[Chris Cuomo, Cnn:] You weren't listening.
[Don Lemon, Cnn:] No, I was listening to you, but I just wanted to ask you because I've been off. And just from a distance, the ridiculousness of what is going on in this country. You know, I try to avoid the news. But because of the stories that happened last week, it is hard to avoid. And then people walk up to me and they say, what is going what is happening in our country? I don't know. I'm scared. What's going on? I mean it's I think sometimes we're too close to it, the forest through the trees, that we just don't see how this is crazy.
[Cuomo:] I hear you. I understand that perspective. I cannot own it myself because I am into this 247365. I think of nothing else. When I'm shaving all five whiskers on my chin-
[Lemon:] Yes.
[Cuomo:] I'm thinking about this while I'm shaving.
[Lemon:] Yes.
[Cuomo:] I cannot get away from it because I do not want to. That's how I started the radio show today. I need more, D. Lemon.
[Lemon:] Even when you're putting on your toupee, I'm sure you're thinking about that as well.
[Cuomo:] They paid a lot for this.
[Lemon:] Yes. Creams and formula helps too.
[Cuomo:] Thank you for your dog donating the hair by the way.
[Lemon:] You're nut. Hey, good to see you.
[Cuomo:] Pleasure.
[Lemon:] Thank you, sir. This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon. And make no mistake the Russia investigation is on the line right now. It's on the line. So as the president -President Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, that is on the line as well, him to the Supreme Court. Either or both could decide the course of the Trump presidency. And incredibly they're both coming to a head on the same day, and that's Thursday. And that's throwing the White House and all of Washington into chaos. And all of this chaos, everything we're seeing right now, the Russia investigation, the Supreme Court, it looks like a direct result of what you could call the devil's bargain that conservatives made with a president who is not exactly their natural ally. The deal? Well, we'll support this president no matter what he says or does as long as we get a couple of key victories tax cuts, done. And the Supreme Court. Well, the president's second pick for the highest court in the land, it's not going exactly as smoothly as the Gorsuch confirmation. That is why Judge Brett Kavanaugh is fighting back, doing an interview on Fox News, an interview that just might be aimed at an audience of one. Guess who that is. President Trump.
[Brett Kavanaugh, U.s. Appeals Court Judge:] I'm not going to let false accusations drive us out of this process and, you know, we're looking for a fair process where I can be heard and defend my integrity. I'm not going anywhere.
[Lemon:] That's the kind of fighting spirit the president likes. The Washington Post reporting Trump has been frustrated by the slow pace of the Kavanaugh hearings and has demanded a quick vote. And after being uncharacteristically restrained when Christine Blasey Ford's accusations that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers, when they first came out, the president is now insisting it's all just politics.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] I am with Judge Kavanaugh, and I look forward to a vote. And for people to come out of the woodwork from 36 years ago and 30 years ago and never mentioned it, all of a sudden it happens, in my opinion, it's totally political. It was totally political.
[Lemon:] So a lot of Republicans on the same page. Orrin Hatch is on the same page as the president, Senator Orrin Hatch. That's no surprise with his comments today about Deborah Ramirez who accuses Kavanaugh of inappropriate sexual behavior when they were both at Yale University.
[Sen. Orrin Hatch , Utah:] Well, it's amazing to me that these allegations come out of nowhere at the last minute and that they weren't brought up earlier in this process. And it's not untypical for our friends on the other side to pull that kind of crap.
[Lemon:] And tonight, some Republicans hinting to CNN they might push through a vote on Kavanaugh this week, even though they don't they won't even hear from Ford until Thursday. They want to push it through this week. So much for a full investigation, right? And Senator Mitch McConnell, the man who said this this is 2016. Watch.
[Mitch Mcconnell,  United States Senator:] One of my proudest moments is when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye, and I said, Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.
[Lemon:] Well, now the senator is echoing what sure sounds like a Republican talking point, claiming the accusations against judge Kavanaugh are these are his words "a smear campaign."
[Mcconnell:] But even by the far left's standards, this shameful, shameful smear campaign has hit a new low. A smear campaign, pure and simple. It sounds like a choreographed smear campaign. Democrats wouldn't let a few inconvenient things like a complete lack of evidence or an accuser's request for confidentiality to get between them and a good smear. But the smear campaign didn't stop there. Let's put aside this last-minute, unsubstantiated smear. Let's return to the facts.
[Lemon:] Phrase of the day, kids smear campaign. And with both sides battling tooth and nail over the Supreme Court, the Russia investigation could be hanging by a thread. Rod Rosenstein, the man who is overseeing that investigation, was expecting the ax to fall today when he went to a meeting at the White House. Instead he got an unexpected reprieve after the New York Times bombshell report last week that Rosenstein had suggested secretly recording President Trump and even considering invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Rosenstein denied it, but you can't blame you can't blame the man for thinking that he was surely on the chopping block with the notoriously thin skin of Donald Trump, President Trump. Instead, the president said this.
[Trump:] I'm meeting with Rod Rosenstein on Thursday when I get back from all of these meetings, and we'll be meeting at the White House, and we'll be determining what's going on. We want to have transparency. We want to have openness, and I look forward to meeting with Rod at that time.
[Lemon:] Doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement, does it, because it's not a ringing endorsement. And it comes after the president said this to Geraldo Rivera.
[Geraldo Rivera, Fox News Correspondent At Large:] Will you fire Rod Rosenstein based on-
[Trump:] I don't want to comment on it. I don't want to comment on it until I get all the facts. I haven't gotten all the facts. But certainly it's being looked at in terms of what took place, if anything took place, and I'll make a determination sometime later. But I don't have the facts.
[Lemon:] And just, I want to refresh your memory now. Remember when a noncommittal Sarah Sanders said this after the FBI raid on former Trump fixer and keeper of secrets Michael Cohen.
[Unidentified Female:] Is the president considering firing or in other ways purposing out Rosenstein?
[Sarah Huckabee-sanders, White House Press Secretary:] I don't have any personal announcements at this front.
[Unidentified Female:] Just one other thing. Paul Ryan today said that he's been given assurances by the White House that the president isn't planning to fire Rosenstein or Mueller. Do you know where he's getting those assurances? Is it coming from the president? Is it coming from others? Where is it coming from?
[Sanders:] Again, I don't have any announcements on that front.
[Lemon:] Well, today she couldn't even muster a no comment and said, instead defaulting to a statement, saying, quote, this is a quote. "At the request of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss the recent news stories. Because the president is at the United Nations general assembly and has a full schedule with leaders from around the world, they will meet on Thursday when the president returns to Washington, D.C." Convenient. You got to wonder whether team Trump even wants to fire Rosenstein and potentially open a whole new bunch of obstruction charges, or do they prefer to stick to their strategy of discrediting the investigation? Well, so will the president fire Rod Rosenstein on Thursday? Will the Kavanaugh nomination crash and burn on Thursday? And are Republicans about to pay a price for the bargain they made with President Trump? Let's discuss now. CNN's White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins is here as well as CNN global affairs analyst, Susan Glasser, and Mark McKinnon, a former adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain, who is now executive producer of the circus on Showtime Sunday nights. Good evening to one and all. Good to have you on the program tonight. Susan, I'm going to start with you because you say it is not normal to start a Monday morning wondering if we're having a constitutional crisis and a confirmation crisis. I happen to think we're already in a constitutional crisis. So talk to us about today's incredible developments.
[Susan Glasser, Cnn Global Affairs Analyst:] Well, first of all, Don, I think you're right, you know, that in many ways the crisis every day, people say is this it? Is this the crisis? Well, if Trump does x, if Trump does y, if he fires Rosenstein, this is the constitutional crisis. But arguably it's been going on ever since January of 2017 in the sense that you have a president who is willing to challenge any number of norms. And so it's left us guessing much of the time. But even by those standards today was a pretty crazy day. We can all agree upon that. I think it took two hours and 40 minutes. That's what the Post reported between the initial reports that Rosenstein was preparing to offer his resignation or did offer his resignation to the White House chief of staff. And when Sarah Sanders put out that statement saying, well, OK, let adjust put this on hold until Thursday. Scenes of chaos and uncertainty that to me, are reminder number one. We really have a government by just one person, the president at this point. You know, there is no such thing really as a regular order because even Trump's own advisers are very uncertain as to what the president is actually going to do at any given moment. It makes it very hard for them obviously to run the country when they don't know. So the president is 250 miles away in New York, meeting with world leaders gathered for the annual U.N. general assembly. They must be thinking, look at the United States in this, you know, political chaos, internally divided, inward-looking. The message it sends about America's leadership in the world is something really quite remarkable, I think.
[Lemon:] A sight to behold. Mark, what happens if the president does fire Rosenstein on Thursday? What happens?
[Mark Mckinnon, Executive Producer, The Circus:] Well, the larger perception will be that all hell breaks loose, you know, because there's the broader perception that this is the first domino to fall, and the ultimate dominoes falling means that's the end of the Mueller investigation. Now, there are plenty of people who think that under any circumstance, that that's not going to happen and that people close to Bob Mueller say he will plant acorns everywhere, believe me, and already has. But, you know, I do think I like the Cuomo strategy actually. I think the do nothing strategy would be a brilliant move, totally unexpected, dramatic, which Trump likes. Since right around from the midterms I think Sean Hannity, by the way, was suggesting not that it leads to further collusion evidence, but I think he was thinking more about the midterms, that it just throws chaos and uncertainty into the midterms when really a lot of Republicans would rather focus on the Kavanaugh nomination. It just Republicans have enough trouble right now with the midterms and just throwing that uncertainty into the mix is a gamble I don't think a lot of Republicans would like to take right now. Why not wait until after the midterms?
[Lemon:] This Thursday on the reality TV network, will the president fire I mean that's what it sounds like.
[Mckinnon:] Showdown at the OK corral.
[Lemon:] Tune in on Thursday night at 10 o'clock if you're going to do it. But I mean, Kaitlan, Rosenstein's job has really been in jeopardy before. But today's summoning to the White House, it set Washington on edge. What's going on behind the scenes? Could the Thursday meeting with the president could that be it for Rosenstein, you think?
[Kaitlan Collins, Cnn White House Reporter:] Well, that's the question. What happened today didn't resolve that question. It just simply postponed it for a few more days until the president returns from New York. But, Don, I can't understate or overstate the chaos that was in the West Wing or among senior officials this morning after it was reported about Rosenstein offering to resign to John Kelly because it really set off this mad dash to figure out what it was that had happened, what conversations had transpired, and that is why we didn't see the White House respond with any kind of statement for hours. That is why you saw no press secretary coming out and saying, this isn't true. This hasn't happened. It's because they themselves were trying to figure out what happened. Part of that is because John Kelly, the chief of staff, is here in Washington. President Trump hasn't been here since on Thursday because he was traveling last week, then was in New Jersey, and now he's in New York this week. But what we do know is that Rod Rosenstein simply miscalculated just how angry he believed the president was going to be to that New York Times reporting. Whenever they had reached out for comment, he essentially, of course, as you noted their relationship has been pretty bad before to where the president openly talked about firing him. So when this story came out, the natural prediction was that President Trump would be so angry that his deputy attorney general had floated the idea of wearing a wire to meet with him, that he would fire him. So Rod Rosenstein was prepared. He offered his resignation. He said he was willing to quit. John Kelly was under the impression that he had accepted his resignation, and that is what led and jump-started all the chaos that happened today. Now of course, President Trump wasn't actually as angry as people thought. On Friday, he did ask people, should I fire this guy? What should I do? We saw him make that comment at the rally about a lingering stench. But really, Don, over the weekend, President Trump was much more preoccupied with what was happening with Brett Kavanaugh and the drama surrounding his nomination than he was with Rod Rosenstein. And that's not what Rosenstein saw coming, which is what led to so much of that chaos today.
[Lemon:] Yes. Well, he's stood behind Brett Kavanaugh saying, you know, he's a good man.
[Collins:] Yes.
[Lemon:] I can't believe this is happening. This is a smear campaign. This is a worse ting, and I'm paraphrasing here. So you set me up because we're going to talk about that when we come back. I want you all to stay around. When we come back, I want to talk about the other big drama that has the White House and Capitol Hill in turmoil. That's what Kaitlan just mentioned. Judge Brett Kavanaugh trying to save his Supreme Court bid. He tried to make his case on television tonight, but was he really speaking to just one person, the president?