you're live in the "cnn newsroom." i'm jim acosta in washington. we begin this hour with breaking news right now. the university of pennsylvania, the president there, has resigned. this comes after her testimony earlier this week before congress about anti-semitism on campus. our polo sandoval is live with more on all of this. polo, not that surprising we're getting this news this afternoon, given what took place this week. the devastating testimony for the president of the university of pennsylvania, that she delivered up on capitol hill. her attempt at cleaning up that testimony, which was also pretty widely panned, and then matching pressure, sounds like, from the board of trustees of that university for liz magill to step down, that's what's happened this afternoon. what's the latest? >> confirmed directly from the university. jim to your point, not surprising giving the days of outcry we've seen and heard from throughout the university, state and federally elected officials and not to mention donors who support the university and calling on magill to step down after that really disastrous bit of testimony that was offered during a congressional hearing. just this past tuesday. it's developed extremely quickly and now days later the university announcing she has voluntarily stepped down in a statement released from scott bach, actually the chair of upenn's board. saying that she will remain tenured as faculty at penn law and agreed to stay onboard while they figure out interim leadership for the university. again, just to remind viewers, just one of three university officials who failed to really offer a very direct and express it answer, saying calling for genocide of jews would immediately violate the codes of conduct for their university, and since then we've heard this growing chorus asking for her to step down, and that's where we are today. finally, jim, an interesting note. just today new york governor kathy hochul announced she actually submitted a letter to some of new york's universities and colleges warning of what she described as aggressive enforcement action, if they don't comply with discrimination laws. basically a preemptive letter to various universities. many of the chancellor of these universities each confirmed call for genocide would be considered a violation of the codes of conduct. very different from what we saw from liz magill a few days ago. we cannot stress enough. much of that outcry, not because of what she said, but what she failed to say, and now you have those two other officials she was flanked by in those images, president of harvard and m.i.t., also under similar scrutiny. the president of harvard actually since yesterday issued a statement of apology via the student newspaper there. >> yes. a hot mess for the leaders of a lot of these very esteemed institutions for just not going far enough in condemning anti-semitism, condemning genocide which should be a layup. joining us now is the university of pennsylvania student who also testified before congress last week and file add lawsuit against the university of what he says is the university's failure to respond to anti-semitic incidents on campus. what's your reaction to this? the president of your school stepping down? >> thank you so much for having me on. this has been something that myself and many alumni and fellow students, parents, working on for a while since penn hosted a lot of anti-semitic speakers to penn, which resulted in a swastika on campus. but i do want to make clear that this is just the first domino in a culture from many leaders, including chairman bach, who have allowed this to happen. >> and when you saw president magill make these comments up on capitol hill earlier this week, did you think immediately that this was going to be a problem for her and for the school? >> i think this has been a problem for a long time coming, and i think what the congressional hearing showed the world is what a lot of us have been saying for a while. that there is an indifference to anti-semitism and a culture of hostility that has been brewing on campus for some time now, and i think if the true cultural change is meant to happen and should happen, then magill is just one figure that has allowed this to happen, and there are continuous steps that need to be taken in order to safeguard and protect all students on campus for such hatred and hostility. >> do you think members of the board should step down? >> i can't steek for members of the board. i'm not aware of -- >> would you like to see that? >> i would like to see chairman bach resign as well. he has told the community that things are under control. that he has full confidence in president magill for some time now, and it's time for not everything to just depend on president magill, but for accountability to be taken across the board. just like we've seen, if this was any other situation, i don't know the ins and outs of the board and i'm assuming many members of the board were a part of asking president ma goil resign. but i do know and a lot of students know we've been told for some time by chairman bach that everything is under control, and i think it's time for beyond just president magill to take accountability. there are other people that need to take accountability and i think that also does include chairman bach, coaching magill on how to handle the situation, and the campus climate has just gotten worse, and we truly need to restore safety. number one. to campus, but also need to secure and restore academics to the university of pennsylvania, if we really want to restore the reputation of this university, and not be fearful for our lives or for professors discriminating, harassing and bullying their students in classrooms and outside of it. >> all right. eyal, thank you for responding to all of this. appreciate it. keep us posted how thing, going on campus. we definitely want to stay on top of the story and we will. meantime discussing more with senior political common dater, and republican strategist doug hyde. brought you on, booked you on the show to talk politics but talk about that in a moment. i think all of you would be just great on this issue, and especially sitting with me here in the studio. doug, to you first. you mentioned to me before we were on the air during the commercial break you are on the board of trustees at the -- >> visitors. >> board of visitors of north carolina and an issue on campuses all over the country. what's your response to what we just saw this afternoon with the president of the university of pennsylvania stelling down? >> eyal, students like him tell me the next generation would be okay. clone him and put him on every campus and have as many student leaders as we could. back to october. in chapel hill, wearing a tar heel high. alumni. week after very ugly anti-semitic protests on campus, saw posters depicting people flying in on paragliders and things like that. just the next week i was on campus for the board of visitors meeting. we weren't prepared to talk about that. talked about the women's tennis team winning the ncaa championship. fantastic. talked fund-raising. great. when i got text messages and phone calls that week it wasn't what the football team or tennis team did, but what happened on campus. the school was unprepared to talk about it. as we saw last week with the college presidents or chancellors, they're unprepared to talk about it because the people hired in communications positions come from academics and academia. they want to surround themselves like that and use words like "contextualize" instead of being clear what you need to do in a congressional hearing. it is a life or death situation for your job survival whatever you do in your profession appearing before congress. you have to take it very seriously. >> ana navarro you've spent time up on capitol hill, involved in politics in your part. how devastating was this tem we saw this past week? we saw the university of pennsylvania president try to clean it up and obviously that did not help. >> incredibly painful and i think like doug i was at institute of politics in harvard as fellow. incredibly painful to see the president of harvard along with the president of m.i.t. and the president of the university of pennsylvania engaging in legalese and just lacking complete verbal clarity and moral clarity when it comes to the issue of anti-semitism, and so this lady is gone now. this president is gone. i hope that this serves to lead to reflection and for universities all over the united states and the world to take stock of what has happeneds, and take the necessary steps to not be equivocating but taking steps so jewish students on campus feel protected. no student in the united states of america should be going to school afraid for their lives. that is deplorable and sthamefu and actions and lack of actions have consequences. that's what these people are feeling today. >> yeah. molly i know you have been really upset about this growing anti-semitism that we're seeing across the country, and that has, i think, picked up since what took place october 7th. what is your sense of it? i mean, the way that these university leaders have been handling this. this really should not come as a surprise, as to what took place today? >> right. i think it's really clear that we need people to say, to condemn anti-semitism, just like they condemn any kind of discrimination against any group. right? it's the same as anti-muslim rhetoric, anti-you know, racism, sexism, these are all the same. right? it's not okay. what we needed in that moment was for these presidents not to sort of spout this kind of very legal, very kind of wishy-washy statement, but instead to say, no. it's not okay. discrimination is not okay. and i think that, you know, this is something as i'm jewish and my family's jewish and this is something we have, you know, experienced firsthand, and i think that we all suffer. right? when we allow any kind of sdwrim discrimination. what happens the people of the university suffer, the rest of us suffer. you know? and we -- so i do think it was, there was moment -- i hope that we can take the teachable moment here, which is to say that any discrimination hurts everyone, and that we really need our moral clarity from our leaders. >> and when i did that in 2015, part of your orientation you go through a series of, you know, not judge warnings but teachings on how to avoid microaggressions. how to properly communicate with students and faculties to avoid getting yourself in trouble. god forbid, you say the wrong pronoun or something about a gender neutral bathroom you have a real problem on that campus. meanwhile, what we saw college administrators, presidents and ch chancellor, students literally feel unsafe for their lives. not because somebody called them the wrong name, didn't have sensitivity, but calling for their race or their ethnicity to be just completely removed from, vanished from society. that's a real problem. >> and just as -- >> and -- >> go ahead, ana. >> to me, this has shown that people do have a voice and people do have a platform, because it's been students like the one you just had on speaking up. it's been their parents, alum, it's been journalists. it's been the press. it's been donors. it's been jews. it's been the allies of jews. anybody who is against anti-semitism and these college presidents, these university presidents look like high school students trying to answer an s.a.t. question. they don't know whether it was a., b., c. or d. it should not be that difficult to unekwiv lick condemn hate speech calling for genocide hate speech. this has taught all of us we do have a platform and when we speak together those voices have consequences. >> yeah. i thought these were smart people running these schools. these are some schools i could never get into. never gotten into, yet i could not have been more tone deaf how they handled. hang time, ana, molly, doug, talk more after the break pap tweet came in as we talking from elise stefanik, one down two to go. obviously, this is in the political bloodstream. we're talk about it on the other side. stay with us. right now donald trump may be the runaway favorite for the gop nomination but new polling reveals he may have a tougher race against president biden than some of his republican opponents. the "wall street journal" found that in a head-to-head general election matchup next year nikki haley meets president biden by 17 percentage points. trump fares worse. only 4-point advantage over the president. back to the panel and talk about this. molly, had you on the show before. so i may be teeing myself to get whacked here. you're not a big fan of these polls. it's a long way out. anything can happen. caveat, caveat, caveat, but what is your reaction to this, and what do you think? we saw the president late last night in california going after trump, calling him a danger to democracy, saying he would destroy democracy, calling him despicable about january 6th and so on. tougher talk than we've seen. maybe responding to headwinds. what do you think? >> you and i are buddies and you know how i feel about polls, but i will say, you know, we have, since trump has been elected, right, in 2016, when we told hillary clinton was going to be president, we have absolutely all of the polls, almost all of the larger general polls like this have been wrong. so i'm just going to put that out there. especially you'll rob the red wave mid-term, which barely was a ripple and that off-off year election where democrats flipped the virginia state house, but with all of that said i definitely think that donald trump is probably a much weaker general election candidate than nikki haley, but the republicans have a problem, which is they, and they keep wishing that donald trump will go away. we all know, donald trump is not going away, and he is going to very likely win this nomination, because he's -- he's 50 points ahead in every state. i think it's unlikely that biden will be running against haley, but if he were i think he would have a harder race. look, trump is shopping this kind of autocracy which american voters don't really like. and if the republican party cared about electability, then they wouldn't have him as their nominee. but they really don't. >> ana what was your sense of things right now? the other question i had is, are we overlooking how abortion could be a single issue fact are for a lot of women? maybe it's not showing up in the polls. put abortion on the table might that change how republican women vote next year, and if a pollster calls, says is it biden versus trump, maybe because not asked about issues of abortion that isn't factored into consideration. what's your sense of it? >> absolutely right when it comes to that issue, and monthly, weekly, daily, we get reminders particularly "we" as women, of what the roe v. wade overturning has meant. this week it has been the story, the news, of the mother in texas who had to go to court while 20 weeks' pregnant to beg for the right to an abortion for a child that according to her doctors was not going to survive. and, again, she has been stripped of that right now by the supreme court of texas. that's very reminiscent to a case that happened in florida where a mother was carrying a child, a fetus, who had no kidneys, that was sure to die shortly after birth and was made to carry it to term and hold it for 90 minutes as he gasped for air on, in her arms and died. those stories are not going away. those stories are getting worse, and i think women have to realize that we have to fight for all other women. even those of us who are too old to bear children. we are fighting for those behind us and fighting for the rights of women and it's an issue that angers all of us. look, you can you pro-life. that doesn't mean you're pro-cruelty and making a woman carry a child to term that's going to die in her arms is being cruel. and, jim, when it comes to trump and biden, listen. i think there's no doubt that probably the most difficult issue joe biden has to face right now is his age. and if the donald trump running against him, all of a sudden that issue is moot, because, news flash, they're both old. there's a difference. once is 81 years old. the other has 91 counts. 81, versus 91. you choose. >> yeah. and, doug, one of the things, glad you're on with us this evening. i wanted to ask you about trump's comments on fox earlier this week when he was on with hannity saying i would only be a dictator on day one. i don't know if we have some of that sound ready, but if we could play it. i do want to the play it. get it in a second, but biden at this fund-raiser in california last night, he really went after trump on this issue, and was scoffing at this comment about being a dictator day one. curious. does this conversation resonate? we saw the"atlantic" magazine, and long-term conservative out with a "washington post" op-ed talking whether a trump dictatorship is on the horizon. what do you think? >> a lot resonates to those already on that side. some preaching to the converted even if it's the absolute right thing for the president to say, what donald trump was was very troubling. comments about donald trump in 2016 should have taken seriously and not literally. in fact, we should take him literally and makes senseed by been talk about it more and more. as far as seeping into independent voters they don't like what he says on this then go to lunch spends $20 on a sandwich that costs $13 three days ago. spending money or anything or don't spent it because they can't afford it or the interest rate, becomes real to them in a way trump's rhetoric isn't. part of the trump base doesn't like what he says dismiss it because they think it's all a fate acomp plooe. >> and get your reaction to this as well, molly. to me, hard to wrap your head around. let's play it. >> under no circumstances you are promising america tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody? >> except for day one. >> except for -- >> except for day one. >> meaning? >> i want to close the border and i want to drill, drill, drill. >> that's not -- >> i mean, molly, you know, we're talking with mary trump previous hour. dictator day one, you could say dictator tomorrow, too, because you are of dictator on day one. astonishing to hear that, and in our culture now, trump says things and go by the wayside 24 hours later, it does feel different this time. feels like people are starting to pay attention. >> yeah. i mean, look. he did a lot of autocratic things when he was in office. and including led an armed insurrection. it was very dicey about whether or not he was going to leave. and i think you know, he had his people go to the capitol. they tried to keep the certification from the election from happening. they had slates of fake electors. like, this is not -- this is not how we do it in democracy, and i think that trump does his thing where he says it loud and a lot of trump's people try to dismiss this and say he was joking, but there's no reason to give this man the benefit of the doubt. and if anything, we've seen again and again, he does these very anti-democratic very autocratic things and it's very dangerous and i think that this is the "do you want to have elections anymore" election? because if trump wins again i don't think you will have elections or certainly not the way we've had them previously. >> guys, apparently more breaking news to share with viewers. excellent discussion as always. thank you for your time. appreciate it. we'll be right back. dangerous and i think that this thank you for your time. you're probably not easily persuaded to switch mobile providers for your business. but what if we told you it's possible that comcast business m