidity with which the firing resignation spread across washington, quick confirmations on something that is typically not rapidly confirmed by this white house. so it had the feeling to me. look, don, i've been doing the book tour thing. i'm buffered by this. i'm not in the trenches hour to hour day to day. but that's how it felt to me. i do believe and i know for a fact the white house preoccupation has principally been about the fate of judge kavanagh, not rod rosenstein. >> you've been doing this long enough to have a gut feeling. your gut feeling may be right. i thought the same thing and others did as well. speaking of kavanagh, this is left wing activists confronting senator ted cruz, i want to put this up, and his wife at a restaurant in washington. >> we believe survivors. we believe survivors. we believe survivors. we believe survivors.

we believe survivors. >> you can see emotions are running high throughout the country. do you think the senate will confirm kavanagh after all of this? >> it feels very, very shaky right now. but it is, don, and i write about this in great detail in the book, an imperative of this white house and mitch mcconnell, the senate majority leader and the white house counsel don mcgahn to see this through if politically possible. but the next 72 hours are going to depend entirely on three republicans. lisa murkowski, susan collins and jeff flake. possibly also bob corker, but i would list the first three, bob corker of tennessee. and what you saw all last week as the senate judiciary committee kept moving in response to dr. ford's request and her attorneys' request, they had to move because they had to continue to build a process acceptable to those three republicans and keep them on board for the absolute necessity of voting to approve and confirm judge kavanagh. if those republicans back away

or slip away, then the white house is going to have to go through a shake down cruise it's never had to contemplate. replacing brett kavanagh with another nominee, and knowing that fateful decision -- and i'm not predicting it. but should it be made -- puts this nomination in a lame duck session after a midterm and a completely turbulent political environment. that's why they feel if they can possibly achieve it, to push this through even if it creates enormous backlash the kind senator cruz and others are experiencing. >> let's sink to into a little more. you speak about the book and the potential of nominating supreme court justices and getting trump elected. that's how he won over some republican voters, by releasing a list of possible supreme court nominees during the campaign. and here's what you write. you say the list bound uneasy republicans to his cause. if for no other reason than to investment in his hands and not clinton's the future of the supreme court.

i met countless trump supporters who with no prompting identified the supreme court as the reason they would live with trump's volatility and lack of political experience. in retrospect, it seems like a pretty smart strategy, doesn't it? >> it was. and it's unique to trump. whether you are a fan of the trump presidency, many americans are, or dee spies the trump presidency, many americans do, this was an act of political originalism brought to him through the auspices and the offices of the federalist society. no doubt i talk about that in great detail in the book. but nevertheless, the idea of putting a list out there and identifying potential supreme court nominees and then right before the general election saying this will be the list, and i will choose from this list, the president gave social conservatives, other conservatives interested in the future of the court something to hang their vote on. separate from everything else that kind of either disturbed them or gave them some measure of anxiety. examine in that respect, you have to acknowledge that the, at minimum, and maybe appreciate it

as an act of political originalism. >> i've got to ask you about this. it's disturbing to most journalists. in the month of september, there's only been one white house press briefing, just 14 of them since june. just 14. has it mattered in terms of getting truthful answers from this white house? >> well, certainly it matters because that is the public's forum, to test the white house and watch it respond. look, i've been fortunate enough to cover directly four presidents. i know the briefings can sometimes be tedious. i know there are sometimes legitimate criticism about a sort of play acting that goes on. i understand that. but it is, nevertheless, an important public forum where questions are asked and they are answered. and follow-ups can dislodge truths the white house would otherwise rather not deal with. and the absence of briefings deprives the public of that. and it reflects something that i think is important to note, don,

which is this white house feels increasingly defensive about defending itself in public. that's a fact. when you have fewer briefings, you are announcing that to the world, because if you were confident about your ability to answer these tough questions, you would be out there. frequently. >> do you think former fox news executive played a role in that, less information coming out, fewer press briefings, control -- >> i know the direct answer to that is i know late spring, this became an active topic within the white house. why are we doing this, why are we getting pummelled so much, why is it such a negative experience? that comes with the territory. you are the president of the united states. you speak on behalf of the country through the white house. tough questions are part of your daily existence. dealing with those tough issues and answering tough questions and explaining yourself to the american public is part of your job application. when you run for nomination of a

major party and then you land yourself in the white house, it comes with the territory. shirking that responsibility, backing away from that, is your way of telling the country, you feel defensive about what you may have to defend. >> major garrett, thank you, sir. here's the book. everybody should read it. the book again is "mr. trump's wild ride, the thrills, chills, screams and occasional blackouts of an extraordinary presidency." wow, all in the first year. thank you. >> thanks, don. as i love to say, i love to say, you don't need to read it. just buy it. >> thank you, sir. i appreciate you joining us. hope to see you soon. write another book so you can come back. all right. so, listen, after the break i'm going to share a story with you. it's my own story and the story of someone close to me. it's why the account of the women who allege assault or sexual misconduct against the scotus nominee hit very close to home and i hope you'll watch and

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so, as many of you probably noticed, i wasn't here last week. i was on vacation. a bitter/sweet one. i'm going to explain that in a moment. but while i was gone, the story about brett kavanagh and alleged sexual abuse became the big story. even though i tried to ignore the news, this one was hard to avoid. so, tonight i feel compelled to share with you something that is very personal to me. there is no standard way survivors talk about sexual assault. it isn't always a police phone call and a rape kit or a report filed with hr. sometimes they don't talk at all, for years, even decades. sometimes a little comes out in a conversation with a friend, partner, or a doctor, and sometimes it comes out all at once. why is it so hard to talk about? well, part of it is fear, and part of it is doubt.

will i be believed? will i be blamed? will i have evidence? do i have to relive what happened? will everyone judge me? and if i speak out, will it even matter? why i have been about my experience with sexual assault, and i know firsthand that no one ever wants to come forward, even to family, friends or loved ones, let alone the entire country. my own family didn't know what happened to me. i didn't tell my mother till i was 30 years old. and it was something that happened when i was very young. one of my abusers, while a lot older than me, was also young, in his teens. so it has been really frustrating to me to hear people ignorantly excusing a 17-year-old possibly committing sexual assault as boys will be boys, teenage hormones, testosterone at work here.

well, let me tell you. in my life it hasn't mattered if the person was 17 or 70. the pain and the damage are real and it never goes away. i first spoke about it on the air on cnn eight years ago this week -- wow, time flies -- and only because in that moment i was so moved by an interview i was doing with young members of the new birth church in suburban atlanta. they were on cnn defending bishop eddie long who was accused of abusing young men and it was during that interview that it just came out. >> let me tell you what got my attention about this and i never admitted on television. i am a victim of a pedophile when i was a kid. this doesn't make you gay when you do this so when someone starts to say that, you perk up. >> i never admit that had on television. i didn't tell my mom that until

i was 30 years old. especially african-american men don't want to talk about those things and don't want to admit them. >> i hadn't watched that since it happened. and it's tough, too, even know it's tough. i did later write about it in my book and i have talked about it since. but it's never easy. so, here's my message then and now and today. people aren't always who they present themselves to be in public. a molester doesn't have an m on their forehead. or abuser doesn't have an a on their forehead. rapist doesn't go around with ean r on their forehead. people are tricky characters. innocent until proven guilty must remain the law of the land. at the same time some guilty people do cloak themselves in innocence. remember, after all, bill cosby was america's dad not so long ago. think about that.

so, two women have come forward with allegations against supreme court nominee brett kavanagh, both alleged deeds they say happened decades ago. he insists they didn't happen at all. i don't know what happened. i don't. but we need to hear them out. and have an honest investigation into whether there is truth to their stories. some have called these women brave, courageous, even patriotic. others have called their revelations a shameful smear campaign, a political conspiracy, and unfair and unjust. people, including the president, questioned why wouldn't they have talked about it sooner. well, the answer is different for everyone. which brings me to why last week was bitter/sweet and the news hard to ignore. as i said, i was on vacation trying to have a good time, but then i got this news. someone extremely close to me, a family member told me just this past week, about her own experience.

out of the blue she texted me and she said, this is a quote, i believe her because i am a product of the me too movement. and i texted right back and i said, what? no way. why didn't you say anything? and she replied, shame. i thought he loved me. so much more to this story. and then i called her and we talked. and, yes, i did ask her if i could share this. she told me that she was assaulted by a boy friend years ago. and even though it happened then, there is still pain now, and it still matters now. so i have been thinking about why she told me this and about why she didn't tell me sooner, and i have been thinking about why these women are coming forward to tell the whole country what they say happened, knowing that they will be judged and judge kavanagh will be judged, and someone will be believed and someone won't.

my last question, please, i want you to really thinks about this as we consider their accounts and the judge's denials for the sake of everyone involved. are we interested in truth, are we interested in healing, or is there, as there always seems to be these days, a political game being played with people's lives? and we're talking about a lot of lives across the country, because according to the rape abuse and incest national network, every 98 seconds, someone in the united states is sexually assaulted. one out of every six american women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. about one in 33 men are survivors of an attempted or a completed rape in their lifetime. and about two out of three sexual assaults go unreported. if you have experienced a sexual assault and are looking for

help, please know that there are resources available to you. call the national sexual assault telephone hot line to speak with a trained staff member to find help in your area. their number is 800-656-hope.

so, the president is questioning why christine blasey ford didn't report her sexual assault by brett kavanagh more than 30 years ago when she said the incident took place. he is challenging her to name the date, time and place. as i said in the previous segment, most victims of sexual assault don't report what happened. i want to bring in now patty davis. she has written an op-ed for the washington post titled, i was sexually assault the. here's why i won't remember many of the details. patty is the author and daughter of ronald reagan, president

ronald reagan, and she joins me now. thank you so much for joining me this evening. >> thank you. >> how are you doing? >> i'm good, thank you. thank you for having me. >> so, in your piece, you talk about horrible assault that happened to you about 40 years ago, but you don't remember many details. what do you remember? >> i remember every detail of the actual assault. i couldn't tell you what month it was. i couldn't tell you if when i got to the man's office, if his assistant was still there. it was, as i said in the piece, it was sort of after work hours appointment, which in retrospect, it should have made me suspicious, but didn't at the time. so there were a lot of things i don't remember. but i remember in detail when he crossed the room and when he was on top of me. i remember how his breath smelled. i remember how the leather couch

stuck to me. i remember the things that matter. and that's what happens in a trauma. you know, it's kind of miraculous really, it's sort of your brain's survival instinct. you remember -- you take pictures of what is important and what is dangerous. and the rest that doesn't matter falls away. and -- >> you block it out. a lot of it you block out. and even things that happen around that time, even if it's not directly connected to that, people will say, don't you remember such and such and such? no, i don't really remember that. i'm sorry for interrupting. go on. >> no, that's okay. i was going to say that when i -- when i've heard people criticizing her, professor ford, for not remembering where the party was or what month it was or whose house it was, i want to say, have you never been through a trauma?

forget sexual assault. have you never been in a car accident or an attempted robbery or watching your kid fall off a jungle gym? i mean, in any kind of trauma, that's how the brain works. and i suspect that all the people that are criticizing her have actually been through some kind of trauma. they just don't want to acknowledge it and give her the same grace that they give themselves. >> when you hear people say, this happened so long ago, and this is boys will be boys, and what 17-year-old do you know that hasn't done that and it's hormones and testosterone? what do you say to that? >> i remember one of the women who was interviewed by somebody on cnn said, oh, 17-year-old boys do this all the time. and i thought, lady, i don't know what town you live in or how you raised your kids. but i know a lot of teenage boys who are sons of my friends.

i don't know anybody who piles onto a girl, puts their hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and tries to rape her. i don't know any boys who do that. >> and we don't know exactly if that's what happened, but i understand the sentiment of what you're saying, you know. let's just say that it does happen. we should not be perpetuating that behavior and condoning it in some sense by saying boys will be boys. can we move forward? i want to talk about thursday. christine blasey ford is set to speak with the judiciary committee on thursday. what do you think senators should ask her, patty? >> well, i think they should ask her about her experience, but more importantly i think that they should really listen to her. if you have listened to what

they have been saying, that's probably not going to happen. i know mitch mcconnell said, we're going to plow through it, "it," like she is a piece of flotsom in the road and she's in his way. lindsey graham initially said, oh, very flippantly, i'll listen to the lady. and more recently said, there's nothing that she can say that will change my mind, which doesn't really comfort with the whole listening thing, right? you know, if you want -- if people wonder why women don't report sexual abuse or why they keep quiet about it for years or even decades, this is why, because that's what they get on the other side of it. and we've made a lot of progress in this country. we have a movement now. but in a lot of ways we haven't moved at all. and what is going on right now

at this moment in time and this moment in history is illuminating all of that. this is obviously about the appointment of a supreme court justice, but it's about a lot more than that. it's about how we treat victims of sexual abuse. >> yeah. patty davis, listen, i am sorry that you had to experience what you experienced, but i thank you for writing this piece for the washington post and i thank you for coming on. >> thank you. >> thank you. we'll be right back. sooner or later, we all sign up for medicare.

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deputy attorney general rod rosenstein is set to meet with president trump on thursday. he may be just days away from finding out his fate as the top official at the justice department overseeing the russia investigation. here to discuss cnn political commentators and cnn contributor michael dee antonio author of the shadow president, the truth about mike pence. but also he wrote the truth about trump. am i right? >> there's a lot of truth going around. >> or not. alice, good evening. good evening, everyone. i want to start with you. throughout the morning it was

unclear if rosenstein still had his job. the president who is in new york is said to have spoken with rosenstein this morning. he also said this, watch this. >> meeting with rod rosenstein on thursdayment when i get back from all of these meetings, we'll be meeting at the white house and we'll be determining what's going on. we want to have transparency, we want to have openness and i look forward to meeting with rod at that time. >> alice, what's going on here? some uncharacteristically caution -- uncharacteristic caution there for not immediately firing rosenstein. do you agree with that? >> it is the best move he could have made. it's a good thing he took a breath, let cooler heads prevail and really thought about this because, look, my view, this story was planted by a disgruntled former fbi head, andrew mccabe and lisa page. they wanted to do something to cause the president to make --

take a knee jerk reaction. fortunately he took a breath. looks, there's two ways to look at this. if the president were to fire rosenstein, it -- there's the political lens which would be bad if he did that. it would look as though he was trying to obstruct justice and obstruct the mueller investigation. but also from an investigative oversight standpoint, it wouldn't have any impact on the investigation. mueller is going to continue to do what he's going to do. so it's best for the president to sit back, let cooler heads prevail, have a conversation. i think he should keep him on there because it's not going to affect the outcome of the investigation. and we need to let the mueller probe play out. we need to see how russia interfered in our election and if there was any coordination between them and the trump campaign. >> so, michael, even with all the bluster and the bullying, you've said this before but you also said it in your column in the atlantic today. you said president trump loathes face to face confrontation and rarely fires anyone. >> he's a coward. he fires people on tv when it's a reality tv show.

but when it's reality, reality, he's very uncomfortable with confrontation, especially with someone who is also powerful. so this is a president who is very comfortable talking trash at a rally. when he was a business person he was very comfortable firing maintenance men who were accused of stealing from johnny carson. but when it comes to a direct confrontation with someone with some reputation and some heft, he's not so brave. >> charles, i want to talk about your late effost column and it' called thomas, kavanagh, and race. you say it's a distinct difference between the hearings. many people have drawn attention to the numerous parallels between you two cases but i would like to draw attention to one difference, one that could bode well for ford. the absence of a racial element in a heated racial environment. so, what do you mean by that? because the racial element

existed in the -- with the anita hill, clarence thomas, but it doesn't exist now. >> you have to understand what was happening in 1991. so, in march of 1991 was the rodney king beating which was probably the first time amateur video was used to demonstrate police brutality. so maybe you could argue that it was the first black lives matter case. and it was enormous. and it consumed television. bush was so nervous about it that he called the attorney general to the white house, had a press conference in the white house about the beating. this is not the person who had died. just the fact that it was captured on television was big enough that the president of the united states called the attorney general into the oval office and condemns it from there in an extended press conference where that was the only thing they were there to talk about. we haven't even had that when

people are killed in the street on video in these days. so you have to understand that context, it was enormous. and towards the beginning of the summer, the judge rules that the jury pool is so tainted in l.a., you have to move it out -- trial out of l.a. they haven't figured out where to move it. while they're waiting to figure where to move it, to where simi valley where there's no black people, while they're waiting for that, the seat comes open and thomas is nominated. and you have thurgood marshall going out, liberal lie on, incredible civil rights kind of megastar, and you have this guy. and now black people are having to choose, do you support this guy who has the sketchy record and to replace him -- replace thurgood marshall or do you stand on principle and don't support him and risk having no black representation in the

court? and it's really touch and go, civil rights groups don't even make a stand because they're so nervous how do we deal with this. you get to the hearing, anita makes her very credible accusations, but black people see this image that is an echo of the image they've seen in march and since march, which is this panel of all white men sitting high, right? that's how these things are. sitting high encircling this black man, which is almost a mirror image of what had happened in the rodney king beating. the circle, kind of wolf pack of white men around this man. and trump -- and clarence thomas plays -- this isn't the race card. it turned everything. and it gave cover for people to say, i support him because now 70% of black people support this guy so he can't be bad. >> i have to go because we're over time, but there won't be

that element this time. so it may bode well for the victim this time. >> now it's just -- it's not that struggle. but the racial struggle. >> i've got to go. thank you all. i appreciate it. we'll be right back. (vo) gopi's found a way to keep her receipts tidy, even when nothing else is. (brand vo) snap and sort your expenses with quickbooks and find, on average, $4,628 in tax savings. quickbooks. backing you.

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twin crises for the white house. the president reaffirms his supreme court pick as we see if he will fire the man in charge of the russia probe. and sending missiles to the assad regime. why now? how it could heighten risks of an air war over syria. and bill cosby will be sentenced today for drugging and assaulting a woman in 2004. a teen is found alive in