thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. that is it for this special report, fair, balanced and unafraid. greta goes on the record right now. i m greta van susteren and this is on the record. congressman trey gowdy only here on the record. there was a systematic intentional decision to withhold certain documents from congress and we re just sick of it. the south carolina congressman leading the new benghazi select committee. decide whether an old washed up prosecutor from south carolina is good enough or not i will volunteer to be a summer intern. condoleezza rice is out. it s possible to live in an echo chamber that serves only to reinforce your high opinion of yourself and what you think. is free speech a fiction at rutgers university? karl rove strikes back at the university silencing secretary rice. shame on the rutgers faculty. shame on them. my personal offer to rutgers. then an american marine right now sitting in a mexican prison. two tours in afghanistan and this is by far the hardest mainly because it s the fear of the unknown. get ready for jam-packed on-the-record tonight. up first the chairman select committee benghazi representative trey gowdy joins us. good evening soon to be chairman mr. gowdy. how are you? i m doing well. this is a partisan, this is a witch-hunt. how are you going to convince the american people that this is going to be a fair hearing, a fair investigation? well, greta, your viewers auto would still have the same unanswered questions as we have. why our so low on 9/11. why we didn t have any assets moving during the siege itself and why the government can t answer your questions completely and accurately in the aftermath. the jury i m interested in are reasonable minded, fair minded people like your viewers, washington is its own ecosystem. they wouldn t like it if i cured malaria tonight. i mean because i m a republican. so, of course they are going to be critical. that s not the jury. although i would tell adam and some of my other colleagues to at least let us have a hearing before you judge it. i mean, let the committee be constituted and the rules be adopted before you declare it to be a political exercise. that s not too much to ask, is it. you refer to adam, i take it you mean congressman adam schiff and he has said that@,d is, look, republicans hired you and gave you your job in california. the democrats gave me a job. back in the 1990s, at least let the process have a chance to work before you declare it null and void. you know, there have been a number of hearings though. what would make this different a select committee. 10, 1213 hearings by different committees. why is this different? it s been so fragmented greta as you know. i can t even attend the intel committee hearing. i have no idea what they have uncovered. just like they don t come to the ojr, the oversight committee. we need a list of the witnesses that have been talked to and which ones are left to be talked to. we need a list of the documents and by the way i m not interested in redacted documents or an overclassification. i want the documents. so i want all of the evidence and then people can draw different conclusions from those facts in evidence. but you can t draw conclusions if you don t have all the facts. and what this committee is going to do is once and for allly out all the facts and then your jury can draw whatever inferences and conclusions they want to. all right. you mentioned the classified documents. i have had a beef with washington for whoever long i have been here. any time anyone hides anything, republican or democrat the trick is to classify it are you willing to go through the documents and do you have the power and the authority to declassify any documents you think were overclassified that shouldn t be kept secret from the american people? speaker boehner is going to give us whatever power we need to get to the bottom of it. jason chaffets was on another show today showing the discrepancy between two documents that were produced. ostensibly the same document. but this had reactions that that one did not have in it. and that s inexclusive when you live in a free and open society where you are supposed to have access to the truth and the facts. solt speaker is going to give us the tools that we need to be able to answer everyone s questions when the select committee has completed its work. you told me right here that you have evidence that not only are they, meaning the obama administration hiding it but there is an intend to hide it. i can t disclose that evidence yet but i have evidence that there is systemic intention to withhold certain documents from congress. will we see those documents? yeah. well, you know, i can t prove to you what i don t know. i don t know whether the documents have been destroyed. i know, this that there are are witnesses that have the courage to come forward and share with us that there was a systematic effort to keep certain documents take the arb, for instance. does anyone really believe the arb had access to all of the documents and all of the witnesses? i don t know anyone who believes that. so, necessarily, that undercuts whatever findings they may have found. i m telling you this: if a document exists, regardless of classification, we need to have access to it. that does not necessarily mean that it will be public. but, as you noted, there is an overclassification to protect people s reputations and careers. and that is not a legitimate reason to classify a document. just because you are worried that it may hurt feelings or impact your career. you mentioned the arb. that was the state department board that looked at benghazi and according to the information i have, is they looked at an after action report by the military. actually, they didn t look at it a summary was read to them. they didn t see they didn t read the whole thing. they didn t read it themselves. are you going to be able to get to that after action report by the military so we can find out what the military was saying within hours and days of september 11th, 2012? yes, ma am. i m not going to rely on any summaries. greta, you are a very good lawyer. there is a reason you can t just summarize evidence in front of the jury. the jury has a right to hear the question. they can judge the credibility of the witness. the credibility can be impeached. i m not interested in summaries. i m not interested in sin nope cease. i m interested in access to the document and the witness and i will decide whether or not i think the appropriate questions were asked in the past how can i til tell your viewers whether she was aware that the fittlez had been attacked before in benghazi or that the british ambassador had been intact. how can i answer that question if the arb never saw fit to even interview the secretary of state? there is another document that was tweeted today or series of documents. the presidential daily briefings for september 11th, 12, 13th, 14th. i don t know what days but some precedent for the bush administration releasing. those are the briefings from the cia to the present that would tell us what the intelligence community from the cia thought happened on the 10th or on the 11th, 12th, and 13th. will you seek to see those and will you urge a disclosure of those to the people? i want to see every single solitary relevant material document. in fact, i want it see everything for which there can be any argument that it is relevant and then we can judge whether or not it s material. for all i know the intel committee has already seen the document you referenced which is another reason the speaker did what he did because we have been fragmented and what intel knows, oversight and foreign affairs and homeland security would not know. do you have an end point? because one of the things that people always worry about in investigations that they take on a life of their own and doing this for the next 100 years. do you have some sort of mission that this will be finished by a particular date. i guess no matter what everyone s concern will be before mid terms, after mid terms, that will have a political implication. people will say do you have sort of in your mind when you want to have this finished? i think the resolution that the house is going to take up is going to have a date in it. that date has not been shared with me, greta. but you also know if there is a systematic intent to withhold you know, the state department said just this week that they are in the process of complying with subpoenas. well, it s been 20 months. how long does it take to comply with the document request? there is no judge in america that would lou you 20 months to comply with a subpoena. so, part of the answer to your question depends upon how forthcoming and how willing this administration is to provide access to the witnesses, and the documents. but with respect to politics, greta, i would just say this: there are certain things in our culture that have to transcend politics. and i don t mean to sound naive, but the murder of four fellow americans and an attack on a facility that is elm policemennatic of our country should transcend politics. and i know that our fellow citizens can handle the truth, but only if they get access to it. they can draw their own conclusions about politics. who is at fault, who is not at fault. but they can t do it if they don t have access to all the documents and all the witnesses. congressman, thank you, sir. and, of course, there are a few technical glitches with the studio. i don t know if you know it i do hope you will come back again anyway. thank you, sir. yes, ma am, thank you. and republicans and democrats already battling over the benghazi select committee. republican representative peter king slamming democratic representative adam schiff s call for a committee boycott. joining us house majority leader eric cantor. good evening, sir. hey, greta. good evening. what do you think about congressman schiff saying that there should be a boycott, democrats shouldn t participate in this select committee? well, you know, i would hope that democrats, just like republicans, want to get to the bottom of the situation here and get the facts out there. the public has a right to know what else the white house is covering up, what else are they hiding? and i also think that the democrats just like republicans, should want to make sure that a president does not and cannot just ignore the congressional oversight process. and clearly we have an instance here where there was a court order that resulted in the revelation of an email that the white house had been withholding from congressional subpoena. again, i m hopeful and i think that they ultimately will do the right thing and participate in this process. what difference though you have had there have been 14 committee hearings. why does the select committee make this any different? how does the select committee more able to get that particular for instance that email that was the subject of a court order? what makes a select committee any more efficient or able to get that? obviously didn t get it here. than the series of committees? well, first of all, you know, i am proud of the work that has been done thus far. there has been a lot of serious work to try and get to the bottom of this situation. obviously the long standing impact here is about being honest with the public and stopping any kind of deceit or coverup on the part of the white house. ommittee will be able to focus its energies in insuring that the white house is going to be held accountable and that it cannot just ignore congressional oversight. you know, this is a part of our government, part of the checks and balances that we are about. and i know that we are going to embark with chairman gowdy s leadership on a very serious effort to make sure thats this has exposed and long standing to make sure our policy in the middle east and in north africa actually can be one that will stop any future terrorist attack from occurring. the committee is not a done deal. there still has to be a vote; is that correct, from a house to form this committee? right. there will be a vote this week to form this committee going forward and i know that chairman gowdy legislature is going to it do a great job in leading this effort. do you expect the democrats will really refuse a position on that committee? i mean is, that or is that just some saber rattling? you know, i can t see how the american people are going to put up with a refusal to participate in a serious process that wants to get to the bottom of what has clearly been deceitful action. that the white house has not been forthcoming in response to congressional subpoenas. and, just as it has been doing in the area of legislation and policy-making, decided just to ignore congress. and the fact is now, it s all caught up with them and we re going to be now engaged in a process of a select committee that will be focusing on trying to find out what else is the white house hiding? what else have the american people been denied in terms of their right to know? i m a big believer and it takes as long as you have. so i i sort of like to give things a time limit. have you given this investigation a time limit to this doesn t become part of, you know, part of all of our lives forever? i am a big believer in that too, greta. i think that the resolution that will be creating this select committee will stay very clearly with the mission is. and, a time to us to wrap things up with take aways. we want them to realize their right to know and again i would say long term we want to make sure that the policies that the white house has been about in terms of the any terrorist policies can be corrected so that this type of event, where an ambassador is killed and other people serving our country is killed in an embassy setting does not happen again. majority leader, thank you, sir. thank you, greta. where was president obama during the deadly terror attack? here is what former national security council spokesperson tommy vetoer told bret baier. i was in the situation room that night. we didn t know where the ambassador was definitively. was the president in the situation room? no. and the fact that your network at one time reported that he watched video feed of the attack as it was ongoing is part of what i think has been a pattern of inaccurate. where was the president? in the white house. so where was the president? senators john mccain and lindsey graham and kelly ayotte writing directly to president obama demanding an answer to that he question and senator mccain joins us. nice to see you, sir. thank you, greta. may i just say this young man gowdy is right out of the lindsey graham mold. i think he is an excellent dhirm chair this committee he he is a smart young man just like his uncle lindsey graham. he has a big job. have you sent a letter to the white house. demanding to know where president obama was the night of september 11th, 2012. why do you want to he know that? the president of the united states while an ongoing tragedy is taking place our consulate being under attack, you would think that, like the video that we saw of the strike on usama bin laden, that we would see many pictures of the president attentive. all we know is that he was briefed by panetta and dempsey and they left and there was no further communication. could i say, first of all, i think it s important that the democrats join in this. when joe lieberman and i said we ought to have a 9/11 commission, the bush administration didn t want it. when abu abu ghraib happened i condemned it waterboarding i condemned it those were all under the bush administration and for them to say that this is partisan, look, if there is nothing to it, as they are saying there is nothing to it, they should want this committee because then they will prove themselves right. then they would be able to say hey, see, i told you there is nothing wrong with it. they are scared to death. i have never seen anything like after 19 months the emails concerning their priorities and the president s spokesperson saying that it had nothing to do with benghazi. now, that has reached a new point. you are talking about press secretary jay carney? i m talking about jay carney. i knew him for years. i knew him as a pretty straightforward journalist. he has destroyed his own reputation by that statement that what clearly was the talking points, which had saying it had nothing to do with benghazi. that, to me, is an all-time low for a presidential spokesperson. i didn t have any particular interest in where the president was that night. i assumed that he was busy working on this as all presidents are. the fact that they won t tell us has made me enormously suspicious. this guy that they sent, tommy veiter that i had never seen until the other night. so flip about it he is the one in the situation room. didn t remember after all. but since when does 19 months go by and it has to be a court order for information. you know, in return for the confirmation of brennan as cia director. we were all told that everything to do with benghazi would be released. now the question is, is what else don t we know about it? and what s been destroyed? i don t like the fact that everything was requested not provided and then a court order and you know now i m even more suspicious because they didn t provide it when they re supposed to. of course now and now as gowdy just said, what s been redacted? there has got to be a thorough review. i would love to see harry reid say yeah we will make this bi cameral select committee. i think it rises to that level. obviously that won t happen. so it s really too bad. and if democrats refuse to take part in this commission, this committee, and more information comes out, they are the ones that will have egg on their faces pause the american people will rightly conclude that they weren t interested in why four brave americans were murdered. i put on gretawire a list of things at a minimum i must start getting information. i would like to see if i were on the committee. i added one to yours. i will put it on there. that is that why is it that after promising that to families that these culprits, these murderers would be brought to justice? one of them did a cnn interview in a cafe in benghazi. why is that not one person has been brought to justice for this heinous crime of murdering four americans and, by the way, another question is, it takes seven hours to get any of our military to benghazi even an overnight of our jets? i didn ti don t believe that. senator, thank you, sir. thank you, greta. the turf war, cia versus obama s national security counsel. honest mistake sore someone lying. sharyl attkisson next. nigeria girls kidnapped. eric holder ducking. in the latest coming up. i don t want to think about the alternative. i don t even know how to answer that. i mean, no one knows how long their money is going to last. i try not to worry, but you worry. what happens when your paychecks stop? because everyone has retirement questions. ameriprise created the exclusive confident retirement approach. to get the real answers you need. start building your confident retirement today. nowchoose one option fromith red lothe wood-fire grill,trios! one signature shrimp dish, and a pasta. all on one plate. three delicious choices. all for $15.99 for a limited time only! come sea food differently today! they re the days to take care of business.. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters. with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to meet your needs. every day of the week. centurylink® your link to what s next. little things, anyone can do. it steals your memories. your independence. insures support. a breakthrough. and sooner than you d like. .sooner than you think. .you die from alzheimer s disease. .we cure alzheimer s disease. every little click, call, or donation adds up to something big. alzheimer s association. the brains behind saving yours. okay, who changed what in the benghazi talking points from obama administration contradicting their own colleagues. vearve reporter sharyl attkisson dipping into the were between security official and former cia official. cheryl joins us now with more on what she has uncovered. cheryl, first of all we had tommy vieter the one who made the infamous dude remark to bret baier the other night and mike morell who testified before congress last month did. they contradict each other? it would seem so. we don t know what s behind it whenever the journalists you see these contradictions that seem unexplained makes you look for more there tommy vieter in his interview with bret last week did change substantive parts of the talking points he acknowledged that in the interview. if you look back to what jay carney had said for over a year as well as to what the former deputy director of the cia mike morell testified to in sworn testimony before congress last month, they both were very explicit and a insisted repeatedly that the only change the white house made was not substantive, it was changing the word consulate to diplomatic post they didn t mention anything fly in the face of the insistences that they have made since september 11th, 2012. what did tommy change and why is it significant? according to his interview that he did with fox last week, he introduced an additional thought about social media warnings of ghoptions, in other demonstrations. it appears as though public narrative from the white house this idea there was a protest to blame rather than preplanned terrorist event. that s significant because part of the questions in the weeks following the attacks, part of the questions were whether this was intentional or not. whether there had been some misunderstanding on this. so tommy vetoer if he is correct in what he said in his interview last week totally contradicted what jay carney told reporters over and over again that there was only that one single change. non-substantive, very specific about it and it totally contradicted at least it appears to me what mike morell told congress both in writing and in his oral testimony last month. why does it matter? i mean, there are going to be some, you know, sometimes our memories are a little bit fuzzy over time. it doesn t even have to be more than an hour we can get confused about what we did even an hour ago. why is an inconsistency of any significance or moment? there have been some inconsistencies we don t know why these exist because we don t have the answers. these are simply reasons to keep digging. for example, mike morell was called to testify last month because of contradictions in what he had previously told congress and adoption that came out subsequently. originally when he was asked to change the talking points, because that was the big question in the early weeks, he remained silent according to senator graham and others that he briefed about it, and, in fact, eventually blamed the fbi and then sort of later the same day had to take that back. now, all this time later, he testified oh, yes, i, in fact, spearheaded all the changes. i made all changes. why wasn t that story offered up immediately closer to the event? surely he knew that. we don t know why. you know what i think is really peculiar is that even today at the white house briefing press secretary jay carney acts like there have been so many hearings, beating a dead horse. we have given everything. yet, if that would true why would a month ago we learned something new mike morell testified at a hearing that s the last time we heard from him. a week agnew emails surfacing pursuant to a court order. things are coming out. so i don t know how they can keep hammering saying that, you know, this is all old. it s very typical, this administration measures its supposed transparency by the numbers of hearings it attends and numbers of pages that it turns over to congress which are usually voluminous highly redacted and not particularly informative. those are two separate issues. they do give a lot of material. they are called for a lot of hearings. are they really answering the questions and oftentimes the answer is no. there is going to be a hearing select committee as you know. so maybe things will change. we ll get all the information. anyway, sheryl, nice to see you. thank you. former secretary of state condoleezza rice the target of college campus protests. now secretary rice responding to this growing controversy at rutgers university. her response plus karl rove is here to talk about it next. and, you know what? 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former secretary of state condoleezza rice canceling commencement address at rutgers university. some protested seackets rice s speech made accusations iraq war. the faculty council passed a resolution calling on the university to rescind secretary rice s invitation. over the weekend secretary rice posting decision on facebook writing rutgers invitation for me has become a descraction to the university community at this very special time. good evening, karl. good evening, greta. rutgers is fine with snooki giving a speech there, not commencement but they don t want the former secretary of state. your thoughts? well, first of all, hypocritical. and stupid. the statement by the organic chemistry professor and the small group of students who protested condoleezza rice s appearance was factually inaccurate. they accused her of torture and waterboarding which it is not. it has been held that it is not. if it were torture, the obama administration would have an affirmative responsibility to go seek charges against anybody connected with it in fact, if waterboarding is torture, then the president, the current president of the united states and the current and past secretary of defense are guilty of torture because we juan military personnel who are participating in our evasion and escape programs and training so first of all not accurate. second much all, if you are going to be opposed to people who supported the iraq war, then what was rutgers doing inviting hillary clinton to speak on campus? she voted for the iraq war. in fact, she said saddam hussein had wmd as did her husband, bill clinton. they never invited bill clinton to campus? will they never invite john kerry to campus who vote for the iraq war. this is political correctness gone nuts. i m sorry that a small group3ec3 of misguided students and a nutty organic chem professor had their way. i have to say connedy s statement was every word sparkled. what a wonderful way for her to remove herself from this situation and to give the students at rutgers back their commencement. but shame on the little totalitarians to the left and their faculty agent who perpetuated this. i also blame the administration though, karl. they gave some wishy washy response of regret or something. i didn t think the university stood up for this at all. i thought that even those who wanted her to speak, their voice was so quiet. it s so weak. right. and, look, that s fine. that s what is expected of university administrators. i want to issue a challenge though to that chem professor and to his student followers. i want you to show the same heightened sensitivity and the same moral outrage when any other supporter of the iraq war appears on your campus or when anybody else who sat in like nancy pelosi did on those briefings about thetvq enhanced interrogation techniques. i want you to show the same kind of sensitivity as you did here with condoleezza rice. i doubt it will ever be shown. this was politically motivated, politically aimed. ideologically driven and stupid. they didn t have their facts out. i m going to have a few comments to say. you might like my proposal and challenge. you might want to stick around later to hear what i had to say. karl, i want to go to a new poll shows president obama in second slump. according to the latest pew poll, 6 5% of voters want different policies that president obama. only 30% want policies similar to president obama s. karl what does this mean for president obama and more importantly for democratic candidates in 2016? this presents a real challenge to hillary clinton. i suspect she saw it coming. very rarely do we have third terms an devil administration. that is to say very rarely in american politics. we generally a at least in the modern era go 8 years for the republicans. 8 years for the democrats. 8 years for the republicans and so forth. obviously we did have two terms of richard next son succeeded by one term of jimmy carter succeeded by three terms of ronald reagan and george h.w. bush but typically there is this tendency to swing one way and come back the other way. so hillary clinton was going to have this problem right from the get-go. only i suspect it s going to be worse than she thought. look, i remember being in a similar doldrums in 2006. the same poll had the american people 23% wanted to vote for someone similar to george w. bush s policies. 70% wanted somebody with different policies. you saw how it turned out in 2008. hillary clinton is requesting to have difficulty extracting herself from the obama record. particularly when she was such a integral part of what s turning out to be a failed part of the obama record, namely foreign policy. so, going to be a challenge for the democrats in 2016. no ifs, ands and butts, how do you be new when you have what you have got existing the old is not very popular. i suppose she is lucky four years off not part of the recent administration. she also does want the support of the president. she doesn t want to distance herself too much to offend him she is going to need his support should run in 2016. that s the difficulty. there was actually a number hidden below this that s even more difficult for the democrats in my opinion. and that is 43% agreed with the felt that republicans in congress, not exact lay very popular brand would be better for the economy than president obama. 39%. and 18% sort of either i don t know or, you know, neither one of us particularly good. i think if a republican presidential candidate comes out with really good answers on the economy, that seemed to make sense, common sense to the american people, they have got a real advantage to get some gains first as the democrats on this critical issue. the economy generally tends to dominate presidential elections, except in times of national crisis. i suspect by 2016 the economy is going to be, again, the number one issue. okay. let s go off-the-record. since i have given them before from harvard law to georgetown law to even my own high school. pick me. i give the rutgers university commencement speech free. not a dime. obviously rutgers knees someone now that the university s first choice former secretary of state that didn t have to happen. if they had backed her up she would be their speaker. she is gracious and knows this is a big day for the graduates and didn t want to become a distraction. i think rutgers looks really bad. plus, think about this, the missed opportunity for rutgers. had rutgers fiercely stood behind and with secretary rice and insisted she give the speech despite all the critics and criticism, the university would stand out as a champions of free speech. showcasing the value of rigorous debate. even when people passionately disagree. instead, the university looks weak, timid in the face of critics and they sure send a lousy message to the graduates. now, it s just within announced former new jersey governor tom keene will now be the speaker but if that falls through, rutgers, here i am. and you can imagine what my topic will be. hah. that s my off-the-record comment tonight. if you have an important story or issue you think i should take off-the-record go to gretawire.com and tell us about it and will the white house stonewall or cooperate with the new benghazi probe?i that s next. d to do something. d to do something. i saw mdoctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron the onlynderarm low t treaent that can restore t vels to normal in about two weeks in most men. axiron is not for use in women or anyone younger than 18 or men with prostate or breast cancer. women, especlly those who are or who may become pregnant, and children should avoidt where axirons applied as unexpected signs of puberty in children or changes in body hair or incased acne in women may occur. report these symptoms to your doctor. tell your doctorbout all medical conditions and medications. serious side effects could include increased sk of prostate cancer, worsening prostate symptoms, decreased sperm count, ankle, feet or body swelling, enlarged or painful breasts, problems breathing while sleeping and blood clots in the legs. common side effects include skin redness or irritation where applied, increased red blood cell count, common side effects include skin redness headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and increase in psa. ask your doctor about axiron. does it end after you ve expanded your business? after your company s gone public? and the capital s been invested? or wn your compan s bought another? is it over after you given back? you never stop achieving. that s why, at barclays, our ambition is to always realize yours. for $175 dollars a month? so our business can be on at&t s network yup. all five of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there s unlimited talk and text. we re working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line anytime for 15 bucks a month. low dues. great terms. let s close. new at&t mobile share value plans. our best value plans ever for business. you want a loan to build you can t do that.ica? nobody builds factories in the us anymore. you can t do that. using american raw materials makes no sense. you can t do that. you want to hire workers here in the states? they re too expensive, you can t do that. fortunately we didn t listen to the experts. at weathertech we built american factories, we use american raw materials and we hire american workers. weathertech.com, proudly made in america. quality like this.you can t do that. what do you think is the white house going to cooperate with the the benghazi investigation. here is what congressman trey gowdy said a short time ago. sometimes you have to assume - jay carney said minutes ago. they are investigating and investigating and investigating investigations and voting, of course, periodically to appeal the affordable care act. joining us our political panel abc political director rick klein, kirsten powers and national journal ron foreign foreign yea. are they going to cooperate. seen what the response ask going to be. folks on capitol hill are not even sure if they are going to appoint the members they are entitled to. i mean, even if they say they are going to cooperate. they have subpoenaed the document to the congress of the emails ben rhodes, that wasn t provided court order a month ago. 19 months into this. doesn t that show a history getting a special committee now. they have to balance it from the hill perspective they have to decide do they want to will he mize this panel at all. some republicans would like to have democrats interested in investigating. get them on the panel as well or do they want to sit this one out? from the white house perspective how much do you comply with a new investigation when you have done some compliance with previous ones? some compliance? some complinsz. maybe they should comply. i look at this two ways to look at this. one is let s for a second set aside the president and the national security team what they knew and what they didn t. just for a second. just look at the communications team the folks who are paid to let americans know what their government is doing. there is now beyond a reasonable doubt no doubt whatsoever that they treated this solely as a political matter and not as a foreign policy matter. four dead. well, i don t know it s disgraceful or not. i think so. you can make that judgment. what we do know that is how they treated it it because of it it they let get bad information get out. let some of it stay out there for months and months and months. even more disgraceful. if we don t have a conspiracy, we certainly have incompetence. and if all we all that s gone on on the side of lack of security and issues that led to the deaths is what we already know, if severing already out. then the communications team should be fired for incompetence for creating a situation that looks like there is a conspiracy. i think the incompetence is if you take them at face value, which is that they said at the time this is what they really believed they are incompetent. all the facts were pointing completely different direction. we he have had multiple people testifying, whether it s mike morell or general lovell or all these people who were right there at the time saying no analysts were saying that it was the video. you know. kirsten, i never saw tommy veert the other night. so arrogant and cavalier. he is the guy in the situation room? i m scandalized that he didn t seem to care. i mean he said he did but he would didn t seem to. bret prepped him on on where best information is available a guy in the newspaper quoted as saying this. what does that mean. no doubt that tommy cares. good american that cares about his country and people who serve our country interest. and getting president obama reelected. put politics first though that s where you get sarcastic and dismissive and look like you don t care at all. i have done too many murder cases to feel. to me it s astounding. anyway, i m going to take the last word on that. panel, thank you. a u.s. marine says he just made a wrong turn the marine sergeant landing in a mexican jail. you will hear from him from behind bars next. peace of mind is important when you re running a successful business. so we provide it services you can rely on. with centurylink as your trusted it partner, you ll experience reliable uptime for the network and services you depend on. multi-layered security solutions keep your information safe, and secure. and responsive dedicated support meets your needs, and eases your mind. centurylink. your link to what s next. when you didn t dread when youbedtime becausenner with anticipaof heartburn.itation. when damage to your esophagus caused by acid reflux disease wasn t always on your mind. that s when you knew nexium was the prescription medication for you. because for over a decade nexium has provided many just like you with 24-hour relief from heartburn and helped heal acid-related erosions in the lining of the esophagus. and now the prescription nexium you know can be delivered exium direct. talk to your doctor to see if nexium is right for you. there is risk of bone fracture and low magnesium levels. side effects may include headache, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. if you have persistent diarrhea, contact your doctor right away. other serious stomach conditions may exist. avoid if you take clopidogrel. for 24 hour support, automatic refills, and free home delivery, enroll at purplepill.com. it s the nexium you know, now delivered.
u.s. marine veteran held in a mexican jail for more than a month. he tells his story. arrested for bringing guns across the border. he said he never meant to. i told him i had three guns and showed them where they were. i checked out the guns i i didn t mean to be in mexico. it s a mistake for me to be here. can guy back to the border. five minutes later i was surrounded by 20 military officials and police officers with guns watching me. reporter from union tribune in san diego joins us. how did he end up in mexico? i mean, can you accidently end up in mexico like he says? you can, you know. he said that he and his friends decided they wanted to get some good mexican food so they thought they would go down to the border which he shows his lack of knowledge about san diego. because you certainly don t need to go to the border to get good mexican food in san diego. his story is that they drove down there, didn t really know where he was going. he blew past the last exit off the freeway, interstate 5 which goes to the border. the next thing he knew he was at the mexican border. and he couldn t then turn around at that point when he realized i don t want to go to mexico, couldn t make a u-turn there or not? right. well he certainly didn t see anywhere too. customs and border protections say there is a left u-turn at the very end before you get to the border. but it s a five lane interstate. i don t know which lane he was in. but, you know, he didn t see the left turn to turn around. what are we doing to get him back to the united states? what s the american government doing? it s become a congressional cause. two congressman from san diego duncan hunter a marine reservist him and scott peters have written letters to john kerry to try to expedite the situation. he has got a hearing on may 28th. which is apparently the first chance for a dismissal. but, you know, this isn t the first time this has happened. and, often these folk also have to sit in jail for a few months until the mexican legal system gets through the process. jen, thank you very much. and we hope he gets out soon. thank you, jen. thanks. and now to breaking news. more than 200 school girls are being held captive by terrorists in nigeria. jennifer griffin live at the pentagon. jen? well, greta, over the weekend, secretary of state john kerry told reporters that the u.s. would help in the search for the missing 300 or so nigerian girls kidnapped by al qaeda off chute three weeks ago. then we hear today that attorney general eric holder says the fbi will help in whatever way it can in the search. and that he has ordered a review of the group boko haram and we hear from pentagon officials even if they wanted to send air assets, drones or aircraft to help with the search, they would not be able to do so because there are no protocols in place with the nigerian government for the u.s. government to enter nigerian airspace. in other words the nigerians have to ask for u.s. help formally but they haven t done so. today the leader of the terrorist group for the first time claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and for enslaving the girls. i abducted your girls, the leader of the terrorist group said in the new video that was released today. he offered to sell the 13-year-old girls some of these girls, we have been told have been forced to marry their captors. the christian girls were forced to convert to islam according to sources in touch with the group. mothers of the kidnapped girls protested this weekend in nigeria s capitol. they are angry that the president of nigeria good luck jonathan has done very little to find jonathan. in a twist nigeria s president s wife ordered the protesters arrested and expressed doubt about the kidnapping. her husband then publicly demanded that president obama send military help but the pentagon says it has no plans as of now, greta, to send the u.s. military to nigeria to aid the everyone. this is one of the worst stories we have been covering for several days on the record on the record. thinking it couldn t go on it goes on and on and on. 300 girls kidnapped and being held by islamic terrorists and nothing at least so far. what a terrible story. hopefully it will end well soon. thank you, jennifer. and there is more breaking news. a plane crashes into a house. there is new video just. in that s next. nds to stay at r. while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, staying active can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain so your body can stay in motion. because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief for many with arthritis pain and inflammation. plus, in clinical studies, celebrex is proven to improve daily physical function so moving is easier. celebrex can be taken with or without food. and it s not a narcotic. you and your doctor should balance the benefits with the risks. all prescription nsaids, like celebrex, ibuprofen, naproxen and meloxicam have the same cardiovascular warning. they all may increase the chance of heart attack or stroke, which can lead to death. this chance increases if you have heart disease or risk factors such as high blood pressure or when nsaids are taken for long periods. nsaids, like celebrex, increase the chance of serious skin or allergic reactions, or stomach and intestine problems, such as bleeding and ulcers, which can occur without warning and may cause death. patients also taking aspirin and the elderly are at increased risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers. don t take celebrex if you have bleeding in the stomach or intestine, or had an asthma attack, hives, other allergies to aspirin, nsaids or sulfonamides. get help right away if you have swelling of the face or throat, or trouble breathing. tell your doctor your medical history. and find an arthritis treatment for you. visit celebrex.com and ask your doctor about celebrex. for a body in motion. to get your client s attention. from brochures to business cards to banners. everything. except your client s attention. thousands of products added every day to staples.com, even bullhorns. how much? 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this is a fox news alert. breaking news from colorado. a plane crashing into a house. this terrifying video just. in the small plane was towing an advertising banner when it went down slamming right into the house. amazingly the pilot walked away with only minor injuries and no one was in the house at the time. thanks for being with us tonight. right now though go to gretawire.com and answer this questions: should rutgers university fought harder for secretary of state condoleezza rice. vote in our poll. up next the o reilly factor. good night from washington, d.c. and we will see you where? right here 7:00 p.m. tomorrow. good night. the o reilly factor is on. tonight: i don t think it makes sense for the democrats to participate. as the investigation into a white house benghazi coverup expands, why are democrats refusing to get involved? we ll tell you. there wasn t a conspiracy. they did not turn out to be accurate. well, how did it happen? i think that people made at the time, their best guess at the facts. where did the idea that the video had anything to do with benghazi come from? sparks fly between fox news brit hume and a former democratic congresswoman over benghazi s unanswered questions. brit will join us with reaction.
this country being denied medicaid expansion. my mother raised me to stand up and i won t sit down for anybody. this is politics nation growing hope. where we refuse to have despair. we re growing home from georgia. politics nation with al sharpton. hardball starts rite now. the shame game. let s play hardball. the accusations now from fox to limbaugh to all corners of the planet hate is that the secretary of state is guilty of letting the 200 girls be taken in nigeria. that s right. he said those that grabbed the girls would not have done so if hillary clinton had named him to the foreign terrorist list. guess what? hillary clinton did name that guy to the terrorist list. also two of his top commanders. she did it two years ago after their group attacked and killed 23 united nations workers in nigeria. the sick fact here is that everything that goes wrong in the world that causes horror is now going to be counted by the hate hillary crowd on this country s recent top diplomat. whether it s here in an ungoverned torn libya. she was on watch and should have kept it from happening. this is an absurdly unfair statement. it suggests a world class dereliction on clinton s park wherever anything went wrong anywhere. has any democrat done this to w or cheney or any of that bunch? said every time we faced the hell of an ambush in iraq or a roadside attack it hung on the soldiers of the country s top officers? i must have missed it. by the lethal standards of the hate hillary crowd, the one being road tested with nigerini the attack on new york and washington in september of 2001, the fact that no one saw that one coming should have led to the president, the vice president and the rest of this country s security officialdom to be hung up in chains. with us now is howard fineman. it seems like every day brings, as it does if you read a quality newspaper, bad news somewhere in the world. something happens. crap happens. and now, the automatic machine says hillary did it. they should check a coup of facts. while the organization wasn t named, the three top leaders were. and that was decided upon after a very nuanced decision making how to go after this group. and not to make every u.s.-owned facility an easy fat target for this group to go after. your thoughts? i think this is just the beginning of what the right is going to attempt to do to hillary. they re going to back time and replay backwards every event in the world today and look for the connection. is this six connections of kevin bacon? yes. when she was secretary of state. when you re secretary of state, you deal by definition in grays. you deal in nuance. that s why her book is called hard choices. but when you re trying to explain the detail of a policy, while you were reluctant to allow full-on nigerian army and nigerian regime bh which committed atrocities. when you try to explain the nuance and the grays of your time as secretary of state when you re up against the accusatory culture that she is now in, it s going to be difficult. it s easy compared to explaining or trying to defend everything they re going to throw at her from her time at state. you know what i think fuels this? not so much information. information is scant, even the people who say benghazi all day long don t have a lot of information to give you. the fuel is the anger. yes. the free floating anger the at obama and now being gradually shifted to her. it s so ferocious it will power any attack. steve duecy or rush limb bauer or laura i thingraham, it now s to have weight. hate has weight. if you say something about them, it now somehow seems vaguely material. we seen it since barack obama became the front runner 2008, the hatred that has propelled conservatives and republicans to do everything in their power to go after him. they re going to do it against hillary clinton because simply right now she is front-runner on the democratic side in 2016. it s unfortunate, though, because it gives us a chance to really sit down as a nation and really think about what should our foreign policies been and how has the u.s. dealt with africa as a continent, the big picture. wednesday reporting in the daily beast hillary s state department refused to brand boko haram as terrorists. she was even charged with hypocrisy. here it is. now word is because we did not place them on the terrorist list of officially known terrorist groups it s going to be harder to go after them. and who made sure they were not placed on the terror list? hillary clinton. for hillary clinton now over the last couple of days to talk about how bad they are, given the fact that she could have done something a couple of years ago and did not. and the fact that her big initiative last week was to help women and girls, there s a little hypocrisy going on. rush limbaugh went further, also blaming the president for not personally overriding the state department s decision on boko haram. why just blame hillary? certainly obama could have overrule perd d her. i just think this is pathetic. we have 300 nigerian girls kidnapped by an al qaeda group. now we re on a big push to get them back. an al qaeda group. he snuck that one in. and ingraham cited a previous attack on young boys and asked why the administration was so slow off the mark. this past february, the group burned 59 young boys to death in northeastern nigeria. no loud calls to intervene then. but now suddenly political elites want u.s. action. where was that powerful drum beat for justice against those who slaughtered american citizens in benghazi. the concept, first of all, he did name all three of the top leaders to the terror list two years ago when they re saying when did he do it. this idea that we re responsible for every acre of property on the planet and if something goes wrong, we should be there. that s not a conservative argument. that s not what they believe, is it? we should be involved in the internal politics of a country they once had a president who ran for president and got elected on the idea that we were not into nationwide bilding. do you remember that? that was george w. bush. i just think that it s dem demonolo demonology. there are jilegitimate question you can ask about hillary s tenure as secretary of state. but as you pointed out, they begin at the end. they begin with the demonization by definition, she has to have something extremely wrong. the president has to have done something extremely wrong and they will work their way backwards to that, to whatever facts ultimately they think might prove the case. even throwing stuff out that turns out to be wrong 24 hours later. that they never even apologized for. they re just going to move forward in that fashion. it s a psychological thing, chris. they take comfort in their own fears. it s a form of political cocooning and it s going to go on with this and any other issue they can come up with. as long as hillary is around. are we going to have a select committee on nigeria now? when did the republican party take a keen interest in africa. i was going to say. it was very nice to see all these conservatives beating the battle drum for justice for people who look like me. truth is, bush administration, obama administration has been ignoring the fact that we have islamist extremists creeping up all over africa and it s time, rather than put the blame on hillary clinton or barack obama or quite frankly george bush, it s time we sit down and think are we really so tired about talking about america post 9/11, and are we really so war weary after iraq, afghanistan, iran and all the other conflicts in libya and elsewhere that we are willing to continue to ignore countries like africa. continents like africa. nigeria is the most populous, important country to the united states. wednesday night, just to prove this was all about exploitation and opportunism. newt gingrich who never misses a chance, congressman should hold hearings on why the state department refused to tell the truth about boko haram in nigeria. and the homeland security committee, peter king of new york and patrick meehan of new york asked john kerry asking him to explain decisions made. fair enough. this thing about newt gingrich you ve got to wonder. this is just a proof of opportunity. by the way, the reason newt is tweeting is because he s not on the air. he s not using the old crossfire he doesn t have a bully pulp pulpit. up there with donald trump now it s shameful politics and i would be remiss if i didn t mention the fact that hillary clinton back in beijing jeers ago was one of the first leaders to say women s rights are human rights. we re talk act the abduction of just slightly under 300 young girls in nigeria and we re playing politics with the lives of young women. that s sick on both sides of the aisle. the women s issue is one very important part of the equation. the other not so sub sub text here is religion. it s faith. there was an attack in a catholic church in nigeria. where boko haram killed people. because they re kooth licks. and what the connective tissue here is for the people attacking hillary and barack obama is that somehow they re soft on islamists. they don t say nit quite those words, but that s what they re because obama is a muslim. there you go. for anyone who doesn t really understand that you re making a joke, we should really say that he is not a muslim. people who normally watch fox. i m translating for the clowns in the clown car. that s what this is really about. this is as much about religion as it is about gender. and that s the connection between hillary and barack obama that they re somehow swirning on this thing. they re on the other side. in these words, they throw out it s all about trying to demonize, i think, is so smart. i will argue that the fuel again, as i said a few moments ago, the fuel of every one of the attacks is not information. because there is no real information about it. there s a murkiness about some of these things, like benghazi. it is murkiness what happened that night. but they use that open vacuum of murkiness and fill it with hatred. and hatred says we hate them so much they must be guilty. and that s it. and while they re doing it, we don t know what s happening to these young women in nigeria. i m hopeful we ve got s.e.a.l.s, guys with more guts than they can imagine. they re going to go into the jungle and find them we re the best at that. let s hope the courageous people who fight for this country are going to do the job here if they get a chance. the republican obsession over benghazi, eight investigations apparently weren t enough. they ve chosen the members of the latest committee to investigate this supposed scandal. the democrats haven t picked anyone. plus, how desperate are republicans about 2016? they still can t find someone who hid that center right sweet spot in a far right party. surprising there. and how do you choose sides in a race between birther ted yoho and his republican challenger jake rush. i love these names. who spends his spare time playing a vampire. just ask stephen colbert. finally, kathleen matthews there she is, former top news anchor here in washington is coming on to talk about the spiking global interest in women s issues. from the whorrors of nigeria to the smashing of the glass cheel l ceiling here at home. salmon . but the energy bp produces up here salmon . creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. it s a tie between barbara bush and hillary clinton both at 20%. michelle obama is close behind at 24%. but watch what happens when you break down those numbers among democrats. michelle obama is the narrow winner. republicans picked barbara bush over her daughter-in-law laura bush 45 to 36. and independents are evenly split between barbara bush and hillary clinton. among african-americans, michelle obama is the overwhelming favorite. latinos prefer hillary clinton by 16 points. and among white voter, it s barbara bush leading hillary clinton by 9. laura bush in third, michelle obama in fourth. be on at&t s network for $175 dollars a month? 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(cat screech) you feel that in your muscles? i do. drink water. it s a long story. well, not having branches let s us give you great rates and service. i d like that. a new way to bank. a better way to save. ally bank. your money needs an ally. that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there s someone around the office who hasn t had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i m looking at you phone company dsl. check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. christmas came early for the seven lucky republicans picked to be on the select committee on benghazi. one of the most coveted tickets, if you will, in republican politics. john boehner tweeted the lineup earlier today. if it looked a bit like an announcement of a circus coming to town and not the investigative body looking into a national security tragedy, you could be forgiven. any wooi, the group is a mix of establishment and tea party republicans. but the fact is after eight investigations so far, more than a dozen hearings and thousands of pages of documents, is this really a search for the truth or a clown show. here is nancy pelosi today. the fact is this is a political stunt. issa is damaged goods. they had to move from him to another venue with another chairman. that s what this is. we ve been here, done this, over and over again. and so the question is, is there at least a level of decency in terms of respect? a level of decency, don t count it, madam chairman. the democrats have to to decide if they re boycott the committee or provide their own members. charles krauthammer wrote today, all that matters is the committee produces new important facts. i agree with him on that, by the way. why do you guys disagree? here we are friday night. who thinks with me, i m tilt the scale here. who thinks with me and elijah cummings it s better to show up, catch them in the contact of buffoonery, call them on their crap or that it is to stand in the sunlight. i think they should participate but play this game under protest. elijah cummings has shown with darrell issa, he got the better of him again and again. they will be putting out every little memo they can find with any sentence or phrase. and i think it s good for the democrats to know this. i think the event, the hearings have already been so politici politicized, the republicans are starting in a bad position. we re doing this under protest. we think this is a circuit. i say boycott. the recent history shows the party that mucks up in washington doesn t really pay a price for mucking up the process in washington. they did in 98. they got confused by these questions. cummings was a good foil to issa on that committee. the democrats can stand right in the hall way outside the hearing room. ready access for reporters, ready to counterpunch. michael dukakidukakis, be thd defend an attack. never hide from it and take it. oh, the people will never fall for this bs. i think hillary clinton, by the way, i know she s not running, but she s suffering right now from not having a war room. a bunch of guys like carville and those guys that pound back, throw it right back. anyw anyway, here s charles krauthammer assuming a sort of referee s role here. he says gowdy needs to keep the hearings clean and strictly fact oriented. questions only. no speech fiing. these hearings are a big political risk for the republicans. they stand to benefit from the major issues. obamacare. the economy, chronic unemployment. from which benghazi hearings can only distract. worse, if botched like previous hearings on the matter, these hearings could backfire against the gop. as did the 1998 clinton impeachment proceedings. so far, there s no evidence the republicans are taking charles advice. my fair fear is they ll come out with something like a memo and say guess what? we got this incredible memo! but it s nothing. i think this is about two things. background nose. some taint of scandal. the other thing is they want to set up a situation where at the end of the day, they re not going to get any real scandal here. i think on both fronts, having a democrat in the room on both fronts will make that even harder to pull off. can hillary clinton avoid this? i don t know. i think she would have to come if a skmit tee of congress asked her to come in. henry waxman subpoenaed condee rice in 2007. heldry would have to go. the idea of self-policing isn t working anymore in politics. here he is, basically defending the use of the killing of those four diplomats overseas on watch for us. their killing is now vary game to raise money with and here he is saying so. here s mitt romney, the gentleman, talking here. i think what the republicans have every right to say and is roept to say, if republicans do not have a majority is there would not be an investigation into benghazi. elect republicans so we can have these kinds of investigations is appropriate. he doesn t know what he s talking about. he s talking about raising money. if we go out and raise money on this horror out there, then it s fine. he s factually wrok. wrong. there have been eight investigations. two were by the senate and the senate is run by democrats. do you remember aft9/11, democrats going out with fundraising e-mails and solicitations saying george bush awill youed terrorists to kill 3,000 americans so give us money so we can investigate? maybe that happened but i certainly don t remember democrats making that sort of argume argume argument. certainly not the leaders of the party, the elder satesmen. it s amazing you can do this these days and not have the referee come out and blow the whistle at you. i think something has changed. the hate against the president, the far right, the fringe right, and has moved over to the scepter right, i agree with that. they hate him. to the point where ingraham and those people on the right, all they have to do is voice that hate, each though i don t think they all share it. some are just doing it professionally. they just have to play that incredible power of hatred to just say, hillary did this, obama did this and that s enough. i ve never seen anything like it. the white way accused of being uppity? we know what this means. i9 s not even code. it s not even code. it s birth of the nation. it s early 20th century talk. i had 50 don serve tifs on my twitter feed telling me there s no racial connotation on the word uppity. it s an adjectives. excuse me, guys, we re americans and have grown up with the good, the bad and the ugly of our country. it s got it all. have a nice weekend, you guys. have a nice mother s day where it s appropriate. by the way, you have to rely on the people who are the mothers. up next, a part-time vampire and full-time republican running for the united states congress makes a mistake of talking to stephen colbert. that s always a mistake, usually. this is hardball the place for politics. with diabetes, it s tough to keep life balanced. i don t always have time to eat like i should. that s why i like glucerna shakes. they have slowly digestible carbs to help minimize blood sugar spikes. [male announcer] glucerna. (meowright on cue. it s more than just a meal, it s meow mix mealtime. with wholesome ingredients and irresistible taste, it s the only one cats ask for by name. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. [ male announcer ] once it s earned, usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protection. and because usaa s commitment to serve current and former military members and their families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve. honestly, the off-season isn t i ve got a lot to do. that s why i got my surface. it s great for watching game film and drawing up plays. it s got onenote, so i can stay on top of my to-do list, which has been absolutely absurd since the big game. with skype, it s just really easy to stay in touch with the kids i work with. alright, russell you are good to go! alright, fellas. alright, russ. back to work! there s an adage in military and law enforcement you never want to take the same war twice. like going into iraq twice. right. which one of those should we not have done? stephen, the problem with i don t know, wars are complicated. good. that s good enough. welcome back to hardball. welcome back for the side show. that was stephen colbert sitting down with jake rush, florida conscious dm congressional candidate. jake rush likes to role play as a vampire with several altar egos. here s colbert asking him about that. you go by the alter egos c chazz darling, the creaseler and ach bishop keterring. you re speaking to jake rush. that is a great character name. that s my name. jake rush early one morning he didn t know why there was blood on his sheets. all he knew there was a dead woman in bed with him. what happens next? hopefully he gets out the vote. what a mismatch of minds there. he says playing a vampire role helps him focus on privacy rights and personal freedom. i m sure. next up, on a appearance on late night, larry king shared his story about a fender bender with political great in florida. mr. king said he became distracted looking at the mansions in the community. listen to what he says happened next. i looked up, suddenly there s a guy parked in a convertible. i hit him. we re the only two people on the road. so he gets out of the car and he goes like this. how could you? how could you hit me? i said i m sorry. i was looking at the houses. i m sorry. do you want to exchange licenses? he said i m senator john kennedy of massachusetts. i m going to run for president in two years. i want you all to swear you ll vote for me. we voted for him. i don t think kennedy talks like this. i m just guessing. it s a great story. up next, republicans still can t find that presidential candidate who can hit the center right sweet spot and avoid an election day debacle in 2016. they re still looking for that mr. right. i rebalanced my portfolio on my phone. you know what else i can do on my phone? place trades, get free real time quotes and teleport myself to aruba. i wish. we are the thinkers. the job jugglers. the up all-nighters. and the ones who turn ideas into action. we ve made our passions our life s work. we strive for the moments where we can say, i did it! we are entrepreneurs who started it all. with a signature. legalzoom has helped start over 1 million businesses, turning dreamers into business owners. and we re here to help start yours. turning dreamers into business owners. be a sound sleeper, or.l you a mouth breather? well, put on a breathe right strip and instantly open your nose up to 38% more than allergy medicines alone. so you can breathe and sleep. shut your mouth and sleep right. breathe right. and that s epic, bro, we ve forgotten just how good good is. good is setting a personal best before going for a world record. good is swinging to get on base before swinging for a home run. [ crowd cheering ] good is choosing not to overshoot the moon, but to land right on it and do some experiments. so start your day off good with a coffee that s good cup after cup. maxwell house. good to the last drop president obama praised walmart s investment and energy efficiency and renewables during a visit to a store in mountain view, california. the visit was part of a broader energy reform push. the white house is criticizing a visit by vladimir putin to crimea which it says will only serve to fuel tensions there. and dick parsons is picked to run the clippers. back to hardball. republicans have become a far right party, but in republican presidential politics, center right is the sweet spot. because then you can win. along the spectrum of potential gop, which includes ted cruz and rand paul, critical center right real estate is up for grabs. mitt romney of all people has shown he doesn t want to be too far away from the arena in case that center right slot needs to be filled because jeb doesn t run and christie is not clean enough to run. in the past few months he s been very visible on the sunday shows. he s endorsed republican candidates in the 2014 cycle and given money to others. and this morning he popped up on morning joe. . pe he tacked very much to the center on the issue of minimum wage. for instance, i part company on the issue of minimum page. i think we ought to raise it. frankly, our party is all about more jobs and better pay. anyway, he hopes that hillary clinton s term as secretary of state will hurt her in 2016. i think her record there is a very substantial liability for her cam panl in 2016 i think it s going to raise a lot of questions about her capacity to accomplish things of significance. particularly on foreign soil. as gene mccarthy, my hero once said famously, it s easier to run for president than to stop. and based on his frequent tv appearances of late, and political endorsements, it looks like mitt romney wants to stick close to the action. i think you re brilliantly direct krekt. he still looks like he belongs in the hall of the presidents down at disneyworld. but go ahead. your thoughts. another thing that romney did on the morning joe appearance this morning was to say he didn t want to run for president again. he said he doesn t think the united states wants to elect anybody who s already won twice and lost. i think he s probably right. the country clearly has no big clamor for mitt romney. but what he did do was he sort of signaled who he thought would fill that assistanter rice space you like to talk about. he talked about paul ryan, his running mate in 2012. he talked about rob portman, he talked about mike pence, the governor from indiana. he talked about scott walker. he laid out a whole list of people he said would basically match hip in terms of his views. why is he talking? why is he on television? just to promote other people? or is he trying to keep our eye on him? i like kasich, but they re pretty far back on the bench. there isn t anybody sitting on that front step of the republican party right now. i guess he feels like why should he do the proverbial sherm sherman-esque statement and say under no irk ises will i run. but weave already even chris christie implode and jeb dependent get off to a great start either. let me just explain my limited role around here. besides genuinely doing the show is history. and beth is pretty much right, except i know a man who ran for presidency three times and ran on the third time, ronald reagan. he ran in 68 oh, that doesn t count. it doesn t count. you know why it doesn t? because california is out of play for republicans. ronald reagan, he was the governor of california and it was very much a republican state. but he ran three times. there s no doubt mitt romney thinks he would be a terrific president and the only thing 245 cures presidential ambition is em balming fluid. it s not just that he lost twice. all the conservatives and all the republicans basically believe he lost an election that was his to win. he won the first debate. he probably goes to bed thinking if i won two debates, not one, i would be president. the 47%. they blame. republicans exhaust all other possibilities before going for the most obvious one, the center right guy, whether it was romney, whether it was mccain. even george w. bush. they do have a history of doing this after they flirt with all these other guys. and it s certainly there for the taking. there s nobody above 13 or 14 points in the republican polls right now. there s, like, nine candidates within seven points of each other. you look at this all the time. here s my question, the republicans have a make a decision, can they beat hillary? the polls will be close enough to say we can knock her off, we can take her down. or decide we can t beat her, so let s have fun and do what we really believe and run somebody on the right. go for it, which means go to the center, don t pick the person that you love. go to the person you got to live with. i think the one closest right now to the center is hillary. just think about the list of people that you and dana just went through. every single one of them was the center candidate, every single one of them lost. george w. won. we re going back quite a few years there. and the country has changed a lot there. that s only a small part of my life. it may be a big part of yours. but not mine. the bigger problem for republicans in time is structural. democrats have in the last 20 years won 18 state that was produced 248 electoral votes. that is starting with such a huge advantage. and the rest of the states that aren t in that category are states like florida that are moving more and more towards the democratic side. but what about the tendency of the country to rotate the stock? and every eight years they tend to go back and fovrt with some exceptions like people wanted a third term for reagan and dukakis was a bad candidate politically. but there s a tremendous challenge to somebody who tries to hold the white house. for that last 12 years. that means 16 years. it s really hard to sell that one. it is. but what we re missing here is spruns are up against this huge demographic problem. it s very hard for them to thread the needle. it will be even worse in 2020 and 2024 beyond that. they have to thread it just properly. you re not going to get that with a rand paul. by the way, hillary, sherrod brown owning ohio, they win the election. that s my argument. i m not in charge. sherrod brown and hillary wins. up next, who better to talk about mother s day and women s issue around this world than somebody who travels around the world all the time. my wife kathleen. and she s coming here next. the day we rescued riley was a truly amazing day. he was a matted mess in a small cage. so that was our first task, was getting him to wellness. without angie s list, i don t know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. from contractors and doctors to dog sitters and landscapers, you can find it all on angie s list. we found riley at the shelter, and found everything he needed at angie s list. join today at angieslist.com [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. i want to remind you with our partnership of born free, with the goal of completely eliminating the transmission of hiv, the virus that causes aids from mther to child, by the end of 2015. no children born with hiv. believe it or not, scientists say it can be done. if you want to help this very important mission, you can find more information on our website, hardball.msnbc.com. i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i m still working. he s retired. i hope he s saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you re just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we ll help you get there. but at xerox we ve embraced a new role. working behind the scenes to provide companies with services. like helping hr departments manage benefits and pensions for over 11 million employees. reducing document costs by up to 30%. and processing $421 billion dollars in accounts payables each year. helping thousands of companies simplify how work gets done. how s that for an encore? with xerox, you re ready for real business. say hi rudy. 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[ barks ] welcome back to hardball. have you noticed the attention to women s issues around the world. there s a focus on women and girls and we ve seen it through the horrors, fk o, in nigeria recently where 276 girls were abducted by a military group that sparked international outrage. we ve seen positive attention in the fight to women for equal pay, a crackdown on sexual abuse and possibly the first woman s president of the united states in hillary clinton. we ve also seen it in business, billionaire coo of facebook, an advocate for women and girls, cheryl sandberg created a movement after releasing her book lean in. from world affairs to government or business, thes facing the world these days are ripe for leadership for women. there s only one woman i can think of to discuss this for me and with me ahead of this mother s day weekend, the mother oof our three children, my wife, kathleen matthews. thank you for joining us. it s on these special occasions that i ask you to come on and you ve agreed. but there is something in the air where centuries have gone by, maybe back to the beginning of time where men dominated the conversation. the conversation, not just the power. and now the conversation is shifting. it clearly has in my lifetime. i think we seen the conversation ebb and flow. i mean, i got into the work force in the 1970s and i remember at that time this was going to be the big movement of women into the work force and towards equality and pay and different things. and i would have imagined i would have seen a lot more ceos that were women by this point in my lifetime. and i think what you see is you see progress and then you see a couple steps backward. but something like the young women who have been kidnapped in nigeria. that s not a women s issue, but i think this is this outrage and this to them it is. what about what about the mothers who have these 300 daughters who are missing and the fathers that are worried about those daughters. i think to see the world cat liez around that, whether it is first lady michelle obama, hillary clinton talking about it, women all over the world. nigeria is a country that has a finance minister who is a woman. it is a country that s trying to move into this century. women s rights are going to have to be at the forefront of that. you ll have to have the women of nigeria feel safe, to feel that they have opportunity. otherwise a country like that, even though it has eclipsed south africa, it won t be a world power until women have rights and feel safe in a country like that. what do you do with a country that s an alley, they re basically subjective to the men. these are tough questions on the foreign policy front. how do we move these countries forward. in saudi arabia, women are trying to drive cars. they don t even have the right to drive cars. they re posting their videos on youtube. they re being educated, but it is a segregated education system and women cannot have jobs alongside men in that economy. how can saudi arabia move into the leading economies of the world and sort of the progress of this century, unless they deal with those issues, which for them they say are religious issues. i think the u.s. finds ourselves often times in really difficult positions in how we deal with these diplomatic issues and we have problems at home. you talk about equal pay. we are talking about it not because it is a positive issue, we are talking about it because studies show there is not necessarily equal pay. on our corporate boards, 16% of the representatives on corporate boards are women. they should be closer to 50%. ceos, it is the same. companies like marriott have women s strategies now, we are trying to make progress in what do you think of lean forward, lean in. let me lean in. what s that mean? lean in is about the fact that i think sheryl sandberg believes women have a role in this, too, that women have to kind of push to take their place. they ve got to be demanding of those opportunities and they ve got to take advantage of those opportunities. i think what she s saying is companies will not flourish unless they have the diversity of men and women. you need that diversity, in age, in gender, in racial representation in order to have a smart business i think, or a smart government. so she s saying companies have to do this. governments have to do it. but women also have to lean in to take those opportunities. and so that s why this dialogue is out there. it is out there because you still see lagging progress, and i think that no company or no country is going to flourish unless they take advantage of the intellectual potential of women, the economic power of women, the countries doing the best are ones where women are leaning in and are out there. what s your reaction to what sven holmes said when you recruit women for top accountant jobs, men immediately say i can fill a couple of those standards and bs my way through a couple more. women want to fit every one of the standards. when are women going to have the ability to say i can do this, even if it doesn t technically mean i can do it. where guys say i can do it. it is kind of a two-way street. this is how girls grow up. you have girls like cheryl sand berg and condi rice saying girls have to embrace being pushy, what is the word, that they have a word for it where girls are seen as being pushy if they say i want to be class president, not class vice president, or secretary. i think it is how you raise your daughters. how do you think we raised our daughter. she will be president someday or something. but she s got to get through, number one, does she want to have a family, if she has a family, how much does she leave the work force for that. what are the things in place to help her raise that family. will she find a husband that will share this load with her. we have been lucky to have a marriage where we both were full time in our careers and had the joy of raising children, which we celebrate on this mother s day coming up, and to be able to sort of pursue careers at the same time, feeling like we had great quality time with our kids. kathleen, i agree with everything you said. because you have been a great partner in all this. i wish i could be as equal to greatness as you are. we will be right back. kathleen matthews, i have words to speak of her when she s gone. back after this. alright, that should just about do it. excuse me, what are you doing? uh, well we are fine tuning these small cells that improve coverage, capacity and quality of the network. it means you ll be able t post from the breakroom. great! did it hurt? when you fell from heaven (awkward laugh) .a little.. 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[ female announcer ] we eased your back pain, you turned up the fun. tylenol® provides strong pain relief while being gentle on your stomach. but for everything we do, we know you do so much more. tylenol®. let me finish tonight with what kathleen just told us. we have been together 36 years, and i have been fortunate to watch her grow from a local tv producer to a top news anchor in the nation s capital to a highly placed corporate executive. i watched her educate herself as i tried to do to the challenges facing this world, including those challenging women. she has taken particular interest in the horror of hiv and aids in africa, with special focus on transmission of infection from mother to children. she has gotten our own children as they grow older to get involved in this work of caring for african kids born with aids. kathleen has also been a proponent of encouraging the development of micro entrepreneurialism. efforts to help women especially begin small businesses in places like rural africa. i love her big picture look at the world that she s gained over the years as executive vice president of marriott international. she took me on a trip to china as a business trip, gave me a look at that incredible country as it zooms into the 21st century. there s no limit to where kathleen herself is zooming, i am so lucky, don t you think? all the time the best mother of michael, thomas and caroline. i look into the kids faces and they love every ounce of real concern and consistent love that kathleen gives them. she worked with them on the homework mostly and the one that
that is it for this special report, fair, balanced and unafraid. greta goes on the record right now. this is a fox news alert. out-of-control nine wildfires raging across southern california. just a short time ago one fire roaring to life and threatening entire neighborhoods. thousands forced to flee their homes. reporter sharon shin is live with the latest. sharon? greta, we actually got out of that neighborhood and we are in a safe area now. we are in an area called harmony grove. you can see right there the sphir smoldering in that person s property. now, this fire right now, this is the area the firefighters were trying to keep the fire out of this morning. harmony grove. earlier this morning we were in san marcos. and we were in that neighborhood where would literally got there. watched the sheriff deputies evacuate all the homes in the area. blaring loud speakers please leave their homes. within, i swear to you, 10 minutes that we saw that fire just come roaring over the ridge and that is what firefighters are dealing with today. this fire is so fast moving fanned by these winds that continue to kick up every now and then and, of course, the heat. the heat is definite factor in this fire fight today. and as you can see, some people are still trying to get their animals out of this harmony grove area which is a lot of horses in some of these homes, greta? sharon, any idea on containment? i mean, when you look at the video from here, it looks awful. it looks dangerous. it looks like it s just going to, you know, take over the entire area. burn everything in sight. but is there any containment? i wish i could give you a better numbers than. this but, no. at this time the last report we had it was at 5% containment. and this, that was the san marcos fire. this co-coast fire right now is at 0 percent containment and it s burned a thousand acres. in total between the two fires that i have been covering today that b. four homes have been destroyed so, of course, our hearts go out to those families. are people cooperating? taking those evacuation orders seriously or are the firefighters having to contend with that problem? no. they are absolutely taking it seriously. a lot of these people, i have spoken with they have had their items packed long before today. they maybe had them packed on tuesday, when these fires were coming through this area knowing that this may be the case. and once they get that knock on the door, they are out. sharon, thank you. and that looks absolutely dangerous and terrifying. thank you, sharon. and in minutes you are going to hear from the fire team on the front lines plus a live report from the neighborhood in the fire s deadly path. right now on the record, a story that is making me angry and it will make you angry her roars at v.a. hospitals. where does the buck stop? would you explain to me after knowing all this information, why you should not resign? also the new york times waging a war on women. on the record investigates tonight. then, give us our dad back. casey kasem found. and why did the radio legend vanish. the administration has done or said that we re not aware of? dang if i know. susan rice scoffing at serious questions. get ready for a jam-packed on the record. and right now veterans affair department eric shin seq.y telling a senate panel is he mad as hell. i thought it was appropriate for him to come before congress. if he doesn t give a better answer, i m not sure how he wouldn t have to do anything but resign. but, greta, whether he resigns or not is important. but if these allegations are true, people should be going to jail. that s just resigning their positions. that s why i asked if the attorney general should get in because the attorney general one who can convene a grand jury and get to the bottom of it to see if there is a crime. absolutely. we have the inspector generate now working on it. that s the slow walk. congress does that for every problem in capitol hill. let s get the inspector general out to do it it these veterans have waited an awful long time, some to their death. if many of these allegations turn out to be true, and there is ample evidence that they probably are i m not drew drawing any firm conclusions just yet, everything i have seen is going to lead us to the attorney general s office of the united states of america. should the american people also be distressed at the committee that has oversight of the general shinseki and the veterans affairs? because we hear about this after the fact. after something catastrophic has happened. oversight to i thought you would be monitoring it as we go along. both veterans affairs committees in the house and senate have been made aware of problems within the v.a. my office has. we have more people who come to us with problems with the v.a. than all the others combined. and i have dedicated staffers that only do those issues. we knew about delays. we knew about problems with scheduling. we knew a number of other things we certainly did not hear up until an allegation that people actually died while awaiting treatment. that s a step further. what is is the explanation for these waiting lists and sort of cooking the books? are they saying that they don t have enough money and they are trying to sort of juggle it in order to provide services? what s the explanation? they were given guidelines that they had to meet. in other words, certain number of days before certain things were done. an appointment, treatment, et cetera. and obviously they were not meeting those criteria. so, we have evidence already of a person who was has been suspended who said, basically, they were cooking the books. in other words, so that they would meet these criteria and time lines that were laid down came from the v.a. here in washington. that s what this was all about. you know, i think of these members, men and women in our military, when we need them, they go. they don t say hold off. wait a little bit. we re going to cook the books. they go. this is the this is what we give them. this is shameful under any circumstances. it is ten times more shameful because it s being done to the men and women who have put their lives on the line for us. so why do does anyone have to wait, americans wait for the attorney general to get on this right now? if the inspector general wants to do a report. can he do one too or she can do one too. but why not demand the attorney general do it right now. get on this. i would like to wait until the house armed services, house veterans affairs committee hearing which is going to be very soon, i think next week that they are going to have that hearing. and then i think we should make a decision. i think it s appropriate to have the hearing here today which, by the way, there was nothing presented today that would successfully rebut the allegations that have been made. then that s even more reason not to wait. even if you have another hearing, there is is not much you can do here in the senate. we don t have quite the muscle that the attorney general has of the united states. that s why i don t get the hearings are informative. he they are interesting. i like to cover them. i find them interesting. but they don t have the muscle that the attorney general has. we are looking at a matter of days here. and in somerespects, it may be more impactful to have general shinseki testify as the head of the v.a., the one who is totally responsible. that may be appropriate. but we are talking about a matter of days here. again, like any of these scandals, afternoon even more so i think there is a lot of layers to this onion. already there are number of allegations all over the country. started as a v.a. scandal and obviously spread. if i were the u.s. attorney in phoenix even though my boss eric holder and you united states senator holding all the hearings. i would open my own investigation and wait for the senate to yell at me and the attorney general to yell at me. that s in his jurisdiction, the u.s. attorney there should be doing something, investigating. one thing about you, yet, have you never minded people yelling at you. i get yelled at a lot. on that note, thank you, senator. thank you. version of the interview will be posted on gretawire. while the v.a. secretary was taking heat on the hill white house under fire. ed henry joins us live. good to see you, greta, you are right. the house majority leader eric cantor put out a blistering statement there is a pattern at the white house when a scandal pops up or allegations of wrongdoing the cabinet secretary takes the heated like kathleen sebelius did on healthcare that now this is happening with eric shinseki. the white house pushed back on that today by telling me put one of the top aides neighbors overseeing the review at the v.a. to show they have some skin in the game and they are going to get on top of this. as you were just saying a moment ago in terms of the president s involvement, and what did he know, look, he has not spoken out publicly on this other than one time last month at a news conference in manila. traveling in asia. do you have any reaction to this outrageous situation in phoenix? that was the beginning of the story. the president to his credit stood up and said, look, we are not going to let this happen. we have put a lot of money, you know, to help veterans, et cetera, et cetera. the problem for him, of course, politically, as you say there may be criminal wrongdoing that others will deal with as commander and chief, when the president stands up and says i m going to make sure there is money there i m going to make sure the veterans are taken care of. if they are not, that puts a lot of pressure on him. this is a lot different than say the benghazi investigation which has become partisan lines drawn out there. easy for the white house to say this is just republicans going after him. in the case of the veterans affairs story here. you have democrats at this hearing today expressing about as much outrage as you just heard from john mccain, greta. you know though, ed, and i know you don t want to argue with me. i think they are all up to their eyeballs in. this they all have a job to monitor. this to make sure that they have got oversight. not after site. democrats, republicans. i don t know what what s worse for the president to say that he didn t know or that he did know and nothing happened and they did nothing? i don t know which is worse. let me ask you a fact question. tomorrow, i assume this is going to be something that s going to be discussed at the press briefing? there is no doubt about it, jay carney is going to get a lot of questions about it, as you said. what did the president know? in fairness, the president doesn t run the phoenix office of v.a. he has a lot of other things to deal with. but, when he he makes these dramatic statements, when jay carney goes to the podium and says our commitment to veterans is strong. they have to make sure they live up to it they know that and that s why this thing has legs right now. indeed. comment off-the-record, nobody in washington ever knows anything about anything. nobody ever has responsibility. he does the hands on running but apparently nobody does. at least not he very well at all. ed, thank you. good to see you, greta. records show the agency has spent almost $500 million on office furniture under the obama administration. that s right. president obama increasing the v.a. budget each year since he took office and 489 million is spent to upgrade conference rooms, buy drapes and buy new furniture. joining us our political panel rick klein, david and washington examiner chief political correspondent byron york. rick, i m sure he didn t increase this budget because he wanted to make sure that the veterans got, you know, got the they got more furniture. i m sure that s not why the president did it it no one minding the shop. looks bad in the context of what we are talking about right now. veterans dying when waiting for the service is. see internal improvements be where the resources are being directed it does not look good for anyone involved. the reason the budget has been going up is because we have more veterans returning from the wars. this is not a surprise. we need more people to stand in line and not get services? we didn t have enough. i m being sarcastic. we have known about this for more than a decade since 9/11 we have had a big increase in the number of men and women who are serving. have more people come back with more issues. that s why the budgets are going up. when the president puts in budget requests. he thinks is he is getting the resources he needs. clearly it s not going the right places. david? i still think it has to do with personnel issues. i know you were talking to ed about if the president directly responsible? i know. but the buck stops some place. the buck stops some place. you know these are huge. he is going to know what s going on in phoenix or north carolina. but, you know, with what just went on with siebe and the healthcare rollout. now you have got this going on in the v.a. with shinseki. there is a question you could ask about personal decisions. is he putting smart people around him in the room to direct these cabinet make sure hands on i think this goes off the outrage scale. san wham new office furniture. v.a. in los angeles spent 108 million. and shoveling. secretary shinseki appears again. in the context of terrible suffering in the v.a. scandal. asking him about this. he is not doing his job. i don t care if it s a tough job. i don t care if it s a big place. don t take the job. i mean, let all these veterans die standing in line and spending all that money on curtains. i mean, it s ridiculous. national security susan rice is talking about benghazi again. this time she seems to brush off a question about whether the select committee will find any new evidence. since you brought up benghazi. [ laughter ] you are too smart for that. [ laughter ] go on. what more is there that the administration has done or said that we are not aware of right now? dang if i know. so is the white house taking the benghazi investigation seriously? it sure doesn t sound like it and of course those women were laugh not guilty room too. remember what former national security spokesperson tommy veiter told bret baier will the talking points controversy. did you also change attacks to demonstrations in the talking points? maybe. i don t really remember. you don t remember? dude, this is like two years ago. we are still talking about the most mundane process. dude, we are talking. we are talking about the process of editing talking points. byron, you have got him saying dude, this is the guy sitting in the situation that night dude two years ago. susan rice saying dang if i know. you have got women in the room laughing. meanwhile we have four dead at benghazi. the susan rice thing was just jaw-dropping. incredibly dismissive. you have to remember this investigation is about a lot more than talking points. even though the talking points are a part of it there are serious questions about the terrible state. terrible lack of preparation. state department and the pentagon for any sort of attack generally in libya and certainly on the anniversary of the september 11th attacks. the members of the committee do not believe they know everything about this. they believe that the state department report kind of built a fire wall around secretary of state hillary clinton. and they want to know more. this kind of dismissive answer from susan rice is not going to sit well with them. it seesmtion so insensitive and dude two years ago and dang if i know. i mean four people are dead. have a little more seriousness and purpose. i would think so i m scandalized by it. it has a lot to do with tone veiter may not remember. he may not know. see from the white house and democrats. toe don t want to legitimize the investigation. it is a fact tens of thousands of records out there. 25,000 documents she said but the problem she has to it compete with is they may have released. we used to do in law all the time. dump everything in the world on the other side. try to drown them. the one email they didn t get was ben rhodes. reasonable to be suspicious and a lot more. the lawyers have not served the white house aides well in this fight by trickling this stuff out. two clips you just said are going to be compiled into a nice tidy 20162016. dude part and susan rice laughing interesting to note. cia director john brennan today was asked in an interview about whether it was, he thought it was a terrorist attack. and he still he was very careful in his wording and said it was an assault. we didn t know. so even today, white house is very careful on how they characterize those events. at least while he is doing that, is he doing it seriously and not making a dang and a dude. anyway, panel, stay with us. straight ahead, casey kasem is found. so where in the world was the famous dj and what is next for him? all the latest coming up? first, we are following breaking news out-of-control wildfires scorching thousands of akers in california. thousands of people forced to run from their homes. a live update from california next. when it comes to good nutrition.i m no expert. that would be my daughter hi dad. she s a dietitian. and back when i wasn t eating right, she got me drinking boost. it s got a great taste, and it helps give me the nutrition i was missing. helping me stay more like me. 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[ female announcer ] stay strong, stay active with boost. wbecame your business. passion. grandpa! at&t can help simplify how you manage it. so you can focus on what you love most. when everyone and everything works together, business just sings. this is a fox news alert. final wildfires raging in southern california. flames and winds putting entire neighborhoods at risk. firefighters battling the flames from the ground. daniel joins us. good evening, sir. these fires continue to grow fanned by santa ana winds. picked up in activity as the santa ana winds have continued to grow in intense city. strong santa ana winds. very active fire behavior. 9 different fires. i assume that nine different reasons or maybe the same reason everyone started. any suggestion any one of them are arson? at this point our investigators continue to follow up on several leads. there is nothing at this time though that points to one direction over the other. when you have santa ana winds though, when you have conditions this dry. it doesn t take much for any open flame, any simple spark to quickly ignite into wildfire with the santa ana winds blowing so heavily, those fires quickly grow out-of-control like they have the past couple days. we continue to aggressively fight these fires. not only on the ground with bulldozers. also in the air helicopters and air tankers doing everything they can can to keep this fire away from the more urban areas. the subdivisions that it continues at this hour to threaten. i should have asked you first, any firefighters injured? that should have been my first question to you. unfortunately we have had several minor injuries. it s a good thing at this point they are minor. these are very dangerous conditions for our firefighters to face. these are conditions we would often experience in the late fall months. santa ana winds are nothing new to this region. but to have these type of conditions so early in the year. these dangerous situations. dangerous conditions so early is what is so unprecedented. so at this point there have been several firefighters that have been injured. thank goodness though at this point only minor. sir, thank you very much for joining us. thank you. and we re continuing to monitor this dangerous situation. these wildfires and we will bring you another live report in a few minutes. right now casey kasem, he has been found. the legendary d.j. turning up in washington state hours after his family filed missing persons report. sheriff s department finding kasem. where was he? kit sap county deputy joins us. good evening, sir. good evening, ma am. how did you find him? welfare check for a person who continued out to be mr. casey kasem. adult services in california. adult protective services department state of washington came to our agency. we were provided an address where state adult protective services in california thought mr. casey kasem would be located as the. was this a friend of the family? yes, ma am. these turn out to be a long term family friends. this is a private residence. sheriff deputies responded there 15 minutes of getting this. we made contact with the homeowners, we were introduced to mr. casey kasem and his wife and others who were in the house. we ascertained his health and welfare. once we ve finished we spent 45 minutes there once we were finished we reported back through the chain of command to adult protective services in california dollars did he he want to be back in california. he was alert. he was awake. he was sitting up. he was cogging any isn t a of our presence there and he seemed to understand the situation. his wife, who is his primary caretaker had medications present with her. and she explained what the medications were for and how they were administered. there was no indication whatsoever that he was being held against his will or that he was in any kind of jeopardy. so, once we completed our assessment of the situation. we determined that his welfare was found. he was fine. and our job was done. we cleared the scene and reported back to california. now, the daughter in california is a conservator. is there any indication there is going to be a problem? is she going to come get him or anything like that? this problem sort of been put to rest? as far as we re concerned, we re done. this is a civil matter. internal to those parties who are in concerning his whereabouts, his location and his primary healthcare provider and other issues. but as far as a law enforcement agency is concerned, we went at the request of state of california. we made the welfare check. we reported back and we re done. and it sounds like you did the perfect job. anyway. deputy, thank you, sir. yes, ma am, thank you. geographic. and casey kasem s children saying they are grateful to police finding their daughter. and carrie saying we are one step closing to bringing him home. the new york times executive editor abrahamson latest victim of war on women? more breaking news from southern california. wildfires burning out of control and spreading. now thousands of new evacuation orders going out to residents. a live report from the scene of the fires is next. 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getting a different pay? our political panel is back. byron? there is question about what the pay was and how different it was. jill abrahamson has not spoken publicly. clearly had friends and associates say things to the press that she discovered she was paid less as editor than predecessor and paid less than keller was when she managing editor. the times came out and said no, it s not true, her pay was not substantially less and last year she earned more than keller last we re year. we don t know the facts on this story looks like a lot of controversy in that news organization. i don t know what s behind the scene last book editorial board said they essentially wanted the benghazi investigation shut down they thought it was silly, my paraphrased words secretive one she has covered in decades. tension between her and the ed toward board. also go back and look. there are reports coming out over a year ago that there were tensions within the newsroom about her demeanor, some of her relationships with the top editors and some reporters. she did have a bunch of female reporters come out and say today that she was a role model to them but there is definitely tension in the newsroom. she was going to hire a second managing editor. that would have threatened somebody else s position. she rubbed some people definitely the wrong way details of that that go back. rick, best question of the night. instagram picture jill abrahamson her daughter has put on instagram. shows her new york times tattooed. there it is. are you going to have abc news tattooed on you. permanent ink. i don t think anyone is going to get a tattoo of a news organization after this happened. byron is right. the next thing she says i assume won t be an instagram photo. she thinks she was targeted because of pay iniquities because of pay gap for women. all got our eyes on the new york times see what s going on there. gentlemen, thank you. united states court of appeals declaring parts of wisconsin campaign finance law unconstitutional. that is big news tonight for wisconsin governor scott walker. the wisconsin reporters matt kitell joins us. matt, why is that big news for the governor of the i should say great state of wisconsin? indeed the great state of wisconsin. well, we are seeing a number of things happening here campaign finance laws in the state of wisconsin have been seriously questioned by the circuit, not just questioned but noted as unconstitutional dark money, concepts dogging walker throughout. what we keep seeing here is no sign of illegal campaign finance operations there has been john dough investigation to see if there are any sort of shenanigans by governor walker with this ruling in a civil matter about the wisconsin campaign law. does that somehow help governor walker. unconstitutional are those the very laws that governor walker is being investigated for for allegedly violating? absolutely sources on the ground here and talked to a former federal election commission source who told me today secretive probe going on targeting conservatives for the last three years now. longer if you take a look back at the targeting of scott walker s former aides and assistants when he was the milwaukee county executive director. this really does change the i do mick on the ground. we will see how that plays out in a civil rights lawsuit that s been filed against the prosecutors in that john dough investigation. thank you, matt. and there is growing outrage around the world tonight after sudan sentence as 27-year-old pregnant woman execution. her crime? marrying a christian. ambassador john bolton is here to talk about that next. plus more trouble for former new england patriot aaron hernandez. prosecutors say the former nfl star was the gunman in a double murder. a live report from boston coming up. and the financing to make it grow? whatever your goal, it can change more than your business. whatever your goal, it can change e future. that s wh at barclays, our ambition is to alys realize yours. and the award goes to ceramics house. congratulations. thank you. the success of your small business depends on results. go vests! all organic, and there s tons of info on our website. that s why you rely on the best for your business. and verizon delivers the best devices on the best network. you re all big toes to me. so go ahead, stream and download with confidence on america s largest, most reliable 4glte network. activate any 4glte smartphone and get $100 off. for best results, use verizon. i m j-e-f-f and i have copd. i m l-i-s-a and i have copd, but i don t want my breathing problems to get in the way of hosting my book club. that s why i asked my doctor about b-r-e-o. once-daily breo ellipta helps increase airflow from the lungs for a full 24 hours. and breo helps reduce symptom flare-ups that last several days and require oral steroids, antibiotics, or hospital stay. breo is not for asthma. breo contains a type of medicine that increases risk of death in people with asthma. it is not known if this risk is increased in copd. breo won t replace rescue inhalers for sudden copd symptoms and should not be used more than once a day. breo may increase your risk of pneumonia, thrush, osteoporosis, and some eye problems. tell your doctor if you have a heart condition or high blood pressure before taking breo. ask your doctor about b-r-e-o for copd. first prescription free at mybreo.com when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. [ male announcer ] once it s earned, usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation. because it offers a superior level of protecon. and because usaa commitment to serve current and former military members andheir families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve. sudan judges sentence as woman to flogging and hanging. her crime marrying christianity. forbids women from marrying non-muslim men. human rights groups including the u.s. condemns the sentencing. joining us is former ambassador john bolton. your thoughts? this is barbaric. no other way to describe it the crime that she is principally accused of is hypocrisy. that is say leaving islam and refusing to come back in measure we call switching religions freedom of religion. it demonstrates the risk when sharia law is implemented to the fullest extent. this relates directly to boko haram in nigeria where they focused their activities against christian missionary activities which is a central tenet of most christian denominations. this is a mark of the clash of civilizations. and i have been to it sudan and i have blogged many times on gretawire that president breashear of sudan is as evil as can be. bombing children. there is is a picture with reverend franklin graham in south sudan. but bombing children. this is the most evil place and he is the most evil person. and now we see this. well, and he sheltered usama bin laden. and there is clear evidence that sudan has been a base for other international terrorists. so, whether the regime in car tomb is itself a terrorist, i think it clearly is. or whether it is affiliated directly with some of these other terrorist activities, is indicative of this wave of radical islamism that we re seeing all across north after infantry capped at middle east. what a serious problem it is and why the united states and others need to take a more comprehensive view. these are not isolated incidents. what happens in sudan, what happens in libya. what happens in nigeria, this is part of a larger pattern. and so far we haven t heard the president speak to it. ambassador, always nice to he see you, sir. thank you. and a 34-year-old woman pose as a 16-year-old high school sophomore? now why would she do that? most of us wanted to get out of high school fast. apparently she didn t. a live report is next. thit s not the limit yoursh hard earned cash back card . it s not the confused by rotating categories card. it s the no-category-gaming, no-look-passing, clear-the-lane-i m- going-up-strong, backboard-breaking, cash back card. this is the quicksilver cash back card from capital one. unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, every single day. i ll ask again. what s in your wallet? that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there s someone around the office who hasn t had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i m looking at you phone company dsl. check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. the jig is up, 16-year-old high school student. now under arrest for the latest in texas ketk reporter alexandria joins us. what is the story? she posed as a 16-year-old why? we don t really know why. i think maybe some of us have wondered what it would be like to go back to high school. as an adult. she did just that she has been at a christian school here in long view, texas for almost a full school year. it s even stranger because the high school only or the school only has about 20 students so it s a small community. very tight nit and still able to fool all these people. i spoke with the principal today who said he is still very convinced by her act. more evidence from the police to prove that she is not actually 15 or 16 years old. i also visited the home here in long view where she was staying. she spoke with somebody he worked with at mcdonald s and asked if she could live with her. that s where she has been living for about a year. at this home there were her homework was everywhere. school projects. drawing. it looked just like a regular teenager s room. she did almost get away with this until last week she started talking to a nonprofit organization in dallas. i think she was probably trying to play her games there some of the things she was saying did background checks and realized this stuff wasn t checking out. she told her current guardian tamika who maybe started realizing that this girl charity wasn t who she was. she ended up calling police police. a fake i.d. she was arrested on monday and monday and she is now. for the record, go back to college not high school. thank you. now to former nfl star aaron hernandez former new england patriots tight end now charged with two more murders. fox news correspondent molly line is live in boston. molly? greta, prosecutors revealed today man fired shots from .38 caliber revolver from inside a suv into another vehicle two young men killing two of them. that happened in 2012. more than a year before the other murder than aaron shenders alleged to have committed the other death. hernandez now faces two counts of first degree murder in that boston shooting and other aarmed assault charges which reflect the shots that were fired at the three surviving victims also in that car during the hail of gunfire. prosecutors say the two men killed, daniel were innocent scrims that just had a chance encounter were learned at a boston nightclub shortly before their deaths. for us, this case was never about aaron hernandez. this case was about two victims who were stopped, ambushed and senselessly murdered on the streets of the city they called home. remember, aaron hernandez signed a very lucrative multi-million-dollar deal with the patriots and went on to play. he remains in jail with no bail on the murder of oden lloyd. charged with the murder of owe lloyd. greta? molly, thank you. okay. emp, here is what is being hard out right now. trending now on social media wiped out a woman s incurable cancer with the measle vaccine. the vaccine strong enough to knock could you late 10 million people. mayo clinic large dose of measle vaccine knocked out a woman s incurable blood cancer. wow this is right. biggest break through since the polio vaccine. huge reunion today on the view all 11 for the taping of barbara walters show. she will bid farewell tomorrow. elisabeth hasselbeck took this selfie trending right now. throw back thursday. i tweeted this earlier. ebt barbara walters and dalai lama along with a photo and now it s your turn to hash it out with us. use #greta on all your tweets and posts. and up next, something you have to see. before you see bill o reilly. the only thing better than the smell of fresh-cut grass. is the smell of perfectly level, fresh-cut grass. that yellow seat s my favorite chair. you wanna find a john deere dealer? just set your gps to tractor expert. when my grandson grows up, it s his. but it s all mine now. that s how we run, and nothing runs like a deere. get 600 dollars off all john deere four-wheel steer lawn tractors now at a dealer near you. we are a collection of smalls. a home saved. a hero homebound for a new opportunity. a kitchen that kick starts careers wells fargo invests in our communities a little differently. small measures that add up to make our whole even greater. little by little we can do a lot. because. small is huge. visit www.wellsfargo.com to see how big small can be. . many okinawans stay so ractive as they age. 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righteous citizens must step up and make the country work. justice is something we should all expect and stand by police to make sure justice is done, even if other police are the ones we question. thanks for watching. i m al sharpton. hardball starts right now. the return of mccarthyism. let s play hardball. good evening. i m chris matthews in san francisco. let me start with the return of mccarthyism. i speak of the behavior of senator ted cruz who accuses president obama of undermining the relationship with israel. it is cruz once again with the reckless charges of joe mccarthy in the 1950s. as he once suggested future secretary of defense chuck hagel was taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from north korea or saudi arabia he now accuses barack obama of working mischief against israel. didn t this country have enough of this stuff 60 years ago? when the reckless communist mccarthy was brought down? is senator cruz trying to mimic the bad old days or just so ignorant are of what those tactics did he s not aware of the horror of mccarthyism all over again. it makes cruz someone who doesn t care what he says as long as it rings the bell at the county fair, makes noise on the right. the place where he set his willful ambition. have you no decency? apparently not . joining me is joe klein and ed rendell, former governor of pennsylvania. senator cruz objected to a temporary f.a.a. ban on flights by u.s. airlines to israel yesterday, a ban put in place tuesday as cautionary measure after hamas rocket landed near the israeli airport. the decision also came in the wake of downed malaysian flight mh-17 last week. while some in israel and the u.s. objected to the ban because of the economic impact on israel senator cruz implied a for nefarious motive saying, the facts suggest that president obama has just used a federal regulatory agency to launch an economic boycott on israel in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign policy demands. here is houma rhee harf responded to the allegations yesterday. senator cruz said the flight suspension is economic blackmail and the obama administration is doing this to punish israel. that s ridiculous and offensive. the f.a.a. takes these responsibilities seriously. they make decisions based solely on the security and safety of american citizens, period. for anyone to suggest otherwise is just ridiculous. in turn senator cruz doubled down on the allegations on fox news last night. yesterday we saw the f.a.a. make an unprecedented decision to ban all air travel to the nation of israel. i have asked today the very simple question did president obama just unilaterally launch economic boycotts on the nation of israel? is this a political decision? was it driven by the white house? by the state department? if it was based on airline safety, as they said, why did they single out israel? why not ban travel to pakistan or yemen or ukraine where a commercial airliner was shot down. instead they targeted israel. they did ban travel to ukraine. flights to israel were restored this morning after the f.a.a. lifted the short ban which lasted about 36 hours altogether. let me go to joe klein on this. let me say this. i know what cruz is up to. he s shouting from are the rooftops in a reckless way. making charges. he doesn t feel the need to substantiate. tell me what you think of this guy, what he s doing. it s gotten worse over the last few hours. cruz is now saying he will hold up all state department appointments until there is an investigation that gets to the bottom of this. we need our state department people out in places like israel and the palestinian area. this is just gamesmanship. you look at the larger picture, all the noisy investigators in the republican house like darryl issa. what have are they come up with? they have been talking about benghazi for years. nothing. this is a major smoke screen. it s a major smoke screen at a time where we have to be very clear about what s going on in gaza and in that region. also in ukraine. but, there is one difference between cruz and mccarthy so far. cruz is going after big fish like obama. mccarthy ruined the lives of a lot of average americans. i suspect cruz will be ringing the bell until he gets anywhere near a presidential primary at which point he ll be dismissed quickly. you and i grew up with this as did joe. i first caught this guy s act when he went after chuck hagel whose nomination was a problem. he wasn t going to be a slam dunk. not when he was most vulnerable cruz impugned his motives by saying he was out there taking money from the north koreans. that s a classic mccarthy charge. now accusing the president of me the nefariously going after israel. for better or worse we are israel s best friend at least in this incident of fighting with hamas. it s all over on their side. all over. what s shocking is number one he s made the charges without a shred of evidence as he did against now secretary hagel. number one. number two, it s idiotic to think a temporary two or three-week boycott of u.s. planes in israel would have a major impact on the israeli economy that would force them to do anything. it doesn t make sense. 36 hours now. that s all it was. joe made a good point. it s part of the republican assault on virtually anything the president does. what s disconcerting to me is two things. one we are doing it in the midst of tough times. we used to bind together, put partisanship aside when there was difficulties like what s going on in the middle east now. number two is this unrelenting assault on whatever president obama does. you know i m not a guy who says president obama is right all the time. but they are holding him to such a standard. imagine for a second he didn t impose such a ban and a hamas rocket brought down a u.s. commercial flight into israel. the republicans would be screaming blody murder. why didn t president obama protect our citizens? look, if president obama discovered a cure for cancer today, tomorrow republicans like cruz would be saying s done nothing for heart attack victims. this is standard f.a.a. behavior. cruz comes from texas. he s been spending too much time in washington. if he were traveling back and forth to texas he would know that the f.a.a. cancels flights on the nearest suspicion of a tiny thunderstorm. they have become very, very cautious over the last decade. it s baloney. take a look at the guys in action. first of all, cruz attacking hag haguen. then mccarthy. i will point out this committee knows absolutely nothing about the personal compensation chuck hagel received in 2009, 2008, 2010. it is relevant to know if the $200,000 he deposited in his bank account came directly from saudi arabia, from north korea. i have no evidence to suggest it is or isn t. here is senator cruz s role model, senator mccarthy. he says he s not concerned about low level spies in the state department. he s saying communists are making policy at the highest levels of government. let s listen. i am speaking of the group sabotaging foreign policy. you can bias bias. meaning the little fellow who will sell his country for 30 pieces of silver. it s the men in the top level of government and the second echelon who do the planning and shaping of foreign policy. they are the dangerous men whether they get 30 pieces of silver or not. does that sound familiar? absolutely. easiest tactic in the world to throw it out there and say, well, we don t know. it is mccarthyism. no question. the american people are better than this. i think republicans are hurting themselves with all of the shenanigans, anti-obama venom. they are trying hard to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the november elections. let s look at a reasonable person who disagrees with the president and the f.a.a. decision but did so in a reasonable way. here s michael bloomberg offering up a defense basically. the former new york mayor offering a defense of at least a character in good will of an administration he disagrees with on this point. if you don t feel safe here i don t know where you would feel safe. i think the state department is just over reacting in typical bureaucratic fashion. political reasons for that? why would you think that? i m asking you. don t be ridiculous. it s an outrage for you to i m just asking by asking the question, you are implying our government does things for political rchblt maybe once in a while they do. it is your job to prove it. just the allegation i take as an offense. that was well done, joe, wasn t it? yes. it shows you how the process works. cruz spews poison into the media atmosphere. people like wolf have to ask the question at that point. so cruz accomplishes what he wanted. the difference between cruz and mccarthy is that cruz is brilliant. if you listen to the way he used the words when he was kind of accusing hagel of taking money from the wrong places the construction was absolutely brilliant. you couldn t pin anything on cruz other than the overwhelming charge he s raising this ridiculous nonsense. it s innuendo. yeah. but cruz is a brilliant lawyer. mccarthy was not so brilliant. i disagree with that a little bit cruz might be a brilliant lawyer and may have phrased it in legalese but to the american people he looks like a jerk, acting against the country at a time we should be coming together. i think they are making big mistake. all i can say is he s making his opponent on the right, rand paul look like pope francis. thank you, joe cline and ed rendell. coming up, marco rubio calls a fake foul. remember those tricks? accusing people who support same-sex marriage as intolerant and opponents as victims. that s a tactic for you. plus, the story in iraq no one is talking about. the persecution of christians by islamic fundamentalists who have taken over a third of the country. i m talking about isis. and a long shot senate candidacy got longer. there are charges of plagiarism against john walsh who was behind already, trying to hold the montana senate seat. finally this is what happens when you get too enthusiastic at the closing of the new york stock market. 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. with the top speedou compare of comcast the top speed of business dsl from the internet. phone company my mom works at ge. well, there s really no comparison. why pay more for less? call today for a low price on speeds up to 150mbps. and find out more about our two-year price guarantee. comcast business. built for business. welcome back. talk about a fake foul. yesterday during a speech on family values at catholic university senator marco rubio are explained why he opposed same-sex marriage and why that doesn t mean he s seeking to discriminate against gay people. fair enough. he also seemed to go out of his way to say it s his side those supporting traditional marriage who have been victimized. let s watch. today there is growing intolerance on this issue. intolerance toward those who continue to support traditional marriage. we have seen the push to remove the ceo of mozilla because in 2008 he made a small donation to support proposition 8 in california. we have seen chick-fil-a attacked and boycotted due to the c.e.o. giving an honest answer to a question about his religious beliefs. even before this speech is over i will be attacked as a hater or bigot or someone who is anti-gay. this intolerance in the name of tolerance is hypocrisy. supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman is not anti-gay. it is pro traditional marriage. if support for traditional marriage is bigotry then barack obama was a bigot until just before the 2012 election. the country has been moving toward embracing same-sex marriage. everyone knows that. marco rubio and his allies may be losing it. i think they are. have they been victimized for their views? howard dean, former chairman of the democratic national committee. michael steele is a political analyst and former chair of the republican national committee. let me go to michael steele. let me ask you a couple of things to set it up. do you think the republican party will keep its platform, its plank which opposes same-sex marriage next time around? will they run on that platform of opposing same-sex marriage? i think in large measure they will, chris. it depends who the nominee of the party is. as you know for both parties, what is or is not in that platform. i would think right now given the current landscape, i don t see that plank being removed just as i don t see, for example, the pro gay marriage plank being removed from the democrats. let me go to governor dean. do you think that s a winning issue for them to come out in 201? that s almost three years from now, well into the 21st century that marco rubio seems to be playing the champion of. at that point, still coming out against it? well, first of all, it depends who the nominee is. if rob portman who made noise about running for president is the nominee and i suspect that plank will no longer be in the platform. secondly, what marco rubio is doing is a sophisticated are version of what cruz is doing. it s a flop, as you called it earlier. there is no foul here. he took a flying leap. what he s doing is something quite sophisticated. the christian community has long felt victimized. they felt like they were a minority. that people didn t treat them with with respect. that s what marco rubio is playing to here. the truth is many religions discriminate against people. they feel gay people aren t full citizens and some felt black people weren t full citizens. the mormon church changed their views in 1974 on this. you re a catholic, i was baptized catholic. it doesn t permit women to be priests. there are limitations on the roles of women in the church. that s church doctrine. it discriminates against women. the problem is marco rubio is trying to make a religious argument for the civil matter. we have equal rights under the law. he may endorse a religion that doesn t dpree with that. it doesn t mean people oppose him are intolerant. i think he s right. i will give you time after my interjecti interjection. the republicans know they can t champion traditional marriage in 2016. so they will play the victim and say, it s not about whether you are for or against gay marriage. it is whether you are intolerant toward people opposed to it. i don t think the democratic party is ever going to attack people with a different view. 42% of the country oppose it. why would any party kiss off 42%. marco rubio gave examples. i m talking about the democratic party. i m including them. there were those on the left who supported to chick-fil-a and various ceos who have a personal view on this matter. not how they run their companies. not what they say is part of their business. but what they view personally. they have been villified. one ceo lost his job. i think there is a basis for concern about how the pendulum is swinging here. i think you are off base here. marco rubio wasn t arguing for or against the subject of gay marriage. he was talking about a political position, number one. number two the moral components of that political position. that s not endorsing a position, saying it s a catholic or protestant view. he s saying there are those of us in this country who hold the traditional marriage has value and right now there is a tendency for those folks to be vilified or criticized because of it. if you taken a position this is why i signed the first civil union bill. not because i had a big jones for gay rights. equal rights under the law means every individual in america has the same rights. true. unless people who fall in love who are the same sex can t get married they can t are have federal rights. that s the argument. i have no problem with a religion who says you can t have same-sex marriage. i have a problem with any kind of format that says equal rights under the law should not be allowed. that s the argument he s make. we should go after him. go ahead, chris. why do republicans keep getting back into the sex question when it has worked against them so often. i don t understand this kind of youthful ambition. maybe i have forgotten it. but he wants to be president so bad he s willing to pick up an issue and run with it today. why doesn t he relax a little bit, this guy? he s desperate. he s down 12 points to hillary. in his dream world he thinks he s a candidate for president against hillary. nothing could be further from the truth. i think marco rubio and i have to give him credit for a very sober well thought out argument he made. he was at a catholic institution, talking about a moral principled position. it was good. i don t think there was this category call leap to jump into the presidential race. yes. is he carving out new space? absolutely. my impression was that was not the driver here. i thought he was playing for the hard cultural right, the rick santorum crowd. he used catholic u. as a base of operations. he was talking to the right wings in the country. he went to the wrong place. the republicans are silly. people under 35 won t vote for candidates who talk like this. this is why obama got 67% of the vote. i don t know about that. they haven t so far. we ll see. 16 is a long way off. certainly true. among women under 35 you are definitely correct. they are liberal on these issues. they don t buy what s called the traditional view. nobody is attacking heterosexual marriage. there is no marriage in jeopardy because it is a straight marriage. if you worry are about people being coupled together in a same sex situation that s your problem, not a real problem. i love that word coupling. anyway, up next, strong arm tactics on wall street. but not the usual kind. the sideshow is next. this is hardball, the place for politics. really. so our business can be on at&t s network for $175 dollars a month? yup. all five of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there s unlimited talk and text. we re working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line anytime for 15 bucks a month. low dues. great terms. let s close. introducing at&t mobile share value plans. .with our best-ever pricing for business. he cadillac summer collection is here. during the cadillac summer s best event, lease this 2014 ats for around $299 a month and make this the summer of style. it s progressive pain. first that feeling of numbness. then hot pins. almost like lightning bolts, hot strikes into my feet. so my doctor prescribed lyrica. the pain has been reduced and i feel better than i did before. [ male announcer ] it s known that diabetes damages nerves. lyrica is fda-approved to treat diabetic nerve pain. lyrica is not for everyone. it may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or, swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, changes in eyesight, including blurry vision, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling or skin sores from diabetes. common side effects are dizziness, sleepiness, weight gain and swelling of hands, legs and feet. don t drink alcohol while taking lyrica. don t drive or use machinery until you know how lyrica affects you. those who have had a drug or alcohol problem may be more likely to misuse lyrica. [ karen ] having less pain, that means everything to me. [ male announcer ] ask your doctor about lyrica today. it s specific treatment for diabetic nerve pain. welcome back to hardball. time for the sideshow. the latest recipient of the congressional medal of honor doesn t know his own strength. watch what happened yesterday at the new york stock exchange when ryan pitts rang the closing bell. [ applause ] whoa! what did he do to that gavel? it was all taken in good humor. the crowd laughed and cheered for the army paratrooper awarded the presidential medal of honor. next jimmy fallon points out toronto mayor rob ford is campaigning for re-election despite his out in the open battle with drugs and alcohol. he wants to hold onto his job. look at this. he wants to get re-elected so he s out there campaigning, talking to voters, meeting the people. he went to a play ground and this is real. this is a real video. i know. but this is a real video. oh, my gosh. oh, my be careful. hold on. yeah. he really did that. there was a girl screaming oh, my god. that s his campaign manager. some politicians will do anything to get their favorability up. some have to because in a new poll one of the darkest characters in the galaxy far, far away has a better favorability rating, believe it or not than the current potential 2016 presidential candidates. in a poll from the 538 blog the favorability of star wars characters was measured. compared to national polling darth vader was viewed more favorably than hillary clinton, than mike huckabee or rand paul. the only star wars character to come in lower was jar jar binks who was still higher than congress. darth vader cut off his son s arm and blew up a planet but gets a higher rating than the candidates for 2016. this is hardball, the place for politics. called allstate quickfoto claim. it s an app. you understand that? just take photos of the damage with your phone and upload them to allstate. really? so you get a quicker estimate, quicker payment, quicker back to normal. i just did it. but maybe you can find an app that will help you explain this to your father. introducing quickfoto claim. just another way allstate is changing car insurance for good. at every ford dealership, you ll find the works! it s a complete checkup of the services your vehicle needs. so prepare your car for any road trip by taking it to an expert ford technician. because no matter your destination good maintenance helps you save at the pump. get our multi-point inspection with a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup hey there, i m alex witt. president obama spoke at a california technical college earlier and touched on a range of issues including improving the economy, energy and job training. the president has been on a three-day fund raising trip to the west coast. a new jersey couple is dead after a tornado struck a catch ground in virginia. their son was critically hurt. dozens for waken to hospitals. local officials say the wreckage of flight 5070 was found in mali. it disappeared over western africa. severe weather may have been a factor. two more military planes carrying remains of victims from flight 17 landed earlier in the netherlands. the flight with 298 people on board was shot down last week over ukraine. most of those on board were dutch. now back to hardball. we are back. here is a story from iraq you may not have heard about. the persecution of oh christians at the hands ofs i miracle extremists. christians in iraq occupied by isis are being warned to have are a choice. convert to islam, pay a steep price or face death. that was the message playing over loud speakers at iraq s second largest city mosul. isis launched an offensive last month and seized control of sunni regions with the goal of capturing baghdad. the offensive has crested for now. christianity which came to iraq in the first century a.d. remains under constant threat. iraq was home to 1 million christians prior to the 2003 u.s.-led invasion. ever since are christians have been the target of brutal violence, facing the bombing of churches and killing of clergymen facing many to leave the community in iraq to stand around half that size. 450,000 according to church officials. they are being purged by isis. jim, i guess you know me well enough to know when i saw the story i leapt on it. it s something i didn t know about. what do you know about the actual day to day life threats, death threats that the christian community is getting in baghdad or actually anywhere in iraq from isis? the threats are mainly in the m ork sul region where isis is in control. at this point, there are very few people of christian faith in mosul. the community has been down to a handful of people. they are being quite persecuted. the stories we are getting from their families in the states. that s a huge christian, iraqi community in the states. it s horrifying. the villages under threat are north of mosul. i m pretty sure they will be safe. the purging is disturbing. it goes back to the iraq war itself. when the ethnic cleansing took place. they never paid attention to the issue at all. thanks for joining us. i went to school with an iraqi-christian. we knew there was a christian community there. what is the united states doing to prevent this or give any protection to this small christian community over there? catholic relief services is on the ground in iraq now as a matter of fact. just this week with officials from the u.s. government helping to plan relief operations. catholic relief services is responding to the needs of the christians who fled mosul, many with just the clothes on their back. those folks left. they had to cross checkpoints as they fled. when they crossed checkpoints they were stripped of possessions, money and even the rings off their fingers. we are providing them with food, basic cooking supplies and hygiene supplies. what is the attitude of arab people to arab christians? do they see them as outsiders or people who have been there for 2000 years well before there was islam as a practiced religion. christians in mosul have been there for 1500 years. they are integral members of the community. it s interesting. our staff on the ground told me this morning that the neighboring sunni, shia and other minority communities have been generously receiving christians who fled from mosul. most of the people in iraq are tolerant of their christian brothers. but isis and other extremist groups don t share that perspective. that s the problem. these groups were unleashed during the civil war period. they did not reflect that. it is a thuggish gang of criminals not unlike some of the mexican drug groups or some of the gang groups that exist in this country. this is a criminal outcast element that s adopted the language of islam as their political ideology but had nothing to do with the religion and coreligions who don t share their depravity or violence. is there anyone in the state department or white house. you do this all the time, fight for the cause. there are those who do. the leverage the united states has in a country like iraq is limited. clearly we don t want to support prime minister malaki. it s part p of the problem that unleashed the sectarian violence. we have allies we ought to be empowering to do more than they are doing. as bill notes relief assistance that s going to be required in the long run for the iraqi christian community. but the ultimate solution in iraq which is way down the road is to create a government that represents the iraqi people, all of them, in a nonsectarian state that s inclusive and tolerant and that we are a long way off from that, chris. we are trying to create a united america here at home, if you haven t noticed. this is an example of what s going on in cities like mosul. one christian resident said we had to go through an area where they set up a checkpoint. islamic state group militants asked us to get out of the car. we got out. they took our bags, money, everything on us. i don t know what will happen to us. our future is uncertain. what can people do? anything to help these people out or get fellow of americans. i think there is a lot people can do. certainly they can support the catholic relief services and other groups on the ground assisting those who have fled. they can also pay attention to the situation and encourage our government, the united states government to engage in ways that are going to bring peace to the region and help are bring the vision jim mentioned for an inclusive government to fruition. that needs to happen. we all have loyalties to the christian community of the arabian world. i feel it when i go to jerusalem. i care about those people. they have been there 2,000 years. thank you. up next, how a long shot senate candidacy just got well, longer. this is hardball, the place for politics. a, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. well, here s a story for people who love newspapers and politics, as i do. name the president the new york times mentioned more often in one year than any other? the washington post did the research. i ll bet it s not the president you think. in fifth place mentioned in 6,220 the articles was gerald ford in 1976. in fourth place, jack kennedy in 1962, the second year of his presidency. in third, richard nixon in 1973 as water gate heated up. first runner up in second place, barack obama in the election year of 2012. in first place, the president you probably didn t expect jimmy carter in 1980 with 9,720 articles written about him. at the bottom of the list, rutherford b. hayes in 1877. poor him. movie night. i get 2x the points on streaming movies and takeout from restaurants with my citi thankyou card. everyone wins. you mean you win. yes i do. the citi thankyou preferred card earn two times the thankyou points with no annual fee. to apply, go to citi.com/thankyoucards. you owned your car for four you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends. three jobs. you re like nothing can replace brad! then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement, we ll pay for a car that s a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. in politics words matter, especially when you steal them from someone else and get caught red-handed. senator john walsh, democrat are from montana, behind already in his race to keep his appointed seat has been caught red-handed. in a great piece of investigative journalism the new york times reported today that walsh s masters thesis which earned him a degree from the united states army war college in 2007 is so riddled with instances of plagiarism that it s rivalled by few examples in recent political history. at least a quarter of the thesis, key parts of the conclusion and a third of the paper was lifted from other work without proper credit. this is a look at 19 pages. every one has instances of plagiarism on it. what s more remarkable is this part of the story. when asked directly if he had plagiarized senator walsh responded, i don t believe i did, no. the college s academic handbook leaves no wiggle room for fraud. the new york times reports copying a segment of another s work word for word, then conveniently forgetting to include quotation mark bus remembering to cite the source is described as academic fraud in the handbook. according to a memo to supporters senator walsh acknowledged his citations weren t all done correctly. sean sullivan is with the washington post and joan walsh, editor at large of salon. thanks for joining us. how is the story holding up today? large sections in the paper showing it was obviously lifted from other sources. so much of the paper. absolutely. this story has the potential to be very damaging for senator walsh. you know, here is somebody who doesn t really have much of a record. he was recently appointed to the senate and really he was going to be running on the strength of his military record and the strength of his character, and this is a development that cuts against both of those things. this got a lot of attention in local papers today. it was on the front page of almost every local paper in montana. so, you know, walsh was already behind in this race, but this damaging revelation to him, you know, makes things even harder for him heading toward november. joan, what do you make of the breadth of this? this isn t one of two oversights or failure to quote. this is large bodies of material. does that sort of suggest that maybe he was a little uneven in his thinking at that time, that he did suffer from post traumatic stress syndrome, that there might have been something wrong in his stability at that point that would justify at least morally what happened? you know, chris, i had the same thought. i mean, it s so egregious, it is worse than anything we know in recent history. and it s so blatant that it does make you wonder if things were entirely all right. i m not defending it, and i also want to say, you know, senator walsh has not been well served by his staff. unfortunately, they ve come out with really shifting explanations. they came out today and they ve tried to say it was a citation problem. it s not. it s a plagiarism problem. and i also think this issue of ptsd, my heart goes out to him, i believe him. i certainly conservatives are mocking it today. i wouldn t do that. i think if he had gotten out and told the times that s what he thought happened, this story might have looked very differently from the start. it s very hard right now. it s not impossible. i don t want to say that. but it is hard right now to get the attention that maybe this deserves for a frank accounting of his struggles and also his treatment. he says he s gotten treatment and he s still on medication. that would have been a really great thing to say, i think, the day that the times approached him. well, i ve never quite understood plagiarism. i always thought there s vanity in writing. i do a lot of writing. i like to take credit for my writing because i tid it. if you didn t do it, why would you want to take credit? 1988, egregious case, joe biden was caught trying to pass off the words of a british politician as his own. ended up costing him a shot at the democratic nomination for president. last year rand paul was caught lifting chunks of wikipedia entries in his speeches and later found to have lifted sections of think tank essays in his books and opinion columns he s written. the new york times says, mr. walsh appears to have gone considerably further. back to you, sean. what evidence do we have that he really suffered from a syndrome that might have shaken his ability to make sound decisions when he was taking this course? well, right now the evidence we have is basically what he s telling us and what his campaign is telling everybody about what happened. you mentioned earlier, you know, there have been cases of plagiarism in politics before. biden, rand paul. these stories tend to fade into the background. you know, a lot of people probably don t remember that joe biden, you know, had an incident similar to this and they would probably say, oh, oh, yeah, you know, that kind of sounds familiar. but, you know, in this case, it s really potentially damaging for walsh because his military record has come up in a negative light before. republic chance have tried to attack him over it. if this was on a different issue, perhaps this might fade into the background, but because this was an issue already at the forefront of this campaign, that republicans were already attacking it, it really makes it doubly worse for him right now. let me go back to my friend and fellow political observer, joan, i think we ve been fair here. i don t think this is a partisan issue at all. i think this is the human condition, whatever gets in the water and makes people do this. people do it a lot on both size. what s this do for the outlook of the senate control issue? i never thought walsh was a strong had a great chance in a conservative state like montana, but everybody has a chance, i suppose intellectually. right. if his opponent fell apart, he d have a chance. he has not led in a single poll. this is not something the democrats were depending on. this was given to republicans while other seats were considered stronger or contested for democrats. i don t think it s going to change the story line of what s going to happen in the senate. sean, the facts are he s been caught red handed. the new york times, you ve done a great job of showing this in a graphic form. it s clear anybody with an objective mind says this guy lifted the material. is there any talk of him resi resigning over this? you know, not right now. i think it s too early to talk about that. i think right now he wants to get his, you know, footing set back to where it was a couple weeks ago in the campaign. you know, there isn t much talk about resignation, but clearly at this point, you know, he was a long shot. he s a real long shot now in the campaign to win a full term in november. well, when the hammer comes down, that will be the u.s. army, when they come down on this, that s going to be the part that really hurts. that will be objective judgment. you can bet they re going to do a good job of checking this out. thank you so much, sean sullivan, and joan walsh. an all irish cast tonight. we ll be right back. except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. when i finally told my doctor, he said my crohn s was not under control. he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. wouldn t it be great if hiring plumbers, carpenters shopping online is as easy as it gets. and even piano tuners were just as simple? thanks to angie s list, now it is. we ve made hiring anyone from a handyman to a dog walker as simple as a few clicks. buy their services directly at angieslist.com no more calling around. no more hassles. start shopping from a list of top-rated providers today. angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. visit angieslist.com today. machines will be sprayed to be made. and making something stronger. will mean making it lighter. one day, factories will work with the cloud. one day. is today. let me finish tonight with where i began. does ted cruz know what he s doing to this country with his reckless attacks of the people in the government? has he read about the mccarthy period when the country was torn asundered, communist aversion, loyalty to moscow? you have to ask what is behind these charges including his latest, the senator s latest accusation that the federal aviation had station is working some dark plot to bring our ally, israel, to its knees. why is he saying this stuff? who in this country responds to the charge that chuck hagel is in the pay of north korea or saudi arabia? or whatever other goblin? it s the tactics being used here. this reckless readiness to charge someone whose policy you don t share with working with this country s enemies. this is what senator cruz did to hagel, what he s doing to the faa right now. he s accusing it of being a secret punisher of israel. there s something in cruz s manner and tactics i just don t like. he acts as if he s ready to take a shot at someone no matter how below the belt that anything goes in his manichean struggle
mcdonnell and his wife. the jury is made up of four women and eight men. the senate is expected to vote on the nomination of robert mcdonald to be the next secretary of on the next secret veteran affairs. to fix the troubled agency. later, the rnc will hold their fire harry reid rally on capitol hill and aimed at getting voters to elect republicans to the senate in the upcoming mid terms. that is going to do it. a tuesday edition of way too early. morning joe starts right now. flares have turned night into borrowed daylight in the skies over the gaza strip. today was supposed to be a cease-fire it didn t work. intense fighting prevented investigators reaching the crash site of mh-17 for the second day running. much more substantial sanctions will come into place across broad sectors of the russian economy. two americans are fighting a for their lives. the spread of a dangerous illness like ebola is no longer somebody else s progress. now three-month examination by the new york times clams that governor cuomo s office deeply compromised the panel s work. if you had watched the movie to the end, the name of the movie would have been independence. you named it interference. donald sterling lost again today. go clippers! a victorious shelly sterling emerged from the courtroom and she can now move ahead with her plans to sell the los angeles clippers. stephen a. smith addressing the fire storm he triggered with his choice of words. to say what i said was accomplish is an understatement. you hit somebody, they hit you back. don t be surprised! oh, we will get to that. that is a big debate here. good morning, everyone. it s tuesday, july 29th. welcome to morning joe. with us on set senior political editor and white house correspondent for the huffington post is sam stein, sitting next to willie. hi, willie. managing editor for the news website bobby ghosh and pulitzer prize winning editor and with the the washington post, eugene robinson. you know what i m talking about whoopi goldberg and stephen a. smith controversy. they were fighting about this yesterday because of comments made. have you been following that? i heard about it. i didn t get to see it but i look forward to it. we will lay it all out but it s definitely one of the old debates renewed in a very different way. we begin this morning in the middle east where the crisis between israeli and hamas is now in its fourth week and the hopes for a resolution appear to be dwindling. last night air strikes lit up the sky in the center of gaza city as israeli hit key hamas locations. the targets including a tv station and the home of one of the group s top leaders. the strikes came as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu delivered a national tv address. he warned of an extended conflict and said, quote, there is no war more just than this. israeli and hamas are trading blame for an attack that left nine palestinian children dead and dozens injured. palestinian officials say israeli air strikes hit a park as children were playing on swings. israeli, however, says militants in gaza fired the rockets which failed to reach the intended targets and that brings the death toll to more than 1,100 palestinians, according to officials there. 53 israeli soldiers have been killed, including four yesterday, as well as three civilians in israeli. joining us no from you gaza nbc news foreign correspondent ayman mohyeldin. reporter: last night was a marked difference in terms of where we are here in gaza city. it s a scene we have seen throughout other parts of gaza but yesterday the fighting arrived in gaza city and 35,000 people live here. late flares were dropped early in the evening 3:00 p.m. local time and paved the way for a series of intense shelling that targeted, among other things, the gaza port, the house of hamas leader here in gaza, and others. there are also this morning, disturbing news about the humanitarian situation here according to the spokesperson who is in charge of the gaza electrical power tank, two fuel tanks belonging to that tank were hit and caught on fire and still burning well into the hours of this afternoon. as a result of that now, they say the representatives at the power plant a humanitarian disaster is going to unfold here. 1.8 million who depend on all types of electricity for water, sanitation, and other subinfrastructure needs are now wa without power and no place to store the fuel burning for the last couple of hours. a sense to what the palestinians are waking up to this morning. the death toll continues to find. along the front lines, there is still fighting taking place. hamas militants were able to, yesterday, fire at israeli soldiers and infiltrate across the border into israeli with some of these tunnels, so it shows you that the situation here is still very tense to say the least. mika? ayman, it s willie. good to see you this morning. is there any changing pressure over the last four weeks inside among palestinians about what they should be doing here in terms of stepping back? as these civilian casualties mount, as they see women and children being carried into hospital and many of them dead and some of them wounded. have they thought twice now and said maybe we should step back from this or are they only emboldened by the ongoing attacks from israeli? reporter: here it s important to make the distinction between hamas and palestinian factions and ordinary palestinian people who are bearing the brunt of this. when you speak to ordinary palestinians they feel they are reaching a point of desperation. they feel the situation is very much out of their hands. the political factions and the military wings of these political factions still remain very defiant and emboldened and they say their backs up against the war and they have nothing to lose and living a life under siege the past seven years and for them this is now about fighting until the end and that end is a struggle for them and they want to continue the struggle to get the international community for once and for all live the siege and that is how they are portraying it and how a lot of the palestinian factions and representatives we are speaking to are saying that is what this struggle is about. ayman, thank you. on capitol hill, kirsten gillibrand and ted cruz came together and announced a resolution criticizing using civilians. the israeli press is pushing a cease-fire that the reports claim would be more beneficial to hamas. secretary kerry is standing by his actions. make no mistake, when the people of israeli are rushing to bomb shelters, when innocent israeli and palestinian teenagers are abducted and murdered, when hundreds of innocent civilians have lost their lives, i will, and we will make no apologies for our actions. in a column that you entitled kerry s gaza blunder. in part you write this. secretary of state john kerry has made a significant mistake how he is pursuing a gaza cease-fire and not surprising he has upset both the israelis and some moderate palestinians. kerry s error has been to put so much emphasis on achieving a quick halt to the bloodshed that he has solidified the role of hamas, the unpopular islamist group that leads gaza, along with the two hard line nations that and in the process he has undercut not only the israelis but the egyptians and the fatah movement that runs the palestinian authority all of which want to see an end to hamas rule in gaza. david ignatius, i see what you re saying and i m wondering how it s possible to blunder something that has been devolving for decades. the gaza mess is not john kerry s fault but it s a tragedy that has been going on as you say for so many years. i think the mistake kerry made in seeking a cease-fire quickly in this intractable conflict without thinking about a pathway for the future so that the situation in gaza wouldn t simply revert to the status quo which we see means another war and another round of misery two years, three years ahead. kerry s first effort was with egypt when he got to the middle east, he tried to use egyptian mediation to broker a cease-fire and that didn t work. so he then turned away from the egyptians who were right next to gaza who are angry at hamas, almost as angry as israeli itself is, and turn to the hamas friends in turkey and in qatar and try to use them as the mediamea meadmea mediators for the cease-fire. he then upset palestinians and moderate palestinians and others in the region who thought he was enfranchising the region who were obstacles to peace. if one thing i hope secretary kerry can do is get back on the track of finding a more stable and permanent transition to a future where hamas is not the only dominant force in gaza. we are bringing this back to you. but, bobby, jump in and take it to david. when you listen to leaders on all sides of this conflict, it doesn t sound like there is a lot of room for negotiation. first of all, i m not sure what you would hold off any call for a cease-fire for because they are not stopping and they are not pulling back. rhetoric especially on the side, i m sorry, of benjamin netanyahu seems to get tougher and tougher every day. having said that, what do you think is possible at this point? nothing until the shooting stops. until the shooting stops, nothing is possible. i think that explains kerry s sort of sense of urgency. it s not like this was his first attempt as david pointed out. he did try to work through the egyptians. that did not work. the egyptians no longer under general, no longer have the flun influence in gaza they used to. the position is now so small it might as well not exist. so it s unlikely that you re going to get a immediate if egypt is a mediator. i can see the sense in trying to work through them. obviously, there was something inarticulate in the way kerry presented his proposal, but the response from egypt has been beyond caustic and so counterproductive. this is a guy trying to solve a problem. there is a global uproar. president obama called netanyahu two days ago and called for immediate cease-fire, basically, the same thing kerry is saying. stop the shooting now. instead the israeli officials speaking many of them speaking off the record or speaking without attribution are mounting pile on top of john kerry who wants to just be ahead. it s difficult for americans to accept something is beyond their reach, betweut isn t it possible this is a conflict, america despite its great power cannot exert its influence without two parties who want to come to the table and speak to each other? if history proves this is not a conflict that american can just solve. my view is and this is a view that has evolved over the years it s just better to be involved than not involved. just saying you guys are crazy, call us when you re ready to talk seriously, both of you. you know, that s a tempting position but, in fact, that doesn t work. that tends to make things worse. i think we need to be involved. my question for david ignatius, turkey is a nato member, a major country. so why not work through turkey to try to resolve this, especially given, as bobby pointed out, the lack of influence that egypt has right now? of course, it used to under the muslim brotherhood but it certainly doesn t now. so why not go to a government like that of turkey to try to work something out with hamas? well, it s a reasonable question. obviously, one that secretary kerry thought. if turkey could create working with the u.s., a stable situation in gaza, if turkey could deliver negotiators among the gazan within hamas or any other faction that could negotiate the kind of cease-fire and longer term arrangements for gaza that would lead to stability, i would have no quarrel with it but there is no evidence that is possible. what is unfortunate here is that in april, secretary kerry recognized that in the agreement between fatah, the more moderate palestinian faction, and hamas, for fatah and the palestinian authority to take control in gaza, which they agreed to do, was the opportunity to negotiate something longer lasting. i think my biggest regret, gene, is secretary kerry turned away from that sensible longer term program that would actually get at what is wrong and went for the very short term 24-hour cease-fire which, as we have seen, is falling apart because there isn t a structure yet that can create stability. okay. we are going to get to the other crisis, foreign policy crisis, the downing of malaysia airlines flight 17 and russia now pushing back against sanctions and saying it will only embolden in a moment. i want to get to domestic politic as well. a follow-up to a story we talked about yesterday. new york governor andrew cuomo is pushing back hard against allegations his office interfered with a political ethics commission one he put in place and stems from a front page article last week in the new york times which alleges cuomo s office squashed certain subpoenas that would have looked into the governor s own dealings. the governor emphatically denies this and saying no proof. one to a media firm connected to new york s democratic party. now one of the firm s three co-chairs at the center of the times story fitzpatrick is claiming that the panel was, indeed independent. he says, quote, the bottom line is that nobody interfered with me or my co-chairs. governor cuomo quick to praise the press conference yesterday in a news conference in buffalo. when you look at the facts, this moreland commission performed exactly the function they were supposed to perform. we passed a law that happen brought historic reform to the state. it was an overwhelming success and the commissioners have not gotten the credit that they deserve. independent. they were talking to people from the second floor. of course, they were. of course they were and they were talking to people from the senate and the assembly and the good government groups. it s not independence is will never talk to anyone, it s that they exercised their independent judgment. but despite yesterday s denials, e-mails obtained by the times showed, quote, mr. fitzpatrick had privatelily expressed frustration with meddling by the governor s office and cuomo needs to understand this is an independent commission and needs to be treated as such. yesterday, the governor disputed the times characterization of the remarks. read it again. the second floor needs to understand this is an independent commission and needs to be treated as such. okay. so what he is saying, at some point in time, is larry is having a conversation with him and larry is advocating a point. that is true. follow the movie to the conclusion. and what does chairman fitzpatrick say? no. resoundingly, no. what does the chairman s actions show? no. resoundingly, no! because he rejected the request! the rejection is ioion is ipso statement of independence because he said no. and he could, and he did. if you had watched the movie to the end, the name of the movie would have been independence. you named it inference. all right. so, sam, i special to governor cuomo. most of it was off the record last night about this because he saw our very heated conversation here on the show. also, we were sort of having a hard time getting through the quote, his very defensive quote about the commission that he created. but he says while the times is making a conclusion, that doesn t necessarily say it s true and that they have gone too far in their conclusion. while it may look like you can make a connection, you actually can t. and even the members of the panel say that the commission was independent. anybody? i mean, the question, i guess, is how much influence can you exert without the panel actually responding to your influence and does that matter? cuomo is saying the panel was ultimately independent because they said no to the request but the request was still made and influencing meddling in its own right. why can t a request be made? it depends how you want to do you want the commission to be completely independent from the other parts of the government? and i think when you establish, most people when they establish an ethics commission, yeah, you don t want anybody meddling in their influences and you want them to investigate and not have any contact with the outside world. boom. but cuomo is saying there is a gray area and that they do need to talk to other elements of government and they need to talk to other officials to do their work. i think part of the problem is cuomo has he is a secretive governor the entire time and now he is speaking out, people have a tough time sort of reconciling i will say my own personal, i would like i would love for him to come on. it s one thing to do a press conference really far away. i understand. we talked about the different reasons why he doesn t really want to do a lot of interviews right now. but i m wondering if he should. you know? and it would help a lot because it seems incredibly defensive. sort of pushing back saying, don t you understand what this looks like? this is someone who has tried to control the narrative around him from day one. and i think doing an interview in this form sort of counterintuitive everything he has done as governor and it shows. this is someone who did interfere in the broadest sense of the world in the ethics commission and that is someone who likes to have a control of the environs around him. governor cuomo came into the office i m going to clean up albany and new york and said it over and over and over again and that was the whole impetus for his campaign. now if he can clean up albany unless it pertains to him is what the problem is. gene, you read through the new york times piece this morning. his office says to the times a patient staffed by the executive cannot investigate the executive. so then the new york times asked governor cuomo about that apparent contradiction there. he said i never said it couldn t investigate me. see, facts matter, even for the new york times. it appears his own office can t quite get the story straight. yeah. it s very confusing. and one wondering about, you know, that the question you were jug talking about, why is governor cuomo, why is his style so secretive and why is everything so behind closed doors? especially the workings of a commission that is supposed to clean up all of the corruption and problems in albany. you would think that at least he would be more forthcoming and sort of open about about how this is working, what he is trying to accomplish and how he is doing it, and i think that just generates more suspicion and makes people wonder what this is really about. you know, the secretiveness, i think, comes off what appears to be a reticence to be tv interviews because potentially he might not want to get involved in the presidential politics conversation. 2016 might be waiting or ready for hillary, depending on where he has been. you know what? i think he should do an interview on this. i told him that. i really do. i think that this is taking a life of its own. still ahead on morning joe, everything you wanted to know about richard nixon, not pertaining to watergate. historian douglas brinkley is here with thousands of hours of audio from the 37th president. a decisive ruling in donald sterling s bid to block the sale of the l.a. clippers but is it finally enough to stop the defiant owner? and espn stephen a. smith and his apology for his controversial comments on domestic violence which sent the ladies of the view especially whoopi goldberg into a very provocative and heated discussion. first, bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? mika, did you see the pictures from outside of boston yesterday? a tornado? oh, my gosh. yeah. we had a tornado in connecticut two days ago and then yesterday up there outside of boston. this is very rare. this was actually near the coast. only about 10 to 15 miles north of downtown boston. there was 120-mile-per-hour winds and ef-2 tornado went right through this highly populated industrial area and fortunately no injuries. can you imagine that? look at the huge trees that came down. a picturesque picture in los angeles. you can see a tornado twisting there but it stayed harmlessly over the open fields. yesterday in new england wind damage and a lot of cleanup and trees down. storm system that produced a tornado is gone. so the lower humidity has moved it. cooler temperatures. it s going to be an absolutely gorgeous day today and you can feel it outside. probably didn t need your air-conditioning last night. many areas top out to the low 70s to the 80s for a high. this picture just out from yosemite national park. a small fire formed last night and now, all of a sudden, it s starting to spread and look at that active fire in yosemite national park. we will watch that today. again, it s a small fire now. but potential there is to grow. of course, the california drought, everyone knows how dry it is. the low humidity is not just in the northeast. appreciate it this morning. little rock, memphis, all the way through atlanta, a gorgeous day and it s like early fall throughout much of the country and that includes new york city. what a gorgeous day! lunch outside! light jacket, maybe even for some heading out the door this morning in july! you re watching morning joe. we will be right back. after nine days i let the horse run free because the desert had turned to sea but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. the summer of this.mmer. the summer that summers from here on will be compared to. where memories will be forged into the sand. and then hung on a wall for years to come. get out there, with over 50,000 hotels at $150 dollars or less. expedia. find yours. now, that s progressive. time now to take a look at the morning papers. we will start with the l.a. times. the $2 billion sale of the los angeles clippers to former microsoft ceo steve ballmer will go through after a judge ruled against team owner donald sterling yesterday. the court sided with shelly sterling saying she had negotiated a good deal for the clippers and had the authority to take away her husband s control of the family trust. doing so after doctors determined he was mentally unfit to manage his affairs. under the ruling, donald sterling can t delay the sale from going forward as he appeals the case. poor donald sterling. only gets $2 billion. it s almost over. the washington post police in washington, d.c. are scrambling to deal with a new ruling that lifted the ban on carrying legally registered handguns in the nation s capital and comes after a federal judge ruled the district ban on firearms possession in public is unconstitutional. they are wanting to appeal to let new gun carry regulations. gene robinson, how is this playing in d.c.? not well at all. you know, i haven t seen anybody walking around, you know, strapped the last day or so. but, you know, the crazy thing is that people in the district of columbia overwhelmingly want gun control and they support gun control. they don t want people, you know, owning handguns, much less carrying them around in the street, however, congress and the courts are essentially saying, no, go ahead, shoot it out. let s go to the richard times dispatch. the fourth circuit appeals court struck down virginia s ban on same sexy marria-sex marriage. as other states are in the fourth circuit. it does not have a direct impact on gay marriage in other states the attorney general in north carolina says it means the ban will eventually be struck down. a new studied finds that a third of americans delinquent in debt and on the ground $5,200. that includes credit card bills and medical bills and child support. southern states have the largest number of people who are late on their bills. that includes alabama, florida, texas, and out west in nevada. the san francisco chronicle two men are accused of squating in a palm springs california condo they found on a website. the bothers had been living in the condo for over a month and refused to leave, despite only paying for 30 days. since the brothers had been living in the condo for more than 30 days, they are protected by california s tenant laws but that is not the only problem they are having on the web. the called air b&b squatters raised $40,000 on kick-starter for a video game that appears to have been abandoned. angry owners were redirected to another game s kick-starter play looking to raise another $25,000. what does that mean? these guys are taking advantage of every internet function out there. they are living for free and they are raising known a game that apparently doesn t exist. kind of brilliant. the california the tenant law? it serves a purpose but not that purpose. so they can t leave. i don t know what the hell is going on in california but that is histoysterical. this is a movie by the people who made pineapple express. coming up following a headline grabbing, whoopi goldberg jumps to stephen a. smith s defense. we will also explain what this has to do with baseball. oh, my! sports is next. i think that is sports. we re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov fancy feast broths. they re irresistabowl. completely unbelievabowl. totally delectabowl. real silky smooth or creamy broths. everything she s been waiting for. carefully crafted with real seafood, real veggies, and never any by-products or fillers. wow! being a cat just got more enjoyabowl. fancy feast broths. wow served daily. when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! a selling machine! ready for you alert, only at lq.com. i might have to close my eyes because i think i m going to glinflinch if i see the ball coming. does that look like a good spot? yeah, sure. ah! are you all right? oh! i could hear that one whipping by me. what an off day. yes! terrible! that is the best picture in baseball right there. clayton kershaw of the l.a. dodgers are jimmy kimmel playing a little game last night. the nfl thought it had moved on from ray rice domestic violence arrest when he was suspended for two games for his alleged striking of his then fiancee in a casino early this year. mitchell beedle making these comments after saying this. we also have to make sure that we learn as much as we can about elements of provocation. not there is real provocation but the elements of provocation. you got to make sure you address it because what we got to do is do what we can to try to prevent the situation from happening in in any way. so yesterday, stephen a. smith offered an apology. my words came across that it is somehow it is a woman s fault. this was not my intent and not what i was trying to say. yet the failure to clearly articulate something different lies squarely on my shoulders. to say what i actually said was foolish is an understatement. to say i was wrong is obvious. to apologize, to say i m sorry doesn t do the matter its problem justice, to be quite honestly but i do sincerely apologize. all of this got the ladies of the view talking leading to this passionate exchange between whoopi goldberg and her co-host. i want to say for a man hitting a woman, unless his life is in jeopardy. i m sorry. he knocked her out. he knocked her out cold. i m sorry. if you hit somebody, you cannot be sure you are not going to get hit back. you have to teach women, do not live with this idea that men have the chivalry thing still with them. don t assume that that is still in place. right. so don t be surprised if you hit a man and he hits you back! you don t hit use it. listen. you hit somebody, they hit you back. don t be surprised. wow. you know, i think it could devolve no a really bad conversation that could get incredibly bad reaction because, obviously, what stephen a. smith said got an incredibly huge, terrible reaction which led to his apology, which i will just say i think it completely outweighs exactly what he said. he was trying to to have a constructive conversation but the bottom line is, unfortunately, there is an unequivocal truth. men may not hit women in any circumstance. it is hard to have an honest conversation in saying that. but i think what whoopi said had value too. i do. i think you just don t hit a woman, period. you stop. that s a given. you think stephen smith didn t know that? i just think, you know, he got his comments underscored a to be curious and have a conversation. but if it s a steadfast rule. he shouldn t have used, in my view, the word provocation was a poor choice of words. does anybody want to try to have this conversation? maybe what he was trying to say everybody stop hitting everybody else or something else. but provocation is a provocation. but to have this conversation beyond a man should not hit a woman is impossible to have without a backlash. because there is no situation in which you can say a woman has put this man in a place where he need to strike back. no such situation exists, short of maybe the woman threatening the man s life. of course. i think if that is the basis of the conversation, then there is really not much to talk about, to be honest with you. it s not just men hitting women. i got into a fair number of scraps when i was a kid. my father and teachers always said afterwards, you don t hit anybody. you walk away. men don t hit women and women don t hit men. you don t hit anybody. you leave it there. i would say it s one thing to defend yourself if a man or woman is coming at you. if you re ray rice and you can bench press 400 pounds and you can suppress the woman and you don t need to knock her out. the big problem here is the two-game suspension for ray rice which seems so lenient compared to anybody else. you suspend him for far more games than other people were suspended for their so. all right. let s go to japan on a slightly different note. an actress with a background in martial arts breaks boxes with her head before throwing out the ceremonial pitch. what is that? wow. how about that? that s crazy! awesome. rifles ovals one of our favo first pitches of all time. this that is a rhythmic gymnast. which way do you go? i think i take the rhythmic gymnast. it s crazy. break the bricks one more time so we can render a decision here. i m going with the bricks. we haven t seen the pitch is the only thing. finish the job! i think that was it. you got to finish the job. still ahead, how iowa has turned from a small caucus state into a year-long tourist destination and mark leibovich is here with his columnist. the latest in the ups and towns of the toronto mayor rob ford. oh, no! don t do it! oh, no! we will be right back with more morning joe. fill their bowl with the meaty tastes they re looking for, with friskies grillers. tender meaty pieces and crunchy bites. in delicious chicken, beef, turkey, and garden veggie flavors. friskies grillers. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use the ca illac summer collection is here. during the cadillac summer s best event, lease this 2014 ats for around $299 a month and make this the summer of style. 45 past the hour. joining us is chief national correspondent for the new york times leibovich. your piece in the upcoming issue takes a look at the politics of iowa and how one state turned its adorable little caucus into a year-round tourist destination and you write in part this. iowa may be a flat landlocked state with six electoral votes but it has become the premier tourist destination for political brown-nosers. if there is one thing every republican presidential candidate can agree upon, it is that branstad represents the peak of american leadership, if not the pinnacle of all human achievement. homage must be paid. we want iowa to be the envy of the whole nation he told me in the parking lot. not just because we have the first in the nation caucuses, no, of course, not. certainly natural for the governor of new jersey to check out the cows here in the middle of july. iowa is going in the right direction branstad continued and the rest of the country is going in the wrong direction. while he is milking this political little sort of first stop thing that iowa has going, mark? yes, he is. the thing that i wanted to look at was the anthropology of the early state. we have had iowa and hamp as the early primary states for a long time but in case of terry branstad the long time governor has been running the state on and off since the 80s it is a study of incredible exhulltation how wonderful of a person he is and people falling all over themselves how great terry branstad is. who are the worst defenders? well, everyone. everyone? it s one oof another. i spent a day with chris christie there last week in iowa and he chris christie, it was actually the day of the ground invasion of gaza. it was also the day, i think the day after the plane went down in ukraine. and mr. tell it like it is, tough talking new jersey governor, you were expecting he was going to weigh in on the subject but, no, no. he was very concerned, mostly about talking about how great terry branstad is and how much of a legend he is and also how inspired he has been by the governor of iowa. you point out, mark, christie, perry and jindal have all passed through iowa this year. is there any indication or any evidence that all this butt kissing helps? helps a would-be presidential candidate? does it work to go in a couple of years out and kind of make your way across the state? i think, obviously, you need to pay attention to iowa if you want to do well in iowa or new hampshire. i think what is interesting and new now it s starting two, three, years out. yeah. it used to be there was an off-season. it s like so much in american life now. you see christmas decorations on sale in the spring. you see people lobbying for the oscars the week after the academy awards ended the year before. there is really no off-season and that certainly has proven true in presidential politics also. gene? mark, is there any indication or did you see any that people in iowa are getting sick of all of this? do they really accept that chris christie is actually there for the cows? you mean he is not? i think they would get fed up with all of this stuff. i think on the contrary, i think they love it. i think from a strictly economic standpoint it s probably great for the state. a lot of national media comes through. it s fun for them. i don t think there is any major downside, although i think it s important we tell it like it is, which is that, look. i mean, this is not necessarily a natural, you know, recitation of the rhythm of american life, yet this is part of the excess that has taken hold in so many areas. but, i mean, it s not full-proof obviously, because mike huckabee won in 2008 and rick santorum run in 2012 and neither ended up as president, at least as far as i can tell. you re wrong, sam. oh. in iowa, there are actually pictures of mike huckabee and rick santorum as our president. it can cut both ways like anything. barack obama would not be president today if it weren t for iowa so you don t know what impact it will have. it is really bizarre. mark is right. why we have a system because we all go to iowa. you can write this state. let s have a rotation of states. you should. just do one for every state. can you do one for every single state capitol? you could have a handbook. mark, thank you. we will be reading your column at nytimes.com. dr. nancy snyderman will be here to explain how much risk to the u.s. with the ebola outbreak. first, toronto politics at its finest and another classic from rob ford. yes, that is rob ford. he is going to break it. news you can t use is next. let me get this straight. 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[ female announcer ] lactaid. 100% real milk. no discomfort. come on, would i lie about this? frommy family and is to love ice cream. however some of us can t enjoy it without discomfort. so we use lactaid® ice cream. it s 100% real ice cream just without the lactose. so now we all can enjoy this favorite treat. surrender to the power of accomodation grooveland booking.com booking.yeah! we re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov . i voted for culture. .with a k. how are you? i voted for plausible deniability. i didn t kill her, david. and i voted for decisive military action. america, you cast your votes. now, go to xfinity on demand and select the people s hotlist to see this summer s top 100 shows and movies. i voted! the mayor managed to get a little bit of exercise in over the weekend. on sunday, he and his brother doug went to the opening of a dinosaur themed playground where they took the opportunity to break in the brand-new see-saw. woo! oh, okay. wee! i got you. no. look at him. gracefully. watching rob ford work a see-saw makes me fear for mrs. ford s life. that is rob ford after the two-month stint in rehab and comes out campaigning for re-election. he and his brother good ole doug get after it on the see-saw. look at the kids looking at them. does he have staph? that is the first question. is there an advance here? who is the guy saying, mayor ford, this is a brilliant picture. get on that see-saw with your brother. i think the fun continued. please stop. i think the fun continued. he tried to go up the rope climb. what the heck? what is he doing? the greatest. we are so glad he is back in our lives. i would take my children home. do the right thing. do it for us, please. mika, you ll love this one. baby ilee and pit bull puppy clyde. bouncy seat. look at clyde gets up there. isley s mom has been instagraming photos of the two together. come on. how cute is this? oh, my god! baby and puppy. oh, my goodness. i love that baby! posted last week has 2 million views. he s a pit bull, too. people say bad things about bpi bulls. they can be great. last week this photo bomb by queen elizabeth smiling at two australian hockey players sneaking in there and not to be outdone. prince harry gave a grin of the commonwealth games last night. one of the men made this his facebook profile pick and you would do the same. a little crazy there. coming up at the top of the hour, a path to victory. how democrat mitchell nunn planned to win a u.s. senate seat and how that plan could backfire. benjamin netanyahu is facing a 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s helping our community. siemens location here has just received a major order of wind turbines. it puts a huge smile on my face. cause i m like, this is what we do. the fact that iowa is leading the way in wind energy, i m so proud, like, it s just amazing. carmax is the best with a quick written offer, right on the spot. perfect for jeannine, who prefers not to have her time wasted. .and time! thank you. your usual. she believes life s too short for inefficiencies. i now pronounce you husband and wife. no second should be squandered. which is why we make our appraisal process quick and easy, and why jeannine chooses to start here. carmax. start here. it s time to bring it out in the open. it s time to drop your pants for underwareness, a cause to support the over 65 million people who may need depend underwear. show them they re not alone and show off a pair of depend. because wearing a different kind of underwear, is no big deal. join us. support the cause and get a free sample of depend at underwareness.com flares have turned night into broad daylight in the skies over the gaza strip. today was supposed to be a cease-fire. it didn t work. an explosion on a busy street where children were playing. israeli says it was a stray hamas rocket. hamas doesn t accept that. and used the attack on the children as a reason to go on the offensive. intense fighting prevented investigators reaching the crash site of mh-17 for the second day running. much more substantial sanctions will come into place across broad sectors of the russian economy. two americans are fighting for their lives. infected with the deadly ebola virus. the spread of a dangerous illness like ebola is no longer somebody else s progress. last july, andrew cuomo pointed a special commission to tackle public corruption. now three-month examination by the new york times claims that governor cuomo s office deeply compromised the panel s work. if you had watched the movie to the end, the name of the movie would have been independence. you named it interference. we will get to that story in a moment. welcome back to morning joe. joining us now from washington, nbc chief foreign affairs correspondent and host of andrea mitchell reports andrea mitchell. senior editor at the the new republic julia yanfey. good to have you both with us. the west increasing pressure on vladimir putin. president obama and leaders of several european countries agreed to a sweeping new set of sanctions. they will target defense, energy, and financial industries in russia. moscow, however, remains defiant. the country s foreign minister downplayed the impact of the sanctions and warned they will would only make russia stronger and more independent. in another sign of stepped-up tensions, moscow is now accused of violating a 1987 nuclear missile treaty by testing cruise missiles as early as 2008. u.s. officials say president obama addressed the issue in a letter to putin, calling it a, quote, very serious matter. meanwhile, ukrainian investigators say flight 17 s black box has revealed a massive explosive decompression brought down the jet and the shrapnel destroyed the plane. u.s. forces are making their way toward the crash site after another fighting with russian rebels. kiev says they gained controlled of two towns in eastern ukraine and more battles under way. the clashes are being blamed for 50 deaths between the two sides and 800 civilians have been killed there since mid april. the newest human rights chief is calling for a full investigation who shot down flight 17, adding that it may be considered a war crime. andrea, i want to start with you here. set the scene for us, first, in terms of russia s response, at least in their words, to the sanctions. well, russia will be tough rhetorically and doesn t mean the sanctions won t hurt. i want to look at the details of these sanctions when they are finally explained to all of us later today, because up until now, they have been giving france a pass, a waiver for arm sales that were already agreed to. any time you grandfather arm sales to russia, that is a big loophole in these sanctions. in any case, it is described to me as the toughest set of sanctions yet and it s clearly getting russia s attention. the fact is that europe is pretty organized now by the president and in sync with the united states because russia has been firing live artillery across the border. there is plenty of evidence of that. plus marbling its forces along the border to move more sophisticated efforts into the milit militia. that is being more aggressive. julie, conventional wisdom the last week or so that european countries were hesitant to go along with tougher sanctions because of the impact the sanctions might have on their own economies. it looks like europe, at least for now, has moved past that? that s right. the fact of the matter is that, you know, it s a two-way street and, you know, as much as europe is dependent on russia for certain things, like energy, russia is dependent upon europe. it gets 40% of its food and medicine from europe. so it goes both ways. so if one party shuts off basically, the consensus is also the russian economy would crumble a lot faster and much more devastating fashion than the european economy would. where is this going to go? what is the strongest measure that can be taken on the part of europe to unequivocally depend what is happening. it is a big issue and i think what europe is scared of is the kind of the wildcard that is putin s behavior. he has shown time and again that he can do really unpredictable things. things that, you know, will hurt his opponent but also hurt him, but he decides it s worth the pain. so i think what europe is scared of is that russia will turn off the energy tap, which, you know, for some european countries, they get as little as 10% of their energy from russia. some eu countries get as much as 100 of their energy from russia so that would really hurt. the netherlands which is most severely affected by the tragedy of the malaysian airliner and the horrible impact on the dutch. the netherlands their pension funds are all tied up in shell and other major corporations so they are going to take a huge hit from this from whatever sanctions do take place. it s also finance. it s the banking in the uk. the brits have been tough about this but when putin was first flexing his muscles toward crimea everybody was caving in because they are integrated they are with russia economically. bobby, the other sort of level of thinking in this is a point you just brought up and that is if russia gives more sophisticated weapons to the rebels, do we do the same for the ukrainian military and start jumping in that way? if russia has gone to the point where it s shelling across the border in support of the rebels, then what how can we make sure the ukrainian military doesn t get completely pounded on this? andrea, has there been any discussion on that in d.c.? more of the risks. yeah. there is real concern about the risks because there have been principally republicans on the hill, the usual hard-line conservative arms committee folks like mccain and graham who have been saying why aren t we arming the ukrainians. oerds is the fear at the pentagon and elsewhere. once you give the sophisticated weapons to the ukraine government, you ll have the same possible tragic result that you had the separatists. they are not really ready to run these things that you re thenes situation. the best thing help with the ukrainians on the intelligence and see where the weapons are on the opposition side. the analysis is that russia has escalated so dramatically in the last couple of weeks because the kiev government was making progress against the separatists in eastern ukraine and gaining territory and that is why the fighting. the fighting was even as keir simmons was showing us yesterday, they were fighting right around the crash site. julie, there is a level of sanctions the west and the world community could do to take putin to pause and step back. up until now the sanctions have only emboldened him and allowed to say to his own people it s us against the world. i don t think it s in a certain sense, it has stopped him from doing certain things. you know, there are people in moscow who say that for a period of about four days in april, russian troops were poised to go across the border into ukraine and that it was because of sanctions that he didn t give them the order to go across the border. publicly, though, the problem with sanctions also is the more you sanction vladimir putin, the less he can actually give you what you want. because of all the image that he has portrayed in russia for the last, you know, what, 14 years he is standing up to the west. the more the west pressures him to do something, the less likely he is to do it. so unless there is kind of something happening behind the scenes where they are offering putin an off ramp where he can, you know, tout something at home as a win, as something that he was able to bring home, and to get out of it, you know, on his terms and to save face, i don t think we are going to see much movement on the russian side. julie ioffe, thank you very much. we turn to the middle east. the crisis between israeli and hamas in its fourth week. hopes for a resolution app to be dwindling. israeli hit key hamas locations overnight. the targets including hamas tv station and the home of one of the group s top leaders. the strikes came as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu delivered a national tv address. he warned of an extended conflict and said, quote, there is no war more just than this. israeli and hamas are trading blame for an attack that left nine palestinian children dead and dozens injured. palestinian officials say israeli air strikes hit a park as children were playing on swings. israeli, however, says militants in gaza fired the rockets which failed to reach the intended targets and that brings the death toll to more than 1,100 palestinians, according to officials there. 53 israeli soldiers have been killed, including four yesterday, as well as three civilians in israeli. secretary of state john kerry is facing criticism now in the israeli press for pushing a cease-fire that reports claim would be more beneficial to hamas. secretary kerry is standing by its actions. make no mistake, when the people of israeli are rushing to bomb shelters, when innocent israeli and palestinian teenagers are abducted and murdered, when hundreds of innocent civilians have lost their lives, i will, and we will make no apologies for our engagement. andrea, we had had a discussion with david ignatius who has a pretty blistering piece on john kerry. he did. yeah. there is sort of the concept that he put on the table about sort of this giving hamas kind of more of a platform. but i have to say i m not sure what anyone can do at this point. that would be productive when you hear what all three leaders on all sides of this are saying. well, what kerry was trying to do with the support and sort of alliance of ban ki-moon and the u.n. and many other people in the world is get a cease-fire to stop the killing and that was viewed in israeli as a way of, you know, tying their hands because they felt they had to deal with the tunnels, they had to deal with the long-range rockets. and so i have never frankly seen such blistering personal criticism on the left and the right in the israeli press. the israeli people, 87% according to channel 10 s polling yesterday, the prime time top station, the top channel in israeli, 87% popularity what the government is doing and pushing it now to be even tougher. so kerry is just being blistered in israeli and it will inevitably hurt his effectiveness in the short term. he was already being blamed for the long term peace negotiations for nine months that, you know, collapsed. i think that, you know, susan rice came our show yesterday and defended him and the white house is trying to rally around. reports he is still trying to resurrect some sort of cease-fire but the focus now i m told is on a short-term cease-fire, not on the long-term relationships. of course, ignatius criticism is that in some way, he has empowered hamas by going to qatar and hamas sponsors and trying to engage them. i want to bring in some washington nbc news chief white house correspondent and host of the daily rundown, chuck todd. we will get to a couple of political stories with you but sam first has a question. we have gone through a list of horribles in the world basically from ukraine to the middle east. we haven t even touched on the ebola virus. when i talk to white house officials they have a calm about it they are on top of these things, but it seems pretty clear that a narrative is developing of a world that is basically out of control. from your conversations with the administration officials, how are they prioritizing these issues and grasping with the sheer number of them all? funny you say that. i had the very similar conversation it sounds like that you had and it s my understanding that president himself is trying to project more calm and some on his staff are eyes wide open saying when the global chaos going to stop and the president sort of trying to say, hey, this is about a globally connected world. we see more of the problem, more of them are at our doorsteps because there s not many and because the united states is the only super power. he is trying to project calm with his own staff to sort of keep everybody at bay. i think as for the prioritization they see it right now as two priorities and that is you see where john kerry is. there is a reason they sent kerry to the middle east. a, what is going on with russia and the decision they made. they got the europeans on board and we will find out in about a month. i think you have to realistically give the sanctions about a month and we will find out in about a month if what the u.s. has been calling for some time which is serious sanctions from europe, will it actually change putin s behavior in ukraine? chuck, on the question of israeli. obviously, now the israeli press and some members of the government there have been openly critical of john kerry, openly critical of the obama administration. what is happening privately between the united states, the white house specifically, and israeli to try to mend that fence a little bit? well, look. you already have the ambassador here who is the israeli ambassador of the united states. he is very close to netanyahu. he has been trying to ratchet the rhetoric back here look. there has been distrust between the obama administration and netanyahu s administration basically from the beginning since president obama came in and it s never really the rifts have never really healed and there is time they scab over, but the wounds never go away and it s very easy to start up. and remember who the missing player is. the last time there was a hot war between israeli and gaza, you had a member of the muslim brotherhood in charge of egypt, mohammed morsi. regardless of everybody s criticisms of morsi as a leader inside egypt and these other issues, on this particular issue he was somebody that helped broker the last major truce between gaza and israeli and right now egypt is not a legitimate player in the eyes of hamas. chuck, we want to get you in on some domestic politics here. michelle nunn s campaign brushing off the leaks of her victory plan in the state of georgia that calls for the candidate to spend 80% of her time raising money. conservative national review released a atrophy of her strategy memos giving a rare glimpse in inside a campaign. her campaign highlighted what they saw as her biggest vulnerabilities including running the points of life when irs filing show may have provided money to an organization accused of having loose ties to hamas. also a memo highlighting what the campaign saw as an opportunity in the jewish community saying, quote, michelle s position on israeli were largely determined the level support there adding that her message was tbd, nunn is locked in a tight race with david perdue. her campaign doesn t dispute the authenticity of the document writing in a statement, quote. chuck, these plans exist on every campaign. of course. is we have got one in the spotlight this morning. absolutely. look. this is why you hire political consultants and you can them in some way do due diligence on yourself. that is what this was. this sort of, you know, what are her vulnerabilities and what should be working on and focus on and how are the republicans going to attack her. in many ways exactly what you pay a political consultant to come up with is to, you know, look through her background and all of this stuff. here it is. it s the equivalent in football terms of the new england patriots getting a copy of the new york jets playbook although i guess you could argue the jets playbook they could have and it wouldn t matter because it s the jets. the point is it s seeing the other team s playbook. the republicans are pouncing saying she is all image conscience and she is trying to portray she is new to politics and another image want that beel this stuff. it s an uphill battle to run as a democrat in georgia and she is trying to be authentic. in this day and age when authenticity matters this makes it look like oh, my god, it s esche everybody s worst stereotype what politicians look like. the seen in simpsons. gene, 80% of i guess it sounds crazy, but welcome to reality. might she be the only one that does that? it s how it works these day. dialing for dollars 24/7 basically. it looks kind of crazy and artificial when it s all written down like this but i think chuck is absolutely right. this is what candidates do and what political consultants do and this is what it s like to run for office these days. especially for a senate seat. the major embarrassment might not be for michelle nunn. it s how money driven the political process is. everybody, actually. andrea mitchell, thank you. we will be watching andrea mitchell reports at noon on msnbc. chuck todd, see you after morning joe. the cuban missile crisis retold. one of the definitive moments in u.s. history. up next, the quest for 10,000 steps. how running just five minutes a day can literally save your life. dr. nancy snyderman is standing by with that. you re watching morning joe. when salesman alan ames books his room at laquinta.com, he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. so he knows exactly when he can check in and power up before his big meeting. and when alan gets all powered up, ya know what happens? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! he s a selling machine! put it there. and there, and there, and there. la quinta inns & suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only a laquinta.com! la quinta! that s why i always choose the fastest intern.r slow. the fastest printer. the fastest lunch. turkey club. the fastest pencil sharpener. the fastest elevator. the fastest speed dial. the fastest office plant. so why wouldn t i choose the fastest wifi? i would. switch to comcast business internet and get the fastest wifi included. comcast business. built for business. president obama has been briefed on the deadly outbreak of the ebola virus in west africa has that left nearly 700 people dead. a hospital in nigeria has been shut down and quarantined after an infection there. joining us now on the set is nbc news chief medical, dr. nancy snyderman. we are trying to put into perspective the risk of its spreading and what is happening there because it is a resurgence. he let s talk about ebola. it s a brilliant spectacular virus in that it kills magnificently and shockingly people get sick very quickly and nausea and high fever and 104 and is 105 and have kidney fail and die. it s like a big wildfire but it s not a smart virus like hiv and doesn t now how to get to one person to another and keep itself live. we normally see these ebola outbreaks has are isolated and go kaboom. now we have seen an ebola outbreak jump a border and last week a man who had a fever got on an airplane and ended up in another country and died several days later. so, for the first time, the world health organization, the centers for disease control is speaking to foreign countries to sort of talk about border control, screening passengers before getting on airplanes. no doubt this is very little risk to the united states. however, it does mean that if you are an aide worker and traveled to western africa and you talk to your doctor, where you ve been in the world now has to be part of your basic history and physical. it can no longer be, well, i just had a sore throat and fever for a few days without saying, have you been out of the country? oh, my gosh. and also the person with the fever what came and then died. right. you were talking about screening? right. as you and i in maknow screenin to get on an airplane is minimal at best if any screening at all. health care workers saying maybe let s take your temperature. you just don t get on that plane. if a patient were to arrive in the united states and look like that, that person would be immediately isolated and hospitalized. the only way to really shut this down is treat it like a wildfire. if there are brush fires popping here and there, you have to make sure they are all out. the challenge is, especially for this person who got on the airplane and maybe came into contact with at least we know 65 people, follow that chain link fence everywhere, find out all of those people he may have been in contact with and you have to make sure you do reasonable surveillance. how does the virus spread human-to-human? it s very much direct contact. saliva, vomit, diarrhea, maybe semen, we are not sure. but because aide workers when you see them in the field are in these hazmat suits. right. what concerns us is one of the american women who is infected and now being treated, her job was just to take off the hazmat suits and help bleach down the guys getting out. she was not even in direct contact. so the death rate from ebola is as high as 90% in. in this current outbreak it s hovering around 68%. the idea is jump in early because if you can stop the kidneys from going into failure. we will get to this new study. gene has a quick question. my question was just that, nancy. first world medical treatment, do we think that death rate would be lower than the 90% or even the 60%? probably, gene. so what we are running into right now is people, particularly in guinea and sierra leone haven t seen this before because this is a new illness in these countries. at the same time, they are seeing ebola kill neighbors and friends and family, the red cross is coming in and catholic charities is coming in. some villagers are seeing western medicine come in at the same time family members are dying and stoke the fear that outsiders have brought the illness. so that need for western medicine and sort of old beliefs and i m going to say, you know, like the voodoo kind of home medicine that you see in many villages, it s all colliding. so aide workers have talked about 17-year-olds with machetes stopping their cars, cutting down trees, and putting up road blocks to keep aide workers out. so they really want aide workers to work with local elders who are respected to try to demystify this. it s horrific. and i should say in this part of the world, ritual bathing of the dead is part of the custom but if you touch someone who is dead you re going to get the virus. let s now turn to this new study from the journal of the american college of cardiology on running. fascinating study. you know, we have been told before to run to work out an hour a day and you re going to live longer. impossible for most people. right. this study looked at over 55,000 people and showed that for runners, the reduction of heart disease and stroke is 30% or so. but even for the average person, if you run five minutes a day, you can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by almost 50%. so that use it or lose it, a little bit is better than nothing is significant. five minutes at like a dead sprint? no, just five minutes a day. sam wants to know how. how bad can i run? mika, i m not a runner. never loved it and never got that endorphin high and never figured out what is so great to it. mika love to get out there and run. i would like to wave them on. but i am very conscious of how much i walk a day. if you re not a runner, at least get in 10,000 steps. on the weekend, 25,000 steps. i would think that is doable for a lot of folks and it s really nice and probably has the same benefit. about three years ago, yes. 25,000 steps seems like a lot. on a weekend, absolutely doable. i think edition to bars. make sure you re drinking the dark alcohol because that stuff is good for your heart. all i drink. nancy, it s basically 30 to 60 minutes a week. let s say you took the low end 30 minutes a week. you could run twice a week, 15 minutes? that is doable for everybody. i do something every day. there was a study about three or four years ago looking at very fit men with no risk factors for heart disease and stroke. their jobs, however, were desk jobs. and they found that sitting at a desk was an independent risk factor for having heart attack. why you need a treadmill desk. have you seen those? al roker has one. he walks all day long. we should get them here. show it on the air. everyone else is on their treadmills watching. everyone says i watch you from my treadmill every morning. i feel jealous! trip on them. i like that. nancy, thank you so much. great to see you. ahead outrage in new york city as residents in a luckry apartment building want a separate door for the so-called affordable units. really? we will break down the city s so-called poor door policies. keep it right here on morning joe. somewhere out on that horizon out beyond the neon lights i know there must be somebody vo: this is the summer. the summer of this. the summer that summers from here on will be compared to. where memories will be forged into the sand. and then hung on a wall for years to come. get out there, with over 50,000 hotels at $150 dollars or less. expedia. find yours. when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. i voted for culture. .with a k. how are you? i voted for plausible deniability. i didn t kill her, david. and i voted for decisive military action. america, you cast your votes. now, go to xfinity on demand and select the people s hotlist to see this summer s top 100 shows and movies. i voted! 35 past of the hour. hi, thomas. hi, mika. you re here. okay. two of our favorite senators here on morning joe is pushing legislation to close down a branch of the commerce department that they say is obsolete and they say it s also a waste of taxpayer claire mccaskill and tomcoal burn. the office doesn t make any money doing it. they have actually lost money. 9 out of 10 years. in fact, the reporters of all those government reports offered online can be found on other sites and almost always free of charge. that s why they named their bill the, quote, let me fooling that for you act. mccaskill saying a government agency for paying for things after realizing they could get it for free elsewhere. good foy. she noted a tiny banner at the top of the branch s website informing consumers of that fact seems awfully difficult to read. yep, you could get rid of that. anybody disagree? i know nothing about this agency. so i m going to reserve judgment but it seems like if you did google something. let me google that for you. up next, the stakes have never been higher than back channel. a piece of historical future set during the cuban missile crisis that takes us to the brink of world war iii. keep it here on morning joe. that is coming up. have you ever looked at someone and right away thought you know exactly what they re like and what they believe in? well, odds are you re wrong. what s on the outside and what s on the inside can be very different. the more you know. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. i call upon chairman to halt and eliminate this clan dah stein and stable relations between our two nations. i call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination and to join in a historic effort to end the perilist arms race and transform the history of man. our goal is not the victory of mig might, but the vindication of right. both peace and freedom. here in this hemisphere and we hope around the world, god willing, that goal will be achieved. that was october of 1962. the cuban missile crisis put the u.s. and soviet union and a military face-off. what went on behind the scenes to avoid a full-out war. with us is the new york times best selling author, steven l. carter who is out with his latest novel back channel. great to have you back on the show. thank you. congratulations on this. we will also talk about the poor door controversy here in new york city coming up which i think is fascinating. you reimagined, speaking of fascinating, the cuban missile crisis and you bring in a couple of different aspects to this. the game of chess and young woman by the name of margo jensen. here, there s two historical facts that i worked with. one is that president kennedy really did have an affair with a 19-year-old college student that did actually overlap the cuban missile crisis. second, behind the official negotiations, there was an unofficial negotiation, a secret negotiation only a few people knew about in the white house. my fictional premise supposed the affair with the college student didn t really happen but a cover for the secret negotiations. okay. take it from there. that affair did happen with kennedy, correct? i really did have an affair with a 19-year-old but my fictional 19-year-old he does not have an affair with but she is asked to pretend to have an affair with the president using his reputation as it were as the cover so that she can ferry messages between him and an official of the soviet embassy. when we look back on the history of what that time meant for the world internationally it was a big chess game and trying to figure it out and a lot of it went with the national thought leaders who could think like the luck of trying to figure out the situation. why does chess play to prominently for you in your books? you say you re an amateur at chess, which i doubt. no, i m an absolute amateur. but what chess involves is figuring out what your opponent is going to do and not letting your opponent know what you are going to do. when you look at foreign policy crises today and there are a lot of them and a lot of people criticizing the president or supporting him and a lot of the criticism i think is undeserved. foreign policy is hard. but the one piece of advice that i would give, if ever asked, wanting to learn from this crisis what kennedy did, he kept guessing. whether kennedy was willing to push the button or not. we still don t know. keeping his opponent off balance that way and keeping his cards so close to his vest and his close advisers didn t know i think was the successful completion of the crisis. discussion of the difficulties of writing and melding the two together. i think written seven or eight works of nonfiction and it is my sixth novel. you re right. to me writing novels is harder and writing historical novels is particularly difficult. it appeals to me as a scholar. i get to do the research and i try in this novel to bring washington, d.c. to 1962 to life and it all takes place in europe and so on but i try to bring the city to life as it really would have been. i have a a lot of real historical characters in the novels, not only the kennedy brothers and national security adviser but people like bobby fisher, the chess champion and others. to me half the fun of it is trying to make sure i have to the extent possible my facts right and that takes a lot of time. why not go full nonfiction and retell the story of what happened from a purely historical end? but i like to tell stories. people like to read the stories. you have a story to tell. i do. i want to bring you to real life for a second. as you have written in bloomberg view about the corridor controversy here in new york city and you write in part this. everyone is mad about the poor door. this is the name critics bestowed upon the separate entrance for the affordable housing units on the western side of manhattan. it is a little outrageous but some of it may be optical. the separate entrance for the cheaper units which is hardly heard of in manhattan real estate is part of a consequence of the very policies that new york is trying to enforce. so the title of this is the poor door concept is nothing new in u.s. cities. i don t think that makes it okay. it s not okay. it s not okay. no, it s not okay. it s a terrible thing, but new york is one of the most economically segregated cities in the united states. well studied. already in new york city, there is an enormous separation between where the with to do live and where the poor live. right but to have the poor people who live in the affordable part of that building bringing in a separate door is bringing us to a past time. i m agreeing. the way to resolve this, is number one, the economic segregation in new york we have the sections of the city that are rich and sections that are poor and tend to not overlap with each other is number one. second the way to solve the problem of affordable housing is not only to reduce some of the regulations that make it expensive to build housing but to get people with actual money they can go out and find a place to live that meets their standards rather than some standard that was designed by the city itself. stephen, in talking about this specific building on the upper west side and also to the divide in the city, a lot of people being priced out of living in manhattan directly. if i understand about the building, the residents in one section say the higher cost apartments are not going to share the same amenities and same floors. it s like two separate buildings built in one structural space so that these builders are getting the big tax exemptions and kick-backs from the city? i agree. what i would do i would stomp giving the builders those benefits. what the builders do with these benefits and not only build separate spaces and extra benefits to sell off for millions of dollars. what the city is doing for this program is subsidizing the construction from luxury housing where builders make billions of dollars. you have a lot of buildings in manhattan have the separate entrances we both object to and the only way we are going to stop that is stop giving them the subsidy which they are happy to get. why put the affordable housing units in the building? more housing can be built you may have someone else put in good to have you back on the show. a pleasure. up next, will voters hurt the democrats this november? we are going to explore in the mojo polling place. plus the nixon tapes you never heard. historian douglas brinkley will be on the set and some of these are fantastic. did you hear some of these? yes. family friendly. yeah. we will be right back. shopping online is as easy as it gets. wouldn t it be great if hiring plumbers, carpenters and even piano 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[ male announcer ] that s why there s ocuvite to help replenish key eye nutrients. ocuvite has a unique formula not found in your multivitamin to help protect your eye health. ocuvite. help protect your eye health. ocuvite. hey, i heard you guys can help me with frog protection? sure, we help with fraud protection. if there are unauthorized purchases on your discover card, you re never held responsible. you are saying frog protection ? fraud. fro-g. frau-d. i think we re on the same page. at discover, we treat you like you d treat you. fraud protection. get it at discover.com 25-year-old junior bishop dressed as spider-man took a photo with two people, and when the couple attempted to give the man $1, bishop says he only takes 5s, 10s, and 20s. a police officer overheard the conversation and stepped in and told the couple they could donate whatever they wanted. the police officer asked for bishop s i.d. and he said he didn t have an i.d.. his real name s peter parker. i guess the real question everybody has in this situation is, did batman think that the police were justified? somebody get choked, just like that, you know what mine? he can get choked for that. you know what i mean? bruce, bruce we can see your face, bruce! oh, my gosh. that is too much. all right, to politics now. there are some circles, which is just as funny, sometimes, there are some circles of the republican party that would like to see mitt romney make another run for the presidency in two years. and as morning joe polling analyst derek kips reports, there s a whole group of voters who wish the former governor were in the white house right now. it appears some americans may be having buyer s remorse about their decision to re-elect president barack obama to a second term. despite the fact that president obama beat mitt romney in 2012, 51-47 in the popular vote, a recent cnn poll shows if the election were held today, mitt romney would be the people s choice, topping the president, 53-44. and according to gallup s recent survey, the president s approval rating has flatlined at 43%. it s a number of that has the gop hoping to capitalize come november. the cnn poll further reveals that 45% of americans believe that president obama has expanded his presidential power too much, with only 3 in 10 saying the president s actions have been about right. however, despite the president s low approval rating, the president doesn t seem to buy the gop s legislative agenda of lawsuits and impeachment either. by a 57-41 margin, americans say house republicans should not file the lawsuit challenging the president s health plan. with even fewer supporting the gop s growing calls for impeachment. if the gop truly hopes to capitalize on the president s weak approval numbers in the midterms, lawsuits and impeachment may not be the best option to do so. guys, back to you. okay, gene, just chime in on the buyer s remorse. is it fair? well, look, this is that phase of a presidency where people have seen him for six years and things are not going well in the world and, but they don t like the republicans either. i think, just not at a great move. so that s where i think we are. we re not in a good place. up next, andrew cuomo defends the ethics commission that he commissioned, as a new report suggests that his office isn t completely free of guilt. we ll talk about that. plus, a senate candidate s strategy for a victory is leaked, revealing an inside look at the game of politics and the role of money. and then as the crisis in the middle east taking a toll on the relationship between the u.s. and israel? nbc s kate snowe joins with us a live report from tel aviv. all of that and much more when morning joe returns. as long as i ve lived in iowa, there s always been wind. 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offensive. intense fighting prevented investigators reaching the crash site of mh-17 for the second day running. much more substantial sanctions will come into place across broad sectors of the russian economy. two americans are fighting for their lives, infected with the deadly ebola virus. the spread of a dangerous illness like ebola is no longer someone else s problem. last july, governor andrew cuomo created a special commission to tackle public corruption. and now, a three-month examination by the new york times claims that governor cuomo s office deeply compromised the panel s work. if you had watched the movie to the end, the name of the movie would have been independence. you named it interference. welcome back to morning joe. sam stein, eugene robinson still with us. joining us now, columnist for bloomberg view, al hunt, in new york. i m confused. first time on the set here in new york. is it really? it s usually a d.c. thing with al. my dream has been to be with mika in new york and finally that s one way to put it. and with steve. what about me, al. don t leave sam out. former mccain campaign strategist and msnbc political analyst, steve schmidt is here as well. nice to have you on board. thank you, mika. let s start with breaking news, as the crisis between israel and hamas enters its fourth week, nbc news has confirmed moments ago that two u.n. staff members were killed in gaza today. the new barrage of strikes came as israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu delivered a national tv address, warning of an extended conflict there. joining us now from tel aviv, nbc news correspondent, kate snowe with the latest. kate? reporter: good morning, mika. secretary of state john kerry is still pushing all the parties for an end to the bloodshed here, but i have to tell you, he faces an uphill battle in israel, because look at what the public and the press are saying about john kerry. here s the headline in this morning s paper, it says obama and kerry are playing with fire. overnight, more explosions in gaza. this morning, the main power plant took a hit, columns of smoke are still rising. israel confirmed ten soldiers died yesterday, pushing the number of military deaths over 50, the highest casualty count since a war in the north in 2006. that s only increasing israel s resolve to keep going, and it helps explain why it s been so tough for john kerry to negotiate a peace deal. i just want to say a very few words, quickly about the events in gaza. kerry s been soundly criticized in the israeli media for the way he pushed for a cease-fire. a columnist for the liberal newspaper says senior government officials in jerusalem described carri kerry s cease-fire proposal as a strategic attack. it s not just that kerry and the obama administration is taking the side of the palestinians, but in the arab world in general over israel. and the feeling is that this america led by this president won t actually be there when it matters for israel s security needs. one paper called kerry a nudnnik. somebody coming again and again and again and doesn t do much. reporter: the coffee crowd in tel aviv thinks kerry is out of his league. he thinks he can make some agreement, he can write some nice words, some nice statements. come on. get real. reporter: the obama administration spent monday bending over backwards to defend kerry. the reality is that john kerry, on behalf of the united states, has been working every step of the way with israel in support of our shared interests. reporter: so here s the situation. a lot of analysts are worried that kerry, with all this kerry bashing going on, is going to lose some of his power to even negotiate some kind of cease-fire, let alone a lasting peace over here. and meantime, while all the diplomats are talking, more than 70 palestinians were killed in that fighting overnight. sam stein? kate, i had a question for you. the israel ambassador to the united states yesterday spoke out in defense, actually, of john kerry, and tried to minimize the distance between the netanyahu government and the secretary of state. do you pick up any sense that the israeli government thinks that the talk has been overblown, or what is the imperative for them in having the ambassador come out and saying something like that? reporter: publicly, they still want to talk about their alliance with the u.s. they need america as an ally. behind the scenes, it s harder to say. the sense from here, when you talk to the people, at least, is that israelis, they re not giving up. they don t want a cease-fire. they re not going to stop this offensive, because they strongly believe that those tunnels still exist and that they haven t yet demilitaryized hamas. that s the mood on the street that benjamin netanyahu is dealing with here. and of course, he has to balance that with the diplomacy. nbc s kate snowe in tel aviv, thanks so much. al, you heard netanyahu in the past 24 hours pulling this just war. kerry, obviously, the secretary of state in the crosshairs of criticism. and you know, at what point, really, is he to blame for continued fighting, when all sides of this are so at each other s throats, literally, and show no sign of backing down. it s almost like the criticism of kerry is an excuse to keep fighting, instead of to listen and to stop. it s kind of hard to blame john kerry for for trying. for fighting in the middle east. he may have made a tactical mistake. i don t know enough about what s on the ground there. but to say that john kerry is not a friend of israel. to say that john kerry is somehow trying to help hamas is just utter and complete nonsense. it s ludicrous. and i think for the israeli those israelis who perpetuate that are going to find it self-defeating. they re not only perpetuating it, this time it s being stirred up as an excuse not to consider a cease-fire, which, i mean, at this point, we re looking at day after day after day of video of civilians and children, getting caught in these massacre. i think the key quote from yesterday was when netanyahu talked about continuing this operation until they closed all of the tunnels from gaza into israel. that could be a serious and long-term operation in terms of the war hostilities. and it suggests that israeli is in this mind-set where they want to, you know, figuratively, mow the lawn, chop down hamas s military capabilities for now, for a couple of years, and they ll have to end up coming back. and my question for everyone who talks about this is what is the long-term strategic objective of israel here? i m having trouble figuring out what they re trying to do in the long run. what replaces hamas as the military outfit of the palestinians? and does it spread to the west bank? steve? look, the reason there is fighting now, today, is 100% entirely the fault of hamas. this is a terrorist organization. the lobbing of missiles into israel, the attacks on the civilian populations in israel have precipitated this crisis. and the strategic goal of the israeli nation, of the israeli army is to demilitaryize, to disarm, to defang hamas. and they have sustained casualties, great sacrifice on the part of the israeli people. and it should be the job of the government of the united states in this situation, to communicate with absolute moral clarity that we will stand side-by-side with israel. that we will not give cover to those who draw false equivalence with the two sides. the images on television are tragic, because all war is tragic. but the israeli people don t live in the fantastical world of washington, d.c. the threats that they face are real, they are lethal, and the people that you just saw being interviewed in cafes have a visceral understanding of that in a way that our policy makers can t seem to at an intellectual level. and i don t want to start a because every conversation usually results in an emotional back and forth, and i don t want to get there. i think, in theory, that s fine. but you can t just ignore the severe humanitarian crisis that s going on in gaza, as well as the civilian casualties. we can t have a foreign policy in a vacuum. yes, it makes sense to stand with israel. yes, israel has vulnerability from hamas. but at the same time, there are clearly issues in elements of the palestinian cause that resonate with the american public, and certainly with the european public and the world public that can t just be wiped away. who is that you re negotiating with? that s the great question. when the people that you are trying to do a deal with do not recognize at any level your legitimacy nothing, exactly. the hamas chief said that s true! gene, jump in? the question, to me, steve, is, okay, who are you negotiating with? well, if you don t want to negotiate with hamas, because that s the opposite party, under any circumstances, and the only way to get at hamas is essentially through the people, the civilians who live in gaza, there s a problem there. and we can t ignore that problem, that if the only way you can get at hamas is, you know, killing thousands, potentially, before this is over, of civilians in gaza, there s a real question there, that we can t just look past. and you know, there s a question of proportionality here and i think it s, you know, i can understand, you know, i know what israelis feel, i know how under attack they feel, with good reason. but there is a question of proportionality. and in the end, can you bomb hamas into oblivion? can you totally get rid of hamas? and if so, isn t it replaced by something very much like hamas? or worse. or worse. well, look, at the end of the day, you have a densely packed civilian population. hamas operates within that civilian population. they use that civilian population to hide weapons systems, to hide rocket systems. the israeli army does everything it can conceivably do to avoid civilian casualties in its operation. this is a moral country. this is a moral fighting force. what is happening in any war, where there are civilian casualties, where there is collateral damage, it is very tragic. but now that this has begun, it must be finished. sure. and the israeli army must be supported by this country in its quest to do as much damage to disarm hamas and to demilitaryize them, to degrade them, and to weaken them as much as possible or these losses will have been in vain. and the secretary of state should not be drawing false equivalence between the two sides. i don t think he did draw he did not draw a false equivalence, steve. that s just not right. he tried to get a cease-fire. you can argue that was a mistake. but to what to end violence. but the strategic goal here should be the degrading of hamas, not the the strategic goal is not the achievement of a cease-fi cease-fire. a cease-fire achieved without a degraded hamas means we will likely see more military con fli flikt in the future. now that this has begun, there is only one way for it to end, and that is for hamas to be defanged to the largest stent as possible. we re saying, what happens? what are the ramifications of a defanged hamas? as eugene possible, i don t think any of us know this, but is it a possibility that what replaces hamas in gaza could end up being worse. it could be a series of terrorist groups or terror cells that we have no control over, that provide no social services to the people of gaza. those are the questions we re not grappling with. we have a very short-term mind-set about this conflict when we should be thinking about the long-term. it s entirely possible that it could be worse. and if it is worse, then the israeli army will need to continue into and here we are. this is why these conversations i want to get two political stories in this block, before we go to break. first this one, u.s. senate hopeful michelle nun s campaign is brushing off the leak in georgia. it calls for the candidate to spend 80% of her time raising money. the conservative national review released a trove of nunn s international campaign strategies. it highlighted her biggest vulnerabilitie vulnerabilities, including her work, an organization that may have loose ties to hamas. and there s a memo highlighting what the campaign saw as an opportunity in the jewish community. saying, quote, michelle s position on israel will largely determine the level of support, adding that her message was tbd. nunn is currently locked in a tight race with georgia businessman, david perdue. her campaign doesn t dispute the authenticity of the document. writing in a statement, quote, this was a draft of a document that was written eight months ago. like all good plans, they change. but what hasn t changed is all the more clear today, that michelle s components are going to mischaracterization, to mischaracterize her work and her positions, and part of what we ve always done is prepare for the false things that are going to be said. i m not sure if that s in response to what happened or not, but that s their response. al, are you surprised by anything in the memo when you know the inner workings of politics? no, i m really not. i m not. it hurts, but i m i can t stand that 80% of her time has to be you wish you didn t have campaigns, where you spend 80% of your time. but you do. points of light, as i recall, was a george bush foundation, a george bush initiative. look, it s embarrassing and it doesn t help. michelle nunn is a very strong accompanied. is the best single opportunity to win a republican seat. her father is still revered in the state of georgia. he s running with jimmy carter s grandson. and they ve got a shot in a red state, in a year that s not going to be you must have written tons of these memos. has anyone what stands out? i have a couple of reactions. first off, she s only spending 80% of her time raising money? only?! good god! i m serious about this. my line to candidates has always been, you re going to submit about 90% of your time raising money. in that this is a revelation to anybody is just shocking to me. look, this is what american politics is like. candidates spend more than 80% of their time, spend much more like 90% of their time raising must be. and that s how broken the system is. and then the second part of it is, and i ve been for a long time now, in a campaign. i just don t hand out paper around the table. everything gets put on the dry erase board. the notion that you re going to put this into long strategic memos and pass out 100 copies is beyond crazy. well, this one was accidentally posted online, which is even crazier. oh, come on! that s how they got it. who would post that online? the former campaign aides. look, when i was running the arnold schwarzenegger campaign, we got a call from the l.a. times one day, saying they had hours of taped conversations, we had no idea how they got them. we eventually figured out, with arnold schwarzenegger talking, you know, in, you know, you know, off the cuff. and i love him to death, but let me assure you that s good stuff. he s a colorful character. and i always thought hours of arnold schwarzenegger tapes with nothing particularly damaging in the media was the equivalent of a 747 doing an emergency landing in lower manhattan and doing no damage and hurting no one. so you can survive this thing. you can. sam in 2008, the obama campaign accidentally sent us their district by district plan from february through june. went through every district. and when i called him up and said, it s terrific, they said, you can t print that, and i said, i can, and they said, we have lots of plans, and i said, send us every one and we ll print every one. and they survived. i got a memo about how to court a high-profile donor and what it was going to entail and how they were going to talk to the guy. it was what would you expect they wanted to do to a high-profile donor, but it was hugely embarrassing to have something like that revealed in public. i don t know what happened to the donor. i assume he department donate. probably ambassador of lu luxembou luxembourg. i remember infamously the in 2008, the giuliani campaign memo about how he was going to run for president was leaked and obviously that didn t turn out well for giuliani. we re also following a story with andrew cuomo. you seen this? new york governor andrew cuomo pushing back hard against allegations that his office interfered with a political ethics commission, a commission he himself put in place. it stems from a front-page article last week in the new york times which alleges cuomo s office squashed certain subpoenas is that would have looked into the governor s own dealings. including one to a media firm connected to new york s democratic party. but now, one of the firm s three co-chairs at the center of the times story, william j. fitzpatri fitzpatrick, is claiming that the panel was, indeed independent. he says, quote, the bottom line is that no one interfered with me or my co-chairs. but disappoint yesterday s denials, e-mails obtained by the times show that fitzpatrick had expressed frustration with meddling with the governor s office. at one point, e-mailing that mr. cuomo s office needs to understand that this is an independent commission and needs to be treated as such. yesterday, the governor disputed the times characterization of the remarks. read it again. the second floor, larry, needs to understand that an independent commission needs to be treated as such. okay, so what he s saying is that at some point in time, larry is having a conversation with him and larry is advocating a point. that s what that is saying. that is true. follow the movie to the conclusion. and what does chairman fitzpatrick say? no, resoundingly, no. what does the chairman s actions show. no. resoundingly no. because he rejected the request. the rejection is ipso facto a statement of independence because he said no. and he could and he did. if you had watched the movie to the end, the name of the movie would have been independence. you named it interference. okay. so, i want to get steve s take on this. the governor is has also said i spoke to him on the phone yesterday, most of it off the record, but denying vehemently that he didn t they did not squash subpoenas. so the times is making a connection that everyone is running with. and the question is, in terms of looking at his response here and looking at the story as it was laid out, the actual facts making no connections, just the facts, is he in trouble in any way? no. and by the way, what i think is, and what he said, i find very compelling. and i think he is correct. and my advice to him would be to speak no more of this matter ever again forever. if the chairman of the commission says that i was not interfered with, and as the governor just went through, and the e-mail to me is dispositive of the fact that he asserted his independence, did not yield to political pressure in a conversation with a political aide who was trying to make a point, and there s no actual evidence, just supposition that there was a quashing of subpoenas, i don t know what the story is here. he didn t squash a subpoena? i think the answer is no, there is no evidence that subpoenas were squashed politically. so in the context of the story, you understand why he seems a little bit emotional, what his reaction is on that. but i don t know what the basis of the story and the allegation is, given the other facts that we just laid out here. i think you re i m not quite so benign on this. he may not have squashed subpoenas, i don t know. i m not familiar with this story. but what is clear, albany is a cesspool of corruption, they tried to clear it up, they tried to interfere, someone from his office, maybe they didn t succeed. i think andrew cuomo does not look good here. and here s a governor, ipso facto, he is in trouble. that s a different issue. i just wanted to get ipso facto in there. people have been trying to clean up albany since the 1920s. it s always been a sacesspool. the fact that albany is a cesspool has no bearing on this story. unless you said you came to albany to clean it up. but bring that up in the re-election. is there any evidence that the governor was involved in squashing subpoenas? there s no apparent evidence to me of that. if the chairman of the commission says that he did shut down the commission. there was no political interference. that s a problem in its own right. it s a problem, i suppose, if people want to make a political argument that he ought not to have closed down the commission. but the notion that, you know, that the story that ran, i think, is absent facts, alleging what he did. the question is what is interference, right? guys, so we have chris christie on one side of this thing and tri-state area. the tri-state governors are being looked at, and in both the cases, the optics are very bad. but to the governor s point, there are no facts right now that prove that he quashed subpoenas, right? does anybody have any? okay, we don t. but it doesn t look good. i think that s fair to say. closing down the the optics are bad. shutting down a commission that you created and it looks like there may be some timing that would indicate that it might be effective, but you ve got no proof. you created it because you were a great corruption fighter. and then you shut it down. but, again, there s no actual fact that chose that. and you could also say that the new jersey governor, you know, tried that as well, saying there are no facts that show i was connected to the lane but that did not stop the press from talking about it is and saying these could be connections that could be made. it s an interesting trifecta. all right. we ll revisit this. we ll be following this. and maybe we ll hold a news conference closer to new york city. that would be nice. because that s another optic issue. buffalo s not good enough? buffalo is hard to get to. i m like, are you kidding me, buffalo? now it seems like you re trying to make it far away tim russert is looking down on you somewhere, be careful, mika. i love buffalo, i m just saying, but if you want to address the story, come to the reporters who are covering it. eugene robinson, thank you, steve schmidt, thank you as well. al hunt, stay with us. 40 years ago after his resignation as president, we ll take a look at some new uncensored tapes from the nixon administration. they re fascinating. and later, the impact of two opposing forces on the modern family dynamic. we ll explain what those forces are with a fascinating new study ahead and the impact of women working and making money and how that potentially affects marriage. but, first, here s bill karins with a check on the forecast. bill? morning to you, mika. a lot of activity lately. we had those tornadoes in boston yesterday, one in virginia last week. and then we had that lightning strike on the beach that killed that person in california, three rare events. what s not so rare is summertime fires in the west. and they continue to spread and we ve been having a very active period. these are coming from near yosemite national park, and we re going to watch this area closely today, because they do have the chance to spread with warm temperatures and some breezy conditions out there. in all, we now have 27 large fires burning in the west. it actually died down just a little bit. we had about 36 last week. so some rainfall has been beneficial. this picture came to us overnight. this is from yosemite national park, and you can actually see on here, how active the fire is, right through the middle of the night. a pretty eerie looking picture there. so across the country, we had that storm in new england yesterday, gone. now we re looking at beautiful conditions. no problems with the mid-atlantic, ohio valley. dry air all the way to the south. one area that s needed the rain, new mexico. and you re getting drenched. we ve seen too much, too fast, and we have some flash flood warnings. colorado and new mexico, flash flooding. your tuesday forecast, flash flood threat continues for colorado, new mexico, some afternoon storms in florida. and as we head towards the end of the week, the predominant weather story will be what happens with this tropical disturbance. it looks like it could become tropical storm bertha by the end of the week. somewhere near puerto rico by the time we get to sunday. and it could go somewhere just off the east coast it looks like, next week at this time. so that s good news with that. shouldn t be much of a problem for the lower 48. but our friends in puerto rico, we ll keep a close eye on it. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. over 20 million kids everyday in our country lack access to healthy food. for the first time american kids are slated to live a shorter life span than their parents. it s a problem that we 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private taping system, and an eerie warning from his chief of staff. joining us now, professor of history at rice university, douglas brinkley, who is the father of cassidy, it s cassidy, right, sweetie? yeah, i m good. also the co-editor of a new book, the nixon tapes: richard nixon unfiltered, uncensored, and in his own words. is your dad nice? yeah. a good writer, right? and cassidy says she s best behaved in the household. i ll let you go figure that out between your brother and sister, because we re going to be talking about inappropriate behavior among pandas, apparently. so cute. so good. we ve got a lot of fascinating things to talk about pertaining to your books and these tapes. here s a conversation between president nixon and henry kissinger when they wanted to produce criticism against soviet jews, worried it could harm their secret talks with the soviet union. what do you think of this conversation? henry kissinger, being jewish, is constantly worried he s going to be taken out of being a negotiator in the middle east, anything to do with israel or foreign policy in general, but nixon told halderman, i don t want any jews regarded with foreign policy. so kissinger always trying to overcompensate and being macho. in this case, he says, i don t care about the human right s jes and soviet unions. it s none of our business. we don t ask russia to tell us about african-americans, we don t care what happens to them. at one point, he says, i don t care basically if they go in gas chambers, it s none of our business. they re in russia, it s not america. he s a realist, kissinger, and this is his real politic vision. al, have you been listening to these tapes at all? i ve listened to some. it s fascinating. i can t wait to read doug s book. everything about nixon is fascinating. the contradictions, this incredibly smart man who was so insecure, had good policies and did them in the worst possible way. but kissinger also was pandering to him. absolutely. and nobody spoke up to the boss. and you have to give kissinger to you know, he didn t know he was being tape recorded. nixon had everything voice activated. it wasn t like johnson or kennedy, where they were doing limited taping. this was everything. they even bugged camp david. so you can imagine kissinger, years later, when these come out, you have to be you get mortified. but nobody, except halderman, and maybe once or twice, really stands up to the boss. they re afraid of him. and kissinger in his defense, pandered to him rhetorically, but it didn t affect policy. often would just do the opposite or at least try to work other channels. in fact, we owe kissinger a little bit of credit in october of 1973 with the yom kippur war, nixon was drinking all the time, completely dissolving, because of the pressure of watergate, and it was kissinger and scowcroft who kept our foreign policy going. so had it been today, there could be cameras everywhere. it would be like the kardashians. one of the more humorous exchanges in the book, nixon s conversation with a washington reporter about chinese pandas heading to the national zoo. nixon was apparently amazed at how they mated. pandas are voyeurs. what in the world?! what in the world? well, nixon s sort of an odd man. yes. but, of course, his best moment in history is the 1972 breakthrough to china and the pandas coming to america were a big deal. and on one of the tapes, nixon was talking about the problem of what zoo, san diego, st. louis? and he decided on the national zoo, because he thought the climate was right for pandas. so he started reading a lot about pandas, so far that he was getting into their mating habits with a reporter. a real aficionado. so 72, you talk about, that s when the breakthrough he had with china. but when we look at his most powerful years, really is just prior to that. because watergate, you know, 73, as you say, he was drinking a little more than he should have been. but 71/ 72? yeah, he was a big deal. he won in 68, improbable as it was. 72, the biggest landslide in american history against george mcgovern. on one of the tapes, he s so victorious, he says, why isn t somebody writing a book about 1972. all that i ve accomplished. his sense of grandiosity is extreme. and of course, we know, by 73, watergate just starts ripping him down. and you get a whole new batch of tapes that a man name stanley cutler had put into a book called abuse of power, a great scholar from wisconsin, and now john deans also adding to that record. did you like putting this together? it was unbelievable, because my friend, luke nicktor, we had transcripts so high, he s been working on it for a decade. and we went through and edited it down to try to be fair. ones that are historically significant, some lighter moments, and some moments of dark nixon. before we go to break, we re going to bump out with him talking about women who swear, which we ran earlier. it is something to listen to. the book is the nixon tapes. and you can read an excerpt on our site, mojo.msnbc.com. douglas brinkley, thank you so much. thank you, cassidy! your daughter s adorable! always bring her. al hunt, thank you as well. i know you ve got to run. tomorrow on morning joe, we ll continue our look at president nixon. john dean will be our guest for his book, the nixon defense, what he knew and when he knew it. coming up this morning, the revolution at home. how men and women are learning to coexist in a new era of equality, or no coexist. morning joe will be right back. think the tree we carved our names in is still here? probably dead. how much fun is this? what? what a beautiful sunset. if you like sunsets. whether you re sweet or salty. you ll love nature valley sweet and salty bars. caman: thanks, captain obvious. wouldn t stay here tonight. captain obvious: i d get a deal for tonight with deals for tonight from hotels.com. and you might want to get that pipe fixed. the dynamics of the american working family are constantly evolving. affected in large part by the economic gains and losses made by women in the family. it creates what the director of the research council, research at the council on contemporary families call the new instability in a piece for the new york times . she wrote in part this, over the past 40 years, the geography of family life has been destabilized by two powerful forces, pulling in opposite directions. and occasionally scraping against each other. much like tectonic plates. one is the striking progress toward equality between men and women. the other is the equally striking growth of socioeconomic inequality and insecurity. and here with us now to weigh in on these two trends, editor in chief of glamour, cindy levy, and chairman of myers biz.net, jet myers, the author of the upcoming book, the future of men and the age of dominant males. we ve got to talk. i don t know who s losing more in that. but let s talk about this study. so cindy and jack, and thomas, show us some of the numbers here we re talking about. because there are some real shifts taking place. there are definitely shifts. let s talk about gains for women and redefining the ideal family arrangement. the question was asked, how have these two trends impacted the notion of an ideal family relationship based on these numbers. and look at this, we have the ideal family arrangement, 1977, two-thirds believed the husband should work, and the wife should be at home. now, 2012, we ve got one third believe that the husband should work and the wife should be at home. so, obviously, there is huge gains in terms of how families are looking at who s going outside the home to work. and add one more outcome to that, looking at divorce, which is so interesting as well. so marriage 101, we look at the 1980s. if the wife was better educated, divorce was more likely. in the 1990s, if the wife is better educated, there is no e added divorce risk. let s stop there with this new instability. what s happening? cindy and then jack? what s happening is work is a reality of women s lives. and it is basically holding up the american economy. and most americans are pretty fine with that. i mean, the statistics that you just showed, showing how people s views towards women bringing home the bacon have changed are remarkable. you know, there used to be this idea that that was a men s world. and now, particularly, young men and women think, you know what, as long as there s bacon coming into the home, i m good. it doesn t matter who s brought it. it s not just a push for equality anymore, it s a necessity. i look at the next generation as girls are going to work. it s not about having it all as some sort of greedy or selfish choice. it s about, this is what the economy and everybody s family is but it is impacting the family, jack? there are clear economic and marriages. it s impacting across all society, culture, business, education, politics. but the reality is that in 2015, for the first time, women will surpass men in the workforce, in managerial and professional jobs, in 1970, men represented over 75%. today, they represent only 45% of managerial and professional jobs. and while women s income has been increasing since 1970, about 25%, men s income has been flat. so while we have more women in the workforce, there s still overall family income, even with more two-family homes is declining. and that s the real challenge. that we can t raise total income, even as more women are entering the workforce. interesting results from this, also, in terms of who does the housework. who bears the brunt of the family responsibilities. well, there was this study last year, that got a lot of attention, that hinted that couples in which men do more of the housework or at least their fair share, actually have less sex. and that turns out not to be true. i m pretty sure it was a rumor started by a guy who did not want to unload the dishwasher. it s a good one! but i think that speaks to something that jack just raised. as women gain in education, they are not actually raising their risk of divorce. that has been a long-standing fear among a lot of women. and it was based on the fact that it used to be true, up until about the 1990s. but one of the things that the times piece points out, is that for the last couple of years, couples where women have equivalent or greater education than their husband, have more stable marriages than those where women are lagging behind. and that s reassuring. and even where there s a working husband and a working wife, the working wife still does on average 25% more housework than child care. and in working homes where there s a working wife and a working husband, the husband still has 40 minutes more per day of leisure time. so women are there s definitely not a balance it s almost matching up. but in your new book and talking about the age of men and male dominance lacking, is that, and these numbers may contribute to that. the fact that when couples are getting together, men and women, they re deciding that their personal and professional lives don t need to be mutually exclusive. and they can achieve these dreams together, communicate about it, talk about it, and achieve it together. it seems like that s the big difference we re seeing in modern relationships. it is a balance. and a good man today is not defined by his conquests. he s just hard to find. that s the opening line of my book. very good! okay. very good. it is so interesting, because i think we re kind of in the middle of all of this, these challenges, watching, and reading this article, it was sort of like, i don t know where this is going. i think part of what it means is that the definition of being a great man and a great provider has changed. it doesn t necessarily mean that you are doing the providing as a man. you might also need to support your wife if she needs to go back to school to increase her earning power. move across the country to take another job. all the things that wives have traditionally done for their husbands, it s a two-way street. thank you both for being on the show. come back when your book comes out. still ahead, new earnings from wall street, including new concerns from bp over russian sanctions. business before the bell is next. welcome back, everybody. business before the bell now with cnbc s sarah eisen. bp warned about further sanctions if the eu and the u.s., as they re discussing, but economic sanctions on russia. it could have, according to bp, a material adverse affect on their operations in russia. remember, bp has about 20% stake in rosnef, which is a major russian energy giant, controlled by the state. so obviously these countries that do business there are starting to worry about more sanctions as discussed. also i want to mention some moral outrage today. okay cupid, the offline dating site, apparently has been lying to its users, doing all sorts of social experiments, taking away pictures, taking away content on professional. and get this, telling people that they were 90% matched when, really, they were only a 30% match, which, guys, they found actually worked in terms of the number of correspondences. people are pretty upset about that. but okcupid says, this is what websites do. doesn t that mean that people will just keep shopping on okcupid? or it doesn t matter. good point, sarah eisen, you re the best. up next, what, if anything, did we learn today? 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