@user1735003 figured it out.
I unistalled the latest version of tensorflow
pip uninstall tensorflow
and then installed tensorflow 1.5
pip install tensorflow==1.5
then I verified the installation worked with the script
import tensorflow as tf
hello = tf.constant('Hello, TensorFlow!')
sess = tf.Session()
print(sess.run(hello))
I got the correct output
Hello, TensorFlow!