Congressman thompson. Thank you so much. Well, thank you. And thank you for mentioning the first responders. The community has been fantastic. First responders are real heroes and heroines. They are out there everyday and their life is on the line for their community. Thank you, anderson. Than you, congressman. We wish you the best. The news continues right now. I want to hand it over to chris. Cuomo prime time starts now. Thank you, anderson. I am chris cuomo, and welcome to prime time. The gop primary for governor in kansas should have been a hohum race, that is until President Trump got involved and went against the gop incumbent in favor of kris kobach. Yes, that State Official who helped trump with that fugazi voter fraud panel. Well, the race is now a hotbed of controversy. It is too close to call. Then kobach declared victory. Then his lead was cut, and an official is blaming the Secretary Of State for getting it wrong in favor of kobach. The Secretary Of State is kris
kobach, and his office would oversee what seems like a certain recount. So everyone is talking about what he will do. We are talking to kris kobach. Hell be live in a moment. Also the death toll from Hurricane Maria in puerto rico just soared. It is now more than 20 times what the government told us it was in december. Why is the truth only coming out now, almost a year after the storm . And why Isnt The President saying anything about it . Those are americans down there. Also a State Of Emergency declared In Charlottesville ahead of the First Anniversary of that deadly Unite The Right rally. How are we doing 12 months later . D. L. Hughley joins us with a message he says you wont like, but you need to hear. Its my birthday. Not bad for 61. Not bad for 61. Lets get after it. Captions by vitac www. Vitac. Com
Chris Cuomo asks the tough questions to newsmakers in Washington and around the world. Its purely sort of a titular role. Youre head of the state election process, but all of the work is done at the county level. The counties doing the counting of ballots. So theres really no point to it, but i said if my opponent wishes me to, id be happy to. But its purely symbolic. I dont think he understands the process. So is that a yes . Yeah, well be formally answering his request tomorrow. But ill give you a headsup. Yes, ill be happy to recuse myself. But as i say, it really doesnt make any difference. My office doesnt count the votes. The counties do. Is the process of oversight in a recount by your Office Different than it is in the main count . Well, not necessarily. I mean what our office does is it communicates the Standards Set by kansas law to the counties. Right. So we give them the official guidelines. For the provisional ballot counting thats going to occur next week, we send them the same
so its not something i get involved in anyway. Look, heres the game that were playing here is that its not about whether theres a law that says you have to step away or whether or not you have direct control over it. Its the semblance of impropriety. You know, its what seems fishy, and thats really the standard that Public Officials should adhere to. Weve made crimes like the new bar for Public Officials. It should be a little better than that. But the reason i ask you about whether or not your offices role is the same in the main count versus the recount is because shelly harms, the Thomas County clerk, she says that they counted 522 votes for your opponent and that she showed a scan of the Kansas City Star form that showed 522 votes. Yet somehow when it got to your office, it became communicated as 422 votes. That smells bad, does it not, mr. Secretary of state . Well, if you put it in context, it smells normal. Every year there are at least a dozen clerical errors that happen in the transcribing. Chris Cuomo asks the tough questions to newsmakers in Washington and around the world. A Secretary Of State overseeing an election in which he himself is on the ballot. Just in this case because of how close it is and youre going to be over the recount. Thats why. Like i said, its purely symbolic because i dont have any involvement in the recount anyway. But i said of course if he wants me to, i would. He says, i do want you to, so i will. Now, we go to bigger issue of what made this race interesting in the beginning which was the president weighing in and saying i think that it should be the secreta Secretary Of State kobach and not the sitting governor of in party. I want him. And they say by all accounts, it helped you, that it boosted your fate within the primary. Have you now really on the precipice of victory. Do you believe the president was paying you back for loyalty . No, i dont think so. I think the president was looking at the race, and he was saying, look, weve got an establishment, More Traditional Insider whos in the office right now, and we have kris kobach, someone ive worked with. I know him well. Ive advised him on immigration issues both during the campaign
and during the presidency, so he knows my advice. He knows my policies. And i think they line up more closely with his. So i think thats what drove him. What does it mean to you that the democrats do see it as a loyalty play and they believe youre someone they could beat in a race that ordinarily they would run away from. They thought that, you know, your opponent would beat them. He has the incumbency effect. But now because of you and everything that happened with that fraud, Voter Fraud Commission that went nowhere, they believe youre vulnerable. Well, they can think that. I dont think thats correct. I mean if you you know, there are many people who have tried to Armchair Quarterback this one and say which candidate, colyer or kobach, would be better for the democrats. Who would be easier for the democrats to beat . You know, my personal view is that my opponent would be easier to beat because he is the successor to Sam Brownback, whos Popularity Numbers are very low, and the democrats for the last cycles have run the
same playbook every year. The republican is Sam Brownback 2. 0. This congressman is just like Sam Brownback and this state rep and they try to link everybody with him. And with governor colyer, it is easier to do, because he was brownbacks Lieutenant Gov r nor. You have a big issue on your side, which is what happened with that voter fraud thing, which really seemed to have been a complete witch hunt from the outside. Not only did your commission never deliver anything substantive in terms of finding voter fraud, but it seemed to be a fools errand that the president wanted out there to forward his notion of millions of illegal votes that was never true. Yeah, i couldnt disagree with you more. The commission was shut down because of more than a dozen lawsuits filed by groups from the left that didnt want the commission to do its work, and it became so hobbled by lawsuits that it had to shut down. But in the time that the commission was in existence, the commission pointed out more than
a thousand cases of convictions for voter fraud, almost all of them since the year 2000. These are convictions, which are the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Most dont result in convictions. On top of that, looking at 21 states saw 8,400 cases of double voting. Just among the 21 states looked at. If you extrapolate to all 50 states, it increases exponentially. You cant. You can do the same analysis. No, because its not math. Every states different. You say okay. Lets [ Overlapping Voices ] i just want to make one point for clarity for the audience. You were presented with evidence. You didnt find evidence. You didnt do investigating. And we looked into your numbers obviously in preparing for the interview when it came in. The 1,000 convictions, first of all, you want to talk about context. You had a billion votes since 2000. So youre talking about 1,000 convictions. When you look inside that number, i believe you got it
from the Heritage Foundation. That report includes misconduct by Election Officials and other insiders. Its not about voters who are not legal or double voting. Thats about this whole thing, every type of basket of conviction you could get within the voting system. Thats not what you were supposed to be looking for. The total of the thousand or so convictions, yes, it includes some misconduct, but that is a tiny, tiny slice of it. But its just from the Heritage Foundation. The panel Didnt Investigate and find. You were given this by the Heritage Foundation. These are facts the commission was assembling. Its fact as far as the Heritage Foundation is included. And the 8,400 instances come from the Government Accountability institute. Lets talk about that. Go ahead. What the commission would have done if we had continued and not been hobbled by the lawsuits is you would take the same type of analysis that the Government Accountability institute did and you would apply that to all 50 states. Youd do the same analysis for
one of the things the commission might have we dont know what it is. Can i continue . Please. Go ahead. One of the things we might have looked at is the number of noncitizens who vote in the elections. That is a very substantial number. Now, in states like kansas, the number may be in the hundreds or thousands voting in any given election. But in a state like california, the number is going to be much, of larger. In a state like texas, much, much larger. Thats a guess. So those are some of the things well, the commission would have actually done the research and used Government Resources to actually look and get some actual data on the table. I mean it surprises me that people on the left are always simply saying nothing to see here, nothing to see here, dont look at voter fraud you keep bashing it as the left was coming after you. Meanwhile an email comes out that one of the people on your staff was looking for someone to help out who was conservative and christian. It says right in the email. So dont make it like it was some fools errand on the political side, like the left was coming after you. Your own commission was looking
for someone pretty confident that hes conservative and christian too because thats what you want in a bean counter, right . That wasnt a conservative and a christian. That Wasnt Commission that email wasnt a staff of the commission. Who was she . But the point is we were talking about the larger context. Who was she . The larger context is people on the left i cant even remember the persons name who said that. I do. The larger context is that the people on the left people who dont think voter fraud is a problem. Lets use those terms. People who dont think 2 Million People voted in california and there was no need for tax dollars to go out there and try to prove we have a problem with voter fraud and we dont. That was the supposition. Listen, Secretary Of State, i dont want to go down a rabbit hole. A thousand is not a lot . I dont know what the number is. I could pull out a number. 15,000, 18,000. [ Overlapping Voices ] you dont have any proof of it. You got presented with studies by these are convictions. Im talking about a thousand convictions. Im asking you, is a thousand a
big number . Obviously its going to be about the context. Id want to know the cases. If i had my own investigation, i would not use the Heritage Foundation for my information. These are documented cases, documented in the court records. Right, and they also include all types of election workers, not the kind of stuff that you said you were going to find, listen, Secretary Of State, youre always welcome on this show to talk about what you find, and i want to talk to you when we find out what happens with your election as well. Youre always welcome to make the case. All right. Thank you. Good luck to you. All right. Devin nunes in the news. Its no question that hes been a loyalist for the president , but the chairman devin nunes is the chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee. He was just caught on tape actually trying to undermine the mueller investigation. Remember what his job is, his oversight job. Youre going to hear the recording ahead. It is such a good time to kiss it is such a good time to dance it is such a good time to [ laughing ] scoobidoo Doobidoo Scoobidoo doobidoo [ Goose Honking ] [ laughing ] a bad day on the road still beats a good one off it. Progressive helps keep you out there. We know theres nothing quite like watching a son rise. We know that whats outside can change whats inside. We know the great outdoors. We love the great outdoors. Bass pro shops and cabelas are proud to salute you, the Great American hunter, with the fall hunting classic. Offering you the best of the best deals, gear,
family lines to all military. Facts first here on this show. How many died in puerto rico because of Hurricane Maria . 64 . No. The new number is 20 times that, and that number is about 400 lives short of who we lost in hurricane katrina. You remember what trump said about that . The aftermath of the hurricane . Here it is. I want you to hear it again because it matters. If you look at a real catastrophe like katrina and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody has ever seen anything like this, what is your what is your death count as of this moment, 17 in. 16 people certified. 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. So in the thousands would be a disaster. Different order of magnitude. So what is he going to say now . Well get to that in a second. 16 never made sense. Neither did 64, not if you were on the ground like we were and so many at cnn and other outlets. So much of puerto rico was shut down. Medical care was compromised. Medications were in short supply. Basic water was spotty. There was power almost nowhere. So we were skeptical, and we pressed and tested power. And trump and his folk fought back calling it well, you know what they called it. Fake news. Despite the Fake News Media in conjunction with the democrats, an amazing job is being done in puerto rico, trump tweeted. The Fake News Networks are working overtime in puerto rico doing their best to take the spirit away from our soldiers and first rs, responders. Shame. Shame is right. Shame on him, especially as reporting and studies started to show what we all suspected. The death toll was way, way wrong and underreported. In november, cnn surveyed 112 Funeral Homes finding that Funeral Home Directors and staff had identified at least 499 deaths. Then what happens . In may, you get a team from Harvard University and researchers. They published a study, and they said in the New England Journal Of Medicine that their as a matter of fact was about 4,645 deaths. Now we know the current estimate from the government, and it is over 1,400. And as for the journalists who weathered the storm there and spent weeks covering what was obviously an inadequate government response, called out by trump as liars, then what do we learn . Well, fema puts out a statement just now in july. It says it was understaffed and underprepared for last years hurricane season. The agency said, quote, Fema Leadership acknowledged that the agency could have better anticipated the severity of hurricanes irma and maria, and that they would cause longterm, significant damage to the territories infrastructure. So now we know. Its not 16. It was never 16 or 64. Its 20 times that. So what does the president say now . Nothing. He doubled down when he thought he was right. But now he wont man up now that we know he was wrong. He wont even show respect to americans who lost loved ones. Instead, he had a White House Deputy put out this statement. Theres only one official count, and the actual counting of disasterrelated fatalities is the local responsibility of puerto rico. The whole of government remains focused on ongoing recovery and preparedness for the current hurricane season. You know what that sounds like . Fake news. Information thats not complete,
and its done to distort and to deceive. And theyre not going to come on here and defend their position. Why . Because im too tough . Shame on them. Its not about tough. Its about truth. Trump owes the truth. The truth he denied to the people who paid with their lives and those who were left in horrible conditions in puerto rico until today. We will not let it go. We will not forget. All rig