documents on the russian leader's desk. the decision to remove the informant was driven in part by concerns that president trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence that could expose the intention asset as a spy. the kremlin is responding this morning and we'll have much more on this fascinating story in just a few moments. he was in charlotte north carolina on today's special election. this is a big day, not just for north carolina but i think for the entire trump presidency, diane. >> reporter: yeah, john, and the people here in the ninth district have been without representation for almost a year at this point, so when the polls open in half an hour, they are ready to finally get their congressman. the thing is right now it is a tight race in a district that both trump and romney won by 12 points, meaning that since it's a toss-up the president, the vice president, and all sorts of republicans who bring their clout with them are here to avoid what they see could be a litmus test for 2020. >> it's the final race of 2018. >> we got a chance to change this country, and that's why we're here today. >> and while north carolina's ninth district do-over election may technically be dan versus dan, it also poses an early 2020 test for president trump. >> a vote for any democrat tomorrow in north carolina is a vote for the rise of radical socialism and the destruction of the american dream. >> reporter: at an election eve rally for republican candidate dan bishop, the president making it clear that tuesday's results are about more than one election. >> tomorrow we take the first steps to firing speaker pelosi and winning back the house in 2020. >> the gop putting a lot of time and money into winning this reliably republican seat. president trump carried the ninth district by 12 points in 2016. >> dan mccready, i'm the democrat running. >> reporter: democrat dan mccready has been campaigning for more than two years. >> my wife and -- we had three when we started 27 months ago, we have four now. >> reporter: mccready lost to republican mark harris by 905 votes. the state's board of elections refused to -- against a political operative working for the republican's campaign. >> we saw what we know now was the largest case of election fraud in modern day american history. let me tell you the easy thing to do when we saw that would have been to throw in the towel. i chose to fight. >> mr. president, we're not tired of winning. >> reporter: bishop is betting that doubling down on the trump agenda will bring him a victory in this conservative leaning district. >> so in district nine, is a vote for dan bishop a vote for donald trump? >> i certainly will go to washington and work very aggressively to help president trump. >> reporter: the campaigns and outside groups have combined to spend millions on television, a sign of how high both parties view the stakes heading into 2020. >> our family can't afford dan bishop. >> reporter: mccready a former marine and self-described political moderate admits that some of the debates playing out in his party's presidential primary pose a challenge for him in the district, especially as tv ads. >> dan mccready, a liberal backed by radicals. >> reporter: his opponent and the president attempt to paint him as an ultraliberal. >> do you think like you're running against dan bishop or donald trump? >> i'm running against donald trump. unfortunately for him he's not running against a socialist. he's running against a united states marine. >> reporter: this district is a suburban rural mix, much like those the republicans had trouble in the midterm. this one was won by the president by a much larger margin. john, i can tell you that the president seemed to be trying to set expectations yesterday saying that he thought dan bishop was a good guy but wanted to make sure everyone was aware he wasn't the one on the ballot, so he didn't think of this one particularly as a bellwether he said. >> polls open there in, what, 25 minutes, so line up now. joining us is ron brownstein and senior editor at the atlantic. what does it tell you that in this special election just one congressional district, both the president and vice president have been there within the last 24 hours? >> it tells you they're worried and i think they have a very specific fear. we're already seen 15 house republicans retire including several in the suburban southern seats outside of atlanta, several in texas, and i think the concern among republicans is that if they lose a district that has been this reliably republican where democrats have not held the seat since 1963 and where diane pointed out trump won by 12 points, that you could see floodgates open and more house republicans decide this is just not happening in 2020. >> talk to me specifically about north carolina nine. this district is representative of what if you're talking about national trends? >> it's representative of the outer circle of republican vulnerability in the suburbs, right? we saw two things in 2018. we saw republicans routed in the last red pockets that were left in the big blue metro areas around the country. so the suburbs of philadelphia or minneapolis or chicago or northern virginia, but we saw something else as well. we saw that suburban vulnerability under trump expand to places where metro democrats are not previously made gains in the suburbs of dallas or houston or oklahoma city or charleston or salt lake city. this is one of those seats. this is a tough seat for democrats. there are only four democrats in the house in districts that trump won by a bigger margin than he won north carolina nine. it starts in the suburbs, but it extends to the rural communities where the president is much stronger and even the suburban part of it has been the most republican remaining area in the charlotte suburbs. so if you see this kind of district go down for republicans, much like the conor lamb seat, remember that pennsylvania special election, it would be a sign of a pretty broad suburban recoil from the president. >> you would start to see words like floodgates opening is what you would see. >> yes. >> now the flip side of this is ron is that the republican dan bishop, and you heard president trump talking about it, trying to tie to nancy pelosi, calling him an extreme radical leftist. >> i think it's important, this is a district that divides between suburban, ex-urban and rural. you have a piece of it that's in mecklenburg county where the democrats made big gains from 2016 to 2018. then the next county out is a kind of classic county called union county where democrats made more modest gains. if you see those reversed in this result, i think it would be a sign that particularly in these kind of outer reach districts for democrats, that message of pinning the party as radical are able to hold some of those traditionally republican white collar suburbanites. mccready is trying to run the 2018 play book, put his head down, avoid these big fights and focus as much as possible on bread and butter issues, particularly health care. >> we did hear the president talk about religion suggesting the democrats weren't so much about religion. there were people saying this rings the irony bell coming from the thrice married president of the united states. >> evangelical white christians have become the absolute bedrock of the president's support. i mean, he's still looking at a 3/4 approval rating. many of those voters essentially view themselves in a struggle over the country's direction. they feel that they are on the losing side of kind of cultural and demographic change, and the president presents himself to them as in effect a human wall against all of the changes that they don't like, and i think the evidence is pretty clear over two and a half years that this is about anything in his personal history that they're willing to forgive. i mean, the problem is that what -- all the kind of coal he puts in the engine to mobilize that base has a real price that we're going to measure at the other end of the district in a place like southeast mecklenburg county outside of charlotte that had been the most republican part remaining in that metro area but where we're seeing undeniable movement. this of particular -- the texas five republicans stepping down, this is that kind of seat. if we see mccready, even if he falls short do very well in the suburban areas trs goihere's go be a lot of anxiety. >> you and i will both be up late tonight. thanks for being with us this morning. >> i think it's safe to say that the president will be watching exiting polling very closely in this race. the kremlin has just responded to cnn's exclusive reporting about a u.s. spy inside the russian government that was so close to vladimir putin he could take pictures of documents on his desk. that's coming up next. doesn't get everything clean. i tell them, it may be 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(tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) (crowd cheering) (tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) (tennis ball hit) get unlimited talk, text and data with our most powerful signal ever- all for just $30 bucks a line for 4 lines. and for a limited time, get free smartphones too! get 4 new lines of unlimited and 4 free phones for just 30 bucks a line! ♪ so chantix can help you quit slow turkey.rkey. along with support, chantix is proven to help you quit. with chantix you can keep smoking at first and ease into quitting so when the day arrives, you'll be more ready to kiss cigarettes goodbye. when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. stop chantix and get help right away if you have changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, depressed mood, suicidal thoughts or actions, seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking, or life-threatening allergic and skin reactions. decrease alcohol use. use caution driving or operating machinery. tell your doctor if you've had mental health problems. the most common side effect is nausea. talk to your doctor about chantix. we're getting new details this morning in a cnn exclusive that jim sciutto broke wide open about a cia spy who was extracted from russia in 2017 in a secret mission. the asset had access to vladimir putin, so much access he could photograph government documents on the russian leader's desk. the kremlin this morning is now responding to jim's reporting. jim joins us up early this morning. i have to say, jim, remarkable reporting. you broke this hours before anyone else had it, and now you're getting infrastructure informati -- new information. >> we withheld a lot of these details. we didn't want to risk any chance of identifying this person. the "new york times" last night in confirming our story gave some details. this is what we know about the le level, and this gets at the importance of how big a loss this is for the u.s. someone that served as a cia informant for more than a dec e decade, a russian national who had risen in the cekremlin, had direct access to the russian president, including the ability to take photos of presidential documents. this person was offered extraction earlier in 2017 at the end of the obama administration because of concerns, length of service, but also the fact that intelligence from this source had been used in part for the intel community assessment on russian interference in the 2016 elections, specifically that president putin had ordered that interference and had done so to help, to benefit donald trump. as that was coming out, the obama administration offered this person extraction, this person refused, but months into the trump administration as a whole host of other events happened, including of course the famous meeting in the oval office where president trump shared classified information from israel with two senior russian officials, after that extraction was offered again and the person was successfully taken out of the country. so those are the new details, just getting into the bigger picture here, multiple trump administration officials have told me that this secret mission took place in 2017. the timing of this decision was directly after that oval office meeting when president trump went with those russian officials, and a person directly involved in the discussions said to me that the decision was based in part on concern in the intelligence community that president trump and his administration had mishandled classified intelligence a number of times. that was part of a bigger picture because a lot of inputs go into a decision like this as i mentioned, for instance, intelligence from the source and the assessment on russian interference in the election, but that that was also a factor in what is a decision -- it's a decision to carry out a very dangerous and difficult operation. >> this isn't just any source. i mean, you talk about his proximity to vladimir putin and the trust that he'd established within the creme rikremlin. can you go back to the time you mentioned prior to the u.s. being concerned, however, about him being exposed? because it wasn't just this one time. >> it was not. so we're at the end of the obama administration. the intelligence community has established that russia interfered in the u.s. election, and that the russian president directed it, and that the intention was over time not just to mess up american politics, but to advantage donald trump over hillary clinton, having a source that high in the russian government factored into getting at what putin's intentions were here. so it's important to note how big a loss this is for the u.s. at a time of growing tensions between the u.s. and russia to lose these eyes and ears inside the kremlin is an enormous loss. i spoke to a former senior u.s. intelligence official who said to me that particularly in denied areas as they call these, russia is a denied area because it's hard for american intelligence to operate. there's a lot of surveillance. imagine trying to cultivate a spy in russia, considering all of that, just this person made clear to me, this former senior intelligence official, this is a very hard asset to replace. >> i got to say i hope people are listening to all the details here. this is fascinating at so many different levels, jim. just as fascinatining is the administration response. it's been nuanced. >> it has. a lot of folks have noticed if you look at the cia statement it doesn't seem to respond to the story that we wrote here, and i should in fairness -- i'll tell you exactly what the administration told me. here's what the cia director of public affairs told cnn. cnn's narrative that the central intelligence agency makes life or death decisions on anything other than objective analysis is simply false. misguided speculation that the president's hand lg of our nation's central intelligence makes -- mike pompeo was cia director at the time. that spokesperson declined to comment. the white house press secretary told cnncnn's reporting is not only incorrect it has the potential to put lives in danger. i should note this, though. i spoke to five separate sources for this story. people who served in the trump administration in the highest levels of the intelligence agencies and also on capitol hill, handling sensitive intelligence, and they told me that this decision happened at a time of broad concern in the intelligence community about the president's handling of intelligence, and it did not end with that oval office meeting. before we go, in july 2017, you'll remember trump met with putin at the g20 in hamburg, germany. it was a private meeting and trump took the interpreter's notes afterwards. unusual step. i've been told by an intelligence source that after that meeting as well, the intel community was concerned that the president had improperly discussed classified information with russia. >> let's not forget vladimir putin himself also a former spy. jim sciutto, fascinating reporting. democrats are calling for commerce secretary wilbur ross's resignation after he reportedly threatened to fire noaa officials for a tweet contradicting the president. we'll discuss that coming up next. i get it all the time. 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>> it tells you that we're at a new level of this white house, and again, we don't know what role the white house played. it's hard to imagine that wilbur ross did this on his own based on the facts of the story we know. this is an ongoing question being raised about the cultural that has been created by this president in terms of what trickles down to government agencies, how that impacts objective fact. how that impacts science and that statement was as you noted widely mocked. so i don't understand what they think they're getting by doing this other than making the president feel good, which is ultimately what this government has increasingly become about. >> and it was anonymously written, too. >> there was no name attached to it. i agree with you wilbur ross making this call seems to be something that was likely driven from the white house and not something he came up with on his own. what are the ramifications. democrats obviously calling for wilbur ross to step down, john thune, the republican said if this is true is deeply concerning to him. how do you see this ending? >> i think it depends on whether there are additional republicans besides john thune who say that. i do think at minimum there will be another hearing. ross has had problems before he had this controversy around the census question on citizenship where he was found to have not been truthful about it. that ended up impacting their supreme court case about this with the administration, and so ross, i think you see him if he did this, ross is trying to keep his job, i suspect, and a lot of people have been willing to do a number of things that they think will be pleasing to president trump. but once you start getting into government agencies, this isn't just sort of a staff debate. this isn't just a fight internally, that is the kind of thing that the president's allies on capitol hill are going to have trouble ignoring and turning away from as they have for so much of the last two years. >> hot off the presses, abc news and "the washington post" just put out new numbers about the president's approval rating. if we can put up p 11 right now. it has dropped pretty substantially. look at it now. >> wow. >> 38% approval rating in the abc news "washington post" poll was at 40% in july. those aren't good numbers for this white house. how do you think this is being received inside? >> well, i think it is mirroring what they are seeing themselves in their own data, and i think it is being met with disbelief by the president who as we saw over the last week has been lashing out at "the washington post" and a story by ashley parker and phil rucker that was describing the sort of lost summer where he didn't make any gains. he didn't try to build towards his re-election, and he got very angry about that story, and these numbers might remind you why because those numbers are reflective of what they are seeing themselves. this is a danger zone. look, it's going to matter when there's a binary, when it's him versus someone else, so until we know what that looks like and we know what the economy looks like next year, it's hard to say what the durability is. there's all sorts of volatility around this president always which makes it harder to predict. those are dangerous numbers. >> the words you used there, danger zone is what was in my head. when you start getting down to 38 or lower than that, it's hard to win re-elections with that number. >> it depends on where the other person's approval and disapproval numbers are. that's why you're going to see one of the ugliest re-election fights we've seen in recent memory. >> do you see some of these latest scandals whether it be noaa and wilbur ross, whether it be government officials staying at trump hotels overseas, do you see these scandals having traction with voters in a way that perhaps the russian scandal did not longer term? >> so i think that voters have actually largely tuned out a lot of what happens between the president and his businesses for whatever reason, i think that has just become kind of noise in the background. i think the issue with the noaa statement, that impacts people's own lives. we were talking about people potentially having to evacuate a state, right? this wasn't just, you know, the president talking about his crowd size and trying to get the parks department to issue statements supporting him or find pictures supporting him. this is something that the more it starts to impact voters directly the more they will pay attention to it. if we see more of that thing going forward, that could impact him. >> talks with the taliban, the president announced they were dead yesterday, which is actually something you more or less predicted with us yesterday. you did not think there was much of a future in this right now given the political hits the president's taken over the last 24 hours. we've also seen on interesting back and forth between the vice president's office and the west wing about the role mike pence might have played in dissuading the president from holding the camp david meeting. >> or trying to play in dissuading him which he clearly was not able to initially until there was this bombing last week, and that's when the president called the meeting off. our understanding is the same as you guys first reported, the vp disagreed, presented issues with the timing of this, and the vp and his staff have been very concerned whenever information gets out about what he's telling the president privately. i think i was not surprised to see an all caps tweet fake news media. it looked like it had been written by trump himself. the vp is facing this situation over the last year where there's been the constant question of is the president looking at making a change in the ticket. other presidents have done the same thing during a re-election fight including president obama's advisers at one point thought about possibly making a change from joe biden. it rarely, if ever, happens, and i think it's extremely unlikely here, but i do think it has created this sense of discomfort for the vp. >> great to have you in with us in this perfectly lukewarm studio this morning. >> it's -- >> she came in here complaining that it was freezing. >> and it was. thank you for my truth in weather prediction. >> i'm glad you're comfortable. >> noaa's coming out with a statement later. appreciate it. president trump making some unsubstantiated cleans about people who endured hurricane dorian's fury, why he said some are not welcome in the united states. that's next. you're turning onto the street when you barely clip a passing car. minor accident -no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ . this morning president trump seems to be sending a different message than his acting border chief over what would happen to bahamian refugees fleeing to the united states. >> everybody needs total proper documentation. look, the bahamas has some tremendous problems with people going to the bahamas that weren't supposed to be there. i don't want to allow people that weren't supposed to be in the bahamas to come into the united states, including some very bad people and some very bad gang members and some very, very bad drug dealers. >> the white house has not provided cnn with evidence to back up the president's claim. earlier acting border chief said bahamians would be allowed into the united states whether they have travel documents or not. he said the decision will be made on a case by case basis based on humanitarian considerations. hurricane dorian has left 70,000 people homeless and at least 50 people dead in the bahamas. the ferry boat operator that ordered dozens of evacuees off a boat on sunday is now apologizing. border officials say the ferry operator did not properly coordinate with the u.s. and bahamian governments. cnn's patrick oppmann is live in freeport with more on this confusion. good morning. >> reporter: hey, good morning, guys, and the prime minister of the bahamas again spoke to the nation last night or at least the people who were able to watch him and said that this is a dark and joyless time. he's talking quite literally because we still do not have power here. we don't have any idea when power or water will return, and that is leading so many baham n bahamians to leave this island because even if you have a house, even if your house survived, conditions are very tough. you spend your whole day in hour-long lines looking for gasoline, looking for food, you know, there's a black market now for bread. it just is very tough to be in a country where there is not power and there's an oppressive heat. you talk about 70,000 people left homeless. that's out of a total population of 400,000 in the bahamian islands. it's an incredibly significant part of this population, and the government quite clearly cannot deal with all the people who are in dire, dire need now. so when you talk about the people leaving, we are seeing women and children. we are seeing people who are carrying everything they own on their back. i have not met any dangerous criminals by and large, the island of abaco, the island where i am are very peaceful places, very quiet places and these are our neighbors and they're in need right now. >> important context there patrick oppmann for you on the island, someone who's been there for some time now. thanks so much for being with us. forecasters this morning watching several tropical disturbances developing in the atlantic. cnn meteorologist chad meyers with the forecast. how concerned should we be? >> not yet. we'll see some rain over the bahamas. they don't need that. that rain will get over florida by friday into saturday and into the gulf by saturday night. i don't see any real development. we have gabrielle in the north atlantic moving to the northeast. those two storms didn't do very much. we'll still see this area of tropical development moving over florida by friday. we will see some thundershowers in this area. this weather is brought to you by xyzal, all day all night allergy relief. straight over patrick oppmann, straight over the abaco and over grarnd bahama, missing a little bit of nassau. it's the area that's going to need to recover that's going to get the rainfall. into new orleans, you don't see any spin. you don't see any eye. this is not going to be a major event, just rain for these people there. some people would like it, but the bahamians probably would not. >> they could use that reprieve. >> thank you so much. the estranged husband of missing connecticut mother jennifer dulos is speaking out in a new interview. >> do you believe jennifer is alive? >> i do. >> more from that interview is coming up next. 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>> i do. >> against all circumstantial evidence and common understanding. >> i'd like not to discuss this per my attorney's advice. >> i understand, but in your mind she's alive? >> yes. >> reporter: investigators don't agree. jennifer vanished more than three months ago. dulos's conversation recorded before he was arrested for the second time last week, and after connecticut state police released this damning arrest warrant alleging a blood like substance containing jennifer's dna was found in the passenger seat of a truck dulos had access to and handwritten alibi scripts were found in his office. >> it's an exhausting fight. i love my children. that's about it. >> reporter: police charging the 52-year-old wednesday with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, adding to a similar earlier charge plus one of hindering prosecution. he later posted a $500,000 bond and was released from police custody. dulos described his divorce from jennifer saying there was no abuse during their relationship. >> nothing went catastrophically wrong. it's just people sometimes grow apart, and i'm not putting the blame on her or me. it just happens, and it happens all the time, and i was going to be an amicable divorce, and then one day she just took the children and disappeared. she hired body guards and ran to new york. >> reporter: the estranged husband once again maintaining his innocence. >> fotis, did you have anything to do with jennifer's disappearance? >> i did not, but i'd like to leave it at that. >> reporter: police are also monitoring his girlfriend michelle troconis in connection to jennifer's disappearance. last week she turned herself in after state police also charged her with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. troconis was released on bond and pleaded not guilty. >> remember that michelle is presumed innocent, and she should be. >> and the next court appearance for dulos on those tampering with evidence charges are this thursday. the police chief tells me that there are at least two dozen state and local investigators that continue to work every day day in and day out on this case, that they go to sleep at night thinking about it. they wake up focused on it, they're going to find jennifer dulos. >> thinking about those five children who still don't have their mother. jean, thank you so much. such a disturbing story. >> let's bring in cnn legal analyst laura coates. given everything we've now seen, why haven't we seen charges? >> first of all, how shocking is it he gave an interview like that? where is his counsel to tell him you're not going to charm the potential jury pool here. it's probably better for him to invoke that right of silence. the reason you probably don't have any homicide charges because sadly and morbidly there's no body. there's nothing that you can actually show other than circumstantially there's actually somebody who has been killed in this instance, and because you don't have that, prosecutors are often worried about the notion of double jeopardy. they get one bite at the apple. if they mess it up somehow, if they don't have information they need, and somehow they don't have a conviction based on the non-body or non-homicide charges without the body, then what are they going to do later on if they do find the evidence to do so. it's very frustrating for the public. this is a diabolical story it seems at this point. as a prosecutor trying to be prudent, you've got to wait until every duck is in a row. >> i'm so glad you brought up the fact of the interview. i was watching that and my jaw was dropped the whole time. i can't believe he's sitting there answering questions and just that one exchange, fotis, did you have anything to do with jennifer's disappearance. i did not, but i'd like to leave it at that. i'd like to leave it at that? why are you here? what is the impact of an interview like this on an investigation broadly speaking? >> essentially, an investigator wants to give you enough rope to hang yourself. if you have a lawyer your in the going to say i'll sit with you prosecutors or police officers for a long time. this may be their time to get information from him, even in this vicarious way, but as a jury, he wants to try to taint them and say, look, i'm a nice person. i haven't found her. it was going to be amicable, i'm innocent. >> a bit brazen that he would be willing to give an interview and yet defer to his lawyer for questions he didn't want to answer. >> stick around, we have much more to discuss with you, because the infamous "access hollywood" tape, the only person to pay any type of price for it was that man, billy bush. he makes his return to television. what does he now have to say about that video? next. all for just $30 bucks a line for 4 lines. and for a limited time, get free smartphones too! get 4 new lines of unlimited and 4 free phones for just 30 bucks a line! ♪ "have you lost weight?" of course i have- ever since i started renting from national. because national lets me lose the wait at the counter... ...and choose any car in the aisle. and i don't wait when i return, thanks to drop & go. at national, i can lose the wait...and keep it off. looking good, patrick. i know. 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(crowd muttering) - [woman] is that paper mache? - it's you. - [woman] wow. - [narrator] jibber jabber ruins everything. - is it? - [woman] i am confused. - [narrator] at symetra life insurance company we're cutting through it, to help you choose the retirement benefits and life products that work best for you. this morning for the first time we are hearing from billy bush as he makes his return to television. remember, it was bush on tape in that interview with donald trump for "access hollywood" where trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, and you saw bush on the tape raising no objection at the time, and people say it was bush who paid the price for that interview. donald trump went on to win the presidency. billy bush lost his job at nbc. he made his return to tv last night three years after the tape controversy as the new host of "extra" and he discussed his return in a new interview. >> in 2005 did you feel you had to go along to get along? why didn't you feel you could challenge him and say, you know, that's not cool? >> well, trump's the kind of guy who would say forget billy bush, and then i might have gotten hey, why did you lose trump? he's the biggest guest we have. there was always a little bit of -- you're a little anxious around him because you just want it to end well and get out. >> he's back on tv as the host of extra as we said, laura coates joins us again. his explanation there for why he didn't raise an objection, well, how could i? it was donald trump. i might have lost my job. >> people already knew that he pandered to sexism. that was the whole point of why people were upset with him. they knew the big personality that trump was. the issue was that you didn't stand up for your co-host. you kind of chuckled along. it wasn't like a moment he just laughed and said why don't you give him a hug and put her in a position where she didn't know she was being exploited. the irony is the accountability only fell in one person's lap, that was billy bush. it came at a time when the #metoo movement was starting to galvanize. i really question that right now given there seems to be a different take on the #metoo that has evolved over time whether he would still be held to that same standard of accountability today. that's a question for society to answer but one in which i think they answered by putting him back on air. they've said okay, you have paid for the ultimate sin you've committed. now we can all move on. i wonder if that was the best move but obviously they made the decision. >> three years later. what struck me from that interview that i didn't know is when he talked about how he thought the tape was weaponized in a sense that he knew the tape existed, that nbc had this tape. >> he said we all knew. >> we obviously outside the network did not know. we thought that was the first time he was hearing this as well. what did you make of him saying that he believed that it was weaponized? >> i looked at that as him thinking he had been the victim in this. he used the word weaponizing. he wanted to imply in no shortage of words that he himself was a victim and that the tape somehow was used maybe as a reason to fire him for some other reason. it was just here's a nice excuse for why you should be let go from the network. what followed from the network he left, there's a long train now of people since billy bush's firing be ever he was rehired that have fallen to this weaponization of their own conduct. you wonder at what point others may return to the limelight, based on the fact that he's saying look, that was all -- it wasn't just me. why should i pay the ultimate price. others have been weaponized against them. it's a hard thing. >> remember, bush was never accused himself of assaulting or being involved in harassing women, others who have left or been pushed out were. let me play one more soundbite of bush in the interview talking about starting over here. >> do you feel you're starting over? >> not starting over in the sense i have -- i think i picked up some missing elements in the last few years like a deeper empathy, patience. i think people that i'm working with now would say, boy, he's good to work with because when things go -- i don't freak out if something's not right, i say don't worry about it. it will get better. >> got about 15 seconds left here. what will his reception broadly speaking tell us about the current environment? >> i think it will tell us that people, whether he's gained that quality himself, whether they view the #metoo movement in the context of moving on or holding a grudge. >> it's worth noting that we've all moved on as a society, but it's also worth noting that the president one of the few times he's apologized to the american public came after that tape. >> of course he regretted the apology after that. >> and questioned the validity. >> thank you very much. it is election day in north carolina, a day with national implications. "new day" continues right now. >> north carolina's do-over election that could test the strength of trump's presidency is now underway. >> i think dan has a very good chance of winning the election. >> i certainly will go to washington and work very aggressively to help president trump. >> if republicans lose this district, it's going to be a very bad omen for 2020. >> u.s. successfully extracted one of its highest level covert sources inside the russian government. >> there's a lot of daylight between the intelligence community and the president. >> when the president handles the intelligence as his own personal coinage. >> you are going to get allies of ours to pop up on twitter. >> this is "new day" with