Transcripts For MSNBC MSNBC Live 20110303 : vimarsana.com

i would love to know more, but what i know is troubling enough. and one thing that i do know is him having grown up in kenya, his view of the brits, for example, very different than the average american. all right, how many times do we have to go through this? he did not grow up in kenya. now, when he said that, i was a little skeptical that he meant it on purpose. richard wolffe said of course he did. it s politics, he s appealing to his base. it turns out richard wolffe was totally right and my skepticism was not warranted. yes, he totally meant to say it. he said kenya and he s going to come on and try to clarify it. now, this is supposeded to explain away his comments. but instead, look how he doubled down. my point really even about talking about him being raised in a different country, actually indonesia, not kenya, as i do. understand. it creates a different world view. this is no someone who grew up going to boy scouts meeting and little league baseball. what does that mean? he didn t grow up playing baseball and going to boy scout meetings. maybe he played kick ball. how do you know? and what huckabee is saying he s another, he s not one of us. he s foreign. whether it s kenya or indonesia or whatever it is, don t trust him, he s not one of us real americans. it s. co-ing through so clearly. but in case he wasn t clear enough on it, he went on to brian fisher radio show and it s the same theme. you seem to think there s some validity to the fact that there s some anti-americanism in this president. that s exactly the point i make in the book. that s exactly the point you make in your book? that our president is anti-american? how many times are they going to go to this well? and how ugly are they going to get and how dirty are they going to get. all this is bad. his intentions are clear. but the last part makes it 100% clear, listen for the end here as he talks about what turns out to be his true intention. i have said many times, publicly, that i do think he has a different world view, and i think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. most of us grew up going to boy scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with rotary clubs, not madrasas. first of all, ibd ni indones kenya have had rotary clubs since the 1930s. but you re going to bring back the madrassas? how many times do we have to debunk this? of course he knows obama didn t go to a madrasa. he knows it 100% for a fact. so why is he doing it? because he wants to play the race card, he wants to play the other card, he wants to bring the ethnicity into it, the religion into it. he wants to trick his base into thinking this guy is a muslim. he went to a madrasa. newt gingrich, shameless about playing the kenya card last week. he said, quote, what if obama is so outside of our comprehension that only if you understand kenyan, anti-colonial behavior can you begin to piece together his actions. that is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior. really? the kenyan anti-colonial model is the most accurate for predicting how the president is going to act when he grew up in hawaii? it s so transparent. and who got this ball rolling? of course, it was sarah palin back in 2008. she got it all rolling with obama isn t like one of us. watch. this is not a man who sees america as you and i see america. we see america as a force for good in this world. our opponent is someone who sees america as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own koun tr i. country. how clear do they have to take it, pal around with terrorists, grew up near madrasas. his father is kenyan. michelle bachmann made the ultimate goal clear as well. this is not symbolic. this is why we were sent here. and we will not stop until we repeal a president repeal a president. defeat a president. newt mentioned recently impeach the president. so the overall objective is clear, tear this president down by any means necessary. all right, joining me now is bob shrum who worked on both the gore and kerry presidential campaign. he knows a thing or two about dirty campaigns run against his guys. and jonathan alter. bob, you were on kerry s campaign. they ran the swift boat veterans against you. is this part and parcel to republican strategy? we have a campaign going on, go dirty, go ugly, go as low as you can. i ve written extensively about the swift boats and why i believe we should have responded immediately. i think this is actually a different case. i think they re appealing here and huckabee is appealing here to the base of the republican party. they re competing for the nomination, they want to get the birthers, they want to get the extreme tea party people who believe obama is the other. so that s the kind of politics being played here and it s being played all across the board and even in a milder form by mitt romney. so that s the game that s going on. but i tell you, when i hear huckabee, it strikes me as disgusting and hypocrital. he talks about growing up in america as boy scouts and rotary clubs. the part of america he grew up in tolerated racial intolerance and segregation. he doesn t have any right to accuse this president of anti-americanism. my dad was in a rotary club. he was in a rotary club before we moved here. and part of the reason he moved here is because the rotary club was so accepting and he thought what a wonderful country. so he joined the rotary club here. he s got that folksy thing. oh, i m with the people. is he hurting that brand doing that or is that part and parcel? huckabee got a reputation for being a decent guy in the 2008 campaign. reporters tended to like him. he made some smart speeches, said some interesting things, and he is putting that all at risk. it reminds me of a line from the o.j. trial when his friend on the stand just stopped and said, this is sad, o.j. first of all, it s not even clear huckabee is running for president. my sources tell me he s not running because in order to meet his mortgage payments on his new house in florida, he needs that fox contract. that s funny. and if he was running, roger ailes would have made him do the same thing that newt gingrich and rick santorum did, go off the payroll. so that s what s confusing about this to me. he knows this is all untrue. it comes from the desousa book, the whole anti-colonial crap that have gingrich think sts brilliant and now huckabee thinks is brilliant but is the most felacious nonsense. he s probably not running for president. so why is he doing this? his base according to these polls believes this nonsense. is he stuck between a rock and a hard place so all run republicans have to go dirty like this in order to appeal to the primary voters? i think you re seeing a wholesale movement in the republican party as far to the right to appeal to these tea party types as possible. look, this is a party that nominated last year in delaware a senate candidate who had to deny she was a witch before she went down in flames. this party is pushed to the right. a lot of these folks dealing with the fact that an african-american is president of the united states. what does it mean when they say they want to take our country back. back from whom? michele bachmann was pretty clear. back from obama. i don t know if huckabee is running for president. he may have to make those mortgage payments but a few months from now, he may decide to run. but he s certainly keeping the option open. part of how they pay the mortgage and it s certainly true of gingrich but also huckabee now. they re rock stars. they make huge amounts of money from speeches, et cetera. how do you do that? keep running for president. huckabee, he s leading and if you re leading, he s almost crazy not to run. he and pay lip are keeping their options open. instead doichk the early r d early exploir toir committee to earn money, they think they re going to ride in late on the fox wave or something. twl s a small part of the republican party that s not going in this direction. do have people like mitch daniels, he isn t going down this road. does he have a chance? oh, yeah, there s a wing of the republican party that have really wants him to get into this race. so one of the things that reasonable people can do is do what we re doing here and denounce this has completely out of bounds. and, you know, say to independents and others that respond to pollster, look at some of the others. if you re going to vote republican, look at the people not engaging in this kind of trash. mitch daniels also took away collective bargaining rights back in 2005. that s more policy. but the guy who won in 2008 in the proo i mare was john mccain, the so-called moderate, but he was not as far right. so i m not sure the strategy that they re employing makes sense. but when you go into the general election, you dealt with this several times. they re going to do these bag of tricks. they did it against your candidates. so now how do you fight back now that democrats aren t willing to do the same thing. it s not like obama is going to come out and say huckabee is un-american or whoever else. how do you effectively fight back? first, i think the mitch daniels wing of the republican party is broken and isn t going to get anywhere. he committed the cardinal sin by saying we ought to have an adult conversation about taxes. secondly, i think this is going to hurt republican candidates in the general election. i think right now you have a whole sense that these folks are unserious. that s why bill kristol, laura ingraham, a number of republican commentators say we have to look outside of this field. why doesn t jeb bush run? why doesn t chris christie run? why don t we have somebody else who can fight for this nomination. they re not running because they think obama is going to win in 2012. and frankly if one of them got in in the present mood, they would have to pull a mitt romney and start flip flopping to the right. just on bob s point, karl rove said recently that this was all an obama plot by not releasing his birth records, by letting all this right. because he knows it discredits the republican party. so the smart people in the republican party like karl rove know this is a total losener a general election. thank you. we really appreciate it. let me say also. jeb bush, chris christie, not mucked in this mire, right? but the problem is when they get into the primary, they re going to have to go into the same situation. they re going to have to appeal to that same crazy base. my guess is they do the same exact strategy. it s easy when they re outside of the race. i don t think it s as easy when they get inside the crazy primary race. wisconsin governor scott walker threatens tr s democrats with a. and in ohio, senator sharrod brown joins us next. plus speaker boehner is sinking. i ve got a plan for you. and we ll find out about the democratic strategy in that battle. and do you feel the intensity building? newt gingrich was planning a big announcement today. wait till you see how ridiculously lame it was. and anna marie cox, washington correspondent for gq magazine on what gingrich is really up to. i couldn t conceive this as a heart attack. the doctor leaned over and said to me, you just beat the widow-maker. i was put on an aspirin, and it s part of my regimen now. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. go see your doctor now. scott walker has energized progressives across the country. the progressive campaign committee and democracy for america are staying on the offense and buying more time for this powerful new ad. governor walker and the republicans just gave over $100 million in tax cuts to corporations and now they re asking teachers and nurses to pay for it. probably cost us between $400 and $500 a month in income. in one day, this ad raised more than $265,000. with an average contribution of $22. that s the middle class giving money, not the koch brother, and that s a progressive wing that s robust and fighting back. and they picked a right time to respond, because scott walker says he s issuing layoff notices tomorrow and republicans in wisconsin are threatening democrats with arrest. we ll explain all that next. my card lets me work out more. and ours lets us eat out more. aarp helps us do our favorite thing. the new website is my favorite thing. [ female announcer ] with aarp you get so much more out of life. call now to get the latest issue of our award-winning magazine absolutely free and discover the best of what s next. a beautiful steering wheel is great. but only if the dash it s attached to is equally beautiful. so we made sure it was. but what s the point of a beautiful dash if the seats aren t beautiful, too? so we made sure they were. but we couldn t stop there, so we kept going and going. and before we knew it, we had a 2011 jeep grand cherokee. republicans in wisconsin are taking the fight to a whole new level unfortunately. they are now literally threatening to put democrats in handcuffs. the state senate passed a resolution today calling for police to take 14 democrats into custody with or without force and possibly in handcuffs. for contempt after they fled to illinois to avoid voting on a union rights bill. the senate minority leader accused republicans of resorting to schoolyard bully tactics. governor scott walker is also threatening to start issuing layoff notices to state workers as soon as tomorrow. he says he ll take that step if his bill to take collective bargaining rights still hasn t been passed and it doesn t look like it will be, so he s saying ha ha, i m going to fire you next. how do you like them apples? according to the polls, they don t like it very much. sad day for you, governor. and now in ohio a fight over a similar plan is also escalating. unlike in wisconsin, this bill hits firefighters and cops in addition to teachers and all other public employees. so it s broader. and it also allows some negotiation over wages, but is bargaining over health care, sick time and pension benefits. and it completely eliminates the right to strike for all public workers. s so in many ways, this is even more drastic than the wisconsin bill. it passed by one vote. it still needs to pass the house and be signed by the governor kasich, and he s promising to do it right away. look at these polls. in the latest nbc/wall street journal poll, 77% of americans said unionized public workers should be allowed to collectively bargain. 19% said they shouldn t be. 77%! these guys are going against 77% of the american people. so why are republicans insisting in the face of overwhelming and obvious facts? well, it s because they re republicans. that s what they do. and remember, the voters aren t really their constituency, the donors who got them elected with all those ads with are the real bosses. and the wealthy donors wouldn t be happier with the results, when the middle class git gets the pain and they get the tax cut, they have two words for that mission accomplished. senator sherrod brown is a united states senator. it looks like it s going to be hard to stop this in ohio. is there any hope it can be stopped before kasich signs it? absolutely. last november, republicans did very well in ohio. their entire focus of the campaign was jobs. what they ve done this week in columbus was gone after worker s rights, collective bargaining, a 75-year american tradition that created the middle class. they re pushing through extreme anti-abortion legislation. that s what they ve done, not jobs. put it in a second context and that is to get this collective bargaining, taking away these workers rights bill out of committee, they had to take a republican senator voting no off the labor committee and replace him with a republican senator that was voting yes. then when it went to a rules committee, they had to take a republican senator who was against it off and put one that was for it on the committee. with all that, they passed it close coming out of committee, passed the senate flart oor 17-. 1/3 of the republicans in the senate voted no. that s why i m so proud of my state. because 8,500 people protested this week against this bill. i was in columbus at an episcopal church talking to firefighters and police officers and teachers and one of the things they said that i think is really important. a police officer told me, when we negotiate for police negotiate at the negotiating table, one of the thing we bargain is to make sure we get bullet proof tables. one of the things a teacher told me she fights for is smaller class size. so tell me this isn t going after public employees. that s what they re doing. and it s against, not just those workers interest. it s against the public interest. when you want police officers to be able to do their jobs, as safely as you can. you want teachers to be able to teach in the best circumstances for the students, and these guys have this political mission to put labor out of business. and it s morally reprehensible and it s just wrong if our state. now senator brown, i love the demonstrations, i love the people standing up iffer their rights. it s great to see it in ohio and wisconsin, but now that it has passed the ohio senate, the house is completely republican, and obviously kasich says he s going to sign it, a republican governor. maybe. so in the short term, how do you actually stop it? . well, maybe. i don t know that for a fact. again, the senate is 2 1/2 to 1 republican. and 1/3 of those republicans, almost 1/3 voted against it. the house is 3 to 2 republican, 59-40. in terms of ratio, percentages, we don t need as many republicans in the house in terms of ratio to switch over. and the fact that those 8,500 people there and there werew meks, a lot of people from churches, a lot of people from advocacy, community group, just good citizens from central ohio and all over the state, i think they helped convince those seven republicans to flip and vote no on it against their party orders. i m hopeful the same thing happens in the house. i don t know. we ll see. do you support the recall efforts in wisconsin? would you do that in ohio if need be? well, my understanding is there s no recall provision of legislators or governors or state officials in ohio. there is, though, a referendum process. so if this becomes law, there s a large group of citizens i think will likely go to the ballot. they need to circulate petitions, go to the ballot to repeal this bill. i don t remember the in um ber of we number of weeks. my guess is they ll succeed. it s a direct assault on workers. this has nothing to do with the budget. it s got nothing to do with what they were elected to do. work for jobs, create jobs. it s got everything to do with the political mission. scott walker and governors of other states talked about over the phone to try to do. and that s why it s just it s just the republicans are governing by ideology. the voters want practical government to create jobs, not to bust unions, not to make abortions even more restrictive, not to do any of those things. they want to focus on jobs and these governors aren t doing it. these governors want to see their names in the paper, i think. all right, sherrod brown, thanks for joining us tonight. up next, the obama administration approved the first deep water oil drilling permit since the deep water horizon disaster. surely everything was fixed, right? well, not really. oh, boy. we ll tell you all about it. 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[ male announcer ] marriott hotels & resorts knows it s better for xerox to automate their global invoice process so they can focus on serving their customers. with xerox, you re ready for real business. her morning begins with arthritis pain. that s a coffee and two pills. the afternoon tour begins with more pain and more pills. the evening guests arrive. back to sore knees. back to more pills. the day is done but hang on. her doctor recommended aleve. just 2 pills can keep arthritis pain away all day with fewer pills than tylenol. this is lara who chose 2 aleve and fewer pills for a day free of pain. and get the all day pain relief of aleve in liquid gels. i. the obama administration has approved the first deepwater oil drilling permit to noble energy to drill a well about 70 miles southeast of venice, louisiana in 6,500 sfeet of water. it s about 30 miles further offshore than where the deep warter horizon disaster occurred, only in 5,000 feet of water. so the new well is going to be 1,500 feet deeper than that. so at least they must now have planned to stop a leak if they have to, right? they ve got to. well, it turns out, not exactly. ken salazar told a group of reporters that containment systems still needed some work. he say, these containment systems are work in progress. oh, no. he continues, both systems currently have limitations on water depth and barrel per day containment capability. now, let me decipher that for you. do you know what still a work in progress means? it means if it blows now, we still have no way to contain it. but hey, we got a lot of pressure from the oil companies to get that oil flowing again. drill, baby, drill and let s hope it doesn t blow. bad idea. now, it turns out the fight over wisconsin budget isn t just about unions. governor scott walker is also making it about are you ready for this? birth control. the budget that he released seeks to repeal a 2009 requires state insurance to cover birth control. he says it s an unacceptable mandate on employers with moral objections to these services and increases the cost of health insurance for everyone. you know what this means? it means they don t want your insurance covering your birth control anymore. so women that voted for walker in wisconsin, is that what you stro voted for? so your birth control won t be covered under your insurance and you ll have to pay more. birth control! it s not even abortion b it s birth control. and you voted for jobs. now they re saying you have to pay luns of dollars more for birth control. nothing on jobs, things on birth control. private bradley manning is many military custody for turning over classified document documents to wikileaks. 22 more charges against him, that he gave documents to the enemy. that s a capital offense. jeff mor rrel, the pentagon pre secretary weighed in on how they justify it today. i don t know about many people, but certainly some on the far left, a couple of websites in particular and one of the shows on this network also made anni issue that he s being held in solitary confinement. he s being harshly treated. i wanted to see for myself. i went down with the department s general council. i came away impressed how professionally the brig is run in quantico. there s only 30 cells. every one of those cells is identical. is it solitary confinement. it s not. there s 30 people on a u-shaped corridor. he s not in a hole, he s not away from others. he s allowed to have conversations with others. he later, though, went on to clarify, no, no, no when he goes to exercise in that one hour he has, he s not allowed to talk to anyone else. when he goes to eat, he s not allowed to talk to anyone else. but when he s in his cell he might be able to shout at others. hey, there s other people in the cells around him. he s not in a hole. do you know first of all, he s not convicted and for most of the time he was being held, he was held in maximum security by himself where heck not interact with those people and he hadn t even been charged yet. i m sorry, but i m not buying it. even according to your own statements on our air. coming up, the budget battle has, of course, erupted and it s funny enough, also within the republican party. the tea party calls john boehner a fool. they want to chase him out of town. can president obama split the republican party in half now? we ll tell you how he could do that. and congresswoman debbie wasserman-shultz gives the take on the budget battle. 100 crisps, 100 ways. everything pops with pringles. of some of the annoying symptoms menopause brings. go it s one a day menopause formula. the only complete multivitamin with soy isoflavones to help address hot flashes and mild mood changes. one a day menopause formula. over a million people have discovered how easy it is to use legalzoom for important legal documents. so start your business, protect your family, launch your dreams. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. of. the republicans are in big trouble with their tea party base, so the democrats have actually been handeded a golden opportunity. house speaker john boehner wants to cut $61 billion from the budget. democrats have offered $41 billion in cuts so they sat down with vice president biden leading the negotiations. here s the problem for john boehner. the tea party wing of the gop wanted $100 billion in cut, so even before he walked into the room with democrats, the tea party was after him. justin phillips, the founder of tea party nation slammed the speaker saying, quote, you look like a fool. charlie sheen is now making more sense that john boehner. damn, that s cold. and he issued a call to arms for tea partiers. the honeymoon is over. the tea party should find a candidate to run against john boehner in 2012 and should set as a goal to defeat in a primary the sitting speaker of the house of representatives. now, remember, this is before boehner even walked into the negotiating room. if the tea party wants to primary him when he s at $61 billion in cut, it s pretty clear boehner has absolutely no room to compromise. yet a government shutdown would also be devastating for republicans. now, this is a republican pollster. he suggested that a government shutdown would be like jumping off a cliff saying, quote, it may be hard to understand why a person might jump off a cliff, unless you understand they re being chased by a tiger. that tiger is the tea party. now do you get it? here s the problem for republicans. most americans want to reduce the deficit, but most americans absolutely disagree with the way the republicans are doing it. let me show you the polls. 56% say cutting head start is unacceptable. 65% say cutting heating assistance to low-income families is unacceptable. 67% say cutting medicaid is unacceptable. unacceptable is a very, very clear word. now, what is an acceptable option to the american people? well, it turns out there is one. raising taxes on the rich. huh, i think i ve heard that somewhere before. 81% support a surtax on people making over $1 million a year. 81%. 81%, 81%. that s a huge number. 74% support ending tax credits for oil companies. 68% want to end the bush tax cut for families making over $250,000 a year. that s exactly what we ve been telling you on this program. we didn t make it up. we just listened to you. we actually read the patrols. polls. we actually care what the american people think. the tea party is driving them crazy, they re driving them further and further to the right. they have these extreme priorities that the american people aren t in favor of. how can president obama finish them off politically? well, first, whatever you do, don t bail them out. if you give them the cuts that they want, then you re on the hook for those unpopular popc y policies. that would be crazy. but if you fight them and make them pick between their base and the overwhelm iing priorities o the american people, then you ve got them. it s really, raelily simple. whatever you do, do not give into their demands. it s almost the only wrong move you can make. i hope he doesn t do it. now joining me is a member of the house budget committee, deborah wasserman-shultz. congresswoman, i don t even know why the democrats are offering $41 billion in cuts, honestly. well, i mean, cenk, the situations that the republicans find themselves in is that they need to be obsessed with satisfying the voracious appetite of their right wing of the tea party. they almost can t help themselves. if they get off the path that they re on, then as the wall street journal piece said, they re literally going to be consumed by the tiger that is after them. it is absolutely critical, though, we focus on creating jobs and turning the economy around. even ben bernanke testified in the house financial services committee that the republicans cuts in the continuing resolution, in hr-1 would actually shrink the economy and we would lose a couple hundred thousand job, which he deemed not insignificant. now, for the fed chairman to actually go out on a limb like that, that s not a person used to making strong statements for risk of being, you know, being taken the wrong way, that was a significant statement. so we ve got to make sure we focus on job creation. congresswoman, you re right. bernanke says at least a couple hundred thousand. another economist says 700,000. that s a republican economist, okay? goldman sachs says maybe a lot more than that, jobs are lost if you cut. so i ve got to come back and ask you, though, why are you guys even playing this game? shouldn t you go back to the republicans and go no. of course, we can have some spending cuts, but only if you agree with the american people that we re going to take away the oil subsidies and raise taxes on the rich. i m going to put it back on the table. the house democrats have been offering specifically the amendment that would get rid of the oil and gas subsidies and the frun republicans have been unanimously voting against them. we recognize we have to be responsible and we do need reasonable cuts, like president obama proposed in the state of the union address. only if we share the pain. only if we share the pain. absolutely. they re not sharing the pain. they just took the top 2% took over $150 billion in tax cuts. where s their pain? beyond just sharing the pain, we also need to make sure we do what he suggested which is to make sound investments in education, so that we can outeducate and outinnovate and outbuild our competitors in this global economy. striking the right balance and not just drawing a line in the sand saying no, we re not going to make any cut, that s not responsible. we re nowhere near the right balance. giving away $800 billion of tax cuts overall blew up our budget. i totally agree with you. i know you voted against that in the sense that the democrats were not pushing that. the republicans were. i got that. now please, please, please, please tell me that president obama isn t going to give them the gift of saying okay, what do you need? you want $61 billion in cuts, i ll give you something close to that. he s a serial compromiser. if he compromises and gives them mostly what they want, he s going to let them off the hook. well, i don t think the president is likely, nor ohouse and senate democrats likely to just give away the store and give republican what is they want. what we want to focus on is striking that appropriate balance. speaker pelosi talked today in her news conference the importance of meeting the republicans halfway, but meeting them halfway on the right kinds of cuts, not slashing education. i was at a child care district in my district and literally stood with moms who who when they lose their childcar, they re going to have to stop working. they re not going to be able to send their kids to school and they won t get an early childhood education. and we know that cuts like that will directly lead to kids becoming criminals later on. we know there s that direct proportional relationship. so we ve got to make sure the cuts are the right cuts as well. all right. congresswoman deb beef wasserman shultz, thank you for your time. so let s not make those cuts, let s go back and put taxes back on the table. that s what i would suggest. but that would be strong. anyway, newt gingrich holds a press conference about his presidential run. announces absolutely nothing. and then fox news throws him under the bus. we ll tell you why. and rush limbaugh, well, he took me on in his radio show, which was interesting. i will respond, and i promise you it will be fun. everything is better with swanson broth in it. an essential ingredient in any kitchen. swanson 100% natural chicken broth. until the combination of three good probiotics in phillips colon health defended against the bad gas, diarrhea and constipation. .and? 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[ male announcer ] just like you, business pro. just like you. go national. go like a pro. gingrich to announce he s running for president! instead he announced a new website! we will explain that clownish move when we come back. newt gingrich and rick santorum have been suspended from fox news. fun. fox says it s because they re considering a run for president. but so are huckabee and palin and shea ear still on the payroll, so what s the difference? rick santorum asked the same question last night. i don t know why fox differentiated whether there s conversations there s been conversations. they didn t talk to me and ask me whether i m running or not. it was not something we had a conversation about. i don t know whether other people have had conversations. and so all i can say is i think they made their call and i respect it. so fox suspended santorum without even talking to him. damn, that s cold. here s the real reason fox let these guys go. they threw them under the bus because they re irrelevant. they re not going to fire palin because she has star power. and they re not going to fire huckabee because he might actually win. it s really ironic. not only are they slanted in favor of the republican party, but they even pick favorites within the gop. roger ailes will eventually come out and say i am announcing the new republican presidential candidate. just skip the nonsense and get right to it. gu it s not just fox. even others don t think newt has a chance of winning. newt isn t helping his case either he s just flailing around. am i going to run? am i not going to run? i don t know. he hyped this big meeting with the governor of georgia and it started a lot of buzz about a presidential announcement. here s what it ended up being instead. the launch of a new website to see if he can get enough people interested in him so that he can consider a presidential run. please. by the way, that stock photo behind him, it s got four asians, three back people. has nothing to do with a newt event. you see that? it s that third or fourth wife? i forget. anyway, so all this waffling about whether you re in or out and in the end you launch a website. this guy is doing a press conference from underneath a bus that fox news put him under in front of a waffle house as he keeping waffling back and forth. the race is beginning and he might already be out of it. joining me is washington correspondent for gq magazine anna marie cox. all right, i m clear on it. but are you with me or against me? is fox news throwing these guys under the bus? rather than really be thrown to the wolves, i think they re being allowed to walk over to the wolfe s den. this does allow them to do interviews for people like cnn. i think they re not going to find as friendly an audience for what they want to say as they would at fox. and i think these are actually the two who might actually run. i think i have a hard time believes that huckabee or palin will actually do it. i hear you on that, but that s how they make their mortgage payments. the reason that sarah palin is relevant, is because she might run for president. if she doesn t, what s the point of talking to palin. and huckabee is winning right now. he would be crazy not to run. it would be crazy not to run but he is crazy and people will find that out. he s saying more and more crazy things. people on the strategy side say huckabee scares them, by the way. he looks like such a nice guy and acts like such a nice guy, he s the one that scares them. i think as far as newt goes, this is now by my count the fifth time he s threatened to run. if he doesn t do it this time, he s never going to do it. in four years he ll be 71 years old. i can t see the gop doing that again. santorum, i m not going to even discuss. the most irrelevant candidate in my lifetime. makes mitch daniels look charismatic.. total loser. newt gingrich, if he ran, former speaker of the house, he has a lot of money. does he have a chance? i don t think he has a chance really. he was one of the most unpopular political figures of the 90s. i don t think it will take a lot for people to be reminded. the core of that primary audience, he has a real problem with them. that s why you see people such as tom coburn discounting h him. tom coburn is an advocate for traditional marriage. gingrich isn t an advocate for traditional marriage. he s a very entertaining guy. he s a science fiction author, some of his ideas kind of resemble science fiction. i m excited to see him run. at least somebody is excited. newt is going to be excited about that. thank you for joining mess. next, i will respond to rush limbaugh so that will be fun. homeowners rates have been going up, but you can still refinance to a fixed rate as low as 4.75% at lendingtree.com, where customers save an average of $293 a month. call lending tree at. today. and we can cook out more with friends. my card lets me work out more. and ours lets us eat out more. aarp helps us do our favorite thing. the new website is my favorite thing. [ female announcer ] with aarp you get so much more out of life. call now to get the latest issue of our award-winning magazine absolutely free and discover the best of what s next. on tuesday, we had robert reich on the program and we suggested raising taxes and we knew that was going to make conservatives angry and we also knew it was completely supported by the american people and the polls bear that out. but it made one guy angry. this is what rush limbaugh had to say. he s talking in terms of an actual war hp he s telling the rich, you better give up the money before people with pitch forks come to your house and get it to you. isn t that what s happening in wisconsin? isn t this sort of what all this is about? all these people occupying the capitol ebuilding and all these public sector union people? but it s not the rich they re demanding it from, is it? it s average americans. many who are underemployed or unemployed. isn t that who teach es are saying give us more. it s what the king of saudi arabia or gadhafi is doing? rush limbaugh cares about the unemployed and underemployed? when did that happen? and did you notice what he did? they re going after the rich. they might come off my mansion in palm beach? did i say that? no, i m for the unemployed and underemployed. no, no, no robert reich doesn t go after the unemployed. he went after the rich.