confirmations of an attorney general in modern times. because usually you have got a president with long public service experience. you know where he stands on voting rights, civil rights, criminal justice. not donald trump. nor has he ever dealt with an attorney general before. so what you have seen is these senators trying to get sessions essentially to agree to certain precedents serving a president who delights in breaking traditions and precedents so they will have some assurance on what is going to happen. let s talk about president obama. he gives his final address tonight. going back home to chicago essentially trying to recapture a lib of that grant park feeling he had back in 2008 when he accepted the presidency. talk to me about what you expect to hear from him. and where will this rank in terms of presidential farewells? i think what we will hear is some prompting to people like me, historians, what we should think and write about barack obama in the future.
would indicate otherwise. i have no belief and do not support the idea in a muslims as a religious group should be denied admission to the united states. i do believe that if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty that you undermine the respect for the law and encourage more illegal immigration into america. down the hallway at the capitol fbi director james comey being asked what he knew about and when about reports russia hacked america s election. there is no doubt that the russians attacked intruded and took data from some of those systems. joining me now from the hill, casey hunt. and from the pentagon, hans nickels. casey, let s start with you. senator sessions was grilled on civil rights, women s rights, hate crimes, immigration, his ability to say no to donald trump. the muslim ban, torture, russian hacking, freedom of the press.
he was questioned whether he does believe the fbi s assessments, other things like that. i think atmospherically the protests very much a central point of this and underscore kind of the public pressure around this nomination. but so far i m not hearing anybody say that this hearing means that sessions is any less likely to be confirmed. what will be the democrats strategy going forward? i know we ve seen a number of protests in the hall trying to disrupt this hearing. but this is just the first of many confirmation hearings we are going to be getting this week. what is going to be the general strategy for the democrats? is this just a situation where they are going to be trying to question each nominee as a proxy to donald trump because they can t question him directly? in some cases, yes, that s true. session is particular because of his background on civil rights and because there are so many activists who are really focused on this nomination. and you saw that in the protests
president-elect of the united states. it s going to be his first news conference in more than 160 days, since mid-july. and it s happening just nine days before his inauguration. as of now, all signs point to it actually happening, too. joining me now from our washington newsroom, peter alexander. let s talk about this news conference before we get to the news conference let s first talk about how the transition team is reacting to senator session s testimony today. it s very clear that he was well prepared for this. are they feeling like he is well representing not only himself but donald trump s presidency? i think before we do this we need to put something that says spin alert on the bottom of the screen. they are not going to say they think he is getting crushed. they are going to say they are satisfied. i spoke with one of the persons who was hyped the scenes in the process of preparing. they say they couldn t be happier with this.
you just saw senator sessions make the point that he does not think that enhanced interrogation, torture, isly. that is a clear departure from the alberto gonzalez point that you can always have some enhanced interrogation. that s a departure from what donald trump said on the campaign trail, that he believes water boarding is not torture and it is an effective form of interrogation. he since tried to walk that back a little or change his stance on it since he found out that james mattis his nominee for defense secretary didn t necessarily believe it. james, one other point. s in the first time we ve seen james comey since the election. 11 days before the election he came out and revuved, if you will, the investigation into hillary clinton s e-mails. are we expecting to hear him address that in any way? are the democrats going the try to get him on record or have they already for how he whether he believes he might have unduly influenced the