joining us, senator tom udall of new mexico with us, donna brazile is here, our democratic strategist who's with us as well. senator udall, thanks for coming in. you've hard to get alan gross out there. tell us what it was like. >> i was there a little more than a month ago with senator flake. we spent two hours with alan gross. it was an engaging conversation. my sense is his condition was getting better. it seemed like something was up. we were at the point where it really seemed that the cuban government was easing things in order to get to the point to do some behind-the-scenes negotiations. we felt very encouraged by what we saw.