Transcripts For MSNBCW The Cycle 20140731

Is so bad, but its not bad enough for some of their outside groups to whom they pander. Luke russert is on the hill to tell us what he is hearing. Youve been on the hill for years now. Help us make sense of what is going on. Have you ever seen anything quite like this . Reporter no. Ive been around since the beginning of boehners leadership, abby. They have obviously had to pull bills in the past because they have not had adequate support but one member whosz close to leadership, he told me this is a new low. This is a complete expletive show. Ill let you fill in the blank there. What youre seeing is House Speaker barren aoehner and the the leadership catered this bill for the more conservative members of their conference. They slashed it down to 660 million. They also put in very tough Border Security provisions. They did everything they seemingly could to make sure this bill would have 218 votes so they could go into the recess saying, hey, we did our job, now its up to the president to try and lead. Guess what, they werent able to pass this. So what does that mean . As of right now, theyre giving obama the bully pulpit to slam them for complete dysfunction. Ill throw on top of that, abby, this was the week they had sued president obama a little ironic. Reporter for executive action. John boehner says the president should act with the tools at his disposal. So its wild, its unprecedented. Theyre having a meeting right now as they speak. Theyre going to possibly try and have a vote on this later. But as one member said to me, this is like in the movie dumb and dumber. Youre saying theres a chance . Theres a one in a million chance, youre saying theres a chance . So if they do go back to the floor and they dont have the votes, that is the most embarrassing thing i could ever imagine in the house of representatives. Well, its a sad state of affairs when youre quoting dumb and dumber when referring to the house. Luke russert, great to see you. Sounds like youll have a very busy day. Lets bring in alan gomez who covers immigration for usa today. We obviously dont know whats going to happen with this house bill but lets just say it goes through today. This essentially allows these House Republicans to go home, pat themselves on the back and say weve done our part, weve done our homework here. But the reality is, this is going to do nothing to actually help the kids on the border, right . Everything that theyre considering in the house and the isnt that the right now are very shortterm fixes. Its basically funding Border Patrol to help them continue patrolling the border, Funding Health and Human Services to help them to continue finding housing and caring for the kids coming across the border but none of them addresses the longterm issues facing the immigration system. This is far short of any immigration bill to help get to some of the root causes. Everything were talking about is a shortterm thing. Theyre struggling to figure out how to fund this the next few months. You have a piece that comes out tomorrow, i think, in the paper talking about the fact youve been covering immigration for the past five years under obama and assessing his legacy. You say its been a very difficult thing for you to do. You write even five years into his tenure, one day someone is telling me hes been too soft and the next someone calls him the deporter in chief. But you make the point that this could all change once they put forward their plan. You say this could actually define his legacy . Absolutely. I mean these five years have been very difficult because hes ramped up Border Security, added more Border Patrol agents, instituted programs that immigration advocates hate that crack down on undocumented immigrants in this country. The other side says, no, hes given a pass to undocumented immigrants in the country. Portion by portion of his immigration record and theres legitimate debate over which way hes going. And so all of a sudden now, assuming this doesnt go through in the house right now, were all going to be sitting around waiting for the president. Hes supposed to be announcing a pretty big, new program to deal with undocumented immigrants and how we deport them, sometime in august, maybe later september. And that if he legalizes or allows one, two, three, four, five million undocumented immigrants to stay in this country, thats when well be pretty sure which way its going and be very easy to say what hes done on this issue. Right. And we typically think about president s and what their legacy will be, but on the issue of immigration we also have to think about the Republican Party and what their legacy on this issue will be. Will they ending up with the latino constituency that has no interest in ever voting for the Republican Party because they have taken such a hard line on immigration and been so unwilling to do anything, and i think that the failure, what looks today to be a failure to even muster support for a very small immigration bill and in fact an attempt to defund the president s that he has taken already on daca, i think those have to be weighed in the republican legacy as well. Yeah, and theres a couple of ways to look at this. Right, if they dont pass a shortterm bill, were definitely not going to get a broader immigration bill so president obama is pretty much this immigration issue is just going to become one of many issues these republicans have blocked from being able to do through congress. So what youre left with is a Republican Party that has resisted that possibility of changing immigration reform. Thats going to matter in 2016 when we are facing a national election, when theres growing hispanic population. But the more you look at these upcoming elections, it doesnt really impact the Republican Party as much. I was looking this morning at eight or nine of the tossup states when it comes to senate races this year. Obviously the senate might turn over to the republicans this year, theres a chance of that. When you look at these nine or ten main states where its a tossup right now, only one state, colorado, has more than 10 of its population hispanic. So in a lot of these places, its not that much of an issue, theres just not that many hispanics that can get enraged and go out to vote against the republican candidate. When you look at the house races, its even less of a factor so its a longterm issue. In these upcoming races it might not play that big a part. You may be 100 right but what we also know and the reason we have this breaking news right now, the House Republicans having a private emergency meeting trying to figure out if they can get some sort of bill to go back to the floor is because house leadership, including their new whip, Steve Scalise here as eric cantor departs, they dont want to go home with nothing, toure, they feel at some level here they were willing to make a lot of policy changes, as luke russert was reporting from the hill, changing the numbers, changing some of the enforcement details, all to the mindset of getting some of these hard right House Republicans on board, because they wanted to go back to recess with something. What were seeing right now as of this moment, nothing. They pulled their own thing from the floor. It wasnt enough. Krystal was just reporting on that with luke minutes ago. This is a problem. It says once again the republicans are not ready to govern. Alan, were talking about what were going to do with all these thousands and thousands of unaccompanied minors, 57,000 so far this year. Some project 90,000 will come into this country this year. And the debate is riddled with discussions of resources. Folks say where will we put these thousands of children, what are we going to do with them, educating them, housing them, taking care of them medically. Youve done some research on this. Is america practically and low gistically able to absorb these thousands of children into this countrys system . I mean if you think about the fact that over 400,000 undocumented immigrants regularly come into the country every year, 50,000 kids isnt going to be that much of a debt. So yeah, absolutely, we can do this. The reason were looking at emergency funding right now in congress is to just to pay for the Border Patrol agents for their immediate housing. But when you look at more of the longterm things like their schooling, their health care, things like that, those are things we already do in this country every year. There are periods where were seeing over a million undocumented immigrants coming into the country every year and they didnt bankrupt our Health Care Systems or shut down schools or anything like that. Being able to get a handle on 50,000 some kids is not going to be what brings down the budget. But talking about children, they obviously cant live on them own. Where do you envision them going . Where they have been going is sponsors and most of them have been family members. So they get caught by borderhan responsible for finding permanent housing. Most of them are endings up with relatives. If they can find a parent, a cousin, some other relative to house them, thats where they get placed. Some of them do ending up in foster care, but that seems to be the vast minority of them. Most of them are just ending up with relatives. Theyre placed into deportation proceedings so eventually they have to appear before an immigration judge. But in the immediate, you know, for the first couple of years that theyre here, theyre staying with family for the most part. And sadly we cannot agree on a shortterm fix. Alan gomez, thank you for joining us. Well continue to monitor this breaking story on capitol hill. Also this hour, life remarks from president obama whos already coming out swinging against Speaker Boehner on a possible lawsuit. What will the president say next . The cycle rolls on for this last thursday in july. Ride to school. I know just the thing to help you get going. Power up with new cheerios protein. But parallel parking isnt one you do a lof them. Ings great. Youre either too far from the curb. Or too close to other cars. Its just a matter of time until you rip some guys bumper off. So, here are your choices take the bus. Or get Liberty Mutual insurance. 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The x1 entertainment operating system. Only from xfinity. Israel says its mission to destroy the hamas Tunnel Network could be completed by early next week. In the meantime israel is calling up another 16,000 reserves to the front line. There are also reports hamas has authorized the palestinian leadership to negotiate on their behalf to the end now of what is israels longest running war with hamas in some time. So far more than 1400 palestinians have been killed, more than five times that number are injured. 59 israelis also dead and another 400 injured there. The pentagon is calling on israel now to protect civilians in gaza, saying the death toll there is, quote, too high. The u. S. Defense chief, chuck hagel, spoke with his israeli counter part last night but the u. S. Is preparing to restock israels munition supplies. The director of the rand center for middle east Public Policy and her latest piece details how iran plays into this entire gaza conflict. Good day to you. You say that a long gaza conflict makes an iran deal less likely. Why is that . Yes, thank you. Well, one of the arguments is that as devastating as this conflict is for the parties on the ground, especially the civilians who are suffering so terribly, there is really some negative regional ramifications of this conflict, especially the longer it depose on. The argument in terms of iran is that the iranians have long been or had long been allies with hamas, had supplied them with financial and military assistance and in fact many of the rockets and the technical knowhow that hamas has today is thanks to the iranian assistance. So this assistance had been broken because hamas and iran had had a split over positions in syria. But unfortunately, this conflict is kind of bringing this resistance camp back together, and youre seeing signals from the iranians again supporting hamas, supporting armed resistance against israel. And the idea here is that youre really intensifying the regional climate, which is only likely to harden israeli positions, possibly american negotiating positions as well. And really creates a very difficult regional climate for the u. S. And iran to negotiate a nuclear deal, because the nuclear deal cannot be completely divorced from this broader regional context. The longer this goes on, the worse it is for our relationship with iran, but shouldnt we dont we have every reason right now at least to be skeptical of iran . You have the five plus one negotiations going on over these nuclear talks, but at the same time iran is calling on muslims around the world to support hamas. What are the chances that we are just playing into irans hands . Well, actually the negotiations with iran have been pretty successful to date. The interim deal that has now been extended for four months actually produced some results. Iran has frozen and rolled back key parts of its program. There have been significant advances to suggest there should be an expansion, and i think there are iranians, pragmatic iranians and the american negotiators who were very interested in a deal and think its viable, but theres no question that the longer conflicts like this go on and show the other roles that iran plays in the region, especially because these roles are viewed very, very skeptically by our regional allies like israel and saudi arabia and so forth and their concerns extend way beyond the Nuclear Program to groups like hamas and hezbollah and assistance to other nonstate actors. So i think that that is the problematic regional context, but i do think the negotiations themselves have proven they can bear fruit. But again, the argument is this regional context will make it all that much more difficult and it already is a very difficult and complex negotiation. Indeed. Elsewhere in the region the New York Times is reporting on how a number of arab states are actually sort of tacitly backing israel in this conflict with hamas. They talk in particular about egypt, jordan, saudi and the uae and they have a quote from Aaron David Miller who says the arab states loathing and fear of political islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to benjamin netanyahu. Ive never seen a situation like it where you have so many arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in gaza and the pummelling of hamas. The silence is deafening. What do you say to that statement . I think its an interesting pointing that really shows that while there have been lots of conflicts between unfortunately between israel and hamas, this isnt the first time, the regional context of this conflict is so much different than its ever been, following the arab uprisings and the great dislike of countries like egypt, the saudis and others of the Muslim Brotherhood. And its a real contest going on in this region. Its not just the israelis versus the palestinians, theres many regional conflicts and rifts that are under way in a very complicated manner. So i think the argument is that some of these arab actors dislike hamas because of their Muslim Brotherhood affiliation even more than israel. I would be cautious about taking that argument too far, however, because these arab governments, while they are quietly pleased that israel is degrading hamas capabilities, theyre publics and arab publics are impassioned and frustrated with this conflict and the suffering of palestinians in gaza resonates. Its on the television screens, its on youtube, its on social media all over the arab and islamic world. In fact thats what iran is capitalizing on, showing that were the real resistance movement. Were the ones that really stand for the palestinian people. These arab governments are corrupt, they just play into the hands of the israelis and the americans. So i think arab governments in light of the arab uprisings and the ability of social movements to enact change in the region, i think there will be a breaking pointing where the suffering is so high where i think this quieter socalled quiet support for israel will come under pressure internally in all of these societies so i would be careful of taking that argument a little too far. Dalia, the suffering that you referred toys already extraordinarily high and there is extreme pain among people who really care about palestinian people. Yesterday we saw the u. N. s Chris Gunness breaking down in tears on Live Television after that u. N. School in gaza was hit, after he had warned 17 times, he said over and over, that it was just children there, that there was no one from hamas there. But it is hamas strategy that is a large part in why so many children are being killed. Why is it that the more reasonable elements of Palestinian Society dont have more power in this situation . Well, you know, i think that obviously these kind of conflicts are inevitably going to ending up with these tragic situations. They really have to be fully investigated because obviously no civilian should ever be targeted or suffer these kinds of consequences from war. And i think they will be investigated thoroughly by the united nations, by israel, by the United States. What this really suggests is that and this is where unfortunately from this tragedy i think the key thing is to start thinking about the end game and figuring out if theres some kind of opportunity that can be seized from this misery, and one potential opportunity is that it may change the mindsets both on the palestinian and israeli side in terms of the willingness to live with the status quo that existed before this conflict started. You know, from the palestinian side, they cant continue they cannot continue living under this siege. And right now while hamas has become hugely popular, and that is an unfortunate consequence of the war because their popularity had been down before this conflict started, but if they dont deliver to people and deliver services and goods and trade and open up the economy in gaza, they will not they will not survive. And so there is an opportunity, i think, to get more pragmatic factions, the Palestinian Authority in particular, back into gaza in a way that may not have been possible before. And i think from the israeli side, youre starting to hear debate about what is the end game, what is the strategy. You know, military, yes, militarily theres strong support in israel for degrading hamas capabilities, especially the rockets and the tunnel development, but there is also a sense that military solutions only get you so far. Right. And that there you cannot just let a situation like Gaza Continue to fester. This previous policy of just letting people suffer is not going to deal a solution to this so i think there is an opportunity but the fighting is going to have to stop. Youre speaking to a division that netanyahu has a deal with. There may be support and concern about a breakdown of diplomacy at the same time. Up next, the Weather Report that has everyone talking from the cycles own chief meteorologist. A choice. Take 4 advil in a day or just 2 aleve for all day relief. Peanuts peanuts crowd cheers then boom. What happened . Stress, fun, bad habits kids, now what . Lets build a new, smarter bed using the dualair chambers to sense your movement, heartbeat, breathing. Introducing the sleep number bed with sleepiqtm technology. It tracks your sleep and tells you how to adjust for a good, better and an awesome night. The difference . Try adjusting up or down. Youll know cuz sleep iq™ tells you. Only at a sleep number store, mattresses with sleepiq start at just 999. 98. Know better sleep with sleep number. The summer that summers from here on will be compared to. So get out there, and get the best price guaranteed. Find it for less and well match it and give you 50 toward your next trip. Expedia. Find yours. It can help your business save money. False. The truth is when you compare our Fastest Internet to the fastest dsl from the phone company, comcast business gives you more for your money. Why pay more for less . Call today for a low price on speeds up to 150mbps. And find out more about our twoyear price guarantee. Comcast business. Built for business. Now to your weather. A few thunderstorms are possible today in the plains and out west. Unseasonably cold weather remains here in the east and it has been lovely. But the real weather story happened over new york city last night. Sharknado 2 took a bite out of the big apple and out of twitter. Last night the much anticipated flick was trending number one, and i bet this guy had a lot to do with it. Now we go live to manhattan with Raphael Miranda from our local station, thats nbc 4. Can you tell us a little bit more about whats happening down there . Thanks, matt. This storm is already taking a toll on the city. The residents are panicked because of the sharks that keep raining down from the sky. Very believable there. I hear he cant go anywhere now, everyone is asking for autographs, hes famous. The movie was so bad, it was great. I couldnt tear myself away. I dont know if we counting that cameo if it doesnt have a shark that wipes him out of the screen. That would have been cool. Next time. Thats why theres sequels, right . Yes. This is not the first sharknado. Breaking news, ari melber, thanks for that little anecdote. I hope we can bookon the show. The president has issues of his own. This week he took russia head on partnering with europe to impose the toughest sanctions yet. Today russia is once again isolating itself from the international community, setting back decades of genuine progress. And it doesnt have to come to this. Senator bob casey from pennsylvania is on the National Security working group. He also comes from a state with the nations second largest ukrainian population. Senator, thank you for being here. Great to be with you, thank you. So youre about to head home for five weeks of vacation. As i just said, you have a number of ukrainians in your own state. What are you going to say to you when they come up and ask you what is going on with the situation . One thing we can say when im going across pennsylvania meeting with folks and having the time to interact with them in ways that we dont during the normal schedule here is to tell whether tell them whether theyre ukrainian americans or otherwise that weve got to keep the pressure on mr. Putin and keep the pressure on with regard to sanctions. Either the imposition of new sanctions or the continuation of some of the financial sanctions that have been placed for a good while now. And also to say very clearly and now that we have european buyin on this that theres going to be a price to pay for his aggression on a continuing basis. I think its starting to have some effect. And also to say very clearly that even apart from the larger question of direct action like sanctions, we should be saying over and over again to mr. Putin, you have an obligation to make sure that that crash site, the folks who have to go in there and do the investigation, have unfettered access and dont have access thats dangerous. And secondly, youve got to call for a cessation of the hostilities to show some leadership instead of just playing a power game, as he has. I think the sanctions are starting to have an impact, but i think we have to do more. You talk about having to do more and trying to cease the military operations going on there. The counsel on Foreign Relations writes about a way of getting that done. They write those who argue that assisting the Ukrainian Military would be reckless and pro vauk california misunderstand the logic of deterns. Unless the military can provide a credible counter force, putin will think that this is a fight easily won. So with that in mind would you like to see us provide military aid for the Ukrainian Forces . Unlike the situation in syria, where ive been a strong advocate for arming the well very lated oppositi vetted opposition, in thiscation i have not heard a compelling case yet, ill keep an open mind, but i havent heard a compelling case yet that more arms from the United States is the answer here. The number of weapons i dont think is the problem here. As you can see both sides have pretty strong weaponry. But i think the important thing here is to keep the unified opposition that weve demonstrated so far against the aggression of putin, making sure that the europeans stay on the case here with us to provide the kind of pressure that sanctions can bring to bear. Look, hes got a very tough economy to deal with and a very tough longterm set of challenges. Weve got to make sure that we continue that pressure, stay unified and stay on message in this sense, that we want a ukraine thats unified, thats stable, thats peaceful an is free of russian interference. Now, its going to take some work to do that, but i think the unanimity that youre seeing now is, i think, significant but it has to be maintained. Senator, the other big story on the hill today, as you know, what seems to be a total breakdown in the new house gop leaderships ability to get their own border bill, a slimmed down border bill to the floor. Weve been reporting on that breaking news. There is, we should mention, an emergency meeting between house gop leaders. What comes out of that we dont know yet, but we do know that Congress Plans to give itself a big recess. Why dont both houses, house and senate, stay in session until they can get this work done and get something on this crisis to the president s desk . Well, im hoping that we can resolve it today. Were going to be voting late today, into the evening likely. We dont know how many votes yet. Number one is weve got to make sure we complete work on the transportation legislation, the veterans legislation as well as dealing with the challenge at the border. And its kind of strange that the house not only couldnt the House Republican leadership not only couldnt get their forces together for a vote but now im hearing that they might even be calling for the president to take executive actions. I thought that they were against that, so its a rather strange day. So ill put a little footnote on this. The house did act today in a substantially positive way in the ways and Means Committee getting out the caseyburrable act. For 529 plans for families that have a child with a disability, to put money away in a taxfree manner. So thats good news in the house. But this Development Today was strange. So at least there is something happening. To your pointing, senator, i wanted to read a little bit of the statement from the leadership. As you mentioned, theyre now calling for the president to do more with his executive power. The Republican Leadership said there are numerous steps the president can and should be taking right now without the need for congressional action to secure our borders. Et cetera, et cetera. In fact it does look like the president is set to take some sort of executive action on immigration likely at the end of the summer. What are you hoping that the president will do with that executive power . What im hoping he can do is within the limits of his authority, and im one of the people that believes that when a president has executive authority to take action in a crisis that that president should do that. Im hoping that what he can do within his authority is similar to or comparable to what hes proposed by way of legislation. Making sure that health and Human Services has as much in the way of resources as they have. The first or the second, i guess, major Government Agency that deals with these children. And they are children, theyre not commodities to be shipped back without any kind of fairness or due process. So making sure that that process of the intake of the children and the care and the protection of the children is improved. And also to put in place if possible any new procedures that will help make sure that when these determinations are made, when a child comes before an agency for a determination that theres support for that child and we do this in a way thats rational and fair. We should act. What we should do is pass the legislation that senator mikulski put forward. I would hope the house would join us in that now that they cant get their own bill moving. Senator bob casey, we will see you in a few weeks. Thanks very much. Up next, a major ruling on an issue that divided wisconsin and the nation. The impact where it matters most, american families. We continue to watch for the president , whos slated to make remarks any moment and expect some more fighting words for House Republicans out to sue him. Keep it here. So factors like diet can negatively impact good bacteria . Even if youre healthy and active. 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I have a lifetime of experience. So i know how important that is. Relish. The sweet pleasure of delivered straight to your face in accomodation paradise. Booking. Com booking. Yeah a Big Development in the heartland today, as the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Governor Scott walkers 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, sparking massive protests and of course a recall election. This was the last legal challenge to that law that limits workers bargaining wage increases pegged to inflation. Now the ruling may boost governor walkers political career, but it is a huge blow to workers earning power, only adding to growing financial insecurity. And its an insecurity that is surprisingly common among families of actually all economic backgrounds. A new book by Stanford University sociologist Mary Ann Cooper called cut adrift gets beyond the numbers to tell the stories of families as they try to overcome anxieties and find lasting economic security. Here with us is the books author, marianne. Welcome. I wanted to start with the big idea in the book which is families have been shouldering more and more of the burden, more and more of the instability as the role of the government and the role of their employers have changed over time. Yes. Risk has been offloaded by government and corporations onto the shoulders of individuals and their families, and its been happening over the last 30 years as risk has shifted. And so families are no longer able to rely on a job that comes with good benefits and good wages. More and more of the time they expect that they wont get anything from their employer, and thats really a change in the social contract between employers and employees. Indeed. I had a chance yesterday to speak with a worker at Union Station working at basically a Fast Food Restaurant on my web show, krystal clear, about the challenges that she faces. Lets take a listen to what she had to say. It will help me in so many different ways. I have an 11monthold son that i have to care for and take to provide for. I would like to go back to college to be able to get a better career, to be able to give him a better life. And me myself, i would be able to live a better life. I also live with my mom. I would be able to help her bay her bills, the rent, so she doesnt have to struggle. The balancing act that keyonna i have to imagine is far too common. What are some of the strategies that folks like keyona and the folks you interviewed are using to try to find that stability in their lives . Sadly, because they dont have policies like living wages to draw upon, theyre actually talking themselves through their anxiety. And one of the ways that they do this is biceping that a lot of times theres nothing to be done, so they lower their expectations. Theyre letting go of their dreams and their goals and trying to get used to less an less. Can we pull back a bit and talk about the general mood that you perceive after your research. You talk about heartwrenching worry. The subtitle is one nation under worry. What is the mood you found . Well, families from rich to poor are actually weighed down by something very similar, which is the anxiety generated from hard times. So from wellpaid Business Executives to struggling domestic workers, i found that were all feeling insecure. We just feel it and deal with it in different ways. Its interesting when you say that how we deal with it. Sociologists talk about role distancing. If you have a healthy mindset you can see yourself in different roles, your job is only one of them. But youre talking about a kind of different anxiety that would be hard for people to put to the side. Can you speak to that and that kind of pressure . Sure. There are deep psychological reverberations in living in such unequal times. I talked with an executive who said he still felt worried and in order to feel financially secure he would need 10 million. With millions more to accumulate, he was worried. On the other hand, i talked with a struggling single mother of three and she said that all she needed was food, shelter and clothing. What i took away from this is that in hard times, the rich dont think they have enough and are striving for more and everyone else is accepting the fact that theres not much they can do about their situation and lowering their expectations. So the dividing lines among us are not just economic, theyre actually also emotional. Absolutely. You also write about how folks in the lower income bracket, those that really do suffer from anxiety, are relying on faith and on religion to help them cope and how the government as well is relying on religion, including the mormon church. Tell us a little bit more about this. Well, again, thats part of the risk shift is that welfare has increasingly gone from the federal government outsourced to states and then outsourced beyond that to faithbased organizations. And a lot of churches do great work in helping people in need, in giving them what food, shelter, clothing, all of those basic needs. But what churches and religions also do is provide people with faith that things will get better. But i found that this way of coping was actually only common among families in intense economic difficulty, poor and working class families. While thats a great source of support, in the book i argue that that shouldnt be the only place for people to go. Because what can happen in that sort of environment is what if youre not a believer or youve not a believer of that particular faith. You might feel that you have to say things or believe things that you dont really believe in order to get the help you need. Fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for your time. We all know that abby usually has her feet firmly on the ground, but not when shes trying to conquer her fear of heights. Abbys adventures. What . Bend your knees. Jump legs up, legs up, abby. You got it, look your knees. Stay like that. Great. Here we go. Hands up now, hands up. Look at james, look at him. Guys, this was like the scariest thing ive ever done in my life. Watch abbys adventures at the Trapeze School of new york on our website, thecycle. Msnbc. Com. Up next, will the president continue his attack on House Republicans bent on suing him . We will listen in when he speaks in moments. Nature valley crunchy granola bars give you energy from 1 3 of your daily whole grains, so 1 3 of this commercial is dedicated to what you could do with all that energy. Energy for making new ocean friends. Its about getting to the finish line. In life, its how you get there that matters most. Its important to know the difference. Like when i found out i had a blood clot in my leg. 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Get help right away if you develop unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising, or tingling. If you have had spinal anesthesia while on xarelto®, watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle related signs or symptoms. Do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. Tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. Before starting xarelto®, tell your doctor about any conditions such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. Xarelto® is proven to reduce the risk of dvt and pe. With xarelto® there is no regular blood monitoring and no known dietary restrictions. Treatment with xarelto® was the right move for me. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor about xarelto® today. For more information including savings options, download the xarelto® Patient Center app, call 1888xarelto, or visit teamxarelto. Com. Right now president obama is on stage at the department of housing and urban development. Pundits are watching for him to continue his attacks on House Republicans after they voted to give Speaker John Boehner the ability to sue him. There is no timeline yet on this lawsuit. Dont expect it before the midterms. But it will accuse the president of exceeding his authority in implementing the health care law. Today the president signed his 185th executive order. This one protecting Workplace Safety for americans hired by federal contractors. Yesterday the president was talking about some of these issues and he said they need to stop being so mad, they need to stop hating. I wonder if well hear some language like that. We will listen in as we talk and if something exciting comes up, well dip into that. This lawsuit is rightly termed impeachment light because what it is is a way of appeasing the crazy while not going full crazy. I think they saw on the shutdown when they go full crazy, that is bad for the Republican Party. But when you stoke so much crazy in your party, then eventually the moderate members have to do something to appease those folks and make it look like, yeah, were still on the same team, even though they may understand this is not a good thing and this lawsuit doesnt actually even make sense. Right. And the whole thing that was supposed to happen today is not happening because of another colossal republican failure. Yeah. Today were looking at the president right now speaking and giving some remarks here and we expect him to do some pushback, but thats on message for the white house right now. Whats off message and also off substance more importantly is that the house said they were going to do two big things. They were going pull out their big gift to the base, make the base happy with this ridiculous, expensive, nothing expensive, intellectually ins t insulting lawsuit and they were going to do Something Real on the border today. What happened so far . They had to pull back the real thing. The nothing burger has been cooked, recooked, reheated, eaten. Its dessert, its not even a meal. Lets be careful with the dessert analogy. You know what that leads to. That they can do. That they know how to do and thats no surprise, Steve Scalise replacing eric cantor, the one thing they rallied around, we have a border crisis. We need to address it. Its an emergency and the president needs to go to the border and well send some money in to send people who actually do things day to day, and they had the money by 600 mill and thats failed. Theyll have this emergency meeting and maybe a latenight vote and maybe a meeting tomorrow. I dont think they had any business giving themselves a vacation, try to do some work. You know what i would also say, why is the president know out there demanding that they stay until they get something done. He has the power to do that. Last night they authorized the house to sue the president and how ironic little little now, we want you to use your executive authority to do something on this border crisis. Howard feinman was on hard ball last night and he had an interesting strategy that republicans, he thought were using that would play off longer term. Lets take a listen. They think theyre being smart by putting the predicate on on this lawsuit and theyll dare the president to do what everybody thinks hes going to do on immigration and that is take executive action on immigration and then theyll put the two together and then theyll turn it into an impeachment on immigration, which for them and their people. Thats what they want. I heard that i thought that was a bit crazy, but thats exactly how this is playing out and theyre suing the president and theyre asking him to use the executive authority which allows them to say this is an Impeachable Offense when they come back to break. Lets go ahead and listen to the president. Lets take a listen. So in talking to julian and initially trying to persuade him to take this task, what i saw was that spirit of hard work thats reflected in how he was brought up and the values that were instilled in him and he every single day wants to make sure that those values live out in the work that he does. And i know everybody in this room, you have a story to tell, too, about somebody who along the way gave you some opportunity. About somebody like me who was raised by a single mom or that first apartment that had your own bedroom and it was clean and it was in a decent neighborhood and there was a Decent School district and how happy everybody was and the the transformation that could take place in peoples lives. Thats thats a story i want you to tap into every day that you come to work. You know, sometimes working in washington can be discouraging. Sometimes it seems as if the agenda that youre trying to pursue helping working families and middleclass families and sometimes it seems thats not the prior is up on capitol hill, but if you remember why you got into this work in the first place, if you remember that this is not just a job, but it should also be a passion, that it should also be part of giving back that you shouldnt just be checking in and punching the clock, but every single day theres somebody out there who could use your help and i know when they get that help, and theyll tell me, you transformed my life, theres no better feeling on earth than that feeling that you somehow played a small part in a family succeeding. And that success then last generations because some child or grandchild suddenly is feeling better and they start doing better in school and maybe, you know they avoided getting into trouble and the Justice System and dropping out of school all because of what you did. What an incredible privilege that is. What an incredible honor, and thats the attitude i want you to have every single day that youre here. I tell folks, ive now been president for more five and a half years and i have two and a half years left and i want to squeeze every single day. I want to squeeze as much out of every single day. This is know just a job, its a privilege that we have, and we have to take dwadvantage of it. We have to seize it because thats what makes it worthwhile. Its something that when i travel around the country, i try to describe because people are so inundated with cynicism and bad news and i want to tell them the story of good news. There are people in agencies like hud, every single day that care about you and they want to help you and, you know, big organizations are never going to be perfect and there are always going to be some bureaucracies and red tape and always things that dont work quite as smoothly as we want and your job is to fix that stuff or work around that stuff, and i want everybody here to when youre working with this new secretary who has energy and drive. Hes young, hes good looking and he talks good. Thats the president speaking at the hud. Well be back with a final word in just a minute. If i can impart one lesson to a new business owner, it would be one thing ive learned is my philosophy is real simple American Express open forum is an online community, that helps our members connect and share ideas to make Smart Business decisions. If you mess up, fess up. Be your partners best partner. We built it for our members, but its open for everyone. Theres not one way to do something. 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These closing hours are a mess. The border crisis is first and foremost that we need to get taken care of before we leave in the house closed the border bills. Ive never been more shocked than what just happened. Whats happening on the border. The wild card, texas senator, ted cruz. I dont know where the heart is of the Republican Party. Mr. Speaker, i would like to thank you for not being afraid to show us all your kind heart. Are you kidding me . The majority of his caucus feels its only a compromise when you see it their way. This congress is the least productive in modern history. Oh, dont make me do this sometimes i feel like the republicans in congress have no heart like the tin man. Oh, this is t