i'm erin burnett. "outfront," we begin with breaking news. herman cain losing key support in new hampshire one day after a georgia woman claims she had a 13-year affair with the candidate. one new hampshire state representative, william panic, conif i recalling to "outfront" that he is withdrawing his support for cain and switching to newt gingrich. adding the alleged affair was the final straw. and within the last hour, the presidential candidate sending a message to his supporters. and i read it in part, quote, this woman's story is completely false. i am asking for your friendship. i am also asking for your prayers and support. this is a trying time for my family, my campaign, and for me. i'm looking at the letter here which concludes with, the ability to buy herman cain t-shirts and donate money. money is what this is going to come down to. cain's plea for support comes after telling staffers this morning that he is recessing his campaign. a top campaign aide told cnn today, a decision will likely be made within a couple of days. as of yesterday cain was adamant about staying in the race but emthere was one person who could change his mind. >> as long as my wife is behind me, and as long as my wife believes that i should stay in this race, i'm staying in this race. >> support for the republican candidate has been eroding ever since allegations of sexual harassment first came to light. that of course was just last month. now herman cain denies the affair. he also denies all accusations of sexual harassment. alveta king is a volunteer adviser to herman cain's campaign. thank you very much for being with us. you have been, i know, texting in contact with mr. cain today. what has he been telling you? >> mr. cain is recessing the campaign, simply any time that you have something hit the campaign, you have to recess. you have to look at your resources. you have to decide how to allocate them. he is already prepared to go to iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, florida, nevada, all of these states. and so it is simply an assessment to pay attention to what needs to be done to continue to go forward. >> so when do you expect, obviously, sources that told cnn he could be making a decision in terms of his candidacy in the next couple days. what did he tell you in terms of his time line? >> i expect his decision will be that he will press on to iowa and i'm joining him at his request. he and his family, his wife, praying for all of them. wonderful people. and i believe that we should continue to be friends of herman cain and support him and his march to iowa and beyond to the white house. >> and obviously, i want viewers to know you are looking at a live picture of herman cain speaking tonight at a fund-raiser. let me just ask you, you've known him. tell our viewers, how long have you known herman cain? i know you don't know ginger white, the woman who accused him of the 13-year affair. and i know you don't know his wife terribly well but what do you know of herman cain? >> i have known mr. cain since 2000. he and his wife gloria attend the church, antioch baptist church in atlanta, georgia. my father was very close friends with the pastor of that church and i've known mr. cain a strong warrior for life, for the economy. he is a rocket scientist. he worked for the navy. graduated from more house college. pro-life man and all of that. this really boils down to if you have two african-american men in the general election with opposing political views, the race card goes away. there can be no question of race. they're both black men. and it will change that base. many people who voted for mr. obama in the last election did so based on skin color. so you have two men with the same color skin and we are going to hear real political issues from opposing political viewpoints. that's really what this is about. >> so tell me, you've known herman cain for a long time. you're a woman though and obviously women sometimes see these sorts of allegations differently than men. why do you believe herman cain? is there a little part of you somewhere inside that says, gosh, where there's smoke, there's fire. i've got a little doubt. >> there are so many women who know mr. cain. we've known him for many years. a woman knows a skirt chaser when a woman sees a skirt chaser. mr. herman cain doesn't chase skirts. he chases solutions for america. so these allegations are not true. and it's so strange that many of these women, for three years coming out of the restaurant association, many affiliated with chicago. the man is not a skirt chaser. there are too many women for herman cain who will tell you that unequivocally. >> you have specific reasons for not believing ginger white. >> well, you know, one reason, if you think about miss white. she said she's had an affair with mr. cain for 13 years. and it was intriguing, it was exciting. now this is a man who has been fighting cancer. he victoriously won it on chemotherapy with a low libido who was supposed to be having an affair with a lady at the time that he was recovering from cancer. on chemotherapy? so how much affair was going on? no affair. the lady is not telling the truth. >> are you going to stick with him? how will you feel if it turns out these allegations turn out to be true? >> this is tabloid politics. you know, people really want to hear about the issues. we want to hear more about 9-9-9. about opportunities zones. about his energy plan. these are the go things that america wants to hear. we want to get rid of the race card. send two black men into the race election. let them talk from different perspectives. america wants solutions. america wants a leader. no more tabloid politics. president obama is chasing around stimulus dollars on a failing stimulus plan and here's the man with the solution that can heal america. >> thank you very much. a passionate defense for herman cain, as you can see who at this moment is speaking in hillsdale, michigan. as our sources say, expected to make a decision possibly on the future of his candidacy in the next few days. let's bring in senior columnist for the daily beast. strategist and the former bush deputy secretary and republican strategist. okay. let me put this question to you. can he survive this? there is the whole smoke/fire question. there is the fact that nobody wants anybody talking about their libido on national tv, even in defense of them. >> yeah, that's right. i do think it is solely up to mr. cain as to whether or not he stays in the race. ultimately he'll have to make the decision as to whether he can recover from this. whether the odds are too long and whether he can continue to see this sustained damage of his reputation. his campaign was built on media attention last month. that's how he gained his rise to the polls. it was an untraditional campaign. not built on organization. and i think in this case, it is a little bit of live by the sword, die by the sword. the media coverage of his campaign obviously has turned very swiftly and i'm not sure he can recover. i think the allegations that we heard this week about the affair lead to that, where there is smoke, there may be fire. and it seems he may be smoked out of the race because of all of it. >> let me throw up a cnn poll in november. who is your second choice? newt gingrich, number one. 38% of would be voters who are voting for cain at the time said they would vote for gingrich. this is newt's win. >> that's exactly right. the poll was done before these latest round of allegations really sunk in. what you see is that gingrich is coalescing the conservative alternative to the romney vote that had moved from perry to herman cain in the month of september. we've spent a month of this presidential campaign talking about this man's sex life with allegations that are ugly and harmful. it is a sign of how much the side show has moved into the big tent. we drag this out this week. ultimately herman cain and his wife gloria will decide if this race goes on. >> and the donors. >> in that donor e-mail, they categorically said ginger white's story was false when his own lawyer gave the classic nondenial, denial. you can't contradict yourself that way. >> let me ask you, it's interesting. newt gingrich gaining from this has its own level of irony. newt gingrich has survived in his past affairs to which he has admitted. he has been forthright about that. his quote was newt has been honest and forthright. that he had regrets, he's had to seek reconciliation and go to god for forgiveness. it is on his own website here. but how do you think this effects, there is an irony here. am i wrong? >> it is certainly an irony. and it would take herman cain to make newt gingrich's personal life not look so outrageous. so sometimes when you're herman cain, you've got to peck your chims up and your cards, leave the table and buy yourself into another game. unless you're going to spend all your money here, he doesn't have anything left. so i think if herman cain really wants to be a speaker, a writer, an author, get a show or whatever else he wants to do, now is maybe the time to get moving and find something else to do. it is amazing that we've spent the last few weeks talking about this when this is not, these are not the issues of the country. herman cain is not going to be president. he's not going to win the nomination. if he does, it is a very steep road to beat the president of the united states. so i would like for to us get back to talking about some of these other candidates who really do stand a chance. >> and the issues. forgetting herman cain, there is something to be said about a tabloid level. >> we don't talk substance, we don't talk policy. the other candidates have a hard time getting into the conversation. especially if they're trying to put forward real policy plans. that only cheats the american people and reduces the whole level of the presidential campaign. >> you know the thing about newt gingrich is, newt gingrich probably does know who the president of uzbekistan is. we know when he sits at the table, he is ready to play. >> thanks to all three. "outfront" next, american airlines files for bankruptcy. they don't have showers on their planes. i'll explain. a crowd of protesters storms the embassy in tehran. and the latest from the syracuse molestation scandal. the police chief admits his force failed to follow up on tips of abuse they got nine years ago. i've been in your shoes. one day i'm on p of the world... the next i'm saying... i have this thing called psoriatic arthritis. i had some intense pain. it progressively got worse. my rheumatologist told me about enbrel. i'm surprised how quickly my symptoms have been managed. 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[ woman #2 ] i would love to meet the people that made the machines. i had such an amazing group of doctors and nurses, it would just make such a complete picture of why i'm sitting here today. ♪ [ man ] from the moment we walk in the front door, just to see me -- not as a cancer patient, but as a person that had been helped by their work, i was just blown away. life's been good to me. i feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world. ♪ american airlines parent amr filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy today. one of the big problems was labor costs which amr kroxt tom horton discussed with our richard quest. >> our labor costs alone are something on the order of $800 million higher than our big competitors on average. >> rising oil costs and the weaker global economy also hurting american airlines, forcing it to file for bankruptcy. but this brings us to our number tonight. 34. that's how many passenger airlines have filed for bankruptcy in america in the past ten years. one airline we spoke to says that american airlines and we're talking about the group now, just not the company, faced stricter rules and more taxes than many of the international counterparts and it hurts them. it sure shows. take a look at these pictures from singapore. that's coach on singapore airlines. lufthansa. nice seats. do you know what that is? that's a shower. not that. but you saw it. a shower. we're not saying we should go that far but airlines are sort of something where it is a point of national pride and they stand for your country around the world. someone gets on an american airlines train, the tray table is nastiy and it has sticky food and you guest on lufthansa and the tray table is clean. a appointment of national pride. something to think about. for those of you who are planning to flight on american airlines, don't worry, your flight somebody okay. breaking down the door and throwing rocks. now it ended with a dozen arrests and the protests came after iran's parliament voted to expel the ambassador for the economic sanctions. after a report suggested iran was working on acquire nuclear weapon. joining us from massachusetts, correspondent david sanger. great to see you. let me ask you, what happened today? we've had protests before at this embassy. this was violent. there was a lot of vitriol. what happened? >> i think what was remarkable about this particular protest is that it appeared to have been government sanctioned at a fairly large number of what the irans said were students. perhaps they could have been members of the force or some other official iranian force. came in and ransacked the building. the embassy believe for today iran is a very large complex, about the size of the whole white house complex. and they tore up the place. they lit a car on fire. there have been conflicting reports about whether or not they may have briefly held some employees hostage. they were later released and eventually riot police got them out. >> so what happens here? obviously they've gone a little further than the u.s. when it come to the central bank of iran. they said we won't do business with you anymore. that was something the u.s. has been so gung-ho on sanctions pulled back from. is that indicative of how much that hurt iran or intended to be a signal to the u.s.? >> i think there were a couple of things going on. the first is there is no u.s. embassy. there hasn't been one since the u.s. and iran broke diplomatic relations after the hostage crisis in 1979. so the british were the next best target. secondly, as you indicate, the sanctions in recent weeks at the british have invoked are significantly harsher. they've basically cut off all dealings with the central bank. the obama administration didn't go that far because they were concerned if they did, they would have to cut off relationships with banks of friendly countries that do business with tehran including the japanese and south koreans and others. i think the third thing that's going on is tehran wants to indicate they're not going to simply take these sanctions. there will be a price to be paid in the west. >> what's your bottom line view on this? you've spent years and years reporting on this story. but iran and a nuclear weapon. is it really inevitable? >> you know, i think at this point, it would be very difficult to stop if the current regime in iran remains in place. what you've really seen happen in the past two or three years is really a race against time in which the united states and israel have tried to among other countries, slow the iranian program. partly through sanctions. partly through sabotage like stuck smith, the computer virus that killed off many of the centrifuges for a while. and what they're hoping is that there is some change of political decisions about the nuclear program in iran while it slowed down. but you can't slow it forever. and it unclear despite what governments say whether or not they're willing to take further steps. >> that will be a story the world watches. thanks. late today the credit rating agency s&p downgraded six major american banks. this was thanks in large part to exposure to europe. this could mean loans are harder to come by in america and interest rate are higher for borrowers. it is proof of how much europe matters to americans. but the truth is there is not a lot of appetite in america to help europe right now and the administration says it won't. >> we do not in any way believe that additional resources are required from the united states from american taxpayers. >> taxpayers, maybe so. here's the bottom line. europe matters so much to america that we already are helping them every single day. ben bernanke is the man in charge. lou is an economist and he explains the u.s. federal reserve led by ben bernanke has made unlimited dollars available to european banks including a few downgraded by s&p today. like deutsch bank, and others. the fed can go further. ben bernanke has the authority to buy the debt of foreign governments. the fed has said they won't use this to bail out foreign governments. that they would only purchase highly rated debt. as of tonight that means they can buy the debt of germany, france and britain. they're all highly rated. the u.s. treasury could be out there buying bonds to keep europe from crashing. we called the fed and didn't get a comment. by the way, for those of you keeping scoring, the batch downgrade included two bank that's got upgraded. both are chinese. "outfront," the "outfront" five facebook getting ready for $100 billion ipo? and speaking of privacy, we can't resist telling you all about something -- we're not supposed to talk about. ♪ [ male announcer ] you never know when a moment might turn into something more. and when it does men with erectile dysfunction can be more confident in their ability to be ready with cialis for daily use. cialis for daily use is a clinically proven low-dose tablet you take every day, so you can be ready anytime the moment's right. ♪ [ man ] tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. don't take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. 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