Pillars of an expanded surveillance state. As to the latter, a report in the New York Times yesterday detailed the degree to which the nsa is monitoring the content of american communications. It is a development that the papers Editorial Board asserted shs a common sense understanding of the fourth amendment. We have chuck todd host of the daily rundown i go to you first as our man at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. The fact the white house is having a press conference on an august friday at 3 00 p. M. , are we to believe they are excited to get the message out to the media . No. I think this is more of a traditional before hes gone on vacation. Hes done this before. End of the summer deal. Its one of those things they know they are long overdo on a press conference in that respect. There is a lot of unanswered questions. You brought up that New York Times sotory yesterday on nsa. This has done more damage to the president and his brand with supporters of his, its the issue of surveillance and surveillance state, the struggles that hes had to deal with looking at an impact with china and all that. More than any of the other stories, this has been the one that is the most politically damaging. Its one the white house folks will tell you off the record they believe this has been the stuff that is hit them hardest that hurt them more than some of the other things that have popped up there over the last couple of months let alone discussed with washington and things like that. But that because it hit its core and hit the core particularly with younger demographic which has been be a important part of this base. So thats going to be something to hear the president address and deal with issues of the surveillance state. Where it is. Where are we in transparency. Putin will be there. Obviously thats going to be big. Hearing him on egypt. A lot of National Security stuff let alone what weve got coming up in the fall with budget de k debackd debacles. The guardian has a scathing assessment of president obamas legacy on counterterrorism. I would like excerpt from it. In doing so he wound up foregoing as chuck points out this is not electorally among Younger Voters but what well think of when we think of the Obama Presidency and the white house has goals as progressives have ideas about the Affordable Care act but certainly the debate over the nsa and surveillance state is going to be a huge part of this i think. Right. Youre going to hear the president having to defend a lot of things today. Hes going to have to be defending the programs that Edward Snowden leaked, the broad expansion of surveillance. Hes going to have to explain the reaction to the terror warning that shut down dozens of embassies and consulates and this Aggressive Campaign of drone strikes in yemen to deal with this very sort of unspecific threat. So theres all of these aspects of the counterterrorism strategy that have been on display this week and my guess is that this is going to dominate the press conference and the president is going to have to describe and defend the administrations strategy on this. We have a perfect storm in terms of counterterrorism and National Security. You have Embassy Closures and drone strikes and Edward Snowden and putin cancellation and you have these newest pieces of information about the nsa and just how broadly its monitoring american correspondents. This is your chance and opportunity to explain this stuff and how it fits together. I expect the president to say as you said before on the surveillance stuff, we really have to balance security and privacy and have a debate about that. And i think the followup question would be when were you going to tell us . When were you going to let us know the basic information so we could have that debate and what else is there out there that we ought to be debating that we dont yet know about. Those are inconvenient questions for the president but they have to be asked. On some level it is really hard to articulate a counterterrorism policy at a time of great change across the region, right . There is fact and history and where president obama stood as a senator and candidate on issues of surveillance and counterterrorism and stop gap measures to put in place and curbs on unlimited executive power. I guess the question is, josh, to what degree can he institute some of those checks in the remaining three years. Is there any political power to do so . Is it the third rail of american politics . I think what hell have to deal with in the press Conference Today is what he said on the record is we do not spy on americans has turned out to be untrue. You see the ripple effects from the snowden leaks. You see its much broader than people originally expected. Snowdens email service that he used shut down yesterday rather than comply with demands from nsa. Other email services have to. I think first and foremost he needs to come out and square what hes done with what he claimed to stand for earlier and then maybe move on to speaking to congress about putting checks and balances in place. I dont know if theres a lot of appetite for that. Chuck, i wonder, can the president even square any of it at this point . I am not inclined to see a lot of reason with charles, i dont think of him as a reasonable arguer but he has a point that he makes today and he says that confusion he focuses on how the administration has changed language around certain things. Embassy evacuations have been a reduction in staff. Terror attacks Janet Napolitano call man caused disasters. Global war on terror is now an overseas contingency operation. He basically says that confusion of language is a confusion of policy and that this administration is in many ways sort of at sea over how to negotiate this. This goes to there have been supporters outside of the white house who have been quietly critical of how theyve handled this entire snowden and nsa situation. The president needs to get out there and explain and defend the policy. If this is a policy he believes in, he talked on leno that he was a skeptical guy. Senator obama would have been very skeptical of this program. Hes president obama. Its a lot different. He gets all of this information. He gets it differently. Any of us understand that its a different theres no doubt you get a different set of facts and data when you are sitting in that seat. What hes got to do is get out there and explain it. This has been among the biggest critiques i heard frankly from both left and right on this issue. Its not that they dont sympathize with the fact that the president is sort of that he is sort of a mixed mind of this. He knows the privacy part of this is sort of ugly and uncomfortable at the same time hes convinced its a good tool. Then explain it. Tell the public and then sell it. Hes got to try and sell it. When you dont sell it, you let other voices dominate the discussion and then you create this muddled mess that you have. The question also of al qaeda is one where the president is in a very tough spot. In so far as we got bin laden. Something the white house has been very, very clear about. Theres this contention that al qaeda has been decimated. That is something the president continues to sort of say except that this week we are most of america is waking up to reality that parts of al qaeda are alive and well and functioning enough to warrant the closure of embassies 19 or 20 across the arab world. So how do you even what does he present to the American People in terms of our victory or ongoing war against al qaeda . Right. I dont think most people are really making fine distinctions between core al qaeda and al qaeda affiliates and whether the al qaeda in pakistan is different than al qaeda in yemen. People hear al qaeda and they get worried and so any time you say there is an al qaeda threat that leads to the mass shutdown of embassies and consulates, it leads people to think the threat is still out there and clearly they havent been decimated. This is going to continue through the president s vacation. There will be questions of what kind of images you have of the president on vacation while theres this ongoing threat. It sort of will hang over everything because even though they will open up embassies and consula consulates, there will not be a declaration the threat is over. It will hang over things. Certainly probably all of the way through the next anniversary of september 11th attacks in a month. So weve got several more weeks of this. One thing that the president could try to address when questioned to what extent has u. S. Policy for the last ten years beginning with the invasion of iraq on up through the current drone strikes, to what extent have some of those policies and in fact recruited new members for al qaeda . You know, i mean, thats a legitimate question to ask. And a different one to answer. Eugene, thats a big question. Has the drone war worked . I had a democratic congressman on my show earlier this week who argues for every drone strike in yemen they get an operative. They get 30 operatives. Alex did a great job of showing this. How many more or created . You know about this based on reporting. The uptick in radical jihadist going from western europe to afghanistan to other failed states in the region, we talked about this new coalition coming into syria. I mean, the implications here are drastic. Were looking at states in transition, failed states, really insecure political situations that are ripe for islamic fundamentalism, radicalism, jihadism and what is americas role to play in there. Drone strikes are one piece of it. You have to ask what the longterm benefits there are and shortterm sacrifices. Right at the end of may president obama gave a speech indicating this war with a not last forever and you are not going to launch drone wars all over the world. At the same time youve seen the response that we know how to do here in yemen and response of the threat is drone strikes and were still going to try to figure out exactly who the strikes have hit, how high of a level inside of al qaeda and Arabian Peninsula they may have been targeting. Theres a lot to figure out here. In addition, you have the syria problem that you talked about where there clearly is no appetite in the white house to have a war with syria but they will be criticized they dont deal with the Terror Threat there. Not that hes questions are easy but certainly theres going to be a lot of scrutiny for the response the u. S. Takes particularly things like drone strikes. Thank you, mark, and of course to our very own chuck todd. Chuck, im expecting to see you at that briefing with the most awesome hard hitting questions of them all as usual. Thank you for raising the bar there. Be sure to catch chuck weekdays at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on a show called the daily rundown. Well cover the president s press Conference Today at 3 00 p. M. After the break, rand paul versus Chris Christie. Rand paul versus ted cruz and rand paul versus mitch mcconn l mcconnell. Well look at what stands between the paul dynasty and 2016 next on now. This is the one i was telling you about. The new Samsung Galaxy s 4. 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The recent spat between kentucky senator rand paul and new jersey govern governor Chris Christie is the latest threat to the establishment posed by the junior senator of the blue grass state. The mouth piece for rand pauls 2012 president ial bid had this to say about his current gig. Between you and me, im sort of holding my nose for two years because what were doing here is going to be a big benefit to rand in 16 so thats my long vision. Pauls pac raised nearly 1 million in the first half of this year and paul has been privately courting gop megadonors like the coke brothers who donated to his campaign committee. Paul is as radical as a. Mbitioa. His budget to the right of paul ryans budget would privatize both Social Security and medicare, raise tax es on middl income earners and paul is either unaware or unapologetic about his budgets impact on the middle class telling josh green im serious about making the party more inclusive and a party where every ethic group is welcome including trying to grow our party within the working class. Josh green, i ask you first as the man who interviewed rand paul. How out of touch must the gop be if they think theres talk that this man not only may run as a president ial candidate but may succeed in winning the nomination. This is someone who wants to get rid of the enumerated powers act which would abolish the regulation of workplace conditions, the minimum wage. He wants to abolish the americans with disabilities act and hes previously opposed the civil rights act. Hes a libertarian. What gives him shine within the Republican Party is he does have a certain kind of charisma. Thats not always evident. I dont think it was evident in the clip we showed where he went to visit Howard University. But the Republican Base he offers an alternative to the kind of stayed establishment mitt romney leading figures theyve had and therefore is attractive as a potentia