Special: Searching for the Paris Attackers, Big Democratic Donors, Voting Rights at the State Level and Few Truths in Election 2016

ANNOUNCER: This is the Washington Week Webcast Extra .

MS. IFILL: Hello, I’m Gwen Ifill. I’m joined around the table by Angie Drobnic Holan of PolitiFact, David Sanger of The New York Times , Reid Wilson of Morning Consult , and Jeanne Cummings of The Wall Street Journal .

First I want to talk to you, David, about what we know about the incredible response which has been mounted as a result of Friday’s attacks in Paris.

MR. SANGER: Well, it looks now that, at least as we speak right now, the attacks seem to be over. And of course, that can be a false calm. What counterterrorism people always worry about is that there’s a wave and then another wave. And for that reason, they’ve actually militarized this in the response. The army – French Army is moving in. That didn’t happen during the Charlie Hebdo time.

MS. IFILL: Closing the borders.

MR. SANGER: Closing the borders. So this has – the response itself has more of a national emergency military response sensibility about it than the previous terror attacks in Europe, if you think back to London in 2005 and others.

MS. IFILL: It also feels that, when we’ve gone through these attacks before, including 9/11, it took a while before terrorism was established. People said it feels like it’s terrorism, we’re waiting for a claim of responsibility. People knew instantly in this case.

MR. SANGER: Yeah, they did, and they did because we’ve unfortunately seen this movie many times before. The AK-47s that were being used in this, the favorite weapon of these extremists. The style of the attacks. So I think the question here isn’t whether it’s terrorism. The question is, was this centrally coordinated terrorism that came out of al-Qaida, ISIS, some other group? Or was this a group of disaffected extremists living within France?

MS. IFILL: OK. That will continue to unfold.

So now we’re going to talk about the politics that gets missed. First, the money. The Wall Street Journal today writes about what’s happened to the big money Democrats. Turns out they’re not automatically lining up behind Hillary Clinton. Jeanne, really? How does –

MS. CUMMINGS: We were shocked.

MS. IFILL: How does she miss that?

MS. CUMMINGS: I mean, especially since she knows their names, for heaven’s sakes. Eighty percent of the donors who maxed out to Obama have not given a penny to Hillary, Bernie or O’Malley. They’re just on the sidelines.

And in the interviews that we did, some of them said they don’t like her; you know, she just does not motivate them in the same way. Many of them said, in the age of the super PAC, they’re just demoralized. And you know, contributions to candidates are limited, so they feel like their $2,700 is just throwing money away – which, of course, the candidate would think otherwise. And still others are, you know, sort of fence-sitting because they’re just not ready to get in yet. So some of them will probably come to her, but it is remarkable. These are donors that are listed publicly on FEC reports. Her campaign knows who they are. I’m sure they’ve been in touch. And that that many of them – there were 4,000 of them. Only 850 have given checks.

MS. IFILL: That signals questions to come, yeah.

MS. CUMMINGS: And here was the other – one last big surprise: Clinton gets the most money from them, then Sanders, then Jeb Bush, then O’Malley.

MS. IFILL: Who? (Laughter.)

MS. CUMMINGS: Jeb Bush. I know, but it’s interesting.

MS. IFILL: I mean O’Malley. I was telling a bad joke, yeah. I know. It is interesting, and that’s part of his problem, actually.

Reid, you wrote a story this week which was interesting, and it’s also a challenge for the Democrats, which was how to take advantage of these voting rights challenges we’ve seen around the country.

MR. WILSON: So since 2009, when President Obama took office, Democrats have lost 816 legislative seats around the country. That’s one – that’s more than one in every 10 state legislative seats in the country. After Republicans swept to power in 2010, and then again in 2014 there was another wave, they passed a number of laws that changed the way voting happens, whether it’s voter identification laws or changing early voting or absentee habits or things like that. And that impacts voters. It impacts on the margin who’s going to show up to vote. And therefore, in some of these very close states, it’s going to impact who’s going to win.

Democrats have really figured out that they have to pay attention to these state races now. They have to pay attention to state legislative races, secretary of states, attorneys general all across the country. And in doing so they’re trying to offer their own legislation or ballot initiatives that would change voting laws again. In California, Governor Jerry Brown last month signed what’s called an auto-registration bill, which means that anybody who is eligible – any citizen who is eligible to be on the voter rolls will be on the voter rolls. With his signature alone, he registered more voters than any other single action in American history; 6.6 million new people will be on California voter rolls right after he signed – once this thing is fully implemented.

MS. IFILL: That is a great story. Let’s go out and report it. I like that. That’s interesting.

MR. WILSON: There you go. Especially because you get to go to California.

MS. IFILL: Exactly. Well – (laughs) – I had a plan. (Laughter.)

Angie, I want to ask you, after all your – the interesting thing about PolitiFact is you just don’t say people are liar, liar, pants on fire, you occasionally call them out for saying the truth. So, looking back on this debate, who was telling the truth?

MS. HOLAN: (Laughs.) Well, you know, it’s not a great season for trues. We did find one. Ted Cruz said that the tax code was longer than the Bible. He didn’t mean it –

MS. IFILL: More words.

MS. HOLAN: More words. He didn’t mean it as a compliment. And so we checked. The tax code, 4 million words; the Bible, 800,000 words. So he got a true.

MS. IFILL: I heard him say that and I wasn’t certain what that meant, but it’s a true fact.

MS. HOLAN: We fact-check the things that we think an average person would hear and say, hmm, I wonder if that’s true or not. And that one caught our attention, so we went for it.

MS. IFILL: OK. Well, thanks a lot.

Thanks for watching as well. While you’re online, check out my blog this week about, as it happens, truth, lies and transparency. That’s at PBS.org/WashingtonWeek. And we’ll see you next time on the Washington Week Webcast Extra .