gillespie made a mistake, he repeated it on cnn. >> he took a leave of absence, and in fact, he ended up not going back at all, and retired retroactively to february of 1999, as a result. >> did romney give back the salary he made between 1999 and 2002 when he retired retroactively? look here, folks. here's the bottom line. the s.e.c. filings show that romney made at least $100,000 a year while he was allegedly doing nothing as the ceo bain. maybe romney should have followed the lead of his father, george romney, stepped down as president of the american motors corporation, when he ran for office. it was real simple. a report in "the nation" says "the board elected george romney as vice chairman, but granted him an indefinite leave of absence without pay." mitt romney chose to retroactively retire. in other words, he was double-dipping. but more importantly, the romney campaign still cannot say who was running bain capital during the time in question. >> does the governor think that those were good deals for bain? >> those deals were made by -- those decisions were made by, um, by folks that were running the company differently. so i don't have the -- the details of what the decision making went into it. >> they don't have the details. that's a key word right there, key phrase. "they don't have the details." have you noticed how the romney camp is kind of short on detail? romney adviser eric fernstrom was asked, who was running bain between 1999 and 2002? his response, "you should check with bain, but it wasn't romney." "the huffington post" checked with the security and exchange commission in six different filings between april of 2000 and may of 2001, mitt romney was listed as a member of the management committee at bain. the committee was responsible -- key word there -- for day-to-day operations of bain. in one filing, romney was listed as president and managing director. no one can have titles like this in the business world and not have any responsibilities to accompany. romney's answers are clouding the issue, no doubt. it's getting so bad for mitt romney, even conservative pundits are urging him to release his tax returns to get everything out in the open. >> mitt romney's losing at this point, in a big way. if something's going to come out, get it out in a hurry. >> we should release the tax returns tomorrow. it's crazy. you've got to release six, eight, ten years of back tax returns. take the hit for a day or two. >> there's obviously something there, because if there was nothing there, he would say, have it. so there's obviously something there that compromises what he said in the past about something. so that's -- but i think the bigger thing is, it's arrogance. >> well, romney and his campaign insist that they will only release this year's and last year's returns. they are even resorting to fake examples, fake examples to make their case. >> senator mccain, the republican nominee in the last election, said was the relevant standard. it's the standard that senator john kerry as the democratic nominee said was the standard. >> hang on a second here. john kerry, you know what he did? he released way more than two years' of tax returns, because he was running in the senate numerous years. in fact, by the time he was running for president in 2004, john kerry had released 20 years' of tax returns. mitt romney tried to correct the campaign's mistake when he was on "fox & friends" this morning. >> john kerry ran for president, you know, his wife, who has hundreds of millions of dollars, she never released her tax returns. somehow this wasn't an issue. >> maybe it wasn't an issue because teresa heinz kerry, she wasn't run for president of the united states. romney and his campaign, you know what they are? they are really boxed in on this issue and they don't have an answer. conservative columnist george will identified romney's main issue. >> the cost of not releasing the returns are clear. therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing -- >> and he's going to tough it out. >> the consequences for releasing the tax returns must be pretty bad for mitt romney if he would rather just get raked over the coals by conservative talkers for not releasing them. obama campaign chair rahm emanuel had an even better explanation. >> the mccain campaign released 23 years. and he's telling the american people, i'm not going to give you what i've given john mccain's people in 2008. and when he gave him 23 years, john mccain's people looked at it and said, let's go with sarah palin. >> the tax returns are essential to everything mitt romney is running on. they explain his real achievements in business, they show how he would try to run the country. they give us a look at what his tax policy would really be and what he believes in. mitt romney, i don't think, is making the case to the american people that he would be a president that americans can trust. it's all about the tax return. number one, i would like to know, how is he listed? general partner? president, owner? ceo? and then he signed it. i assume he signed his own tax return, even if he had somebody put it together, even if it's 500 pages. and the other thing is the business deductions. did mitt romney have any business deductions that dealt with bain capital? because if he did, he was flat-out lying to the american people when he said he had no n involvement. and maybe mitt romney has made the political calculation that it's just a heck of a lot safer and a hell of a lot easier to lie to the american people than it is to the internal revenue service. get your cell phones out, i want to know what you think. tonight's question -- this is a good one -- what will do more damage to mitt romney's campaign -- releasing his tax returns or not releasing his tax returns? text "a" for releasing his returns, text "b" for not releasing his returns to 622639. our blog is right there for you at ed.msnbc.com. we'll bring you the results later on in the show. i'm joined tonight by msnbc political analyst, richard wolffe, and rick tyler, republican strategist and former communications director for newt gingrich. gentleman, great to have you with us tonight. richard, you first. >> yep. >> what is his afternoon out of this mess? out of this maze? you do five interviews to try to clear things, it only made things worse, and they're having a hard time explaining any of this. what's the easy avenue? >> the easy answer is to release the tax returns, but actually there's a step or five before that. which is first of all, decide which avenue you're going to take. one of the problems mitt romney has right now is indecision. it's that his story keeps on change. first of all they said, well, you know, everyone else has done this the, that's not true. then you end up talking about john kerry's wife, which is ridiculous. you say, the obama people will never be satisfied. they've said all of these things over the last couple of days and it's a bit like his response on the bain question. the story keeps on changing. if you think back what happened to john kerry, the swift boat attacks were terrible, but the indecision you're broadcasting about your own character as a leader is, i would argue, just as damaging. >> so he didn't solve anything on friday. and as we move forward in this campaign, they don't seem to have any clear-cut answers. at least it's been 36, 72 hours, it goes on and on. how do they fix it, though? what would they come out and say to fix it? >> well, he does have to take the hit. i would argue that friday's comments made it worse. instead of trying to project strength and saying, i'm punching back, he overstepped the mark. he said i had no responsibility, that was hit word. and you get into that whole buck passing thing that rahm emanuel described so well. >> rick tyler, your campaign, the gingrich campaign, raised these issues in the primary. did the gop miss it? i mean, wasn't anybody in the gop beyond newt gingrich taking this more seriously? why weren't they? >> well, look, if you remember, we did release all these s.e.c. documents we had in january of this year, that was six months ago. the media wasn't very interested in it, in our side. frankly the romney campaign actually did a good job. they won the debate with us, which is they had reframed this to an attack on free enterprise, and all the conservative commentators bought that. it wasn't an attack on free enterprise, but that's what happened. mitt romney might do well to go back and try to claim the mantle of free enterprise versus obama's statism, that may be the way to go. but i think at this point, he had opportunities in 2008 during the primary to clear this up. he decided to delineate a very bright line in 1999 about going to the olympics, and the documentation and salaries, as you pointed out, are inconsistent with that and he's going to have to explain it. i think at this point, the best thing for him to do is full transparency and get it out there. it's not just the obama campaign, who, by the way, i think that that would be the thing they don't want to happen, so to have them release everything, and have everybody pore through it. because i suspect this is a lot to do about nothing. i don't think there's anything illegal that was done here. >> it's not a question of whether it's illegal. it's not a question of whether it's illegal, it's a question of what he was doing and the company was doing that he was the head of in 1999 to 2002, if he was outsourcing jobs. >> i disagree with the assertion that we'll find out what his tox policy is by looking at his tax returns. we'll find out how much he made and who he made it from and how it was filed and what kind of interest he had. and i think the american public has some interest in that if he's going to run for president of the united states. >> but i think we would find out what his tax policy would be, because there's an awful lot of write-ups in there that i suppose he would continue to support or he wouldn't have taken them. and obviously he is not releasing it for everybody to see. the point i made earlier is, if he took business write-ups with bain, would you consider that a connection to the company? >> if he could legally take write-offs, he should take write-offs. >> but he's saying he's not connected -- >> entitled to -- >> he might be entitled to it, but on friday he said he had no connection with the company. >> and that's a political problem. you know, he says he didn't have decision making capacity with bain. they negotiated, you know, he said he took a leave of absence and then decided to not go back to the company. you know, this retroactive thing. while it's true, the way they did that, i don't think that's untrue, but it just doesn't play politically well. i think romney, you know, back in 1999, when he left for the olympics, he should have been thinking about this. >> yeah. >> the only way this is a problem is if you run for president. otherwise, none of this is a problem. >> well, he's running for president and the american people want some answers on this. >> he will it be before the republican party steps out? not the people on tv on sunday. i mean, i'm talking about when does newt gingrich step up, rick santorum, how can they be silent on this? >> maybe that's a question for rick. >> i'm going to get it from you first. >> i think he's the presumptive nominee at this point, and there's a window for things to go spectacularly wrong for him. as long as the polls are closed and he can string this along, he's okay. there could be a moment of peril, a few more weeks of this if the polls really start to move where you get people who have suspended, quote, unquote, suspended their campaign -- >> herman cain, how can he be quiet? how long is newt going to be quiet on this, three, four weeks? what is the date he's going to say we have to challenge candidate here? >> well, that could happen. if the campaign cannot figure out a way to dispense with these types of issues. now we know how the obama campaign intends to operate. that is they're going to obfuscate his record for as long as they can. there was some memo out by newman released i think earlier today that talked about how great it was they were a parity because he spent $51 million and only a parity. i would argue he spend $51 to be a parody, that's a good thing because this is the worst economy, the worst debt, the worst deficit spending. >> he sure inherited. you're right about that. >> romney should be far ahead and he has to fix the political party so he can be. and then we'll return to the economy. >> thanks for joining us. remember to answer tonight's question at the bottom of the screen. share your thoughts on twitter, @edshow. and on facebook. president obama is going directly after romney's business experience and what it would mean for america. 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[ female announcer ] colgate total. less germs. healthier mouth. coming up, the president went to the jugular on mitt romney's outsourcing. we'll show you exactly why romney's missing years at bain are so critical to the middle class voters and workers in this country. the right wing smear machine. does a hatchet job on obama's remarks on government and small business. van jones knows what that's all about and he's here to weigh in later tonight. while senate leader harry reid warns about the influence of big money in the election cycle, sheldon adelson, makes a multimillion-dollar donation to a republican super pac. we'll tell you who it's probably going to be going to with all of the details. share your thoughts with us on twitter and on facebook using the hashtag, ed show. you know what i love about this country? trick question. i love everything about this country! including prilosec otc. you know one pill each morning treats your frequent heartburn so you can enjoy all this great land of ours has to offer like demolition derbies. and drive thru weddings. so if you're one of those people who gets heartburn and then treats day after day, block the acid with prilosec otc and don't get heartburn in the first place. 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[ female announcer ] the travelocity guarantee. from the price to the room to the trip you'll never roam alone. welcome back to "the ed show." president obama's campaign is hitting its stride. and explaining why mitt romney's business experience is bad for this country. this new ad is a big part of the obama offensive. ♪ o beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain ♪ ♪ for purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plain ♪ ♪ america america god shed his grace on thee ♪ ♪ and crown thy good ♪ with brotherhood ♪ >> mitt romney's not the solution. he's the problem. it's the ultimate statement about mitt romney not being for the middle class in this country. the ad will run in nine swing states. today, president obama shows more than ever he is prepared to personally take this fight to the american people and let them decide. here he is cincinnati, ohio, today. >> today, we found out there's a new study out by nonpartisan economists that says governor romney's economic plan would in fact create 800,000 jobs. there's only one problem. the jobs wouldn't be in america. they would be in other countries. by eliminating taxes on corporations' foreign income, governor romney's plan would actually encourage companies to shift more of their operations to foreign tax havens, creating 800,000 jobs in those other countries. >> president obama linked this directly to romney's experience at bain capital. >> this shouldn't be a surprise because governor romney's experience has been investing in what were called pioneers of the business of outsourcing. now he wants to give more tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas. >> and a new poll commissioned by the nonpartisan alliance for american manufacturing finds that 83% have an unfavorable opinion of companies that outsource. 97% hold a favorable view of goods made right here in the u.s. of a. let's turn to chuck rocha, a democratic strategist. good to have you with us tonight. >> thanks for having me. >> is it effective for president obama to make this direct link between mitt romney's business experience and what he would do if he wereresident of the united states? is there a connection? >> i couldn't agree with you more. that may be one of the best ads i have ever seen in my entire political career. here's why. as you know, i grew up in east texas and was fortunate to go to work in a factory when i was 19 years old. there were 1,000 men and women in that factory including my father, my uncles and a lot of kids i grew up with my whole life. in 1962, they opened the factory there. five years ago, they shut the factory down, destroying 1,000 people's lives. when they walked through the factory handing out pink slips, they didn't ask if you were a democrat or republican, they said this tire production isn't going to be here anymore and that tire production now sits in china. think about the middle-class voter sitting at home watching the commercial. no matter if they're democrat or republican thinking that's not right. that could be my job overseas. that's why it's so devastating. >> this is president obama running on the compassionate sensibilities of the american people that a lot of americans will put themselves in the place of that displaced worker. then mitt romney of course has a record of showing a very callous attitude towards shipping jobs overseas. is this going to be the winning formula to win the middle class? >> there are a lot of middle class voters just like you said, ed, that are hurting. the whole fact of this entire election is who can you best relate with? mitt romney is a good looking guy. his hair is always a perfect shape, but he looks like your boss. he looks like the boss you always said he lives in a different part of town, his kids going to a different school, he shops at a different place. he can't relate to someone in the factory whose job was overseas. when mom and pop are at the kitchen table and have the paycheck and bills, their hoping they have enough money to have dinner on saturday night. >> i think the president's been pretty remarkable on the campaign trial. he's been able to take a news story about romney and twist a positive. today, the president, he just didn't go after romney. he turned this whole thing into a positive message about himself and america. here it is. >> i want to give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in ohio. that are investing in cincinnati. that are investing in hamilton county. i want to give incentives to companies that are investing in you, the american people. to create american jobs, making american goods that we're selling around the world, stamped with three proud words, made in america. >> i mean, chuck, if you take that comment right there and match it up with what the republicans have done in the senate and all of the ob