from hard-hit staten island. >> during difficult times like this, we're reminded that we're bound together. and we have to look out for each other. and a lot of the things that seem important, the petty differences melt away and we focus on what binds us together and that we as americans are going to stand with each other in their hour of need. we're going to have to put some of the turf battles a souside. we're going to have to make sure everybody is focused on doing the job as opposed to worrying about what's getting the credit or who's getting the contracts or all that sometime that sometimes goes into the rebuilding process. >> that was what happened today in presidential politics in storm damaged new york. but if the president's message in new york was one of buckling down and cooperating and working together to get things done, what happened in washington today was a study in contrast from that. >> the president, himself, has intentionally misinformed, read that, lied, to the american people in the aftermath of this tragedy. this is not simply a cover-up of a third rate burglary. we have four of our diplomatic personnel dead. >> this administration continues to put out things that are just not quite true. >> if you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror. our evil doing american citizen hating administration requested a lot more money than we provided. a quarter of a millibillion dol in security upgrades that you refuse to make in this committee. and then you have the audacity to come here and say, why wasn't the protection of these people provided for? and the answer is, because you didn't provide it. >> the election was over. the president won re-election. the voices of the public were heard. they want us to cooperate. if you want an honest investigation of this tragedy, we will join you. but if you want to persist in trying somehow to put this, lay this at the doorstep of the president or the secretary of state, or the united nations ambassador, you will find us ready and willing to resist to the teeth. >> to the teeth. that's what it was like today at the house foreign affairs committee's hearing on the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi, libya, and in the house and senate and intelligence committees but those are both closed to the public. we learned today newly resigned cia chief david petraeus agreed to testify at a closed intelligence committee hearing tomorrow and maybe a closed house hearing, too. in his first remarks to a reporter since he resigned, general petraeus told kyra phillips from "headline news" his resignation had strictly to do with the affair and not related to benghazi. he told kyra phillips he's eager to testify in congress about the benghazi relationship to clear that up. that's related presumably to the conspiracy theories of general petraeus' resignation that are populating the conservative media. quote, it's obvious someone was out to silence petraeus. quote, in the modern era, office holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary noncriminal consensual adult sexual liaison. said elliot spitzer. i mean, anthony weiner. i mean, jim mccgreavy. none of them. it was said by a man named andrew napolitano. david petraeus' resignation to him could not possibly be about some dumb affair. nobody resigns from office for having an affair. there must be a leftist government cover-up going on. the white house is trying to keep general petraeus from spilling the beans about vague imagined government conspiracy surrounding the benghazi attacks. that's what napolitano is saying. the conservative columnist charles krauthaummer is driving the same thing now. it is still really senator john mccain. over the past week senator john mccain made six different television appearances just to ta talk about the benghazi attack and obama administration cover-up of the attack making his case over and over and over again to any blinking red light within sight about how benghazi should not be viewed as an attack on a u.s. consulate but instead be viewed as a democratic lie. an obama scandal. the senate needs more information about this blatant cover-up, says john mccain. john mccain needs more information. this, for example, is john mccain convening a press conference yesterday morning denouncing the scandal that congress is not being given enough information about this horrible scandal that he can't get any answers on. while john mccain was demanding answers at this press conference, that he convened yesterday morning, some of this colleagues, from a committee that he's a member of, were getting answers. on the subject that he was so mad about. john mccain was missing a three-hour high-level closed classified briefing on what exactly happened in benghazi from representatives of the state department, national counterterrorism center, fbi, john mccain did not get any of the classified briefing, did not get any of that information or questions answered by any of those people because he skipped the briefing and instead went and yelled at tv cameras about how he couldn't get any information. and when a cnn producer had the good sense to ask senator mccain about why he was yelling about not getting information instead of attending the briefing on his committee where the information was being given out, then he just yelled some more. >> our ted barrett caught up with the senator earlier today and want to know why he didn't go to that briefing and to say the least, it did not go well. listen to what happened. >> because i have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me i can or not? i'm not giving you an answer. for the tenth time. >> who the hell are you? this is all going on while john mccain continues to try to make a case that this scandal that he can't get any information about, can't be handled through the normal committee process, that he can't get enough information that way so instead john mccain says there needs to be a water gate style mega investigation. so far that idea has been shot down by the republican speaker of the house, john boehner, by john mccain's own bff in the senate, joe lieberman, he also disagrees with mr. mccain on this. same goes for susan collins of maine who did go to the classified briefing yesterday and noted publicly that john mccain was not there. even though it was his committee. mccain's special investigation idea was also shot down today by republican senator richard burr who said, quote, i think you've got to allow the structure we have of oversight to function and i think the intelligence committee is more than capable of handling this. in other words, the senate is getting information so maybe we should, you know, get information instead of continuing to scream on tv about not getting information. here's how you know when somebody is being disingenuous. when they demand something and then you give them that thing that they just keep demanding about and they pretend that you're not giving it to them and they just keep making the demand anyway as if it hasn't been met. john mccain obviously sees some advantage somewhere in continuing to scream on tv about the fact he's not getting information about this issue. when that screaming cannot be quieted by actually giving him information about this issue, that is a sign that something else is going on here. joining us now is josh rogen, staff writer, "foreign policy" magazine, he writes the daily column "the cable." thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> president obama yesterday in his press conference basically accused john mccain of grandstanding, trying to gin up the tragedy into something he and the republicans can get political gain from. how did that play out today with john mccain and the way the rest of congress is viewing him on this? >> right. so you've been covering this well in the sense that republicans are not used to the obama administration pushing back. they're not used to the obama coming with a fire in the belly and really confronting them on accusations and insinuations that they've been launching for the last four years without a lot of resistance, without a lot of contradiction. let's remember the politicization of the benghazi issue started with the mitt romney campaign, on the night of the attack. he then harangued the entire republican caucus into joining him on that. now the mitt romney campaign is gone leaving guys like john mccain holding the game. he's committed to the strategy and has to go forward. now that president obama called him out on public television during a press conference, he has no choice but to double down. and stories like these where he missed the hearing that he was calling for undermine his argument that the obama administration is not giving him enough information. and pushes him back into the argument the obama administration is lying, or misrepresenting or intentionally politicizing the tragedy. that's a much tougher argument to make. and that's the fight the obama administration wants to have. so john mccain's really on his heels. >> that point, about which argument the obama administration wants to have, i mean, the thing that tripped up mitt romney on this in that debate is that he believed what conservative media had been saying about this. right? he believed some conservative thing that president obama never used the word terror when he described this attack. when, in fact, the president had. it led to that horrible fact checking moment, live fact checking in the debate. is john mccain, and these guys, dana warbaucher, gene schmidt, trying to make it into a political scandal, are they making the same mistake, they're pursuing a narrative circulating on the right but isn't based in fact? >> i'd add darrell issa on that. he held the hearings on benghazi a month before the election and bungled them. he released documents without even check with anyone. and the bottom line here is there are legitimate questions about the benghazi attack and a lot of information we haven't gotten but that's all become secondary to the sort of political fight between the republicans in congress who want to assert that they still have the control of the foreign policy issue, and they want to assert that obama's weak on foreign policy though the election is over and the actual responsible lawmakers who want to actually just figure out what happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. >> the way this is going, are we likely to get a giant watergate style mega investigation on this the way john mccain has been demanding? >> there's no appetite for that. the bottom line is congressional committees with set up based on seniority. people want to have control over what they have control over. let's put this in the context of the republican caucus which is fighting amongst itself on foreign policy. for a decade, john mccain and the hawks and neocons had control of gop foreign policy. over the last two years that's been contested. mitt romney started out as a neocon, ended up as a moderate on foreign policy. now the caucus is more on that side. so john mccain is fighting for relevance here, fighting not to be marginalized in his own party, about to lose his own committee chairmanship on senate armed services. jon kyl, joe lieberman are both leaving. he's seeing his relative power inside the caucus on foreign policy challenged for the first time in a very long time and fighting for the survival of that power and that plays into everything that we're seeing. >> the more he swears on camera, the more you can tell he's feeling that. josh, could you stay with us for just a moment? this afternoon, i sat down with house democratic leader nancy pelosi. and she had something very interesting to say about the connection of the david petraeus scandal to some of these other issues. i'd love to get your response. hold on? all right. hold on. we'll be right back. >> what has triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> you think this did not rise to that level? in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. capella university understands back from rough economic times. employees are being forced to do more with less. and the need for capable leaders is greater than ever. when you see these problems do you take a step back, or do you want to dive right in? 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[ voice of dennis ] indeed. are you in good hands? ten years ago yesterday our country for the first time ever put a woman in charge of up of the two major political parties in congress. that was ten years ago. and it is still the only time we have ever done it. yesterday former house speaker nancy pelosi, the top democrat in congress, the highest ranking woman in american politics ever, she announced that she would put her name forward to stay on as the top democrat in the house. because of the election results from last week, the new house that's going to convene in january will be more democratic than it is now. although the republicans will still have the majority. it will be more diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation. and it will be considerably more female. no thanks to the republicans who are actually even more male than they used to be in the house before this election. but democrats more than made up for it. with the number of women they added. a fact miss pelosi highlighted in her announcement that she is staying on by bringing up all of the democratic women in the caucus on stage with her. but as excited as everybody is for the next congress to start in january, you can feel it in washington, people are very excited, the old congress is still in session now. this is the lame duck between now and january. and this lame duck, "a" has a lot of work to do and "b" is taking place in the midst of a really big scandal has engulfed the head of the cia and top commanding general in the war in afghanistan, a scandal that still seems to be getting bigger and not smaller. here's what nancy pelosi had to say today on this matter when i asked her about it in her first interview since she announced her intention to stay on as the top democrat in congress. let me ask you about something that arose unexpectedly right after the election which was the sex scandal that has ended the career that the cia chief, david petraeus. as you know, this arose from the fbi starting an investigation into an unrelated matter and they came across evidence of his sexual misconduct. at this point, there does not seem to be any evidence of anything criminal or of the mishandling of classified information. at least that we know thus far. given that, do you think that the fbi should tell congress and tell the white house about evidence they uncover of personal sexual misconduct by political figures? or should that be kept private? >> well, i believe that the standard has to be, does this have an impact on our national security? so far, we haven't seen anything that gives evidence of that. we have another balance that we have to strike, our founders had to do it, the beginning of our country, and we still do, except now with communication the way it is in a different way. and that's a balance between security and liberty. and so how do you make that balance? should congress and the president be informed of hearsay? i don't think so. what is triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> and you think this did not rise to that level? >> from what we know so far. but it's really also important to note that our founders had to do this, and that was at a time when a message could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or ship could sail. that's how fast or slow a message could travel. with the blessing of telecommunication, we know in realtime true or false about what somebody might be saying about somebody else and i think we, in the interest of everyone in our country, have to respect privacy rights unless it falls into a realm of something of a person of that stature. i mean, that's such a sad thing. such a sad thing. and personal indiscretion is unfortunate. but to have a personal discretion e-mails is stupid. >> to have this scandal touch on general allen, commanding general in afghanistan, today was the confirmation hearing for the man who would be his successor, general dunford in afghanistan. that sex scandal, personal behavior scandal is unrelated to the war. the fact these things are all happening at once raises for me, once again, the strangeness of the fact that we have so little political debate about our ongoing war. in terms of the realm of political responsibility and what is doable after this election, i have to ask you why congress shouldn't be expected now to push for a faster end to the afghanistan war than the end of two years from now? >> well, it isn't two years. it's just one year from now. >> end of 2014. right? >> i guess almost two years. let's hope it's before then. let's hope it's by then but let's hope it is before then. what is our mission? how is it in our national security to stay a long time? what i think we have to be vigilant about is we're not staying any longer. i know there have been some comments about, well, we may keep a force. i don't think there's any appetite for that. >> general dunford said he'd be willing to keep a force beyond 2014. >> i'm interested in what the president of the united states has said, we will be out by the end of 2014. but it is unpopular. the country is weary of war. they want our troops to come home, and they are coming home, but i don't know if there's a majority in the vote in congress to bring the troops home. remember, the president said by 2014. so hopefully it will be sooner. >> nancy pelosi in an exclusive interview with me today saying that from what we know now, general petraeus' affair does not seem to have risen to the kind of national security matter that might justify the fbi telling other people about that affair. also saying the ultimate drawdown timeline in afghanistan should be shortened to earlier than the end of 2014 which is what it is now. joining us again is josh rogin, staff writer at "foreign policy" magazine where he writes "the cable." when nancy pelosi said at the end i don't know if there's a majority in congress that would vote to make the war end sooner, if such a vote was put to them, do you think she's right about that? do we know? >> yes. let's remember here the president's policy is to extend the troops past 2014, negotiations started in kabul today to extend the troops past 2014. we can forgive nancy pelosi for not knowing that because the administration, according to joe biden during the debates said the on sit thing. >> what about the distinction between combat troops being gone by 2014 and some residual force being left thereafter? >> it's a distinction without a difference. you have troops in harm's way fighting, killing, dying. those are combat troops no matter what you call them. we're going to have a big debate, what the roles and responsibilities should be. that debate starts today. there were dozens of congress people led by nancy pelosi, call them liberals in the house, have been arguing against the long troop deployment since the wars in afghanistan and iraq started. president obama has never in his four years favored the liberal national security policy of getting out of the war sooner. not likely it's about to start right now. >> in terms of the republican side of this debate, i keep talking to people who have been around politics for a long time who say the republicans don't want this conversation, but when you ask them what they think of the afghanistan war, nobody makes an argument we ought to be there a day longer, yet alone two more years plus an unending residual force. >> right. >> so will anybody ever ask the republicans on this? >> yes. we're going to have hearings. eventually general allen is going to surface, going to testify. there will be a bunch of republicans led by john mccain and joe lieberman and lindsey graham who are going to argue for longer troop deployments. waiting to see what the conditions are on the ground. having more troops there than the administration wants and a big segment of the republican caucus that will not support that. and that, again, is the divide inside the republican caucus. ultimately the president is going to have to balance the risk of withdrawing troops faster against the goal of leaving afghanistan as stable and secure as possible. and whatever his decision is going to be, that's going to be his legacy. so that's going to be his responsibility. >> is there anybody else who's stepping up on the john mccain side of this? i mean, at this point john mccain is a noun and verb and don't cut and run. he's really -- i feel like his credibility on foreign policy issues is getting pretty wispy at this point. is there anybody else who's taken the place of him as he becomes less and less relevant? >> mark kirk, kelly ayotte, marco rubio. prepared to carry this water on the republican side. the question is whether or not the generals are going to back them up. when the generals come to testify, if the generals are to the left of john mccain and lindsey graham and joe lieberman, they're going to be left twisting in the wind. if the generals -- the obama administration and give an honest assessment that matches mccain, they'll have a stronger argument. in the end the president is going to do what the president is going to do. >> i think the politics are in flux. six months from now this is going to be a different discussion. josh rogin, staff writer "foreign policy" magazine. writes "the tabcable." still ahead, a lot of republicans get mad at mitt romney, now, today, and not just for losing last week. we'll also have more from my interview with nancy pelosi when she weighs in on why all the republicans are so mad at mitt romney right now. i have a cold... i took dayquil, but i still have a runny nose. 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[ dog barks ] because right after they get married, they'll find some retirement people who are paid on salary, not commission. they'll get straightforward guidance and be able to focus on other things, like each other, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. it's just common sense. social security are just numbers thinkin a budget.d... well, we worked hard for those benefits. we earned them. and if washington tries to cram decisions about the future... of these programs into a last minute budget deal... we'll all pay the price. aarp is fighting to protect seniors with responsible... solutions that strengthen medicare and... social security for generations to come. we can do better than a last minute deal... that would hurt all of us. i said something on this show last night i would please like to take back. if you just think about the presidency, if women had voted the way men did this year, it would have president romney, but women did not vote that way at all. so honestly we're never going to hear from mitt romney again. the part there at the end aut never hearing from mitt romney again, not true. and it turns out people do still care what mitt romney says when he says stuff. because unless and until the republican party can find a new national face for their party, mitt romney remains the national face and, therefore, the national leader of the republican party. even if the republicans don't want him to be. and it appears the republicans do not want him to be. the thing that has landed mr. romney back in the national spotlight is a post election conference call he did with donors in which mr. romney said the reason he lost and president obama won is that president obama bribed minority voters and young voters and women with gifts. >> what the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote and that strategy worked. he gave them a big gift on immigration with the dream act amnesty program, which was obviously very, very popular with hispanic voters. and then number two, was obama care. and so for any lower income hispanic family, obama care was massive. let me tell you, what i would do if i were a democrat running four years from now, i'd say, you know what, dental care ought to be included in obama care. immigration, we can solve. but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with. >> on that call, portions of which were edited and posted online by abc news, on that call mr. romney also praised his campaign team for being no drama and highly effective. now, everything went perfectly. according to abc news, mr. romney's campaign manager then listed other gifts president obama used to win the election like free contraceptives for 18 to 29-year-old women, dream act waivers and student loan interest rate cuts for college students. the romney campaign released a statement authenticating the tape saying, quote, governor romney was elaborating on what obama senior strategist david axelrod said about the obama campaign's effort to target key demographics, most specifically women. for the record, david axelrod said nothing like that. for their part republicans seemed very mad on his way out the door mr. romney has left them with this mess to clean up. iowa's republican governor, terry branstad, said this. quote, i don't think it's helpful. florida senator marco rubio said, quote, well, senator marco rubio according to journalists, quote, distanced himself. kelly ayotte weighed in on "andrea mitchell reports" today. >> i listened to the comments. i don't know what the context fully was. i don't agree with the comments. we have big challenges that need to be resolved as you know. >> so you're not comfortable with what you heard him say. >> no, i don't know the full context of them, but i don't agree with the comments. >> you know, nobody sounded quite as annoyed with mitt romney in these comments as louisiana governor bobby jindal asked about the romney comments yesterday at the republican governors association conference. >> no, look, i think that's absolutely wrong. two points on that. one, we have got to stop dividing the american voters. we need to go after 100% of the votes, not 53%. i absolutely reject that notion, that description. i think that's absolutely wrong. that is not -- i don't think that represents where we are as a party and where we're going as a party. and i think that -- that has not got to be the most fundamental takeaway from the election. >> for continuing to spotlight the most alienating, most elitist, most resentment driven weaponized thurston howell ideological edge to what republicans are offering the country. you can see why they'd be so angry at him. the country as a whole maybe owes mitt romney a debt of gratitude for continuing to exist in the public eye and continuing to insist there was nothing wrong with his campaign and the democrats' victory should be ascribed only to a vast bribery conspiracy involving, like, green cards and condoms. what is good about that for the country, maybe, is that republicans who are now jockeying among themselves to replace mitt romney as the de facto head of the republican party, they are having to articulate what is wrong with that way of thinking. and that seems constructive. that seems like maybe what the country needs them to do. >> this is just something that's fundamentally important for the future of our party, as a republican party, also important for the country. the country needs two competitive parties fighting for every single vote out there and proudly standing up for their principles. let's have a real contest of ideas and that's what this country deserves. we didn't get that in this past election. that's what this country deserves going forward. >> yay. i agree with bobby jindal on almost nothing when it comes to policy and politics. what he just said there is the kind of conversation the whole country is counting on republicans having with each other right now. today the top democrat in the house gave us exclusively her reaction to those comments from mitt romney, and she told us how she thinks they're going to affect the ability of republicans and democrats to work together now and in this next upcoming congress. it's fascinating. that's next. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign and that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. ♪ [ male announcer ] how could a luminous protein in jellyfish, impact life expectancy in the u.s., real estate in hong kong, and the optics industry in germany? at t. rowe price, we understand the connections of a complex, global economy. it's just one reason 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[ male announcer ] tempur-pedic owners are more satisfied than owners of any traditional mattress brand. for 6 days only, get 0% apr financing with up to five years to pay. to learn more, visit tempurpedic.com. don't wait. five-year special financing ends november 20th. tempur-pedic. the most highly recommended bed in america. yesterday nancy pelosi announced her intention to stay on as leader of the democrats in the house. in her first interview since that announcement, i asked her today for her reaction to the tape that emerged last night of mitt romney explaining to his donors that he only lost the election essentially because of bribery by the democrats. in the form of policy. watch her response. there was a bit of a firestorm in the last 24 hours when number of news organizations reported on mitt romney's comments to donors in a call yesterday explaining why it is that he thought he lost. and he attributed his lost to democratic policies that he described as gifts to specific populations. to young people, to students, to latino voters. he described as a gift the way he put it, amnesty for the children of illegals and that was a gift to latinos and that was essentially a democratic bribe to earn those votes. that's mr. romney's assessment of why he lost. >> well, that's sad. that's really quite sad. it doesn't sound very professional about who he was as a candidate and what his organization might have been in spite of all the money they had. but it was completely consistent with his message when he didn't know he was being recorded about the 47%. i have said for a long time, since we saw that tape, that's the most authentic romney we have seen. every other instance, for this, then against this, different. what does he really believe in? that he really believed in. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign. that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. >> if that is, we are seeing some republican dissent, bobby jindal criticized him, kelly ayotte, has criticized those remarks. it's not been greeted warmly, the remarks from him, just as the 47% remarks weren't. if that ends up being the conservative assessment of what went wrong, and it is absolutely the take in conservative media and in conservative talk radio. what does that say about what's politically possible next? i just think about the prospect of john boehner and nancy pelosi working together. i think about you sitting down with vice president biden and president obama and john boehner and talking about what's possible. what do you expect about the republican world view and goals to change because of this election? >> well, the president was very clear in the campaign. on where he stood. there was no ambiguity about where he was on many of the issues. and so his election, i think, strengthens our hand at the table. but the public still has to continue to be engaged. public sentiment is everything. and in the past, for example, the republicans in the house were the odd people out on the -- on some of the tax bill. one of the tax -- you know, deduction. and then also on the transportation bill. and so when the president went public on those, then they finally came around. but they're not going to come around just by persuasion sitting across the table, i do not believe. >> they are not going to come around just by persuasion in washington. nancy pelosi essentially calling for an extension of the spirit that drove the campaign. more ahead. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question and why did you call it an offensive question? >> i don't spend money on gasoline. i am probably going to the gas station about once a month. last time i was at a gas station was about...i would say... two months ago. i very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. i go to the gas station such a small amount that i forget how to put gas in my car. 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[ phillips' lady ] live the regular life. phillips'. . some of your colleagues privately say your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and will be -- hurts the party in the long term. what's your response to that? >> leader pelosi. >> -- asked that question except to mcconnell. >> anything about mr. -- excuse me, you, mr. hoyer, you're all over 70. is staying on -- younger leadership from moving forward? does this delay younger leadership from moving forward? >> i think what you will see, let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question. although it's quite offensive. but you don't realize that, i guess. the fact is, the fact is is that everything that i have done in my almost decade -- i guess decade now of leadership, is to elect younger and newer people to the congress. in my own personal experience, it was very important for me to elect young women. i came to congress when my youngest child, alexandra, was a senior in high school, practically on her way to college. i knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. but i wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner. >> at your leadership announcement yesterday, you were asked, well, there was a strong reaction and a very strong response from you to a question about age. about the prospect of stepping aside so younger leadership could take over in the democratic party. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question? and why did you call it an offensive question? >> well, i don't -- the point is that i was surprised at the reaction of my colleagues because i hear these questions all the time. from the press. not that one, but questions that they might consider inappropriate. but here's the thing. i didn't say it was inappropriate. i said it's only appropriate if you're asking everybody else. senator mcconnell hasn't won an election in a while. and nobody's asking him to step aside. and i said, do you want the whole leadership to step aside? but it's interesting because when something like that happens, remind them that president reagan was elected at 69 and left at 77 from the white house. sam rayburn was 79 years o s ol when he ended being speaker. in the strength we had in the election, we won 25 seats. we didn't net 25 seats but we elected 25% of our caucus is new, younger, women and minorities, 50% of our caucus, women and minorities and lgbt community folks. so we thought it was a great night. the election of the president to protect health care and the rest. increase our numbers in the senate, increase our numbers in the house. so i didn't really know what the point was unless it -- was it about winning? was it about not winning enough seats or was it just about age? >> and a combination of age and gender. you're saying. that it's a different -- >> that was the point. right. it was -- and i -- you know, we all live with each other around here, no offense taken except the women took great offense. and i made the point that one of my goals was to bring women in younger so they could start getting seniority sooner. not to wait as i did until my children were practically in college, all in college. one, alex stand zanstand ra, in school. that was my choice, my love, my happiness. the p happiness. but if women have an opportunity earlier. they get the seniority sooner. i think i should be granted a dozen to 14 years for raising my family. >> you talked about the diversity. >> ronald reagan said, i will not hold your youth and inexperience against you. >> i will pass that onto luke. >> you are talking about the diversity about the democratic caucus in which you lead in the house. it is a new thing at least that there is not a straight, white male majority in this caucus. and i wonder, you know, the republican party, won a larger majority of the white vote which they were bragging about today in terms of what went right for them in this election which they lost. they lost all minority groups by large margins. when you look at your group and you have that momentous change, what do you say to people who look at that change and think i'm not sure i'm happy about the fact that there is a -- in the democratic caucus? >> i haven't met anybody like that yet. >> but let's say i would say everybody is talking about how we can appeal to these people to vote for us and we are saying no, we want to go beyond that. we want them to represent us. so it is not about we need your vote this is an election day alliance, we want you to have a seat at the table. it is not that we want to displace the white males in our caucus. we want to have a mix. there is something important about having other thinking. whether it is generation al to have a mixture of thinking at the table. but it gives people hope outside to say, there is something there who understands my aspirations and charllenges and i reiterate we have diversity of opinion one in our caucus too and we rejoice in that at well. and i say to my male friends. your views are enhanced because you can convince more people about your position. >> you are not just talking to people are inclined to agree with you. >> you have to persuade others. >> when you bring that caucus together and they build consensus, i've never lost a vote when i was speaker and that is because we built consensus. we didn't write something and say this is what we are going to vote for. i would not want to be a head of a caucus that was a rubber stamp. >> announcing that she in tends to stay on in that position. best new thing in the world coming up next. 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[ male announcer ] or free data transfer when you buy a windows 8 computer at staples. another way staples makes it easier to upgrade. best new thing in the world today. if you were a liberal you like to believe that government can be a force from good. nobody likes bureaucracy just for it's sake. but government is good for important work. like medicare, it is the government insurance company for 50 million americans and people are happier with it and it is cheaper to administer than all of the private insurance plans that everyone else has to use. it works well. another example the mayor's office in newark new jersey. if there is a tree down on the wires in front of your house. did you see homeless people suffering through the storm, are you stranded with a baby, tell the mayor's office and he will come sort it out for you personally. he will be there in five minutes and bring your bored baby a toy. sometimes government works well. in big and small ways. but government rarely works well in ways that are also very funny. here is the situation. nobody knows if it is legal or illegal to smoke pot or possess pots in the states of colorado or washington. that is because on election night measures to legalize it passed so in state law it is legal. but federal law that applies to the whole country says it is still illegal. which is it? we don't know. enter the eyacsee yacht it will police department. on their blog they posted this official document. it is called marijwhatnow? and it is clear answers to simple questions to what everyone is asking. like where can you smoke pot now in seattle? >> you can use it in the privacy in your own home. >> can you get that seized pot back from the police? >> one word answer to that one is no. >> will seattle's finest help crim kal ageinal agents with sm amounts of pot. here again the answer is no. >> this my friends is a public service and it is everything you wanted to know about the complicated laws about pot in seattle as presented by an alternative guy who blogs for the police department along with this guy who is an actual cop. they posed for their post with this video
this, we're reminded that we're bound together. and we have to look out for each other. and a lot of the things that seem important, the petty differences melt away and we focus on what binds us together and that we as americans are going to stand with each other in their hour of need. we're going to have to put some of the turf battles aside. we're going to have to make sure everybody is focused on doing the job as opposed to worrying about what's getting the credit or who's getting the contracts or all that sometime that sometimes goes into the rebuilding process. >> that was what happened today in presidential politics in storm damaged new york. but if the president's message in new york was one of buckling down and cooperating and working together to get things done, what happened in washington today was a study in contrast from that. >> the president, himself, has intentionally misinformed, read that, lied, to the american people in the aftermath of this tragedy. this is not simply a cover-up of a third rate burglary. we have four of our diplomatic personnel dead. >> this administration continues to put out things that are just not quite true. >> if you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror. our evil doing american citizen hating administration requested a lot more money than we provided. a quarter of a billion dollars in security upgrades that you refuse to make in this committee. and then you have the audacity to come here and say, why wasn't the protection of these people provided for? and the answer is, because you didn't provide it. >> the election was over. the president won re-election. the voices of the public were heard. they want us to cooperate. if you want an honest investigation of this tragedy, we will join you. but if you want to persist in trying somehow to put this, lay this at the doorstep of the president or the secretary of state, or the united nations ambassador, you will find us ready and willing to resist to the teeth. >> to the teeth. that's what it was like today at the house foreign affairs committee's hearing on the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi, libya, and in the house and senate and intelligence committees but those are both closed to the public. we learned today newly resigned cia chief david petraeus agreed to testify at a closed intelligence committee hearing tomorrow and maybe a closed house hearing, too. in his first remarks to a reporter since he resigned, general petraeus told kyra phillips from "headline news" his resignation had strictly to do with the affair and not related to benghazi. he told kyra phillips he's eager to testify in congress about the benghazi relationship to clear that up. that's related presumably to the conspiracy theories of general petraeus' resignation that are populating the conservative media. quote, it's obvious someone was out to silence petraeus. quote, in the modern era, office holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary noncriminal consensual adult sexual liaison. said elliot spitzer. i mean, anthony weiner. i mean, jim mcgreavy. none of them. it was said by a man named andrew napolitano. david petraeus' resignation to him could not possibly be about some dumb affair. nobody resigns from office for having an affair. there must be a leftist government cover-up going on. the white house is trying to keep general petraeus from spilling the beans about vague imagined government conspiracy surrounding the benghazi attacks. that's what napolitano is saying. the conservative columnist charles krauthammer is driving the same thing now. it is still really senator john mccain. over the past week senator john mccain made six different television appearances just to talk about the benghazi attack and obama administration cover-up of the attack making his case over and over and over again to any blinking red light within sight about how benghazi should not be viewed as an attack on a u.s. consulate but instead be viewed as a democratic lie. an obama scandal. the senate needs more information about this blatant cover-up, says john mccain. john mccain needs more information. this, for example, is john mccain convening a press conference yesterday morning denouncing the scandal that congress is not being given enough information about this horrible scandal that he can't get any answers on. while john mccain was demanding answers at this press conference, that he convened yesterday morning, some of this colleagues, from a committee that he's a member of, were getting answers. on the subject that he was so mad about. john mccain was missing a three-hour high-level closed classified briefing on what exactly happened in benghazi from representatives of the state department, national counterterrorism center, fbi, john mccain did not get any of the classified briefing, did not get any of that information or questions answered by any of those people because he skipped the briefing and instead went and yelled at tv cameras about how he couldn't get any information. and when a cnn producer had the good sense to ask senator mccain about why he was yelling about not getting information instead of attending the briefing on his committee where the information was being given out, then he just yelled some more. >> our ted barrett caught up with the senator earlier today and wanted to know why he didn't go to that briefing and to say the least, it did not go well. listen to what happened. >> because i have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me i can or not? i'm not giving you an answer. for the tenth time. >> who the hell are you? this is all going on while john mccain continues to try to make a case that this scandal that he can't get any information about, can't be handled through the normal committee process, that he can't get enough information that way so instead john mccain says there needs to be a water gate style mega investigation. so far that idea has been shot down by the republican speaker of the house, john boehner, by john mccain's own bff in the senate, joe lieberman, he also disagrees with mr. mccain on this. same goes for susan collins of maine who did go to the classified briefing yesterday and noted publicly that john mccain was not there. even though it was his committee. mccain's special investigation idea was also shot down today by republican senator richard burr who said, quote, i think you've got to allow the structure we have of oversight to function and i think the intelligence committee is more than capable of handling this. in other words, the senate is getting information so maybe we should, you know, get information instead of continuing to scream on tv about not getting information. here's how you know when somebody is being disingenuous. when they demand something and then you give them that thing that they just keep demanding about and they pretend that you're not giving it to them and they just keep making the demand anyway as if it hasn't been met. john mccain obviously sees some advantage somewhere in continuing to scream on tv about the fact he's not getting information about this issue. when that screaming cannot be quieted by actually giving him information about this issue, that is a sign that something else is going on here. joining us now is josh rogen, staff writer, "foreign policy" magazine, he writes the daily column "the cable." thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> president obama yesterday in his press conference basically accused john mccain of grandstanding, trying to gin up the tragedy into something he and the republicans can get political gain from. how did that play out today with john mccain and the way the rest of congress is viewing him on this? >> right. so you've been covering this well in the sense that republicans are not used to the obama administration pushing back. they're not used to the obama coming with a fire in the belly and really confronting them on accusations and insinuations that they've been launching for the last four years without a lot of resistance, without a lot of contradiction. let's remember the politicization of the benghazi issue started with the mitt romney campaign, on the night of the attack. he then harangued the entire republican caucus into joining him on that. now the mitt romney campaign is gone leaving guys like john mccain holding the game. he's committed to the strategy and has to go forward. now that president obama called him out on public television during a press conference, he has no choice but to double down. and stories like these where he missed the hearing that he was calling for undermine his argument that the obama administration is not giving him enough information. and pushes him back into the argument the obama administration is lying, or misrepresenting or intentionally politicizing the tragedy. that's a much tougher argument to make. and that's the fight the obama administration wants to have. so john mccain's really on his heels. >> that point, about which argument the obama administration wants to have, i mean, the thing that tripped up mitt romney on this in that debate is that he believed what conservative media had been saying about this. right? he believed some conservative thing that president obama never used the word terror when he described this attack. when, in fact, the president had. it led to that horrible fact checking moment, live fact checking in the debate. is john mccain, and these guys, dana warbaucher, gene schmidt, trying to make it into a political scandal, are they making the same mistake, they're pursuing a narrative circulating on the right but isn't based in fact? >> i'd add darrell issa on that. he held the hearings on benghazi a month before the election and bungled them. he released documents without even check with anyone. and the bottom line here is there are legitimate questions about the benghazi attack and a lot of information we haven't gotten but that's all become secondary to the sort of political fight between the republicans in congress who want to assert that they still have the control of the foreign policy issue, and they want to assert that obama's weak on foreign policy though the election is over and the actual responsible lawmakers who want to actually just figure out what happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. >> the way this is going, are we likely to get a giant watergate style mega investigation on this the way john mccain has been demanding? >> there's no appetite for that. the bottom line is congressional committees with set up based on seniority. people want to have control over what they have control over. let's put this in the context of the republican caucus which is fighting amongst itself on foreign policy. for a decade, john mccain and the hawks and neocons had control of gop foreign policy. over the last two years that's been contested. mitt romney started out as a neocon, ended up as a moderate on foreign policy. now the caucus is more on that side. so john mccain is fighting for relevance here, fighting not to be marginalized in his own party, about to lose his own committee chairmanship on senate armed services. jon kyl, joe lieberman are both leaving. he's seeing his relative power inside the caucus on foreign policy challenged for the first time in a very long time and fighting for the survival of that power and that plays into everything that we're seeing. >> the more he swears on camera, the more you can tell he's feeling that. josh, could you stay with us for just a moment? this afternoon, i sat down with house democratic leader nancy pelosi. and she had something very interesting to say about the connection of the david petraeus scandal to some of these other issues. i'd love to get your response. hold on? all right. hold on. we'll be right back. >> what has triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> you think this did not rise to that level? ask me what it's like to get your best night's sleep every night. 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[ yawning sound ] it's so great to see you. you, too! oh, cloudy glasses. you didn't have to come over! actually, honey, i think i did... oh? you did? whoa, ladies, easy. hi. cascade kitchen counselor. we can help avoid this with cascade complete pacs. over time, the other premium pac can leave cloudy, hard water deposits, but cascade complete pacs help leave glasses sparkling. shiny! too bad it doesn't work on windows. okay, i'm outta here. more dishwasher brands in north america recommend cascade. ten years ago yesterday our country for the first time ever put a woman in charge of up of the two major political parties in congress. that was ten years ago. and it is still the only time we have ever done it. yesterday former house speaker nancy pelosi, the top democrat in congress, the highest ranking woman in american politics ever, she announced that she would put her name forward to stay on as the top democrat in the house. because of the election results from last week, the new house that's going to convene in january will be more democratic than it is now. although the republicans will still have the majority. it will be more diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation. and it will be considerably more female. no thanks to the republicans who are actually even more male than they used to be in the house before this election. but democrats more than made up for it. with the number of women they added. a fact miss pelosi highlighted in her announcement that she is staying on by bringing up all of the democratic women in the caucus on stage with her. but as excited as everybody is for the next congress to start in january, you can feel it in washington, people are very excited, the old congress is still in session now. this is the lame duck between now and january. and this lame duck, "a" has a lot of work to do and "b" is taking place in the midst of a really big scandal has engulfed the head of the cia and top commanding general in the war in afghanistan, a scandal that still seems to be getting bigger and not smaller. here's what nancy pelosi had to say today on this matter when i asked her about it in her first interview since she announced her intention to stay on as the top democrat in congress. let me ask you about something that arose unexpectedly right after the election which was the sex scandal that has ended the career that the cia chief, david petraeus. as you know, this arose from the fbi starting an investigation into an unrelated matter and they came across evidence of his sexual misconduct. at this point, there does not seem to be any evidence of anything criminal or of the mishandling of classified information. at least that we know thus far. given that, do you think that the fbi should tell congress and tell the white house about evidence they uncover of personal sexual misconduct by political figures? or should that be kept private? >> well, i believe that the standard has to be, does this have an impact on our national security? so far, we haven't seen anything that gives evidence of that. we have another balance that we have to strike, our founders had to do it, the beginning of our country, and we still do, except now with communication the way it is in a different way. and that's a balance between security and liberty. and so how do you make that balance? should congress and the president be informed of hearsay? i don't think so. what is triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> and you think this did not rise to that level? >> from what we know so far. but it's really also important to note that our founders had to do this, and that was at a time when a message could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or ship could sail. that's how fast or slow a message could travel. with the blessing of telecommunication, we know in realtime true or false about what somebody might be saying about somebody else and i think we, in the interest of everyone in our country, have to respect privacy rights unless it falls into a realm of something of a person of that stature. i mean, that's such a sad thing. such a sad thing. and personal indiscretion is unfortunate. but to have a personal discretion e-mails is stupid. >> to have this scandal touch on general allen, commanding general in afghanistan, today was the confirmation hearing for the man who would be his successor, general dunford in afghanistan. that sex scandal, personal behavior scandal is unrelated to the war. the fact these things are all happening at once raises for me, once again, the strangeness of the fact that we have so little political debate about our ongoing war. in terms of the realm of political responsibility and what is doable after this election, i have to ask you why congress shouldn't be expected now to push for a faster end to the afghanistan war than the end of two years from now? >> well, it isn't two years. it's just one year from now. >> end of 2014. right? >> i guess almost two years. let's hope it's before then. let's hope it's by then but let's hope it is before then. what is our mission? how is it in our national security to stay a long time? what i think we have to be vigilant about is we're not staying any longer. i know there have been some comments about, well, we may keep a force. i don't think there's any appetite for that. >> general dunford said he'd be willing to keep a force beyond 2014. >> i'm interested in what the president of the united states has said, we will be out by the end of 2014. but it is unpopular. the country is weary of war. they want our troops to come home, and they are coming home, but i don't know if there's a majority in the vote in congress to bring the troops home. remember, the president said by 2014. so hopefully it will be sooner. >> nancy pelosi in an exclusive interview with me today saying that from what we know now, general petraeus' affair does not seem to have risen to the kind of national security matter that might justify the fbi telling other people about that affair. also saying the ultimate drawdown timeline in afghanistan should be shortened to earlier than the end of 2014 which is what it is now. joining us again is josh rogin, staff writer at "foreign policy" magazine where he writes "the cable." when nancy pelosi said at the end i don't know if there's a majority in congress that would vote to make the war end sooner, if such a vote was put to them, do you think she's right about that? do we know? >> yes. let's remember here the president's policy is to extend the troops past 2014, negotiations started in kabul today to extend the troops past 2014. we can forgive nancy pelosi for not knowing that because the administration, according to joe biden during the debates said the on sit thing. >> what about the distinction between combat troops being gone by 2014 and some residual force being left thereafter? >> it's a distinction without a difference. you have troops in harm's way fighting, killing, dying. those are combat troops no matter what you call them. we're going to have a big debate, what the roles and responsibilities should be. that debate starts today. there were dozens of congress people led by nancy pelosi, call them liberals in the house, have been arguing against the long troop deployment since the wars in afghanistan and iraq started. president obama has never in his four years favored the liberal national security policy of getting out of the war sooner. not likely it's about to start right now. >> in terms of the republican side of this debate, i keep talking to people who have been around politics for a long time who say the republicans don't want this conversation, but when you ask them what they think of the afghanistan war, nobody makes an argument we ought to be there a day longer, yet alone two more years plus an unending residual force. >> right. >> so will anybody ever ask the republicans on this? >> yes. we're going to have hearings. eventually general allen is going to surface, going to testify. there will be a bunch of republicans led by john mccain and joe lieberman and lindsey graham who are going to argue for longer troop deployments. waiting to see what the conditions are on the ground. having more troops there than the administration wants and a big segment of the republican caucus that will not support that. and that, again, is the divide inside the republican caucus. ultimately the president is going to have to balance the risk of withdrawing troops faster against the goal of leaving afghanistan as stable and secure as possible. and whatever his decision is going to be, that's going to be his legacy. so that's going to be his responsibility. >> is there anybody else who's stepping up on the john mccain side of this? i mean, at this point john mccain is a noun and verb and don't cut and run. he's really -- i feel like his credibility on foreign policy issues is getting pretty wispy at this point. is there anybody else who's taken the place of him as he becomes less and less relevant? >> mark kirk, kelly ayotte, marco rubio. prepared to carry this water on the republican side. the question is whether or not the generals are going to back them up. when the generals come to testify, if the generals are to the left of john mccain and lindsey graham and joe lieberman, they're going to be left twisting in the wind. if the generals -- the obama administration and give an honest assessment that matches mccain, they'll have a stronger argument. in the end the president is going to do what the president is going to do. >> i think the politics are in flux. six months from now this is going to be a different discussion. josh rogin, staff writer "foreign policy" magazine. writes "the cable." still ahead, a lot of republicans get mad at mitt romney, now, today, and not just for losing last week. we'll also have more from my interview with nancy pelosi when she weighs in on why all the republicans are so mad at mitt romney right now. try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase. but with advair, i'm breathing better. so now i can be in the scene. advair is clinically proven to help significantly improve lung function. unlike most copd medications, advair contains both an anti-inflammatory and a long-acting bronchodilator working together to help improve your lung function all day. advair won't replace fast-acting inhalers for sudden symptoms and should not be used more than twice a day. people with copd taking advair may have a higher chance of pneumonia. advair may increase your risk of osteoporosis and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking advair. if you're still having difficulty breathing, ask your doctor if including advair could help improve your lung function. get your first full prescription free and save on refills at advaircopd.com. i haven't thought about aspirin for years. aspirin wouldn't really help my headache, i don't think. aspirin is just old school. people have doubts about taking aspirin for pain. but they haven't experienced extra strength bayer advanced aspirin. in fact, in a recent survey, 95% of people who tried it agreed that it relieved their headache fast. what's different? 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[ grunting ] i said something on this show last night i would please like to take back. if you just think about the presidency, if women had voted the way men did this year, it would have president romney, but women did not vote that way at all. so honestly we're never going to hear from mitt romney again. the part there at the end about never hearing from mitt romney again, not true. and it turns out people do still care what mitt romney says when he says stuff. because unless and until the republican party can find a new national face for their party, mitt romney remains the national face and, therefore, the national leader of the republican party. even if the republicans don't want him to be. and it appears the republicans do not want him to be. the thing that has landed mr. romney back in the national spotlight is a post election conference call he did with donors in which mr. romney said the reason he lost and president obama won is that president obama bribed minority voters and young voters and women with gifts. >> what the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote and that strategy worked. he gave them a big gift on immigration with the dream act amnesty program, which was obviously very, very popular with hispanic voters. and then number two, was obama care. and so for any lower income hispanic family, obama care was massive. let me tell you, what i would do if i were a democrat running four years from now, i'd say, you know what, dental care ought to be included in obama care. immigration, we can solve. but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with. >> on that call, portions of which were edited and posted online by abc news, on that call mr. romney also praised his campaign team for being no drama and highly effective. now, everything went perfectly. according to abc news, mr. romney's campaign manager then listed other gifts president obama used to win the election like free contraceptives for 18 to 29-year-old women, dream act waivers and student loan interest rate cuts for college students. the romney campaign released a statement authenticating the tape saying, quote, governor romney was elaborating on what obama senior strategist david axelrod said about the obama campaign's effort to target key demographics, most specifically women. for the record, david axelrod said nothing like that. for their part republicans seemed very mad on his way out the door mr. romney has left them with this mess to clean up. iowa's republican governor, terry branstad, said this. quote, i don't think it's helpful. florida senator marco rubio said, quote, well, senator marco rubio according to journalists, quote, distanced himself. kelly ayotte weighed in on "andrea mitchell reports" today. >> i listened to the comments. i don't know what the context fully was. i don't agree with the comments. we have big challenges that need to be resolved as you know. >> so you're not comfortable with what you heard him say. >> no, i don't know the full context of them, but i don't agree with the comments. >> you know, nobody sounded quite as annoyed with mitt romney in these comments as louisiana governor bobby jindal asked about the romney comments yesterday at the republican governors association conference. >> no, look, i think that's absolutely wrong. two points on that. one, we have got to stop dividing the american voters. we need to go after 100% of the votes, not 53%. i absolutely reject that notion, that description. i think that's absolutely wrong. that is not -- i don't think that represents where we are as a party and where we're going as a party. and i think that -- that has not got to be the most fundamental takeaway from the election. >> for continuing to spotlight the most alienating, most elitist, most resentment driven weaponized thurston howell ideological edge to what republicans are offering the country. you can see why they'd be so angry at him. the country as a whole maybe owes mitt romney a debt of gratitude for continuing to exist in the public eye and continuing to insist there was nothing wrong with his campaign and the democrats' victory should be ascribed only to a vast bribery conspiracy involving, like, green cards and condoms. what is good about that for the country, maybe, is that republicans who are now jockeying among themselves to replace mitt romney as the de facto head of the republican party, they are having to articulate what is wrong with that way of thinking. and that seems constructive. that seems like maybe what the country needs them to do. >> this is just something that's fundamentally important for the future of our party, as a republican party, also important for the country. the country needs two competitive parties fighting for every single vote out there and proudly standing up for their principles. let's have a real contest of ideas and that's what this country deserves. we didn't get that in this past election. that's what this country deserves going forward. >> yay. i agree with bobby jindal on almost nothing when it comes to policy and politics. what he just said there is the kind of conversation the whole country is counting on republicans having with each other right now. today the top democrat in the house gave us exclusively her reaction to those comments from mitt romney, and she told us how she thinks they're going to affect the ability of republicans and democrats to work together now and in this next upcoming congress. it's fascinating. that's next. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign and that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. okay, now here's our holiday gift 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[ male announcer ] marie callender's puts everything you've grown to love about sunday dinner into each of her pot pies. tender white meat chicken and vegetables in a crust made from scratch. marie callender's. it's time to savor. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. yesterday nancy pelosi announced her intention to stay on as leader of the democrats in the house. in her first interview since that announcement, i asked her today for her reaction to the tape that emerged last night of mitt romney explaining to his donors that he only lost the election essentially because of bribery by the democrats. in the form of policy. watch her response. there was a bit of a firestorm in the last 24 hours when number of news organizations reported on mitt romney's comments to donors in a call yesterday explaining why it is that he thought he lost. and he attributed his lost to democratic policies that he described as gifts to specific populations. to young people, to students, to latino voters. he described as a gift the way he put it, amnesty for the children of illegals and that was a gift to latinos and that was essentially a democratic bribe to earn those votes. that's mr. romney's assessment of why he lost. >> well, that's sad. that's really quite sad. it doesn't sound very professional about who he was as a candidate and what his organization might have been in spite of all the money they had. but it was completely consistent with his message when he didn't know he was being recorded about the 47%. i have said for a long time, since we saw that tape, that's the most authentic romney we have seen. every other instance, for this, then against this, different. what does he really believe in? that he really believed in. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign. that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. >> if that is, we are seeing some republican dissent, bobby jindal criticized him, kelly ayotte, has criticized those remarks. it's not been greeted warmly, the remarks from him, just as the 47% remarks weren't. if that ends up being the conservative assessment of what went wrong, and it is absolutely the take in conservative media and in conservative talk radio. what does that say about what's politically possible next? i just think about the prospect of john boehner and nancy pelosi working together. i think about you sitting down with vice president biden and president obama and john boehner and talking about what's possible. what do you expect about the republican world view and goals to change because of this election? >> well, the president was very clear in the campaign. on where he stood. there was no ambiguity about where he was on many of the issues. and so his election, i think, strengthens our hand at the table. but the public still has to continue to be engaged. public sentiment is everything. and in the past, for example, the republicans in the house were the odd people out on the -- on some of the tax bill. one of the tax -- you know, deduction. and then also on the transportation bill. and so when the president went public on those, then they finally came around. but they're not going to come around just by persuasion sitting across the table, i do not believe. >> they are not going to come around just by persuasion in washington. nancy pelosi essentially calling for an extension of the spirit that drove the campaign. more ahead. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question and why did you call it an offensive question? you won't find a "home rule" on every corner, a "stag provisions" down every block, or a "hugh and crye" in every town. these are the small businesses of america, and all across the nation they're getting ready for their day. hundreds of thousands of small businesses are preparing for november 24, a day to open doors, and welcome the millions of customers who will turn out to shop small. small business saturday. visit shopsmall.com and get ready. because your day is coming. thank you, mr. speaker, uh, members of congress. in celebration of over 75 years of our government employees insurance company, or geico...as most of you know members it.congress. ...i propose savings for everyone! i'm talking hundreds here... and furthermore.. newscaster:breaking news. the gecko is demanding free pudding. and political parties that are actual parties!? 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[ male announcer ] tempur-pedic owners are more satisfied than owners of any traditional mattress brand. for 6 days only, get 0% apr financing with up to five years to pay. to learn more, visit tempurpedic.com. don't wait. five-year special financing ends november 20th. tempur-pedic. the most highly recommended bed in america. some of your colleagues privately say your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and will be -- hurts the party in the long term. what's your response to that? >> leader pelosi. >> -- asked that question except to mcconnell. >> anything about mr. -- excuse me, you, mr. hoyer, you're all over 70. is staying on -- younger leadership from moving forward? does this delay younger leadership from moving forward? >> i think what you will see, let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question. although it's quite offensive. but you don't realize that, i guess. the fact is, the fact is is that everything that i have done in my almost decade -- i guess decade now of leadership, is to elect younger and newer people to the congress. in my own personal experience, it was very important for me to elect young women. i came to congress when my youngest child, alexandra, was a senior in high school, practically on her way to college. i knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. but i wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner. >> at your leadership announcement yesterday, you were asked, well, there was a strong reaction and a very strong response from you to a question about age. about the prospect of stepping aside so younger leadership could take over in the democratic party. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question? and why did you call it an offensive question? >> well, i don't -- the point is that i was surprised at the reaction of my colleagues because i hear these questions all the time. from the press. not that one, but questions that they might consider inappropriate. but here's the thing. i didn't say it was inappropriate. i said it's only appropriate if you're asking everybody else. senator mcconnell hasn't won an election in a while. and nobody's asking him to step aside. and i said, do you want the whole leadership to step aside? but it's interesting because when something like that happens, remind them that president reagan was elected at 69 and left at 77 from the white house. sam rayburn was 79 years old when he ended being speaker. in the strength we had in the election, we won 25 seats. we didn't net 25 seats but we elected 25% of our caucus is new, younger, women and minorities, 50% of our caucus, women and minorities and lgbt community folks. so we thought it was a great night. the election of the president to protect health care and the rest. increase our numbers in the senate, increase our numbers in the house. so i didn't really know what the point was unless it -- was it about winning? was it about not winning enough seats or was it just about age? >> and a combination of age and gender. you're saying. that it's a different -- >> that was the point. right. it was -- and i -- you know, we all live with each other around here, no offense taken except the women took great offense. and i made the point that one of my goals was to bring women in younger so they could start getting seniority sooner. not to wait as i did until my children were practically in college, all in college. one, alexandra, in high school. that was my choice, my love, my happiness. the most important thing i'll ever do. if women have an opportunity earlier. they get the seniority sooner. i think i should be granted a dozen to 14 years for raising my family. >> you talked about the diversity. >> ronald reagan said, i will not hold your youth and inexperience against you. >> i will pass that onto luke. >> you are talking about the diversity about the democratic caucus in which you lead in the house. it is a new thing at least that there is not a straight, white male majority in this caucus. and i wonder, you know, the republican party, won a larger majority of the white vote which they were bragging about today in terms of what went right for them in this election which they lost. they lost all minority groups by large margins. when you look at your group and you have that momentous change, what do you say to people who look at that change and think i'm not sure i'm happy about the fact that there is a -- in the democratic caucus? >> i haven't met anybody like that yet. >> but let's say i would say everybody is talking about how we can appeal to these people to vote for us and we are saying no, we want to go beyond that. we want them to represent us. so it is not about we need your vote this is an election day alliance, we want you to have a seat at the table. it is not that we want to displace the white males in our caucus. we want to have a mix. there is something important about having other thinking. whether it is generation al to have a mixture of thinking at the table. but it gives people hope outside to say, there is something there who understands my aspirations and challenges and i reiterate we have diversity of opinion one in our caucus too and we rejoice in that at well. and i say to my male friends. your views are enhanced because you can convince more people about your position. >> you are not just talking to people are inclined to agree with you. you have to persuade others. >> when you bring that caucus together and they build consensus, i've never lost a vote when i was speaker and that is because we built consensus. we didn't write something and say this is what we are going to vote for. i would not want to be a head of a caucus that was a rubber stamp. >> announcing that she in tends to stay on in that position. best new thing in the world coming up next. look how small they were! 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[ male announcer ] or free windows 8 training when you buy a computer at staples. another way staples makes it easier to upgrade. best new thing in the world today. if you were a liberal you like to believe that government can be a force from good. nobody likes bureaucracy just for it's sake. but government is good for important work. like medicare, it is the government insurance company for 50 million americans and people are happier with it and it is cheaper to administer than all of the private insurance plans that everyone else has to use. it works well. another example the mayor's office in newark new jersey. if there is a tree down on the wires in front of your house. did you see homeless people suffering through the storm, are you stranded with a baby, tell the mayor's office and he will come sort it out for you personally. he will be there in five minutes and bring your bored baby a toy. sometimes government works well. in big and small ways. but government rarely works well in ways that are also very funny. here is the situation. nobody knows if it is legal or illegal to smoke pot or possess pot in the states of colorado or washington. that is because on election night measures to legalize it passed so in state law it is legal. but federal law that applies to the whole country says it is still illegal. which is it? we don't know. enter the seattle police department. on their blog they posted this official document. it is called marijawhatnow? and it is clear answers to simple questions to what everyone is asking. like where can you smoke pot now in seattle? >> you can use it in the privacy in your own home. >> can you get that seized pot back from the police? >> one word answer to that one is no. >> will seattle's finest help criminal agents with small amounts of pot. here again the answer is no. >> this my friends is a public service and it is everything you wanted to know about the complicated laws about pot in seattle as presented by an alternative guy who blogs for the police department along with this guy who is an actual cop. they posed for their post with this video clip from the "lord of the rings". this is a needed service. nobody has been able to figure out what the law is. and what you have done makes sense and has gandolf in it for no good reason.
bound together. and we have to look out for each other. and a lot of the things that seem important, the petty differences melt away and we focus on what binds us together and that we as americans are going to stand with each other in their hour of need. we're going to have to put some of the turf battles aside. we're going to have to make sure everybody is focused on doing the job as opposed to worrying about what's getting the credit or who's getting the contracts or all that sometime that sometimes goes into the rebuilding process. >> that was what happened today in presidential politics in storm damaged new york. but if the president's message in new york was one of buckling down and cooperating and working together to get things done, what happened in washington today was a study in contrast from that. >> the president, himself, has intentionally misinformed, read that, lied, to the american people in the aftermath of this tragedy. this is not simply a cover-up of a third rate burglary. we have four of our diplomatic personnel dead. >> this administration continues to put out things that are just not quite true. >> if you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror. our evil doing american citizen hating administration requested a lot more money than we provided. a quarter of a billion dollars in security upgrades that you refuse to make in this committee. and then you have the audacity to come here and say, why wasn't the protection of these people provided for? and the answer is, because you didn't provide it. >> the election was over. the president won re-election. the voices of the public were heard. they want us to cooperate. if you want an honest investigation of this tragedy, we will join you. but if you want to persist in trying somehow to put this, lay this at the doorstep of the president or the secretary of state, or the united nations ambassador, you will find us ready and willing to resist to the teeth. >> to the teeth. that's what it was like today at the house foreign affairs committee's hearing on the attack on the u.s. consulate in benghazi, libya, and in the house and senate and intelligence committees but those are both closed to the public. we learned today newly resigned cia chief david petraeus agreed to testify at a closed intelligence committee hearing tomorrow and maybe a closed house hearing, too. in his first remarks to a reporter since he resigned, general petraeus told kyra phillips from "headline news" his resignation had strictly to do with the affair and not related to benghazi. he told kyra phillips he's eager to testify in congress about the benghazi issue to clear that up. that's related presumably to the conspiracy theories of general petraeus' resignation that are populating the conservative media. quote, it's obvious someone was out to silence petraeus. quote, in the modern era, office holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary noncriminal consensual adult sexual liaison. said elliot spitzer. i mean, anthony weiner. i mean, jim mcgreavy. none of them. it was said by a man named andrew napolitano. david petraeus' resignation to him could not possibly be about some dumb affair. nobody resigns from office for having an affair. there must be a leftist government cover-up going on. the white house is trying to keep general petraeus from spilling the beans about vague imagined government conspiracy surrounding the benghazi attacks. that's what napolitano is saying. the conservative columnist charles krauthammer is driving the same thing now. it is still really senator john mccain. over the past week senator john mccain made six different television appearances just to talk about the benghazi attack and obama administration cover-up of the attack making his case over and over and over again to any blinking red light within sight about how benghazi should not be viewed as an attack on a u.s. consulate but instead be viewed as a democratic lie. an obama scandal. the senate needs more information about this blatant cover-up, says john mccain. john mccain needs more information. this, for example, is john mccain convening a press conference yesterday morning denouncing the scandal that congress is not being given enough information about this horrible scandal that he can't get any answers on. while john mccain was demanding answers at this press conference, that he convened yesterday morning, some of this colleagues, from a committee that he's a member of, were getting answers. on the subject that he was so mad about. john mccain was missing a three-hour high-level closed classified briefing on what exactly happened in benghazi from representatives of the state department, national counterterrorism center, fbi, john mccain did not get any of the classified briefing, did not get any of that information or questions answered by any of those people because he skipped the briefing and instead went and yelled at tv cameras about how he couldn't get any information. and when a cnn producer had the good sense to ask senator mccain about why he was yelling about not getting information instead of attending the briefing on his committee where the information was being given out, then he just yelled some more. >> our ted barrett caught up with the senator earlier today and wanted to know why he didn't go to that briefing and to say the least, it did not go well. listen to what happened. >> because i have the right as a senator to have no comment and who the hell are you to tell me i can or not? i'm not giving you an answer. for the tenth time. >> who the hell are you? this is all going on while john mccain continues to try to make a case that this scandal that he can't get any information about, can't be handled through the normal committee process, that he can't get enough information that way so instead john mccain says there needs to be a water gate style mega investigation. so far that idea has been shot down by the republican speaker of the house, john boehner, by john mccain's own bff in the senate, joe lieberman, he also disagrees with mr. mccain on this. same goes for susan collins of maine who did go to the classified briefing yesterday and noted publicly that john mccain was not there. even though it was his committee. mccain's special investigation idea was also shot down today by republican senator richard burr who said, quote, i think you've got to allow the structure we have of oversight to function and i think the intelligence committee is more than capable of handling this. in other words, the senate is getting information so maybe we should, you know, get information instead of continuing to scream on tv about not getting information. here's how you know when somebody is being disingenuous. when they demand something and then you give them that thing that they just keep demanding about and they pretend that you're not giving it to them and they just keep making the demand anyway as if it hasn't been met. john mccain obviously sees some advantage somewhere in continuing to scream on tv about the fact he's not getting information about this issue. when that screaming cannot be quieted by actually giving him information about this issue, that is a sign that something else is going on here. joining us now is josh rogen, staff writer, "foreign policy" magazine, he writes the daily column "the cable." thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> president obama yesterday in his press conference basically accused john mccain of grandstanding, trying to gin up the tragedy into something he and the republicans can get political gain from. how did that play out today with john mccain and the way the rest of congress is viewing him on this? >> right. so you've been covering this well in the sense that republicans are not used to the obama administration pushing back. they're not used to the obama coming with a fire in the belly and really confronting them on accusations and insinuations that they've been launching for the last four years without a lot of resistance, without a lot of contradiction. let's remember the politicization of the benghazi issue started with the mitt romney campaign, on the night of the attack. he then harangued the entire republican caucus into joining him on that. now the mitt romney campaign is gone leaving guys like john mccain holding the bag. he's committed to the strategy and has to go forward. now that president obama called him out on public television during a press conference, he has no choice but to double down. and stories like these where he missed the hearing that he was calling for undermine his argument that the obama administration is not giving him enough information. and pushes him back into the argument the obama administration is lying, or misrepresenting or intentionally politicizing the tragedy. that's a much tougher argument to make. and that's the fight the obama administration wants to have. so john mccain's really on his heels. >> that point, about which argument the obama administration wants to have, i mean, the thing that tripped up mitt romney on this in that debate is that he believed what conservative media had been saying about this. right? he believed some conservative thing that president obama never used the word terror when he described this attack. when, in fact, the president had. it led to that horrible fact checking moment, live fact checking in the debate. is john mccain, and these guys, dana warbaucher, gene schmidt, trying to make it into a political scandal, are they making the same mistake, they're pursuing a narrative circulating on the right but isn't based in fact? >> i'd add darrell issa on that. he held the hearings on benghazi a month before the election and bungled them. he released documents without even checking with anyone. and the bottom line here is there are legitimate questions about the benghazi attack and a lot of information we haven't gotten but that's all become secondary to the sort of political fight between the republicans in congress who want to assert that they still have the control of the foreign policy issue, and they want to assert that obama's weak on foreign policy though the election is over and the actual responsible lawmakers who want to actually just figure out what happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. >> the way this is going, are we likely to get a giant watergate style mega investigation on this the way john mccain has been demanding? >> there's no appetite for that. the bottom line is congressional committees with set up based on seniority. people want to have control over what they have control over. let's put this in the context of the republican caucus which is fighting amongst itself on foreign policy. for a decade, john mccain and the hawks and neocons had control of gop foreign policy. over the last two years that's been contested. mitt romney started out as a neocon, ended up as a moderate on foreign policy. now the caucus is more on that side. so john mccain is fighting for relevance here, fighting not to be marginalized in his own party, about to lose his own committee chairmanship on senate armed services. jon kyl, joe lieberman are both leaving. he's seeing his relative power inside the caucus on foreign policy challenged for the first time in a very long time and fighting for the survival of that power and that plays into everything that we're seeing. >> the more he swears on camera, the more you can tell he's feeling that. josh, could you stay with us for just a moment? this afternoon, i sat down with house democratic leader nancy pelosi. and she had something very interesting to say about the connection of the david petraeus scandal to some of these other issues. i'd love to get your response. hold on? all right. hold on. we'll be right back. >> what has triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> you think this did not rise to that level? doesn't have to take longer. i'm done. 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[ thunder crashes ] it doesn't. stop pretending. only flood insurance covers floods. ♪ visit floodsmart.gov/pretend to learn your risk. my exclusive interview with nancy pelosi, her first interview since saying she's staying on as the top democrat in congress is coming right up. hold on. ten years ago yesterday our country for the first time ever put a woman in charge of up of the two major political parties in congress. that was ten years ago. and it is still the only time we have ever done it. yesterday former house speaker nancy pelosi, the top democrat in congress, the highest ranking woman in american politics ever, she announced that she would put her name forward to stay on as the top democrat in the house. because of the election results from last week, the new house that's going to convene in january will be more democratic than it is now. although the republicans will still have the majority. it will be more diverse in terms of race and sexual orientation. and it will be considerably more female. no thanks to the republicans who are actually even more male than they used to be in the house before this election. but democrats more than made up for it. with the number of women they added. a fact miss pelosi highlighted in her announcement that she is staying on by bringing up all of the democratic women in the caucus on stage with her. but as excited as everybody is for the next congress to start in january, you can feel it in washington, people are very excited, the old congress is still in session now. this is the lame duck between now and january. and this lame duck, "a" has a lot of work to do and "b" is taking place in the midst of a really big scandal has engulfed the head of the cia and top commanding general in the war in afghanistan, a scandal that still seems to be getting bigger and not smaller. here's what nancy pelosi had to say today on this matter when i asked her about it in her first interview since she announced her intention to stay on as the top democrat in congress. let me ask you about something that arose unexpectedly right after the election which was the sex scandal that has ended the career that the cia chief, david petraeus. as you know, this arose from the fbi starting an investigation into an unrelated matter and they came across evidence of his sexual misconduct. at this point, there does not seem to be any evidence of anything criminal or of the mishandling of classified information. at least that we know thus far. given that, do you think that the fbi should tell congress and tell the white house about evidence they uncover of personal sexual misconduct by political figures? or should that be kept private? >> well, i believe that the standard has to be, does this have an impact on our national security? so far, we haven't seen anything that gives evidence of that. we have another balance that we have to strike, our founders had to do it, the beginning of our country, and we still do, except now with communication the way it is in a different way. and that's a balance between security and liberty. and so how do you make that balance? should congress and the president be informed of hearsay? i don't think so. what is triggered about informing the congress in any event, just talking about congress, does it have an impact on our national security? >> and you think this did not rise to that level? >> from what we know so far. but it's really also important to note that our founders had to do this, and that was at a time when a message could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or ship could sail. that's how fast or slow a message could travel. with the blessing of telecommunication, we know in realtime true or false about what somebody might be saying about somebody else and i think we, in the interest of everyone in our country, have to respect privacy rights unless it falls into a realm of something of a person of that stature. i mean, that's such a sad thing. such a sad thing. and personal indiscretion is unfortunate. but to have a personal discretion e-mails is stupid. >> to have this scandal touch on general allen, commanding general in afghanistan, today was the confirmation hearing for the man who would be his successor, general dunford in afghanistan. that sex scandal, personal behavior scandal is unrelated to the war. the fact these things are all happening at once raises for me, once again, the strangeness of the fact that we have so little political debate about our ongoing war. in terms of the realm of political responsibility and what is doable after this election, i have to ask you why congress shouldn't be expected now to push for a faster end to the afghanistan war than the end of two years from now? >> well, it isn't two years. it's just one year from now. >> end of 2014. right? >> i guess almost two years. let's hope it's before then. let's hope it's by then but let's hope it is before then. what is our mission? how is it in our national security to stay a long time? what i think we have to be vigilant about is we're not staying any longer. i know there have been some comments about, well, we may keep a force. i don't think there's any appetite for that. >> general dunford said he'd be willing to keep a force beyond 2014. >> i'm interested in what the president of the united states has said, we will be out by the end of 2014. but it is unpopular. the country is weary of war. they want our troops to come home, and they are coming home, but i don't know if there's a majority in the vote in congress to bring the troops home. remember, the president said by 2014. so hopefully it will be sooner. >> nancy pelosi in an exclusive interview with me today saying that from what we know now, general petraeus' affair does not seem to have risen to the kind of national security matter that might justify the fbi telling other people about that affair. also saying the ultimate drawdown timeline in afghanistan should be shortened to earlier than the end of 2014 which is what it is now. joining us again is josh rogin, staff writer at "foreign policy" magazine where he writes "the cable." when nancy pelosi said at the end i don't know if there's a majority in congress that would vote to make the war end sooner, if such a vote was put to them, do you think she's right about that? do we know? >> yes. let's remember here the president's policy is to extend the troops past 2014, negotiations started in kabul today to extend the troops past 2014. we can forgive nancy pelosi for not knowing that because the administration, according to joe biden during the debates said the opposite thing. >> what about the distinction between combat troops being gone by 2014 and some residual force being left thereafter? >> it's a distinction without a difference. you have troops in harm's way fighting, killing, dying. those are combat troops no matter what you call them. we're going to have a big debate, what the roles and responsibilities should be. that debate starts today. there were dozens of congress people led by nancy pelosi, call them liberals in the house, have been arguing against the long troop deployment since the wars in afghanistan and iraq started. president obama has never in his four years favored the liberal national security policy of getting out of the war sooner. not likely it's about to start right now. >> in terms of the republican side of this debate, i keep talking to people who have been around politics for a long time who say the republicans don't want this conversation, but when you ask them what they think of the afghanistan war, nobody makes an argument we ought to be there a day longer, yet alone two more years plus an unending residual force. >> right. >> so will anybody ever ask the republicans on this? >> yes. we're going to have hearings. eventually general allen is going to surface, going to testify. there will be a bunch of republicans led by john mccain and joe lieberman and lindsey graham who are going to argue for longer troop deployments. waiting to see what the conditions are on the ground. having more troops there than the administration wants and a big segment of the republican caucus that will not support that. and that, again, is the divide inside the republican caucus. ultimately the president is going to have to balance the risk of withdrawing troops faster against the goal of leaving afghanistan as stable and secure as possible. and whatever his decision is going to be, that's going to be his legacy. so that's going to be his responsibility. >> is there anybody else who's stepping up on the john mccain side of this? i mean, at this point john mccain is a noun and verb and don't cut and run. he's really -- i feel like his credibility on foreign policy issues is getting pretty wispy at this point. is there anybody else who's taken the place of him as he becomes less and less relevant? >> mark kirk, kelly ayotte, marco rubio. prepared to carry this water on the republican side. the question is whether or not the generals are going to back them up. when the generals come to testify, if the generals are to the left of john mccain and lindsey graham and joe lieberman, they're going to be left twisting in the wind. if the generals -- the obama administration and give an honest assessment that matches mccain, they'll have a stronger argument. in the end the president is going to do what the president is going to do. >> i think the politics are in flux. six months from now this is going to be a different discussion. josh rogin, staff writer "foreign policy" magazine. writes "the cable." still ahead, a lot of republicans get mad at mitt romney, now, today, and not just for losing last week. we'll also have more from my interview with nancy pelosi when she weighs in on why all the republicans are so mad at mitt romney right now. i said something on this show last night i would please like to take back. if you just think about the presidency, if women had voted the way men did this year, it would have president romney, but women did not vote that way at all. so honestly we're never going to hear from mitt romney again. the part there at the end about never hearing from mitt romney again, not true. and it turns out people do still care what mitt romney says when he says stuff. because unless and until the republican party can find a new national face for their party, mitt romney remains the national face and, therefore, the national leader of the republican party. even if the republicans don't want him to be. and it appears the republicans do not want him to be. the thing that has landed mr. romney back in the national spotlight is a post election conference call he did with donors in which mr. romney said the reason he lost and president obama won is that president obama bribed minority voters and young voters and women with gifts. >> what the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote and that strategy worked. he gave them a big gift on immigration with the dream act amnesty program, which was obviously very, very popular with hispanic voters. and then number two, was obama care. and so for any lower income hispanic family, obama care was massive. let me tell you, what i would do if i were a democrat running four years from now, i'd say, you know what, dental care ought to be included in obama care. immigration, we can solve. but the giving away free stuff is a hard thing to compete with. >> on that call, portions of which were edited and posted online by abc news, on that call mr. romney also praised his campaign team for being no drama and highly effective. now, everything went perfectly. according to abc news, mr. romney's campaign manager then listed other gifts president obama used to win the election like free contraceptives for 18 to 29-year-old women, dream act waivers and student loan interest rate cuts for college students. the romney campaign released a statement authenticating the tape saying, quote, governor romney was elaborating on what obama senior strategist david axelrod said about the obama campaign's effort to target key demographics, most specifically women. for the record, david axelrod said nothing like that. for their part republicans seemed very mad on his way out the door mr. romney has left them with this mess to clean up. iowa's republican governor, terry branstad, said this. quote, i don't think it's helpful. florida senator marco rubio said, quote, well, senator marco rubio according to journalists, quote, distanced himself. kelly ayotte weighed in on "andrea mitchell reports" today. >> i listened to the comments. i don't know what the context fully was. i don't agree with the comments. we have big challenges that need to be resolved as you know. >> so you're not comfortable with what you heard him say. >> no, i don't know the full context of them, but i don't agree with the comments. >> you know, nobody sounded quite as annoyed with mitt romney in these comments as louisiana governor bobby jindal asked about the romney comments yesterday at the republican governors association conference. >> no, look, i think that's absolutely wrong. two points on that. one, we have got to stop dividing the american voters. we need to go after 100% of the votes, not 53%. i absolutely reject that notion, that description. i think that's absolutely wrong. that is not -- i don't think that represents where we are as a party and where we're going as a party. and i think that -- that has not got to be the most fundamental takeaway from the election. >> for continuing to spotlight the most alienating, most elitist, most resentment driven weaponized thurston howell ideological edge to what republicans are offering the country. you can see why they'd be so angry at him. the country as a whole maybe owes mitt romney a debt of gratitude for continuing to exist in the public eye and continuing to insist there was nothing wrong with his campaign and the democrats' victory should be ascribed only to a vast bribery conspiracy involving, like, green cards and condoms. what is good about that for the country, maybe, is that republicans who are now jockeying among themselves to replace mitt romney as the de facto head of the republican party, they are having to articulate what is wrong with that way of thinking. and that seems constructive. that seems like maybe what the country needs them to do. >> this is just something that's fundamentally important for the future of our party, as a republican party, also important for the country. the country needs two competitive parties fighting for every single vote out there and proudly standing up for their principles. let's have a real contest of ideas and that's what this country deserves. we didn't get that in this past election. that's what this country deserves going forward. >> yay. i agree with bobby jindal on almost nothing when it comes to policy and politics. what he just said there is the kind of conversation the whole country is counting on republicans having with each other right now. today the top democrat in the house gave us exclusively her reaction to those comments from mitt romney, and she told us how she thinks they're going to affect the ability of republicans and democrats to work together now and in this next upcoming congress. it's fascinating. that's next. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign and that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. yesterday nancy pelosi announced her intention to stay on as leader of the democrats in the house. in her first interview since that announcement, i asked her today for her reaction to the tape that emerged last night of mitt romney explaining to his donors that he only lost the election essentially because of bribery by the democrats. in the form of policy. watch her response. there was a bit of a firestorm in the last 24 hours when number of news organizations reported on mitt romney's comments to donors in a call yesterday explaining why it is that he thought he lost. and he attributed his lost to democratic policies that he described as gifts to specific populations. to young people, to students, to latino voters. he described as a gift the way he put it, amnesty for the children of illegals and that was a gift to latinos and that was essentially a democratic bribe to earn those votes. that's mr. romney's assessment of why he lost. >> well, that's sad. that's really quite sad. it doesn't sound very professional about who he was as a candidate and what his organization might have been in spite of all the money they had. but it was completely consistent with his message when he didn't know he was being recorded about the 47%. i have said for a long time, since we saw that tape, that's the most authentic romney we have seen. every other instance, for this, then against this, different. what does he really believe in? that he really believed in. when you watch that tape, that videotape, you see passion, you see commitment. that is the most sincere, with no competition for that honor, most sincere moment in his campaign. that's what he believed and that's what he continues to believe and that's what he said yesterday. that's quite sad. >> if that is, we are seeing some republican dissent, bobby jindal criticized him, kelly ayotte, has criticized those remarks. it's not been greeted warmly, the remarks from him, just as the 47% remarks weren't. if that ends up being the conservative assessment of what went wrong, and it is absolutely the take in conservative media and in conservative talk radio. what does that say about what's politically possible next? i just think about the prospect of john boehner and nancy pelosi working together. i think about you sitting down with vice president biden and president obama and john boehner and talking about what's possible. what do you expect about the republican world view and goals to change because of this election? >> well, the president was very clear in the campaign. on where he stood. there was no ambiguity about where he was on many of the issues. and so his election, i think, strengthens our hand at the table. but the public still has to continue to be engaged. public sentiment is everything. and in the past, for example, the republicans in the house were the odd people out on the -- on some of the tax bill. one of the tax -- you know, deduction. and then also on the transportation bill. and so when the president went public on those, then they finally came around. but they're not going to come around just by persuasion sitting across the table, i do not believe. >> they are not going to come around just by persuasion in washington. nancy pelosi essentially calling for an extension of the spirit that drove the campaign. more ahead. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question and why did you call it an offensive question? some of your colleagues privately say your decision to stay on prohibits the party from having a younger leadership and will be -- hurts the party in the long term. what's your response to that? >> leader pelosi. >> -- asked that question except to mcconnell. >> anything about mr. -- excuse me, you, mr. hoyer, you're all over 70. is staying on -- younger leadership from moving forward? does this delay younger leadership from moving forward? >> i think what you will see, let's for a moment honor it as a legitimate question. although it's quite offensive. but you don't realize that, i guess. the fact is, the fact is is that everything that i have done in my almost decade -- i guess decade now of leadership, is to elect younger and newer people to the congress. in my own personal experience, it was very important for me to elect young women. i came to congress when my youngest child, alexandra, was a senior in high school, practically on her way to college. i knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. but i wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner. >> at your leadership announcement yesterday, you were asked, well, there was a strong reaction and a very strong response from you to a question about age. about the prospect of stepping aside so younger leadership could take over in the democratic party. why did all of the democratic women on stage with you boo that question? and why did you call it an offensive question? >> well, i don't -- the point is that i was surprised at the reaction of my colleagues because i hear these questions all the time. from the press. not that one, but questions that they might consider inappropriate. but here's the thing. i didn't say it was inappropriate. i said it's only appropriate if you're asking everybody else. senator mcconnell hasn't won an election in a while. and nobody's asking him to step aside. and i said, do you want the whole leadership to step aside? but it's interesting because when something like that happens, remind them that president reagan was elected at 69 and left at 77 from the white house. sam rayburn was 79 years old when he ended being speaker. in the strength we had in the election, we won 25 seats. we didn't net 25 seats but we elected 25% of our caucus is new, younger, women and minorities, 50% of our caucus, women and minorities and lgbt community folks. so we thought it was a great night. the election of the president to protect health care and the rest. increase our numbers in the senate, increase our numbers in the house. so i didn't really know what the point was unless it -- was it about winning? was it about not winning enough seats or was it just about age? >> and a combination of age and gender. you're saying. that it's a different -- >> that was the point. right. it was -- and i -- you know, we all live with each other around here, no offense taken except the women took great offense. and i made the point that one of my goals was to bring women in younger so they could start getting seniority sooner. not to wait as i did until my children were practically in college, all in college. one, alexandra, in high school. that was my choice, my love, my happiness. the most important thing i'll ever do. if women have an opportunity earlier. they get the seniority sooner. i think i should be granted a dozen to 14 years for raising my family. >> you talked about the diversity. >> ronald reagan said, i will not hold your youth and inexperience against you. >> i will pass that onto luke. >> you are talking about the diversity about the democratic caucus in which you lead in the house. it is a new thing at least that there is not a straight, white male majority in this caucus. and i wonder, you know, the republican party, won a larger majority of the white vote which they were bragging about today in terms of what went right for them in this election which they lost. they lost all minority groups by large margins. when you look at your group and you have that momentous change, what do you say to people who look at that change and think i'm not sure i'm happy about the fact that there is a -- in the democratic caucus? >> i haven't met anybody like that yet. >> but let's say i would say everybody is talking about how we can appeal to these people to vote for us and we are saying no, we want to go beyond that. we want them to represent us. so it is not about we need your vote this is an election day alliance, we want you to have a seat at the table. it is not that we want to displace the white males in our caucus. we want to have a mix. there is something important about having other thinking. whether it is generation al to have a mixture of thinking at the table. but it gives people hope outside to say, there is something there who understands my aspirations and challenges and i reiterate we have diversity of opinion one in our caucus too and we rejoice in that at well. and i say to my male friends. your views are enhanced because you can convince more people about your position. >> you are not just talking to people are inclined to agree with you. you have to persuade others. >> when you bring that caucus together and they build consensus, i've never lost a vote when i was speaker and that is because we built consensus. we didn't write something and say this is what we are going to vote for. i would not want to be a head of a caucus that was a rubber stamp. >> announcing that she in tends to stay on in that position. best new thing in the world coming up next. best new thing in the world today. if you were a liberal you like to believe that government can be a force from good. nobody likes bureaucracy just for it's sake. but government is good for important work. like medicare, it is the government insurance company for 50 million americans and people are happier with it and it is cheaper to administer than all of the private insurance plans that everyone else has to use. it works well. another example the mayor's office in newark new jersey. if there is a tree down on the wires in front of your house. did you see homeless people suffering through the storm, are you stranded with a baby, tell the mayor's office and he will come sort it out for you personally. he will be there in five minutes and bring your bored baby a toy. sometimes government works well. in big and small ways. but government rarely works well in ways that are also very funny. here is the situation. nobody knows if it is legal or illegal to smoke pot or possess pot in the states of colorado or washington. that is because on election night measures to legalize it passed so in state law it is legal. but federal law that applies to the whole country says it is still illegal. which is it? we don't know. enter the seattle police department. on their blog they posted this official document. it is called marijawhatnow? and it is clear answers to simple questions to what everyone is asking. like where can you smoke pot now in seattle? >> you can use it in the privacy in your own home. >> can you get that seized pot back from the police? >> one word answer to that one is no. >> will seattle's finest help criminal agents with small amounts of pot. here again the answer is no. >> this my friends is a public service and it is everything you wanted to know about the complicated laws about pot in seattle as presented by an alternative guy who blogs for the police department along with this guy who is an actual cop. they posed for their post with this video clip from the "lord of the rings". this is a needed service. nobody has been able to figure out what the law is. and what you have done makes sense and has
of e-mails to a second woman. it isn't just a triangle, it's a pentagon. that general down there, he is the top commander of our war in afghanistan. afghanistan, really? please. if our troops were really still fighting in afghanistan, don't you think we'd be hearing about that on the news instead of all this bull [ bleep ]? >> good morning. it is friday. it is friday, november 16th. welcome to "morning joe." with us on set, we have the president of the council on foreign relations, richard haass. richard. >> good morning. >> chairman of deutsche incorporated, donny deutsch. get over it. okay? get over it. >> get over what? what are you talking about? >> all of you are in here. in washington, msnbc and "time" magazine senior political analyst, mark halperin. >> richard's in here? >> i don't know why. i'm serious. what's going on? also, look at this cast we have today, the author of "thomas jefferson, the art of power," historian jon meacham. is meacham here? meacham, look at him. >> lots of books. >> and willie, congratulations on your newest honor. >> thank you. are you in nashville, jon meacham? >> i'm in washington. going to be in nashville tomorrow. >> he needs a pipe in that setting. >> yes, he should, and a fireplace. >> you're saying donny's milking this thing. >> we talked about it for ten minutes. we got on the set and donny's, like, can we do this again today? >> unfortunately, joe and i are on what's called the decaying page. guys falling apart. we're on the presidential page. >> you look good. >> right next to brad pitt. >> that kind of ruins it. okay. well, there you go. >> okay, take that down, please. >> oh! >> there we go. >> it's too early for this. >> it is. take that down. i'm sick. so mika -- >> whatever. >> mitt romney's still in the news. >> yeah, thank you. he is the gift that just keeps on giving. but i think at this point -- >> time to go away. >> yeah. we'll start there because actually, the response to it is probably the beginning of maybe something for the party. the republican party. we begin this morning with a growing number of leading republicans trying to distance themselves from mitt romney's recent comments where he argued that president obama won re-election by offering, quote, gifts or government services to minorities and young voters. >> what the president -- president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote. >> okay. we're going to now show the response to this from some leading republicans. the only thing i'll say is where was this along the way? >> right. it was there. i mean, it was there. >> it's not like this is a revelation about romney. >> yeah, the 47% quote. he actually believed it. >> okay. >> and he wasn't just doing analysis. that was his, i would say, twisted view of what he views conservatism to be. that you write off 47% of the population and just try to squeeze out 3% that's undecided. it's just sick. >> i know this is going to sound snarky, but i think it's a lot easier to say now, but it is being said. louisiana governor bobby jindal came out strongly against romney's comments wednesday and continued yesterday. >> this is unhealthy. this is not where the republican party needs to go. if you want voters to like you, the first thing you've got to do is to like them first. it's certainly not helpful to tell voters that you think their votes were bought. that's certainly not a way to show them that you respect them, you like them. we need to stop talking down to voters. i truly believe people on food stamps, on government assistance, don't want to be there. they're there because they don't have the ability to get better paying jobs. it's our responsibility to give them the education, give them the opportunities to have a better quality of life. >> then we have senator marco rubio of florida who offered a carefully worded reaction to romney, telling "politico," quote, i don't want to rebut him point by point. i would just say to you, i don't believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don't want to work. okay. and former mississippi governor, haley bar rour barbour, saying party needs to do some soul searching. >> we've got to give our political organizational activity, you know, a very serious proctology exam. we need to look everywhere is my point. >> yeah. you know what? i will say -- and i don't hand you compliments often -- but you've been saying this during the primary process, it started. and now it seems to me that it's great to hear these gentlemen coming forward and speaking truth to what mitt romney said. but it's just too easy right now. it should have been done in the primary process. >> it's just like when i was talking about people in the conservative entertainment complex talking in ways that we'll never win the suburbs of philadelphia, bucks county, pennsylvania, or the i-4 corridor. in this case, donny deutsch, i said all along that mitt romney's biggest problem wasn't that he was too conservative. it's that he didn't understand conservatism like margaret thatcher, the shopkeeper's daughter, understood conservatism or ronald reagan, the alcoholic son that grew up in middle america who actually believed, like i believe, like a lot of conservatives believe that if you want to help everybody, if you want to help the 100%, what you want to do is you want to fight hard for their individual free am do doms and unshackle them from regulations from high taxes, from a centralized state, and that's the best way to move forward. we can have a debate over whether that's right or wrong. the problem is, we didn't have that debate this time because mitt romney's view was such an insulated view of a guy who grew up rich and grew up in this insular world where his father ran car companies and was governor of michigan. >> this is a pivot point for the republican party. i think bobby jindal probably said it best. you have to turn -- you have to marry conservatism and pop y lyh populism. we helped the little guy because that's the america dream. it's not the opposite as far as entitlements and victims. that's a pivot point. and the republicans that get it are going to be part of a new branded -- i was arguing yesterday on the show about the republicans need to rebrand themselves. of course they do. a brand is a set of values and how you articulate those values and the attributes you assign it. and it's very, very, very clear, the demographic fait accompli of where this world is going, until you can shift what is the current view of republicanism into what i'll call the pop yewist articulation of conservatism, they will not get there. >> willie, it all starts at the top. it really does. in presidential years, for better or for worse, the guy or woman you nominate to run your party, to be the presidential candidate is one that runs the party. and we had a guy in the republican party that just did not think like thatcher, did not think like reagan, did not think that. >> it's interesting that all these governors held their tongues through the campaign. it's not just bobby jindal, it was bob mcconnell of virginia yesterday saying we need to be more flexible on the issues of taxes. haley bar rour said bour said, purists. i guess the question i have is how do you win general elections without abandingenioning your c principles? how do you move yourself to get 50% of the electorate? >> it's actually healthy. what you want to see is a republican debate about ideas. you can't have the lessons of why romney lost be about quote, unquote, gifts. you can't have it all be about ground game and political tactics. that's a cop-out. it's like an army after losing a war and you chalk it up to this or that sideshow. the republicans have to have a serious debate. what is their view of the economy given what's going on? what is the proper role of government in this society? what is the role of the united states in the world? what did we learn from iraq and afghanistan? let's have a serious debate, but let's not chalk it up to this or that democratic tactic or this or that failure to get the vote out. that's avoiding any serious learning of lessons here. >> let's go to jon meacham. >> i would love to ask what thomas jefferson would do, mika. >> what would jefferson do? having said that, also how do we -- what's the moving forward conversation to have? because this, again, just shows how bad the candidate was. or how much he didn't fit the conversation that needed to be had all along, which, by the way, was a failure on both sides in the campaign. jon. >> you know, what's fun sometimes in life and in politics is when you can make a vice a virtue. and in this case, the fact that romney was not a good candidate and has now said this, which totally ratifies his 47% comment, those of us who wanted to think that he was just talking about tactics, that it was late at night and he didn't really mean it, well, we were wrong. he really meant it. and i think the republicans to some extent are lucky in that they now have a total, to use donny's term, words, by the way, i never thought i would say, in that order. >> yeah. >> it is a pivot point. you now have a nominee who is absolutely embodies and has now said again something that you can play off of. you can define yourself against. you can become an -- i would try to use a term, something like i'm a 53% republican. something that says you're not, you know, we're not that anymore. and then what richard says is exactly right. you can't just be packaging. it's got to be what's in the package. >> well, to that point about being a 53% republican, joe, you actually have to really be one, though. you have to really be one. >> you actually have to believe it. i'm not a 53% republican. i'm a 100% republican. tom coburn is a 100% republican. steve largent when he was in congress, 100% republican. matt salmon back in congress, a 100% republican. you remember back in 1994, we got into congress. we were conservatives, but we were all populists. and we constantly were doing battle with what we called the thurston howell iii wing of the republican party. i thought that wing was dead. it is hard to imagine listening again this morning to mitt romney's statement that this party, two years after a tea party revolution that led to the largest legislative landslide in american history nominated a thurston howell iii republican to be their standard bearer. it's just shocking. >> well, it's not so much unlike 1994, joe, because that's another huge republican congressional win that was also fueled by populism. i think there's no doubt that the republicans react to the macro lessons for their brand and for the experience of 2012 are going to be looking for leaders who are more populists. you can't just wait for the presidential campaign because it's too far down the road. there are lots of political battles between now and then. he'll be looking for somebody like bobby jindal who has a lot of strengths, one is he does have a populist streak, an andy washington streak, and focus on the real lives of real people. and i think what's so damaging for a lot of republicans about romney's comments is once again he's talking in a way that's narrow and that's not talking about things in a populist way but more the way you talk if you are at the yacht club with thurston howell. >> yeah. every time we talk about jon huntsman, we have idiots -- and i'll call them idiots -- that say oh, you're a rhino for even suggesting -- suggesting jon huntsman would have been a good candidate when everybody from erick erickson to myself said, as a matter of fact, it's just a fact, he had the most conservative voting record of anybody that ran. the most conservative record as a public leader, of anybody that ran. you mow what else he talked about, donny deutsch? unlike barack obama, unlike mitt romney, unlike newt gingrich, unlike herman cain, unlike anybody, jon huntsman was the only guy that understood this populist strain of the republican party. he talked about breaking up the banks. government's too big. our banks are too big. our military industrial complex is too big. we talked about it here all the time. you know, that's that populist strain. why didn't people talk about breaking up the banks? >> i'll tell you another thing that he had that actually worked against him that will now be price of entry. and it's called compassion. you know, his tone did not have the vitriol that the other candidates had. >> by the way, they called him a rhino, and this is style over substance time and time again. if you don't hate, then you are, by the entertainment, the conservative entertainment complex, this must mean you're a rhino. if you don't hate, this must mean you are not sufficiently conservative. if you don't hate, you're not good enough to be in our party. no. they're in the losing party. they're on the loser side of history. they are finished. they are finished with having any impact on this party moving forward. >> so the very thing that was price of entry, the fist pounding, the anger, the vitriol is the opposite now. if there is not a compassionate streak -- and you can't fake it. it's interesting, the contrast of jindal and rubio. jindal did the hard pivot. and he had the conservative populist message, and it felt compassionate. rubio, it was just -- blah, blah, blah. so to me, to your point, to huntsman, the very thing that worked against him will now work for the candidates. >> what does it tell you, joe, that it wasn't just the conservative entertainment complex, it was the voters. jon huntsman could not get above 3% in the primary. >> he ran a lousy campaign. i mean, he's responsible in the end for not carrying that message forward. but you know what? more people other than erick erickson on the conservative blogosphere and conservative publication should have picked up that fact. he ran a lousy campaign early on. if he runs again, maybe he'll run a better campaign. but i think also, though, he didn't -- he was not sufficiently angry enough in this environment that the primary process was fought in. he wasn't anti-intellectual enough. >> and downplayed his conservatism. >> that was the biggest mistake. he downplayed his conservatism from the very beginning. and i want to say again, mark halperin, the anti-intellectualism in the republican party over the past decade has been growing. that's another thing bobby jindal has been talking about. that's got to change. that's got to change. we not only have to win over hispanics, we've got to win over educated hispanics. educated african-americans. educated white people. educated people of all races with ph.d.s, an area we've been losing for decades. >> and joe, there's another issue that i know you think a lot about and thought a lot about that huntsman also talked about which is afghanistan and ending the war. that's another populist issue that i think republicans missed in 2012. the president was for winding down the war. you had others who didn't run that thought that that was an issue to tap into across the board populists including a lot of the groups you just talked about. that was an issue that would have surprised voters. that's one of the things that people criticized the republicans who ran for, no deviation from the expected orthodoxy. and if you do that as a party, if you rethink things and lead, you can cut across voting groups, you can reach well-educated people, less well-educated people. high income/low income. if you've got an issue that's bold and brave, you didn't see that from republicans on dealing with the banks and other issues where the common thread would be populism. >> issues that would have been a real match for president obama. >> really quickly, one thought. i would challenge everybody to close their eyes -- >> is this about the "people" magazine thing? let's not go there. >> by the way, jon meacham just quoted me, a pulitzer prize winner. it has nothing to do with sexiest man. >> that may be my 47%. >> that's your waterloo, my man. look it up. >> if you close your eyes and think of a progressive or liberal or conservative, the vision -- >> can i do this with my eyes open? >> the vision of the conservative now has to feel nicer. i know that sounds silly. conservative has always had a hard edge to it. >> it was all good till you said that, but whatever. the growing crisis between israel and the palestinians, we want to get to this story, gaza is on the verge of all-out war developing over the past 24 hours in response to repeated rocket attacks from hamas operatives. israel has begun mobilizing some 30,000 reserve troops including armored vehicles and tanks. overnight the fighting did not let up. explosions rocked gaza city as israeli warplanes pounded hamas targets. hamas vowing retaliation for the death of its military chief two days ago is escalating missile attacks deeper into israel. the jerusalem post reports that israeli air force has fired a rock near the home of hamas's prime minister. no one was reportedly injured. for the first time since the gulf war, more than 20 years ago, air raid sirens were triggered in the commercial capital of tel aviv, sending residents running for cover. so far the long-range missiles fired from gaza have landed without damage there. yesterday israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu warned that the military operation could significantly widen. >> no government would tolerate a situation where nearly one-fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire. and israel will not tolerate this situation. i hope that hamas and the other terror organizations in gaza got the message. if not, israel is prepared to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people. >> while egypt's prime minister visited gaza today in a show of solidarity with hamas, israel agreed to pause attacks, but we keep hearing more coming from there, richard, your thoughts. >> look, it's possible this escalates, but it's hard for me to see how anybody benefits. israel got out of gaza -- israel's a first-world country, a first-world economy. it doesn't want rockets raining down in the middle of tel aviv. it would be like rockets raining down on rockefeller center. israel's way beyond this and wants to move beyond this. also, this brings into play the israeli/egyptian treaty and jordan. everything now -- >> so the question is, why did hamas choose to start firing rockets into israel the way they did? >> i think for hamas -- >> to start this? >> i think for hamas, it's station identification. this is what hamas does. this is how it differentiates itself but hasn't been able to deliver the goods at home to the palestinian people in gaza. this galvanizes its space. it shows the hamas, quote, unquote, is doing something. it has credentials unlike the west bank palestinians who are seen as corrupt and not really offering a palestinian future. >> so they just started firing missiles into israel. >> it's station identification for hamas. and also, hamas now is less isolated. a year ago, they would shoot missiles -- two years ago -- the hosni mubaraks and others would a stop. now suddenly hamas is close to egypt. >> so how do we pressure morsi and egypt? they want billions from us. they want billions from the imf. >> well, that's the way you do it. is that the egyptians also have a stake in this not getting out of hand. israel doesn't want the relationship to break down totally. egypt doesn't want to forfeit its relationship with us, $4.8 billion sitting there in the imf, the $2 billion annually. >> the imf's not going to give them the money if they are seen as being sponsors of hamas, are they? >> that's why this is the balancing act. what we have to make clear to the egyptians is you're no longer simply a party. you're now the government. you're going to rein in people over whom you have some influence. >> is the president passing that message along to morsi and the egyptians? >> i would hope so. the age of unconditional american relationships with a lot of these regimes is over. remember a few months ago during the campaign, the president was asked in the telemundo interview, he was asked, do you consider egypt an ally or adversary and he basically said neither? what we've done, whether it's pakistan, egypt, conditional relationships, it's going to depend on how they treat their own people, whether they act responsibly beyond their borders. this is exactly the future of the middle east. >> so i just want to clarify, there was no triggering event specifically this time for hamas to start raining missiles down? >> no. >> on israeli civilians? >> no, this has been building up over the last few weeks and months. several hundred rockets were launched. this is a self-definition thing for hamas. >> yeah. coming up, we have a great show ahead. new jersey governor chris christie will be here on set. also, vice chair of the senate intelligence committee, senator saxby chambliss. actor bradley cooper will join us. and documentary filmmaker ken burns. up next, mike allen with the top stories in the "politico playbook." but first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill. >> hey, mika, good friday morning. this weekend forecast shaping up to be a nice one. a little chillier than some of us would like, but it will be dry just about everywhere. as far as today goes, the areas still cleaning up from hurricane sandy, no storms in the cards this weekend or even next week. that's great. a cold morning just like yesterday. the afternoon will be okay. temperatures getting up into the 40s and 50s in almost all locations in the northeast. now, the troublesome weather over the next week is going to be all located on the west coast. just had some rain move through los angeles, which is always a big deal. that will continue through the ho morning. some of that rain in the bay throughout your morning rush ho hour. here's the l.a. forecast, one of the worst in the nation, a chance of rain three days in a row. very rare in southern california. let me take you through the next three days. your entire weekend forecast. friday will look like saturday and saturday like sunday. there's really no changes. the wet weather remains on the west coast. and on saturday, we should get a lot more sunshine than today in areas of the northeast. and sunday is more or less the same. so no complaints. we're getting a break from mother nature after she was very cruel to us over the last two weeks, especially on the eastern seaboard. nice shot there, looks like some partial sunshine for areas around new york city this morning. you're watching "morning joe." we're brewed by starbucks. [ male announcer ] families grow up but some things never get old... marie callender's dutch apple pie with fresh fuji apples and a crust made from scratch... it makes home at the holidays even sweeter. marie callender's. it's time to savor. it makes home at the holidays even sweeter. music is a universal language. but when i was in an accident... i was worried the health care system spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life. information on my phone. connection to doctors who get where i'm from. and tools to estimate what my care may cost. so i never missed a beat. we're more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. 27 past the hour. time now to take a look at the "morning papers." "the houston chronicle," oil giant bp has been handed the largest ever criminal fine in u.s. history. in connection with the 2010 oil rig explosion that killed 11 people and triggered a massive spill in the gulf of mexico. two employees face involuntary manslaughter charges. bp will plead guilty to the deaths and for lying over how much oil was really gushing out of the deep water horizon. bp made a record $25.8 billion in profits last year. "the indianapolis star," hostess is expected to announce today whether it will shutter operations permanently. the move would result in the loss of 18,000 jobs, and the company could begin to liquidate itself in bankruptcy court. right now striking workers are preventing production over their objections to a contract offering benefit and wage cuts. hostess makes iconic baked goods from twinkies to ding dongs to wonder bread, and it could all go away today. >> be careful what you -- this is a great company. i know you don't love ding dongs and twinkies, but many people do. >> a lot of jobs at stake. >> yes. >> i know it's complicated, for sure. no snarky comments here. "the wall street journal," google is prepping a new mapping app that will work on apple's iphone. apple stopped providing the app on its latest smartphone in favor of its own mapping program, a move that drew heavy criticism, especially when it was revealed the app contained inaccurate data and helped lead to the firing of apple software chief. and on the cover of "parade" magazine, they were just here at rockefeller plaza. >> oh, wow. >> british boy band one direction. donny deutsch was out there with the girls. >> willie geist, it was great. >> did you dance? >> my daughter danced. >> oh, cute. >> she was very excited. donny was dancing. >> my daughters. >> i bet they loved them. >> they were, like -- >> i bit they were insane. >> by the way, willie's little boy was there, true story. the most adorable little boy. >> he is. >> how old is he now? >> 3. george. >> a month ago he went to -- whose wedding? >> my sister. >> your sister's wedding. was wearing a tuxedo, decided he loved the black tie look. he's just not -- he was rocking the -- >> one direction. >> in a tux. >> in a tux. 7:30 in the morning. >> the cutest thing i've ever seen. >> he puts it on, this looks great. >> this is the hot look. >> he's dapper. >> greatest thing i've ever seen. >> like a young sinatra. with us now, chief white house correspondent for "politico," mr. mike allen has a look at the "playbo "playbook." >> happy friday. >> there it is, happy friday. we can begin our weekend. you can help us pick up on this. the way republican governors in and the republican party at large has now sort of reacted to mitt romney's candidacy. plotting a comeback, where do they begin, mike? >> well, one of the megatrends that came out of this election is the empowerment of younger republican voices, voices we haven't been focused on because the leaders blew it across the board. so governor susanna martinez of new mexico is one of those. she's out at the republican governors association in las vegas where we saw that little clip of governor bobby jindal of louisiana. and she, too, is saying that the party needs to attack immigration, to find a legal way for people to become citizens. she also really went after the romney remarks, saying this is the kind of thing that set us back. and she made a very interesting point. she said we don't need to be talking to hispanics. we need to be asking them, how can we earn your vote? what can we be doing differently? and so this, on paper, was a status quo election. you have a democrat in the white house, democrats running the senate, republicans running the house. but i have never seen so much power moving around, so much molten power in washington in many, many cycles because on the left, you also have a lot of groups that feel empowered who worked hard on this election, who are going to be pushing president obama, the climate groups, gay groups, others to be doing their agenda as one member of this democratic coalition said to our maggie abraman. last time it was for history. this time it's personal. >> and mike, on taxes, we mentioned it earlier, governor bob mcdonnell saying we need to soften it with this president if we want to get a larger deal, our position on taxes. will we see a little move back from that grover norquist line? >> this is another fascinating sign of how much the gop is moving. for mississippi governor haley barbour saying republicans need to look at that. we'll see a fairly conciliatory statement. president obama is also going to say he needs to make some tough choices and will compromise. so at the meeting in washington today, we hear a lot of talk about compromising on both sides. and it's a sign of how they read the electorate. i think it will fade day by day as we get into the heat of negotiations. but coming out of the election, washington sounds extremely differently than it did just a few weeks ago. >> a lot of work to do. mike allen with a look inside the "politico playbook." thanks, mike. >> happy weekend. up next, the knicks undefeated. the knicks are undefeated. a lot of people said they were a fluke, but after last night's win on the road against previously unbeaten san antonio, you can't say that anymore. mike barnicle, brian schactman help us out with sports when "morning joe" comes back. into their work, their name on the door, and their heart into their community. small business saturday is a day to show our support. a day to shop at stores owned by our friends and neighbors. and do our part for the businesses that do so much for us. on november 24th, let's get out and shop small. [ male announcer ] a european-inspired suspension, but not from germany. ♪ a powerful, fuel-efficient engine, but it's not from japan. ♪ it's a car like no other... inspired by a place like no other. introducing the all-new 2013 chevrolet malibu, our greatest malibu ever. ♪ all right, time for some sports. mike barnicle, cnbc's brian shactman join the table. >> i love that the women had to leave the table to do sports. >> that was voluntary. >> they wanted to. >> alex was drifting us back. >> mika's got more important things to do. so mike barnicle, you called this when we made our picks last week. so did a lot of people. tigers' third baseman miguel cabrera beat out mike trout for american league mvp. it wasn't as close as some thought it might be. the first triple crown winner in 35 years. 22 first place votes. trout got six. this decision not going to sit well with the moneyball crowd. cabrera had the advantage in batting average, rbis, home runs. trout had the wins in w.a.r.s that measures a player's contribution to a team's record. 10.7 to 6.9. >> i'll tell what you it means, the internals of those statistics means that trout gets on base. he steals second. if miggy got on second, he'd never score. trout would score eight out of times from second base. even though the tigers went to the world series. so there was a big push for trout to get the mvp. >> i was surprised that the number -- the gap was that big. >> cabrera's a better -- trout's a better baseball player, but you win the triple crown -- >> it's automatic. >> -- you finish in first, you've got to give him the award. >> by the way, trout will be there. what is he, 20, 21? over in the national league, the mvp went to buster posey of the giants, the first national league catcher since johnny bench won it in 1972. take that mvp award. you guys like that one? >> i just want to say one thing. you like this. the red sox did not receive an mvp vote, not one vote, for the first time since 1911. first column was in "the globe" that year, too. >> yeah. wow! >> right out of the box! >> steps right up. >> right out of the box! >> he said 5 bucks if i rip you. >> buster posey, any women about to give birth, you name your son buster, how do you miss with buster? >> second most popular name behind mike trout. >> mvp and world series title. >> and a leader. let's go to the knicks, donny deutsch. i said they were unbeaten, they actually had one loss. fourth quarter, knicks clawing back from the 12-point deficit. under two to play. j.r. smith with a big three. that gives the knicks a two-point lead. less than a minute left now. raymond felton. can't get it to go. tyson chandler for the follow. knicks come all the way back to win, 104-100. 6-0 for only the second time in the history of the franchise. their other 6-0 start came in '93/'94, the last time they made it to the nba finals. a lot of people said they were a fluke, hadn't played good teams. but you go on the road and beat san antonio, that's a real win. >> i like to kind of frame things. knicks, 6-0, crimson tide loses, same week. >> what? how do i make the connection? >> what are they doing here? >> i don't get it. >> i like to look at trends. i like to kind of -- >> how are they -- i don't see the -- >> they're both really good things. >> here's another trend, we lost again last career and still won the national championship. there's another trend. >> come on. you've got to have something good. if you pause, it's got to be good. this has got to be a knockout punch. >> what are you talking about? we're going to win the national championship again. you don't need a knockout punch. >> i believe the networks understand people are tired of the s.e.c. i believe you'll see oregon and notre dame. >> i don't know why he's here. because i'm one of the sexiest people. >> you know another trend? donny's not on the show anymore. congratulations. >> who's vandy got this weekend? >> tennessee at home. we haven't beaten them for 20 years. tennessee has not won an s.e.c. game this year. >> let's go, vandy. up next, the must-read opinion pages. we're back in a moment. 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[ dog barks ] because right after they get married, they'll find some retirement people who are paid on salary, not commission. they'll get straightforward guidance and be able to focus on other things, like each other, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. it's just common sense. try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only thing we've ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. make your mark with ink from chase. welcome back to "morning joe." it's 44 after the hour. and we have a cast of millions with us. today. i want to look at the front page of "the new york post." >> yes, please. >> o's vow to residents, i'll try to make it right. jon meacham, we were talking about this before the election, that when a president comes to a storm-ravaged area, it doesn't matter whether they're a republican or a democrat, they bring a certain authority that can comfort people in a way that little else can do. >> yeah, it goes back to -- there's so many roles to the presidency. you have to be the explainer in chief, you have to be the deal maker in chief, and you have to be the pastor in chief. it's a role that, you know, fdr was brilliant at playing, and he understood that there was a kind of -- particularly in a culture where the president is so present in everyone's lives because of the media, the idea that he cares about you and is on the ground has even more power than it did when they were even more distant figures. >> mark halperin, the president's been criticized in the past for being a bit remote. there's some nice photos of him with people on staten island. i just wonder, are you hearing on the inside that this re-election has transformed him a bit and that we can expect a different president obama over the next four years, at least stylistically, if not ideologically? >> i think in terms of dealing with disaster, i think he's been a bit underrated in how he's dealt with them from the comforter in chief role, but also from the mechanical role. these are state and local problems to solve for the most part, but we all agree that most of us do, the federal government has a role. one of the things i think where he's been underrated is picking the right people. fugate is widely considered to be very good at dealing with these things at fema. but you saw in that video shean donovan, the housing secretary, also given high marks for just kind of technical competence, the kind of president excels at. i think the bigger question is will he be a different kind of leader and president in dealing with congress? one thing we haven't talked about is the meeting with kong gre congressional meeting today. it's that kind of setting and the ongoing relationship with boehner and mcconnell because he's going to have to be a different kind of leader with them. he talked about it in the press conference a bit the other day. he needs to reach out to them the way he's reached out to people on staten island and dealt with the two governors, christie and cuomo, who are two pretty demanding guys as well. and based on their public and private comments have been very happy with the president's leadership and his government. >> i just wonder if it's fair to make a parallel when you look at the president's response to sandy which has had and continues to have just devastating effects on the economy for businesses and the reaction to the bp oil spill which seemed slow in coming because that was devastating as well to a different part of the country. >> he certainly was. he was very slow to respond to people in the gulf coast. >> in terms of appearances. >> i think things have changed, though, over the past couple years. and i suspect that, you know, even the president's closest allies will say that it was a very hard adjustment going from where he had been, a senator with very little experience in washington, to being president of the united states. i think he's -- i think he's learning as he goes. he's four years in. i think we're going to see i think more positive developments over the next four years. >> and richard haass, while we have you here, new head of the communist party in china. talk about what it means. >> we're talking about the political transition here in the united states. this is the other great political transition in the world. you now have the new leadership of the world's largest country, the world's second largest economy, and what's so interesting about it is how conservative it is. china is in for a rough ride. everyone in this country talks about a rising china, this sense of china's emergence. they don't see it that way. their economy is slowing big time. their entire economic model can't continue to succeed. they can't rely on exports. they've got to stimulate demand. you've got political protests at home, anti-corruption movements. china is battening down the hatches. this is a very conservative leadership. they're answer's not going to be reform, but rather they're going to try to deal with nationalism, potentially by repressing some of it at home. they're going to try to do anti-corruption things, and china may become or continue to be more assertive abroad. this is a different china. it's a china that's in for a much tougher experience at home. and for us, it's going to -- everyone's worried about a rising china. a china that encounters difficulties domestically could pose a different and in some ways a more difficult set of problems for united states, japan and other countries we're so close to. >> mike barnicle, you are our crime correspondent. what's fbi director mueller saying this morning? this is, of course, the agent that began the cyber investigation that brought down general petraeus and is about to bring down the top general in afghanistan. he sent this picture to jill kelley who then decided to go to him later on to start a cyber investigation because a woman had sent her an e-mail that said nani, nani pooh-pooh. >> i think based on my knowledge of director mueller, he is probably looking at that picture and looking at the fact that that fbi agent cold called a republican congressman to report what was going on. >> just for the record, he sent this, he says, to doz dozens of people as a joke. >> that's supposed to make us feel better. >> i just said for the record. >> if anthony wiener had only come up with that excuse, he'd still be in congress right now. i tweeted that to all my followers. >> let's wait until all this cools off. they have the ongoing investigation, a month or two down the road. >> yeah. >> let's reassign this agent to, you know, anchorage, alaska, perhaps. >> again, the first sin was the worst, and that is they began the investigation on six e-mails. >> it's scary. >> that were not threatening. that's the point we've been making all week. civil libertarians should be up in arms at the privacy that was violated here by this, this gung ho agent who started this thing and then continued it. i've got a friend in the intel community that says, actually, they probably would have let this go away, but the second this idiot started cold calling members of congress because of his personal vendetta or because he was trying to impress jill kelley who sent it to him. at that point, they really had no choice but to go public with it. >> well, there's no need for willie and i to live in fear now that our e-mails will be exposed. >> there you go. willie, tell me what's next. >> general petraeus testifying on capitol hill within the hour. still ahead this morning, new jersey governor chris christie will be here. also, actor bradley cooper joins us on set to discuss his new film. it's getting great reviews. here's hoping it goes a little better than one of the last couple of times he was with us. >> and bradley's here to talk today about his latest film. it's called "the a-team." >> as opposed to -- she came up to me and said, so i'm so happy you're part of the a-list? a-list show? >> mika. >> like totally sincere. totally sincere. >> yeah. >> that's fantastic. >> she grew up in a hermetically sealed bubble. >> her mother was a fan of mr. t. [ male announcer ] free windows 8 training from your son. can you help me with something? nope! good talk. [ male announcer ] or free windows 8 training when you buy a computer at staples. another way staples makes it easier to upgrade. ♪ don't know what i'd do ♪ i'd have nothing to prove ♪ i'd have nothing to lose [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide, now through sunday. to bring you a low-priced medicare prescription drug plan. ♪ with a low national plan premium... ♪ ...and copays as low as one dollar... ♪ ...saving on your medicare prescriptions is easy. ♪ so you're free to focus on the things that really matter. call humana at 1-800-808-4003. or go to walmart.com for details. welcome back to "morning joe." jon meacham, before we let you go, you're out, obviously, on this big book tour about thomas jefferson. the book is just doing fantastic. incredible reviews. what are people asking you out at these book events about thomas jefferson? >> you know, there's a real hunger, as you would expect, to say, you know, what can obama learn from jefferson? and is there -- are there lessons back there? and there are some stylistic things. you know, jefferson was brilliant at reaching out in his caucus and across the aisle. i think we are seeing that -- we are hoping there's more of an instinct on obama's part to press forward in a second term by reaching out more. >> all right. very good. >> jon meacham. >> have you sent one to the president yet? >> i have not. i should do that. >> you need to do that, jon. you need to sign it and send it to the president. he's a big reader. >> as ever, you're ahead of me. so i'll do that. thank you. >> all right, jon meacham, the new book, "thomas jefferson: the art of power." when we come back, vice chair of the senate intelligence committee, senator saxby chambliss, also "bloomberg's" josh green on the three factors he says will decide the fiscal cliff. and david gregory joins the set as well. there's david. >> all right. >> keep it right here on "morning joe." anncr: some politicians seem to think medicare and... social security are just numbers in a budget. well, we worked hard for those benefits. we earned them. and if washington tries to cram decisions about the future... of these programs into a last minute budget deal... we'll all pay the price. aarp is fighting to protect seniors with responsible... solutions that strengthen medicare and... social security for generations to come. we can do better than a last minute deal... that would hurt all of us. some people put everything intotheir name on the door, and their heart into their community. small business saturday is a day to show our support. a day to shop at stores owned by our friends and neighbors. and do our part for the businesses that do so much for us. on november 24th, let's get out and shop small. humans -- even when we cross our t's and dot our i's, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why, at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what's your policy? what the president -- president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition. give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government. and then work very agressively to turn them out to vote. >> how on earth did mitt romney find out about the extraordinary bag of gifts? what we've got in here. there's something for everybody in this. oh. what did obama give us? oh, a bag of weed. that was nice. oh. food stamp koozie. contraception variety pack. very thoughtful. pinata filled with green cards. >> welcome back to "morning joe." look at this beautiful shot of new york city as the sun comes up. joining us on the set, we still have donny deutsch with us who just made the most unbelievably self-aware comment. do you know what he said? >> what did he say? >> he said if i were 6'5", i would be insufferable. >> like david gregory. >> wait. i'm 6'5" but i'm not insufferable. >> are we suggesting he's not insufferable? i would say, you know, his upcoming book, david gregory, insufferable at any height. >> i'm trying to decide if it's self-aware or not. >> insufferable. >> joining us on set, we have the moderator of "meet the press," david gregory and senior national correspondent for bloomberg businessweek, joshua green. we just listened to mitt romney explaining why he lost. i think it's not -- i think he actually explained why he lost. >> i think he helped explain why he just didn't get it. david gregory, there are a lot of conservatives from the very beginning and a lot of moderates in the republican party who thought this guy didn't really understand at his core what it meant to be a conservative. "the wall street journal," obviously, editorialized about it time and time again. he just didn't believe like reagan or thatcher or hayek or milton friedman that conservative wasn't for the rich. it wasn't for the thurston howell iiis, it was for all america. >> and a conservative view and philosophy for governing. necessarily include a lot of people, beyond just white men, that it ought to be an expanding view that new immigrants to the country ought to embrace, that should appeal across ethnic and racial divides. and i mean, i just think that there's a collective sense among those in the party who want to drive forward and say please make it stop. make him stop talking to donors because apparently when he speaks to donors, he just opens up. and that's not really helping. i thought bobby jindal, as an indian-american, really sort of said hey, no. we have to get it. he doesn't get it. what we need to understand is that we need to go in some new directions. we should not be talking about the fact that, you know, obama's giving away things to minorities in the country as a way to get elected. >> look, i agree completely with what jindal said. i think you do, a lot of us do. again, it's easy now to say that. you've been saying this for two years. about what the party sort of needs to do or responding to certain comments that candidates like mitt romney or during the provide marry primaries certain candidates have said, and you've cut to the chase, but these politicians now saying a lot of great things, but it's easy. >> i mean, i'm glad they're starting to say it. bobby jindal is one of the most intelligent, brightest forward-thinking republicans that we have. he's been muted over the past several years in part because if you're a party leader, if you occupy the space that he does, a lot of times you fall in line behind the nominee. there are a lot of times that mitt romney said a lot of really stupid things, a lot of disappointing things when he showed his weakness when he refused to speak out against a lot of the hate that was spewing from the right-wing entertainment complex. now i think people are freed up a bit more, and i think it's important. >> don't you think -- you saw this change, you know. george w. bush campaigned in 2000 saying that compassion doesn't end in the banks of the rio grande. he gets more of the hispanic vote. he talks about comprehensive immigration reform. it would have been the first thing he passed, had it not been for 9/11, he tries it in the second term, he fails. then in the run-up, you saw conservatives moving away from immigration. then 2010 happens and you have the tea party movement. they sort of moved away -- became more fiscally conservative. >> it wasn't just republicans that ran away from immigration reform. it was a group of democrats that did as well. but republicans took the hit because of voices from the republican side, especially in the primary, were just incorrigible on so many fronts. >> haley barbour, but first here's bobby jindal on mitt romney's comments. >> this is completely unhelpful. this is not where the republican party needs to go. look, we want -- if you want voters to like you, the first thing you've got to do is to like them first. and it's certainly not helpful to tell voters that you think their votes were bought. that's certainly not a way to show them that you respect them, you like them. we need to stop talking down to voters. i truly believe people that are on food stamps, on government assistant don't want to be there. they're there because they don't have the ability to get better paying jobs. our responsibility is to adopt policies that grow the economy, give them the education and opportunities to have a better quality of life. >> guys, there is donny deutsch. how about that for the republican brand? how good is that for the republican brand, a guy speaking out like that on his toes, being aggressive. bobby, governor jindal, that's a message we need more republicans to say without fear. >> i said it earlier, coming off of the romney gaffe into jindal, it's the republican pivot point. and i think republicans can either line up -- what was great about what jindal said is we're not going to talk down anymore. it was genuine, it was compassionate. >> you know what else he said that i loved? i'm sure you've had to tell your advertising people, people that wanted to advertise, you've got to like your people. if you want them to like you, you've got to like them first. it's a great message for them. we republicans too often are at war with, you know, a certain segment of society, maybe the 47%. but mainly at war with the press. i remember early on, i had guys coming up to me, why do you always get such good press, scarborough? you're a right-wing freak. i said, because even my dog knows if i don't like him. i said, you guys walk around with a scowl on your face. you let everybody in the press know that you think they're going to be unfair to you, that they're biased, that you hate them. what do you expect them to do? and that's the chip on the shoulder that we have to lose. >> i'll tell you, it is a style thing. and i said the other day -- and i got mocked, as i often do -- that i think nice is going to be the new black. >> oh, god. >> donny. >> listen to me. governor chris 'tis tie is comi. what he did was a genuine thing with obama was a seminal moment, how to act, behave, working together is not bad, kindness is not bad, compassion is not bad, and the conservatives, the republicans have to rebrand and no, that isn't the american dream and we are about embracing. >> david gregory, that is what president bush did so well, always talked about being a compassionate conservative, got a large segment of the hispanic population. but republicans have not only lost hiss paj panics and african-americans, but asian-americans as well. >> yeah. yeah. >> we're losing every growing demographic group out there. >> and again, it comes back to what i think was a big debate in the course of this campaign, which is what is the proper role of government, particularly in a distressed economy? and that debate, you know, happened in the course of the campaign. it's going to continue to happen. and that's where i think in this case, romney got on the wrong side of that argument. >> well, he also opened up an opportunity, though, for the party to push off and move back and embrace a different kind of vision that could have more ele ele electoral success than romney's. i think jindal's pushback is a good example of how the party might use that latest gaffe to kind of move beyond mitt romney. >> if you could play the rubio quote, because that's how not to do it. very interesting. this is somebody who's not getting it. >> he's being very careful. i'll read rubio's quote. then i'm going to play haley barbour. this is senator marco rubio of florida who is careful in his wording. he tells "politico," i don't want to rebut him point by point. i would just say to you, i don't believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don't want to work. okay. and then former mississippi governor haley barbour suggested the whole republican party -- >> did haley measure his words? >> he thought about it long and hard and then just went there. take a look. >> we've got to give our political organizational activity, you know, a very serious proctology exam. i think that's the only -- we need to look everywhere is my point. >> everywhere. >> okay. mark halperin. >> well, mika, you made the point that i think is really important, which is a lot of these things might have been better said before the election rather than now. there's an confluence here of events that's helping republicans make the pivot more quickly than they might, which is governor romney said these things just as the republican governors were gathered for their meeting in las vegas, and a lot of leading national reporters were there to amplify and question them. that's lucky for the republicans in the sense that they're getting a chance to respond and try to move up in a new direction. but we've seen this movie before. it's very hard for republicans, after a loss, governors of whatever party loses often try to say you know what? we're going to be the voices now. we get it. we're going to try to move the party in a different direction. easy to do when they're in vegas by coincidence. very hard for bobby vijjindal a other governors to have a megaphone consistently to try to change the direction. >> i think this is about tone. this is what we keep talking about. the temptation is to say i see what republicans have to do. they have to become more moderate. they have to move toward the democrats. that is not the answer. and i'm sure that's what you would say. this is about rebranding conservatism in a conservative approach to governing. but to being more tolerant, to having a different tone about talking, you know, to immigrants and to other people in the country who are not for them. that's what i think bobby jindal is saying. and that's what i think was really missing. to romney's credit, romney, i know, wanted massive immigration reform before he started running for president. they couldn't reach an agreement. so he then had to go into this primary process where he had to keep moving to the right on immigration and we see the results. >> and he ran away from it. four years ago -- four years ago i read a book right after the president got elected. i talked about tone. i said we need to be conservative. we need to be conservative on spending money, balancing the budget, fighting wars. we've got to show restraint. but i said we've also got to show restraint in our rhetoric. and it drove so many people crazy. they couldn't do it. so you're right. you want the reagan model. you want to be conservative ideologically, but want to be moderate temperamentally. there's also something important as well, and i can't bring it up enough. david frum calls it the conservative entertainment complex. there were so many times where we were in danger as a party, the primary process, i said it time and again, that it was killing our brand. one week you would have herman cain at the top of the list. the next week you would have sarah palin. the next week you would have rick perry. the next week you would have donald trump. the next week you would have somebody else. who had just never governed effectively. it made our primary process look like a reality show. every time i criticized a different group, i was blasted not only by people on twitter, but by bloggers and people in the mainstream press. >> you were blasted for saying what these guys are saying now. >> saying now. and then go to the convention. i dared say our convention may not have been the best convention ever. my god, you would have thought that i had knocked over a bust of ronald reagan. i'm not done. i've got a long list here. >> that's your problem. >> this is not about me. this is important to say. nobody was saying this, and they weren't saying this for a reason. right after the convention. i did a series of tweets, huffington post mutt it uput it they said romney's team's in trouble. they need to turn it around. it's slipping out of their grip quickly. they're in trouble. then finally the libyan press conference that he gave that was such a disaster, the next morning, i went out, i said, this is the worst thing, mark stein at "national review" and all these other people went crazy talking about how i was a rhino and i was this. it was stupidity. then they decided to come at us saying we doctored a tape and obsessed for a week over two seconds where we felt they said ryan, they thought they said romney. so while all of these conspiracy theories are spewing on the right and the conservative entertainment complex, barack obama's team is organizing. and they're targeting. and instead of talking about conspiracies in the media, josh, they're targeting voters in ohio. instead of talking about how the polls are skewed, they're making phone calls. while we are basically in this cocoon where our websites, our tv shows and our radio shows, talk show hosts are telling us, everything's okay. you're going to win. and anybody that says otherwise is just a part of the left-wing socialist conspiracy. >> i think that's why there was that thunderstruck disbelief among conservatives and apparently among romney himself the day after the election that they had actually lost. they didn't belief it would happen. and i think if romney had had a chance to break free of that entertainment complex, hadn't felt obligated to consistently kind of pander to it in his ineffective style, it would be more like the romney in the first debate who had that broader appeal that you're talking about, he might have been more successful. >> i'm going to save the super pacs $1 billion next round. i'm being completely serious. here's what they should start running now. a series of ads with really different individuals saying, i'm a conservative, and i believe in immigration reform. i'm a conservative, and i believe in helping the little guy that needs the help. i'm a conservative, and continue to redefine conservatism. >> what does it mean to be a conservative in 2013, '14, '15. >> own that. that will set the table for republicans. >> just one caveat, though. i'm a conservative, and balancing the budget helps the 99%. >> yeah. >> more than the 1%. >> we can write 100 lines about that. yes, yes and yes. >> conservative ideology can be consistent -- >> but the american people don't understand what the word "conservative" means and does not understand the humanity behind it. that's it. >> you have to be able to do that and still have an honest conversation about the realities that we face right now here today in this country. and mark halperin, that would also continue, i'm a conservative, but i want to talk about the big banks. i'm a conservative, but i want to talk about afghanistan and bring all those philosophies to what is actually happening right now. >> it's very easy to criticize mitt romney right now because of where he stands in the party after his loss. the harder thing, which the republicans have not done, we've talked about this so much, is take on the media freak show and the circus. take on the party who doesn't want to be a leader on immigration. you know, people are talking about immigration now. of course, it seems like republicans are ready to take that on. when there's actual legislation, when you have to join arms with the president and be a leader the way bush was on the issue and senator mccain was for a time on the issue, that's going to be really hard. that's when you've got to take incoming from the right, and it's going to be difficult to do. you take on the big banks, same thing. take on afghanistan. same thing. that's what the party's going to have to do to change its brand and its image. and to be confident that they are standing in the right place to broaden the party rather than to stay narrow. >> by the way, i want everybody to know, to follow up on david gregory's point, i'm not saying default to positions automatically give up on a 35% tax rate because i'll tell you what. i'll just say it right now. if i were in congress, if i were going to give up on a 35% tax rate, the democrats would have to bring a hell of a lot to the table to make me do that. they would have to get past the demagoguery on medicare, get past the demagoguery on social security, on so many things. and republicans at the same time would have to give up on an endless war in afghanistan that's causing us $2 billion a week. give up on a military industrial economics that is getting more bloated by the day. give up on corporate welfare. you know, so the default position isn't -- you're right -- it's not just hey, let's give up on the bush tax cuts. >> no. >> it's tone and it's balance. >> and that hasn't been said once in the past hour and 20 minutes. >> josh, you're talking about the three questions to ask about the fiscal cliff about this debate. what are they? >> well, to me, the fiscal cliff, it's obviously a big clash between the two parties, but you can break it down into three individual struggles. one involving each of the three key players. for the president, he's won the election, but if we are going to go over the cliff, i think what he's trying to do now is shape public opinion so that if we do, republicans get blamed. i think for john boehner, and you saw this the day after the election with his conciliatory tone, he needs to have that battle with the right wing of his caucus and lead his tea party members kind of out of this land of make-believe. >> can i ask you a question? the president's not running for re-election. and i've heard him say, we're going to take this fight across the country and go after the republicans. there's not a damn election for two years. what good does it do the president if americans blame the republicans? we're still going over the cliff. >> the good it does the president is that we go over the cliff and democrats, including in the white house, believe that if they shape public opinion, the furor would be so intense that everyone's tax rate's going up, that republicans would not be able to hold out more than a week or two. and the example you saw that before was the last extension of the payroll tax cuts when house republicans said no, no, no. the weight of public opinion eventually forced him to concede. the presumption this time is that it would be even bigger because everybody's taxes are going up. >> i just think brinksmanship as a strategy is dangerous at this time. the country is so agitated and disgusted with that in washington. i just don't know that that's what they want to do. >> at the same time, how do you avoid it without the kind of outright concession that obama really wound up making? >> i agree. i think part of it is putting on the table that was attempted before. in other words, if he's got leverage on taxes and i think he does, then he's got to get democrats right with the idea of we're going to do more cuts on medicare beyond the $250 billion that he proposed before. there's got to be other spending cuts that are part of this to make it easier for republicans to come along. and again, i still think he uses the leverage that he has overall on tax rates. you know, to drive that piece of it. >> you know, we've got to look at human nature. and the thing is -- and donny, you know about human nature. you've made a lot of money surveying human nature. everybody looks at the president. the president won this big election. he microtargeted in the swing states. republicans had a horrible message, a horrible brand. the president won big. yea, throw the confetti. you know what? in 1996, bill clinton won big. you know who else won big? me. when i went back in january of 1997, was i willing to work any more after bill clinton won the election than before? no. a lot of republicans that won an election in the house as well. i just say that to say the president can go ahead -- and to follow up on david, he could do brinkmanship if he wants. a lot of these guys have spent the last couple years in the house standing up to the president going after him aggressively. he got re-elected. >> and the government's organized the same way. >> yes. if the president wants to engage in brinksmanship, he can. >> the message they took from their own re-election in their district was go back to washington and fight the president. don't cooperate with what he wants to do. >> right. >> all right, josh -- >> that's what i'm saying, brinksmanship seems to be short-sighted right now. i think instead of flying all across the country and spending taxpayer dollars on air force one and your security detail, could you just try inviting people over to the white house? >> he's doing that, too. >> and working them the way bill clinton did and the way ronald reagan did. >> he's starting to do that today. >> he's doing it. >> josh green, bloomberg businessweek, can obama persuade the country? can john boehner control the tea party? can mitch mcconnell protect his right flank? thank you very much. >> by the way, he's got to, i guess. he's got an election coming up himself. >> and he had a tough re-election. remember, he had to run six years ago right after the auto bailouts, had a tougher election than he wanted. still ahead, new jersey governor chris christie joins the set. also actor bradley cooper will be here. next, senator saxby chambliss and andrea mitchell. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. try running four.ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately we've got ink. it gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at office supply stores. rewards we put right back into our business. this is the only 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leaders from the intelligence community including acting cia director mike morrell and jim clapper, the dni, and others. the difference that we're looking for today is, general petraeus, obviously, was involved in making some of the key decisions. and we want to know what his thought process was. plus, he's the only member of the leadership team that has been back to libya since september 11. he was just there several days ago. being on the ground, he has a little bit different perspective. so we're going to be talking with him about that. >> hey, saxby, joe here. good to talk to you again. >> hey, joe. >> you know, susan rice, our u.n. ambassador, has been taking a lot of heat. john mccain, lindsey graham going after her for repeating what the president says was the intel that was available at the time. you're on the committee. can you tell us, was susan rice, from what you know, just repeating what was being told to everybody in washington at the time on what had happened in benghazi? >> well, here's what i think, joe. i think without question, i mean, you know, you've got guys storming a consulate with ak-47s, with rpgs and firing mortars. they knew immediately this was a terrorist attack. there wasn't any question about that. and why the white house didn't come out and say that immediately, i don't know. they tried to soften it somewhat with regard to it was a spontaneous action that stemmed from a protest. there was a question about whether protesters were there. and five days later, susan rice goes on tv and says that not only was it a protest, but it apparently stemmed from this trailer or this movie that had been shown. and very honestly by that point in time, we were beyond that. so i do think that there were some politics involved in the message that the white house wanted to send. >> so saxby, you obviously hold a very important position on the intelligence committee. the president, the white house is saying that all susan rice was repeating on "meet the press" was what everybody else was being told from america's intelligence community. if susan rice was giving bad information five days later, and if the intelligence community was her source, this is a bigger question about the failings of the intelligence community. i'm just trying to sort through this. >> yeah. and that's a question that very frankly, joe, we discussed in depth yesterday with the community. we spent an awful lot of time on these talking points. the one thing i can tell you is, it will be a long time before unclassified talking points are put out by the intelligence community. that probably was a mistake. but susan rice was sent to give a white house message. it was not an intelligence community message. and there's a very clear distinction in that. >> andrea, it's david up here in new york. i have a question for you on some of the bigger fights here. i mean, isn't this really beyond the susan rice questions, which i know are going to be litigated fiercely, about what was happening on the ground in terms of protecting u.s. personnel, namely the ambassador, what kind of coordination was there, or was there not between the cia presence which was substantial in benghazi and state department security? >> well, i think those are the questions that i would suspect senator chambliss and dianne feinstein and their house counterparts are also going to be asking because they want to know the time line. they had five separate beyond warnings, five separate incidents, as senator feinstein has made very clear. and as we have been told. five separate incidents in benghazi against the british ambassador, against our own consulate in the months leading up to this. the state department was told about this. there's been plenty of testimony about that. so why did they leave our diplomats there, not better protected? why did they not shut it down? or beef it up and send in the military? those are questions that i think also have to be asked. and where are we at risk elsewhere in the world? senator, i would encourage you to jump in here and tell me because you know a whole lot more about this. >> and senator, could i just add to what andrea is asking because it's critical, the security inaina inadequacy we know about now for our ambassador to be in benghazi on 9/11? >> it's pretty easy to look back now and say sure, he shouldn't have been there. the fact is that he -- the cia, number one, let me clear up a myth -- the cia does not provide any security. a lot of the american public, i think, thinks that's the case. security here was actually provided by the libyans, and that's normal. the host country provides security for all of our embassies and all of our consulates. as it turned out, they simply weren't capable. and andrea, you make a good point, and it's something that we talked with ambassador kennedy about yesterday who is a longtime career diplomat, very outstanding guy from the state department which said, look, you know. why aren't you guys thinking about other places? and he very clearly stated they are. and if we can't get the protection we need, we do have no business there. so long range, that's going to be a problem. that doesn't solve the benghazi issue, but long range, you're right. >> mark halperin, jump in. >> senator, if i could ask you to put a little finer point you're saying about ambassador rice. are you saying that she has lied and the white house has lied when they've said that what she said on the sunday shows was based not on the white house political spin, as you've been saying, but specifically on what the intelligence community best sense of things was at the time? >> i'm not saying she lied. i'm just saying she didn't tell -- she put a softer touch on what the real facts were. that's not lying. she just didn't get out there and say, look, this is a terrorist attack. somebody screwed up. we've got to get to the bottom of it. that's where we were two days later, not five days later. and i think the american people would have been better served, and they would have a better feeling about what happened in benghazi if the white house had just been forthcoming very quickly. and they knew by then more about what happened than what was being talked about. >> senator, back to a point that you and joe touched upon just a couple of minutes ago. given the level of ferocity, of the attack on the consulate, given the weapons involved, it was clearly planned. it was clearly a planned assault on that consulate. so given what happened and given in the aftermath the intel that was available, and we heard provided through ambassador rice, are we looking at a shocking lack of human intel capability on our part in eastern libya or throughout libya? >> well, you have to remember, this is a part of the world that we haven't had much of a presence in for decades under gadhafi. and our intelligence community did put some assets on the ground as quickly as possible. but the one question that i've asked is at the heart of what you just asked, and that is, we are the best at what we do. and if we couldn't figure out that there were a group of bad guys planning to attack this consulate, why not? because we've always been able to put people in the right places to figure out those kinds of things. we knew, for example, that there were a lot of al qaeda operatives in libya training people and being trained themselves. yet we had no penetration to that. and unfortunately, we didn't know this attack was being planned. >> and finally, andrea mitchell, given everything going on including the inspector general for the cia launching an investigation into general petraeus's conduct on other -- in other areas, your thoughts on his testimony today. andrea? >> andrea? >> i'm sorry, i didn't fully hear the question. i think you were asking about the i.g. investigation, and that, we are told, is open-ended but is focused primarily on whether he used the resources and the assets, you know, the security detail, all of the other resources of the agency to further his relationship. the relationship he has acknowledged with paula broadwell. and that has potential legal implications. they say the fbi has assured them that he did not misuse any intelligence. of course, it's open-ended. and if they find something, they will pursue it, but that is not specifically what they are looking in. senator chambliss -- saxby chambliss may know more about that in the questions he'll be asking today. >> senator chambliss, we'll be following it closely as i'm sure many americans are. thank you for being with us. always great to see you. >> you as well. >> you got the question there. >> saxby, i've got a feeling we're going to see you in atlanta when alabama takes on georgia. >> go, dogs. >> roll tide, baby. see you there. >> david gregory, thank you. >> you bet. lindsey graham and rogers and feinstein. we're going to cover all this benghazi and petraeus stuff. >> david gregory, thanks very much. still ahead, actor bradley cooper takes us inside his latest role and donny, you say it's a good one. >> honestly, one of the best movies i have ever seen. if you're 80, if you're 20, and he is spectacular. >> wow! okay. >> the dust bowl filmmaker ken burns will be here to talk about his new film documenting what he calls the worst manmade ecological disaster in u.s. history. 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[ yawning sound ] what the -- the whole time you're rooting for this hemingway guy to survive the war and to be with the woman that he loves, katherine barkley. >> it's 4:00 in the morning, pat. >> and he does. he does. he survives the war. after getting blown up. he survives it. and he escapes to switzerland with katherine. you think he ends it there? no. she dies, dad. i mean, the world's hard enough as it is, guys. can't somebody say hey, let's be positive? let's have a good ending to the story? >> pat, you owe us an apology. >> mom, i can't apologize. i'm not going to apologize for this. you know what i will do? i will apologize on behalf of ernest hemingway because that's who's to blame here. >> yeah, have ernest hemingway call and apologize to us, too. >> i think i'm going to like it. that was a scene from the new movie "silver linings playbook." and joining us now, the star of the film, bradley cooper back on the show. nice to see you. >> it's been a long time. >> long hair. >> we're in the middle of shooting "hangover 3," your favorite trilogy. >> you think mika may actually see this? >> i'm not going to hold my breath, joe. >> i'm going to see it. my husband and i are going to watch it. >> she's probably going to call it "silver bells." >> "hit and run" is your favorite movie, isn't it? >> and "a-list." >> you know what? that's when i like it, he'll know. >> that's true. that's true. >> exactly. >> i have a hunch. >> don't you hate suck-ups? >> yes. >> i hate suck-ups. >> i wouldn't mind a little bit. i don't know if "hate" is the right word. >> speaking of suck-ups, donny deutsch, you saw the movie. you said this was the "citizen kane" of our time. >> i was fortunate enough to be at the premiere. the movie is -- >> of course you were. >> wait a second. >> i'm talking about a movie here, all right? honestly, it is a wonderful movie. i would send my 25-year-old daughter, my 84-year-old dad, bradley is amazing. jennifer lawrence. a great human story. it's a grown-up movie. i've got to tell you, i was blown away, not because bradley's here and he's great. i really mean that. >> thank you. >> i laughed, i cried, i sucked up nfor hours. donny did say it was an extraordinary movie, it's gotten great reviews. tell us about it. >> i don't know, it's a unique story. it's written by david o'russell. it's very philly centric. it's about a guy released from a mental institution after having a plea bargain with the courts, beat the hell out of a guy leaving with his wife. in the hospital he's diagnosed as being bipolar, and he had just never dealt with it his whole life. he moves back home and thinks he knows how to save his life, get his wife back, restraining order against him, get his job back, yet he's living with his parents, he's got no phone, no car and trying to put his life together. and then tiffany maxwell played by jennifer lawrence is another woman who's got issues. her husband was just killed. he was a cop. and in order to deal with that, she's been sleeping with everybody at work. you know the story, guys. >> as old as time. >> and then -- but it's about these people that are, you know, hopefully we all can relate to. they're a little bit on the extreme emotionally. and yet they come together in an honest way. o'russell, all he cares about is authenticity. >> donny, where you going, man? >> what is the deal? you suck up and leave. >> is it a suck up and run? >> no, i was scheduled to leave and then bradley was coming and i loved the movie. >> we actually didn't really want to know. >> too much information. all right. >> thank you. >> have fun. >> let's look at a clip. >> another clip from the movie. >> you don't want me to keep talking? >> i'm having sex with everybody in the office. >> everybody? >> i was very depressed after tommy died. it was a lot of people. >> you don't have to talk about it. >> thanks. >> how many were there? >> 11. >> wow. >> i know. >> i'm not going to talk about it anymore. >> okay. >> can i ask you one more question? were there any women? >> yes. >> really? >> yes. >> what was that like? >> hot. >> oh, my god. >> this is incredible. >> this is rich. >> do we have another clip? >> donny. >> i can't believe it. >> donny loves it, mika loves it. >> as a rule, i hate to second anything donny deutsch says, but i have seen the movie, and it is quite excellent. there's -- i think when you play somebody with a mental disability, the danger of making, like, a cartoon character of a crazy person, but there is a little subtlety here to the way you play it. >> but we're all sick. that's what's perfect. >> that's the point. >> you get it -- hit it right on the nose. i don't know if sick is the right word. sick, yeah, we're all sick. i like it. >> why not? >> i got some notes of little miss sunshine which is to say totally totally dysfunctional family. >> you love them. >> and they celebrate their little -- their quirks and the fact they are a little bit nuts in certain ways but they rally around each other and you root for them. >> there's no sort of hollywood end i ending where all of a sudden everybody is healed at all. >> exactly. >> the family does help in coming together communicating. >> and the trick is to make the intensity normal and appealing. the whacked out eagles fan, the transference. >> this guy, pat, i played will take you through the whole movie. if it's too extreme, we're never going to get onboard. the movie starts out, he has issues. we have to win the audience back almost honestly with that because you're sort of sitting there going, wait a second. who is this guy? >> by the way, great reviews this morning in your hometown paper, the "boston globe." also this film, you're going to love it. obviously we all know mike is a big ballroom dancer. >> oh, well. >> and we get some behind-the-scenes footage. bradley is doing some ballroom. >> mike an worked -- i don't know how you managed sitting with me. >> a lot of stamina. >> oh, my god. look at that. what are we looking at here? >> this is an idea mike came up with for jennifer and then he insisted on doing the routine himself and i kept saying, mike, i'm going to have to eventually do 0 it. no, just watch me. >> no stand in. >> that is actually us rehearsing. where did you get that? >> we have a guy. >> you can tell that we had no dance standards. that was us. >> that is proof right there. >> everybody is asking, by the way, about working with de niro but what about her? >> i love working with a university. it's interesting, an entire university. >> you know what i meant. jennifer. sorry. >> wow. she's great. a great school. >> i think j.j. evans was there. he's in the dorm. >> she's great, though, right? >> jennifer laurence, we did did another movie together right afterwards. i love her. >> can we turn to politics? you watch "morning joe" a lot. talk about the election. how are you feeling? >> i mean, i feel good. who did you vote for? do you like to talk about it? >> i voted for mitt romney. >> you did? >> i voted for obama. are you surprised? >> yeah, i can't believe that. >> not real thrilled about it. >> because you're republican -- >> ron paul. more libertarian. small government guy. what about you. >> i voted for obama. i did. >> you won again. >> yeah, yeah. >> are you excited? >> i am excited, and i'm -- you know, i'm amazed at how quickly that election ended. it was almost -- you could even tell the news outlets didn't know what to do almost. you have this whole build yum and then, bam, it happened so fast. >> what draws to you politics so much? what do you enjoy? >> well, i mean -- philadelphia -- a lot of cities are but -- i don't know. i grew up with a politically minded father and mother and then going to georgetown obviously almost ignited -- >> you're in the middle. >> clinton was in often and came often and living in d.c. for four years. it sounds cheesy but, you know, i think it's a very admirable profession. i think to actually give yourself over. and obama wrote about it in his book just about how sechless it is to become the president. your life ends. and now because of, you know, social media and how we're able to document people's lives, you realize how much that is true. how true that is. it really is true. >> it's incredible how long mitt romney has been running for president. >> let's hope that stops. >> painful. >> we'll take a break. >> "silver linings playbook." >> did you say it looks like me? >> that's what i thought. >> that's what my mother says. >> he's bi-polar. >> he's very messed up. >> we all are. i can't wait to see it. i'm going to see it. >> if you see it, i'm going to fly and come back on. let's have a conversation about the movie. >> we'll do it. bradley cooper, great to see you. new jersey governor chris christie will be on the show. >> is he. >> he'll be here on "morning joe." have a good night. here you go. you, too. i'm going to dream about that steak. i'm going to dream about that tiramisu. what a night, huh? but, um, can the test drive be over now? head back to the dealership? 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[ male announcer ] ...just 'cause. download zeebox free, and have the night of your life with your tv. good morning. it's 8:00 on the east coast. 5:00 a.m. on the west coast. time to wake up, everyone, as you take a live look at new york city. back with us on set we have donny deutsch. the sexiest man alive. >> was he really because he bought it. what was the issue? >> you know what -- >> what did they say? >> every time we don't talk about it for five minutes, he coughs and he goes, sexiest man alive. it's unbelievable. it's needy. richard haass is here and we have mark halperin and mark meacham. we begin with a growing number of leading republicans trying to distance themselves from mitt romney's recent comments where he argued that president obama won re-election by offering, quote, gifts, or government services to minorities and young voters. >> the president's campaign did was focus on certain members of his base coalition, give them extraordinary financial gifts from the government, and then work very aggressively to turn them out to vote. >> okay. so we're going to now show the response to this from some leading republicans. the only thing i'll say is where was this along the way? >> it was there. i mean, it was there. >> it's not like this is a revelation about romney. >> the 47% quote. he actually believed it. >> okay. >> and he wasn't just doing analysis. that was his, i would say, twisted view of what he views conservativism to be. you write off 47% and try to squeeze out 3%. it's just sick. >> i know this is going to sound snarky but it's a lot easier to say now, but it is being said. bobby jindal came out strongly against romney's comments on wednesday and continued his criticism yesterday. take a listen. >> this is completely unhelpful. this is not where the republican party needs to go. look, we want -- if you want voters to like you, the first thing you've got to do is to like them first. and it's certainly not helpful to tell voters that you think their votes were bought. that's certainly not a way to show them you respect them, you like them. we need to stop talking down to voters. i truly believe people on food stamps, on government assistance don't want to be there. they're there because they don't have the ability to get better paying jobs. we need to grow the economy, give them the education, give them the opportunities to have a better quality of life. >> then we have senator marco rubio of florida who offered a carefully worded reaction to romney telling politico, quote, i don't want to rebut him point by point. i would just say to you, i don't believe that we have millions and millions of people in this country that don't want to work. okay. and a former mississippi governor, haley barbour, suggesting the whole republican party needs to do some, well, soul-searching. take a listen. >> we've got to give our political organizational activity, you know, a very serious proc it tology exam. we need to look everywhere, is my point. >> yeah, but, you know what, i will say, and i don't hand you compliments often, but you've been saying this during the primary process it started. and now it seems to me that it's great to hear these gentlemen coming forward and speaking truth to what mitt romney said, but you it's just too easy right now. it should have been done in the primary process. >> it's like when i was talking about people in the conservative entertainment complex talking in ways that will never win. the suburbs of philadelphia, bucks county, pennsylvania, or the i-4 corridor. in this case, donny deutsch, i said all along mitt romney's biggest problem wasn't that he was too conservative, it's that he didn't understand conservatism like margaret thatcher, the shopkeeper's daughter understood conservatism or ronald reagan, the alcoholic son that grew up in middle america who actually believed like i believe, like a lot of conservatives believe that if you want to help everybody, if you want to help the 100%, what you want to do is you want to fight hard for their individual freedoms and give them the ability. unshackle them from regulations, from high taxes, from centralized state. and that's the best way to move forward. we can have a debate over whether that's right or wrong. the problem is we didn't have that debate this time because mitt romney's view was such an insulated view of a guy who grew up rich and grew up in this insular world where his father ran car companies and was governor of michigan. >> this is a pivotal point. i think bobby jindal probably said it best. you have to turn -- you have to marry conservatism and populism. they're not on other sides of the map. it's all of a sudden, no, we help the little guy because that's the american dream. it's not the opposite of the american dream as far as entitlements and as far as victims. and that's a pivot point. and the republicans that get it are going to be part of a new brand -- i was arguing about the republicans need to rebrand themselves. of course they do. a brand is a set of values and how you ar it particular late those values and the attributes you assign it. and it's very, very clear the demographic fait accompli of where this world is going, until you can shift what is the current view of republicanism into the populist articulation of conservatism, vis-a-vis the american dream, they will not get there. >> and, willie, it all starts at the top. it really does start at the top. in presidential years, for better or worse, the guy you nominate or the woman you nominate to run your party, to be the presidential candidate is the one that runs the party. and we had a guy in the republican party that just did not think like thatcher. did not think lake reagan. did not think like donny is talking about. >> it's interesting all these governors held their tongues throughout the campaign and now they're hearing them. it's not just bobby jindal. it was bob mcdonald saying we need to be more flexible on the issue of taxes. haley barbour said in the same event we saw in that clip, he said we just can't be purists about everything. the question i have is how do you win general elections without abandoning your core principles? people saying we need to 0 soften on abortion as well. how do you move to a place where you get 51% of the electorate without giving up what you believe? >> what do you think, richard? >> it's actually healthy. what you want to see is a republican debate about ideas. you can't have the lessons of why romney lost be about, quote/unquote, gifts. you can't have it all be about ground game and political tactics. that's a cop-out. it's like an army after losing a are war and you chalk it up to this or that sideshow. republicans have to have a serious debate about ideas. what is their view of the economy now given what's going on? what is the proper role of government in this society? what is the role of the united states in the world? what did we learn from iraq and afghanistan? let's have a serious debate, but let's not chalk it up to this or that democratic tactic or this or that failure to get the vote out. that's avoiding any serious learning of lessons here. >> to jon meacham -- >> i would love to ask what thomas jefferson would do. >> what would jefferson do? having said that, i also -- how do we -- what's the moving forward conversation to have? because this, again, just shows how bad the candidate was or how much he didn't fit the conversation that needed to be had all along which, by the way, was a failure on both sides in the campaign. jon? >> you know, what's fun sometimes in life and in politics is when you can make a vice a virtue. in this case the fact romney was not a good candidate and has now said this which totally ratifies his 47% comment, those of us who want him to think he was just talking about tactics, that he was late at night and he didn't really mean it, well, we were wrong. he really meant it. and i think the republicans to some extent are lucky in that they now have a total -- to use donny's term, words, by the way, i never thought i would say in that order -- it is a pivot point. you now have a nominee who absolutely embodies and has now said again something that you can play off of. you can define yourself against. you can become -- i would try to use the term something like i'm a 53% republican. >> we want to get to this story, gaza is on the verge of all-out war developing over 0 the past 24 hours in response to repeated rocket attacks from hamas. operatives in israel have begun mobilizing 30,000 reserve troops including armored tanks. overnight the fight iing did no let up. explosions rocked gaza city as israeli warplanes targeted hamas targets. hamas vowing retaliation for the death of its military chief two days ago is escalating missile attacks deeper into israel. the jerusalem post reports israeli air force has fired a rocket near the home of hamas' prime minister. no one was reportedly injured. for the first time since the gulf war, more than 20 years ago, air raid sirens were triggered in the commercial capital of tel aviv sending residents running for cover. so far the long-range missiles fired from gaza have landed without damage there. yesterday israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu warned that the military operation could significantly widen. >> no government would tolerate a situation where nearly a fifth of its people live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire. and israel will not tolerate the situation. i hope that hamas and the other terror organizations in it gaza got the message. if not, israel is prepared to take whatever action is necessary to defend our people. >> while egypt's prime minister visited gaza today in a show of solidarity with hamas, israel agreed to pause attacks, but we keep hearing of more coming from there. rich artd, your thoughts? >> it's possible it this escalates, but it's hard for me to see how anybody benefits. israel got out of gaza. israel is a first world country, a first world economy. it doesn't want rockets raining down. it would be like rockets raining down on rockefeller center. they want to move beyond this. also, this brings into play the israeli/egyptian treaty this brings into play jordan. >> so the question is, why -- why did hamas choose to start firing rockets into israel the way they did? >> i think for hamas -- i think this for hamas is station identification. this is what hamas does. this is how it differentiates itself. it hasn't been able to deliver the goods at home to the palestinian people in gaza. this galvanizes its base. it shows the difference that hamas, quote/unquote, is doing something. it has credentials unlike the west bank palestinians who are seen as corrupt and not really offering a palestinian future. >> so they just started firing missiles into israel. >> station identification for hamas. and what they now -- also hamas is less isolated. a year ago they would shoot missiles -- two years ago -- and hosni mubarak and others would say stop. now suddenly hamas is close to egypt. >> so how do we pressure egypt? they want billions from us. they want billions from the imf. >> well, that's the way you do it. the egyptians also have a stake in this not getting out of hand. egypt doesn't want the relationship with israel to break down. egypt doesn't want to forfeit its relationship with us. they have the $2 billion annually. >> the imf is not going to give them the money if they are seen as -- >> exactly. >> sponsors of hamas, are they? >> what we have to make clear is you are no longer a party. you have to rein in people. >> is the president passing that message along? >> i would certainly hope so. an entire relationship -- the age of unconditional american relationships with a lot of these regimes is over. the president, remember a few months ago during the campaign was asked in the telemundo interview, do you consider egypt an ally or adversary and he said neither? what we have done, we have ended the era of conditional relationships. it will depend how they treat their own people at home, whether they act responsibly beyond their borders. this is exactly the future of the middle east. >> i just want to clairify. there was no triggering event specifically for hamas to start raining missiles down on israeli civilians? >> this has been building up over the last few weeks and months. it's, again, a self-definition thing for hamas. when we come back, let's make a deal. new jersey governor chris christie joins us on set. and president of the american federation of teachers randy weingarten here to explain the landmark education reform. still ahead, historian and award winning filmmaker ken burns will be here as well. first, bill karins with a check on the weekend forecast. bill? mika, mother nature is giving us a break at least on the east coast and the middle of the country. the west coast not so lucky. looks like your time to get rainy, stormy weather as we go throughout the weekend and the holidays. on and off showers around los angeles and a batch of moderate rain heading into san francisco. san jose to san francisco probably one of the wettest areas of california as we go throughout your morning commute today and look at los angeles. a chance of rain the next three days. the rain will be moving out and the weather will improve during the day on sunday. in other words many areas of the west a chance for damp weather but it's a great looking weekend. and what you have today is pretty much what you're going to see all weekend long. notice the weather pattern doesn't change. temperatures continue to be seasonable in many areas of the country and there's no big storms heading to the east. things are looking nice as we head through the weekend and even towards next week. i'll have those details coming up. thanksgiving less than a week away, and the tree is now up. it will be lit november 28th out 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and the teachers union will announce a landmark contract offering merit pay bonuses to the teachers of newark so we can now, the three of us, or the four of us, or the five of us even, actually get along on something here. >> i love it. >> when it comes to education which is one of the hot button issues the past two years on this show but this is great news. >> so talk about what happened. >> what happened was the folks in newark, the superintendent and the president of the teachers union wanted to do something different. randy and i were supportive of that. we control the newark state district, the state does. we've taken it over so we're the negotiators. i think we've all decided we need to do something different and not only does it provide merit bonuses and provide advancement based on merit but involves the teachers in the evaluation process as well. and so everybody got around the table and compromise d with eac other and now have created a system where it's not no longer just seniority or degrees received but now it's how you perform in the classroom. and that evaluation is not just done by the administration but teachers involved as well. everybody has a stake in it and i think it's going to improve the quality of education across the city of newark. >> so what you have here as the governor said is that you have both experienced matters and what you do matters. it's funny to me that people have focused on the one $5,000 bonus as opposed to the comprehensiveness of this new system. so what has been aligned is the work that you do every day. the experience that you carry into the classroom, and input at the school level so that this is a dynamic new contract that's fair -- that's fair to the teachers but is good for kids, and that's why it was, when people looked at it, that's why they voted it up by more than 60%. but i want to just say one other thing which is that in all of this sandy happened. and the governor did an extraordinary job in terms of all the work in new jersey. and, you know, this is the way government should work. whether it's a collective bargaining table or whether there is a disaster, you have lots of public employees who every single day are trying to make a difference in the lives of kids, the lives of the community. and here you have -- we worked hard at the table to come up with something that was good for newark. >> so, chris, what are you doing here? you're hanging out with people in the teachers union, you're striking deals with the democratic legislation. >> it's not going to work with the base. >> you are being nice to the president of the united states who is coming to help people who have been rach of ravaged by a historic storm. what are you doing? >> my job. listen, when randy and i first talked about this, i guess it was last february in washington. we were kind of at a stall point with the locals in terms of their negotiating. i said if you really want to do something different, if you really want to try to put merit into the system, i'm willing to negotiate with you. and we would do what we needed to do. and i think that she looked at me and said if you're willing, i'm willing. so i think, joe, what we're doing is we're showing people that i didn't abandon my principles. randy didn't abandon her principles or the local but what we found a boulevard of compromise that exists between compromising principles with neither one of us would ever do and getting everything you want which you're never going to get. >> you're never going to get. >> there's always a boulevard between there. sometimes broad, sometimes narrow. the job of a leader is to find the way up the boulevard and make progress for the people of your state. >> because at the end of the day it was about every time we had a problem at the table, it was about what is going to work for the kids in newark and what the governor and the superintendent understood and joe degrasso, the leader, is an amazing leader of the union. but what we understood was what's going to work can enable teachers who we need to recruit, retain, and support to do their jobs for kids. and long term it's not just individual teachers but it's the community of newark. >> congratulations to you both, honestly. >> that's the other thing we've been talking about all along is that you want to reward good teachers. you want to reward teachers who excel in the classroom. this gives us a way to do it. i have to mention we wouldn't have been able to do this without mark zuckerberg and the $100 million grant from facebook that we raised money to match. the fact of the matter is these bonuses will be paid from the money that mark contributed almost two years ago now. and this is what he wanted. when he said to me when we got this together was, governor, use this to try to make a contract in newark that will be an example for the country. and when it was voted and affirmed this week, i have a text from mark saying thank you. you kept your end of the bargain. i'm keeping mine. >> that's the third part of the equation. both sides getting along and the corporate as well. this is such an incredible example of what can be done. >> public/private partnership. unions coming together. it's fantastic. bradley, you're a philly guy. it's a suburb of jersey. >> oh! >> aren't you glad you stayed? seriously. poor thing. >> didn't you know the name of the show is good morning trenton. >> it is. >> the best is twh you're in california and everybody says they're in philly and when you ask the follow-up, well, cherry hill. you're not from philly. i have a question, so you make this decision, you guys come together, logistically speaking, what's the time line to be instituted? immediately? >> look, it's a five-year contract, two years are gone already so there's a bunch of retroactive pay and they are working on it as we speak. the implementation is a really good question. the implementation is probably more important than the actual signing of the contract. really truly in schools every single day there's going to be these new school improvement committees. we're going to focus on how we not just recruit and retain teachers but how we mentor them, how we support them. it's something going on in a classroom, how you change that immediately so you don't wait for test scores at the end of the year. it's a really dynamic system. the newark teachers actually have more voice than they've ever had before. >> right now -- >> i was going to say psychologically, too, oh, someone has my back out there. >> and they have a role in it. they have a say in the way the teachers are evaluated and now principals feel like there is a way to reward the excellent teacher and let them know if you are highly effective, you prepare, you update, you make a difference in these kids' lives, you're going to get paid in a way that teachers deserve to be paid. >> i'm sorry. >> back in school when you we went -- you took a class where you knew that you never raised your hand, you would never be called on so you would be fine. if you knew your teacher was the kind of guy or woman who would call on you, you would be prepared and that work will pay off. >> it's also for -- >> every level, it all starts with teachers. >> but it's also the comprehensive nature of this new plan because it's, you know, it is every single person who, you know, you're aligning, evaluation and experience because our job is for all kids, not just for some kids. and then the same thing i want to give props to newark as well because the teacher village was also created at the same time. so there's more teacher housing going on. we're doing more stuff with literacy. you and i have had this conversation. it really does take a community to actually raise children. joe? >> governor, a couple of quick questions. how is jersey doing after the storm? i'll tell you, we flew in last night. it's still depressing and flew over parts of long island. just pitch black. it is a sad, sad scene out there and it is cold. >> it's the worst -- it's the worst storm ever to hit the state of emergennew jersey in i history. we have thousands and thousands of people that are homeless who lost their homes during the storm. now we're past the immediate crisis. power is back on to all new jerseyans. clean water. 98% of our schools are open. the only ones not open are the ones that were destroyed. other districts are picking up the slack for the kids to go to other districts. and then we have our roads open. we're still working on mass transit. the initial crisis is over but now it's going to be about -- >> it's the long slog of trying to rebuild. >> trying to get people's homes back. i tell you, i walked the jersey shore. what's happening is just extraordinary. >> and you have a great partnership with the president. >> he's done everything i've asked him to do so far. i have no complaints about that. at the end of the day, it's going to have to be a partnership because no one state could rebuild itself after this kind of calamity. this is what the federal government is supposed to be there for in my view, instances like this, where no one state could do it. this is part of the reason the states created the federal government, remind everybody. the states created the federal government. that's one of the reasons why. >> this is not something that -- i mean, whatever he's doing, and i'm glad you feel that everyone is coming to the table, it's not going to be enough. >> no. congress needs to come to the table now, too. as you know there will need to be a supplemental bill and money appropriated for the states to get this done. >> and get people back on their feet. so we've been talking about the republican party for some time and the failings of our party this morning. we've been talking about mitt romney's most unfortunate conference call yesterday where he talked about barack obama winning because he gave, quote, gifts to minority groups. you're seen as a leader. do you agree with bobby jindal, it was a terrible thing to say and it was said terribly? >> yeah, sure. listen, i think the bottom line of what the conversation was, i was in lass vegas yesterday with the governors and what we all said was that it's time to pivot and move on. the leaders of the republican party in america give you the republican governors and one of the reasons why you have 30 republican governors in america and why we're the only organization to add republican strength, house lost members, senate lost members, we lost the presidency. we went up from 29 to 30 republican governors is because people see us getting things done like this. getting things done for people. and that's what we have to emphasize and talk about. i don't think this is a core philosophical examination we have to go through. what this is, is about doing our jobs. and people expect that if they give you the privilege of serving. do your job. >> so explain to voters who are listening out there to what mitt romney said. explain why he was so wrong in his statement. >> you can't expect to be a leader of all the people and be divisive. you have to talk about themes, policies that unite people. and play to their aspirations and their goals and their hopes for their family and their neighbors. and i always think this is scapegoating after elections. when you lose, you lost. someone asked me, why did mitt romney lose? because he got got less votes than barack obama. that's why. and the fact of the matter is more people in the country decided the president was the right way to go. i voted for mitt romney. the bottom line is we lost. now what weigh need to do as leaders of our party is pivot and get back to our jobs. and if we do our jobs well, people will put us back into office. and if we don't, they won't. >> is it time for mitt romney to move on and stop having conference calls? >> that's up to him. listen, mitt romney is a friend of mine. i understand he is very upset about having lost the election and very disappointed. i've never run for president. we've lost elections. i've lost elections but never for the presidency. i'm sure it stings terribly. >> but it's not helpful, right? >> of course not, joe, but he's a good man and he will find his level. and i think it's still a little raw. so do i wish he hadn't said those things? of course not. but on the other hand i'm not going to bury the guy for it. >> okay, and randy, should we be looking for more examples of what you and governor christie did? is this possibly the future evaluation and teacher bonuses? >> the import of this is you can solve problems through collective bargaining. if people are willing to get to the table and actually work things out, that is the best way to actually make schools better. >> and bradley cooper, we're going to get pictures of mika actually watching your movie from beginning to end. and we're going to test her to see if she can get the title right. just the title. >> oh, god. it's going to be fun. i can't wait to see this movie. >> what's the name of the movie? >> no. there's a little bit of all of us. >> what's the name of the movie? >> governor chris christie and randi weingarter in. "silver lines playbook" is in theaters now. >> my daughter is going to think i'm so cool that i was on set with bradley cooper. you set me for the whole weekend. >> if only one direction was here you would be complete. >> a cool index because of you. it was one of the worst man made ecological disasters in american history. filmmaker ken burns takes us next inside the dust bowl next on "morning joe." i don't spend money on gasoline. i am probably going to the gas station about once a month. last time i was at a gas station was about...i would say... two months ago. i very rarely put gas in my chevy volt. i go to the gas station such a small amount that i forget how to put gas in my car. [ male announcer ] and it's not just these owners giving the volt high praise. volt received the j.d. power and associates appeal award two years in a row. ♪ ♪ don't know what i'd do ♪ i'd have nothing to prove ♪ i'd have nothing to lose [ male announcer ] zales is the diamond store. take an extra 10 percent off storewide, now through sunday. it was just unbelievable. it would blister your face. it would put your eyes out. well, i guess i can't describe it. it was just -- it was just constant. just that steady blow of dirt. >> as far as you could see there was dust all coming right towards you. this giant wall just coming towards you. and you still had the feeling whether you would admit it that something was going to run over you and just crush you. >> that was a clip from "the dust bowl" a new pbs documentary directed by ken burns. ken also co-wrote the complementary book to the film "the dust bowl." an illustrated story. brian shactman who was up way too early back with us as well. you look ebbs haused. your eyes are red. seriously -- >> that's a good way -- >> you look like you've been through hell. >> it was good. >> you did a great job. >> a work of art, by the way. >> the way you do 0 it. >> exactly. >> but i want to talk to mr. burns, the pride of hamster college. >> perfect. that's why we have you here. so tell us about the film. it looks incredible. >> this is the worst man made ecological disaster. when we plowed up grass land that should have never been plowed up in the southern plains, buffalo fwras that held the soil, set down its roots five feet to hold the moisture. we expanded the homestead acts and folks got the greedy with the industrialized agriculture. they turned over the soil. they had some great, great, great wet years. they planted more and more, larger than the size of ohio. ohio. that ever important state of ohio. and then all of a sudden the drought came in and the winds blew and it would pick up -- it wasn't just one storm. it was hundreds of storms over a ten-year apocalypse period. ships wouldn't come in. franklin roosevelt went like this and had oklahoma on his fingertips of his desk in the oval office n. one day one storm moved more dirt than in the ten years it took to excavate the panama cam and people were suffering from dust pneumonia. kids were dying. it was an amazing holocaust that we forget about and this could happen again because we're -- we have the drought right now, climate change. this was a specific man made disaster. climate change now intensifies out of storms like sandy as the governor knows, and it intensifies the drought that's going on, you know, right now in the same section of the country. >> now, more than ever, i think it's really hit us and hit people who, you know, usually watch these store chris unfold on the periphery outside of their zone of comfort. now we know. mike barnicle, you've seen the film. >> i've seen about 45 minutes of it. that's the question, though, ken. a decade long, you know, rape of the land up through the gut of the country. that impacted the entire country. and god bless you, sadly for our culture, this is now a way for too many people to view history. >> that's right. >> and to regard history. but how does it happen that an event of this nature and of this length, of this duration, and as you've indicated franklin roosevelt could sweep the dust off the desk in the oval office. how does it happen we are so ignorant? >> it is now a paragraph at best in a textbook or a cooperation of a photograph. we just think grapes of wrath, that's all about the central valley of california and all the troubles they had there. but the folks that stayed and tried to make a go of it over this ten-year period, it's amazing. we found the last survivors of it. these were kids and teenagers during that period and their memories are no less accurate, no less searing and in some ways more poignant when they describe as if it happened yesterday the death of a little sister who they haven't seen since early 1935 who was barely 2 years old. and then you realize as faulkner said, history is not was but it. and if you can access these memories, if you have the great gift of being present at express memory as we did in world war ii film, you suddenly go, my god, this is what it was like and then you can bore down, open up and find out what happened. >> brian? >> it's true. i was a historyed over it in tw. prohibition in the sense that there was stuff i hadn't seen and how difficult was it to find the footage, and did you uncover stuff that had never been seen? >> we asked folks -- i made appeals on all the pbs stations in those five state regions of oklahoma and texas and new mexico and colorado and kansas, the epicenter of the dust bowl and also the central valley. i asked for their pictures and home movies and for their memories. them. the united states government when the president of the united states got oklahoma on his fingertips, you are going to go out and say what's going on and toumt it. and news reel companies went out. that's what we do. this is the great fun of it, are the detective work of finding those extraordinary people. there's no ordinary people when you see what floyd cohen, the guy with the eye patch you just saw, what he went through, the loss of his baby sister. amazing. this is about a natural disaster over ten years that was man made and, therefore, avoidable. but it's also a human story of heroic perseverance because you look at these people and no pun intended the grit, the ability to withstand. they were even bigger gamblers because of the dryness and they were always called next year people meaning if it was terrible this year, next year will be better. to do that ten years in a row, that tests your resolve. if the storm coming through 100 times a year and you can't even -- you wake up in the morning and the only clear place is the pillow where your head had been. you clear off the table and by lunch you can draw pictures on your dining room table again and it's killing your kids, it takes a lot of guts to stay. >> and you capture the human side of this with these great characters, these great story tellers, these great faces. >> you can tell the top down story. >> i can't wait. it premieres on pbs sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, 7:00 central. everybody here, by the way, red sox -- red sox? >> we're undefeated so far this season. >> there is that. ken burns, thank you very much. we're back in just a moment with much more "morning joe." if we want to improve our schools... ... what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. how they'll live tomorrow. for more than 116 years, ameriprise financial has worked for their clients' futures. helping millions of americans retire on their terms. when they want. where they want. doing what they want. ameriprise. the strength of a leader in retirement planning. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you one-to-one. together for your future. ♪ a wit takes some doing.sn't just happen. together for your future. some coordinating. and a trip to the one place with the new ideas that help us pull it all together. from the things that hang and shine... ...to the things that sparkle and jingle. all while saving the things that go in our wallet. more saving. more doing. that's the power of the home depot. create a musical light show with the maestro mouse voice- activated ornament. how does that look, guys, that mustache on joe? >> i don't like that one. >> not so good. brian? >> too much like -- i don't know, a latin american dictator. >> exactly. >> okay. we have an update on slash the stash campaign to raise money for 0 epilepsy research. you recall david axelrod is putting his 40-year-old mustache back on the chopping block this time promising to shave it off live on "morning joe." how gross is that? if we can raise, if we can raise $1 million for cure. a nongovernment organization dedicated to funding epilepsy research. joe has pledged to donate $10,000. donald trump and mark cuban have gotten into the action, if you can believe both those guys have been incredibly generous. after just over a week of raising money, cure is almost halfway there with over $482,000 raised. come on. we can make this happen. you can make a donation today at slash the stache. raise money for cure is an inkr incredible organization doing a lot of good in looking for the cure to epilepsy. the best of late night is next on "morning joe." 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[ male announcer ] the spark business card from capital one. choose unlimited rewards with 2% cash back or double miles on every purchase, every day! what's in your wallet? welcome back. what we learned today. brian? >> if you want anyone to talk to you, don't come on the day bradley cooper comes on the set. >> and he thinks i'm in a good mood. brian shactman, you do not know me. >> mike, what did you learn? >> well, i learned that, you know, we have bradley cooper here today. we have chris christie. incredible. and brian shactman. >> yes, way too early, you look horrible after doing it. >> governor christie? >> bradley cooper wants to help us rebuild the jersey shore. >> i have danielle and victoria here, it t.j.'s
trial next week, the senate reached an agreement earlier to push it to february 9th. that doesn't change the facts. this is an egregious, vicious act of political violence against the u.s. constitution and our country. it's also an incredibly stupid mistake that's going to hurt joe biden. first i want to tell everyone they have to spare us the claim that democrats and a handful of republicans are trying to make that they truly care about punishing individuals who incite political violence. where was their sanctimony and demand for justice when minneapolis was smoldering? how about when businesses and innocent people in l.a. and new york were under attack? or how about when rioters and looters using the george floyd case as an excuse to rampage across cities across the nation. and don't forget how left-wingers in wisconsin occupy the state capital several years ago to protest actions that they didn't like. where were all the concerns then? second, the entire exercise is unconstitutional. as former federal appellate judge ken starr said last night. >> the president is gone. he is off to san clemente. it's done. it's over with. that's the relative president, not an obscure 1876 proceeding against the secretary of war. i find it painful that very, very able people, some of whom are my friends, are saying there is the key. it's not. >> laura: by the way, are democrats actually saying that it would have been constitutional for republicans to have demanded articles of impeachment against former vice president joe biden last year? over what he really knew about hunter biden's china payoff? i mean, long out of office but could they be impeachable crimes? what would they upset about that? third, this impeachment action is as pointless as it is vindictive. the hill reporting that only five or six republican senators at the most seem likely to vote for impeachment. and a conviction will require at least 17 g.o.p. votes if every democrat votes to convict trump. so it's like watching a football game. you know what the scores going to be at the end. since we already know that impeachment will fail, democrats plus senator, i like to call them "romkowski" will put them on the right side of history. what's self-indulgent, self-righteous goofballs they are. don't have to believe president trump did everything right postelection, and i don't, to find the impeachment mob sickening. they are not trying to address the constitutional problem. they are trying to tag all trump supporters as dangerous white supremacists who want to overthrow the government. right now it's unclear who will even preside over this sham of an impeachment trial. if it's chief justice john roberts, if they want him, he should refuse on grounds that trump is no longer president. relying on him to do the right thing is like relying on a 13-year-old boy to remember to clean his room before going to bed. another point: going after trump makes the biden administration look weak. remember when obama pursued bush and cheney for war crimes? well, of course you don't because obama was much too smart for that. he had too much sense. if democrats really believe that donald trump is disgraced and washed up with no political future, man, they are acting really insecure about that concept. why are they so hell-bent on a second unconstitutional impeachment trial. don't they believe they beat him in his ideas legitimately? finally a word about republicans think impeachments will help them score points with the democrat establishment may be convinced republicans to turn their backs on trump. you guys are suckers and you're fools. most of the g.o.p. don't believe for a moment that trump actually want to be rioters to take over the capitol and carry out a coup. that idea is patently absurd. there was no malicious intent in trump words to be "strong" and fight for him, things he said many times over the past five years. look what happened to poor liz cheney after her impeachment grandstanding. she has already chalked up a primary calendar. meanwhile mitt romney is a running joke even in his home state of utah. does he really believes the democrats who savaged him as an out of touch thurston howell iii type of elite in 2012 are now clamoring to cooperate with him on policy? they despise them now as much as they did back then. republicans supporting impeachment believe a conviction would be worth it in order to get the trump cancer out of the republican party. that's the real reason they are doing it. yet no serious political observer could possibly think that the party that turned out in historic numbers for trump is about to boomerang back to the policies of the bush-cheney era. let's hope with his delay that republicans will have more time to grow a backbone. we hope they hear from you, many of their constituents, to tell them that we want you to fight for conservative policies and against the ridiculous democrat sham that we are seeing in the biden administration tonight. they want to bury the america first populist movement, the democrats do. it's up to republicans to prevent them from doing it, resist all the way. but my friends, if democrats insist on going through with this unconstitutional impeachment, republicans have to ensure that they pay a heavy political price. if joe biden, by the way, thinking about all of this, if you were really smart, if he really had his wits about him, truly capable of seeing how this would be actually in his own interests to do this, he would call schumer and call off the impeachment dogs. but joe is not going to do that because he's too weak to steer his party away from its own self-destructive ways. that's the angle. joining me now as jonathan turley, george washington university law professor. constitutional law expert in fox news contributor. jonathan, is there anyway that john roberts could decide that he will not preside over this impeachment? can he just refuse? >> he can. he's not a bus. he doesn't pick up everyone he stops next to. he has to determine whether this is a function given to him by the constitution. the problem is that the constitution states that the chief justice should preside over a trial of the president. i doubt the democrats want to remove joe biden. there is the threshold issue for roberts. he may not be asked but it will beg the question of who is being tried? it is clearly not "the president" and it's clearly not to remove him from office. it's a private citizen who the senate will vote on removing from an office that he's already left. that creates a serious threshold issue for the senate. they may have the most consequential vote in their entire tenure as senators. that is whether to go forward with this trial. the constitution states that the principal question for impeachment is whether to remove the president. that creates a rather curious vote. the problem is that constitutional novelties can easily become constitutional nuisances. we have already had a snap impeachment for the house didn't even hold a single hearing to consider the language or implications of the impeachment, give a formal opportunity for the president to respond. now we are going to hand a snap impeachment over to a retroactive trial. that is a very serious question for all these senators to weigh. i'll point out one other thing. there were only two cases in history where this type of retroactive measure was used. the first one was with william blount. when that happened, many of the signers of the constitution were in congress. most of them were still alive. blount himself was a signer. he was a former, he was a senator who had been expelled from the senate. the senate refused to hold the trial. when the ink had just barely dried on the constitution, the senate have threshold vote inside were not going to do this. >> laura: you could understand the intent of the framers when the framers were right there. you didn't have to go much into the legislative history, even if you believe that because they were there. that's a fascinating point, jonathan. i want to point out something that a lot of legal scholars have said in response to your argument just now about the removal. you can't remove him from office because he's already gone from office. a group of these scholars penned an open letter. don't you love the open letter? it argues that the disqualification from holding future office is equal to the removal from the office in the constitution. now, i don't understand how that could be possibly writing to the constitution. but these are some, you know, well respected constitutional scholars arguing this. why are they wrong? >> like many of them, i responded to that letter on my blog. i believe it's ultimately wrong. i have to stress things are good-faith arguments. this has been an open debate. i wrestled with this since 1999. i talked about the value of even retroactive trials. what i believe today is that those values are outweighed by the cost. i don't agree with what the letter says. disqualification is an optional penalty that the senate may impose. but it is only considered after the main task of impeachment is down. you have tried and removed a president. when they talk about future disqualification, it's in a sentence that is meant to limit the power of the senate to say you can't go beyond removal or disqualification. i don't think of these things are equal in that sense. >> laura: and by the way, richard blumenthal says we can do this trial in just a matter of days. but isn't that also up to the president's defense team? what if they want to put on a multi-day or a few weeks defense? are we going to have the presiding judge say no, you can only do x number of days? they want to have a snap impeachment have been really fast and they hope taken out at the knees. >> right, this is all improvisational. that's dangerous when it has to also be constitutional. i did the last judicial impeachment trial with colleagues that was held in the senate. it took us months to present that case. they are about to try a president in a blink without a hearing in the house, in a snap impeachment and now i retroactive trial. >> laura: no, no. jonathan turley, thank you so much for being here tonight. one of the destructive byproducts of post-presidency trial, will the house and senate chambers serve as prosecutorial cudgels instead of its intended purpose in writing laws? schumer seems okay with that. >> it makes no sense whatsoever that a president or any official could commit a heinous crime against our country and then be permitted to resign so as to avoid accountability and i vote to disbar them from future office. it makes no sense. >> laura: who gets to decide what's a heinous crime against our country? a few power-hungry partisans? here's congressman lee zeldin. he was part of trump's defense last time. also former congressman bob barr and congressman zeldin, would it be okay for a republican-controlled congress to impeach obama for droning an american citizen abroad? we could go back many years? >> of course not. that is the important double standard check that is here at play. after we witnessed over the course of the last four years thousands of democrats, they boycotted president trump's inauguration. they first had a vote on impeachment before they identified what the impeachment charge was going to be. that was early on in the presidency and then they actually impeached him and now they want to do it again. i was asked in 2020 about house democrats keeping the majority, with their priorities would be. i said the only thing if house democrats keep the majority if they know they want to accomplish for sure in 2021 is that they would want to make donald trump the first president to be impeached twice. the answer to your question, if the shoe was on the other foot, we know exactly what democrats would say. republicans would be consistent on it. absolutely not, of course not. >> laura: congressman barr, when you really think about this, really get your mind wrapped around what's about to happen, you think the democrats don't seem that confident in their ability to beat trump. that's a he runs again. i have no idea what he's going to do but let's say he runs again in 2024. you would think that after what they did to him over the years that they would feel like oh, god, we beat him in 2020. we are going to easily beat him. but they are afraid he's going to win. isn't that what this is all about? >> it's really hard to tell what this is all about because nothing about it makes any sense whatsoever. you don't have to be a student of history. you have to be a student of the law but you do have to be able to read what is actually in the constitution. the constitution says that a president, not a former president, not an ex-president, can be removed from office only upon conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors. impeachment for that. there is no jurisdiction here. what the president's lawyers ought to do if mcconnell proceeds in this idiotic call to trial, with the republicans ought to do is they ought to support a presidential motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. the senate has no jurisdiction over donald trump, period, and of argument. >> laura: immediately. congressman zeldin, presumably that would go to the chief justice if he is presiding over this impeachment. we don't know if he's going to preside over it. as a law geek or former law geek, it's fascinating to debate these issues with these are real world consequences for not only president trump personally but precedent going forward. bernie sanders even chimed in all this. let's watch. >> i want to see this impeachment process move forward. i want to see them convicted as quickly as possible. we have got to show the american people we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. we don't have the time to spend weeks and months on impeachment. >> laura: and maybe i'll wear some mittens during the trial. congressman zeldin, they want to do it as soon as possible. that's also, any notion of due process which obviously doesn't necessarily apply here but in theory due process is out the window. you've got to get him, prevent them from running again and move on to destroying the country. >> irony alert. it was senator sanders when he was asked about his position of allowing people to vote who are convicted, he was asked specifically about the boston marathon bomber and his position was that the boston marathon bomber should be able to vote in a u.s. election. so the extent that bernie sanders is willing to go to take positions, mass. prison release, to allow felons to have their vote again, even if it's a terrorist like the boston marathon bomber. you're looking at due process. he is supporting a house, impeaching the president for a second time within hours. talking about a few weeks. within hours. now he wants the senate to do it as quickly as possible. it's completely contradictory and hypocritical to everything senator sanders has stood for over the course of multiple presidential races in his entire career in public service. it shows the hypocrisy in the double standard and the hate they have for donald trump. >> laura: they despise him. speaking of personal animosity, congressman barr, very quickly here. what's mitch mcconnell up to? is he trying hold together the republican coalition with murkowski, romney, and the other stragglers? is it personal with him and trump? >> i think it's both personal and also he seems to be trying to out-john roberts john roberts by appearing so nice to chuck schumer that may be some crumbs will be thrown his way if, in fact, we proceed with a 50/50 split in the senate. it makes no sense whatsoever, and it makes him look like a complete fool. >> laura: especially after president trump went into help him win reelection. after trump went into help him and campaigned for him, i thought he went double digits in the polls. he really -- she reached out to president trump when he needed him and now for a lot of people shivving him in the back. gentlemen, thank you so much. great to see you. if there was any doubt that biden couldn't give a rip about this concept of unity, well, look at his divisive and destructive executive orders rolled out this week. we're going to explain why the self-proclaimed champion of women just set them back decades. how his appeal to the working class men and women of the country were a crock. stay there. ♪ ♪ >> a glass ceiling has been shattered. this was the pivotal moment for america. >> multiple proverbial glass savings shattered. >> shattered some of glass ceilings. it's history. this is her-story. >> laura: okay, that's really nauseating. do you get it her story? not history. how many words were going to change. manhole cover, women, person. you heard a lot about this during the campaign that the biden administration was supposedly shattering the glass ceiling for women everywhere. but their actual policies tell a different story. in an inauguration day executive order that elated the transgender community, the biden administration pledged to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, gender identity, the children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they'll be denied access to the restroom or locker room or school sports. what does that mean? that means biological boys will be in the locker room with biological girls. there is speculation that public schools could end up having funding polled, federal funds, if they don't adhere to this. female athletes saying joe biden is erasing what it is to be a female athlete in the united states. author abigail schreier put it bluntly. "a new glass ceiling was just placed over girls." by the way, don't think any of this changes with hormone treatment or makes competition fairer among biological boys between boys and girls because a recent study discovered that hormone therapy does not suddenly remove the natural athletic benefits that biological men naturally have over women. it was published in the british journal of sports medicine. the study's lead author dr. timothy robert said in one year the trans women on average still have an advantage over the biological women. cis women. is this why joe biden was elected? was this part of his mandate? so much for unity. from gender to good paying jobs, the biden administration seems intent on destroying it all. >> on joe biden's first day in office, he killed thousands of american jobs. joe biden killed hundreds of wisconsin jobs. >> talking about 10,000 jobs and in the 80,000, $90,000 range. >> laura: joining me is andy black, president and ceo of the associative oil pipelines. i know that the canadians are up in arms. what are they going to do with that pipe they have already laid down? all the technology that's in place. how much in terms of job losses are we looking at here and then we are going to get to how much money is taken out of american pockets. >> before wednesday, president biden's first day, 1,000 people who had been working were told they won't have jobs anymore. another 10,000 american union jobs were expected, the expected good paying jobs they could support a family, provide health care, those won't happen now. >> laura: andy, we are showing the video of what the area around the pipeline looks like and some of this is in canada and other parts of the united states. what happens with all of that infrastructure that's in place? >> it's a symbol of a wasted opportunity. americans would benefit from that pipeline bringing western canadian crude oil down to america where it's turned into products that we use every day to get us where we need to go. now it turns out that money was wrongly spent. >> laura: joe biden i should say is bragging that he's going to create all these great union jobs. watch. >> i think of climate change, i think about jobs, good paying union jobs. union workers have been holding this country together during this crisis. the middle-class built this country and unions built the middle class. >> laura: andy, those were all in the past month. do you think union members who voted for biden feel like they have been just hosed here? >> this is a president who said he wanted to be the most pro-union president ever, yet on the first day 11,000 american union workers knew they weren't going to be able to build. build back better means build. >> laura: andy, the cost to the average american family -- these are hard numbers to always quantify. but in terms of energy costs and our desire to be energy independent which obviously this gave us an incredible boost in an already strong energy sector but what does it mean to the average family? is it a blip or is it significant dollars? >> americans don't want to pay more for energy and when they go to the service station to fill up with gasoline or diesel they want to know that that fuel is there. now we have a question about whether we can expand pipeline capacity as we need for the fuel that we use in our daily lives. when we get this economy going again, people are going to be wanting to take trips to go see family in the car, take flights on vacation or see their relatives. we have to make sure that as our demand for energy grows, we are able to have pipelines bring them the fuel they need. without enough pipeline capacity, you either have shortages higher prices. >> laura: maybe we are all looking forward to having rolling blackouts like in california. apparently that's the gold standard. the government gets to decide who has the energy and when. maybe we can do odd and even days of the gas pump like we did in the late '70s under jimmy carter. andy, great to see you tonight and we hope we can turn it around but people have to know what they're getting into. was joe biden's polished delivery of his inaugural address a one-off? who has the media taken to describing a super hero? raymond arroyo explains in friday follies next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> laura: it's friday and that means it's time for... friday follies. fox news contributor raymond arroyo. raymond, the newly inaugurated biden, he sounded a lot like candidate biden this week, didn't he? >> come on, man. joe biden's first remarks on his first full day in office were well, biden-esque. >> yesterday during my inaugural address i offered a salient prayer, silent prayer. the pandemic consists of my transition team task force, tony fauci and the team here today put this plan together. it is so detailed. it's over, 198 pages. complete detail what we are going to do. we will make sure that science and, scientists and public health experts will speak directly to you. wear a mask, no vaccines. the fact is it's the single best thing we can do. more important than the vaccines. >> bear in mind this is with a teleprompter. he is just as unsteady on his feet and incapable of retaining basic facts as he ever was. this was a covid event so as you might expect masks came up. >> yesterday i signed an executive action requires masks and social distancing on federal property. >> only one problem, laura, he wasn't wearing a mask there and then the night before at the lincoln memorial, biden appeared confused on federal property without a mask. very sad. >> laura: it's okay, raymond. biden's press secretary had a fabulous explanation. >> why weren't president biden and all members of the biden family masked at all times on federal land last night? >> he was celebrating an evening of a historic day in our country and i think we have bigger issues to worry about at this moment in time. >> laura: oh, oh. >> there you go. if covid is allergic to celebrating hopefully we can have mardi gras. the good news is things are getting back to normal. biden is confused again. the elites are making their own rules again. you can just shut up again. ain't normal grand? >> the fact they went off without a hitch so perfectly produced and so perfectly normal and beautiful and american, that was what was so moving. >> after four years we had almost forgotten what normal sounded like. >> it wasn't a boring normal. he was an amazing return to normalcy. an amazing normal, laura. welcome to the old normal, laura ingraham, where the media fawns, heavily edits the candidate of their choice and missed serves and disturbs the public they are here to give information to and to challenge the people we elect. they are integral to this republic and they have fallen down on their responsibility. >> laura: okay, raymond, your being very harsh. i'm feeling the harshness coming across the teleprompter. i would just say i look forward to the day when joe biden emerges from the surf, let's say in rehoboth, delaware, with his glistening pectoralis muscles as they described obama. remember? was obama in hawaii or was it after the oil spill when he came out of the surf, i can't remember. it was like his glistening pecs. that might not be written about by the press but who knows. he is a fit senior. you never know. >> he has got to the aviators. what's really normal is the medias default to gratuitous worshipful over-the-top rates for the establishment or should i say the justice league? >> the fight of the clintons and the bushes in the obamas. the avengers. the marvel superheroes back up there together all in one place. with their friend joe biden. >> felt like the avengers. it felt like we are being rescued from this craziness that we live through in the last four years and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all. >> a glorious moment of fashion perfection side-by-side with the former president just like they just come straight from wakanda. >> laura: wait a second, weren't most of those same people calling bush a warmonger and a dumb frat boy 12 years ago? wait a second. oh, yeah, marvel comics. michelle obama even came to the inauguration dressed kind of like a superhero. look at that belt. that was quite a statement. >> kind of a doctor strange, scarlet witch mashup. i understand the obsequious superhero reference but it's good to know they are extending it to bush. who knows, there is hope for donald trump. >> laura: why not? i can say melania trump was, they never discussed her fashion. she's obviously very beautiful objectively speaking. but michelle obama, is that a maroon or purple combo? it was a beautiful outfit. that was the talk for 36 hours. you couldn't get past that pantsuit for 36 hours. melania. >> i don't know if i would call them the avengers. you might call them the revengers. they are looking for blood but we'll see what happens. >> laura: raymond, that's a lot of negativity. a lot of negativity. much of this week's coverage about the biden administration focused on emotions and feelings but this one took the cake. >> we need a catharsis. i think joe biden is a human catharsis. >> laura, i'm glad the country wasn't constipated. we didn't need relief from that. the thing here, the thing you have to give everybody credit for on the biden side, they kept their messaging tight from the young poet laureate to the performance of that inaugural concert, it was that light is back. the darkness is being scattered. it was reflected in speeches, performances, music, every way possible. the republicans could learn a lot from that group. >> laura: raymond, it's going to be a dark winter going into a dark fall and maybe the rose parade in 20205. >> the morning has broken, laura. >> laura: of course. raymond, thanks so much. have a great weekend. the biden administration rejoins the w.h.o. just as it finally admits something that will likely drive covid case numbers down. what a coincidence. a few days after the inauguration. former u.k. parliament member richard tice has been sounding the alarm for months. he joins "the angle" next. ♪ ♪ etirement plan with voya keeps me moving forward. they guide me with achievable steps that give me confidence. this is my granddaughter... she's cute like her grandpa. voya doesn't just help me get to retirement... ...they're with me all the way through it. voya. be confident to and through retirement. it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. ♪ ♪ >> laura: among president biden's first actions was, big shot, rejoining the world health organization. despite its shilling for the chinese communist party. guess who biden put in charge of our delegation to that nest of commie sycophants? >> i enjoy my fellow representatives in thanking the world health organization for its role in leading the global health response to this pandemic. i am honored to announce that the united states will remain a member of the world health organization. >> laura: okay. that looked like a hostage tape. i don't know what was going on there. this comes as a w.h.o. finally admitted but we "the angle" have been saying for five months. the exclusion of positive covid results could be riddled with false positives, something my next guest has also been predicting for months. joining me now is richard tice, businessman, former e.u. parliament member and chair of the u.k. reform party. richard, thanks for staying up for us tonight. >> no problem, great to be with you. >> laura: do you put any stock of the timing of the u.s. rejoining the w.h.o. and the new news about the vaunted pcr test? >> this is extraordinary. the world health organization, what many of us have known for months, there is an unnamed but potentially huge quantity of what they call false positives test results. using this opposing gold standard pcr test. here in the united kingdom for example, our own government, despite doing some half a million tests every single day is also admitting in the house of parliament it doesn't know what its operational false-positive rate is. here we've got to the world health organization finally say actually you need to review every result in any need to look at the symptoms of the potential patient, the potential person carrying the disease. and you need to look at the strength of the test for the weakness of the test and see whether actually you need to do a second confirmation test if it's a weak one to see whether or not it's a true result or actually visit a false what i term an irrelevant positive where it's something but it's so small and it's taken so many magnifications to find it that it's actually irrelevant and you don't need to worry about it. >> laura: are you as concerned as i am about the politicization of medicine globally frankly or the sheer ignorance. i don't know what it is. i'm not a doctor but we know, knew the thing about the cycling of the pcr test back in june and they are just getting around to admitting this now? they are still calling it the gold standard? >> let's be very clear. if it's done, if the pcr test is done the way it's supposed to be done which is in a specialized laboratory, by a specialized technician, then yes, it is gold standard. if it's done on an industrial scale in temporary laboratories using unqualified people, than the risk of contamination is huge. that's the problem that we've got in the united kingdom. that's the problem i feel may be taking place around the rest of the world. on that basis, it then becomes not gold standard. it becomes i think a rather dirty standard unless it is double checked. interestingly, in norway for example, whoever they get a positive result from someone who doesn't have any symptoms, they always double-check with the second test. guess what. they have a much, much lower overall positive case rate than we have here in the united kingdom. >> laura: richard, the u.k. elections could be put off because of the case numbers even though when you look at the chart from the covid, the plateau seems to be a surety. it looks like the peak in the u.k. was two weeks ago. but it looks like you guys could be putting off elections because of it? >> it's absolutely appalling. they have taken away our liberties. we are locked up, locked down. they've taken away our right to free speech in many cases. youtube takes down things if it doesn't accord with government information. now they're going to take away our democracy it seems by taking away the ballot box. it's absolutely ridiculous. one senior politician suggested he was a bit worried about covid on the pencils. i said listen for heaven's sake if you're short pencils i will sort it out. it's ridiculous. you've had a big election, over 150 million people voted. two days, three days, it will be warm. we can have it outside. >> laura: richard, thank you for speaking out on this. we need more honest voices like yours out there. come back soon. thanks so much. governor andrew cuomo finds a new way to embarrass himself. the last bite explains. [crunch] ♪ ♪ .. [crunch] >> we have showed we can control the beast. we have the beast on the run, no doubt about it. >> we are going to celebrate. we deserve to celebrate. i was good. i am on santa's good list. >> this was the actual swab that was being used to fit up that double barrel shotgun that you've mounted on the front of your pretty face. >> laura: governor cuomo was fairly deadly, was he not, to his constituents throughout the entirety of the pandemic but he sounded a lot like you just heard. he even wrote a book saying how well he responded. now governor cuomo is singing a different tune. >> never get cocky with covid. truer words were never spoken. i will take credit for that quote. never get cocky with covid. >> laura: oh, my god. new york, you have to deserve better than that. that's all the time we tonight. shannon bream and the "fox news @ night" team take it off from here. have a great weekend. ♪ ♪ >> shannon: hello and welcome to "fox news @ night." i am shannon bream in washington. breaking >> welcome to fox news at night. breaking tonight, day 3 of the biden administration and we are monitoring as a medic. with our closest ally was already present
on ukraine. after initially suggesting a trial next week, the senate reached an agreement earlier to push it to february 9th. that doesn't change the facts. this is an egregious, vicious act of political violence against the u.s. constitution and our country. it's also an incredibly stupid mistake that's going to hurt joe biden. first i want to tell everyone they have to spare us the claim that democrats and a handful of republicans are trying to make that they truly care about punishing individuals who incite political violence. where was their sanctimony and demand for justice when minneapolis was smoldering? how about when businesses and innocent people in l.a. and new york were under attack? or how about when rioters and looters using the george floyd case as an excuse to rampage across cities across the nation. and don't forget how left-wingers in wisconsin occupy the state capital several years ago to protest actions that they didn't like. where were all the concerns then? second, the entire exercise is unconstitutional. as former federal appellate judge ken starr said last night. >> the president is gone. he is off to san clemente. it's done. it's over with. that's the relative president, not an obscure 1876 proceeding against the secretary of war. i find it painful that very, very able people, some of whom are my friends, are saying there is the key. it's not. >> laura: by the way, are democrats actually saying that it would have been constitutional for republicans to have demanded articles of impeachment against former vice president joe biden last year? over what he really knew about hunter biden's china payoff? i mean, long out of office but could they be impeachable crimes? what would they upset about that? third, this impeachment action is as pointless as it is vindictive. the human reporting that only five or six republican senators at the most seem likely to vote for impeachment. and a conviction will require at least 17 g.o.p. votes if every democrat votes to convict trump. so it's like watching a football game. you know what the scores going to be at the end. since we already know that impeachment will fail, democrats plus senator, i like to call them romkowski will put them on the right side of history. what's self-indulgent, self-righteous goofballs they are. don't have to believe president trump did everything right postelection, and i don't, to find the impeachment mob sickening. they are not trying to address the constitutional problem. they are trying to tag all trump supporters as dangerous white supremacists who want to overthrow the government. right now it's unclear who will even preside over this sham of an impeachment trial. if it's chief justice john roberts, if they want him, he should refuse on grounds that trump is no longer president. relying on him to do the right thing is like relying on a 13-year-old boy to remember to clean his room before going to bed. another point: going after trump makes the biden administration look weak. remember when obama pursued bush and cheney for war crimes? well, of course you don't because obama was much too smart for that. he had too much sense. if democrats really believe that donald trump is disgraced and washed up with no political future, man, they are acting really insecure about that concept. why are they so hell-bent on a second unconstitutional impeachment trial. don't they believe they beat him in his ideas it legitimately? finally a word about republicans think impeachments will help them score points with the democrat establishment may be convinced republicans to turn their backs on trump. you guys are suckers and your fools. most of the g.o.p. don't believe for a moment that trump actually want to be rioters to take over the capitol and carry out a coup. that idea is patently absurd. there was no malicious intent in trump trumps words to be "strong" and fight for him, this he said many time over the past five years. look what happened to poor liz cheney after her impeachment grandstanding. she has already chalked up a primary calendar. meanwhile mitt romney is a running joke even hit his home state of utah. does he really believes the democrats who savaged him as an out of touch thurston howell the third type of elite in 2012 are now clamoring to cooperate with him on policy? they despise them now as much as they did back then. republicans supporting impeachment believe a conviction would be worth it in order to get the trump cancer out of the republican party. that's the real reason they are doing it. yet no serious political observer could possibly think that the party that turned out in historic numbers for trump is about to boomerang back to the policies of the bush-cheney era. let's hope with his delay that republicans will have more time to grow a backbone. we hope they hear from you. many of their constituents to tell them that we want you to fight for conservative policies and against the ridiculous democrat champ that we are seeing in the biden administration tonight. they want to bury the america first populist movement, the democrats do. it's up to republicans to prevent them from doing it, resist all the way. but my friends, if democrats insist on going through with this unconstitutional impeachment, republicans have to ensure that they pay a heavy political price. if joe biden, by the way, thinking about all of this, if you were really smart, if he really had his wits about him, truly capable of seeing how this would be actually in his own interests to do this, he would call schumer and call off the impeachment dogs. but joe is not going to do that because he's too weak to steer his party away from its own self-destructive ways. that's the angle. joining me now as jonathan turley, george washington university law professor. constitutional law expert in fox news contributor. jonathan, is there anyway that john roberts could decide that he will not preside over this impeachment? can he just refuse? >> he can. he's not -- he doesn't pick up everyone he stops next to come he's not a bus. he has to determine whether this is a function given to him by the constitution. the problem is that the constitution states that the chief justice should preside over a trial of the president. i doubt the democrats want to remove joe biden. there is the threshold issue for roberts. he may not be asked but it will beg the question of who is being tried? it is clearly not "the president "and it's clearly not to remove him from office. it's a private citizen who the senate will vote on removing from an office that he's already left. that creates a serious threshold issue for the senate. they may have the most consequential vote in their entire tenure as senators. that is whether to go forward with this trial. the constitution states that the principal question for impeachment is whether to remove the president. that creates a rather curious vote. the problem is that constitutional novelties can easily become constitutional nuisances. we have already had a snap impeachment for the house didn't even hold a single hearing to consider the language or implications of the impeachment, give a formal opportunity for the president to respond. now we are going to hand a snap impeachment over to a retroactive trial. that is a very serious question for all these senators to weigh. i'll point out one other thing. there were only two cases in history where this type of retroactive measure was used. the first one was with william lund. when that happened, many of the signers of the constitution were in congress. most of them were still alive. blunt himself was a signer. he was a farmer, he was a senator who had been expelled from the senate. the senate refused to hold the trial. when the ink had just barely dried on the constitution, the senate have threshold vote inside were not going to do this. >> laura: you could understand the intent of the framers when the framers were right there. you didn't have to go much into the legislative history, even if you believe that because they were there. that's a fascinating point, jonathan. i want to point out something that a lot of legal scholars have said in response to your argument just now about the removal. you can't remove him from office because he's already gone from office. a group of these scholars penned an open letter. don't you love the open letter? it argues that the disqualification from holding future office is equal to the removal from the office in the constitution. now, i don't understand how that could be possibly writing to the constitution. but these are some, you know, well respected constitutional scholars arguing this. why are they wrong? >> like many of them i responded to that letter on my blog. i believe it's ultimately wrong. i have to stress things are good-faith arguments. this has been an open debate. i wrestled with this since 1999. i talked about the value of even retroactive trials. what i believe today is that those values are outweighed by the cost. i don't agree with what the letter says. disqualification is an optional penalty that the senate may impose. but it is only considered after the main task of impeachment is down. you have tried and removed a president. when they talk about future disqualification, it's in a sentence that is meant to limit the power of the senate to say you can't go beyond removal or disqualification. i don't think of these things are equal in that sense. >> laura: and by the way, richard blumenthal says we can do this trial in just a matter of days. but isn't that also up to the president's defense team? what if they want to put on a multi-day or a few weeks defense? are we going to have the presiding judge say no, you can only do x number of days? they want to have a snap impeachment have been really fast and they hope taken out at the knees. >> right, this is all improvisational. that's dangerous when it has to also be constitutional. i did the last judicial impeachment trial with colleagues that was held in the senate. it took us months to present that case. they are about to try a president in a blink without a hearing in the house, in a snap impeachment and now i retroactive trial. >> laura: no, no. jonathan turley, thank you so much for being here tonight. one of the destructive byproducts of post-presidency trial, will the house and senate chambers serve as prosecutorial cudgels instead of its intended purpose in writing loss? schumer seems okay with that. >> it makes no sense whatsoever that a president or any official could commit a heinous crime against our country and then be permitted to resign so as to avoid accountability and i vote to disbar them from future office. it makes no sense. >> laura: who gets to decide what's a heinous crime against our country? a few power-hungry partisans? here's congressman lee zeldin. he was part of trump's defense last time. also former congressman bob barker congressman selden, would it be okay for a republican-controlled congress to impeach obama for droning an american citizen abroad? we could go back many years? >> of course not. that is the important double standard check that is here at play. after we witnessed over the course of the last four years thousands of democrats, they boycotted president trump's inauguration. they first had a vote on impeachment before they identified what the impeachment charge was going to be. that was early on in the presidency and then they actually impeached him and now they want to do it again. i was asked in 2020 about house democrats keeping the majority, with their priorities would be. i said the only thing if house democrats keep the majority if they know they want to accomplish for sure in 2021 is that they would want to make donald trump the first president to be impeached twice. the answer to your question, if the shoe was on the other foot, we know exactly what democrats would say. republicans would be consistent on it. absolutely not, of course not. >> laura: congressman barr, when you really think about this, really get your mind wrapped around what's about to happen, you think the democrats don't seem that confident in their ability to beat trump. that's a he runs again. i have no idea what he's going to do but let's say he runs again in 2024. you would think that after what they did to him over the years that they would feel like oh, god, we beat him in 2020. we are going to easily beat him. but they are afraid he's going to win. isn't that what this is all about? >> it's really hard to tell what this is all about because nothing about it makes any sense whatsoever. you don't have to be a student of history. you have to be a student of the law but you do have to be able to read what is actually in the constitution. the constitution says that a president, not a former president, not an ex-president, can be removed from office only upon conviction of high crimes and misdemeanors. impeachment for that. there is no jurisdiction here. what the president's lawyers ought to do if mcconnell proceeds in this idiotic call to trial, with the republicans ought to do is they ought to support a presidential motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. the senate has no jurisdiction over donald trump, period, and of argument. >> laura: immediately. congressman zeldin, presumably that would go to the chief justice if he is presiding over this impeachment. we don't know if he's going to preside over it. as a law geek or former law geek, it's fascinating to debate these issues with these are real world consequences for not only president trump personally but precedent going forward. bernie sanders even chimed in all this. let's watch. >> i want to see this impeachment process move forward. i want to see them convicted as quickly as possible. we have got to show the american people we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time. we don't have the time to spend weeks and months on impeachment. >> laura: and maybe i'll wear some mittens during the trial. congressman zeldin, they want to do it as soon as possible. that's also, any notion of due process which obviously doesn't necessarily apply here but in theory due process is out the window. you've got to get him, prevent them from running again and move moveon to destroying the countr. >> irony alert. it was senator sanders when he was asked about his position of allowing people to vote who are convicted, he was asked specifically about the boston marathon bomber and his position was that the boston marathon bomber should be able to vote in a u.s. election. so the extent that bernie sanders is willing to go to take positions, mass. prison release, to allow felons to have their vote again, even if it's a terrorist like the boston marathon bomber. you're looking at due process. he is supporting a house, impeaching the president for a second time within hours. talking about a few weeks. within hours. now he wants the senate to do it as quickly as possible. it's completely contradictory and hypocritical to everything senator sanders has stood for over the course of multiple presidential races in his entire career in public service. it shows the hypocrisy in the double standard and the hate they have for donald trump. >> laura: they despise him. speaking of personal animosity, congressman barr, very quickly here. what's mitch mcconnell up to? is he trying hold together the republican coalition with murkowski, romney, and the other stragglers? is it personal with him and trump? >> i think it's both personal and also he seems to be trying to out-john roberts john roberts by appearing so nice to chuck schumer that may be some crumbs will be thrown his way if, in fact, we proceed with a 50/50 split in the senate. it makes no sense whatsoever, and it makes him look like a complete fool. >> laura: especially after president trump went into help him win reelection. after trump went into help him and campaigned for him, i thought he went double digits in the polls. he really -- she reached out to president trump when he needed him and now for a lot of people shaving him in the back. gentlemen, thank you so much. great to see you. if there was any doubt that biden couldn't give a rip about this concept of unity, well, look at his divisive and destructive executive orders rolled out this week. were going to explain why the self-proclaimed champion of women just set them back decades. how his appeal to the working class men and women of the country were a crock. stay there. >> a glass ceiling has been shattered. this was the pivotal moment for america. >> multiple proverbial glass savings shattered. >> shattered some of glass ceilings. it's history. this is her-story. >> laura: okay, that's really nauseating. do you get it her story? not history. how many words were going to change. manhole cover, women, person. you heard a lot about this during the campaign that the biden administration was supposedly shattering the glass ceiling for women everywhere. but their actual policies tell a different story. in an inauguration day executive order that elated the transgender community, the biden administration pledged to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, gender identity, the children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they'll be denied access to the restroom or locker room or school sports. what does that mean? that means biological boys will be in the locker room with biological girls. there is speculation that public schools could end up having funding polled, federal funds, if they don't adhere to this. female athletes saying joe biden is erasing what it is to be a female athlete in the united states. author abigail schreier put it bluntly. "a new glass ceiling was just placed over girls." by the way, don't think any of this changes with hormone treatment or makes competition fair or among biological boys between boys and girls because a recent study discovered that hormone therapy does not suddenly remove the natural athletic benefits that biological men naturally have over women. it was published in the british journal of sports medicine. the study's lead author dr. timothy robert said in one year the trans women on average still have an advantage over the biological women. six women. is this why joe biden was elected? was this part of his mandate? so much for unity. from gender to good paying jobs, the biden administration seems intent on destroying it all. >> on joe biden's first day in office, he killed thousands of american jobs. joe biden killed hundreds of wisconsin jobs. >> talking about 10,000 jobs and in the 80,000, $90,000 range. >> laura: adjoining music and a black, president and ceo of the associative oil pipelines. i know that the canadians are up in arms. what are they going to do with that pipe they have already laid down? all the technology that's in place. how much in terms of job losses are we looking at here and then we are going to get to how much money is taken out of american pockets. >> before wednesday, president biden's first day, 1,000 people who had been working were told they won't have jobs anymore. another 10,000 american union jobs were expected, the expected good paying jobs they could support a family, provide health care, those won't happen now. >> laura: andy, we are showing the video of what the area around the pipeline looks like and some of this is in canada and other parts of the united states. what happens with all of that infrastructure that's in place? >> it's a symbol of a wasted opportunity. americans would benefit from that pipeline bringing western canadian crude oil down to america where it's turned into products that we use every day to get us where we need to go. now it turns out that money was wrongly spent. >> laura: joe biden i should say is bragging that he's going to create all these great union jobs. watch. >> i think of climate change, i think about jobs, good paying union jobs. union workers have been holding this country together during this crisis. the middle-class built this country and unions built the middle class. >> laura: andy, those were all in the past month. do you think union members who voted for biden feel like they have been just hosed here? >> this is a president who said he wanted to be the most pro-union president ever, yet on the first day 11,000 american union workers knew they weren't going to be able to build. build back better means build. >> laura: andy, the cost to the average american family -- these are hard numbers to always quantify. but in terms of energy costs and our desire to be energy independent which obviously this gave us an incredible boost in an already strong energy sector but what does it mean to the average family? is it a blip or is it significant dollars? >> americans don't want to pay more for energy and when the trick with a to the service station to fill up with gasoline or diesel they want to know that that fuel is there. now we have a question about whether we can expand pipeline capacity as we need for the fuel that we use in our daily lives. when we get this economy going again, people are going to be wanting to take trips to go see family in the car, take flights on vacation or see their relatives. we have to make sure our demand for energy grows we are able to have pipelines bring them the fuel they need. without enough pipeline capacity, you either have shortages higher prices. >> laura: maybe we are all looking forward to having rolling blackouts like in california. apparently that's the gold standard. the government gets to decide who has the energy and when. maybe we can do audit even days of the gas pump like we did in the late '70s under jimmy carter. andy, great to see you tonight and we hope we can turn it around but people have to know what they're getting into. was joe biden's polished delivery of his inaugural address and one off? who has the media taken to describing a super hero's question explains friday follies next. andpa. voya doesn't just help me get to retirement... ...they're with me all the way through it. voya. be confident to and through retirement. >> laura: it's friday and that means it's time for... friday follies. fox news contributor raymond arroyo. raymond, the newly inaugurated biden, he sounded a lot like candidate biden this week, didn't he? >> come on, man. joe biden's first remarks on his first full day in office were well, biden-esque. >> yesterday during my inaugural address i offered a salient prayer, silent prayer. the pandemic consists of my transition team task force, tony fauci and the team here today put this plan together. it is so detailed. it's over, 198 pages. complete detail what we are going to do. we will make sure that science and, scientists and public health experts will speak directly to you. wear a mask, no vaccines. the fact is it's the single best thing we can do. more important than the vaccines. >> bear in mind this is with a teleprompter. he is just as unsteady on his feet and incapable of retaining basic facts as he ever was. this was a covid event so as you might expect masks came up. >> yesterday i signed an executive action requires masks and social distancing on federal property. >> only one problem, laura, he wasn't wearing a mask there and then the night before at the lincoln memorial, biden appeared confused on federal property without a mask. very sad. >> laura: it's okay, raymond. biden's press secretary had a fabulous explanation. >> why weren't president biden and all members of the biden family masked at all times on federal land last night? >> he was celebrating an evening of a historic day in our country and i think we have bigger issues to worry about at this moment in time. >> laura: oh, oh. >> there you go. if covid is allergic to celebrating hopefully we can have mardi gras. the good news is things are getting back to normal. biden is confused again. the elites are making their own rules again. you can just shut up again. eight normal grand? speak of the fact they went off without a hitch so perfectly produced and so perfectly normal and beautiful and american, that was what was so moving. >> after four years we had almost forgotten what normal sounded like. >> it wasn't a boring normal. he was an amazing return to normalcy. an amazing normal, laura. welcome to the old normal, laura ingraham, where the media funds, heavily edits the candidate of their choice and missed serves and disturbs the public they are here to give information to and to challenge the people we elect. they are integral to this republic and they have fallen down on their responsibility. >> laura: okay, raymond, your being very harsh. i'm feeling the harshness coming across the teleprompter. i would just say i look forward to the day when joe biden emerges from the surf, let's say in rehobeth delaware with his glistening pectoralis muscles as they described obama. remember? was obama in hawaii or was it after the oil spill when he came out of the surf, i can't remember. it was like his glistening packs. that might not be written about by the press but who knows. he is a fit senior. you never know. >> he has got to the aviators. what's really normal is the medias default to gratuitous worshipful over-the-top rates for the establishment or should i say the justice league? >> the fight of the clintons and the bushes in the obamas. the avengers. the marvel superheroes back up there together all in one place. with their friend joe biden. >> felt like the avengers. it felt like we are being rescued from this craziness that we live through in the last four years and now here are the superheroes to come and save us all. >> a glorious moment of fashion perfection side-by-side with the former president just like they just come straight from wakanda. >> laura: wait a second, weren't most of those same people calling bush a warmonger and a dumb frat boy 12 years ago? wait a second. oh, yeah, marvel comics. michelle obama even came to the inauguration dressed kind of like a superhero. look at that belt. that was quite a statement. >> kind of a doctor strange, scarlet witch mashup. i understand the obsequious superhero reference but it's good to know they are extending it to bush. who knows, there is hope for donald trump. >> laura: why not? i can say melania trump was, they never discussed her fashion. she's obviously very beautiful objectively speaking. but michelle obama, is that a maroon or purple combo? it was a beautiful outfit. that was the talk for 36 hours. you couldn't get past that pantsuit for 36 hours. melania. >> i don't know if i would call them the avengers. you might call them the revenger's. they are looking for blood but we'll see what happens. >> laura: raymond, that's a lot of negativity. a lot of negativity. much of this week's coverage about the biden administration focused on emotions and feelings but this one took the cake. >> we need a catharsis. i think joe biden is a human catharsis. >> laura, i'm glad the country wasn't constipated. we didn't need relief from that. the thing here, the thing you have to give everybody credit for on the biden side, they kept their messaging tight from the young poet laureate to the performance of benton inaugural concert, it was that light is back. the darkness is being scattered. it was reflected in speeches, performances, music, every way possible. the republicans could learn a lot from that group. >> laura: raymond, it's going to be a dark winter going into a dark fall and maybe the rose parade in 20205. >> the morning has broken, laura. >> laura: of course. raymond, thanks so much. have a great weekend. the biden administration rejoins the w.h.o. justice is finally admits something that will likely drive covid case numbers down. what a coincidence. a few days after the inauguration. former u.k. parliament member richard tice has been sounding the alarm for months. he joins "the angle" next. experience the wonders of the mexican caribbean at nizuc resort & spa, where paradise is personal. nizuc is a world to discover unto itself, day or night, indoors or out. something wonderful awaits. experience the wonders of the mexican caribbean at nizuc resort & spa, where paradise is personal. nizuc is a world to discover unto itself, day or night, indoors or out. something wonderful awaits. >> laura: among president biden's first actions was, big shot, rejoining the world health organization. despite its shilling for the chinese communist party. guess who biden put in charge of our delegation to that nest of commie sycophants? speak i enjoy my fellow representatives in flanking the world health organization for its role in leading the global health response. to this pandemic. i am honored to announce that the united states will remain a member of the world health organization. >> laura: okay. that looked like a hostage tape. i don't know what was going on there. this comes as a w.h.o. finally admitted but we "the angle" have been saying for five months. the exclusion of positive covid results could be riddled with false positives, something my next guest has also been predicting for months. joining me now is richard tice, businessman, former e.u. parliament member and chair of the u.k. reform party. richard, thanks for staying up for us tonight. >> no problem, great to be with you. >> laura: do you put any stock of the timing of the u.s. rejoining the w.h.o. and the new news about the vaunted pcr test? >> this is extraordinary. the world health organization, what many of us have known for months, there is an unnamed but potentially huge quantity of what they call false positives test results. using this opposing gold standard pcr test. here in the united kingdom for example, our own government, despite doing some half a million tests every single day is also admitting in the house of parliament it doesn't know what its operational false-positive rate is. here we've got to the world health organization finally say actually you need to review every result in any need to look at the symptoms of the potential patient, the potential person carrying the disease. and you need to look at the strength of the test for the weakness of the test and see whether actually you need to do a second confirmation test if it's a weak one to see whether or not it's a true result or actually visit a false what i term an irrelevant positive where it's something but it's so small and it's taken so many magnifications to find it that it's actually irrelevant and you don't need to worry about it. >> laura: are you as concerned as i am about the politicization of medicine globally frankly or the sheer ignorance. i don't know what it is. i'm not a doctor but we know, knew the thing about the cycling of the pcr test back in june and they are just getting around to admitting this now? they are still calling it the gold standard? >> let's be very clear. if it's done, if the pcr test is done the way it's supposed to be done which is in a specialized laboratory, by a specialized technician, then yes, it is gold standard. if it's done on an industrial scale in temporary laboratories using unqualified people, than the risk of contamination is huge. that's the problem that we've got in the united kingdom. that's the problem i feel may be taking place around the rest of the world. on that basis, it then becomes not gold standard. it becomes i think a rather dirty standard unless it is double checked. interestingly, in norway for example, whoever they get a positive result from someone who doesn't have any symptoms, they always double-check with the second test. guess what. they have a much, much lower overall positive case rate than we have here in the united kingdom. >> laura: richard, the u.k. elections could be put off because of the case numbers even though when you look at the chart from the covid, the plateau seems to be a surety. it looks like the peak in the u.k. was two weeks ago. but it looks like you guys could be putting off elections because of it? >> it's absolutely appalling. they have taken away our liberties. we are locked up, locked down. they've taken away our right to free speech in many cases. youtube takes down things if it doesn't accord with government information. now they're going to take away our democracy it seems by taking noy the ballot box. it's absolutely ridiculous. one senior politician suggested he was a bit worried about covid on the pencils. i said listen for heaven's sake if you're short pencils i will sort it out. it's ridiculous. you've had a big election, over 150 million people voted. two days, three days, it will be warm. we can have it outside. >> laura: richard, thank you for speaking out on this. we need more honest voices like yours out there. come back soon. thanks so much. governor andrew cuomo finds a new way to embarrass himself. the last bite explains. [crunch] >> we have showed we can control the beast. we have the beast on the run, no doubt about it. >> we are going to celebrate. we deserve to celebrate. i was good. i am on santa's good list. >> this was the actual swab that was being used to fit up that double barrel shotgun that you've mounted on the front of your pretty face. >> laura: governor cuomo was fairly deadly, was he not, to his constituents throughout the entirety of the pandemic but he sounded a lot like you just heard. he even wrote a book saying how well he responded. now governor cuomo is singing a different tune. >> never get cocky with covid. truer words were never spoken. i will take credit for that quote. never get cocky with covid. >> laura: oh, my god. new york, you have to deserve better than that. that's all the time we have tonight. shannon bream and the "fox news @ night" team take it off from here. have a great weekend. ♪ ♪ >> shannon: hello and welcome to "fox news @ night." i am shannon bream in washington. breaking tonight, day three of the biden administration where monitoring developing double medic dustup with our closest allies already. president biden actually accused by foreign officials of siding with tyrants over friends to appease his radical base. almost overlooked today's new backlash against the president tonight on this, the 40th anniversary of america's seminal abortion ruling. the white house putting out a statement declaring the biden-harris administration is
billion. tripoint is backed for gary sternlicht. andrew, good morning. >> there's some synergy there, as they say in the merger business. also, we have some corporate buzz. "the new york times" reporting that u.s. authorities have expanded the probe into jpmorgan's hiring practices outside of china across the asian pacific. they're focusing on south korea, singapore and india. the d.o.j. was exploring other areas. we talked a little bit about this. jpmorgan is the one that actually went to the d.o.j. and started talking about these other hiring practices and now they've expanded their probe. there they are. good news, in the i.p.o. space, october was the busiest month for u.s. offerings since 2007. 33 companies raised more than 12 billion companies. finally, a new cnbc associated press poll is finding that the social network faces skepticism from potential investors and broader publica head of its initial public offering. kayla is going to join us with more of those details in a minute. joe, over to you, sir. >> thank you. dallas fed president richard fisher has a harsh message for washington. he says an ineffective frac shus and physically irresponsible government has slowed the u.s. recovery and counter acted the stimulative effects of the fed's super accommodative monetary policy. double super accommodative i dare say. in prepared remarks to australian business economists in sydney fisher says in part, in his words, while the fed has been moving at the speed of a boomer in full run, is that a -- >> what is that? >> is that a kangaroo. >> a boomer center? >> a boomer what? >> boomer -- >> boomer esiason. he wasn't that fast, i don't think. they say it best exhibited the adaptive alacrity of a koala. >> must be an australian thing. >> without being anywhere near as cute as the koala. that's interesting. >> boomer may refer to animals, fictional characters, comics, video games. >> doesn't explain it. >> that's a large male kangaroo. >> that's what we were just told. large male kangaroo. so it doesn't have a pouch then? not all kangaroos have pouches? >> i guess you wouldn't need one if you were male, right? >> unless it was like vestigal. >> if you're male, i don't think you have one? >> i don't think so. unfortunately some of us humans -- you know. we're not carrying babies in our pouch. fisher -- mine's less than it was. you have nothing. fisher will vote next year on the fomz. he wasn't a voting member this year. meantime, one of this year's voting members, yes, jim bullard will join us on set at 7:00 for two hours and we may -- he may be a little different in tone and substance than plausser we talked to on friday. >> they're both hawkish. they have different reasons for why they get there. >> yeah. exactly. >> but they get to the same place? >> i think plausser is even more -- bullard has recently been more dovish than he had been. >> what i don't get is once you get him going and you get fisher going voting, does that actually change the dynamics? >> no. >> they all fall in line. >> it's interesting. >> collegial voting. >> plausser wouldn't have done qe 2 he said last week. >> but he voted for it. >> i don't know. let's check on markets this morning. markets continue to do well based on whatever you think it is. people have two different ways of looking at it. either it's the fed or it's what the economy is going to finally do because of the fed up another 12 points. a decent session on friday. oil has been a pleasant surprise for commuters from $195. the ten year, interesting on friday got down, now it's back up -- it's been anywhere between the 2.4 and 2.6 handle recently. the dollar has been moving in the right direction for travelers. just recent, 1.35. we could go on to 1.35 which would help a little bit. then gold made its move to the mid 1300s and immediately turned back down. it's been in the trading range for i would say about six months. >> so plausser becomes a voting member next year and bullard is a voting member now. >> fisher -- >> he won't be. >> fisher will be next year. >> okay. >> you have new york, dallas, minneapolis, cleveland, philadelphia. >> i guess what i'm wondering, does the voting actually change the outcome? it sounds like the answer is no. if yellen says this is what we're doing, this is what we're doing. >> may get more contemptuous and more arguing. >> the minutes are more interesting. >> there's joeys and there's boomers. >> those are babies. >> babies. >> boomers are adult males. >> there's a song, a fame yoousg so he was clued in. >> smarter than we are. finally figured it out. >> knew more about australia. let's get back to the top stories. kate kelly joins us with the details of the sac settlement. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, becky. it looks like today is the day after weeks of negotiating the embattled sac capital will finalize an agreement with u.s. prosecutors to resolve charges of securities fraud regarding to insider trading. they're expected to pay a fine that amounts to $1.8 billion. that's $1.2 billion in new charges related to the criminal settlement but at the same time they paid $600 million earlier this year in a similar but separate charge that they'll get credit for. this is probably the largest fine on record in terms of insider trading cases. probably the largest as well for the u.s. attorney for the southern district in manhattan and certainly high ranking for the justice department as well. instead of just pleading guilty to everything in the original indictment from july of this past summer, sac i'm told will have modified charges that they plead guilty to in a sort of separate court filing. we can look for that as early as today. that may go public today. the papers are likely to show up in court and then we'll hear, i think, from both the u.s. attorney and sac and this is going to essentially end life as sac knows it, at least for a time. what's going to happen is they'll lose their registration as an investment advisor with the securities and exchange commission and because of that they won't be able to manage public money. they'll have a brief grace period, i'm told, in order to redeem the remaining outside money that they still have, but then they'll essentially convert to a family office early next year, becky. so that means they'll only be able to manage money belonging to steve cohn, the founder, certain employees and his family members. >> hey, kate, couple questions this morning. one is this doesn't resolve any potential criminal liability for steve cohn, the man himself, is that true? >> well, let me give you a dual answer to that. i mean, i guess it doesn't, although i think if they had the material for a criminal individual case against cohen, they probably would have brought it at this point. now they continue to try current and former traders. in two weeks from now we'll see the trial of michael steinberg and i assume the fbi continues to try to turn witnesses against him. so i think you can't rule that out in the future, but i would probably not expect it at this point. >> the only reason i ask is because if you remember and you remember so well given -- now we're talking about a $1.8 billion settlement, 600 was already from a prior settlement, some people meant the whole thing was over. here we are they would argue we're sort of double dipping. it seems to me they're taking a second bite at the apple, why not take a third? >> right. i think that's certainly possible. the 600 from earlier this year is an interesting discussion. i think in the hedge 23u7bd cumulatikmu cumulative -- fund community, i think you would have expected this to be tied up. instead you have steve cohen fighting personal charges that he failed to supervise errant employees, which is the nature of a pending civil case against them. and i'm glad you brought it up, actually, because that won't go away with today's settlement. they'll still have to fight that next year and i'm sure that will have an impact on whether or not they can reopen as an investment advisor. >> one other question which is this, wall street has been a huge beneficiary of sac. they've been the largest fee payer to wall street in terms of fees off of just straight trades. what happens to what you think looks like the firm in the future and therefore their relationships with the rest of wall street? >> i actually would not expect substantial changes for now, and here is why. after sac was indicted on july 25th and between that and a protective order that the southern district of new york and prosecutors there signed with sac, basically the street was given a certain guarantee. sac's not going out of business. the government is not going to try to hasten that. they want to avoid hurting third parties, investors, you know, brokerage firms, prime brokers, what have you. now they're still operating out of that. if they become a family office they'll manage $9 billion. i know the plan is to keep things largely intact. they may have some additional layoffs. i don't think any of that has been determined. basically they'll still be a high fee payer. when you talk to people on wall street, you probably have as well, andrew, they'll say this is an odd situation. this isn't sort of your everyday thing. we've received assurances from the government that we're okay in continuing these trading relationships. otherwise, we'll move forward. >> do you think -- once there's a guilty plea is there a firm that says, you know what, guys, you've been a great client, we can't do business with you? >> reporter: i've asked that question leading into today and i certainly think, you know, as we have some of these wall street executives on air we need to ask them that, but to my knowledge, nobody is planning that. the most dramatic thing i've heard is that they're going to sort of reassess when this happens. but it's the government that they're looking to for guidance on whether they bear any liability for continuing to do any business. so far they've been told they do not. >> kate kelly, fascinating story. the biggest -- this has been going on. it's a soap opera that seems like it's coming to an end. i don't know if it is. it's now time for the golden markets and we'll go across the world to lon ton to karen chow tso. >> you can see we are ahead by a third of 1%. some of the individual indices to show you. you can see the core is still performing. the ftse is a backer. hsbc, for instance, one of the banks reporting here today, .4% is what you see across the ftse. ryanair holdings, 11% of the down side its shares have slumped. they cut the profit target for the second time in two months. the ceo michael elyria claims the demise of the demise of alatalia will help them. >> one of the opportunities with the new 175 aircraft order is the fact that alatalia will get smaller. i think no matter what the rules are, the italians will continue to bail it out again and again and again. it will continue to create huge opportunities for us. >> alatalia having impact across the board. air france klm which is being forced to deny reports that it's asked alatalia to cut 5,000 jobs. and alcatel-lucent shares are down 6%. along with a $750 million high yield bond and elsewhere hsbc shares, i mentioned one of the better performers, 2.4% higher. analysts are saying the numbers came in line with forecasts. hong kong, one of the outperforming regions. heavy volume of stock and about 20% higher in the first 30 minutes of trading. you can see a very strong ticker in the stock price. let me move to the other markets to share with you. bonds up. we had numbers out too, heavy impact. construction numbers impacting the markets. the highest level since 2007. across on the eurozone as well, manufacturing numbers coming in line with the flash numbers showing an expansion. 1.68% is what we're seeing. u.s. treasuries, 2.61%. we are around the 4% mark as well, too, for italy and spain as you can see. now crossed below the 4th% handle. not much pressure there on markets. a lot of liquidity in the markets. let me toss it back over to you. >> thanks for that report. we are also just days away from twitter's first trade on the new york stock exchange. how does the public view it as an invest. kayla has the results of a new pole. >> twitter is set to price on wednesday and trade on thursday. cnbc teemed up with the public to see how the public thinks about it. half of all active investors don't think it's a good investment. a number of those who don't think it's not a good investment are high income respondents. many people think it will be profitable in the next five years. one might think the most optimistic group would be the most frequent users, millen yals. when surveyed, 50% of the group said they wouldn't put their money in t. they have been weary about the stock market overall. there are broader questions about the business model. the majority of those with twitter accounts in the survey says they lurk or read news. more than half said they've never even noticed promoted content. twitter's ad writers say 2015 earnings will be a turning point. twitter in terms of overall favorability ranks low compared to its peers. only 19% had a favorable view of the company. that's pretty low compared to 47% for pb but, of course, potential facebook and google and linked-in had their dots, too. it's up because of their ipos. because of the volatility and sentiment, it's very likely that twitter underwriters will keep these shares to wall street as well. >> i wondered about that. did we do a poll like that before facebook or is this a new poll? >> we did a similar poll almost exactly the same before the facebook ipo. 54% of people thought it was a good investment. >> that's interesting. >> it is interesting. >> this guy, kayla, andy kesler -- >> i know andy. we've had him on the show. >> why twitter's ipo is a bigger deal. he's talking about ways that it will allow you to use the second screen. that's why they hired the nbc person, because people watch tv and young people are tweeting while they watch tv. >> some of these live shows, some of the shows that get the highest rating. >> it will be better than facebook for advertising. facebook is up to 122 billion market cap. this is 13 billion. why are our viewers not that bright for something? i don't -- this guy's making the ka thas twitter's a much bigger deal than facebook. >> the problem is it's not as far along in its development. facebook by the time it went public is making a profit, twitter is not there. it's harder to be able to point to that. >> more potential. >> underwriters on the road are saying look at 2015. 2015 is the year they've circled on the calendar. we are hoping by that time we will be profitsable. that's saying twitter is more important than the other social networks because it inspires a conversation. the others get you to go on there. twitter has the power to get you to engage. >> twitter is suffering from the facebook ipo. >> twitter i use for work. facebook i would never -- if i had to choose one or the other -- >> you sometimes tweet pictures from vacation. >> i would take twitter if i had to take one or the other. if i could only have one. facebook, i don't use very often. >> twitter is not suffering from facebook's ipo, it's suffering because people have been leaving facebook because it's been littered with ads. >> i think it's almost a good thing that people haven't noticed the twitter ads. i didn't see one until you pointed it out. i didn't realize it was an ad. >> i'm not following them. >> it was an nfl thing that i almost wanted to link on. >> it's like who are you? it's not retweeted. how did you get on here? >> you don't realize it. >> i do. >> most people don't realize it. >> when they ask do people realize there are promotion there is, you're saying they don't. >> the negative of that -- >> many people don't know. >> 54% of people just lurk on twitter. they use it either as a news feed, they just read. they don't retweet. they don't engage. the problem is if you're an advertiser. if you're comcast and you want to buy an adebayor on twitter, only pay how many times it's engaged. >> if you link on it. i almost linked on the nfl. i didn't realize it was an ad and then i almost clicked on it and then i got busy. >> that's the same with facebook. paper click. it will show you the ad 10,000 time but comcast only pays if you click on it. >> right. more people, more impressions. certain banners you play a flat fee for. video ad. you play a flat fee for the home page. >> little things do bother me. >> you have strong powers of observation. >> my clock in my car. >> drives me crazy. i haven't changed mine yet. >> that's my problem. my car is different than my last one. i used to have just -- it was easy. a manual thing. it can't be like that. i had every manual out. i couldn't -- i said, you know what, i know it's an hour fast. it doesn't matter to me. >> drives me crazy. >> and i'm driving and so yesterday i said, you know what, i'll be back in a while and i left the family and i went out there and i -- until i figured out how to do it, i wasn't going -- you know what i had to do? i had to get in and i had to set it to where i live in the world because it's based on gmt. so it's minus five -- and something is different. now they think i live in newfoundland because i had to change it where -- now i think -- because remember -- >> i had to go through my gps. >> gps. >> i don't know how to change mine. i was driving to my cousin to the new york marathon. i saw the clock was 6:30 and not 5:30. you're going to miss the marathon. >> did you notice if you went to a bed, it was an hour extra this morning? i feel good today because i had an hour extra. it's going to take me a while. >> even an hour later is still dark. >> it is. but i got to sleep until 5:00 today not 4:00 even though it said 4:00. in my car, i finally did do it. it was bad. it took me probably two hours. >> can you change mine? >> i could have dropped the transmission by the time it took. this is the way -- >> another reason not to have a vehicle. >> another reason not to have -- >> i enjoy my vehicle. i'm not in this argument. >> no. you have to have a car. he had to rent a car to buy a pumpkin. >> that's true. >> anyway, coming up, google's executive chairman -- there's two kinds of people in the world, those that think the nsa -- that think snowden is a hero or who think he's a scoundrel. >> there are two people in the world. the nsa blasting the nsa over spying reports. google likes to keep all their spying to themselves. they couldn't want other people having their spying information. what the d.o.j. wants u.s. airways and amr to do. as we head to break, the weather channel's alex wallace joins us. 32 degrees this morning, alex. >> cold. yeah. there's no way around it. cold. not just for new york city but the rest of the northeast. very chilly start to things. a lot of 20s in the interior. syracuse to buffalo, 20s. therefore, no doubt about it we have chilled down those numbers. good news is we'll get a chance to warm up as we head through the week. high pressure drifts east and on the west side the winds will turn more out of the south and the south winds are a warming wind. we'll get a chance to see the 60s by mid week. hang in there. we have some showers moving now from parts of mexico into texas. this is thanks to some moisture coming in from a tropical cyclone which has made its way through mexico. moisture from the golf of mexico. a cold front from the north. that's going to keep things on the wet side for today including dallas. we have some wintery weather. parts of the rockies could see significant snow. the first significant snow for spots like the twin cities heading through our tuesday into wednesday. that's your national forecast. more "squawk box" coming up in just a bit. ♪ ♪ here we are, me and you ♪ on the road ♪ and we know that it goes on and on ♪ [ female announcer ] you're the boss of your life. in charge of making memories and keeping promises. ask your financial professional how lincoln financial can help you take charge of your future. ♪ ♪ oh, oh, all the way ♪ oh, oh oo. welcome back, everybody. right now it's time for the executive edge. this is a daily segment focused on giving business leaders a leg up. eric schmidt is blasting the nsa on spying. in an interview with the wall street journal he describes an act like this as outrageous and potentially illegal if proven. >> it's really outrageous that the national security agency was looking between the google data centers if that's true. the steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people's privacy is not okay. it's just not okay. so in that sense the snowden revelations have assisted us in understanding that. it's perfectly possible that there are more revelations to come. >> schmidt says that google has registered complaints with the nsa, president obama and members of congress. gentlemen, joe you were saying before there are two camps of people. >> here's what the nsa said. the nsa referred to some of the press articles treatmently that they had misstated facts and mischaraterized the nsa. this is definitive. unless they're lying, the nsa follows all of the laws, regulations and policies and assertions do a grave disservice to the nation, its allies and partners and the money who make up the nsa. >> i was in the antisnowden camp but something i read yesterday in "the new york times" gives me a little bit of pause. they pointed out that the nsa has 35,000 people working for it. it has a budget of $10.8 billion. at this point they are collecting so much information. >> no morsel is too small? >> yeah. it's a little staggering when it used to be you would do whatever you can when the agency first started. you would do whatever you can. technologically they can do anything and there aren't questions. >> i remember why you take it at face value what the nsa is saying. the fact that they're collecting 320 million or 320,000 -- >> i take it at face value because i don't care what they're finding out. right, if i do something wrong, then i'll worry about it. but i'm not smuggling meth, i'm not walter white. >> the bigger issue is if you have somebody who's getting ahold of that. >> the irs. >> when they give it to the irs and lois lerner -- i still haven't seen my refund. they may already know about me. no, look, whatever it takes to -- you know, to make sure that we're safe in the homeland. >> you're okay with it. >> what i was unhappy with in the article -- >> i'm fine with it. >> -- there was the front page and two full pages inside of that. there was a lot of information in it. what i thought was not fair about the article, it buried some of the terrorist plots that they were unable to recover. >> i saw a picture of some guy in germany. it looked like he was getting an award. >> couldn't have been in germany. he was in gefrm ma any? >> yeah. >> they're considering giving him, you know -- >> you didn't see the picture of him holding -- >> was he actually in germany? >> yeah. he's looking at finding some sort of a deal so that he can -- >> he wants clemency in germany. >> hard to tell you something you don't know. >> you don't know all the details. there are so many secrets surrounding it. we don't know so many of the things that you would need to make an educated decision on whether it's right or not. but the idea lone that they have 35,000 employees. >> and google -- you know, schmidt has to succk up to the left because it's google that i think of. the great thing about this is you don't have to be mad at the president for this because it's bush anyway. he started it. the president was unable to stop it. >> this has nothing to do -- this is -- >> i would be somewhat -- if i wanted to slam the current administration, i could, but i don't want to. i don't have a problem with this. and the people that do have a problem with it, they don't really like president obama because they're basically an extension of bush's -- >> at this point you have some on the intelligence committee saying look, some of the stuff they told us they were doing, it's not true. some of the things they were not doing, they didn't tell us about. there's a select group of people who need to know. >> there's no business implication. i'm curious what you think of this. google is a u.hs.-based company. at&t may struggle to be able to acquire companies in europe because the company -- >> you talked about it. i don't know whether that's -- you were worried about blackberry. >> i think you're in the same place. >> we'll see. >> what happens if that's the case? >>. >> i don't think it is. >> what if it is. >> it's like kaasa blank at tca. we are way better at it. >> we're better at everything. >> we are better at it. my concern, again, is there's an oversight committee there for a reason. >> sharing stuff. >> half the stuff we found out that they were mad about they had supplied to us. >> when there's no deal -- when some company needs to do a deal out there are you going to scream protectionism? >> i'm he not going to worry. if you like mna, i'm all right. >> you're fine? >> i don't think that's going to happen. you're worried about it beforehand. been worried about a lot of things. >> growing the pie. >> no one over there -- >> that's a huge leap to say because of the nsa someone over there is not going to allow at&t to make an acquisition over there. they're not. >> let's see. >> all is fair in love and war. business goes on. it's not personal, sonny. >> i'm taking this tape in case this goes south. >> it's not personal. when we come back we'll talk about whether fracking is the future. we have the pros, the cons, etc. behind the energy revolution. stick around. i have low testosterone. there, i said it. see, i knew testosterone could affect sex drive, but not energy or even my mood. that's when i talked with my doctor. he gave me some blood tests... showed it was low t. that's it. it was a number. [ male announcer ] today, men with low t have androgel 1.62% testosterone gel. the #1 prescribed topical testosterone replacement therapy increases testosterone when used daily. women and children should avoid contact with application sites. discontinue androgel and call your doctor if you see unexpected signs of early puberty in a child, or signs in a woman, which may include changes in body hair or a large increase in acne, possibly due to accidental exposure. men with breast cancer or who have or might have prostate cancer, and women who are or may become pregnant or are breast-feeding, should not use androgel. serious side effects include worsening of an enlarged prostate, possible increased risk of prostate cancer, lower sperm count, swelling of ankles, feet, or body, enlarged or painful breasts, problems breathing during sleep, and blood clots in the legs. tell your doctor about your medical conditions and medications, especially insulin, corticosteroids, or medicines to decrease blood clotting. in a clinical study, over 80% of treated men had their t levels restored to normal. talk to your doctor about all your symptoms. get the blood tests. change your number. turn it up. androgel 1.62%. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. making headlines. "the wall street journal" reporting that they want to see a broad package of divestitures from amr and u.s. airways as part of any deal to settle the merger plan. the d.o.j.'s antitrust suit says the deal would harm consumers by reducing air service and increasing fares. that case could go to trial in a few weeks. this is a little dance going on. fracking has made the united states the world's fastest growing energy power. on track to pass saudi arabia by the year 2020. that's according to a new book out tomorrow "the fraccers." joining us is the author, award winning journalist, greg zuckerberg. what i love about what you've done with this book is taking what happened with the energy revolution and tying it to the financial crisis where it was people who were on the outside who really saw what was happening first. >> yeah, that's the shocking thing. so who should have been the one to see this energy revolution? should have been chevron, should have been exxon, should have been the industry experts and they didn't. they were caught blindsided by this whole thing. exxon literally, their headquarters is on the barnett shale which ended up being one of the biggest in our country. it was sort of these interesting entrepreneurs, outsiders in some ways who got it and believed in this country. it's a very american story for good and for bad i would argue. >> what these guys saw that nobody else realized, i guess it was a crazy way of getting the oil out of the shale that others thought couldn't be done. >> they figure out how to get the shale. everyone knew there was a lot of oil in shale and gas in shale but everyone figured there's no way we can get it out. let's go off shore, africa and asia. there are a few americans who said, no, we have to figure out how to do it in this country. they were small guys and didn't have options to go off shore. they had to figure it out. >> who are some of these wildcats. >> george mitchell, son of a goat herder in greece. he was an immigrant. he was running out of gas. his company was called mitchell energy. nick steinberger, i wrote about him. he had a break through and changed the country and the world. there are guys like harold ham. he grew up dirt poor. couldn't even start school until christmas time each year because he had to help his parents in the fields picking cotton and watermelon. now he's worth about $14 billion. his wife is going to walk away with more money than oprah. that's a lot of money. >> who is the publisher of this book? >> penguin. >> did you talk to them about the title? no one thought of meet the fraccers? >> why would you call it meet the -- you are introducing the frackers to us. you didn't want it to be funny? >> we thought about it. >> you thought about meet the frackers. >> look in the back of the book. it says meet the frackers. >> i thought it was only me. >> you know what, then it's fine you didn't use it. we ran it past them. they were like, ah, no. i gave it a shot. >> sticks in a mud. >> for business, right. for the paper back, we can switch it out. >> meet the frackers. >> i show the characters. >> each of the characters. very clever. >> most frackers. the word is begging for double entend entendre. were you able to mention mother combined with frackers. >> the mother of all frackers. >> greg, at this point people have totally bought into this, the idea of an energy revolution. we're looking at the numbers where we're taking over russia, the amount of oil and gas that we produce in this country. what are the big guys doing at this point? >> it's a remarkable phenomenon. if you're over 30 years old you remember how just a few years ago we as a nation were running out. we were nervous we were running out of oil and gas. now we have so much we're going to export gas which is a crazy thing. the oil guys, big guys are catching up big time. exxon bought a company called xto for about $40 billion a few years ago. the smaller guys, mitchells, harold hamm is doing well and continental made about $2 billion since my book went into print in july. the small guys are holding on. at some point you would think the big guys open up and buy them. >> greg, we want to thank you for coming in today and wish you the best of look on the book is meet the frackers. or "the frackers." >> he said no to meet the frackers? >> he liked the idea, joe. we discussed it. in the end we liked this one as well. >> i think you need to go for it. i do. i do. in the reprint we'll do it. >> got to make a phone call over there. we have a big week ahead for the global markets. ecb decision thursday. u.s. job reports friday. we have a preview of what to watch. that's coming up on "squawk box" right after this. farmers presents: fifteen seconds of smart. so you want to drive more safely? stop eating. take deep breaths. avoid bad weather. [ whispers ] get eight hours. ♪ [ shouts over music ] turn it down! and, of course, talk to farmers. hi. hi. ♪ we are farmers bum - pa - dum, bum - bum - bum - bum ♪ the ocean gets warmer. the peruvian anchovy harvest suffers. it raises the price of fishmeal, cattle feed and beef. bny mellon turns insights like these into powerful investment strategies. for a university endowment. it funds a marine biologist... who studies the peruvian anchovy. invested in the world. bny mellon. the main focus for the markets this week is the october jobs report due out friday. joining us on the set, chief investment officer at corner stone wealth management. alan, just in a nutshell, has the market been doing well just from the liquidity from the fed or because the liquidity is going to have a positive effect eventually on the underlying economy, therefore the market does well? >> i think both, joe. i think the fed has supported the equity market, but the equity market has been going up because of quarter 1 profits which have been strong. >> and that being helped by the qe 3? >> i think so. i think it's held interest rates down. that's helped corporate profit margins which are an all-time high. i think the market is telling us the economy will get better in 2014. >> do you think the wealth effect, animal spirits become kicked into motion and the consumer feels better and it counter acts some of the drags that we've had? >> i think it does. we can measure this. we have consumer confidence. the index is at 71 today. it's well up from the lows but it's still far from the highs that we've seen at previous peaks in the market. >> did you talk to bullard in the greenroom? >> i did. i did. >> he's great, isn't he? he's giving you -- jim bullard is over here going, yeah, yeah. >> we're both in st. louis. >> he just said great mind. >> st. louis. nice heading, jim. nice hitting. ten runs every time they play the reds, they get ten runs. >> still a great year. still a great year. >> what happened? >> they're not going to beat boston. i don't think anybody was going to beat boston. >> good pitching beats good hitting, doesn't it? where are you on s&p earnings next year? >> you know, we think earnings this year will be a 107.50. next year could be as high as 120. >> not going down? >> not going down. >> i thought corporations had already extracted things that they could from the cost side? >> the gdp is going to grow probably closer to 3% in 2014 and consumers are start to go gain some of that confidence now that washington is behind us. >> i guess we'll see. so as far as long-term, you know, nightmarish scenarios, do you ascribe to any in terms of a five or $10 trillion ball sheet if we get there? >> we have to get our fiscal house in order. >> i'm talking about just the fed. can they suck that back out? can they bring the balance sheet back in to equal? >> eventually they need to. i think you'll hear that here in a few minutes. i think the fed has done the right thing by having the foot all the way down on the gas to get this economy back going again and when that growth is sustainable, the fed will pull back. >> so, okay. then none of these things that we worry about, i'm talking about a participation rate of 62, food stamps doubling in the last -- disability, people -- more people on government assistance than with full-time jobs at this point, on some type of government assistance. does that ever start to reverse and head back the other way? >> it does when the economy starts to improve. >> this is all a reflection of what we went through? nothing that we're self-inflicting now? >> i do think an activist government needs to pull back to a better balance, but i think investors needs to take the focus a little bit off of washington and recognize that the real economy is slowly starting. >> i was just saying that to someone, that it's a credit to the u.s. the resiliency of the greatest economy in the world that we're doing this well with everything that's going on. >> absolutely. we've made it through. we're going to see more improvement next year. if investors are focused so much on washington, they're missing the opportunity to being invested. peace of mind is important when you're running a successful business. so we provide it services youc with centurylink as your trusted it partner, you'll experience reliable uptime for the network and services you depend on. multi-layered security solutions keep your information safe, and secure. and responsive dedicated support meets your needs, and eases your mind. centurylink. your link to what's next. afghanistan in 2009. on the u.s.s. saratoga in 1982. [ male announcer ] once it's earned, usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation because it offers a superior level of protection and because usaa's commitment to serve current and former military members and their families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve. . . . . welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. our next guest argues the majority of investors don't have the edge. once you accept this as a fate or fact, you're more likely to be better off in the long run. lars explains it all in his second book, how to invest without speculation and sleepless nights. lars is also former hedge fund manager, founder and chief of holt capital. and good morning to you. >> thanks for having me. >> you are a professional money manager, or were, actively managing stocks. >> mm-hmm. >> and you think the whole thing is a crock? >> no, that's not exactly what i say. what i argue is just because some people have edge in the market doesn't mean that everyone has an edge. >> this is the warren buffett market. most people can't do it themselves. and there's only a handful of warrens out there. >> correct. >> and if you're going to do that, which index funds do you buy? >> buy the broadest and cheapest index you can get your hands on. in the sense if you consider only equities for a minute, although it extends to other asset classes, you should buy the broadest index of equities anywhere in the world you can get your hands on, do it as cheaply as you can. in a sense, that would be the world equity index, as an example. >> why did you get out of the business? >> as a long story short, i ran a hedge fund for five years in london. in the end of it, had a rough year, it wasn't rough, we were down 10%, 20%, return capital, and continued. >> what was the maximum amount of money you had? >> about $300 million. so, yeah, we did okay. >> lars, let me ask you, do you think -- i heard the argument before about average investors not being able to do it. do you think it's a good deal? or do you think people are better off? >> well, what i want to do in this book is turn the argument on its head. it's not so much whether i come to you and claim, what is the ability to distinguish between me and 10 other lars that come and ask for your money? to say to you, i can pick the one out of maybe 1 to 1 1/2 out of 10 that perform in a ten-year period. that's a tall order. if you can't do that, you probably don't have edge and you'd be better off in an index fund. >> where do you stand on etfs? >> i think they're a great vehicle. when i studied this from a theoretical perspective in school, etfs were not a great alternative. now there are quite a bit and much cheaper than they were. >> would you ever invest in a hedge fund? >> yeah. i sit on boards with several hedge funds. >> okay. >> keep in mind, i'm not -- >> you have edge? >> i think i have an edge -- >> in picking -- >> in picking those hedge fund managers. but also, keep in mind, again, if i didn't have it, you know, i've been in the industry for a long time since university and i know these people, known them for many years, i know a lot about finance. some people might disagree. if i don't have it, what chance does my mom have? what chance do regular investors have? >> if that's the case, if you -- and i understand warren buffett's argument for this too, what is the analyzed return that you should expect as an investor? you're probably not looking at 20%, 30%. is 8% even fair? some pension funds were expecting that and they're not going to get it. >> no, and i think that's going to be a massive problem for the next generation. not just because we're expecting, if we assume equity markets, historically if you go back several hundred years all over the world, the risk premium has been 4%, 5% above inflation. you can see that's the return we have gotten for the kind of risk equity markets have been. >> and that's what an individual investor? >> and that's roughly, i think, if the risk is similar going forward, that's probably the kind of return we should expect going forward. in any one year, they could be massively, massively different. this is why an investor, it's incredibly important to think long and hard about your risk levels. and how you're going to implement your portfolio. so, you know, risk is -- risk is a funny one. you talk a lot about. we appreciate the standard deviation. but i -- one of the other things i argue in my book is a lot of investors today are really amazingly concentrated in their portfolios. so your portfolio consists not just of your investment portfolio, but your house, your job, your education, your future inheritance. >> right. >> and look at yourself like -- chances are, you know, you have a house close to here, your education is related to this industry. you have a job in this industry, alternatives in this industry also. you're already pretty concentrated. >> right. >> and if you add to that concentration in your investment portfolio, i think you'd be doing yourself a disservice. >> lars, thank you for joining us this morning. the book "investing demystified" appreciate having you here. >> thanks for having me in. coming up, jim bullard. talk about tapering, jobs and more when we return. customer erin swenson ordered shoes from us online but they didn't fit. customer's not happy, i'm not happy. sales go down, i'm not happy. merch comes back, i'm not happy. use ups. they make returns easy. unhappy customer becomes happy customer. then, repeat customer. easy returns, i'm happy. repeat customers, i'm happy. sales go up, i'm happy. i ordered another pair. i'm happy. (both) i'm happy. i'm happy. happy. happy. happy. happy. happy happy. i love logistics. the squawk the squawk reserve, today's special guest host, st. louis fed president james bullard. a voting member of this year's fomc and never one to mince words. the taper, the economy, janet yellen and the future of the fed. no topic is off the table as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. >> good morning, everybody, welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm becky quick along with joe kernan and andrew ross sorkin and steve liesman. we're watching the futures this morning. right now, dow futures up by about 26 points above fair value, s&p futures up by 2 1/2. and in our headlines this morning, we are expecting a settlement to be announced today between the government and s.a.c. capital. the settlement would be worth $1.8 billion when you include that $616 million fine that the firm has already paid. s.a.c. would also plead guilty to one count of securities fraud. and twitter is facing a dose of skepticism ahead of the ipo later this week. that's according to the cnbc associated press poll. 47% say buying twitter stock would not be a good investment. 36% take a positive view. and california home builder tripoint homes is merging with warehousers home building position. the deal is worth $2.7 billion. and tripoint would become one of the top 20 u.s. home builders as a result of that deal. barry sternlicht will be here tomorrow starting at 7:00 a.m. on "squawk." and a number of events of note this week. tomorrow, we're getting the release of this year's most anticipated video game, activision's "call of duty ghost." >> we'll get them all. >> the latest installment of the call of duty series which sold over 100 million copies. i can't believe it's 100 million. >> was that -- video games and c.o.d. was one of them. and there was another one my son got. >> check this out on wednesday, twitter expected to price 70 million shares for $20 a share. we'll have that ipo on thursday morning. but then on thursday, there's the ecb rate decision and third quarter gdp released. and on friday, the delayed government jobs report is finally out for october. so we've got a lot to look forward to. or not. >> we've got that going for us, which is nice as they say. >> we do. dallas fed president richard fisher with a harsh message for washington. he says an ineffective fractious government has slowed the u.s. recovery. and that's not that profound. but also counteracted some of the effects of the fed's super accommodator monetary policy. i don't know if he said that or we said that. in prepared remarks to economists in sidney. fisher says in part while the fed's been moving at the speed of a boomer, a big male kangaroo which is not held back by air going into the pouch, a boomer in full run, the federal government of the united states has at best exhibited the ada adaptiadap adaptive alacrity of a koala. and with a lot of pressure on him to come up with analogies as good as that, you've got to include some koalas, boomers -- >> i appreciate your translating the australian for me. boomer esiason or chris what's his face from espn. president and ceo of the federal reserve bank. and good to have you in. >> good to be here again. >> we just got done playing baseball. >> get done is the operative word, too. you were finished. >> did win a pennant. >> if that's what you're hanging your hat on. both you -- you know. you and the reds in the same place. >> i thought we were in good shape up 2-1 and had two games in st. louis. >> pitching is -- that's what i finally came to the conclusion of. the pitching really matters in the end. >> oh, yeah. >> and i love -- and then you've got ortiz who -- >> ortiz was fantastic. fantastic. unstoppable. >> almost like he was a superhero almost. like he had some kind of super power. anyway, what month will the taper begin? >> this is that -- >> how's that, steve? >> let me do it the way steve would do it. he'll ask you this later. what month will the taper begin? >> no, joe, you do this, i don't. >> i do that? >> this is a data-dependent program. and we're going to look at the data and make a decision at each meeting. and so i do think we've made substantial progress in labor markets, unemployment is down almost a full point from when we started this program in september 2012. we've got faster job growth to the tune of 40,000, 50,000 per month since we started the program as compared to the six months before the program started. >> but the last couple haven't been -- >> they haven't been -- they've been a little mixed recently. but i think this motion of cumulative progress is the one you want to think about. and we have had a lot of cumulative progress in labor markets. and every jobs report that continues to show more jobs being created and a tick down in the unemployment rate, is going to mean the probability of a taper goes up. >> plus, you've got skewed data. >> yeah. this report here coming up on thursday will be hard to interpret. but aren't they all hard to interpret? >> does the fed have anies a risk on that number? >> i would use the second "s," but -- >> brinksmanship. >> do you put anything there when you talk about low sevens? do you say it's low eights? >> the participation rate, i've come around, seen research recently that's consequenvinced more this is demographic. >> doesn't change the issue it's there, does it? it does? >> the participation rate has been coming down since 2000. and if you fit a pretty good demographic model to that, you'll basically predict it'll be right where it is. so unemployment really is a pretty good measure of how we're doing. >> doesn't feel great. >> welm, it's seven -- you know, over 7%. that's not what we're used to in the u.s. but, still, it's better measure of labor market performance than people have been giving credit for. >> isn't there an argument, though, even though it's demographics and people are retiring, we're living longer and people are going to have to start working longer too? there's the argument that some people retire because they can't find -- >> yeah. so the demographic model i have in mind is just, you know, you look at different age groups, men and women and maybe some other groups and you look at their propensity to participate in labor market. then you look at how the whole population's changing and fit those propensities in and that's what you get. but this issue about living longer and maybe working more, that probably is not in the model. >> eventually i would guess you would need to see the demographic model switching to suggest people don't retire until '68, '69, '70. >> if you're going to live a lot longer and start working a lot longer, that would be a new phenomenon. >> i want to follow up. using the term substantial progress, i think, advised quite intently, right? so you're -- >> cumulative -- >> you said substantial. >> cumulative is the most powerful argument for tapering. >> okay. >> we started off saying we're looking for, you know, substantial -- substantially better labor markets. >> okay. so when you say that, you're saying the preconditions for tapering have been met? >> yeah. >> which means you're signaling by using those terms, it could happen at any meeting because the preconditions are met? >> we could cite substantial progress at any meeting. however, we've got other things going on. we've got low inflation. that's why i've been willing to be patient about this. what's your hurry? you don't have to be in a big hurry. i also think we have room on the balance sheet whereas maybe some others don't think we have room on the balance sheet. >> what does room on the balance sheet mean? >> if you look at the size of the balance sheet relative to gdp, who's got the biggest one? japan? europe? uk, u.s.? we're fourth out of those guys. we're actually low on that kind of a dimension. we're in the low 20s. the other guys are 25%, 30%. so if you think something bad is going to happen, you're going to pass some threshold and something bad is going to happen with the balance sheet, these other central banks should've already passed that and had that experience and they haven't. so i think we've got, you know, i don't want to take too much risk -- >> right. >> but i think we've got some room to go on that. >> so sounds like you're putting another test on, which i guess has always been not as explicitly stated. which is substantial progress on labor, but also, you need to see some measurable improvement in the inflation rate toward the 2% goal. >> i'd like to see it heading back to 2%, i'd like to see some tangible evidence that we're going back to 2%. right now, we're quite low or near 1%. we haven't seen too much evidence. >> what's the cutoff for when you stop calling rising inflation and improvement? what would you get to? eight? it's improved to nine. >> no, no no -- >> and it's really kicking at 14. >> when you set an inflation target. you should hit the inflation target. you should not -- >> it's a weird word for rising inflation. >> you should defend the inflation target. >> what will our growth rate be including the shutdown in this quarter? >> the growth rate in this quarter? >> fourth quarter. yeah. >> i don't know. i've been encouraged that the third quarter numbers are looking better. tracking estimates about 2.5%. >> 2.7. >> 2.7. >> by the way, the street consensus is below that. >> been wrong on every quarter. well, it's around 2.7, and the dow jones reporting on friday was 1.9. >> so what you really have is second quarter actually came in stronger than expected. a good holiday season, put together a good string of quarters, we'll see what happens. >> it's a clean number. that's before the government shutdown. the fourth quarter's not going to be clean. >> you know, the government shutdown, i don't think at least mechanically, i don't think it's going to have that big of an impact on growth. those furloughed people are getting back pay and the contractors are just going to have to work somewhat longer in the next quarter. there's some substitution going on there. it's probably not that big of a deal. it was a hit to confidence and that is a concern for the holiday season and for retailing. we're going to have a retailer on. i think a little bit later in the show. we'll get some idea about that. did you book that first guest? >> i had nothing to do with that. >> you talked to him in the green room, right? >> i did. >> yes, the fed has been very effective. what did he say? >> substitution. you lost in this quarter you'll get in the next quarter. >> all of a sudden his -- just his smile. >> it's like job security for me. when they say stuff like that, someone needs to explain it. >> wow. >> no, they don't. >> please don't. please don't. please don't. >> right afterwards. i didn't follow that point. >> why, jim, would you -- >> and how many -- how many viewers at home have a little smile on their face, steve? >> this smile -- zero! >> i hear from them, they send me e-mails. >> we're going to come back. a boomer can be a navy ballistic missile, or david wells, the former -- >> boomer? >> yeah, we don't know what fisher meant. he said koala -- he probably meant -- >> speak like the local people. >> if you've got comments, questions about anything you see here, shoot us an e-mail. you can also follow us, of course, on twitter @squawkcnbc is the handle. the predecessors have smashed records bringing in millions for activision. we'll preview "call of duty: ghost," and the upcoming holiday season. that and more coming up when "squawk" returns. back toome welcome back to "squawk box" on this monday morning, checking the futures right now. the dow looks like it would open up about 30 points higher. the s&p 500 up over three points and the nasdaq would open up close to ten points higher. bids for blackberry, they are due today. if you're playing at home, you can -- well, not going to be that much. get some credit cards together and buy the thing. a tentative bid from fairfax financial to take the device maker private, it would be for $4.7 billion. also scheduled to be firmed up. other parties said to be vying for blackberry, lenovo is involved. and blackberry's co-founders also potentially putting in a bid. we are back with our guest host this morning, st. louis fed president jim bullard. and, jim, both joe and steve already asked you, what's the month you start tapering. let me ask it differently. because after september, we all figured if you didn't do it then you're going to have a hard time starting before at least march or april. that's where the fed futures are now, april, as a starting date. and the reasons behind that, you've still got washington is a mess. they're going back to the same negotiations that began in january and february and if that was a big reason for not going it last time around, would you want to start tapering before you you have any solution in washington? >> yeah, that's a good question. i think we can't really wait for the political situation in washington to be just right because, you know, evidently, they're going to be bickering forever here. so i think you don't want to put too much -- too much in that particular pot, i think. >> all right. let me ask you this. and i know you're not speaking on behalf of the fomc. but in your opinion, would it be strange for bernanke to have his last official act to be something where he actually cut rates? would he have to do that by january? >> cut rates? >> i mean to begin the tapering. yeah, to begin the taper if it were his last act, would that be strange if it were yellen's first act, would that be strange either? >> i don't think the committee put much weight on anything like that. it's a continuous process. and, you know, and it's a committee that's making the policy. and they want to adjust at the right time. and i don't think it would be any problem. >> you don't feel any pressure? has that issue ever come up either directly meaning people are like -- physically talk about it in the room? or is it sort of -- is there a little bit of a cloud? or people in back channel where they say, well, ben's going to be leaving soon. he wants to get this show on the road. you know, what's the -- >> no, i don't really -- it's not really like that. i think the committee's trying to get to the right policy. there's always issues around monetary policy. we only have certain meetings every -- twice a quarter that we can make decisions. so we use our meetings as well as we can. i think if you start bringing in stuff like this, then, you know, you take all your meetings off the table, you can't make any decisions. >> there's no reason to think there's going to be the same issue in three months. i think everybody's calmed down a little bit. but let's say the worst-case scenario happened, what are the chances the fed could go up? zero? >> well, if you've got a very bad situation and the committee would have to think hard about what we want to do next. >> but -- >> i do think qe has been effective and we could do more. i don't think that's likely but i certainly would not take it off the table. less than 20%. >> nobody knows with these guys. >> right. we could. >> i thought you were going to say no way. what happened? >> on the taper? >> yes. what happened back then? >> it was a close call. i think it was a close call. the data came in more mixed than we anticipated. we told the story in june that the economy would be stronger in the second half of the year. and as of the time of the september meeting, we didn't really have very much evidence that the economy was stronger. and so -- and i think for me, especially, inflation's been low. we don't have to be in any hurry. >> you said cumulative -- >> why don't we get more data and go on from there? >> you just -- were selling us on the substantial cumulative, positive effects and it's only gotten worse since the shutdown. >> but for me, you don't have to be in a hurry because of low inflation. >> i feel like i'm more confused than i was before you started talking. before you started talking, i was convinced -- >> succeeding. >> and you're -- yeah, it's probably successful from what the fomc would like the market to not really know what's coming next, right? >> no, i don't think that's true. when you can show how things -- how we react to variables in the economy. the truth is, we've never been able to get to that. it's too experimental of a policy. we don't have enough experience to get to that point. and we have not been able to get to it. and there's a lot of controversy, a lot of intellectual cross currents about the program. that's where we are. and we do the best from there. >> what happened in september was the market thought it was starting to understand the fed more. the fomc more. that it would understand about when things would be more li likely. the market was surprised. do you worry that the fomc has lost some market street cred? >> i think we enhance the credibility because we show we're reacting to data. we said it was a data-dependent policy and turned out to be a data dependent policy. i think we've got that part right. the other thing going on in september is the ten-year had gone up to close to 300 basis points. i think that was a surprise to many on the committee. it's since pulled back some from there. that was a big issue. >> do you guys -- >> we've got to take a quick break. when we come back -- the street cred issue -- and i wonder if you sit around talking about this issue. if we kind of give our finger to the market, then we get a little bit of extra points ultimately. and how much of that conversation takes place of what the market's going to think versus what the public thinks, versus how it's going to move things. we can talk more about that later. >> fortunately, jim is with us for the rest of the program. we're also going to talk about the soldier in all of us, at least that's what activision is hoping when it releases the new "call of duty: ghost" tomorrow. we'll find out if they should be in your portfolio. right now, taking a look at the futures, green arrows this morning, dow futures up by about 30 points, s&p up about three points. opportunities aren't always obvious. sometimes they just drop in. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. ♪ ♪ so you can get out of your element. so you can explore a new frontier and a different discipline. get two times the points on travel and dining at restaurants from chase sapphire preferred. so you can be inspired by great food once again. chase sapphire preferred. so you can. help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we're sharing what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. ♪ there'll be the usual presentations on research. and development. some new members of the team will be introduced. the chairman emeritus will distribute his usual wisdom. and you? well, you're the chief life officer. you just need the right professional to help you take charge. ♪ welcome welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. the u.s. wants a major set of divestitures at large u.s. airports if it's to approve the proposed merger between american airlines and u.s. airways. that's according to reuters which says the discussions are centering in key airports like washington's ronald reagan airport. that trial set for a couple of weeks from now. delta and jetblue, the first two to apply new rules about the use of electronic devices. so excited about this. you can now use those devices from gate to gate without turning them off. it's a grin. the exception, mobile phones and devices that connect to mobile networks, those must be put in airplane mode. i'm still trying to understand how they're going to enforce that policy. and sci-fi movie, "ender's game" topped the weekend box office taking in $20 million in north american ticket sales. they pushed last week's winner, "bad grandpa" into second place. becky? 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>> it's same day -- well, actually came out last week, it's probably about a 10 million unit seller, about half as big as "call of duty" and 2/3 as big as battlefield. >> it's a stupid question i asked you if you knew about it. but yeah, it was the hardest on jeopardy. you're not that excited about atvi, ea, i understand, it's up so much. it's up 100%. but activision with "call of duty," why would this not be a time to buy that given that "call of duty" in the past has had such huge numbers. >> we haven't had a transition like this in the past. we've got two big consoles launching at high prices, the play station 4, and i think the wallet drain is going to be huge, because neither microsoft nor sony want to give an inch to the other. they battled it out in north america the last cycle. i think they're both going after the early adopters. the same guys who buy "call of duty," and they're about to be $500 poorer after they buy their console. i think it's got to hit activision at the margin, ea at the margin. i think it's a good time to wait. >> you'd buy ae, though, before atvi? >> i think ea has a much clearer path to revenue growth. activision has three giant franchises that drive huge margins but each vulnerable to competition. and i think we're going to she that this christmas. whether battlefield cuts into the lead, disney infinity cuts into sky landers lead. there's room there for activision to fall off the perch. i don't think it'll happen, but i think investors will be skeptical until they see it proven, activision is healthy in the screen. >> i've been hearing about the new boxes too. so you've got to buy all new video games for play station 4? >> yeah. they aren't back ward compatible. so yeah, yo uv got to buy the new version. >> wow. and same with the other. and you would buy game stop now, as well? >> yeah, game stop's tripled. i think people are still underestimating how much earnings power. the stock trades at about seven or eight multiple, i think another $7 or $8 to go on the stock. >> and you're not the most modest guy, but you know abo about -- more about twitter than anyone else on the entire sell side industry. >> i certainly have more followers. >> excellent. so we did a poll and our viewers are not that excited about the ipo, i guess. and that -- you think that twitter is probably a pretty good story versus facebook, right? >> i do. twitter's kind of the opposite of facebook, dominates among younger people and hardly used at all among older people. i think it just takes time and takes savvy media outlets like cnbc to start promoting their talent. i mean, you guys, most of you guys don't have followers as me, that's crazy. i've got 36,000 followers, and i don't think anybody knows who i am. why don't you guys all have 1 million followers? you will. give it time. once your outlet -- >> how did you get 36,000? >> i think it's my good looks. >> no, really, what did you do, michael? >> i get on tv a lot and i actually use the social media site to promote me as a brand. it works. >> wow. >> what about facebook at this point? there are concerns about -- i mean, it's $113 billion market cap, i think. $122 billion right now and it's losing cache, you would say? >> i don't think so. the people who aren't using facebook as much are young teens. they see everybody they know every day. they go to school with all of them, their entire universe lives within five miles of them. they don't have any real reason to be on facebook and don't appreciate the utility of facebook. we older people, i mean 18 and up, start to move away from home, our friends aren't right at our fingertips, don't see them every day, we don't have their phone numbers, can't text them. facebook's a great way to reconnect. you gain an appreciation for facebook when you're older, i think the same thing will happen with twitter. we'll start using it. >> who was the winner of that competition, michael? >> it's like saying who wins between ebay and google. twitter is essentially a news site. and you track realtime news. you also can have a relationship with a celebrity who you don't know because many celebrities actually respond to twitter followers. facebook is a place where you find your friends. there are completely different purposes so both of them are going to win. >> what about the effectiveness of the advertising on the platforms? >> facebook far more effective right now, twitter only has three ways to advertise. it'll take a while before twitter actually figures out how to mine all the data that they have. i think they're in the first inning. they haven't begun to try. >> okay. >> zynga you'd buy? >> he's a little more shy than i expected him to be and he's not making bold pronouncements. >> thank you. >> thank you, appreciate it. see you later. still to come this morning, we have much more from jim bullard. in the next hour, we'll be joined by haley barbour. he'll help us rise above the politics in d.c. can a budget deal be reached? 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(both) i'm happy. i'm happy. happy. happy. happy. happy. happy happy. i love logistics. cani i can never get her to -- now she's going to perform this. yeah. i told you about that two months ago. and you wouldn't listen to -- i get them -- i get the early call. i get the early call from sirius xm, i forget the name. time warner cable upgraded. the firm believes fundamentals are bottoming, and now sees a tie-up between charter and twc as more likely than not. is that going to happen? >> i don't know. time warner cable gets taken out. they do, but you saw last week they lost 300,000 subscribers. it's going to get worse. that's another problem. but i think what happened with the cbs thing is a real thing. especially, in new york city specifically. they're not losing another market. it's another market. >> the wall street had -- little column about -- and the big story was despicable me, $900 million -- i said there's the difference. this is comcast. >> you need a lot of hits to make that work. >> 900 million? from 78 million? >> right. but you have to have that repeatedly. can't be a one-time event. >> gap downgraded to neutral from buy at goldman sachs, target cut to 40 from 42. kohl's upgraded to buy from neutral. what do you think? ubs? >> sure. >> the firm notes confidence in the turn around strategy. target goes to 69 from 54. then a.k. and stld, steel dynamics upgraded. the goldman sachs is moving its steel sector coverage view to neutral from cautious. it sees the sector heading to a sustainable recovery over the coming years and argues its risks associated with oversupply appear to be largely priced in. although the company did downgrade reliance to neutral from buy. but went up on the other ones. >> okay. >> welcome you for a monday. when we return, we're going to wrap things up with st. louis fed president james bullard. mr. kernan will keep singing during the break, as well. "squawk box" returning right off this. coming up at the top of the hour, former mississippi governor haley barbour will join us to talk health care. the debt battle in congress and a lot more. plus, plenty more to come from our guest host st. louis fed president jim bullard. keep watching "squawk box" on cnbc. first in business worldwide. does it end after you've expanded your business? after your company's gone public? and the capital's been invested? or when your company's bought another? is it over after you've given back? you never stop achieving. that's why, at barclays, our ambition is to always realize yours. in a we believe outshining the competition tomorrow requires challenging your business inside and out today. at cognizant, we help forward-looking companies run better and run different - to give your customers every reason to keep looking for you. so if you're ready to see opportunities and see them through, we say: let's get to work. because the future belongs to those who challenge the present. they're the days to take care of business.. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters. with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to meet your needs. every day of the week. centurylink® your link to what's next. welcome back to welcome back to "squawk box," we are back with jim bullard. we haven't really talked to you about janet yellen too much yet. >> not mentioned. >> we haven't mentioned her name. i want to understand the dynamic of how you think a meeting is going to change under her leadership. >> i have a good answer to this. >> yep. >> very little. >> very little? >> she's been an insider. that's the biggest thing about janet. she's been at the table the whole time. she was my counterpart at the san francisco fed for quite a while. she's been vice chair of the board. she was on the board. she has a lot of fed experience. she's been in the middle of designing policy. i would not expect a lot to change. there's a lot of continuity. >> i guess from that perspective, having someone inside the fomc, whether you agree with them or not is preferable to having someone from the outside. >> yeah, i think for an outsider right now, it'd be a hard time to come into monetary policy. instead of just having the policy rate, it's become, you know, all these different things, all these different considerations. i think it would be very hard for someone from the outside. >> and you have no problem voting against her? >> well, i havecember dissentede past and reserve the right to do so in the future. >> she's been one of the most outspoken advocates for transparency at the fed, i think. >> yes, she has. she designed the current communications strategy. she was head of the communications committee. and so she's done a lot of work on that. >> and do you think that has -- >> do you think that's been a positive? a negative? do you think it's brought more volatility to the markets and to your own decisions? do you think it has helped, hurt? >> well, first of all, it was a necessity. this policy is so complicated than what we did in the past that you could not go on being opaque, i think. that was one part of it. and i think we have made a lot of improvements, one of chairman bernanke's goals was to find ways to be more transparent and get better communication with -- i think we have done that. >> let me ask you a different question. we talked about this during the break. i said when you come on the show, you seem open but at some level, a little bit guarded, as do most fed governors that come on this program. now that your meetings are recorded, inside the room there's actually both the minutes and then transcripts of what goes out. >> yep. >> how open is the actual dialogue recognizing that effectively at some level you're also on tv? >> well, there's a great story behind that because at one time in the early '90s, the committee did not know that meetings were being recorded. and greenspan, former chairman alan greenspan took a lot of heat from the committee when they found out -- >> how did they find out? >> i forgot exactly how this came up but there was an inquiry from congress and they had to admit that things were being recorded. >> that sounds -- >> that's when they came up with the policy about five years -- five-year transcripts. but it did change the character of the meeting. i was staff at the time and our president, i know was concerned about this. >> does that mean -- >> actually reading a statement. >> and do you do that now? >> i jot down what i'm going to say but i adjust what i'm going to say compared to -- >> does that mean that the real action is going on behind the scenes? meaning you're back channeling, on the phone with each other because you know these meetings are televised events? >> you know, we do see each other on many different occasions and -- but it's too large of committee to do everything through phone calls. you've got 19 people, and actually, i've tried to do it a few times, call around to everybody. it takes a long time. it's not that easy, actually, to have a lot of coordination. so the meetings really are meetings and they're important and that's when you really get to hear what everybody thinks. >> one other quick one on yellen. people have said over and over again that ben bernanke was the perfect person to have in the midst of a financial crisis given his history, given what he'd studied, the whole package. and that was an argument at some level for larry summers. do you think if we hit another iceberg she will be as competent if not more so than either of those gentlemen? >> i think she's very competent. plenty of background in the fed and her experience has been tempered, both on the monetary policy side, on the bubbles issue. she's been through two of those. on regulatory issues, she's been in the middle of that. so she's very well prepared for this. good resume for this. >> there's things like this happening, right? >> i think this is the number one piece of macro economic news we've received in the last few weeks here. very low inflation. in europe, you guys might know, i was in europe in the spring, and i gave some speeches over there. i was trying to get them to pay more attention to the low inflation rate and think about extraordinary policy actions they might take. the ecb has not been one to do qe or to do forward guidance. and it's only recently that they've come around. so this will be an important juncture for them. >> i was just seeing, you've got that -- and let's say china -- i don't know, things, maybe they're not growing as fast as we think they are. let's say the deflationary forces start to increase again so that -- you like being able to continue qe without worrying about inflation. but if we never get -- if we go years where if you wanted to, you have cover to stick with qe. because inflation stays low. would you stick with it? sounds like you're saying, you know, as long as we don't have to worry, why not do it? why not get some of the benefits, even if it's questionable as long as inflation is low. what if it stays low for another two or three years? >> well, a couple of years would be a long time. and i think we're in an experimental policy and we're -- >> still experimental. >> you'd have to make a judgment at that point about what you want to do. i think we're okay for right now. i don't want to go too far into the woods here. >> okay. if you wouldn't just continue qe to try -- if inflation didn't respond by moving higher. that wouldn't be a reason to continue qe. if things get better in the jobs market and the economy, then you'll end it because of that? >> well, if you're going to end it with inflation low, you have to ask yourself how are you going to hit the inflation target? >> well, you might not end it if inflation stayed low? >> well, how are you going to hit the inflation target? do you want zero inflation? do you want minus one? >> you could see a position where the jobs numbers start to respond? >> japan kept interest rates low for 15 years. >> keeping interest rates low and doing $85 billion a month, you could keep talking about how long you keep -- >> i think you should think about qe more as a normal policy when the policy rate is at zero. it's a very reasonable thing to do to substitute for the fact that you can't lower interest rates any further. it's reasonable to do bond purchases. this makes a lot of sense. very conventional monetary policy. >> if you're at zero. >> 85 is a torrid pace. i will give you that. and $1 trillion a year is a torrid pace. and i'd rather get out of it if we can. but i'd like to meet our goals. >> wow. >> would you -- if the housing market started to turn around, would you shift away from mortgage back securities and focus it somewhere else? >> yeah, i think there's been a lot of talk in financial markets about whether -- if we tapered whether it would be on the mortgage backs or on the treasuries. for myself, i think just keep it simple and do both at the same time and not try to be tricky about that. >> do you think -- >> the guys that really hyperbolic guys -- when you put in a government program crisis, you never get out of it and it'll be forever. and i made it the metaphor that instead of priming the pump now it's just gasoline for our economy. >> what are you worried about? >> keep filling the tank. >> what are you worried about qe? >> is there a limit to -- >> it's inflation. you're worried about we're going to set off a '70s type inflation. but it's not coming. >> but if you wait -- >> the camp, including my own staff, has to think about, you know, has to re-examine some theorys here. i mean, are you just going to keep saying this big inflation is out there in the future? five years in the future? or are you going to adjust a little bit compared to the evidence? i would have thought by the time we got to this point with this big of a qe program, i would have thought that we're running pretty high inflation and i'd be coming on here, you know, trying to be -- trying to -- but that isn't what has happened. everybody's got to re-examine their theorys a little bit about what's going on here. >> the question is whether you see it in time. that's going to be the trick. >> yes. >> and the issue for the fomc has often been behind the curve, not soon enough. >> right. >> very cognizant of that. >> we're going to have a lot more still ahead this morning. when we come back, former mississippi governor haley barbour, we'll talk to him about what's happening in washington. by the way, check out the futures right now, dow futures indicated up by 45. they have picked up a little bit of steam this morning. "squawk" will be right back. my mantra? family first. but with less energy, moodiness, and a low sex drive, i saw my doctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron. the only underarm low t treatment that can restore t levels to normal in about 2 weeks in most men. axiron is not for use in women or anyone younger than 18 or men with prostate or breast cancer. women especially those who are or who may become pregnant and children should avoid contact where axiron is applied as unexpected signs of puberty in children or changes in body hair or increased acne in women may occur. report these symptoms to your doctor. tell your doctor about all medical conditions and medications. serious side effects could include increased risk of prostate cancer; worsening prostate symptoms; decreased sperm count; ankle, feet or body swelling; enlarged or painful breasts; problems breathing while sleeping; and blood clots in the legs. common side effects include skin redness or irritation where applied, increased red blood cell count, headache, diarrhea, vomiting and increase in psa. ask your doctor about axiron. help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we're sharing what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. when you when you set an inflation target, you should hit the inflation target. >> one hour with jim bullard. your money, your vote, tomorrow is election day, but today marks one year until the midterm elections. we're going to tell you what to expect from tomorrow's races and who's on the hot seat in 2013. haley barbour will join us to talk politics, health care and a lot more. it is monday, november 4th, 2013, and the third hour of "squawk box" begins right now. welcome back to "squawk box." here on cnbc, first in business worldwide, i'm joe kernan. our guest host this morning jim bullard, many from president bullard -- sounds pretty good. doesn't it? >> thank you, man. >> yeah, you're welcome. first, though, becky has your morning headlines. >> s.a.c. capital is expected to complete its deal with government prosecutors today. the firm will settle charges with the guilty plea to securities fraud and a $1.8 billion fee if you include the $616 million they've already paid to the sec. as part of the plea, s.a.c. will lose the investment adviser administration with the sec. kate kelly has been following the story and will join us later in the hour. >> unbelievable story. it's the end of a soap opera and maybe a continuing soap opera. also, a number of events of note, tomorrow, we get the release of this year's most anticipated video game. that's going to be hitting the stores. it's the latest installment of the call of duty series which has sold over 100 million copies. twitter expected to price 70 million shares for as much as $20 each. they'll probably go on sale the next morning. on thursday, though, there's also an ecb rate decision and third quarter gdp. we're going to be getting that. and on friday, the delayed government jobs report for october and we will see what the government shutdown has meant to the employment or unemployment picture. also, election day coming up tomorrow and with no federal races for the house or senate on the ballot, the virginia and new jersey gubernatorial races have stolen the spotlight as well as the contest for mayor of new york city. continues to lead, rather, cuccinelli in the polls and chris christie expected to win reelection over democratic challenger barbara buono. and today, also marks one year -- is that true? one year until the 2014 midterm elections. some key state races to watch. here we go, we've got senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. he's going to be facing a tough challenge in kentucky from tea party challenger matt bevan. and lindsey graham also expected to be challenged by one or more tea party candidates in the primary. alaska democrat may have to defend his seat against joe miller as the tea party candidate who won the republican primary in the last election but lost to a write-in campaign for lisa murkowski. also north carolina democrat kay hagan. won her first term in 2011 but likely to face a tougher challenger. we're going to get a quick check on the markets, take a look at what's going on. dow would open up about 44 points higher, s&p up four points and nasdaq up over 12 points. obama care to the ongoing budget battle, the chaos on capitol hill continues. joining us to talk about these stories and more is haley barbour. he's also founding partner of bgr group. and governor, it's great to have you here today. >> thank you, becky, glad to be back. >> what do you think, you shake your head, scratch your head? >> well, for governors who get paid to do things, you know, it really is concerning that washington's just constipated. there's nothing else you can say about it. the president doesn't lead, the republicans, i thought, really did themselves a lot of damage. the democrats are not interested in working together. i mean, there's nothing to recommend it right now, except for republicans, the real shame of it was for three weeks, we kept obama -- care off the headlines. >> that's what baffles me. >> you have leaders of the tea party movement that don't see eye to eye with the traditional establishment of the republican party. how does that get resolved? >> well, i'll tell you a little bit of a tweak on that. they don't disagree on policy. if you take the average regular republican take 20 issues, they'll be the same on 18, 19 issues, on taxes, spending, deficit, debt, health care, energy. it's been over tactics. these fights have been over tactics and strategy and what irks me is to see groups like the senate conservative fund attack conservative republican senators, not over their policy votes but because they disagreed with them on political tactics. now, there's no place for this, you know, purity in politics is the enemy of victory. and what we want is what you said a while ago. republicans want to take over the senate so we'd have the house and after next year the senate, we have to win six seats. we've got at least seven good shots. and for our guys and people like cruz to want to start big fights over tactics is a setback. let's focus on policy where people see the difference between us and obama. >> who leads the party to that conclusion, though? there hasn't been someone who has been able to. >> i think governors do. if you look at governor and is their records of success, whether it's scott walker, john kasich, rick perry from texas had a fantastic run. and that's where we are actually in control. when you've got one house of congress and the other party's got the other house and the president and you've got a president who doesn't want to work with you then you look to those governor. huge victory in new jersey, democratic state, why? because he's done a good job. that's what people want. >> how do you get governors from both sides of the aisle working with people in washington. i mean, the question we've been asking at cnbc is how do you win us back? because right now, the average american voter doesn't have a whole lot of confidence in washington. how do you actually up into that? >> well, first of all, get the governor -- i was a governor for eight years and we had a good relationship with our congressional delegation and with the whole congress, particularly after katrina, when there was something going on and we needed help and it had to be -- it was a unique disaster unprecedented disaster and we needed unprecedented support. we've got a lot of democrats who helped us. barney frank, a little bit more liberal than i am. barney frank wrote a letter to every democrat in the house and said, please support governor barbour's plan. now, that's the way it ought to be in times that are serious. and the fiscal crisis in our country is serious. and we ought to be trying to work together. but governors can help that because they're used to leading. and you're right. there are a lot of democrat governors who are -- who want to do the same thing. they balance the budget every year. they don't go four years without a budget. that's just unheard of in state governments. so we want to push more of what we're doing in the states up to washington as an example. >> barney frank is no longer in congress. who do you look at from the other side of the aisle. of the governor who will work to get things done from the other side of the aisle? >> it's very hard. and one of the reasons is the difference in attitude of the obama administration. i mean, we have a president -- the president has to lead. congress can't lead. you can get help from congressmen like congressman frank who helped us in our time of crisis. but the president has to lead. and on the democratic side, he's not showing any leadership that gives any democrat member the idea that what they ought to be doing is trying to work with the republicans. >> then do you write off the next three years as it can't happen in washington? >> i don't think you can write it off. i think it's good they've got this conference committee that's going to try to work out a budget deal. i'm not overly optimistic because the president says means $1 trillion in new taxes. the republicans say a budget deal should mean more economic growth. >> they also say no new taxes. >> well, they say we'll produce much more revenue but not by raising rates. and history bears that out. but they're so far apart, the only way they can get there is if the president does like reagan does or did or did like clinton did. and both of them were ready to lead and to try to work out compromises that were good for the country rather than worrying about politics. >> they were both governors. former governors. this guy is not a governor. >> well, community organizer is not a good training ground to be president. >> no private sector, not a governor. good luck. you said it, we can't write off the next three years but you're writing off the next three years. >> i'm not. >> might as well. >> i think republicans are going to do very well in '14 election despite the government shutdown. >> well, president's at 40% this morning. 40%, down from 42, down from 51. that didn't help anyone in this latest shutdown. >> that's right. and look, i remember '95, '96 when we were blamed more for the government shutdown. we came back, we went 99% as many seats in '96 as we did in the greatest republican victory of three generations. in 1994, we won 227 versus 230. i think we'll do very well in '14. and that's the real important election right now. '16 will take care of itself, right now we need to focus on '14. >> who is the person who is the leader of the republican party? is it john boehner right now? mccain, romney? who do you look to as the voice? >> you know, when i was chairman of the party, newt gingrich and bob dole. two very different people with very different ideas. i was the chairman, i certainly wasn't the leader of the republican party. but when you're out of power, there isn't one leader. we're going to have a very large field for president in '16. going to be a lot of capable people. but not one of them today you would say that's the leader of the republican party. tomorrow, i think what you're going to see, christie wins, i think in virginia mccollough in the polls. great lesson for conservatives, here's a libertarian going to take enough -- >> but it's kind of a flawed candidate that should have been much easier for the republican candidate. and if the last guy hadn't gone out with such a, you know, with all the scandal and everything else, it would have been a lot easier for cuccinelli. >> all true, but the democrats can't get a majority in virginia. and by conservatives splitting up, we elect democrats. >> that's -- >> tea party -- >> where do you come down on christie as a presidential candidate? i don't know if you read excerpts of this "double down." but there's a dossier put together with some pretty nasty stuff about him, which is one of the reasons it sounded like mitt romney ultimately chose not to put him on his ticket. >> well, i haven't read the book -- let me say that to start with. i don't think it's for sale yet. >> it's for sale tomorrow. >> i haven't read it. christie's been very successful in a blue state. he is not liberal. he's conservative. he's more conservative than romney but he's not as conservative as haley barbour, that's for sure. i think how he does for the next two or three years, he's going to be chairman of republican governors. does he -- how we make republican governors set the agenda for the country rather than get bogged down in washington. that'll be a test for him. i think the guy has got real potential and huge advantage for him to be in the new york media market. he has seen so much more than the governor of, you know, louisiana, or the governor of wisconsin. and we'll just see. he's clearly in the field as a serious, serious candidate and he should be. >> it's weird, andrew, some of the stuff that's in the book -- he was vetted before he became governor. i mean -- as -- some of the stuff they're talking about. how can we go back to that and say look at what happened here? >> i don't know. as you know, i really like chris christie, and what i don't understand about that is the people reading that dossier. >> went to his friends? >> came to the conclusion that -- in the book from what i've seen of the excerpts, it says not only didn't they want him on the ticket because of it but they said actually they thought if the stuff came out publicly he wouldn't be able to run for governor again. that's how bad they thought it was. >> most of it was -- >> i didn't think it was -- >> most of it was the last couple of weeks when the president came back and christie hung out with him. and the other part was when he gave the keynote speech and didn't mention romney's name. it wouldn't have helped anyway. he might as well. it wasn't going to work. he basically gave his own speech. those are the two things that p.o.'ed the romney camp. >> i didn't understand. >> and their staffs too. and i think maybe -- i didn't know christie's staff as well, but the romney staff. >> bringing up romney, though, does force me to mention that the democratic candidate of virginia, i've known for years and years, his campaign strategy has been exactly obama's. he's not run on why terry ought to be governor. he's run on what's wrong with cuccinelli. he was out spending ten to one and 3/4 of his advertisements were negative. that's become the democrat theme. don't expect me to run on my record, but boy, this other guy's terrible. >> right. right. >> governor, i want to thank you very much for coming in today. >> thank you, becky. >> that's governor haley barbour. >> yeah. i don't know. who's going to win? alabama again, right? >> the trifecta looks to be like. >> and now florida state's number three now. anyway. more coming up from our guest host. i was harkening back to our off camera conversation. it should be outlawed. too much better than everyone else. why bother with the games? jim bullard, more from him, and then at 8:30, hudson bay ceo richard baker will join us. first on cnbc. his company completing the acquisition today. check out the "squawk box" market indicator. opportunities aren't always obvious. sometimes they just drop in. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. welcome back to "squawk box," everyone. welcome back to "squawk box," everyone. we do have some earnings news and job cut news from cereal maker kellogg's, cutting the workforce by 7%. part of a cost savings program. also reported quarterly profit of 95 cents a share. that beat the street's expectations by 6 cents. up by less than a percent in the premarket. and sisco, the one with an "s," not the "c." reported a penny above estimates, the market environment was challenging for the customers during the course of the quarter. >> i find that so confusing. someone should change. >> all right. let's -- >> let's make it easier. >> let's get back to our guest host jim bullard. were we done with our inflation conversation? people got kind of -- a lot of people are tweeting about it and talking about that now. have you always -- have you changed recently and become even -- this is almost like a new theory that you have at this point, i think. don't we always think it's different this time? i mean, volcker had to come in and save this, uyou know, save the entire world because we let it get out of control last time. i'm talking about inflation. >> i think it could happen again and i have been worried about it. yeah, absolutely. >> there's global deflationary forces that have given you guys cover. >> yes, global deflationary forces. what is going on? what's driving that deflationary process. i think that's been -- >> what -- >> low inflationary. >> cheap labor? globalization. >> greenspan would say all these workers coming on from emerging markets which is a good story. bernanke says it's driving real interest rates low. >> you made the case for qe almost becoming a permanent program if inflation were to stay low for two or three or four years. >> i think it's a reasonable way to operate when the policy rate is at zero. >> as long as you're stuck -- so that -- the criticism used to be if the fed got to zero, it's pushing on a string, it can no longer do anything. you came up with a different way to do it with bond buying. there is more to do and we're doing it right now. >> yes. >> and the only -- the only way that you would ever see that come back to haunt you is through inflation. as long as inflation stays low, nothing else can go wrong. >> one other way, asset bubbles and bubbles are a serious concern and -- >> no one can ever pick one out, jim. no one can ever see it when it's inflating. >> i don't agree with that. tech bubble was blindingly obvious and the housing bubble also blindingly obvious. how should the fed react to those very huge bubbles. i don't see anything of that magnitude going on right now. i made that comment elsewhere and people have come back to me saying they do see big bubble. but i don't see anything of the magnitude of the housing bubble or the tech bubble right now. >> i've got to jump in for one second because we have news on blackberry. we had news on how the stock looked like it was dropping. now reporting that blackberry limited is abandoning the plan to find a buyer and will instead raise $1 billion of new funds and replace the chief executive and some directors. that's according to sources to that newspaper. the smartphone company had spent the last 2 1/2 months seeking a buyer, received a letter of intent from investors, fairfax financial holdings to purchase the company for $4.7 billion. fairfax had until today to complete its detailed expectation of blackberry's books. lenovo was potentially there, partnering up with qualcomm. at least that was the talk this weekend. but now, apparently to this report, blackberry off the table. that stock down. >> see if you can send me -- >> a text right now. >> yeah. your phone will still work, at least for now, but i'll tell you -- without a partner. you've got to think to yourself, what is the plan. and i imagine what's happened is none of the bids or at least indications or signals have come in. >> people wonder all the time if this was for real if there was a real deal behind this. >> whether anybody would buy the thing. >> off the table, makes you wonder -- yeah, nothing was really there, not that they decided to -- >> let me temper this by suggesting -- this is according to unnamed sources. we do not have this confirmed yet here at cnbc. >> do we know he's definitely gone? >> if he's not there, who is? >> and he just -- you know, life is moving pretty quick. i want to make sure it doesn't pass you by. there was criticism, this isn't the guy that was going to be able -- >> that was less -- >> he didn't do much when he came in. >> we have questions ourselves. >> and now he's gone. it was thurston howell, but this was torstin hines. >> an unbelievable turn in all of this. >> we'll dig into it and find -- >> and the other question is, their new plan involves raising $1 billion by selling convertible notes to investors. we don't know who those investors will be. says he will depart the company, and the company will announce changes to its board. wow. wow, wow, wow. this is all according to the "globe" and according to sources, a big headline on their website. and hines is out. so we will bring you more and we will also have -- go ahead. >> how about a bond market bubble. let's say the stock market isn't a bubble. >> yeah. that's a good leading candidate. the ten-year at 140 basis points or 160 basis points seemed incredibly low. and so there, i think, you can make a case. but now the yields have come up some, so -- >> right. but what about the worry that eventually if the fed's not there to buy a paper, there really is no other buyer. and what happens in a market like that? couldn't you -- that's the big worry about the fed losing control, isn't it? if there's a complete vacuum and you're not buying and nobody else is there, then we could go up to what. >> yeah, i think we certainly do not want to be in the position to be supporting fiscal recklessness and congress and through the political process. and i don't think that anyone on the committee wants to be supporting that kind of activity. >> but how much -- how much of the u.s. treasury supply is the fed buying right now? >> the fraction of the outstanding treasuries held by the federal reserve is not as high as it was, let's say in the 1970s. it's actually not as high as you might think. it's actually kind of close to the average level that we've held. now, you could say, well, that's because a lot of treasuries have been issued, which is true, but we're not buying, we don't hold particularly the large fraction compared to what we've held in the post war era. >> so the people that are really worried, the people that worry about currencies in general and the only way since we're off the gold standard, the only way to keep the dollar strong is that the fed has to be sort of cognizant of their duty. and their overriding duty. that's not a concern. you see that -- as long as inflation -- >> that's what -- >> as long as -- >> that's what inflation targeting is about. is you get -- you probably can't go back to the gold standard. but the modern incarnation of the gold standard is to say we're going to target inflation, we're going to tell people what we're trying to do and be held accountable for it. you're supposed to hit the inflation number that you choose. >> is there any way the global deflationary forces are sort of masking that we're making a mistake here. that you're able to do it because these are external things that are allowing inflation to stay low but were really building up -- >> some kind of -- something will blow up on us later. >> yeah. >> you think it's a risk we're taking. i think that's a risk we're taking. >> there's -- the dislocations of the market -- the market's not getting cleared like it normally would by price discovery. >> yeah, maybe. >> all right. well -- i wouldn't like to be you. you know what you're doing. we'll come back and talk. we'll ask you about this. plenty more to come throughout the hour. plus, more on the blackberry news. the company reportedly abandoning its sales plan and replacing ceo hines with who? >> i don't know. >> we'll find out. >> and -- >> i just tried calling blackberry and if you try to call the company directory says no one there at this point. but that may be because he's the ceo and they never wanted it there. 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(both) i'm happy. i'm happy. happy. happy. happy. happy. happy happy. i love logistics. welcome welcome back, everybody, let's get to one of this morning's top stories. the s.a.c. settlement expected to be finalized today. and kate, this is a biggy. >> reporter: this is a biggy, becky. certainly the probe has been going on for years, the indictment happened in july and we've been expecting a settlement. but today we're likely to see it. i'm told the documents are generally all but signed right now. and we're just waiting for a more official announcement as to what's here. we'll probably be hearing from the u.s. attorney for the southern district some time today. don't know exactly when. but the key issues in the settlement are for starters a fine that totals $1.8 billion, this, of course, factors in an earlier $600 million settlement on related charges, but the 1.8 will be the headline number. this is a record for an insider trader penalty as well as a high number for the sdny and the justice department. also, s.a.c. will plead guilty to at least one count of securities fraud. details still to be determined. but i'm told while they won't plead guilty to essentially promoting a scheme of insider trading which was part of the original corporate indictment, they will plead guilty to fraudulent market activity among other details. we'll be looking for that, as well. what's going to happen today? the documents will be made public, we'll be looking for they any time now. we'll probably hear publicly from both sides at one point. perhaps this afternoon. unlikely to see anybody in court today, although the guilty plea will be sort of physically registered by lawyers for s.a.c., becky, once a judge signs off on the accord. >> kate, thank you very much. when we come back, shares of blackberry are halted. the stock has dropped on the report that the company was abandoning the sale process. >> we can confirm that now. >> we'll have more on that when we come right back. plus, hudson bay completing the acquisition of retailer. joining us next on a first on cnbc interview. right now, though, take a look at the u.s. equity futures. this morning, the dow futures up by about 41 points, s&p up by four. more on blackberry in a moment. clients are always learning more to make their money do more. 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>> yeah. >> we should also note that john chen will become the executive chairman of the company. that's going to be a new person brought to dpsh. >> executive chairman. >> executive chairman. >> and as we said earlier, hines is out. >> they're going to do a search for a ceo? >> it imagine. thu is now an independent company all over again. >> it raises all kinds of questions. jim, we were talking on break, you pointed out that the federal reserve has about 10,000 blackberries it uses. >> yeah. >> you're on the telecommunications committee that's been looking at this very issue? >> yeah, the information technology committee. yeah. >> which is the issue what happens if blackberry no longer -- >> yeah, like any organization, we've been trying to put plans in place over the last year and a half while this saga has been running. and so hopefully we'll have a good reaction. >> do you still type with your thumbs? >> i use -- i have a blackberry, but it's -- there's no key pad on it. >> there isn't? >> no. >> president obama has a blackberry. >> i hear he does. >> most of the white house uses a blackberry. this is going to be a huge concern for a lot of people across the globe. >> i'm pretty good at dictating now on the iphone. it works. >> yeah? >> put me in the training. >> angela merkel, by the way, uses a samsung. i don't know what that means. more accessible to the nsa, i don't know. so anyway, that's the news of the morning and that's going to be getting a lot of attention today in the markets. let's talk about hudson's bay, the company is expected to complete the acquisition of retailer later today. >> reporter: good morning, becky. i'm here at saks fifth avenue in new york city with richard baker, the ceo of hudson's bay company. an early congratulations on the deal today. let's get started off with why saks. how important was real estate as we sit here and sort of the crown jewel of saks? >> well, saks was very important and relevant for us and something we worked on really since 2006 for three primary reasons. first, we had an opportunity to grow saks into canada, hudson bay company is the dominant department store company in canada and through our infrastructure we'll be able to open six or seven stores, very robust online saks in canada. so that's a road map to growth that wasn't available to saks previously. additionally, we have about $100 million a year of synergies between the two companies. these two companies share a lot of the same dna and have a lot of the same principles and structure allowing us to really take advantage of the $100 million synergies. additionally, we now have enough real estate and enough ebitda that would allow us to create a reit which would really give our shareholders an understanding of the tremendous real estate value that we have. so investors would be able to do a sum of the parts, valuation, and see what the operating company's worth. >> so the ceo of saks for a number of years, he's now no longer going to be the ceo of the company. >> well, i think for the customer, saks is going to look just the same way as it always looked except we now have opportunities to be more efficient and opportunities to grow the business in new places. and most importantly, through our reit structure and our capital structure, we'll have a lot more resources in order to reinvest in the stores. so as we've talked about, the beautiful store we're sitting in, the flagship new york fifth avenue store, we will be able to spend $200 million to $250 million to renovate the store. >> so going into the holiday season, it's important to discuss the state of the luxury consumer or that high-end shopper. do you think it's getting better? what does it look like? >> we've been on a long road to recovery. and i think while it's bumpy, the government does what they do, the increased taxes, we're seeing improvement every month, every quarter. and i'm optimistic about this holiday season. and i'm really optimistic about the future, not only for saks and the luxury shopper, but for our mid tier department stores and our off price, as well. >> and you spoke a bit about the expansion into canada, i know it's been a big part of the strategy. is that going to continue? will you expand that part of the business into canada? >> yeah, i think we have a great opportunity with our outlet business. not only in the u.s. but also in canada. we have a lot of plans we're working on and we think it's going to continue to be a big part of our growth strategy going forward. >> you touched on a couple of moments of what you think shareholders can expect. is there anything else as i'm a shareholder to understand how this acquisition is going to add to that ultimate shareholder value? well, we really have under our business, four major brands. and with our capital structure, we plan on reinvesting and making each one of those brands as spectacular and special as we can make them. and i think that's going to create to the overall value and success of our company going forward. >> wonderful. congratulations on the acquisition closing today. ceo of hudson's bay company. becky, joe, andrew, back to you. >> great. coming up, we'll talk more about the surprise news from blackberry. plus, much more from our guest host st. louis fed president jim bullard. and tomorrow our guest host will be chairman and ceo barry sternlicht, we'll talk energy, politics, more, tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. it's as simple as this. at bny mellon, our business is investments. managing them, moving them, making them work. we oversee 20% of the world's financial assets. and that gives us scale and insight no one else has. investment management combined with investment servicing. bringing the power of investments to people's lives. invested in the world. bny mellon. 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[ male announcer ] open an account and get a $150 amazon.com gift card. call 1-888-280-0149 now. optionsxpress by charles schwab. welcome back to welcome back to "squawk box," the big news in the last 15 minutes, shares of blackberry under a lot of pressure. they will begin trading at 9:00 a.m. eastern. let's recap what happened so everybody understands. the final bids were due for that company today. the company, though, no longer up for sale. so it's going to go alone on its own. it's going to be receiving $1 billion of investment from fairfax which had put a bid on the company earlier, seems like a fair -- a failing effort at putting a floor on what the company was worth. but apparently nobody came in and hines is now officially out. steve? >> yeah, i wanted to get back to our guest host jim bullard. let's talk about your favorite place after st. louis, which is washington. two senators talking about the possibility of holding up janet yellen's nomination. rand paul for an audit the fed bill. >> yeah. >> and lindsey graham for information about benghazi. what do you think of this idea of holding up the fed nomination? >> well, it's up to the senators how they want to handle this. the vice chairman yellen will go in for her testimony here pretty soon. and i think she'll do a good job. she's always well prepared and well scripted. >> do you worry about the fed being a political football in washington in that regard? >> well, it's not so much the fed, it's the appointments process generally, which has been bogged down in recent years. i'd like to see a smoother process there. that's not my job. i don't have any ideas. >> speaking of smoother process, can you walk us through what you think it is you think you can hear when it comes to the budget process and the debt ceiling debate that would make you comfortable enough to pull the trigger on a taper. how would this play out in january and february? >> well, like i was saying earlier, i think it looks like they'll be bickering in washington for a long time to come. so i don't think that we can afford to wait till the political waters are completely calm before we decide to make a decision. so -- i kind of hate to put too much emphasis on partisan bickering in washington as sort of a special variable or special situation. you know, if it's really out of control, you know, we might pause for jst a minute. but i don't want that to be driving fed policy. >> but in september, very specifically -- >> the economy has to drive the policy, not partisan bickering. >> very specifically drove policy in that you were concerned about a shutdown. you were concerned about reaching the debt ceiling. why would you not be concerned that could happen again in january and february? >> we did -- and we were turned out to be right. you know, it turned out to be a shutdown. like i was saying earlier, i don't think that the mechanical effects of the shutdown are actually that big on the economy because there's just some shifting around. >> yeah, like a real default would be worse than inaction. >> the kids are swimming above niagara fall, makes you nervous. >> but they're still going to be swimming there. i know we've got to go. >> no one thinks of doing default anymore. >> so we're done with that? >> yeah. >> okay. >> and sometimes -- well, it's not as bad as default, i guess. >> steve, thank you. >> my pleasure. and we'll have more still to come. plus, right after this commercial break, we're going to talk to an analyst about the blackberry news and jim cramer's getting ready for the trading week ahead. "squawk box" will be right back. so you can have a getaway from what you know. so you can be surprised by what you don't. get two times the points on travel and dining at restaurants from chase sapphire preferred. so you can taste something that wakes up your soul. chase sapphire preferred so you can. . . . breaking . . . breaking news. blackberry falling sharply after abandoning a plan to sell itself. we have daniel ernst on the phone. big disappoint, no? >> well, yes for them. not a huge surprise. what i really want to know, and maybe we'll never know, did they abandon the plan for the sale or simply never get a real bid? >> the fairfax bid was never fair. they had a big stake in the company also. >> i agree the fairfax bid was never real. what i do believe was real is they took this time a serious process to see if they could sell the company. there was a lot of different speculation about who that might be. we knew the majority of u.s. tech probably wasn't going to be able to do it. i thought the qualcomm idea was somewhere interesting. >> as an analyst that covers this company now. now, this is going to be a stand-alone company. it is going to have to try to be independent. does it have a feature? what is the future of this company in. >> great question. if you look at pre-market trading with the stock around 6:30. the market cap is $3.3 billion. they had $2.3 billion in cash at the end of the last quarter excluding the new money they are raising. it is not particularly expensive. it is trading at ruffle four times depressed ebitda. is the new management team now that heinz is out really understand what was going on here. heinz was so convinced they could bring out a new operating system seven years after the ship had sailed. >> what do you make of john chen coming as executive chairman. he has a really good record. people like him. does that give you a good hope. >> if their plan is adoption of 01-10, i would say forget about it. people still like the keyboard. people still like the secure network. if they replace os-10 with android or microsoft operating system, they could provide a niche business to enterprise and people that like keyboard phones. there is probably a market for that. it is very small i think they could do it. >> i want to bring jim cramer into this conversation. what do you make of this news? >> to me, this is just a company in total disarray. maybe they can raise money. they are burning through money this. feels a lot like a desperation move let's see at the follow the nokia desperation move, maybe they have something that can be sold to someone. i done think that can last. >> when you hear dan say the stock is cheap, given the multiple, do you say, sure, it is cheap but cheap for a reason? >> well, i this i that, yeah, stocks are not -- stocks tell the truth all the time. this is a company that's in a tailspin. we all know it is in a tailspin. yes. it has some intellectual property that is worth something. there were a lot of private equity firms that have looked at this thing. maybe they have stepped forward now. you can't do a thing. >> things that i have heard from sources that when we were reported this out, this was one of those transactions where if you were an lbo firm, there was no "l" you could put on this. no leverage you could put on a company like this given the dete deterioration of the business. if you believe that, it becomes very limited in terms of who the buyers are. >> we will a secular decline in dell. michael dell stepped up. the balance sheet was unbelievable. there was something to work with there. the ceo, just out the door. we all know him. he was doing his darn best. it just didn't matter. >> dan, let me bring you into this. you heard what jim had to say. is there any sense in buying the stock according to you. >> it is cheap for a reason. what i'm saying is, is there a real strategy here to turn it around. with stock down almost 20%, pre-market, there is a potential short-term opportunity here. it is a bit of gambling. i do think there is a market for hand set to the keyboard, run in, secure network. i this i they have that. they just have the wrong operating system. the question is, can they scale down? >> unfortunately, we have to run. jim, we are going to see you in a couple of minutes. we'll be back with jim bullard in just a moment after this quick break. with fidelity's options platform, we've completely integrated every step of the process, making it easier to try filters and strategies... to get a list of equity options... evaluate them with our p&l calculator... and execute faster with our more intuitive trade ticket. i'm greg stevens, and i helped create fidelity's options platform. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account. help the gulf when we made recover and learn the gulf, bp from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a state-of-the-art monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twenty-four-seven. and we're sharing what we've learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. our commitment has never been stronger. i have obligations. cute tobligations, but obligations.g. i need to rethink the core of my portfolio. what i really need is sleep. introducing the ishares core, building blocks for the heart of your portfolio. find out why 9 out of 10 large professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. ishares by blackrock. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. risk includes possible loss of principal. let's let's get back to jim bullard for the last word. when do you start tapering? >> i think i'm on the record as being vague about that. it's a data dependant policy. we know everybody has been saying that. we'll see how it comes in. got a jobs report this week, another one before the fomc meeting in december. we'll see how the data look at that point and go from there. >> you think those will be skewed numbers? >> this one will be but if you average, you should get an idea of what's going on. >> always a pleasure having you here and we hope you are coming back. >> thanks so much for having me. >> make sure you join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" begins right now. indeed, what a day for blackberry. i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david cramer at the new york stock exchange. we have a stunner from blackberry. the smartphone maker abandoning a plan to sell itself but will receive a $1 billion investment from fairfax international and thornstein heins will step down. david has been working the phones. give us a little color as to what
send it over to you. >> thanks, becky. we've got corporate news for you this morning. it is a very big day for apple fans. new orders to the iphones are officially on today and they are under way. the devices won't ship, of course, until september 19th. but analysts expect the phones to sell out during the preorder period. apple shares in the last week, take a look and see what's going on with that stock. right now we're at $101.11. and i'm wondering, joe, whether i should be preordering. because if they're going to sell out, i actually one one. i think wipt the 5.5 one because it has the longer battery. >> i was just thinking, there's a lot of people that are going to want these. is it going to be, like, a full on product cycle? >> yeah, i think. >> it is? >> yeah. because i think the new size -- >> will you have that iphone or you'll get rid of your iphone and just have that? >> just that. >> i want kind of want both. then if you want a little one, you could take -- >> it would go with your blackberry? >> no. i have a regular iphone and a mini ipad and a regular ipad. >> and a blackberry. >> and a blackberry. i'm into carrying around a lot -- >> the watch? >> i don't want the watch. i want the rest of the stuff, though. >> does it glow in the dark? do you after you carry it around enough? >> in my purse. >> the whole purpose of this is to get down to one device. >> the future is great, isn't it? >> even you are addicted to this thing, though. you have reached the point -- >> i have one. the only thing that bothers me is when i leave, it used to be i could leave and there was nothing important enough to go back for. if you leave without your phone, you have to drive back. >> absolutely. tell me what you think about this story. >> are you segueing into this or do you really want to know what i think? >> i really want to know what you think. >> okay. go ahead. you haven't had any coffee yet. >> that's true. here is what's going on. yahoo! now spilling the beans on its fight with the government. here is is what happened. the company said uncle sam threatened to fifteen it $250,000 a day every day that it failed to turn over customer data to intelligence agencies. now, this happened back in 2008. yahoo! had argued that the demand was unconstitutional. but at the time it lost that fight. this is all sort of very pre-edward snowden. tech experts say that this decision actually paved the way for the government's surveillance program and now this news just coming out and some of this stuff is getting disclosed. >> so now they're ratting out the government that they were pressuring us to do this. well, they've been allowed to rat out the government. this is happening at the height of the financial crisis, by the way, to spill the beans. this is in the middle of 2008. >> and what proprietary important information would yahoo! have about its people? >> e-mail. yahoo! e-mail, yahoo! calendar, yahoo! everything. >> they're not designing ceos or something. >> it didn't have anything to do with -- >> no, i'm saying this was at a time when the whole world irrespective of the implosion part, are you okay with them handing over the information or are you okay with the government going to get it? >> we were using -- b. >> but we were going to fine the company $250,000 every day. >> if they didn't give it to us. >> they didn't give it. it's a business decision now. >> that's the whole thing, i got -- there's a lot of different angles. i don't know you who i feel. at this point, my question is are they being audited now? this administration does punitive stuff to people that don't cooperate. >> but we're back in the bush era, remember that part. >> 2008. >> he didn't get sworn in until -- my first thought was good for yahoo! for going to bat to try and defend its customers. i don't know what the government was looking for, i don't know what they found and what they got out of it. so beyond that, i'm speaking from a point of ignorance. but i was like, wow, yahoo! you're loving your customers. >> that is the question, was jerry yang back in the hot seat then? >> ya should didn't become that interesting until jack ma started hitting the cover off the ball. google tooblg over the world. >> you have to give jerry yang an enormous amount of credit. he invented yahoo!. you could argue that yoo-hoo has taken a strange slide over the years. but he was the one to decided to take the investment in alibaba. >> what would it be worth with no alibaba right now? >> $10 billion, $5 billion? you're looking at me like -- >> well, i mean, think about it. >> it ain't radio shack. that's the good news. >> but it was still jerry yang in 2008. carol bartz took over in 2009. >> not google, either. in global news, the united states and eu are expected to unveil tighter sanctions on russia today. the new measure will reportedly sanction russia's largest bank and tighten access to western ruins. that leadses into this front page article in the journal about exxon suggesting sanctions are putting exxon at risk. we're just ready to get a bunch of poil. the arctic and exxon has more direct exposure to russia than any other country. mean while, pleading guilty to charges that former employees bribed russian officials for a contract. god, that's an ugly word, isn't it? hp is being fined nearly $59. the sbc allegeses that the union paid $2 million to secure a contract with russian prosecutors. weird. it is weird. >> it's going to cost them $59. we that you weought they were g- is anything being done in russia without a prescribe? >> i don't know. there are some parts of the world that you can't get things done without it. but when you're a u.s. company, you have to follow u.s. law. >> right. that's scary. that's a scary thought. let's take a look at the markets this morning. so far, it looks like the futures are pointing towards -- well, relatively a flat open. right now, the dow futures up by three points. s&p up by just under a point. same with the nasdaq. right now, as i mentioned, this is the first time with only friday left to go. both the dow and the s&p suspect look like they would be breaking that whipping streak for the first time after five weeks of gains. nasdaq is set to close for another six weeks of gains for the sixth week in a row. take a look at what's been happening with oil prices. a lot of pressure on oil prices over the last couple of weeks. this morning, up about 40 cents for wti. 93.23 is wti crude. brent is $98.28. ten-year note, ticked slightly higher this morning, 2.562%. also, the dollar, if you're taking a look at how it matches up, it is up against the euro. euro is trading at 129.2. dollar is up against the yen at 107.16. dollar is down against the pound. with gold, it was down for the fourth straight session yesterday to an eight-month low. $1,238.40 an ounce. and the latest on the pulse of the consumer, retail sales will hit at 8:30 eastern. how will all this play out in the market? let's ask rebecca patterson. also with us is steven lighting, global chief strategist as citi private bank and make up -- no, a couple of girls get something makeup, you said you're next year. >> yeah. or maybe you can go to scotland and there would be a whole new fun currency you bring home for your kids. >> and you thought maybe it was the gild because it rhymes. >> but as you said, today we have big news in the u.s. are he are tail sales and i think the consumer is going to continue to benefit from low interest rates and low gasoline prices. >> what do you think of the market here? and i reference, did you guys read about mark, what his latest -- >> no. he says that the problems at mcdonald's are now indicating that everybody, consumers -- he's looking at this and it's a proxy for how much money everybody feels like they have. since it's so abysmal that the paper world we're living in -- >> it's driving me into hamburgers. >> no, the only people doing well are the people that lead at le cirque. i'm talking about what he's fashion. he did that after to spur the economy and sooner or later, money is not going to be worth anything and you're seeing it in what's happening at mcdonald's. >> and walmart, too. >> there is a bifurcation and we had that report out last week showing that the wealth accumulation since the crisis has accrued only to the top income earners, who special their home and have equity. >> there should be more focus on what central banks can't do. i mean, you look at the labor force in 2008 been it was $155 million in the u.s. today it's 156 million. there are lots of things that they can't control. and, you know, we want to think about how much they've done for markets, but we have to look at where the underlying resources are in the economy. and this is an issue in years. the summer is not the year. we are still bullish. earnings are still up. the rest of the world is lagging behind the united states. so you can't save up the rest of the decade will be clearer problems because we've managed thus far. >> so we're going to talk to thurman today who is currently the council and he's a young guy. >> it's a mostly -- it's not heritage. >> did you read that weekend that suggested everything was completely and utter lly corrupted, by the way, by foreign governments who basically pay them fees so they can have their big issues? >> well, in this case, the conclusion that they're coming to is that the participation in the workforce purply for people like me, baby boomers, structural. but a quarter of it they say is because of the slow economy. >> this was because of people being discouraged. >> and you do have so much discussion, almost an object session about what drives the fed, that any utterance by anybody with chrisbility, that affects the debate timing. whether we like it or not, we have to follow all of these reports for the next several months. >> this is an economy that is incredibly depressed. that is the reality where we are. >> we've seen the ten-year yield rise in the last week or two on the back of speak expecting the fed to change its tone next week, to acknowledge the economy is getting better. we've seen the dollar rally on that, that's pushing down commodities. it's actually a pretty big move when you think about it. dollar/yen at 107. we've had a 4% appreciation in the treadway to dollar just over the last several weeks. that's start to go become a big topic of debate. historically, cyclicals, while perform defenses in a ridesing dollar market. that's going to pull down serlg. the dpeeo political tensions, very crowded peripheral bond markets. i think european markets will tb to struggle and that is going to draw the euro lower. >> the chances of it passing are very low at this point. but you think it's the tightness of the vote to the issue? if it's a blowout, does anybody try to? within fiscal policy, you have germany urging restrain. even in germany, france shuffled its cabinet thee times in thee years. how are companies in europe going to be excited about sxaning? >> it's surprising that scotland is the one playing the surprise here in terms of potential political trouble when you have spain behaving relatively well by comparison. >> what is the biggest risk for us? or two, we have been conjuring the stirrings of actual inflation down the road? >> three would be bad. but i think one, a slower europe and a slower china than expected. >> it allows us to stay easing. >> but then you look at the risks building up. there have been two analysts, one running a big fixed income firm, another at a large bank and the last week urging people to put leverage on junk bonds. >> i worry low for long gives us more people. >> at this stage -- >> we've got to go. >> you don't go for three. you know, you get at least a few years out of it. >> we may need some regulatory finds. let's get 10%. do you want to? >> all on margins. >> i'm not putting anything down. >> put your house down. thank you. >> i've leveraging my kids and my -- coming up, that's a thought. >> you don't have any pets. >> a pr nightmare. i told you henry wants a cat. >> is the world ready for another top begun? the need for speed next right here on "squawk box." the baltimore ravens rolling past the pittsburgh steerlts. several female ravens fans were spotted wearing number 27 last night. which was in support of ray rice. i don't know how -- >> some were burning them. then there was the rihanna song that they were going to play, they pulled because of. >> people remember what happened with her. >> they said they did it so they could devote more time to coverage of the rice incident. but yeah, that's the first thing everybody thought. >> i mean, i'm afraid to say anything because i just thought the coverage was just awful. i was watching nance and sims before the game thinking, wow. >> did you read the -- >> it's flat watching those two guys. it wasn't as excited about it. >> you remember worried about what i was going to say. i really do think sunday is a much better presentation of -- i think i could do much -- you know what's going on be interesting? they may get a break, cvs, they may get some big numbers because of the whole ray rice thing. we have sunday -- that's a great pregame. >> there's two reports that i don't understand. "the wall street journal" says roger goodell, he didn't push hard enough when he was asking these questions at the time out of respect for the wife. okay? >> i thought that was interesting. >> and then there's this other report out of espn that cites four people close to rice who says that he explained in explicit detail to goodell -- >> everybody knows that she went in -- at that point, they knew something awful happened just seeing the video itself. and goodell at this point is almost being as demonized almost as much as ray rice. which i just don't get. i'm sure he tried to do what was right and the best thing possible. >> well, when ray rice went in for the disciplinary hearing, janay, his wife, came in and said please don't do this. i hit him first, i spit in his face. >> goodell is not -- i mean, he's not god. he doesn't -- he's a guy trying to do his best. and you look at the way the tabloids, the daily news and the post, it's like a feeding fre y frenzy. they say there's a possibility goodell might walk away. i might at this point. >> when you see the video, it's very stark, it's very clear that you have domestic voins that shows us in video form and you can how raw it is. >> i want to switch gears quickly and can do one more thing. so i watched this new guy a few times on abc. all right? david mura. i'm gone for good. never going back. ever, never. because i just wanted to see how they're doing. >> i told you. they led last night with ray rice. every night, the second story is rain, it's weather, it's severe because there's rain. is was raining somewhere yesterday like a little bit. there was a few clouds. that was the second story. they never did get to -- so i put on brian. immediately, isis. richard engle is over there. it was all really good pertinent, important, not bs -- i mean, i guess they're trying to -- i don't know what they're trying to do at abc to get viewers. >> there's a whole lot of stuff that's not news in that news cast. >> oh, my god. i'm never going back. >> i told you. >> i was just watching to see what it looks like. >> good to know. keep it in the family. a lot of support. >> let's tell you about a couple other things going on in the news this morning. general motors, the company has stopped delivery of 2015 corvettes. i don't know if you were in the market, but the automaker says it needs to fix two potential problems. one of the problems is the air bag. the other one with a parking brake. at this point, gm hasn't issued a recall. consider corvette was designed for sales of the car were more than four times what they were during the same the period last year. in entertainment news this morning, top gun 2 is getting ready to take flight. reports say paramount and sky dance have found a writer for the long awaited sequel that tom cruise's 1986 hit. justin marks is said to be in negotiations behind the film. he's the man in disney's upcoming live action version of "the jungle book." cruise is set to come back as match rick. no worse if iceman will be making the steeple. >> really. >> cool. >> kind of a -- you can't be a -- what is a -- he's probably going to be the teaching structure like the last time around when he came through. >> kind of depressing. we're all 20 years older than when he was like match rick, right? engaged mat ed maverick. >> we could do a parity of that. >> tom cruise is still in pretty good shape. >> he is. but you know what i mean. val kilmer would definitely come rolling out with a big gut. >> yeah. >> i don't know why, but he has gone up. >> i have seen some fluctuations with him. >> yeah. >> i could do a -- "saturday night live" ought to do a parity of top gun 0 years later. everybody is moving slower, not quite as sexy in those uniforms. >> although i think the russians would still be the bad guys. like you would come full circle as the opposing guys. up next, the crude realities of cheaper oil. check out this chart. take a look at what's been happening with oil prices. you'll see it's down about 15% since mid-june. all of this is coming as global tensions reach new heights. what gives here? we're going to head out to find out. as we head to a break, take a look at yesterday's winners & leasers. we needed 30 new hires for our call center. i'm spending too much time hiring and not enough time in my kitchen. [ female announcer ] need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web's leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. you put up one post and the next day you have all these candidates. makes my job a lot easier. [ female announcer ] over 100,000 businesses have already used zip recruiter and now you can use zip recruiter for free at a special site for tv viewers; go to ziprecruiter.com/offer2. good morning. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin. our colleague steve sedgwick running down ukraine's president. he didn't actually run him down. and it wasn't wasn't easy work. steve getting pushed and shoved. we'll bring you the headlines in just a few minutes. the ukrainian president is okay. he's okay. a new poll showing support for scotts independence now is slipping. there's just days to go before the big vote. supporters are keeping scotland in the united kingdom now have a four percentage point lead over separatists. take a quick look at the pound. is.62 right ow. there's a story we should talk about this morning. front page of the "wall street journal." jamie dimon finishing his cancer treatment. profiles him and the recovery and his recovery, says he is being closely monitored by doctors. diamond stayed active in the country. limited his travel. he's now expected to resume international travel. looks like he's doing okay. there's a great anecdotal -- talking about how you should have breaking bad or bringing an ipad to watch. he's been doing all the 8:00 meetings on friday morning. he's definitely getting better. >> and this is tough, what he went through. now you recuperate for six weeks. >> the next couple weeks may be the hardest part. >> i was gratified to be that he was going to have to watch for years. he's keeping a close watch 20 years from now, hopefully. i read twister while you were reading that and that is that this guy immediately -- a segue, but immediately pictured val kill mer in that volleyball game that they play. >> the shirtless volleyball game? >> the shirtless volleyball game that they played. that would be funny. there would be a lot of movement, a lot of moving parts. >> tom cruise kept himself in really good shape. remember how he got right in tom cruise's face? >> yeah. he was not a nice guy in the movie. >> andrew, it's friday. can't you loosen up on a friday? what were you reading over there, but the yahoo! story? >> no. before we were going to talk about the jamie dimon story, i was rereading the end of the story because i read the top of the story. >> apparently jamie heard from barack obama, too, during the treatments. >> i thought you might be rereading the richard branson book that you pored over over the weekend. >> i had read the book. just because i said i read the book, and i did read the book. >> you read the cover, i think. >> no. i was actually -- >> inside and back. >> no. i was looking for something specific in the book. >> that copy you were holding that day hadn't been cracked. >> you know what? i may never believe anything he says again about all the other stuff that he supposedly -- i love you. i love you. >> let's get a check of the markets this morning. things have been relatively flat, but we are talking about the potential for the s&p 500 and the dow to break what has to this point been a five-week winning streak. we'll see what happens today. the nasdaq does look like it's on track to win for the sixth week in a row. in europe, early trading, you can see at this point spain up by 18 points, ftse up by 11. germany is up by wall down by 0.25%. the shanghai composite ended up by 0.9%. oil prices have risen slightly, but ever so slightly. only up about 20 cents for brent crude. 98.26. wti is the number we usually watch. that's up about 43 cents to 93 .26. the ten-year note yesterday, the yield sitting at just actually the yield picked up a little bit this morning. dropped slightly this morning to 2.563%. but, again, that yield has risen substantially over the last week and a half or so. the dollar this morning looks like it is up against the euro, which is trading once again below 1.30. at 1.2922. it's up against the pound and the yen. and gold prices, which yesterday -- yeah, okay, looks like they're down about 1.50. dropping it again to 1,237.50 an ounce. oil prices as we mentioned, they've been defying conventional wisdom. the deteriorating situation in the middle east, not shocking the market at least at this point. crews still sitting near eight-month lows. could we see an eight handle on oil by thanksgiving? joining us right now is matt schmidt. matt, in terms of that, could we? could we see an 8 handle? do you think the supply continues? >> it is possible, becky. i think we could see a little bit of a bounce now. as you can see my tie, it has london -- on it and bearish influences in the market have been like london buses. they haven't been present at all sort of back in june and then they've all sort of come along at once. there's been a strong dollar coming through. we've seen demand dropping off from europe and china, supplies increasing from libya. the political impact has not been an impact in crude specifically. all of these bearish news have knocked crude down to that 90ish level. by all means, we could potentially drop below that. >> matt, i feel like it's been about a year since we've talked about opec having any impact on prices. is there a point where opec does have a little bit of strength and where they could step back in and push prices higher? >> that's this thing. once we get down though 90ish level, we stau start to get jaw boning from saudi arabia and other countries. we've seen them dropping back exports, as well. they're obviously showing concern on that front. so the lower the prices go, specifically on brent, as well, below that $100 mark, the more sort of rhetoric we get out of the cartels. is there a point also where geopolitical concerns step in once again? >> that's the thing. when prices are so high, you never think they're going to drop like in mid-june when iraq pops up to 1.15 on brent. when prices get below with all these bearish influences, you don't think they can rise and then they kind of slip on the flip of a coin. so we could well see prices slip. whether it's relating to iraq or indeed russia. >> that makes it sound like it's a tricky place to play right now, probably makes traders nervous. >> yes, it was. we saw bargain hunting coming down. we could well sort of see a bounce here. but yeah, the reality is we are in this kind of like lower trading range now from being between $100 to $110 now on wti. it was actually between 90 and 100. >> one of the main stories in the front page of the "wall street journal" today talks about how the sanctions between russia and the united states could have an impact on exxon at this point, that it is in the cross hairs. what do you do when you start looking at some of these big multi nationals? how concerning is it to start thinking about what's happening with the ukraine situation? >> that's a really difficult one balls -- because sanctions have been so sort of limited and sort of tit for tat as we start to see them implemented on more companies. and there's that retaliation aspect that we could see them implemented on exxon, etcetera. but the reality is it is still at the moment involved in rhetoric rather than necessarily anything more than that. >> okay. matt, thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> we should start a squawk like -- you know how with sports tweet they do, people all talk about whatever is going on in the sports game on twitter or something. because people are followers immediately start doing all kinds of stuff that we're talking about, instantaneously. i'm getting more instances of val kilmer. i guess you should just google full figure val kilmer or something. i'm not going to say the word. and there's lots of websites and it all comes up and our viewers are on top of it immediately. it's kind of funny. i don't know whether i'd say it's gratifying. >> squawk-apedia. >> now we need to try to make some money by doing one of those things -- >> hashtag? where people talk and it's a social something. >> do we advertise? >> yeah. and we advertise and somehow get -- we have to monetize it somehow. probably not. still to come -- but the whole top gun 30 years later is something that -- i was laughing so hard during some periods. i have to get it together. a big new travel survey says some of the year's hippest holiday spots are a long, long way away. you've been to some of them, right? you've been to tahiti? >> no. >> bora bora? >> no. >> we'll tell you why, straight ahead. there's a gap out there. that's keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. at humana, we believe the gap will close when healthcare gets simpler. when frustration and paperwork decrease. when grandparents get to live at home instead of in a home. so let's do it. let's simplify healthcare. let's close the gap between people and care. chocolate, soybeans, thisand apricots. made with what kind of chef comes up with this? a chef working with ibm watson, on the cloud. ingredients are just data. watson turns big data into new ideas. and not just for food. watson is working with doctors and bankers to help transform their industries. today there's a new way to work. and it's made with ibm. z. the u.s. and eu are expected to unveil tighter sanctions on russia today. at issue is moscow's role and supporting separatists in eastern ukraine. steve sedgwick caught up with ukraine's president earlier this morning. >> only now we have to unhow important it was security. and i am proud to inform you that ohm our european and -- partners understand that today's fighting is not the fighting for independence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of my country. this is the fighting for the global security. and this is demonstration is a necessity to introduce and to create the new security structure. in this very dangerous world. >> and you're probably aware, a cease-fire did go into effect last week. but at this point, unclear, it's still fragile at best. when we come back, want to get away this winter? we may be running out of time to get in on some of the hottest destinations in travel. and then summer snow. fall is not even here already and some areas of the country are getting a blast of winter. we'll tell you where when "squawk box" returns. him? dad: of course. kid: how much? dad: i don't know exactly. kid: what if you're not happy? does he have to pay you back? dad: nope. kid: why not? dad: it doesn't work that way. kid: why not? vo: are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed? wealth management at charles schwab watch this. sam always gives you the good news in person, bad news in email. good news -- fedex has flat rate shipping. it's called fedex one rate. and it's affordable. sounds great. [ cell phone typing ] [ typing continues ] [ whoosh ] [ cell phones buzz, chirp ] and we have to work the weekend. great. more good news -- it's friday! woo! [ male announcer ] ship a pak via fedex express saver® for as low as $7.50. [ male announcer ] ship a pak via fedex express saver® sometimes they just drop in. always obvious. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. transit fares! as in the 37 billion transit fares we help collect each year. no? oh, right. you're thinking of the 1.6 million daily customer care interactions xerox handles. or the 900 million health insurance claims we process. so, it's no surprise to you that companies depend on today's xerox for services that simplify how work gets done. which is...pretty much what we've always stood for. with xerox, you're ready for real business. is today september 12th or december 12th? heavy rain is falling in south dakota. this is the largest amount of measurable stuff since they started taking records in 1888. temperatures expected to climb sfwoo the 60s for the weekend but i'm still holding onto summer. our next guest says you need to start booking vacations six to eight month now in advance for international travel. data says people are heading to places you might not expect. here with the details, matthew upchurch. he is a virtuoso of luxury travel advisers network. let's talk first. six to eight months? has that changed? i thought you could book a good trip four or five months out. >> i think what's happened is global tourism is just -- i mean, it's on a rampage. it's amazing what's going on globally. and so i think what's happening today with the savvier travelers, remember the science experiment which is how do you get all this in the jar? start we the big rocks, pebbles, then sand. so people focus on their dream trips. >> when you say six to eight months out, is that to use miles on your trip? >> miles is one element of it. quite frankly, it's availability of the best places at the right times and the best inventory. so people are kind of -- >> the hotel rooms are going. >> yeah. you look at the -- >> let's go through the hottest places right now to travel to. >> right now, close to the home would be mexico. one of the really hot ones is new zealand. new zealand is up 4% for the period. >> love new zealand. south island over the north island. >> new zealand used to be the add-on to australia. >> and it's not just for -- >> no it's for hobbits. >> i'm not sure that's it. >> it used to be. >> but that did a lot. on the big screen. >> but there's a tipping point for destinations. been in this business for 30 years. there's a tipping point. i think new zealand has it all. it's a great family destination. it's great for adventure travel. food and wine, the lodges that are there are incredible. it's the whole package. >> i mean, we're just avoiding the issue. what -- at what cutoff in terms of wealth disparity, talking about income, who goes to new zealand? where are you on that? the bottom 50% aren't going to new zealand. >> no. we're a luxury network. >> you're wondering why it's exploding right now? it's the same story we talk about all the time. wouldn't you say it's the top 5%? >> probably 5% to 10%. >> that does the international travel. that does the bora boras and the new zealands. these are the people that are flush and it's the same story we talk about again and again. they should write a thank you card to janet yellen. >> there's another aspect to it. you know, you have college professors making $150,000 a year who spend a disproportionate amount. there's a huge shift in the past 20 years about the prioritization of travel versus like i don't need another car. i'd rather have an experience. >> let's go through a couple of others. south africa. >> very hot. has been for some time. uae is big. i think part of the uae is not only the inventory on the ground but the air service there is becoming really one of the go-to places. >> what -- these trips we're talking about, all eye end trips, what's the average price of a trip like this? some are serious destinations. you go to new zealand, you've got to go for like two weeks. >> on the average yearly income. >> how much are these trips costing? >> our average trip is about $8,000 per person. that's on average across the globe. >> so for two people, 16 grand. >> new zealand for two weeks? no way. >> i'm saying that's our average. but also you look at, for example, one of the other hot destinations. >> go to africa, the price is going up at the type of lodges you're talking about. >> and the inventory is gone. it's gone for this year. probably 70% gone for next year already. but then you also look at some of the closer like mexico, for example. people don't really understand what has happened. there are actually more five-star luxury properties in mexico than all of the caribbean. >> help us with this since i'm a cheapskate too. what is the coolest place that i could go for a reasonable price? highest end, cheapest place. >> well, the best value right now is mexico. and has been. >> that's because of the headlines coming out of mexico. >> you know what? that's a miss. the rebound in mexico tourism has been unbelievable. and by the way -- >> what's that trip going to cost me? >> probably four. >> four a person. >> yeah. no, no, no. >> total. at a five star? >> yeah. >> i may have to give you a call. matthew, appreciate it. thanks so much. when we come back on "squawk box," the health of the economy, inversions, the minimum wage debate, and the energy production. these are all topics we'll discuss with the president's chairman of the council of economic advisers jason fuhrmann. "squawk box" will be right back. financial noise financial noise i'm spending too much time hiring and not enough time in my kitchen. [ female announcer ] need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web's leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. you put up one post and the next day you have all these candidates. makes my job a lot easier. 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>> i would give the economy an enormously improved, moving in the right direction, and moving there faster than it's done over the course of this whole situation. >> what did you think of the jobs report last week? it was a weak monthly number. we also got higher than expected jobless claims yesterday and retail sales last month are not as strong as anticipated. >> i don't look at one piece of data or one month. you look at the jobs over the course of the year. they're averaging 215,000 jobs a month. that's up from 194,000 job a month pace we had last year. you look at the unemployment rate, it's fallen 1.1 percentage points in the last 12 months. as recently as last year, forecasters said it would take us until 2017 to cut the unemployment rate to 6.1%. we've gotten there three years in advance. growth has picked up. consumer spending actually was part of that growth pickup in the second quarter. so we have a lot of challenges. there's no doubt about that. but to me it looks like things are moving in the right direction and moving a bit faster. >> the naysayers would say if you look at the unemployment rate the reason we've got there is the participation rate has been lousy. you could argue a bunch of reasons why the participation rate has dropped. one thing the obama administration has been hammering home is the inequality gap. the difference between the haves and have nots. the richer people have done the best over the past years. >> i don't comment on the fed's policies one way or the other. >> is that a yes? >> but if you're trying to look at the causes of inequality, i don't think monetary policy is a general economic matter that has a lot to do with it. i think there are a lot of forces that have led to a buildup in inequality. it's happened over the last several decades. but to solve it, we also want more growth. we want to grow the economy faster. that'll help wages rise. we want to connect people with those wage gains. corporate tax reform for more growth to a higher minimum wage. >> you can't blame the fed for the way that assets have been allocated among the general population. but once the asset owners already have it and then the fed, you know, goes through the last five years of sort of asset boosting, you can't help but point to well maybe they got the assets in a different way. but certainly the fed, the owners of the assets have done well because of fed policies. right? >> you know, again, you're not going to get me to comment on the fed. >> i know. i'm not saying that's how the distributions got skewed on who owns thes s assets. but certainly asset owners have been rewarded handily by the fed action over the last five years. >> if you bought the s&p when barack obama took office and sold it yesterday, you'd be up over 100%. i think a whole bunch of things have gone into that increase. a lot of it being a sign of the strengthening -- >> you didn't answer the question then. i'm going to put it in a different context. >> okay. another attempt to find out -- >> becky asked you to grade the economy. if you were to try to ascribe credit to the success, let's just suggest, of where the economy is today over the past, say, six years and you would say there's politics and policy issues, there's the fed, there's global -- i mean, i don't know -- how would you sort of break down the credit that you would ascribe to where we're at today? >> it's a buildup of credit as you mentioned. kudos credit is what you're talking about. >> some things trying to put in a positive framing. >> some things we can quantify. you can look at the recovery act in 2009. we came back and did about 12 subsequent jobs actions whether it was a payroll tax cut, tax incentives to invest in infrastructure, tax incentives to hire. and add all of that up and you see millions of jobs, several percentage points of gdp sustained over a couple-year period. harder to quantify is if you add in what was done in the financial rescue, what was done in the housing sector, and monetary policy. but you had blinder say the unemployment rate would have gotten to 15% without that full set of actions. instead it rose to 10% and has come back down to 6.1%. >> with all that no one would say we've had a gang busters recovery from that recession. i mean, we finally got back to the same number of jobs that we had prior to it five years later. and we're almost -- we're not much above where we were five years ago. so it's not like -- >> right. >> and that's with all of what you said and the fed. and we only get here. >> yeah. look. when ronald reagan was president at his -- i always nod my head. when someone says that, i do this, jason. >> the unemployment was around 6.1%. the same place it is right now. >> pick up on this what i think joe's getting at here which is this idea that it's the policies of the obama administration that have been bad for business, that have kept this recovery despite a massive amount of monetary stimulus, that have kept this recovery from giving us the expansion that everyone expected on the backside of a massive decline. >> actually, that's not what i said. maybe it's the depth of the financial crisis that destroyed so much demand that made it much more difficult. because it wasn't a normal recession caused by the fed raises rates and then -- >> but i think that's out there. these ideas -- >> that's definitely part of the story. >> regulatory policies. >> you know what? i would say it's not what the administration has done. it's what the administration hasn't done. that's where i saw in the notes you said the president has been the biggest proponent of tax reform. and you noted that he said it in his state of the union address as somehow indicating that it's really a priority of his. well, it clearly hasn't been. >> i completely disagree. first of all, look at business investment. we talked about the stock market up 148%. 20 quarters since the recession ended, it's up. business investment was up 28%. >> my only point is -- but when the president wants something -- no, no. but when the president wants something like remember the american jobs act? every week he'd appear with people standing behind him and talk about that. minimum wage, which affects how many people in this country? >> 28 million. that's a lot. >> okay. 2.9%. some of them are working second jobs or college kids. whether that helps that much, i don't know. but every week he's got people standing behind him. he's pushing it. he's never done that type of rollout for corporate tax reform. >> do you know what the biggest investment incentive we've done through the tax code in this country's history? it was 100% expensing. the president proposed it in september 2010. he signed it into law in december 2010. >> republicans went along with that, right? >> oh, republicans did go along with it. it was his proposal. >> so it is possible. >> we worked together to do it. and that was, you know, one of the examples of ways in which we thought that we wanted to increase business investment and it worked. >> but we're not going to do corporate -- in his administration in his last two years, we're not going to to do it. we could have been working on it for six years. do you think raising the minimum wage would do more to jump start the economy than getting rid of this weird non-territorial tax structure and not bringing our corporate tax rate down to a more productive -- >> i don't think it's either/or. i think it's both. >> i think that would be much more than raising -- >> i think he's asking which would have a greater impact? >> you don't want to make me choose between two of my favorite children. >> in terms of overall impact, if you were to measure the overall impact over ten years, do you think they're comparable? >> if you asked -- in terms of economic growth? >> yeah. >> in the long run it's primarily a policy that's about more wages. if you ask me which is going to grow the economy more over ten years, corporate tax reform. which is going to generate direct benefits for 28 million american workers? minimum wage. >> is your contention that we don't have an investment problem when you say we're up 28% doing better than the prior administration? >> i think we can always do better. >> but given the amount of cash on the balance sheets of these companies, when you look at comparable -- when you look at comparable growth stories after recovery stories, i don't think you had companies sitting on this kind of cash with this kind of profit. so when you say they're investing, the word is relative. >> i think some of that's been demand. and you had an economy where we had such a massive shock in the financial crisis that it's taken a long time to work that off, the deleveraging process is a long one. >> what zudo you think is holdi back the investment? >> i think demand is a decent part of it. i think part of it was investment overhang we had going into the crisis that takes a long time to work itself off. and you have seen investment growing faster in the past year than it did in the couple years before that. >> you've got a couple years left. and you do love corporate tax reform. and now that we know you love it, we're counting on you then. if you're saying it might happen in the next two years, i hope you've got some broad shoulders. do you have a card? an e-mail? will you give me his e-mail? >> i'll give you his e-mail. and you can e-mail him. >> i'll do the minimum wage if you do corporate tax reform. nobodies trying to do this with both sides. that's the problem. >> the president put that out. he said let's make an american economy more competitive. he hears from business leaders all the time. two things they want. >> i think this is a peace move. >> jason, we'll talk more about why that hasn't happened in washington yet. what the road blocks are. again kwb jason is with us for the rest of the program steve, we'll see you in a little bit. still to come, the king of inversions, warren buffett. kidding. he did that on burger king. calling on congress to do something to curb tax inversions. really? is that what he's doing now? all right. we're going to ask the president's man on the economy what they're prepared to do. plus darden posting earnings. says its performance is improving, but it acknowledges there's still work to be done. the street reaction is next. i'm type e. my golden years will not just be gold plated. i had 3 different 401(k)s. e*trade offers rollover options and a retirement planning calculator. now i know "when" i'm going to retire. not "if." (shouting) location. here's the location that matters the most. here. or here. or here. it's wherever this is. to get customers to come here and stay here, you're going to need an app that connects to all your systems. so they can bank, shop, do what they need to do, and you gotta do it fast. before the competition does. it's tough out here; you better be on the right cloud. today there's a new way to work. and it's made with ibm. could mean less waiting for things like security backups and file downloads you'd take that test, right? what are you waiting for? you could literally be done with the test by now. now you could have done it twice. this is awkward. go to comcastbusiness.com/ checkyourspeed. if we can't offer faster speeds or save you money we'll give you $150. comcast business built for business. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. ebay will begin to run ads on its mobile app some time in the next few months. ebay is hoping to take advantage of heavy usage of that app. ebay users spend 150 minutes per month using the mobile app. those times are three times more than its nearest rival. darden restaurants reporting results just moments ago. earning 32 cents a share 1 cent above estimates. joining us now is morningstar. where is this company right now? they've got new management at this point. is this a time when the situation is improving given the economic backdrop and people should buy this? >> i'd be cautious of this name. i think what you've got going on, you've seen improvement of the core in olive garden. we've seen a shift in the industry. i think they've eroded the pricing power the chains have had. i think to stay competitive they're going to have to price. i'd steer clear of this one. i think it's an improving story, but there's a lot of caution still out there. >> i think the way you talk, no one's going to mcdonald's. no one's going to this. everyone's at chipotle? >> i think we've seen gravitation from both sides. quick service restaurants, fast casual. they see more and more families that traditionally would have gone to casual dining go to fast casual as well. you've seen both sides try to emulate that and copy the fast casual. for the casual dining guys that means cutting prices and margins. >> so how does a company like this that is doing its best just to operate its olive gardens as well as it can and marketing and everything. but when there's demographic shifts in consumer taste, what's it supposed to do? >> i think they're doing some smart things. use of tablets of the restaurants, you have tack-on orders, takeout orders. some of the secondary brands are interesting. things like seasons 52. i think that can attract a wider audience and maybe get them to an audience they never had before. i think that's how you start to build this into a viable long-term story. >> so you diversify away from olive garden. is there a way to fix the core olive garden experience? >> i think it really is critical on just driving a lot of traffic. i think they're looking at other ways but i do think right now it's going to be very tough to get back to 9%, 10% operating margins. i think you're looking at more between 6% and 8% over the next couple years. >> why'd that get squeezed so much? >> mainly on the pricing. i don't think they had had the pricing power they once had. used to be able to charge on an average ticket. as high as $15. that's gone away. that's not an option for this company in my mind. >> we're even making it out to be a zero sum game. if it is, i don't know who the winners are. you can't -- okay. panera, chipotle, who else is replacing fast casual and fast? >> i think we've seen a lot of players that aren't publicly traded to. a lot of small chains under 50 units. i think we've also seen an emergent class of fast casual. i think that could be very dangerous for the traditional casual dining guys. but also might give them a blueprint to look at with less wait staff and operate smaller boxes. something like that. a higher velocity model might do something for an olive garden, other casual dining players to explore. >> you know carbs haven't helped either. the never-endsing pasta pass. all you can eat for seven weeks. val kilmer, i think, actually had been seen in that line. not always -- you can really tell it was him. but all you can eat for $99 in the never ending pasta pass for seven weeks. anyway, rj, i don't know what they should do. clarence is gone. it's a changing world. i appreciate it. happy friday. >> you too. >> and guess what? tgif today. it is today. >> are those still around? >> they are still around. they have alcohol though. >> a lot of people go because it used to be a scene. >> used to be a scene. when we come back this morning, one of our platinum portfolio managers is adding a new pick. plus a scary moment for one of baseball's young superstars. but the beating wasn't the end of the story. we'll have more on "squawk" next. aflac! and a gentle wavelike motion... aahhh- ahhhhhh. liberate your spine, ahhh-ahhhhhh aflac! and reach, toes blossoming... not that great at yoga. yeah, but when i slipped a disk he paid my claim in just four days. ahh! four days? 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(laugh) nice. doing the big things that move an economy. see you tomorrow, mac. see you tomorrow, sam. just another day at norfolk southern. ♪ in "squawk box" sports news. we showed you this scary video earlier of giancarlo stanton hit by a pitch last night. based on the reaction, it seemed like he didn't mean it. stanton was taken off the field on a stretcher. then reed johnson was hit in the hand by the next pitch. that triggered a bench clearing. >> wow. nobody tries to -- you're trying to back the guy out. he didn't mean it by throwing that close. it happened anyway. and then the next guy got hit too? >> yeah. >> yeah. well, that's a little bit of a melee. coming up next when we return, the president trumping the energy. we're going to talk about it. plus our platinum portfolio manager says now is not the time to let it go when it comes to shares of disney. i can listen to this song every day in my household. we love olaf. more when "squawk box" returns. 24/7 it's just i'm a little reluctant to try new things. what's wrong with trying new things? feel that in your muscles? yeah... i do... try a new way to bank, where no branches equals great rates. so i get invited to quite a few family gatherings. heck, i saved judith here a fortune with discounts like safe driver, multi-car, paperless. you make a mighty fine missus, m'lady. i'm not saying mark's thrifty. let's just say, i saved him $519, and it certainly didn't go toward that ring. am i right? [ laughs ] [ dance music playing ] so visit progressive.com today. i call this one "the robox." can you start tomorrow? tomorrow we're booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. tomorrow we go live... it's a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. csx. how tomorrow moves. welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. among the stories front and center this morning, carl icahn's son deciding to stay with his billionaire father's firm. brett icahn scrapping plans to start his own hedge fund. icahn has credited his son for some of his best stock picks in the past including netflix. is cash king again? moving into money market funds. the people are pulling out of domestic equity funds while also buying stocks overseas. again the futures this morning have been indicated relatively flat. we'll see what happens as we get retail sales and some other data as we move towards the opening of trading. the line from the kenny rogers song is you've got to know when to hold them and when to fold them. selling her top-performing stock. sara malek joins us now with more. you had joined us with three picks back on may 30th. our viewers follow you closely, some of you try to mirror what you're doing. you are swapping your top pick. the largest return up 30% since then. disney is up 7%. and your last pick marriott is up 18%. but today you're sticking with disney and marriott and rolling gilead to the side. >> we are. >> and you're taking honeywell. >> we are. we still like gilead over the long run and the buyer tech sector. but given the price appreciation, we think there's more attractive opportunities in companies like honeywell. we think all is well at honeywell. they're doing a sweet job of producing -- >> ooh, sweet. you got all that. keep going. >> their relentless focus on productivity. they also have a great global mix of business with 23% of sales to europe and 15% of sales to the emerging markets. because of their focus on productivity they can almost double earnings by 2018. we don't give out actual price targets but we think there is nice upside. we've owned it for a long time. we think it's a holding for a portfolio. >> you're swapping it out. but you're sticking with disney and florozen. we teased it should you let it go. we've got elsa and anna and olaf. >> we don't think it's time to let it go. following up the blockbuster that was "frozen" they came out with "guardians of the galaxy" which did $500 million at the box office. we have "captain america," "avengers" coming out. >> let's talk marriott. earlier this week marriott made some major announcements of what they think their business is going to be like and major investments. they're going to be spending a lot of money. >> uh-huh. well, marriott has a strong cash flow story. they are still returning cash to shareholders. they bought back 700 million in stock year to date. and the hotel sector looks great. we have low supply growth, high occupancy rates. we think there's room at the end. >> you happy with all those? >> i'm just reading -- yeah. yeah, i'm happy with those. i don't know about gilead. >> you were a gilead fan. >> what's the market cap now? it's almost as big as merck. >> clarify one thing for us. is it over-valued? >> we think that gilead still has a lot of strong fundamentals and catalysts ahead of it including approval of oral hep-c drug coming out. >> $160 billion. there's there with a major pharmaceutical company. you know why. rumsfeld. we talked about that the other day. >> yes. >> some kind of conspiracy there. >> thanks for joining us. there's always people who piggyback on these trades. >> exactly. that's why we do this. >> we'll have you back and see whether you should have swapped out on gilead for honeywell. let's get back to our guest host, jason furman. chairman of the council of economic advisers. the president's job is not just the economy, jason. and given recent developments and watching the speech the other night, can you tell us whether there's -- can you see a little more back burner type at this point? is there any indication that maybe -- he's got a lot on his plate. that maybe when you call him now and say i want to talk about something economicwise, he might say i'm sorry i'm meeting with my syria or ukraine people? >> i think probably like every president he's got to multitask. we talked to him about economic issues this week at the same time he was dealing with his national security issues. he's -- you'll see him out there talking about economic issues. you'll see him continuing to push -- >> that's kind of -- >> there's no rest there. >> you'd think he feels like talking about the economy at this point given -- >> i find it amazing he can walk out of life and death decisions and walk into another room where we're talking about trying to improve college and make it more affordable and he's just as focused on that. but that's what he does. >> so you -- at this point, i mean, no one's perfect in terms of being able to allocate time. i just would imagine that maybe some of the stuff might not become, you know, as pressing as it was three months ago before everything happened. >>do you know, one thing he alws tells us is you stay focused on your job. i'm not going to meetings on our policies related to isil. i'm continuing to focus on the economy. he expects us to continue to do our jobs. >> it's not like we've done a lot anyway with congress. >> if you could give us an idea of the next couple years that remain. what are the priorities? what can get done? what would you like to get done in the next couple years? >> we've talked about some of it. investing in our infrastructure. >> you always have that on there. you never get it. >> well, we got an extension. both parties think we should do it and there's no rewe can't do it. we talked about business tax reform, talked about raising the minimum wage. immigration reform is something the president is going to act on on his own. he's made that clear. just like he did when it came to climate and the emissions of our power plants. so where he can't get congress to act, you'll continue to see him finding places where he can act. >> we're going to talk about tax inversions in the next -- >> in the next segment, right. >> but when you say tax reform, when you think about the way to get it done, there was dodd-frank that was kind of written in the treasury and made its way over to congress. are you going to write a tax reform bill and send it to congress? >> we put out a tax reform framework, did it at the beginning of 2012. it called for 28% rate. it talked in a lot of detail about the number of ways you'd pay for that rate. the way you'd overhaul the international system to have a hybrid that's more competitive. and the cut and simplified taxes for small businesses. we put out a lot of detail and importantly he's put out his mantra behind it. >> but you've been criticized for not putting out a bill. that's been where the criticism has been. >> i don't think that's the issue. i think the people know exactly where we're coming from. and it's just a matter of taking the time and effort to do it rather than, you know, 50 votes to repeal obamacare or other waste of time like that. >> i think we're going to have a deeper dive here on tax inversions in the next segment. >> in fact, up next, warren buffett and senator orrin hatch talking about tax inversions. the administration says it's working on something, but can anything get done before more companies leave the united states? 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>> first of all, let's understand why these inversions happen. they happen for three reasons. one, our tax law is very permissive about the address you have for tax purposes. you buy a smaller company in another company, you're allowed to change your address. two, our tax structure isn't attractive enough for companies to be here in the united states as it should be. and three, our tax structure makes it too easy for you to ship your profits overseas, not pay u.s. taxes on them. ideally -- >> and we do pay a much higher rate. >> that's number two. the united states needs to be more attractive. >> you just said you ship them off shore because you don't want to pay profits here. but the profits are less there. if they were more there, you wouldn't ship them over. >> ideally we'll be dealing with all three of these. you look at the leading republican proposal for tax reform is 25% rate. that's still higher than a lot of nations arounded the world. we wnt compete with a rate of 0%. we are going to need to do something of people locating overseas to pay lower taxes. even as we make our tax code more attractive. we'd love to do all of that. congress was unable to do all of that. we want to legislate just on inversions. congress looks incapable of doing that. the treasury is reviewing the set of options it has. >> what do those options look like? >> that's something that you'll have to hear from the treasury. it's something that they're reviewing right now. but they're very close to a decision. >> you can't speak to any of just at least explaining what they're thinking about? >> i can explain the general issue is one, the tax code is too pervasive about your address. and even -- >> the options that the white house would have to unilaterally end these inversions at least on a temporary basis. >> right. it's the treasury that's working on these options. and i don't -- i wouldn't want to get ahead of them. >> you can't compete with zero if you go to zero. you can compete with zero if you go to zero. >> but you're not worried about our deficit? >> it's 10% of -- we can make up the 10% other places. and the additional capital inflows and the number of jobs that would be created here and all the positive things that would happen from -- >> that just doesn't work. the math doesn't add up. >> it'll work if you tax the individuals that are -- >> you don't want to deal with one issue and then make your long run deficit a lot worse. there's a lot of scope here. and the business community, by the way, is broadly united around the idea of a 25% rate. we've proposed a 28% rate. this is something that we can do. >> can we go to zero, fratto? why can't we go to zero? >> i'd love to go to zero. i've always felt that the best way to tax is to tax people and not -- if you think about the cost of -- people talk about the cost of tax inversions or tax avoidance. and i think the cost of tax compliance which is outrageously expensive for a lot of firms right now. a lot of these efforts that are populous in nature right now, they don't get at the real problem which is we have this really inefficient system. and trying to create a berlin wall around the united states and keeping companies in here and demonizing the companies who have to compete globally isn't the way to do it. we have to make this system just a lot more efficient so these companies can compete. this isn't a radical idea. >> i don't think it's demonization. you look a decade ago and it was a bipartisan consensus we needed to deal with this issue. a month before the election in 2004, congress overwhelmingly passed and president obama signs anti-inversion legislation and people are using similar language to now. >> jason, i'm not saying it's partisan. i said populist. you noted the date correctly. it was right before an election. and there was a lot of attacks on u.s. corporations for, you know, for some of the tax avoidance efforts they were doing. and nothing has changed since then. actually, that's one of my points is we shouldn't -- even if we wanted to do something about inversions, doing it as a one off kind of effort isn't the way to deal with it. we have to deal with it in more comprehensive way. we are not able to get comprehensive tax reform. that was one of the reasons. >> jason, one of the things that concerns me the most is what it means for competitiveness. not just on inversions but companies here look much more attractive to companies overseas. if they come in and buy a company, they're dealing with not having to play by the same rules. and it worries me that american companies are going to get picked off by foreign competitors. how do we stop that? >> there's no debate i think among of us that the best thing to do here would be a broader business tax reform. treasury can't do a broader business tax reform under its administrative authority. treasury can do something about this problem. doing something about this problem would put us in a better position to reform our tax code. we'd have a more robust tax base when it comes around to reform. i also think this isn't just about the money we lose, and we lose a lot of money through this. it's also about inefficiency. do you want our businesses spending their time figuring out companies that may or may not make sense to merge with just to save money on their taxes? we'd rather our businesses spend time about innovation and growth. the problem with loopholes in the tax code is they lead to too much tax planning. >> but i did doing a one-off solution like this, a band-aid solution, does it make it much more difficult to get both sides to come to the table to agree to an overall comprehensive tax code? >> i think it puts us in a better posit to reform the tax code. >> i very much disagree. these one-off efforts make it very difficult to cobble together the kind of coalitions you need to do comprehensive reform. i would love to see comprehensive tax reform including corporate tax reform, but the administration's opposition to territoriality is the biggest obstacle to that. you know, it's -- >> profits are taxed no matter where you earn them. not just the united states. why not give up on the territorial issue? >> we support -- let's understand the system we have today. we have a hybrid international tax system. but it's a pretty stupid one. we pretend to tax you, but in fact most companies keep reinvesting overseas so we end up not taxing you. >> and the money stays over there. >> we have a territorial system today but it's stupid. >> the reason they're leaving it over to -- >> we'd like to move to a hybrid system. it would have a minimum tax. and the reason you want to have that is one, you want to make sure your base isn't getting eroded. because when your base is getting eroded that means you need higher tax rates on companies here in the united states. and that hurts things. and number two, you want a tax that's more neutral. are companies going to locate here in the united states or overseas? we'd like taxes not to be a consideration there. right now they are and they're pushing overseas. a territorial system makes it more tax advantage to invest overseas than here in the united states. we'd like more neutrality between the two of those. you want have zero tax if you invest overseas and a higher tax in the united states? i don't think that makes economic sense. we do want our companies to be globally competitive. we want them to succeed around the world. we can do it a lot smarter than we do it right now. >> the overwhelming number of companies -- >> all the other countries -- >> japan has a minimum tax. a number of european companies -- >> when you look at the number of companies not investing overseas as a tax avoidance scheme. they're taxing overseas to get closer to customers. >> i completely agree with that. we want to encourage that type of investment overseas but some of it is for tax reasons. that's what we don't want. >> but overwhelmingly it's for business reasons. there are occasional reasons that might be for tax reasons, but overwhelmingly it's for business reasons. and we shouldn't penalize those companies for doing that. when siemens does it here in the united states, they get mentioned in the state of the union address. this isn't a bad thing to see them being competitive. >> i completely agree with you and you want a tax system that respects that. but at the same time protects your tax base. even dave camp has a hybrid tax system that takes seriously the fact that you don't want to make it easy for companies to locate profit and production overseas when it would be more economically efficient to be here in the united states. that's the conversation we need to have. >> it'll be a long conversation. i think we have a couple years ahead of us. >> we will continue that conversation. tony, thank you. you're going to be sticking around for a bit longer. coming up, president obama is calling on congress to raise the national minimum wage but others call the idea a job killer. top white house adviser jason furman makes the pitch when we come back. take a look at futures right now. we have green arrows. the dow looking 14 points higher. we are back in a moment. whenwork with equity experts who work with regional experts that's when expertise happens. mfs. because there is no expertise without collaboration. take a look at the stocks to watch this morning. netfl netflix upgraded to equal weight from underweight. the gains have been smaller than peer groups. and now more balanced. shares of conversant. it's being acquired by cash and stock. about -- i'm sorry $2.3 billion. president obama's made it clear he will continue to push for an increase for minimum wage. he wanted to do a $10.10 per hour to take effect next year. jason furman is chairman of president obama's council of economic advisers. jason, as you know, mr. kernen -- i don't know where becky stands on minimum wage. i feel like you're in the middle on that. >> i can guess where joe is. >> when you think about -- >> i said i'd give it to you if you do corporate tax reform. >> -- truly add to the economic prosperity of the country. where does minimum wage really rank? >> 28 million people would get a raise if we raised the minimum wage. president first called for it in the state of the union in 2013. since then you've seen numerous states and cities pass increases. because of those that have already passed, 7 million people are getting a raise. you get another 21 million with federal legislation. to me that's a big deal. >> right. you're an economist so -- >> challenge is a big one. we have to do a lot of things. >> how far can you go with it, do you think? before a business owner says that's one employee too many for me now. >> i'm very comfortable at $10.10. i think it's within the range of types of increases that economists have studied in the past. >> you've done models for the president. what does it look like? the curve. >> i think where we are right now, it's somewhere between a zero and very small impact of raising the minimum wage. and a number of unemployment. in some ways in the short run it will help because that additional demand and purchasing power from those consumers in the economy right now which you were talking before about business investment. one thing holding back business investment has been -- >> from a policy perspective why not let the states do it? >> i think the states have a role. and we're encouraging them to do it. businesses have a role. the federal government as you said is playing its part by raising wages. but, you know, ultimately this has worked well at the federal level setting a basic floor for a country. we think the idea of $20,000 a year doesn't seem like a princely sum. >> but 22,000, if there was a way to create jobs where people make 80, 90, and $150,000. that's where we want to get. we don't want to take the very lowest levels of compensation and raise them by 8%. >> i think we want to do both. >> we make sure we don't hurt the other -- you saw that -- well, there was a study you saw the study that the 28 million get the raise, there was a study that maybe 500,000 whatever, their salary goes from whatever they're making now to zero or there aren't jobs created. there are arguments on both sides. and it seems like we're just dancing around the edges again. we're talking about a lot of people where they may have a second job. they may be just getting into the workforce and they're 19 years old and they're eventually going to be a manager of wherever it is. i mean, it doesn't seem like the big -- to be talking about it every week when we've got these other big problems, i mean, it just seems like we have an election coming up. it's always popular, jason. >> it's popular for a reason. because i think it makes sense to people. >> but it's not going to solve the big problem. >> if you work full-time year round, you shouldn't have to raise your children in poverty at $7.25 an hour. >> in general wage price controls don't make sense. >> i'm going to take you both to lunch and we will try to hash this out. but thank you for being here. steve, thank you very bringing him. kid: hey dad, who was that man? 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what's keeping the consumer up at night? isis. oil prices. interest rates and more. a look at the key drivers for shoppers. plus retail sales data. and bobby bacala talks business. >> 25,000 cash. >> actor steve shripa talks as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. first in business worldwide. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with joe kernen and becky quick. say it ain't snow. the earliest snowfall for this area since 1888. find out where in just a bit. in headlines at this hour, yahoo! says the u.s. government threatened to fine it each day until it turned over data to intelligence agencies. the company lost the fight. tech experts say this paved the way for the government's prism surveillance program. jpmorgan says it has not seen unusual customer fraud related to a recent cyber attack on the bank. the bank making the comments in a new s.e.c. filing. and crocs accused by monopolizing behavior. saying they sue smaller competitors and puts them out of business. smaller competitors who are knocking them off, i'm wondering? >> there's a lot of people trying to knock off crocs. >> i have -- you know, i wear those dorky crocs that are -- you've seen mine. they're like canvas with white soles. i get endless grief from everyone in my family. but i don't care. we're going to get a better read on -- it was a show on. >> i remember. "gilligan's island". >> yes. >> used to wear the bucket top. >> my little buddy. that's right. someone said that in my ear. >> are you the professor? who are you? >> i think i want to be the skipper. >> you're the skipper. >> okay. anyway, the question is, is becky ginger or mary ann? you have the best combinations of both. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. we know who you are, i think, what was his name? mr. howe. ♪ i guess retail sales are going to hit in less than 30 minutes. let's get more on the markets ahead of those numbers. joining us now, we're going to squeeze him into the gilligan. richard bernstein, ceo of richard bernstein advisers and a cnbc contributor. never had a middle name until he got his "squawk box" middle name. a rich, you still think it's a fairly friendly overall environment. you see there are some drum beats of over-valuation and impending disaster that you see on -- you know, on websites that maybe make a living being more sensational. but is there something wicked this way coming? or it's pretty good still? >> well, you know, i mean, first of all, i think when you talk about valuation, one has to consider what is the correct valuation when you have 1.5% to 2% inflation here in the united states. the pc deflators about 1.6 had inflation about 2. what is the right multiple? and our models seem to say given the rate of inflation right now, we're roughly at fair value which also fits our notion of being in a mid-cycle environment. in the early cycle, you're undervalued. mid-cycle you're fair valued. to answer your question more explicitly, i think if you're looking for a recipe for disaster, what you want is deteriorating fundamentals and a drying up -- not a reduction -- a drying up of liquidity nap is a recipe for a bear market. neither of those things are actually happening right now. >> no, they're not. jeff, you've been on and i try to remember each thing you said. we have not had the correction, and i think you thought we might at least -- the games might slow down to some extent. do you think we've been through a rolling correction where we can move out of this trading at some point soon? or do we need to shake out the complacency at some point? >> it's an interesting question. we pursed our research universe of over a thousand companies. and found the stock in raymond james research is down 23.3%. now, our sweet spot is small mid-caps. i have been -- i think we're in a secular market. markets have grown by 6.15% per year since 1989 on average. if you extrapolate that out to 2020, you come up with $183.36 as an earnings estimate. the medium historic multiple on that, you've got 2 842. i think these pullbacks are noise. >> do either one of you gentlemen worry about the notion it can't get better than this in terms of profit margins and profitability? have we squeezed everything out? >> margins have been extraordinarily wide. we all know that. i think everybody knows that. so one would have to wonder if that's in the market already. but number two, remember profitability is a function of two variables. it's margins but also the number of units sold. and what's unfathomable to people is that margins might contract, but as the cycle begins to mature, you might actually sell more units. so overall, profitability might not be as much a risk. >> okay. so that's the revenue growth we finally get that's been missing for years. jeff, true? >> i'm on the same view. i don't think they'll regress to the mean. they don't expand from here, but i think they continue to stay wide for a multiplicity of reasons. a lot of the ceos i talk to, they like their gadgets. to support the new gage fetes they tell them we need to buy new servers. and they say we can outsource this to the cloud. i think that allows you to save a lot of money on i.t. i think it implies that margins are going to stay wider than most people think. >> all right. so rich, instead of just big caps, what are -- you don't have individual names. i mean, do you buy stocks yourself? can you tell us what is in your own portfolio? >> i'm not going to tell you what i invest in personally, but i will tell you what our funds are focused on. that's easy. we still like small and mid-cap industrials. jeff and i have probably been the two biggest cheerleaders for the industrial theme. these companies are gaining market share. again, how many units are you selling? small and mid-cap industrials are gaining market share. i have to be honest with you, a lot of the small cap universe has gotten pretty expensive. what's interesting is if you want sensitivity to the market, you'll find beta is actually very cheap within the s&p 500. you know, if you go to what you call the disrupter stocks or if you go to a lot of small caps, you'll find valuations that are quite stretched, in some cases ridiculously stretched. but large cap is ridiculously cheap. >> jeff, last word. quickly. >> the one thing you need to know is is we're in a secular bull market. that's the only thing you need to know. >> i like it when some of these websites say financial experts say we're in for a huge crash and stuff and then people ask me about that still. and as long as they keep asking, it makes you think maybe we'll hang out a little longer. >> exactly. >> all right. thanks, rich and jeff. >> you bet. when we come back, is the apple watch just the start of how wearable tech will change your life? a look at our completely connected lives right after the break. later, what's going to be the key driver for consumers for the rest of the year? is it cheap gas? cheap money? or fears about isis? a pulse check on spending when "squawk box" returns. the world has gotten you far, but what if you could see more of what you wanted to know? with fidelity's new active trader pro investing platform, the information that's important to you is all in one place, so finding more insight is easier. it's your idea powered by active trader pro. another way fidelity gives you a more powerful investing experience. call our specialists today to get up and running. sometimes they just drop in. always obvious. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there's someone around the office who hasn't had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i'm looking at you phone company dsl. go to comcastbusiness.com/ checkyourspeed. if we can't offer faster speeds or save you money we'll give you $150. comcast business built for business. ♪ live shot of the windy city there, chicago. apple customers can take their first step towards owning the new iphone 6. that can happen today. check out, though, "time" cover story called "never offline." it's pegged to the release of the apple watch and the idea that putting such powerful technology on our wrist is going to literally handcuff us to our computers. here to tell us how wearables will change our lives, "time" editor matt vella. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> let me start with this. i'm going to look at joe for a second. joe is not a fan of this watch. doesn't think he wants this watch and is not so convinced ta the rest of the world is going to want one either. you say that we are on a steady march towards every one of us wearing something. >> that's right. you know, a lot of people have tried to do some kind of wearable technology and most have failed up to this point. this is really the first time that you've seen one of these devices that you could imagine people wanting and a lot of people wanting. >> and to you it's clear that this is the tipping point. is it possible this isn't the tipping point but in the future we do get there? but there's several it rations before it becomes a mainstream product? >> tim cook said he felt they were finally at the beginning of something new during his presentation this week. and whether or not this particular model is an off-the-chart hit or not, it's pretty clear that there's a new platform here and that apple really has a new line of business. >> but people continue to ask the question, what is the killer app? meaning if i'm going to wear this on my wrist, what am i going to get for it? how's it going to change my life? >> you know, people said the exact same thing about the iphone. they said why would i want to read the internet on my phone? i don't think many of us could imagine life without that now. you know, the nice thing about the watch is that it does all the things your phone does, but they've added little features. being able to send each other snapchat-like messages. there's a lot there that, you know, makes it feel special especially compared to -- >> but you need your phone. you have to carry both, right? the other night i watched someone say i can feel her heart beat in my phone. it's like -- i mean in my watch. so somebody's wearing a watch and somebody else's heart beat was -- and it's like, i had a good idea her heart was beating. i didn't understand it. why is that something, matt, that i'd want to do? >> i mean, it's -- you know, it's these little touch points that apple puts into its products that make them feel a little bit special. i mean, you know, they are a little gimmicky. they are a little, you know, flashy. >> if i could do the phone if i didn't need to carry the iphone around and i could do -- or even just text. if i could text people to phone numbers on my watch without carrying the phone around, that way you could go somewhere where you don't want to carry the phone. but you have to have both, don't you? >> yeah, you do. >> so they'll get to that though. then i might change my mind. >> yeah. i think this is the first step down a long process. if you think back to the first iphone, it's practically archaic compared to what we have now in terms of speed and capability. the first one didn't even have apps. so this is the beginning of a long process for apple and for all the tech companies. but this is the sort of first one. >> what kind of watch do you have on, matt? >> i have a jawbone. it doesn't even have a watch face. it tracks my movements. >> i wear a jawbone too, but in terms of battery life, yo i can wear it for a week. are you not concerned that this watch, you're going to have to take it off every day and probably while you're sleeping charge it? >> absolutely. the battery life is probably the biggest, you know, unanswered question mark. they kind of hedged that during their presentation. the people who were showing them to us out here didn't really want to talk about that very much. you know, it will get better. you know, they will sell 10 million, 20 million of them and the technology will get a lot better. there's already reports this morning of what the second generation is going to be able to do that the first generation can't. >> tell us about that. >> well, you know, i think a couple months ago "the wall street journal" reported it would have ten sensors and it never really said whether that was the first generation or the second generation. but you can see, you know, talking to the people at apple, you can see they believe they've got an iphone-like innovation on their hands and it will continue to get better. it will continue to improve as long as people buy them. >> your article did a beautiful job of laying out all the corporations of the companies that have tried to do this in the past, how no one's been successful. why is it you think apple will be successful, why they will be able to sell 10 million to 20 million? >> this is what they do. this is the -- what apple's success has been built on. it's been a process of looking at places where you have technological carrying whether it's tablets or smartphones which had sort of practically died by the time the iphone came out. they looked at what didn't work, what didn't click. and they don't do that. they do what they think will work. >> matt, will we carry devices five years from now or just be wearing all of it? google glass and watches and who knows what. will a phone disappear? the actual hand-he would device? >> it's hard to say. i don't know if it'll be five years, but i think that's coming. i don't know that it'll be a google glass kind of situation. but the thing that's really striking about this watch is that it doesn't look like a piece of technology. it really looks like a -- you know, a piece of fashion and accessory. a piece of jewelry. and i think that's the key difference here. and that's why it'll probably start to take off now. >> matt vella at "time" magazine, thanks so much. check out the cover story today. today's big apple rollout started just a few hours ago. demand seemed to overwhelm the system a little bit. josh lipton joins us with that and the prices coming in. a huge ad today from at&t talking about how you can buy any iphone for $0 down and get $200 off an ipad to boot. >> yeah, becky. we are seeing these reports that, you know, apple, sprint, t-mobile were suffering problems because of the demands for the preorders. the phones are bigger, they're fa faster, better camera. and financial analysts who are covering apple are expecting very strong demand for these next generation phones. >> i think if you look at the market they're going after, the bigger screen samsungs, it has a different feel to it. i think the thinnest and the battery life, the combination of all three of those are going to power this product cycle. >> apple priced the iphone 6 starting at $199. larger 6 plus at $299. but some are looking to get you a better deal. so walmart, for example, will sell the iphone 6 starting at $179 on a two-year contract. iphone 6 plus for $279. carriers are offering trade ins to attract customers. so verizon, $300 credit card when you trade in your phone and purchase a new one. for its part starting today, at&t is letting customers get up to $300. credit they can use to pay off a bill. t-mobile is offering customers the best price for a trade in. if they can find a better offer from a carrier, they will beat the offer, give them the difference back, and top it off with another 50 bucks. not to be outdone, sprint is offering what it's calling its iphone for life plan. so for $70 a month, users lease the iphone 6 and then upgrade to a new version every two years. starting next week on september 19th, these iphones are available for purchase. and analysts saying they think apple could sell 10 million phones that first week. and that would be a new record. and actually, 1 million more than when the 5s and 5c went on sale last year. >> before you go, i got to buy one today. is the iphone 6 plus, is it too much phone? that's all i need to know. you've played with this thing? >> you know, it's going to be i guess up to you, andrew. you've got two choice. 4.7, 5.5. depends what you're looking for from the new phone. obviously a lot of people there today on this preorder looking to pick up that new phone. even reportedly overwhelming some systems in the effort. >> okay. josh, thank you. appreciate it very much. i don't know what i'm going to do. coming up, hot stuff. a spectacular display of nature's raw power. volcano. and it's only september, but the flakes are flying. find out where after the break. dad,thank you mom for said this oftprotecting my future.you. thank you for being my hero and my dad. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance could be one of them. if you're a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. welcome back to "squawk box," everyone. some dramatic images from an erupting volcano in iceland. it continues to send plumes and lava out into the surrounding glacier. and at home it's beginning to look a lot like christmas in september. heavy snow? south dakota. you heard that right. a storm has dumped up to two inches of snow. temperatures are expected to climb back into the 60s by the weekend. coming up, breaking news on retail sales. and a pulse check on the strength of the consumer. and later we've got an actor and small business owner who's here. his special organic sauces are a hit at whole foods and other markets. we're going to talk business, movies, and much more. are we going to eat some of this stuff? i hope we do. take a look at u.s. equity futures at this hour. we have red arrows now that match the marinara sauce. >> you'll have to just eat the sauce no pasta. while every business is unique, everyone is looking for ways to cut expenses. and that's where pg&e's online business energy checkup tool can really help. you can use it to track your actual energy use. find rebates that make equipment upgrades more affordable. even develop a customized energy plan for your company. think of it as a way to take more control over your operating costs. and yet another energy saving opportunity from pg&e. find new ways to save energy and money with pg&e's business energy check-up. welcome back to "squawk box" this morning. more problems for general motors this morning. the company has stopped delivery of 2015 corvettes. they need to fix two potential problems. one with an air bag and one with the parking break. at this point gm hasn't issued a recall. the corvette was designed for the 2015 model year. sales were more than four times what they were during the same period last year. just another problem and headache for gm at this point. yahoo! also spilling the beans on its fight with the government. we talked about this earlier. it's fascinating. saying that uncle sam threatened to fine $250,000 a day unless it turned over to data to agencies. yahoo! argued it was unconstitutional but lost that fight. tech experts say this paved the way for the government's prism surveillance program which was exposed by mr. snowden. >> your hero. >> not my hero. >> we are just a few seconds away from retail sales data for august. we've been watching the futures ahead of those. right now the dow futures indicated down by about six points. this is all coming after five weeks in a row of gains for the markets. the s&p and the dow are within a little bit of question as to whether they can pull that off. it looks like we may end with a down week unless we see massive gains today. the nasdaq is on track for its sixth week in a row of gains. also been watching what's happening with the ten-year note. this morning, that yield sitting at 2.58%. jim, why don't you take it away with the numbers? >> this is fairly significant data. retail sales advance month over month which is as expected. revise, though, however from the last one is plus .3 which is better than expected. import prices came in at negative .9. that's a big reflection of king dollar over the last month that. retail sales auto and gas plus .5. export prices down .5. import prices being down .9 is a big deal. we're in this special place right now where we can have a fed that's arguably wild and still rallying hard. markets should like these numbers. the stock market relatively ignored. still down one in the futures. 10-year yields came in at 2.58. they have gone up a little bit. 2.583 right now. >> all right. jim, stick around for a just a moment. we want to get a little bit more. >> mr. leaisman sitting here. >> consumer showed back up through revisions. the july number was .04. came back to be revised .3. august .6. i'm looking at the control group. maybe .4. but the revision of july, i think what we're talking about here is an upward revision of the third quarter. can't be sure. overall i'm looking at general strength. we don't always get that. a lot of times we know the vehicle sales number was strong 37 this month it showed. up on autos. i'm looking at other places like miscellaneous retail stores. furniture up .7. electronics up .7. a lot of discretionary stuff looking good. there were negatives in general merchandises in department stores. >> before we let you go, jim, with what has been happening with oil prices is that something people are scratching their head on the floor? >> no. it's just a reflection of the strong dollar. to put it in perspective, when gas goes down 40 cents a gallon, everyone uses about 400 gallons of gas per year in this country. so 40 cents is like adding another 160 bucks into the economy per head in this entire country. it's enormous. we're sitting in a nice spot with the strong dollar. keep in mind how good this must feel to the fed. outside of labor we thought we were on the verge of going gang busters. in this last week we saw numbers that seemed relatively soft. this has got to make them feel better from changing to wildly dovish to just mildly dovish next week. >> i suppose there's a question here about how the fed is going to feel about falling import prices. down 0.9%. it looks like it's all petroleum down 4.4%. and i don't think they're going to be too worried about it. but certainly you have two factors that are going to keep a lid on invasion the strong dollar which shows up among other things, down nearly 1%. that's two months in a row here negative import prices. >> no doubt about it. but they can't compete right now with the ecb and bank of japan. they have to stay their course and enjoy the good part of the strong dollar and ignore all the bad parts of it too. what are they going to do? if they pull the lever and try to depress our currency more in comparison to those, that could be disastrous. right now we just kind of -- what's that? >> really quickly, consumer goods autos unchanged import. imports of consumer goods not counting autos, unchanged two months in a row. the lack of inflation is also outside of the petroleum sector. >> jim, i want to thank you very much for all your help this week. you've been wonderful with the numbers. >> my pleasure. thank you. >> have a great weekend. we're going to broaden this conversation right now and talk more about the risk factors that could impact consumers. joining us is a veteran in the retail industry. what do you think of these numbers? they're better than expected. the revisions to the last month numbers, is that tells us that the consumer is feeling good about things? >> this is all good news. the consumer is seeing a lift in wages which we haven't seen in forever. we've got more people working which is good. the import prices are doing nothing if anything a little deflation. when you see an increase in wages and you see deflation in the input, this is always good for retail. i think this is all good news. i don't see anything here that would be concerning to retailers going forward. we've got a better calendar than we had last year. we can't have as bad of weather as last year. we've got more people raising -- >> it's snowing already. >> last year was the worst weather for retail in 50 years. it could happen again, but if you're a statistician, we're going to say it's not going to be as bad as last year. >> so there was a mystery out there how could we have this number of jobs out there and more people working and retail sales in the month of july? the market got a spook from that number when it came out. .04 pretty much 0 when you start to do the rounding there. does that solve this mystery when you revise up july and now have a decent number for august? >> i think this is what we thought should happen. we all knew august was pretty good month. the question was how will it show up in official numbers. if you're looking as a retailer at apparel, home goods, all that, we knew we had a pretty good month. >> so spin it forward. back to school, lower oil prices, and then the christmas season. what's your expectation? >> well, you know, if gas really goes to $3.20 a gallon and we put money in the consumer's pocket, we're going to see good sweater sales. if they don't spend it all on cars and that doesn't look like it's slowed down really in this report, but we all think cars are starting to top out from the point of the interest of the consumer. if that's true, we're going to see a strong back half of the year for the discretionary retail. and we're going to see that happen at the right time. the fourth quarter is all that really matters. that's happening right now. so i think we're going to see the strongest back half for apparel sales in the last five years. consumer confidence is good. >> but does apple suck all the wind out of retail sales? and the thing that blew me away was the idea that if the watch doesn't come until january. so the extent i wanted to buy all the "squawk" anchors for their stocking, i can't do it. >> i'm intriguing by the watch. you think it's a bust. >> i didn't say a bust. it's not going to be a big deal. last year 100% of the retail sales, the growth in retail sales came from a.samsung, appl and amazon. apple is already selling the 5. >> think it it was available for christmas and didn't sell anything. >> if steve's buying, i want one. >> if it's free, i'll take three of them, right? >> what do you make of all the cash that consumers are spending on all the subscriptions that have to do with these devices whether it's spotify, your phone bill. >> that's been the biggest issue. so much more of your money is consumed with ongoing payments. but the iphone 6 is not going to really change that. we're not going to see a bunch of new people take on smart phones because of the iphone 6. it's all replacement. >> do you have any hair left here? if you have it left, do you leave it here? >> yes, i have some hair left. >> what's caused you to say you're going all the way? and you look bad ass and you would look like lex luthor if you do it. >> i did it because i wanted to look like lex. >> that's what i mean. he looks like a bad ass. >> i consider these the sacred relics of a once thriving civilization. >> i didn't. >> we've got to go. >> this is going to be awesome. thank you. we appreciate it much. coming up, is it sauce or gravy? "sopranos" actor steve schirripa is going to settle the controversy once and for all. he's making his way out. we're going to pour marinara sauce everywhere. we're back in a moment. this is a burrito made with chocolate, soybeans, and apricots. what kind of chef comes up with this? a chef working with ibm watson, on the cloud. ingredients are just data. watson turns big data into new ideas. and not just for food. watson is working with doctors and bankers to help transform their industries. today there's a new way to work. and it's made with ibm. in a we believe outshining the competition tomorrow quires challenging your business inside and out today. at cognizant, we help forward-looking companies run better and run different - to give your customers every reason to keep looking for you. so if you're ready to see opportunities and see them through, we say: let's get to work. because the future belongs to those who challenge the present. welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. take a look at the futures. they're a little bit weaker this morning. dow futures down by 12 points. s&p down by 1 point. virgin galactic taking flight for an dperz. it looks like two planes with two fuselages. it's designed to carry shuttles up to be launched into space. they've now been pushed back to february or march of next year. he's best known for his role of bobby bacala on the "sopranos." >> you got it. >> he's a "new york times" best selling author. now pasta sauce expert with his signature tomato sauces called uncle steve's italian specialties. you sent me some after we had dinner together. >> yes. >> had some mutual friends. joining us now steven schirripa. >> nice to be here. i've done -- you know, i started late. you know, i didn't start acting until i was in my mid-30s. got on "the sopranos" when i was 40. for the last 15 years i've squeezed a whole lot of stuff in there. >> and what were you before? >> i was an entertainment director in las vegas. i was a maitre d' for many years. born in brooklyn, moved to vegas after college. became a bouncer. then an executive at the riviera hotel. it's like a whole other life, you know? >> i would see him before i knew him at a great restaurant. >> it's a good restaurant. >> great place to go. and there's some connected dudes in there, i think. >> yeah, sure. but a lot of places in the city. >> have connected people. i don't know and i don't talk about it and i would never point them out. >> but there's connected people and there's ones that want to be connected. they want you to think they're connected. >> but there was one time honestly -- i don't know if i'm allowed to tell this story. you know, sal who's great. and i said is there anyone connected. he said there's never anyone connected here. and he turned around and victoria gotti was there. >> he said the right thing. >> yeah. >> he didn't want to give it up. that's why he stayed there so long. you got to keep it quiet. >> that's right. gravy or sauce? >> sauce. there's always sauce in my house. >> that's g-1. that's where we get it from when he's there with mikey. >> listen, that's exactly right. but people -- my grandmother used to call it gravy. to me it's more like the sunday sauce where you have meat balls and sausage. that's kind of gravy. it's a whole meal. this is just pasta sauce. it's just sauce. all organic, gluten free, kosher. we covered all the bases. >> you did. when i put it in, it's got a little spicy thing. >> one of them does. then we have the tomato basil. you tasted it. this is the first jar sauce i've had in my life. honestly. >> how long ago did it start? >> we started about six, seven months ago. >> is that it? >> it's a new company. we hit whole foods any week now. >> really? so that now makes it suitable for your household. right? >> he's a snobby guy? >> no! >> no gmo. this is all clean. >> jersey guy just because i live on the island the thinks -- >> open up the jar and stick your finger in. >> this is really good. this is delicious. >> it's really good. everyone has loved it. like i said, it's -- if i made a big dish of pasta forfantastic. >> you would never know. >> he trashes jersey all the time. >> i work hear every day. >> you got to be careful going home, man. >> i am. i don't know what is -- >> jersey's great. >> what did i get into. this is the best stuff i've had all day. wow. >> so it's a new company. it started out with my mother's recipe. made it better. >> you must have friends. >> i do have friends. >> what's the latest -- and god rest his soul, one of the greatest actors. i used to say and people say he couldn't be on a tv show and be one of the greatest. but i watched gandolfini's range. one of the greatest ever. >> not only that, he wassed eds good a guy as he was an actor. really good guy. i've told the story before. one year he held out for more money. he called every one of us, 16 people, and gave us $33,333 a piece. another time i was at vegas when we were doing something together and we were having breakfast. he said last night you did the work, he told the business manager give him 10 grand. i said i'm fine. >> have you seen "the drop"? >> i have not. >> that looks pretty good. >> that was his last movie. he did a movie with me. i wrote a kids book and he came up to montreal, flew up for one day from l.a. it was a movie for nickelodeon and he shot all day and then got back on the plane. that was a complete favor. he didn't have to do that for me. he was a good guy. a terrific actor. when you worked with him and you were supposed to be scared, you didn't have to act scared. he made you scared. he was a big guy. >> did the character tony sparano, what happened at the end? >> i always said he was alive and nothing happened. what you saw is what you got. you know? nothing happened. all the conspiracy theories, all the this guy with the members only jacket, nothing happened. he was alive, well, with his family, and life marches on. that's my opinion. >> you owe a lot to "the sopranos." i mean, it was the first time you realized that you could have the greatest -- i mean, there's no movie where you put it together all the episodes of "the sopranos" and you have that experience of living something like that. and it could do it netflix, all of a sudden. >> it changed tv. >> it did. >> billions. >> it was at times like people said it was an 86-hour movie. >> right. >> you could sit down and -- listen. it's seven years later, it's off the air, everyone still talks about it. there's not a day i don't get stopped. you know, all of us. it was ground breaking tv. >> did you know that at the time in the very beginning? >> i came on the second season. and no, i did not know. and the guys who were there from day one had no idea. they said, you know what? we're going to come in. we'll do this pilot. even jim said we'll do the pilot, it probably won't go. we'll make a payday and i'll move on. it became the bikest thing where parties and every sunday people were watching this. monday morning everyone was talking about it. >> how did you get into acting in your mid-30s? >> i was working with a lot of comics at the riviera. one said i'm doing this thing in l.a., would you want to do it? i never even read a script and i flew to l.a. and i did it and i got to tell you, it was -- it was one of those moments where it really -- i'm sweating over here. and you know it was one of those moments where i literally was high on the way home. i went, this is great. >> never an acting lesson? >> never a lesson. then i -- the funny thing is i got on the show. then i started taking acting lessons and started getting into it. i still do it now. i started learning more and more. i kind of did it opposite. i got the job and then i tried to learn to see what i was doing. >> you are such a perfect entertainment director at the riviera. i would -- that is something you could be cast in as well. you played yourself. if in a movie called "welcome to hollywood" when i was first starting out. i would fly to l.a. i had money. i wasn't a struggling actor. i was lucky. fly to l.a. go on auditions. get bit parts here, there. at one point i did a movie in toronto. i said, they were real actors. i called my wife and i said, i think i can do this for real. i think i can really do it. >> why don't we start a chain of bada-bings. >> they had one in vegas. you've got to come up with another idea. >> how much is this? >> most places, it retails $7.99. go to the website, uncle steve's ny.com, you can buy it there it'si it's rolling you the. >> this tomato basil, i'm not lying. i said i read the richard branson book yesterday. this is different. this is great stuff. >> you can cook for your inlaws. >> pretend i made it? >> you have no idea. >> i wanted to be italian. for a while i was okay. after "sopranos" i wanted to be italian. >> thank you very much. coming up, jim cramer from the new york stock exchange as we get ready to wrap up the week on wall street. we'll have to get him to have this tomato sauce at the hotel. with universities across the state. for better access to talent, cutting edge research, and state of the art facilities. and you pay no taxes for ten years. from biotech in brooklyn, to next gen energy in binghamton, to manufacturing in buffalo... startup-ny has new businesses popping up across the state. see how startup-ny can help your business grow at startup.ny.gov wait, wait, wait, it's wait, wait, wait...whoa, does she have special powers when she has the shroud? 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>> i'm from philadelphia, it's obviously gravy. >> it is gravy. >> i did gravy. i did sauce the other day. this had no tomato paste in it, no wine it in. i did a cream-based one saturday. got about 100 jars. i'll be serving. >> wow. >> i'm serious. a lot of plums, beef steaks, early girls. i make each one. >> way to go. >> all right, my friend. god knows what you're doing. you've got a bed and breakfast, restaurants, sauce. >> got to make a living. >> you've got a farm. >> gravy. >> not allowed to invest in anything. what do you do with the proceeds here? >> right. you don't have an apple watch yet. >> no. apparently there's not enough -- the apple watch needs a few more apps is what i'm told. >> it's what? >> it's not as ready as i'd like to think. >> really? >> yeah. that's the call i'm getting. let's see what happens. >> see you in a couple of minutes. >> okay. coming up, never underestimate our audience. today we've been talking about joe's crocs and "gilligan's island." >> my what? >> your crocs. >> a new picture settling the debate which characters we'd play. opportunities aren't always obvious. sometimes they just drop in. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. opinions. there's no shortage in this world. who do you trust? whose analysis is accurate? how do you make sense of it all? a simple, unbiased stock score consolidated from the opinions of independent analysts... is that too much to ask? nope. equity summary score, powered by starmine, will help you execute your ideas with speed and conviction. and it's only on fidelity.com. open an account and find more of the expertise you need to be a better investor. there was no question she reminds you every day. but your erectile dysfunction-that could be a question of blood flow. cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any symptoms of an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. big day? ah, the usual. moved some new cars. hauled a bunch of steel. kept the supermarket shelves stocked. made sure everyone got their latest gadgets. what's up for the next shift? ah, nothing much. just keeping the lights on. (laugh) nice. doing the big things that move an economy. see you tomorrow, mac. see you tomorrow, sam. just another day at norfolk southern. check out this tweet. i guess i could be the skipper and you could be thurston howell, but you are my buddy. >> you want me to be gilligan. >> i don't know. do you want to be marianne? tina louise is still around. i think anyway. makes you wonder if you were on that island lost for days and days, who do you think paired off? any idea? i mean the professor? ginger, marianne? >> he always hung out with marianne. >> think of "the brady bunch." i mean we had no idea. >> it's time for "squawk box." a >> good friday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." made it through the week almost. one more to go. so far the nasdaq is the only index up for the week going for six straight weeks. that's the most in 1 1/2 years. our road map will go like this. retail sales good, raising in august. he'sing some concerns about consumer spending as we look ahead to a more hawkish fed
the policy that saved the auto industry and how this kind of active industrial policy can bring a surge in american manufacturing. he needs to push the overdue construction in this country, roadway, rail, brick and mortar investment, a campaign that will bring this country aggressively into the 21st century. he pushed that big jobs bill in his first weeks in office that kept the economy from heading off a cliff. he needs to show us what a second bill will look like. the more he paints a picture of his second term economic building he agenda, the better. chuck todd is nbc's chief white house correspondent and political director and jonathan martin is politico's senior political reporter. i brought you on as the big brains. i was at the al smith dinner. a bunch of rich irish, i get it. the fact of the matter -- >> finger on the pulse. >> not regular. this thing seem to be drifting around. i don't want to bring a lot of numbers in. is there a drift, a turn, is it moving towards romney clearly ever since that first debate? is that a safe assessment or is it not? >> i think itoved clearly in romney's direction. i think it is now sort of sitting there. the question is does he still have a little momentum or did the president stop him? and, you know, that's -- >> so that's -- a little more momentum left but he gained ground. >> he gained a lot of groun. this is a coin flip race. it's about whether mitt romney can break through in the three midwestern states, ohio, iowa, and wisconsin. it's the only way the math works. >> you're imploying it's going to be so close in the popular vote that these electoral decisions are going to really matter. >> i think they absolutely are going to matter. >> there's not going to be -- >> colorado and virginia -- >> you don't see a national mandate crossing the country -- >> not right now. i am still a believer that it's still possible. >> i think it's still possible. >> what do you think -- do you agree with him it basically moved a big space toward romney after that first debate and that sort of came to a still, that swing, or has it in your mind? >> i think it is still moving in romney's direction. >> okay, fine. >> and i think one of two things are going to happen. either the obama campaign is going to sweat out an electoral vote victory where they put together a combination of the states chuck mentioned, iowa, wisconsin, and nevada and romney can't get to 270 and they sweat out a tough race, negative race. they grind it down and they get 275. or in the next couple days here we do see that national swing and romney does make sort of huge -- >> and sweeps it. >> at what point does it become a popular vote election? >> if romney moves. it could happen. it would only happen in the romney direction. >> if he has a strong movement the next two weeks that he had two weeks ago -- >> correct. >> is he a winner? >> it's hard to madge -- absolutely, yes. >> let's look at the president today. let's look at the daily show. the president tried to sell -- good job. i'm not sure he's done yet. let's watch. >> four years ago i said i'd end the war in iraq. we did. said i would pass health care reforms make sure people don't go bankrupt when they get sick. we have. said we had refocus on al qaeda. we have. made sure that we saved an auto industry that was on the brink of collapse. we've done that. so we've got a very strong story to tell whether it's on social issues like don't ask, don't tell, or economic issues that matter for middle class families. >> does that lean forward enough or is that just the past? >> it feels like the past but one of the odder things we're seeing in the polling is the right track/wrong track is moving in the direction that should be helping the president. and yet mitt romney is the one making -- is still making gains even as people feel better, both with the job the president is doing -- this is what's weird about this. this is not a seesaw. the romney move up is not correlating with some sort of obama going down on his job rating. >> right. >> and that is -- >> could it be that the president outran his string? could it be he outran his string. his good news came too late? >> that's a very strong possibility. >> the housing market is up, job claims are going down -- >> but it came two months too late. i think the best thing to happen to romney was that first debate. you had 70 million people who finally saw him, not the caricature in the tv ads. they saw him in the flesh, i'll tell you what, i have been talking to a lot of swing folks in places like new hampshire, places like florida last couple days. operatives in both parties in those swing states and they say that was a huge moment because for the first time people saw, yes, this is somebody who could be applausible alternative. it doesn't mean they were willing to sort of buy the house, but, yeah, i can live here. >> they let him in the house. once you let him in the house it's hard to say get out of the house. >> here is a fun -- >> he's sitting on the recliner. >> here is a fun nugget about the first debate. the time between first and second debate, it's the longest period of time between a first and second debate since 1988. that's also what hurt the president and helped romney. he got two weeks' of momentum out of this debate. the president needed -- >> he's got five weeks to live off that first debate between that election -- >> he lived off it for longer than mondale got with reagan. he lived it on longer -- >> unemployment -- the employment numbers are getting better in 41 states. i thought the joke last night, you're asking me about the al smith dinner. romney made fun of obama by saying you can say based on the september numbers you're better off than you were four weeks ago. i mean, they're starting to put down the fact of this late recovery. >> that could be a huge challenge. the idea that the vp debate, chris, or the debate at hofstra earlier this week were going to somehow turn this around for obama, it hasn't happened yet. >> it's slowed it down. i think you're seeing evidence that it sort of -- romney didn't lose any ground. he didn't peel anything, but i think the president stopped the erosion. >> let me ask you about this question of what you think. i know you don't want to take political positions or partisan positions, but i will. in fact, this is an analysis. i think the american people will not vote for nothing. they're not going to vote for obama's track record, not vote for romney's business know-how. they're looking for a plan they can say when i voted it meant something. i have heard people say i like this guy romney because he had that five-point plan, he had something i could see. business guy, i'm going to do these things. obama has done a lot more at the national level than romney ever thought of doing but he doesn't turn it into a future map. he said i have done the automobile, i did the stimulus, did health care, but where does that point to what they're going to do? >> their investment and theory of the case is the way to get re-elected in this environment is to render romney as unacceptable. >> doesn't work. what do we do now? >> they're still doing it. look at today for example -- >> look at the president today. cue it up. let's show the president because i agree with you. instead of trying to build the case for the president staying in the game, being kept in a starting pitcher, they keep making the case against the guy in the bull pen and i don't think that's the way it works. here he is this afternoon the president called out romney for shifting positions on issues like equal pay, women's hale, taxes and coining a new phrase for his opponent's condition. let's watch him. >> i mean, he's changing up so much and backtracking and side stepping, we've got to name this condition he's going through. i think -- i think it's called romnesia. that's what it's called. and if you come down with a case of romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for president, here is the good news. obama care covers pre-existing conditions! we can fix you up! we got a cure! >> we've got a big fight coming up later in the show about women and this whole thing and you two guys are going to talk about it as distant people here, males, but is that going to be an issue here now because i saw those younger women there. i saw cecile richards introduced him in northern virginia today. my question is without a gender gap, can a democrat win? >> no. no chance. no chance. they have to. >> because if the issue is health, education, it's women's rights, the whole plethora of issues. >> that's why when you see the race this close and then you'll see some polls that will be a two or three-point race but there's no gender gap you're like throw that poll out. there's a gender gap in american politics. >> kathleen turner and tough hom rays in a minute not just you guys but my question is how can one guy one night, he walks in, very impressive, even pushy. he is. he's a bully. and yet he seemed to impress a lot of women, romney. >> sure. >> why does his manner impress people? >> the perception of him as haley barbour said he was an out of touch plutocrat married to a known equestrian. when people saw he was a serious politician not the thurston howell character, it helped him. i think that's still the case. >> you don't think he was that guy? i thought -- he looked like a big business big shot. >> but by the way in the first debate you said he was kind after bully. no, he wasn't in the first debate. i thought there was a civility to him. >> covering up for lack of deference. >> on the obama care issue. >> he did little subtle things that i trl thought he made a mistake no not doing in the second debate. that he was too aggressive and too hot. >> hold on, you'll get your chance. can you imagine obama had done that to a sitting president? >> they would have brought the police in. >> it was not a good moment for him there. i thought the first debate what helped romney is that it came across with a civility. it was toughness with a smile. >> right. >> it was toughness with a deference. >> pushy but without -- >> covering it up. >> a bit of cordiality about the wedding an verse and then a lot of good civility. he didn't call him mr. obama, he called him mr. president. throughout there's a lack of deference. >> that's what a challenger was has to do when you're running against the president. >> treat him like he's not president. >> make him think you're as presidential as the actual president. you have been through this. >> anyway, thank you. i wouldn't be that kind. i think he was so lacking in deference it was db. >> the second debate he lacked deference. >> the first time he masked it. chuck todd, thank you, gentlemen, smart guys. jonathan martin. coming up, the battle for the female vote, can't help republicans when congressman joe walsh says concern for the health of the woman is just an excuse to have an abortion. kathleen turner comes here, the kathleen turner, to fight the fight for women. also it got hot in senate debates across the country. check out that bout between sherrod brown and his republican opponent josh mandel. >> being called a liar, a liar by the winner of the pants on crown fire is just a pretty remarkable thing for a young man to say or for a man of any age to say in a political debate. >> that was one of the many roundhouse punches thrown last night in senate debates around the country. we're going to bring you the important action. it's going to get hot here. and monday, the last of the presidential debates coming up now. this one on foreign policy. a home game for the president, but the president needs to put out the bottom line on what happened in benghazi and get it over with. let me finish with this from the past trying to take charge of the country's future. what a bunch of troglodytes out there. this is "hardball," the place for politics. getarian... look at these teeth! they're made for meat! 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time to compare plans and see what's new. you don't have to make changes, but it's good to look. maybe you can find better coverage, save money, or both. and check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care law. ♪ medicare open enrollment. now's the time. visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare. ♪ when it comes to issues critical to women, the right to make your own decision about your health, the right to be treated fairly and equally in the workplace, governor romney wants to take us to policies more suited to the 1950s. >> that's for sure. anyway, welcome back. president obama campaigned today in virginia, northern virginia there. george mason. kept the focus on women. a lot of young women there and also cecile richards introduced him. the republican party has taken issues related to women that can only be described as extreme. we'll run through the list including a gop platform that criminalizes abortion. now we've got a new entry following his debate last night. the illustrious, i mean that totally sarcastically, joe walsh satisfied allowing an exception for abortion when the mother's life is at risk is not scientifically or medically necessary. >> this is an issue that opponents of life throw out there to make us look unreasonable. there's no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing. with advances in science and technology, there is -- health of the mother has been -- has become a tool for abortions any time under any reason. >> and this quote, unbelievable the way these guys are talking, scientific theory to todd akin's theory to back it up that women don't get pregnant from a legitimate rape. in other words if they don't want to get pregnant, they aren't getting pregnant. anyway, here is a sign of how important democrats believe abortion rights are to their fate. this chart shows the number of ads for democratic candidates on this issue, the blue one up there, and all races that mention abortion, contraception, and funding for planned parenthood have increased much more than for republicans in red. joining us is activist and actor kathleen turner. and managing editor of the agree ceo joy reid. two great women to talk about it. they don't want to call it a war on women, but i got to tell you, this guy walsh again, the other day said my mother was told not to have any more kids at the risk of her life. this is what happens. this is real. how could he just come along and say you can't get pregnant if you get raend. they throw this stuff out. >> what's scary is he and akins are by no means the exceptions. i mean, this is going on continually in every state across our country. the idea -- the cdc has stated that availability of contraception and a woman's ability to control her reproductive life has been the greatest health advancement in the 20th century leading to the greatest economic rise in that women can now have higher degrees, earn higher hourly wages, 40% of women earn more than their husbands. so this is not simply a question of women's right. it is also an economic question. >> my question to joy, we call this with women's issue because it's women who prior marly take responsibility for contraception. both engage in sex, both knowing there's no protection going on and not taking responsibility when that happens but women have to be the first responders you might say because they've got to live with it. here is the question. here is the question. why don't men and women both say birth control is a darn good thing? we should make sure it's available to women who are working. as resplendently and prodigiously as possible. spread it around, birth control, get it out there. we want to reduce the number of abortions, unwanted pregnancies. do something about it, stop talking about it and passing bills that don't mean anything. your thoughts. >> and a guy like joe walsh who won't even pay his child support. he won't take responsibility for the birth he's directly responsible for producing. chris has a great point, but birth control has become yet another part of the culture wars, and you have guys like walsh that have taken this hard and fast position which is anti-abortion. just to give statistics to mr. walsh in case he needs to be educated on them, maternal death still happens in this country. the united states is 39th in the world behind countries like greece and germany, albania has a better rate in terms of maternal death versus places like houston. specifically, especially in red states where you have got something like 16 deaths, maternal deaths per 100,000 birth according to a study in atlanta in 2010. this is still a very real problem and there are still very real women dying -- >> let's get off sex -- i want to get off sex for a minute and obviously reproductive rights. i want to say something about equal pay. why has governor romney refused to say as of this moment, friday afternoon at 5:00 eastern time, he's refused to say why he's against the equal pay bill. he won't say whether he's for or against. >> i don't think it's just about the equal pay. i think he's obviously not giving many specifics about almost anything. i wanted to follow up on your point about contraceptives being something that both men and women must be for. i'm chairman of the board -- >> i know that. you were at the beginning. >> one of the things i believe we have great common ground on is the fact that what we want is no child unwanted. >> yeah. >> that every child should be wanted. which means every child should be planned. and give those conditions, the ability to access, when you see this new ad about a woman saying, oh, well, romney is not against contraception at all, this is ridiculous because it doesn't mean contraception is even available to that woman whether romney personally is for it or not. >> he means it's legal. that's thenonsensical -- >> it doesn't mean the woman can get her hands on it. >> he only did that to basically be dishonest. the issue is not legality. that was decided in the '50s. it's access, availability, affordability. joy, i always wonder about the beat reporters following romney around. when he says that malarkey or whatever the latist irishism we're supposed to use, when he says that, i'm still for access, it's clearly -- i hate saying it lying -- he's dishonest about it. he's not answering the question of should it be in your health care plan. should any employer be able to deny it to a woman. >> he's the ultimate niche marketer. whatever audience he's in front of he's saying what he needs to get elected. he romney seems to be a person that's an empty vessel willing to be filled with whatever he thinks is politically expedient at literally that moment. you get the feeling five minutes later he could say i have changed my mind, i'm now against contraception. his wife backed that up on "the view." they're testing the proposition that voters are so shallow and are not paying any attention whatsoever except for the moment that he's speaking to them. >> let me make a case to you. you're the expert. a couple things i want to get to. it isn't just boo sex and reproductive rights and abortion. that's the way the republican right lights to paint it. if you're a woman you generally take the primarily responsibility for the older parents. you call them, keeps up with their health care, and you make sure they're taking advantage of medicare. you know women are going to live longer. they just do. so women are much more concerned about social security being there for them. social security and medicare. there's a whole range of issues women have a more personal interest in than men and why in heck with a woman vote for romney and against those issues? >> i cannot imagine. i cannot understand this at all. i mean, i think that this election should be -- women should be to this election what the youth were in 2008. what i do not understand and i'm very fearful of is the fact that women are so underrepresented, and we are the majority in this country, and our needs, we accept the fact that our needs are not prioritized. i find this very difficult to understand. >> well, the squeaky wheel. >> yeah. >> just to add to that point, i think democrats have a harder job typically in elections. democrats are trying to defend this big social compact, these big ideas from the 20th century whether it's social security and medicare, women's rights and access to an abortion, these are all of these big sort of amorphous things democrats are saying we're here owe to defend the past and defend the gains. republicans have a much simpler job, just don't pay attention to any of that. jobs. don't pay attention to that. unemployment. they're driving home this very specific message, including to female voters. that's what romney is doing. he's saying ignore all of these big generalizations that the democrats are talking about that you take for granted. >> remember what the governor said the other day. he was asked if he would sign a bill outlawing abortion across the country. he said it would be a terrific idea. he up next, you and molly ivans, [ male announcer ] there are only so many foods that make kids happy. and even fewer that make moms happy too. with wholesome noodles and bite sized chicken, nothing brings you together like chicken noodle soup from campbell's. it's amazing what soup can do. mitt's got big plans right out of the gate. >> i will repeal obama care and stop it in its tracks on day one. >> starting on day one, i'm going to do what it takes to get america back to work. i will on day one put a halt to all the regulations that were put in during the obama years. >> mitt is going to keep those promises i know because i have his day one schedule right here. 8:00 a.m. to noon, inauguration. 12:30, appoint cabinet. 1:00, take photo for white house i.d. card. 1, 07, retake photo. 1:45 repeal obama care. 4:00, pick nuclear launch codes, maybe zip code plus ann's birthday, question mark? >> back to "hardball." first to last night's al smith dinner up in new york. as you can see, i was up on the dais at the big event seated right behind president obama and mitt romney. here is the view i had from my seat. i have to say, thanks to tom more ran and his global food program concern for taking this great photo right in front of us there. in his own jake-laden speech, the president made a specific apology regarding his performance in the first debate. >> i particularly want to apologize to chris matthews. four years ago i gave him a thrill up his leg. this time around i gave him a stroke. >> a better shot of me sitting right over there. that was something. now to more of the night featuring both presidential candidates. >> at campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes. blue jeans in the morning perhaps, a suit for a lunch fund-raiser, sport coat for dinner, but it's nice to finally relax and wear what ann and i wear around the house. >> i went shopping at some stores in midtown. i understand governor romney went shopping for some stores in midtown. sometimes it feels like this race has dragged on forever. but paul ryan assured me that we've only been running for two hours and 50-something minutes. >> don't be surprised if the president mentions this evening the monthly jobs report where there was a slight improvement in the numbers. >> the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since i took office. i don't have a joke here. i just thought it would be useful to remind everybody. >> president obama and i are each very lucky to have one person who is always in our corner. someone who is a comforting presence without whom we wouldn't be able to go into the day. i have my beautiful wife ann, he has bill clinton. >> spoiler alert, we got bin laden. >> actually it was mostly a pillow fight, especially by the president. now the big debate, not the presidential one. earlier this week i showed you part of my encounter with bill o'reilly for jon stewart's autism benefit "night of too many stars." there was a lot where that came from. o'reilly and i had strict guidelines to stick to in our debate. take a look. >> you know the rules of the debate. neither participants shall be permitted to speak without first filling their lungs with helium. the participants may continue to speak only if the helium has kept up the pitch of their voice. >> we have to start now. why don't you ask a question. >> you inhale, they decide. >> that means like it or lump it. >> our annual deficits are now above -- you might want a little more. $1 trillion a year. the president says it's time to raise taxes on the rich. governor romney says that would inhibit job creation. >> well, i don't agree with that. >> i say we have to go back to the clinton tax rates and get the hell out of afghanistan. huck catch the full production if you want to this sunday on comedy central at 8:00 a.m. eastern. up next, if you thought this week's presidential debate got hot, wait until you see what happens in some senate debates around the country last night. it was like thursday night fights, and we've got the highlights next. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. i'm a conservative investor. i invest in what i know. i turned 65 last week. i'm getting married. planning a life. there are risks, sure. but, there's no reward without it. i want to be prepared for the long haul. i see a world bursting with opportunities. india, china, brazil, ishares, small-caps, large-caps, ishares. industrials. low cost. every dollar counts. ishares. income. dividends. bonds. i like bonds. ishares. commodities. diversification. choices. my own ideas. ishares. i want to use the same stuff the big guys use. ishares. 8 out of 10 large, professional investors choose ishares for their etfs. introducing the ishares core, etfs for the heart of your portfolio. tax efficient and low cost building blocks to help you keep more of what you earn. call your advisor. visit ishares.com. ishares. ishares. yeah, ishares. call 1-800-ishares for a prospectus which includes investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. read and consider it carefully before investing. c'mon, michael! get in the game! 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[ laughs ] hey! fire bad! just have to fire roast these tomatoes. this is going to give you a head start on your dinner. that seems easier [ female announcer ] new progresso recipe starters. five delicious cooking sauces you combine with fresh ingredients to make amazing home-cooked meals. i'm julia boorstin with your cnbc market wrap. the dow marks the 25th anniversary of black monday with a 205-point slide. the s&p drops 24 and the nasdaq mets by 67. ge shares fell 3% after quarter revenue fell short of estimates. ge own i a minority stake in nbc universal. mcdonald's skidded today after profits and expectations. home sales dropped 1.7% last month but home prices were up more than 11%. that's it from cnbc, first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." ♪ back to "hardball." some fireworks in some key races last night, senate races. showed in the down ballot debates how exciting they can be, and contentious. in ohio, wisconsin, connecticut, virginia, and missouri last night, just last night, red and blue faced off. we me is david corn and poll lit coast's senior washington correspondent, jonathan allen. let's take a look at the action from the always interesting state of ohio. here is republican josh mandel challenging sherrod brown in ohio. they kept up the attacks against each other. here they are in last night's debate going at it. >> senator, you are a liar. you're falsely attacking me and i won't stand for it. you might want to try to push people around in washington, but you're not going to push me around. >> being called a liar? a liar? by the winner of the pants on crown fire is just a pretty remarkable thing for a young man to say or for a man of any age to say in a political debate. josh mandel as we know has trouble telling the truth. if we can't trust josh mandel to do his job, to show up for work. >> i must be getting old, he looked 10 years old. is he a real threat? >> it's ohio, a key state, obviously a lot of money going in on the presidential side. the interesting thing what they were referencing is mandel ran an ad saying that sherrod brown was responsible for all the jobs lost from ohio to china and elsewhere, and politifact.com, the fact checking organization, gave him a pants on fire rating for that ad, and he got that rating and said, great, i'm going to run this ad again and again and again. >> that's the new thing. if you're caught not telling the truth, you say i'm not going to let my campaign be run by fact checkers. >> that's right. and what you end up seeing is everybody calls each other liars in debates. there's a house -- >> don't we need candy crowley to be available and just come out, i'm candy crowley, he's right, he's wrong. >> i'm surprised you didn't pick an msnbc host. >> in wisconsin tommy thompson and his democratic opponent, a republican opponent, tammy -- democratic opponent tammy baldwin sparred over each other's positions in iran. this gets tricky. you're in the weeds here but let's watch. >> you have tens of thousands of dollars in investments in companies that do business with the iran, including a company that teams up with iran doing uranium mining in africa. >> she also received the $60,000 in the campaign funds, $60,000, lanl, for a campaign from a company that believes and supports no sanctions in iran. i heard about this stuff -- >> who are you talking about? you can't even -- >> wait a minute, let me finish. let me finish. you had two minutes. let me finish. you want to interrupt me joe biden, just give me a chance. the other thing is, ladies and gentlemen, is that she's talking about stock. i didn't know about the fact that my stockbroker had purchased two shares -- two company stocks. i sold it. >> what is this about? this is what -- this is why people hate politics. they dig into somebody's stock portfolio. probably never spent three seconds looking at it. she gets the aid of $60,000 from a company that doesn't believe in sanctions. she's now vulnerable but she quibbles over the name of the group. is that what it's come down to knowing the name of the group on live television? >> it does come down to that to a certain degree. you hear the audience booing him a little bit -- >> because of the biden reference. >> he got booed a couple times for acting more like a bully and interrupting, and tommy thompson, his big advantage in that state is he walks into any room and what do people say, they go, tommy. really well-known, great name recognition. if he's going on these debates and coming across as a bully and people are seeing him in a different light it's more damaging to him than the $60,000 iranian stock charge. >> if she's getting 60,000 bucks from an organization that says let's trade with iran, that's radioactive. >> you can't get 60,$000 from a company -- >> the big underlying issue is israel. tammy baldwin has been a liberal on israel issues. tommy thompson has been hammering him for that. and then she found something she could knock him back with. you own stock in companies that are -- >> let's look at connecticut. i love this race. democratic congressman chris murphy called out republican linda mcmahon andhe's been tough in this case, for being vague on her positions. let's watch. >> i've not talked about specifics when i have been on the campaign trail because they get demagogued. >> she says that she's going to get demagogued. that maybe is a different way of saying she's going to lose votes. you might lose votes if you take a position, but that's our responsibility as candidates, to tell folks what we do. >> linda mcmahon just parroted absolutely echoed what romney has been saying and what's his name, paul ryan is saying. i can't tell you what deductions i'm going to get rid of, i can't tell you how my tax plan is going to work because you will use it against me. >> you don't expect a world wrestling federation owner to duck and weave so much but she was obviously doing it there. this points out what's a problem for a lot of politicians right now which is you're either talking about raising taxes or cutting spending and taking away government services. there are no good options for the future. >> or spending money. >> or running up the deficit. there are no good options. >> it's all bitter out there. >> that's why nobody is i saing -- >> what do people want to run for office? they can't do anything new. they say want to borrow from china for that. you can't even fix the lightbulbs in the government. let the lightbulb be dead out for a while, save the money. >> jonathan is right. this is sort of a new development which is the candidates saying i'd like to tell you, but i can't because it's going to hurt my chances, my prospects. they say it so brazenly, it's like, okay, that makes sense to me tp it really doesn't, but mitt romney is tied in the polls, and he has demonstrated again and again that he can actually succeed with this, that he doesn't get laughed out of the room. she should have been laughed out of the debate hall. >> i read the new york post, a conservative newspaper obviously, i read the paper. do you know every one of the letters on the letters side of the op-ed page attack candy crowley for being right. you can't be right. >> no. >> that's intervening here. thank you. great to have you on jonathan, thank you, david, as always. up next, monday's third and final presidential debate and it's all about foreign policy. that should be friendly terrain for the president, he's good at it but there may be trouble if the administration can't get his story clear on libya. i think its his chance to thend discussion, put a bottom line on what happened, what we knew, when we knew it, and what we could have done and what we couldn't have done. this is "hardball," the place for politics. my insurance rates are probably gonna double. but, dad, you've got... 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[ cat 1 ] i'm an iams cat. feed me what i'm born to eat. meow. we're back. with each passing day last month's attack in benghazi becomes a bigger headache for the president. mitt rop and the republicans think they've hid on a strong issue to go after the president. they accuse his administration of not coming clean about the nature of that attack. about th nature of the attack. today the associated press reported, quote, the cia station chief reported to washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the u.s. consulate that theres was evidence that it is was carried out by militants not by the american made video. it's not clear when that information got to the white house but it ensures that questions won't go away. what is the truth in benghazi? was it planned? spontaneous? more importantly, what was the motivation. correspondent for "the washington post" and for the "new york times," david, i want to go to you. i guess the question is, one of the charges being made by romney and the other republicans is that this was motivated by a plan to do something of a terrorist style on 9/11. let's get to one point. was the motivation a planned 9/11 marking by a terrorist group or was it an opportunistic move which jumped on this video and used that to cause the attack? which one? >> chris, based on the reporting from my great colleague david kirkpatrick, we seem to line up very well with what we're hearing from u.s. intelligence sources is that this was motivated some by the video but that the group that did it were militants and they were looking for an excuse. now, you can ask the question, would they have done something on september 11th even absent the video and i don't think that i've got at least right now sufficient clarity on that question. but we do know there was no demonstration that then turned into a bigger militant attack. in fact, it began as a militant attack. but it may have been motivated in part by word of the video, which, of course, was spreading from egypt and other places. the protests in egypt had been just a few hours before. >> well, how did ambassador rice get the idea that sunday that it began as a demonstration, kind of protest demonstration we've seen so many places around the world those days? where did that come from? >> the company we've heard so far is that she was relying on the intelligence reports that they had gotten up to the saturday before she went on the air and she was pretty strong on the air saying that this began as a protest. that view got rapidly revised by the intel community. i think the other interesting question to ask here, chris, i haven't heard the candidates asking but it strikes me as the most interesting one, which is, what did the intel community know about the general threat against both tripoli and the benghazi consulate leading up to 9/11? it would have been a good reason to be on guard on 9/11 for the anniversary even if that didn't turn out to be the cause. and it looks like there was a fair bit of threat report. >> what could they have done to deal with that threat? you can't put an extra ten marines in and say -- let me go to ann first. same points i'd like to raise with you, ann. does your reporting say that the video had something to do with staring this -- triggering this act of terror against our consulate in benghazi? >> well, yes but sort of in the reverse from the way it was reported earlier and the way susan rice initially described it. rather than it ak spontaneous protest outside the embassy gates or the mission gates mirroring the one earlier in the day in cairo are, this has emerged quite clearly as a planned attack which was likely inspired by anger over the video but a group of militants who saw their opportunity and took it and then once the gates were breached and there was an actual attack going on, a protest followed. so there was a protest. there was a video involved. there was an atablg. but the order appears to have been reversed. >> i learned a lot. thank you for coming on. it was opportunist clee using the video but it was a militant group and it was not really a protest beginning this whole operation. we're going to hear a whole lot about this monday night. anne, david, thank you. when we return, let me finish with this stuck in the past republican party that wants to control the country's future. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. bro. or engaging. conversations help us learn and grow. at wells fargo, we believe you can never underestimate the power of a conversation. it's this exchange of ideas that helps you move ahead with confidence. so when the conversation turns to your financial goals... turn to us. if you need anything else, let me know. 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[ male announcer ] and that's how you test your car for fun. easy. let me finish tonight with this. i don't know where these people are coming. women don't get pregnant if they are raped and then this odd duck who says a woman cannot lose her life in child delivery. that's a weird one. if someone extracted the climate change up in alaska or commercial shipping easily passover the north pole, talk about a northwest passage, you can chalk up the planets only being a few years old all of the bones left from the ages past, all of the skeletons of large animals and all of that oil that we use deep in the ground, vej stating and filled with life. and now this anti-science lunacy is going towards women, keep them at home, don't let them have birth control with their health plans, threaten them with high crimes if they have an abortion. all of this with the same intellectual peen yut gallery that denies all of the progress of men and women kind. these people who believe most of all in not believing. what a crowd the to turn over our future over, people who don't even have a handle on the past, except those they want to go back to. monday night is the third and final presidential debate. i'll be live from boca
everybody can see how close this is. the loser will get pilloried by his party. how can you be so sought of it? the closing struggle begins this weekend. then monday in boca raton, florida, for the final debate. this election is about the economy. president obama has two weeks to sell the country on what he'd do in a second term. he needs to ramp it all up. the policy that saved the auto industry and how this kind of active industrial policy can bring a surge in american manufacturing. he needs to push the overdue construction in this country, roadway, rail, brick and mortar investment, a campaign that will bring this country aggressively into the 21st century. he pushed that big jobs bill in his first weeks in office that kept the economy from heading off a cliff. he needs to show us what a second bill will look like. the more he paints a picture of his second term economic building agenda, the better. chuck todd is nbc's chief white house correspondent and political director, and jonathan martin is politico's senior political reporter. i brought you on as the big brains. i was at the al smith dinner. a bunch of rich irish, i get it. the fact of the matter -- >> finger on the pulse. >> not regular. this thing seems to be drifting around. i don't want to bring a lot of numbers in. is there a drift, a turn, is it moving towards romney clearly ever since that first debate? is that a safe assessment or is it not? >> i think it moved clearly in romney's direction. i think it is now sort of sitting there. the question is does he still have a little momentum or did the president stop him? and, you know, that's -- >> so that's -- a little more momentum left, but he gained ground. >> he gained a lot of ground. this is a coin flip race. it's about whether mitt romney can break through in the three midwestern states, ohio, iowa, and wisconsin. it's the only way the math works. >> you're implying it's going to be so close in the popular vote that these electoral decisions are going to really matter. >> i think they absolutely are going to matter. >> there's not going to be -- >> colorado and virginia -- >> you don't see a national mandate crossing the country -- >> not right now. i am still a believer that it's still possible. >> i think it's still possible. >> what do you think -- do you agree with him it basically moved a big space toward romney after that first debate and that sort of came to a still, that swing, or has it in your mind? >> i think it is still moving in romney's direction. >> okay, fine. >> and i think one of two things are going to happen. either the obama campaign is going to sweat out an electoral vote victory where they put together a combination of the states chuck mentioned, iowa, wisconsin, and nevada, and romney can't get to 270 and they sweat out a tough race, negative race. they grind it down, and they get 275. or in the next couple days here we do see that national swing and romney does make sort of huge -- >> and sweeps it. >> at what point does it become a popular vote election? >> if romney moves. it could happen. it would only happen in the romney direction. >> if he has a strong movement the next two weeks that he had two weeks ago -- >> correct. >> -- is he a winner? >> it's hard to imagine -- absolutely, yes. >> let's look at the president today. let's look at "the daily show." the president tried to sell -- good job. i'm not sure he's done yet. let's watch. >> four years ago i said i'd end the war in iraq. we did. said i would pass health care reforms, make sure people don't go bankrupt when they get sick. we have. said we had to refocus on al qaeda. we have. made sure that we saved an auto industry that was on the brink of collapse. we've done that. so we've got a very strong story to tell whether it's on social issues like don't ask, don't tell or economic issues that matter for middle class families. >> does that lean forward enough or is that just the past? >> it feels like the past, but one of the odder things we're seeing in the polling is the right track/wrong track is moving in the direction that should be helping the president. and yet mitt romney is the one making -- is still making gains even as people feel better, both with the job the president is doing -- this is what's weird about this. this is not a seesaw. the romney move up is not correlating with some sort of obama going down on his job rating. >> right. >> and that is -- >> could it be that the president outran his string? could it be he outran his string? his good news came too late? >> that's a very strong possibility. >> the housing market is up, job claims are going down -- >> but it came two months too late. i think the best thing to happen to romney was that first debate. you had 70 million people who finally saw him, not the caricature in the tv ads. they saw him in the flesh. i'll tell you what, i have been talking to a lot of swing folks in places like new hampshire, places like florida last couple days. operatives in both parties in those swing states, and they say that was a huge moment because for the first time people saw, yes, this is somebody who could be a plausible alternative. it doesn't mean they were willing to sort of buy the house, but, yeah, i can live here. >> they let him in the house. once you let him in the house, it's hard to say get out of the house. >> here is a fun -- >> he's sitting on the recliner. >> here is a fun nugget about the first debate. the time between the first and second debate, it's the longest period of time between a first and second debate since 1988. that's also what hurt the president and helped romney. he got two weeks of momentum out of this debate. the president needed -- >> he's got five weeks to live off that first debate between that election -- >> he lived off it for longer than mondale got with reagan. he lived it on longer -- >> unemployment -- the employment numbers are getting better in 41 states. i thought the joke last night, you're asking me about the al smith dinner. romney made fun of obama by saying you can say based on the september numbers you're better off than you were four weeks ago. i mean, they're starting to put down the fact of this late recovery. >> that could be a huge challenge. the idea that the vp debate, chris, or the debate at hofstra earlier this week were going to somehow turn this around for obama, it hasn't happened yet. >> it's slowed it down. i think you're seeing evidence that it sort of -- romney didn't lose any ground. he didn't peel anything, but i think the president stopped the erosion. >> let me ask you about this question of what you think. i know you don't want to take political positions or partisan positions, but i will. in fact, this is an analysis. i think the american people will not vote for nothing. they're not going to vote for obama's track record, not vote for romney's business know-how. they're looking for a plan they can say, when i voted, it meant something. i have heard people say, i like this guy romney because he had that five-point plan, he had something i could see. business guy, i'm going to do these things. obama has done a lot more at the national level than romney ever thought of doing, but he doesn't turn it into a future map. he said i have done the automobile, i did the stimulus, did health care, but where does that point to what they're going to do? >> their investment and theory of the case is the way to get re-elected in this environment is to render romney as unacceptable. >> doesn't work. what do we do now? >> they're still doing it. look at today, for example -- >> look at the president today. cue it up. let's show the president because i agree with you. instead of trying to build the case for the president staying in the game, being kept in as starting pitcher, they keep making the case against the guy in the bull pen, and i don't think that's the way it works. here he is this afternoon, the president called out romney for shifting positions on issues like equal pay, women's health, taxes, and coining a new phrase for his opponent's condition. let's watch him. >> i mean, he's changing up so much and backtracking and side stepping, we've got to name this condition he's going through. i think -- i think it's called romnesia. that's what it's called. and if you come down with a case of romnesia and you can't seem to remember the policies that are still on your website or the promises you've made over the six years you've been running for president, here is the good news. obama care covers pre-existing conditions! we can fix you up! we got a cure! >> we've got a big fight coming up later in the show about women and this whole thing, and you two guys are going to talk about it as distant people here, males, but is that going to be an issue here now because i saw those younger women there. i saw cecile richards introduced him in northern virginia today. my question is without a gender gap, can a democrat win? >> no. no chance. no chance. they have to. >> because if the issue is health, education, it's women's rights, the whole plethora of issues. >> that's why when you see the race this close and then you'll see some polls that will be a two or three-point race but there's no gender gap, you're like, throw that poll out. there's a gender gap in american politics. >> kathleen turner and tough hombres in a minute, not just you guys, but my question is how can one guy one night, he walks in, very impressive, even pushy. he is -- he's a bully. and yet he seemed to impress a lot of women, romney. >> sure. >> why does his manner impress people? >> the perception of him, as haley barbour said, he was an out of touch plutocrat married to a known equestrian. when people saw he was a serious politician, not the thurston howell character, it helped him. i think that's still the case. >> you don't think he was that guy? i thought -- he looked like a big business big shot. >> but by the way, in the first debate you said he was kind of a bully. no, he wasn't in the first debate. i thought there was a civility to him. >> covering up for lack of deference. >> on the obama care issue -- >> he did little subtle things that i thought he made a mistake not doing in the second debate. that he was too aggressive and too hot. >> hold on, you'll get your chance. can you imagine if obama had done that to a sitting president? >> they would have brought the police in. >> it was not a good moment for him there. i thought the first debate what helped romney is that it came across with a civility. it was toughness with a smile. >> right. >> it was toughness with a deference. >> pushy but without -- >> covering it up. >> a bit of cordiality about the wedding anniversary, and then a lot of good civility. he didn't call him mr. obama, he called him mr. president. throughout there's a lack of deference. >> that's what a challenger has to do when you're running against the president. >> treat him like he's not president. >> make him think you're as presidential as the actual president. you have been through this. >> anyway, thank you. i wouldn't be that kind. i think he was so lacking in deference it was -- >> the second debate he lacked deference. >> the first time he masked it. chuck todd, thank you, gentlemen, smart guys. jonathan martin. coming up, the battle for the female vote can't help republicans when congressman joe walsh says concern for the health of the woman is just an excuse to have an abortion. kathleen turner comes here, the kathleen turner, to fight the fight for women. also, it got hot in senate debates across the country. check out that bout between sherrod brown and his republican opponent, josh mandel. >> being called a liar, a liar, by the winner of the pants on crown fire is just a pretty remarkable thing for a young man to say or for a man of any age to say in a political debate. >> that was one of the many roundhouse punches thrown last night in senate debates around the country. we're going to bring you the important action. it's going to get hot here. and monday, the last of the presidential debates coming up now. this one on foreign policy. a home game for the president, but the president needs to put out the bottom line on what happened in benghazi and get it over with. let me finish with this from the past trying to take charge of the country's future. what a bunch of troglodytes out there. this is "hardball," the place for politics. 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[ mom ] that's my tide, what's yours? we've got some new polling in battleground states. let's start in colorado where a new ppp poll shows president obama up three, close there, over mitt romney. all-important 50% mark. that's good for the president, obama, 50%, romney, 47%. iowa, romney up by one. 49% to 48%. that's a big difference from our nbc news/"wall street journal"/maris poll. same score in new hampshire where ppp has romney up by one. finally in michigan, president obama is maintaining his lead. a new poll shows the president up by six. that's pretty comfortable these days, 52%, 46%. these numbers are gyrating, as i told you. we'll be right back. when it comes to issues ♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] it's time for medicare open enrollment. are you ready? time to compare plans and see what's new. you don't have to make changes, but it's good to look. maybe you can find better coverage, save money, or both. and check out the preventive benefits you get after the health care law. ♪ medicare open enrollment. now's the time. visit medicare.gov or call 1-800-medicare. ♪ overmany discounts to thine customers! [old english accent] safe driver, multi-car, paid in full -- a most fulsome bounty indeed, lord jamie. thou cometh and we thy saveth! what are you doing? we doth offer so many discounts, we have some to spare. oh, you have any of those homeowners discounts? here we go. thank you. he took my shield, my lady. these are troubling times in the kingdom. more discounts than we knoweth what to do with. now that's progressive. when it comes to issues critical to women, the right to make your own decision about your health, the right to be treated fairly and equally in the workplace, governor romney wants to take us to policies more suited to the 1950s. >> that's for sure. anyway, welcome back. president obama campaigned today in virginia, northern virginia there. george mason. kept the focus on women. a lot of young women there, and also cecile richards introduced him. the republican party has taken issues related to women that can only be described as extreme. we'll run through the list including a gop platform that criminalizes abortion. now we've got a new entry following his debate last night. the illustrious, i mean that totally sarcastically, joe walsh said allowing an exception for abortion when the mother's life is at risk is not scientifically or medically necessary. >> this is an issue that opponents of life throw out there to make us look unreasonable. there's no such exception as life of the mother, and as far as health of the mother, same thing. with advances in science and technology, there is -- health of the mother has been -- has become a tool for abortions any time under any reason. >> and this quote, unbelievable the way these guys are talking, scientific theory to todd akin's theory to back it up that women don't get pregnant from a legitimate rape. in other words, if they don't want to get pregnant, they aren't getting pregnant. anyway, here is a sign of how important democrats believe abortion rights are to their fate. this chart shows the number of ads for democratic candidates on this issue, the blue one up there, and all races that mention abortion, contraception, and funding for planned parenthood have increased much more than for republicans in red. joining us is activist and actor kathleen turner. and managing editor of thegrio.com, joy reid. two great women to talk about it. they don't want to call it a war on women, but i got to tell you, this guy walsh again the other day said, my mother was told not to have any more kids at the risk of her life. this is what happens. this is real. how could he just come along and say you can't get pregnant if you get raped. they throw this stuff out. >> what's scary is he and akins are by no means the exceptions. i mean, this is going on continually in every state across our country. the idea -- the cdc has stated that availability of contraception and a woman's ability to control her reproductive life has been the greatest health advancement in the 20th century leading to the greatest economic rise in that women can now have higher degrees, earn higher hourly wages, 40% of women earn more than their husbands. so this is not simply a question of women's right. it is also an economic question. >> my question to joy, we call this a women's issue because it's women who primarily take responsibility for contraception. both engage in sex, both knowing there's no protection going on and not taking responsibility when that happens, but women have to be the first responders you might say because they've got to live with it. here is the question. here is the question. why don't men and women both say birth control is a darn good thing? we should make sure it's available to women who are working. as resplendently and prodigiously as possible. spread it around, birth control, get it out there. we want to reduce the number of abortions, unwanted pregnancies. do something about it, stop talking about it and passing bills that don't mean anything. your thoughts. >> and a guy like joe walsh who won't even pay his child support. he won't take responsibility for the births he's directly responsible for producing. chris has a great point, but birth control has become yet another part of the culture wars, and you have guys like walsh that have taken this hard and fast position which is anti-abortion. just to give statistics to mr. walsh in case he needs to be educated on them, maternal death still happens in this country. the united states is 39th in the world behind countries like greece and germany. albania has a better rate in terms of maternal death versus places like houston. specifically, especially in red states where you have got something like 16 deaths, maternal deaths per 100,000 births according to a study in atlanta in 2010. this is still a very real problem and there are still very real women dying -- >> let's get off sex -- i want to get off sex for a minute and obviously reproductive rights. i want to say something about equal pay. why has governor romney refused to say as of this moment, friday afternoon at 5:00 eastern time, he's refused to say why he's against the equal pay bill. he won't say whether he's for or against. >> i don't think it's just about the equal pay. i think he's obviously not giving many specifics about almost anything. i wanted to follow up on your point about contraceptives being something that both men and women must be for. i'm chairman of the board -- >> i know that. you were at the beginning. >> one of the things i believe we have great common ground on is the fact that what we want is no child unwanted. >> yeah. >> that every child should be wanted. which means every child should be planned. and given those conditions, the ability to access, when you see this new ad about a woman saying, oh, well, romney is not against contraception at all, this is ridiculous because it doesn't mean contraception is even available to that woman whether romney personally is for it or not. >> he means it's legal. that's the nonsensical -- >> it doesn't mean the woman can get her hands on it. >> he only did that to basically be dishonest. the issue is not legality. that was decided in the '50s. it's access, availability, affordability. joy, i always wonder about the beat reporters following romney around. when he says that malarkey, or whatever the latest irish-ism we're supposed to use, when he says that, i'm still for access, it's clearly -- i hate saying it's lying -- he's dishonest about it. he's not answering the question of should it be in your health care plan. should any employer be able to deny it to a woman. >> he's the ultimate niche marketer. whatever audience he's in front of he's saying what he needs to get elected. romney seems to be a person that's an empty vessel willing to be filled with whatever he thinks is politically expedient at literally that moment. you get the feeling five minutes later he could say, i have changed my mind, i'm now against contraception. his wife backed that up on "the view." they're testing the proposition that voters are so shallow and are not paying any attention whatsoever except for the moment that he's speaking to them. >> let me make a case to you. you're the expert. a couple things i want to get to. it isn't just about sex and reproductive rights and abortion. that's the way the republican right likes to paint it. if you're a woman, you generally take the primary responsibility for the older parents. you call them, keep up with their health care, and you make sure they're taking advantage of medicare. you know women are going to live longer. they just do. so women are much more concerned about social security being there for them. social security and medicare. there's a whole range of issues women have a more personal interest in than men, and why in heck would a woman vote for romney and against those issues? >> i cannot imagine. i cannot understand this at all. i mean, i think that this election should be -- women should be to this election what the youth were in 2008. what i do not understand and i'm very fearful of is the fact that women are so underrepresented, and we are the majority in this country, and our needs, we accept the fact that our needs are not prioritized. i find this very difficult to understand. >> well, the squeaky wheel. >> yeah. >> just to add to that point, i think democrats have a harder job typically in elections. democrats are trying to defend this big social compact, these big ideas from the 20th century whether it's social security and medicare, women's rights and access to an abortion, these are all of these big sort of amorphous things democrats are saying we're here to defend the past and defend the gains. republicans have a much simpler job, just don't pay attention to any of that. jobs. don't pay attention to that. unemployment. they're driving home this very specific message, including to female voters. that's what romney is doing. he's saying ignore all of these big generalizations that the democrats are talking about that you take for granted. >> remember what the governor said the other day. he was asked if he would sign a bill outlawing abortion across the country. he said it would be a terrific idea. he'd love to have nine scalias on the court. kathleen, glad to have you back. and we will have you back. thank you very much. and joy reid -- kathleen is starring right here in washington in the play called "red hot patriot" the kick ass wit of the great molly ivins. up next -- you and molly ivins, what a pair. up next, highlights from last night's al smith dinner where president obama made a special apology to me. i didn't need it. this is "hardball," the place for politics. 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[ female announcer ] unlike sprays and dust rags, swiffer 360 dusters extender can clean hard to reach places in less time. swiffer. great clean in less time. or your money back. and his new boss told him two things -- cook what you love, and save your money. joe doesn't know it yet, but he'll work his way up from busser to waiter to chef before opening a restaurant specializing in fish and game from the great northwest. he'll start investing early, he'll find some good people to help guide him, and he'll set money aside from his first day of work to his last, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense. from td ameritrade. mitt's got big plans right out of the gate. >> i will repeal obama care and stop it in its tracks on day one. starting on day one, i'm going to do what it takes to get america back to work. i will on day one put a halt to all the regulations that were put in during the obama years. >> mitt is going to keep those promises i know because i have his day one schedule right here. 8:00 a.m. to noon, inauguration. 12:30, appoint cabinet. 1:00, take photo for white house i.d. card. 1:07, retake photo. 1:45, repeal obama care. 4:00, pick nuclear launch codes, maybe zip code plus ann's birthday, question mark? >> back to "hardball." first to last night's al smith dinner up in new york. as you can see, i was up on the dais at the big event seated right behind president obama and mitt romney. here is the view i had from my seat. i have to say, thanks to tom moran and his global food program concern for taking this great photo right in front of us there. in his own joke-laden speech, the president made a specific apology regarding his performance in the first debate. >> i particularly want to apologize to chris matthews. four years ago i gave him a thrill up his leg. this time around i gave him a stroke. >> a better shot of me sitting right over there. that was something. now to more of the night featuring both presidential candidates. >> a campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes. blue jeans in the morning perhaps, a suit for a lunch fund-raiser, sport coat for dinner, but it's nice to finally relax and wear what ann and i wear around the house. >> i went shopping at some stores in midtown. i understand governor romney went shopping for some stores in midtown. sometimes it feels like this race has dragged on forever. but paul ryan assured me that we've only been running for two hours and 50-something minutes. >> don't be surprised if the president mentions this evening the monthly jobs report where there was a slight improvement in the numbers. >> the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since i took office. i don't have a joke here. i just thought it would be useful to remind everybody. >> president obama and i are each very lucky to have one person who is always in our corner. someone who is a comforting presence without whom we wouldn't be able to go into the day. i have my beautiful wife, ann. he has bill clinton. >> spoiler alert, we got bin laden. >> actually it was mostly a pillow fight, especially by the president. now the big debate, not the presidential one. earlier this week i showed you part of my encounter with bill o'reilly for jon stewart's autism benefit "night of too many stars." there was a lot where that came from. o'reilly and i had strict guidelines to stick to in our debate. take a look. >> you know the rules of the debate. neither participant shall be permitted to speak without first filling their lungs with helium. the participants may continue to speak only if the helium has kept up the pitch of their voice. >> we have to start now. why don't you ask a question. >> you inhale, they decide. >> that means like it or lump it. >> our annual deficits are now above -- you might want a little more -- $1 trillion a year. the president says it's time to raise taxes on the rich. governor romney says that would inhibit job creation. >> well, i don't agree with that. >> i say we have to go back to the clinton tax rates and get the hell out of afghanistan. >> you can catch the full production if you want to this sunday on comedy central at 8:00 a.m. eastern. up next, if you thought this week's presidential debate got hot, wait until you see what happens in some senate debates around the country last night. it was like thursday night fights, and we've got the highlights next. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. we saw that last tide commercial with the parents and the cute little baby triplets... well wait until your triplets move back home after college. we were enjoying our empty nest. and now it's just a nest full of laundry. lucky underwear. we were going through so much of that bargain detergent... and the clothes didn't look as good. but since we switched to tide, we use much less. their clothes are looking much more...uh... what's the word? clean? employable. [ female announcer ] one cap of tide gives you more cleaning power than 6 caps of the bargain brand. [ mom ] that's my tide, what's yours? ♪ mile after mile, to and from ♪ now there are four for all to use ♪ ♪ tell the neighbors, friends, everyone the news ♪ ♪ and let's hum, hum, hum, hum ♪ ♪ let's hum ♪ a prius for everyone ♪ there's a bigger one, if you want more space ♪ ♪ a small one if the city's your place ♪ ♪ and even one you can plug in ♪ so hop on in and give one a spin ♪ ♪ and let's hum, hum, hum, hum ♪ ♪ let's hum ♪ a prius for everyone here's what's happening. an explosion in beirut killed a top intelligent official. it occurred during rush hour in a mostly christian area. a cease fire was called for in syria and the state department p is calling for the assad regime to allow humanitarian aid in. and doctors say that she can communicate. back to "hardball." back to "hardball." some fireworks in some key races last night, senate races. showed in the down ballot debates how exciting they can be and contentious. in ohio, wisconsin, connecticut, virginia, and missouri last night, just last night, red and blue faced off. with me is david corn and politico's senior washington correspondent, jonathan allen. let's take a look at the action from the always interesting state of ohio. here is republican josh mandel challenging sherrod brown in ohio. they kept up the attacks against each other. here they are in last night's debate going at it. >> senator, you are a liar. you're falsely attacking me, and i won't stand for it. you might want to try to push people around in washington, but you're not going to push me around. >> being called a liar? a liar? by the winner of the pants on crown fire is just a pretty remarkable thing for a young man to say or for a man of any age to say in a political debate. josh mandel, as we know, has trouble telling the truth. we can't trust josh mandel to do his job, to show up for work. >> i must be getting old, he looked 10 years old. is he a real threat? >> it's ohio, a key state, obviously a lot of money going in on the presidential side. the interesting thing, what they were referencing is mandel ran an ad saying that sherrod brown was responsible for all the jobs lost from ohio to china and elsewhere, and politifact.com, the fact checking organization, gave him a pants on fire rating for that ad, and he got that rating and said, great, i'm going to run this ad again and again and again. >> that's the new thing. if you're caught not telling the truth, you say i'm not going to let my campaign be run by fact checkers. >> that's right. and what you end up seeing is everybody calls each other liars in debates. there's a house -- >> don't we need candy crowley to be available and just come out, i'm candy crowley, he's right, he's wrong. >> i'm surprised you didn't pick an msnbc host. >> in wisconsin tommy thompson and his democratic opponent, a republican opponent, tammy -- democratic opponent tammy baldwin sparred over each other's positions in iran. this gets tricky. you're in the weeds here, but let's watch. >> you have tens of thousands of dollars in investments in companies that do business with iran, including a company that teams up with iran doing uranium mining in africa. >> she also received $60,000 in the campaign funds, $60,000, ladies and gentlemen, for a campaign from a company that believes and supports no sanctions in iran. i heard about this stuff -- >> who are you talking about? you can't even -- >> wait a minute, let me finish. let me finish. you had two minutes. let me finish. you want to interrupt me, joe biden, just give me a chance. the other thing is, ladies and gentlemen, is that she's talking about stock. i didn't know about the fact that my stockbroker had purchased two shares -- two company stocks. i sold it. >> what is this about? this is what -- this is why people hate politics. they dig into somebody's stock portfolio. probably never spent three seconds looking at it. she gets the aid of $60,000 from a company that doesn't believe in sanctions. she's now vulnerable, but she quibbles over the name of the group. is that what it's come down to, knowing the name of the group on live television? now, she gets aid of $60,000 from a company and now she's vulnerable or quibbles over the name of the group. is that what's it's come down to, knowing the name of the group on live television? >> it does come down to that to a certain degree. you hear the audience booing him a little bit -- >> because of the biden reference. >> he got booed a couple times for acting more like a bully and interrupting, and tommy thompson, his big advantage in that state is he walks into any room and what do people say, they go, tommy. really well-known, great name recognition. if he's going on these debates and coming across as a bully and people are seeing him in a different light, it's more damaging to him than the $60,000 iranian stock charge. >> if she's getting 60,000 bucks from an organization that says let's trade with iran, that's radioactive. >> you can't get $60,000 from a company -- >> the big underlying issue is israel. tammy baldwin has been a liberal on israel issues. tommy thompson has been hammering her for that. and then she found something she could knock him back with. you own stock in companies that are -- >> let's look at connecticut. i love this race. democratic congressman chris murphy called out republican linda mcmahon, and she's been tough in this case, for being vague on her positions. let's watch. >> i've not talked about specifics when i have been on the campaign trail because they get demagogued. >> she says that she's going to get demagogued. that maybe is a different way of saying she's going to lose votes. you might lose votes if you take a position, but that's our responsibility as candidates, to tell folks what we do. >> linda mcmahon just parroted, absolutely echoed, what romney has been saying and, what's his name, paul ryan is saying. i can't tell you what deductions i'm going to get rid of, i can't tell you how my tax plan is going to work because you will use it against me. >> you don't expect a world wrestling federation owner to duck and weave so much, but she was obviously doing it there. this points out what's a problem for a lot of politicians right now, which is you're either talking about raising taxes or cutting spending and taking away government services. there are no good options for the future. >> or spending money. >> or running up the deficit. there are no good options. >> it's all bitter out there. >> that's why nobody is saying -- >> what do people want to run for office? they can't do anything new. they say, you want to borrow from china for that. you can't even fix the light bulbs in the government. let the light bulb be dead out for a while, save the money. >> jonathan is right. this is sort of a new development, which is the candidates saying i'd like to tell you, but i can't because it's going to hurt my chances, my prospects. they say it so brazenly, it's like, okay, that makes sense to me. it really doesn't, but mitt romney is tied in the polls, and he has demonstrated again and again that he can actually succeed with this, that he doesn't get laughed out of the room. she should have been laughed out of the debate hall. >> i read "the new york post," a conservative newspaper obviously, i read the paper. do you know every one of the letters on the letters side of the op-ed page attacked candy crowley for being right. you can't be right. >> no. >> that's intervening here. thank you. great to have you on, jonathan, thank you, david, as always. up next, monday's third and final presidential debate, and it's all about foreign policy. that should be friendly terrain for the president, he's good at it, but there may be trouble if the administration can't get his story clear on libya. i think its his chance to end this discussion, put a bottom line on what happened, what we knew, when we knew it, and what we could have done and what we couldn't have done. this is "hardball," the place for politics. 38 mpg highway... advanced headlights... and zero gravity seats? 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[ female announcer ] unlike sprays and dust rags, swiffer 360 duster's extender gets into hard-to-reach places without the hassle. so you can get unbelievable dust pickup in less time without missing a thing. i love that book. can you believe the twin did it? ♪ swiffer. great clean in less time. or your money back. swiffer. great clean in less time. mike rowe here at a ford tell me fiona, who's having a big tire event? your ford dealer. who has 11 major brands to choose from? your ford dealer. who's offering a rebate? your ford dealer. who has the low price tire guarantee... affording peace of mind to anyone who might be in the market for a new set of tires? your ford dealer. i'm beginning to sense a pattern. buy four select tires, get a $60 rebate. use the ford service credit credit card, get $60 more. that's up to $120. where did you get that sweater vest? your ford dealer. we're back. with each passing day last month's attack in benghazi becomes a bigger headache for the president. mitt romney and the republicans think they've hit on a strong issue to go after the president. they accuse his administration of not coming clean about the . they accuse his add traministra of not coming clean about the nature of the attack. the associated press reported, quote, the cia station chief in libya reported to washington within 24 hours of last month's deadly attack on the u.s. consulate that it was evidence it was carried off by militants, not a spontaneous mob about a video ridiculing prophet muhammad. it's not clear when that information got to the white house. it ensures questions won't go away. what is the truth about what happened in benghazi, who was responsible? was it planned or spontaneous? what most importantly was the -- david sanger is chief washington correspondent for "the new york times." david, i want to go to you. i've been reading a lot of "the times" about this. i guess the question is what are the charges being made by romney and the other republicans is this was motivated by a plan to do something of a terrorist style on 9/11, nothing to do with the video that was made in los angeles which ridiculed the prophet. was the motivation a planned 9/11 marking by a terrorist group or was it an opportunistic move which jumped on this video and used that as a cause to attack? which one? >> well, chris, based on the reporting we've had out of cairo from my great colleague david kirkpatrick it seems to line up very well with what we're hearing from u.s. intelligence forces, is that this was motivated some by the video but that the group that did it were militants and looking for an excuse. you can ask the question, would they have done something on september 11th even absent the video in i don't think i've got, at least, right now sufficient clarity on that question. what we do know is there was no demonstration that turned into a bigger militant attack. in fact, it began as a militant attack. it may have been motivated in part by word of the video which, of course, was spreading from egypt and other places. the protests in egypt had been just a few hours before. >> well, how did ambassador rice get the idea, she presented on all those five interview shows sunday it started as a demonstration, a protest demonstration we've seen so many places around the world these days? where did that come from? >> the account we heard so far is she was relying on the intelligence reports they'd gotten up until the saturday before she went on the air. she was pretty strong on the air as saying this began as a protest. that view got rapidly revised by the intel country community. i think the other interesting question to ask, chris, i haven't heard the candidates asking but strikes me as the most interest one which is, what did the intel community know about the general threat against both tripoli and the benghazi consulate? leading up to 9/11. it would have been a good reason to be an guard on 9/11 for the anniversary even if that didn't turn out to be the cause. it looks like there was a fair bit of threat report. >> what could they have done to deal with the threat? i mean, you can't put an extra ten marines in somewhere. let me go to ann garen, first. same points i'd like to raise with you with "washington post," ann. does wrr reporting say the video has something to with triggering this act of terror against our consulate in benghazi? >> well, yes, but sort of in the reverse from the way it was reported earlier and the way susan rice initially described it. rather than it being a spontaneous protest outside the embassy gates or the mission gates, mirroring the one earlier in the day in cairo, this has emerged quite clearly as a planned attack which was likely inspired by anger over the video. but a group of militants who saw their opportunity and took it. and then once the gates were breached, and there was an actual attack going on, a protest followed. so there was a protest. there was a video involved. there was an attack. but the order appears to have been reversed. >> i learned a lot. thank you both. i do understand now. it was somewhat used or opportunistically using the video but it was a militant group and not really a protest beginning this whole operation. we're going hear a lot more about this monday night. anne gearen, thank you so much and david sanger, as always. when we return, let me finish with the stuck in the past republican party that wants to control the country us future. you're watching "hardball." the place for politics. we were enjoying our empty nest. and now it's just a nest full of laundry. lucky underwear. we were going through so much of that bargain detergent... and the clothes didn't look as good. but since we switched to tide, we use much less. their clothes are looking much more...uh... what's the word? clean? employable. [ female announcer ] one cap of tide gives you more cleaning power than 6 caps of the bargain brand. [ mom ] that's my tide, what's yours? let me finish tonight with this. i don't know where these people are coming from. the senate candidate out in missouri who says women don't get pregnant if they are raped and then this odd duck who says a woman cannot lose her life or risk serious harm in child delivery. that's a new one. if someone extracted the climate change despite the fact people up in alaska where i was for a conference recently are talking about commercial shipping soon being able to pass easily over the north pole, the north swrn west passage, talk bt believing the planet is only a few thousand years old, a religious belief, i suppose, ignoring the bones left from the ages past. the skeletons of large animals and all the oil we used from deep in the ground built up over the millions of years this planet has been here vegetating and filled with life. this anti-science looniness is emerging with women. don't let them have quality at work, don't let them have birth control in their plans. all this from the same intellectual peanut gallery that denies the progress of man and women kind. these people who believe most of all in not believing. what a crowd to turn over our future to, people who don't have a grip on the past except the part they want to go back to. that's the "hardball" for now. monday night is the thirdnd