divisions, trying to punish people rhetorically for the hard work that will restore american greatness. the current president of the united states, i think, doesn't get it. he said on monday, i think right before he came here to this part of ohio, he said, in virginia, if you've got a business, you didn't build that. somebody else made it happen. that was kind of like saying that the private sector is doing pretty good. it's the economy that's doing bad. these are insights into the thinking of a man who has had no practical experience in creating jobs, who has a belief that government owns the resources, really, of the country. i think it's incredibly naive to say that because the greatness of our country doesn't come from our government. the greatness of our country comes from 300 plus million people, interacting amongst themselves, pursuing their dreams as they see fit and that dynamic interaction has created the greatness of our country. >> good morning. from washington, it is thursday, july 19th. welcome to "morning joe." with us on set, here in washington, d.c., political editor and white house correspondent for "the huffington post" sam stein. we have nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of "andrea mitchell reports" andrea mitchell. we have the executive editor of politi politico jim vandehei and willie geist in new york with that disgusting story. >> willie, today, of course we are as usual, we are -- you say cornucopia of news, we take people across the globe, talking about shocking new "new york times"/cbs poll everybody is focused on, going to be taking americans of the millions and millions of americans that watch the show every morning and listen on the armed forces radio, the news out of bulgaria, big news out of syria but we are looking at one story the further decline of the united states of america, it started as dr. sacks said in 1973, average wages declining and leads us down this long and winding road to grim, grim news, coming out of the far east this morning. >> it is. >> the sun continues to set on the american empire. here it is again, singapore, dateline, singapore, the 7-eleven in singapores, not in america, singapore only, you've heard of the slurpee machine in singapore the mashed potato and gravy machine. you put a little cup under, hit a button, mixes hot water with a powder, spits out mashed potatoes and pours chicken gravy you can take on the go. >> coming soon to singapore, obesity. >> where were we? john kennedy why england slept. i'm going to why america slept. >> thanks. >> that puts -- >> that's disgusting. you would love that. i could see you eating that. >> i want that. sad day. >> front page of "usa today"lis the town. at a conference with the national journal with valerie jarrett talking about it because she's pregnant and she's going to be the ceo and she says, i'd like to stay in the rhythm of things. my maternity leave will be a few weeks long and i'll work throughout it making a lot of people respond. >> when you had emilia your maternity leave was three hours. >> i was on the air that night. >> that night they brought the cameras in. >> it's a little different. >> have the baby -- >> i'm no ceo. >> deliver the news. >> where's my lip stick. >> and she was on that night. >> no. >> couple weeks, three hours. >> it's generating a lot of response and yesterday, we talked about it a lot. the audience was so interested in sort of whether it's okay and it's so okay. we're here. so -- anyhow. i love that story. >> the fact that she's such a star, a super star, that was not an issue. >> even an issue. >> not only for her but the board. >> those who chose her. it's exciting. >> you know, what's not exciting. >> yeah. >> vandehei. >> i know. i see him. trying to pretend he's not here. >> don't make eye contact. >> i'm not looking. >> the potato thing. if you go to fuds ruckers, for real americans -- >> it's a morning show. please -- seven-second delay. >> gets as much cheese as you want. just like willie's machine. no different. it's not campaign. they have them all over virginia. fuddruckers. >> we did -- >> joe is real america. that's all they have in florida. >> what the heck is that? >> do they have them in nantucket? >> i doubt it. >> let's go to the new "new york times"/cbs general election poll coming up with surprising numbers that have nothing to do with nantucket. >> they're on president obama's job performance in the white house. 44% now approve of president obama's overall job in office. 46 % sdis approve. president obama's favoribility 36%, 48% view him as unfavorable. >> jim vandehei, favoribility, that is stunning for a sitting president running for re-election. almost one in three americans approve of the job he's doing. one in three. >> it's lower than any other poll we've seen. if that's true and it's not a glitch he loses. >> you can't win with 36% favorable ratings as an incumbent. >> now you know why they went on the offensive. clearly why they decided they had to characterize and characterize -- >> got to destroy mitt romney. so the president's upside down, what, 13 points, between his favorable and unfavorable. mitt romney is also upside down in favoribility. >> his ratings four points lower than the president's in this poll. 32% favorable few of the former massachusetts governor as favorable, 36% unfavorable. >> of course, jim, there you only have the 4 percentage point difference between favorable and unfavorable because americans are trying to figure out who mitt romney is. the obama people, if you have to be very concerned if these -- if other polls follow this trend. as james carville said on our show last week it's the obama team spending all the money right now. the romney team raising all the money right now. >> i think that's a brilliant point. nobody is paying attention to that. everyone is saying mitt romney's strategy is terrible, why isn't he responding forcibly? do they understand how much money he's sitting on and the outside group and when everybody tunes in he's going to be outspending with his allies the president two to one in the final months of the campaign. you don't think he can redefine himself. >> restrictive in some respects before spending it before becoming the republican knowledgeny. they'll be sitting on a trove of money and will unleash advertising that will drown out anything obama does part of the reason they're trying to define mitt romney right now. there's a window to do it. >> willie geist, if they were able to define mitt romney by spending all of this money right now, it certainly made a lot of sense, define a guy like michael dukakis before americans know who he is, if it moves numbers that would be one thing. if he spends this much money and effort on this bain capital attack and out-of-touch rich guy, needs to release all of his taxes, what this suggests is, they've blown a lot of money, plus they've blown this issue in july. if the numbers -- if these numbers don't move anymore than they have in the cbs/"new york times" poll. >> we were talking about that yesterday morning, john heilemann and harold ford discussing whether this will look, let's see the first poll after this attack. our first poll conducted from july 11th, one week ago today, to july 16th, two days ago. that's five days that's in the heart of the tax returns and the bain attacks. and actually, mitt romney inched up a little bit over the last poll. so you can draw your own conclusions from that, but it hasn't taken the piece out of mitt romney's high that they expected it would. >> people at the end of the day, people don't care, not to keep going back to carville, but people don't care about what happened in 1999 or 2000. they want to know what's going to happen over the next four years. and this president is constantly talking about the past. he's talking about defending the past four years of his record. going after mitt romney in the past. but neither one of these candidates seem to be looking forward saying this is how i'm going to turn this economy around. this is how i'm going to get you back into work. >> yeah. i think president obama is xwilxwi guilty of that but so is mitt romney. i'm not sure we've heard articulated what his plan is going forward either. maybe it's time to get down to serious details in this campaign. >> the other day, sam nun here with the bipartisan group on the budget and he said, why not take simpson-bowles as the default position if instead of the sequester and then deal with post-election. you know, pretty smart idea. but nobody else is talking, nobody running for office is talking about anything specific. neither side. i think people are smart enough, the american public is smart enough to know that this is all a distraction. >> mika, what -- what do these numbers tied to for the most part? >> probably the handling of the economy. we have new numbers here, the president's drop in favoribility, obviously may be tied to the economy. the same poll shows 39% approve of the president's handling of the economy, down 5 points from last month. 355% say they -- 55% disapprove of the work on the economy. the polls head-to-head matchup has the president and romney in a statistical dead heat. romney is at 47%, and obama at 46%. >> it's the economy, stupid. >> not to be a polling geek, nobody's up or down, nobody has been up or down for the last month and a half. everything within the margin of error and the polls will not change until three weeks before the election. that's the one thing obama and romney agree on. it's going to be a neck and neck race. the persuadables haven't started to pay attention. we're sort of talking to each other no talking about bain and wealth and other numbers from the polls. 60% of respondents said bain didn't matter, 73% said romney's wealth didn't matter to their vote. these are issues that are sort of side issues. that said, one caveat, these might matter in certain states than others. this is a national poll and some states do matter more than others. for instance, in ohio or virginia, bain could play a lot differently than nationally. there's that one caveat to consider. >> andrea, front page story on all the major newspapers today. "the new york times" talks about the suicide attack in syria. killed assad's brother-in-law. and some leaders. the front of the "washington post" also has that as the headline, the same thing with "the wall street journal," talking about the rebel bombings and this is -- i'm telling you, this is some big news. >> this is really big news. >> richard engel and i were talking about this yesterday in new york, and the bottom line is this could be, could be the tipping point. we could look back months from now and say that this was the moment where assad lost the grip on power for a couple reasons. talking to intelligence people, they're not yet persuaded, they're a little more cautious about it, but the white house is leaning this way, that assad now knows they could bomb the national security headquarters in the middle of damascus. they knew there was meeting going on. clearly an inside job and they got the three top defense officials including his brother-in-law, so we don't know whether or not he was at that meeting or in that building, but the bottom line is they got to the heart of the regime and overnight, since then, the rebels seem completely energized and they are going after major targets in the last 24 hours. >> you and i remember, i don't think anybody else around this table remembers because they were too young -- >> thanks a lot, i think. >> assad's father, obviously, had an uprising from an islamist town and reduced it to rubble. the rest of syria followed meekly behind. assad may have learned the wrong lesson from the father. assad's days in office are numbered. >> i think they are numbered. the president called putin yesterday because the u.n. had to postpone a key vote yesterday because they can't get anywhere with russia's opposition and the president didn't get far with putin, but the message is you're backing the wrong horse. the hope is the people around assad realize that. if he doesn't realize it himself they're going to start abandoning in droves. >> they got a national security building in damascus, three top officials including the syria defense minister and assad's brother-in-law. rebel commanders calling it an inside job. say those who planted the bomb are still safe. then the call between president obama and vladimir putin say they agreed it has to stop but don't know how. this has been going on weeks and weeks but a stalemate between obama and putin on this. >> as "the new york times" reports even while the suicide attacks are going on, fighting continues to rage in damascus. it's intensifying and right now, assad better figure out where he's going to escape to, because he doesn't have much longer there. >> i think that that's the case, even though he's got heavy weaponry, you know, he's got a real army unlike gadhafi and real air power. but at the same time, people are -- the people around him have to see the handwriting on the wall. the conundrum is russia and the u.n. mandate for the monitors expires on friday and they have to vote to either extend it or do something else. >> what does israel do? there's been talks about concern assad might use chemical weapons and talks about whether to take them out. what role does israel play in this? two talks they don't touch it. >> they don't touch it because right now israel is completely focused on the other major development yesterday, which was the attack on teenagers. >> yeah. >> a teenage tourist coming from israel to bulgaria to a popular spot, bombed as they were getting off the plane and on the bus and that has led netanyahu to say iran is responsible, he immediately said iran is responsible, the u.s. view is we don't have the evidence yet, we don't have all the signs that point to iran, but we want to see the evidence, don't use this as a pretext to go after iran. the president calling netanyahu and say we'll help you with forensic and intelligence and get these guys, but the last thing that the white house wants to see right now is israel attacking iran. >> isn't mitt romney heading towards the middle east now? this is complicating everything. >> he'll be there next week. >> wow. >> the end of next week. >> complicating everything. blaming all this on romney? >> no. >> it's a complicated situation -- >> making it worse. >> you know -- >> come on. unbelievable. >> no. that wasn't my intention. in an ideal circumstance he could go to israel and line himself with netanyahu. the israeli government is having its own issues. he's stepping into -- >> you're blaming him for bulgaria as well. >> netanyahu and romney worked together as boston partners in the '70s. they are very close. >> we're talking about offshore accounts. >> at least the first time a discussion, maybe the only time in the campaign, a discussion about foreign policy when romney does his trip overseas. this last week, daniel jones who runs our website had a phrase for like what the campaign theme should be for both candidates, it's the stupidity, stupid. if you watch these ads, if you watch the tone, it's so divorced from everything else that's happening in the world. >> the thing about world issues they can arise when you least expect them. >> change the entire course of the election. >> like willie's mashed potato slurpee machine. >> singapore is the place. >> which candidate will jump on that one. >> i don't know. >> this remains as you said, the "seinfeld" campaign, the campaign about nothing. the campaign about nothing. >> it's really -- >> that's the good thing the country is in such great shape. >> exactly. >> i look forward to the conversation getting real. we should get to the "chicago tribune" story. are you telling me we don't have time? >> i am but we'll do it in the next block. >> very meekly. >> what's this? oh, wait a second, hold on. oh, it's about mitt romney and offshore money. i watched you guys yesterday. >> yeah. >> if you could make sure to wear the young patches next time to clearly identify yourself around the table that would help all of us watching ap at home. >> i thought you were on vacation. >> that was the most liberal shows of five years of liberal shows. >> i had a good time. i thought wit a great show. >> i know you did. unbelievable. >> made a lot of good points. >> you did, for -- not even democrats. democrats wouldn't even say what you were saying. >> that's not true. >> barack obama -- >> republicans were saying what i'm saying. >> oh. >> your problem -- >> barack obama says like if you build a business you didn't do that on your own. >> oh come on. and then you're really -- >> everybody around the table -- i'm saying, the young socialist plea. >> don't. it's best you were off. stay that way. >> no. i -- i talked to a lot of people -- >> you don't want to start that fight. it won't go well. >> at fudsrukers. >> at that restaurant, which i will not say, because i'm afraid we'll have to enact a seven-second delay. don't even go there. she's an elitist. >> what is fuddruckers and who would say that word? what is that? >> burgers. >> you talk about it that early in the morning, bad things happen. coming up next, we've got senate majority whip dick durbin going to be with us, with congressman barney frank, "the washington post" david ignatius will come by as will "the new york times" tom friedman and up next, we've got papers and the politico playbook. first here's the great bill karins with a check on the forecast. how's it going, bill? >> not like yesterday, joe. what a day yesterday was. 104 in baltimore, 104 in newark, and then the thunderstorms rolled in. knocking power out to thousands. they aren't the typical storms we get in new england in the mid-atlantic. they had hail with them and gusty winds, almost like we lived in the central plains for one day. this morning a lot calmer. here's a look at the map and how impressive was that. hartford was 100 down to d.c. today this region is going to be cooler. we will see a chance of showers and storms, but this is more typical summer-like day. 80s and 90s with afternoon storms. and how happy are we for northern indiana, finally some heavy rainfall, first rainfall for two months for some of these regions, flash flood warnings around fort wayne. we don't want flooding or devastation but we're happy to get rain and even indianapolis will have a chance of rain later today. the heat wave not over, 103 in kansas city. new york city, your heat wave is over with. looking at a nice period of weather coming up over the weekend. your forecast coming up later for the weekend. you're watching "morning joe" brewed by starbucks. 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( laughter ) why's the new guy sending me emails from paris ? paris, france ? verizon's 4g lte devices are global-ready. plus, global data for just $25. only from verizon. time to take a look at the morning papers. at 23 past the hour. a "washington post" poll shows 54% of d.c. residents think mayor vincent gray should resign. only 37% said he should stay. it comes amid a federal investi