Good morning. We are glad you are with us. Victor blackwell by my side as we get to the significant Breaking News. So much happening overnight. Here are the five things to know this morning. 36 people are confirmed dead in this devastating wildfire across hawaii. The flames charring hundreds of buildings. Black hawk helicopters have been deployed as paradise burns. Just out this morning, Supreme Court Clarence Thomas and His Luxurious Life Tstyle A who was funding it. 38 luxury vacations, 26 private jet flights and a dozen vip passes to Sporting Events. And a president ial candidate in ecuador assassinated at a rally. The anticorruption candidate was killed just ten days before the election. New video coming in of a deadly fbi raid, a man killed after making threats against President Biden and other elected officials. And new information in the atlanta area investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Sources tell cnn Prosecutor Fani Willis is seeking more than a dozen ind
since 1991. we all make friends over 30 years. few of us make billionaire friends. what do they want from one another if they had no business before the court? it is an interesting question and one we were trying to get at. what we learned time and again was that they all had really similar ideologies, they are conservative funders, donated a lot to gopdates and causes over thers. but he said, thomas said once that these are just my good friends. wayne doesn t want anything for fr me. i can t give him anything in return. that has been the through line with all these benefactors. and you guys and your team have done phenomenal reporting. this is a series hes of reports that you guys have done on the supreme court. this comes at a time when the
you re not paid by them. i want to start with you eric. the nra doesn t like to debate. they don t like to be on these segments. they keep saying no to interview requests. i wonder if the strategy is not let this topic be debatable and not let gun reform be a debatable point. what do you think? i think they are willing to engage in discussion if they go over to fox news. they are happy having some level of discussion on this thing. i thought it was cowardly that they wouldn t show up for cnn s event. they complain they would only have one question and pre-screened. as you saw, as i saw and as the country saw, people who oppose president obama s gun agenda were able to stand up there right in front of him and press their points with the president. what more could you ask for. they didn t ask any follow up questions. they could have pressed him
i have a theory i want to try out. i think in the nra had come, it would have been great tv. it would have been great journalism. we would have heard from them at length. maybe they would have been going back and forth. that is something that it was a missed opportunity by the nra. do you feel that i m right about this idea that the nra doesn t want the issues to be debatable? they don t want to suggest this is a debatable subject? so interesting, last month chris cox argued the nra didn t oppose gun research and support fair, tough minded look at how gun laws work. we re not seeing a lot of cdc gun violence research funding. why doesn t the nra release a list of questions they would like answered. that would be helpful to everyone. have you ever i ve gotten comment from them but only rarely. i noticed that wayne doesn t do many interviews. chris cox does a number but not a high number. it s interesting they don t do more press. the idea that there s a
guns would not have done anyone any good at any time in that story in boston and we know it. if every man, woman and child at the finish line of the boston marathon had a gun, it would have done them absolutely no good when the bombs went off. the three dead would still have been killed. all of the injured and maimed would still have suffered the same injuries, and the people that weren t injured would not have reached for their guns, they would have rushed to help the injured just like all the gun toting police officers did. no one with a gun would have taken a shot at the bombers because no one knew who the bombers were. but wayne lapierre could still ask his reality challenged audience how many bostonians wished they had a gun two weeks ago. wayne doesn t care about or even know the facts of the boston case, so he probably doesn t know that the first person that