wbr id= wbr0 /> he was shotting an intruder. and it is cinco de mayo. the fifth of may celebrating the mexican the mexican army over the french forces in the battle of puebla back in 1862. it s an excuse to drink for louis. you have to drink the whole thing and eat the worm. that is it for way too early. morning joe starts right now. and i m feeling sorry, believe it or not, for the speaker of the house as well. these days the house republicans actually give john boehner a harder time than they give me. which means orange really is the new black. that was one of the really good ones. good morning, everyone. speaking of orange, look at that sunrise over new york city. /b> wbr id= wbr600 /> wbr id= wbr600 /> monday morning. may 5th. welcome to morning joe, everybody. that s an orange crush right there. yes, it is. on the set we have john heilemann. good to have you here. hello, heilemann. anything going on with you? not much. celebrating the nets victory yesterday, baby. game seven. unbelievable. we ll talk. visiting professor at nyu, former democratic congressman harold ford jr. professor. and in washington, senior political editor and white house correspondent for the huffington post sam stein. we also have editor for the washington post david ignatius. with all going on in ukraine, glad you re in early this morning. an eventful weekend. willie, happy belated birthday for you. thank you. it was a great saturday. it was a derby/birthday combo. /b> wbr-id= wbr1200 /> how much bourbon did you drink? you mean bottles? you should have seen the hat he was wearing. it was a fascinator. you guys in washington, you were at the correspondents president was good. president was great. thought he was funny. his performance skills are very high when it comes to these events, i think. has that dry sense of humor. he s got the great second beat on those jokes. we ll stay on it. more of the jokes at the white house correspondents dinner. we cannot believe what these olympic athletes do. death defying feats. haven t seen someone pull a 180 that fast since rand paul disinvited that nevada rancher from this dinner. as a general rule, things don t end well if the sentence starts let me tell you something i know about the negro. just a tip for you. don t start your sentence that way. now that it s 2014, washington is obsessed on the midterms. folks are saying that with my sagging poll in numbers, my fellow democrats don t want me campaigning with them. i don t think that s true although i did notice the other day that sasha needed a speaker at career day and she invited bill clinton. washington seems more dysfunctional than ever. gridlock has gotten so bad in this town, you have to wonder, what d we do to piss off chris christie so bad? that was a good line. okay. so that was joel mchale. we ll get to that in a second. he s star of the community. did he talk about chris christie? he sure did. let s roll it. i know it s been a long night, but i promise that tonight will be both amusing and over quickly just like chris christie s presidential bid. i got a lot of these tonight, so buckle up, governor christie. excuse me. extender buckle up. all right. governor, do you want bridge jokes or size jokes? i got a bunch of both. i can go half and half. i know you like a combo platter. now, i get that. i m sorry for that joke, governor christie. i didn t know i was going to tell it. but i take full responsibility for it. whoever wrote it will be fired. but the buck stops here. so i will be a man and own up to it just as soon as i get to the bottom of how it happened, because i was unaware it happened until just now. i m appointing a commission of me to investigate the joke i just told. and if i find any wrong doing on my part, i assure you i will be dealt with. i just looked into it. it turns out i m not responsible for it. justice has been served. okay. joel mchale was adorable, i think, first of all. good guy. and by the way, chris christie not only laughing at the jokes at the party, but was laughing after the party. he and mchale were together. people on tv thought it was a cheap shot. chris christie and mary pat were laughing and posed for pictures with him. and we kind of had a run in with him. you know what? there s a we were comparing book notes. willie, as you know, i m selling a lot of books in new hampshire. and i was selling more. he was commenting on how many books i m selling in new hampshire. i said i m selling more books in new hampshire than you will ever sell. this went on for a good eight minutes. it s publishing trash talk. it is. both of us are men of letters and both of us are taken by how much the good people of new hampshire love to read. they love to read. are you monitoring the independent book sales at store by store basis. duh. of course we are. of course we are. dropped by one in concord this weekend. we were waiting to take pictures and this happened. willie, this went on for, like, eight minutes. seriously. the book talk? the book trash talk. wow. i changed to samsung. i had new numbers. mika runs up to chris christie and tried to explain it. like you can t talk in shorthand like that. so we went up and mika went up and said i m texting you, why aren t you returning your calls. he said i m not getting them. she explained it was the phone. i said mika always thought it was the phone. i said you were a really big skinned jerk and that was probably why. and he laughed. so he s good? mika had the wrong number. i m telling you, the drugs, you can t see. even a big screen like this. it s hard to see the big screen. you know? just stop. she was sending texts to chris cross instead of chris christie. can i get their number by the way? sure. more of those photos can be seen at vanity fair portraits. there s our son. who s that? that s ronan. our handsy son. he s a naughty child. and there was a eric holder has decided that you re going to run for office and he s going to take your job. so we did oh, yeah. he said why don t we do a freaky friday switch. here he is. he wants it to be morning eric and he and mika were trying out for that cable news. you know, he s the former attorney general, she s a former whatever you are former. whatever. thanks, guys. then morning eric. what do you think? that would be a great poster. i d watch that show. of course you d watch that show. title it with holder somehow. she suggested morning ric. take the e off. i don t know. vanity fair party was fun. the correspondents dinner was, i think, a success. i guess. let s move on. i m bored. okay. for the reason now that we have such an elegant panel, we re go i think to start with ukraine where violence is spreading deeper with clashes now erupting in that country s third largest city. hundreds of pro-russian militants stormed police headquarters on sunday demanding that fellow separatists be released. the men smashed open the door of the police station and broke windows and security cameras. five dozen militants were freed with little resistance from police. the men were being held in connection to deadly reactions on friday which left many dead. it was the worst violence in that country since february. the u.s. ambassador to ukraine is now demanding an investigation into the increasing violence and if moscow is behind it. meanwhile, michael mcfaul, the former u.s. ambassador to russia is warning that russia could be in the final stages of preparing for a full scale invasion. david ignatius, the ukrainian government says it s protecting its own citizens from pro-russia militias. now we hear russia saying they have to protect russian-speaking people from the government. what are we seeing this morning? we re seeing the inability of any government to maintain safety and security in ukraine. which means that the violence is getting worse and the calls for some kind of intervention are growing. the obama administration s biggest hope is that somehow if ukraine can stumble through to elections on may 25 when there ll be a new government and a sense the administration hopes of legitimacy for a government that could crack down, restore orders, defend its borders, et cetera. and the terrible irony of the russians demanding safety for these poor protesters in eastern ukraine. many think the russians have been encouraging the protesters to grab the airport, a television tower. now they re demanding someone maybe even the russians come in and restore order. it s been increasingly chaotic demonstration. it s shows the weakness of the ukrainian government. above all, it illustrates the russians basic comfort level with this chaotic ukraine on the way to elections on may 25th. okay. i m going to grab a thought that i read recently about the situation in ukraine. especially as it pertains to american leadership. because some can put this as black and white, america is not strong. the president is not strong enough. but i read recently that it s sort of like getting in a fight when you re trying to get a divorce. it s not that easy. because you want to make your point without hurting the whole situation, the whole family. how the united states should use its enormous power to deter vladimir putin from invading eastern ukraine just as he invaded crimea a month ago is the question that s really haunting washington. we had a map in the washington post over the weekend that showed the battle lines for a war between russia and ukraine. i haven t seen anything like that since history books, you know, after the fall of berlin in 1945. it s just stunning to see that. the administration keeps saying when you push them that its policy is to make it so costly for putin to keep pushing in ukraine, that he ll think twice. he ll stop. of course as you know, the ruble and the russian stock market have gone up since we ve things are beginning to no, since we put the sanctions in place. these sanctions are so insignificant that they re not going to deter somebody like putin, are they? you know, joe, the recovery in the russian currency and markets is after a significant fall. so in absolute terms, it s not a great period for russia. i think it is fair to say that obama has been holding in reserve partly because europe is not comfortable yet with heavy duty sanctions. the kind of sanctions that would hit the export industries, principally energy and weapons. if the russians move, if their tanks roll across the frontier in ukraine, i would guess president obama would have merkel with him in imposing sanctions that would make things hurt for russia. but by that time it s too late. the tanks were already in. so no question that obama s taken a go-slow approach to this. all right. some political news now. new indicators show rough waters ahead for the democrats in the midterms. a pugh research/usa today poll shows republicans have their biggest advantage in two decades. numbs shows voters shifting away from democrats over the last six months. a majority of voters say the president isn t a factor in their vote, but the number of democrats voting in support of the president s record has fallen 16 points since the 2010 elections. the number of republicans voting against his agenda has increased. still when compared to this point when george w. bush was president, the president s approval is nine points higher. voters have showed a deep desire for change during both presidents second term saying it s time for different policies. john heilemann, we have a flurry of polls. willie and i were talking about this last week, two weeks ago. democrats looking better this past week. republicans looking better. now this pew poll suggests big trouble. also on the usa today, health spending. this is going to drive the first half of the week as far as the debate goes. health spending up the fastest in 34 years. and in the lead, the usa today blames obamacare. look. we saw three polls last week, right? we started early last week with the abc/ washington post poll. then the other poll that seemed kipt. and now this poll. we ve had three in a row now from big organizations with big sample sizes who have good records that suggest that maybe what happened with the obamacare 8 million number was more of a blip and that we re actually settling into what i think a lot of people thought the prevailing trend lines would be which is republicans are in a strong position in the midterms and obamacare is going to be by no means a winning on the macro level, not a winning issue for democrats. they ll have to be fighting for their lives in general and on that issue going forward. harold, it s only may as you and i know more happens in campaigns in six days than let alone six days. but you look atted t the headli. biggest advantage for republicans in two decades. what did democrats do six months out? another headline talks about the violence in ukraine. i think there s a sense if you have an everyday hard-working american and you are struggling and working to support their family and you read the political headlines and trends out of washington, just don t bode well for the party in charge. second, you consider the states where you have these elections. states that romney performed well in. states where the health care plan and some of the other things a president is doing or has done is less popular than they are in other states. and finally, i think you showed the numbers between george w. bush and the president in terms of the approval ratings. remember in 2006, democrats cleaned up. if you re democrats, even though it s only may, you have to begin to think now how do you shift a bit on things that would help you? we re starting to see keystone, harry reid trying to help. help some democrats around. helps us as home on manufacturing. helps foreign policy. but you know, willie, it s you re starting to see harry reid and you re starting to see other democrats talk about keystone. this energy issue is going to be a big issue because it s about jobs. for once it s not the republicans the base that s pulling them away from where middle america is. democrats have a lot of challenges. they do. maybe harry reid s talking about it, but there s still a lot of democrats who are not going to move on the keystone pipe line. maybe there s some deal to use it as a chip for something else. the president could just do that. that s right. sam, you re looking at these numbers. the piece in the usa today says these numbers show the strongest tilt towards republicans in the last couple decades. including stronger than before 2010. republican strategists if you talk to them privately, they re feeling good about this obviously about holding the house but taking the senate as well. yeah. i mean, i ve said it before and i ll say it again. the best thing the democrats have going for them right now is they had a huge wave loss in 2010. there s fewer seats for them to lose in the house than they would otherwise. the house is a problem when you have so many seats in states that went to romney that holding the majority seems tenuous. that said, looking at national polls is silly. each individual race has its own dynamic. for example, in arkansas where you would imagine is democrat would be really suffering under the burdens of the health care law, a poor economy, sagging approval numbers, mark potter is not that poorly positioned. you do have to look to respect to the senate state by state. one thing i d add with health care spending which is a scary headline is that the charts early on when they were on kbbcare suggested a very spike in 2014 because millions more people were going to get coverage and spend on health care at the time. we have to wait and see what happens after this spike to see if they continue going down which they were before. it could just be tied to the bad economy. but if the recent trends continue and we have more health care spending, then we re in real trouble basically. all right. we re going to keep talking about this. obviously more on ukraine and foreign policy straight ahead with david ignatius. oh, yeah. coming up in the 7:00 hour, chuck schumer is here on set. he brought with him an interesting chart on the big fight over raising the minimum wage. i m going to debate him on that chart, the minimum wage, and ask if he would trade keystone for a rise in minimum wage. help workers on both sides of that equation. i ll see if he loves the working man as much as i do. i want to see if his chart is more interesting than rattner s. i don t think if that s possible. also a new investigation into the benghazi attacks. i m also going to ask him what happened in ireland when jerry adams was arrested. a strange move considering where the peace talks have been going. then live in our 8:00 hour, senator joe manchin is here in the studio and senator tim kaine on his backing for hillary 2016. willie and i was what did we say this was? yeah. full throated. yes. okay. all right. thank you for being there with me, willie. up next, a tragic circus accident leaves a group of performers in critical condition. also ben affleck caught counting cards in las vegas? we ll explain it on morning papers. and jim gaffigan joins us on set. i don t know if you can tell by my beard, but i m fat. i don t know what happened. all i did was eat constantly and then boom i m fat. seems unfair. but first if it was only that simple, here s bill kairns with a check on the forecast. good stuff, you guys. we got done with a pretty nice weekend on the eastern seaboard. rain showers in new england yesterday. the heat was the real story, though. everywhere in the red on this map shows you where it was 80 degrees yesterday from d.c. all through the deep south. but the one highlight was the central plains. it was 102 in wichita, kansas. they were off to the driest start to the year ever since the dust bowl in the mid- 30s. with the windy conditions this was in oklahoma yesterday. they had me vacuations. a couple structures burned down. you could see one of them there. the way the wind was blowing those flames. another dangerous day in the plains today. what s cruel about the central u.s., even though it was 100 there, it was snowing in northern wisconsin. still very chilly weather remains through the great lakes. there s still some ice on the great lakes from the winter. i think it was 20% ice still left. so chilly today. chicago only a 56 for your high. but we re warm with with a brush fire threat in the middle of the country. we re looking nice in new england. maybe a stray shower or two in maine. but the rest of the region is looking very nice. a perfect spring day for you. and the next five days, the only really big storm we re going to have should bring rain to the northern plains. weld like to get some of this rain in texas and arkansas. that doesn t occur until about thursday. nice week ahead for much of the country. i don t think any tornado threats at all. which is great especially after what we dealt with last week. washington, d.c. was the big scene for the correspondents dinner. here s one more humorous joke. the vice president isn t here tonight not for security reasons. he just thought this event was being held at the dulles airport applebees. yes. right now he s elbow deep in jalapeno poppers and talking to a construction cone he thinks is john boehner. also true. 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. pcentury link provides reliable yit services like multi-layered security solution to keep your information safe & secure. century link. your link with what s next. 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! time now to take a look at the morning papers. the providence journal. eight female acrobats and one man on the ground are recovering after a beam fell 30 feet to the ground in a circus accident. it may be graphic for some viewers here. oh, my god. the eight injured acrobats are all out of surgery. one performer is still in critical condition with internal bleeding. others recovering with broken bones. this morning s performance canceled. that was absolutely horrific. oh, my gosh. the oklahoman, firefighters in guthrie, oklahoma, are battling a massive wildfire that s killed one and destroyed six homes. the fire began yesterday afternoon after a controlled burn got out of hands. strong winds and dry weather fuel it this morning. nearly 3,000 acres burned so far. the star ledge ebb. condoleezza rice will not give the commencement appearance at rutgers after protests. calling for the university to disinvite rice. how stupid on these students. students are upset about her support of the war in iraq. she was set to receive $35,000 for the appearance. that is absolute insanity. here you have the first african-american female woman to be secretary of state in the united states of america. what a wonderful example not only could she set for these students, but she has been setting at stanford. one of the greatest colleges in the world where she s been provost and head of student affairs. i mean, serious i m sorry. where is the rutgers community standing up for academic freedom? i would urge her i would bend over backwards. you talk about political correctness run amok, this is absolute insanity. yeah. and universities are supposed to be the place where ideas are exchanged, where your mind is open to all points of view. what a disgrace actually. agree with me 100% of the time or you re not allowed to come to an institution that s supposed to be about higher learning. and the frequee market place of ideas. do you know how many speakers students had to listen to at their universities? how many times they had to sit and have their views and their values mocked and ridiculed? you know what they did? they sat in those seats. because they don t get the kind of treatment. i cannot believe rutgers needs to bend over backwards to get there. they ought to review that. the san francisco chronicle, for the first time in more than two weeks, court is back in session for former olympian oscar pistorius. the first person to arrive at his home the night of reeva steenkamp s death, he described a very emotional scene. it s not something i would like to experience again, my lady. it was a young man walking down the stairs with a lady, with a young woman in his arms. and the scene you see, the expression of sorrow, the expression of pain. pistorius claims he mistook steenkamp for an intruder. seriously, how long is this trial going to go on? let me help you. the guy s guilty. new york times, a new study suggests the secret to reversing aging may lie in the blood of the young. research from harvard and stanford university found the blood of young mice rejuvenated the brain s muscles of older mice. also found drastic improvement to every tissue in tnthe bodiesf older mice. ben affleck found himself in hot water at the hard rock last week accused of counting cards. he was approached by security for being too good at blackjack and was asked to leave the premises. quote, he is not banned from our property and is welcome back any time. good to know. unlike willie. no. willie s too good. just to reiterate, counting cards not illegal. just frowned upon. i don t understand what it is. with us now on the set in the flesh, white house correspondent for politico, mike allen. mike, good morning. happy cinco de monday. holy cow. you ve got to piece on michael hirsch. the hillary industrial complex. we know what it is basically. but take us inside what this looks like. if the runs for president, what heat will she feel about benghazi? this is a piece by michael hirsch who s the national editor of politico magazine. he pointed out that benghazi is becoming to this decade what vince foster, white waterwere in the 90s. from mentions of hillary in twitter recent days. 219,000 mentions of benghazi. he calls it the social media twin. this is something that fires up the republican base, but even though the white house hates this topic, democrats in general like it because it helps reinforce their views of the republican base as right wing nuts. if you re hillary clinton or if you re running hillary clinton s campaign, should there be a campaign, are you generally concerned in a general election about the idea of benghazi? or is that sort of confined to a republican primary? of course you are. the question is whether it s about competition of ideology. at the moment because republicans perhaps overplaying their hand as they seem all too ready to do calling for appointing special committee, more subpoenas. but if it becomes a question about secretary clinton s competence especially at a time when the world events we re talking about at the top of the show, we have not a lot of accomplishments to talk about, then it s a problem. harold ford, would you be worried about it? the question i have is you ve seen polling. where do the american people rank this in terms of low. and the story points out it s unlikely to hurt her with the voters. it s how she ramps up this campaign. so when she goes out with her book tour starting in june, she wants to be talking about her vision for the future. she wants to talk, remind people of why they used to like the clintons. this at this moment is this big topic that no interviewer can fail to ask about and it s all about the past. that s not what you want. people will believe that hillary clinton is not a patriot, doesn t care deeply about the country, doesn t care deeply about our assets around the globe. and if the purpose is trying to suggest that, i think it s going to fall on deafer ears than some would think. i think that d be the case. before we go, nobody s more plugged into washington than you are. what was the review of the white house correspondents dinner over the weekend? people thought the president was much tougher on himself than he s been in the past. his great line, sasha needed a speaker for career day, she chose bill clinton. that perfectly captured it in the weekend. mike allen with a look inside the play book. thank you. coming up next on morning joe, a group of marines let it go while watching disney s frozen. but first the off-season gamble paying off in a big way. and joe johnson with a big fourth quarter. the nets advance across the toronto raptors. highlights next. 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all right. let s do some sports. a couple of game seven playoff matchups in the nba. there were three of them on saturday. only one matters. two yesterday. let s start with the raptors hosting the nets. by the way, how great are the fans in toronto? going crazy. full force. packing even outside. nets try to inbound with the one-point lead. the pass knocked away. what a play right here. throws the ball off the nets player and goes out of bounds. they get the ball back now with a chance to win the game. here is lowrie on the deck. puts it up. it s blocked by pierce! and the nets win the series! paul pierce with the monster block. the old man getting it done. john heilemann is a huge nets fan. the old guys getting it done. they win game seven on the road. they move on to play the heat. great win. great win. double double for kevin garnett. his best game of the season. paul pierce right there, the truth, showing why he can still get it done. you know, it s great for this next series. because toronto has a terrible time with miami. brooklyn beat miami four times this year. swept them. did they really? yeah. miami is the obvious favorite, but brooklyn has figured out miami at least during the regular season. san antonio also won game seven of its series against the mavs. now they move on to face the blazers. tonight the wizards host the pacer. and the clippers go to oklahoma city to play the thunder. harold, who do you like? the wizards look good. pacers look shaky. i like the nets. the nets push it to seven. if garnett and pierce don t have to over-play early in the series, they re the only team that can beat the heat. they re a good team. as are the raptors. the raptors will be a power in the east over the next few wbr id= wbr24600 /> years. let s go to the ice. round two of the stanley cup playoffs yesterday. out to center. in a two on one. moving in. scores! letang on the side. to james neil. neil, rebound. goal! so the penguins win theirs 3-0. they even up with the rangers. the rangers stole game one on the road. and the ducks looking to even things up with the kings. rangers have a shot. yeah. they re 1-1 coming back to the garden. they ve got a good shot. you saw the blackhawks winning their game up 2-o on the wild. a lot of crazy ranger fans. in a good way. hockey fans are intense. let s go to baseball now. some of the top plays out of the big leagues yesterday. first pitch swinging, slow roller. /b> wbr-id= wbr25200 /> not in time. padres win! down the line. on his way to third. picked up by davis. they re going to wave him around. reds win! to right. it s well hit. at the wall. ball game! there s a shot. back into center. got some carry. ellsbury will go to the wall. off the wall bounding off ellsbury. rolling towards right center. jennings scores. longoria scores. they re going to wave will meyers. it s an inside-the-park home run. that s just embarrassing. especially for els burr are i. a guy you ve got to root for actually, i m rooting against him this season. the yankees are in first place by a half game. derek jeter welcomed a special guest to the stadium. peyton manning. two of the all-time greats hanging out. yankees don t play the rockies this season so manning came to the bronx to pay respect to jeter in his final season. peyton watched that up in the box with eli. still ahead at the top of our 7:00 hour, peter king of new york says democrats would be, quote, terribly arrogant if they block another investigation into the benghazi attacks. then joe manchin on set on the fight to increase the minimum wage. but up next mika s must read opinion pages. we ll be right back with more morning joe. make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily. i m on expert on softball. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. feel like a knot. how can i ease this pain? (man) when i can t go, it s like bricks piling up. i wish i could find some relief. (announcer) ask your doctor about linzess a once-daily capsule for adults with ibs with constipation or chronic idiopathic constipation. linzess is thought to help calm pai pain-sensing nerves and accelerate bowel movements. it helps you proactively manage your symptoms. do not give linzess to children under 6, and it should not be given to children 6 to 17. it may harm them. don t take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain especially with bloody or black stools the most common side effect is diarrhea, sometimes severe. if it s severe, stop taking linzess and call your doctor right away. other side effects include gas, stomach-area pain and swelling. bottom line, ask your doctor about linzess today. time now for the must read opinion pages. david ignatius, want to read this one to you especially. the new york times editorial board writes president obama and the world two years after winning an election in which foreign policy was barely mentioned, president obama is being pummelled at home and abroad for his international leadership. the world sometimes seems it is flying apart with mr. obama unable to fix it. through a combination of a few significant missteps, circumstances beyond his control, unreasonable expectations, and his bland demeanor, he doesn t walk around with his shirt off? i don t get it. in key respects mr. obama is precisely the foreign policy president that most americans and allies overseas wanted. he rejected the shoot first tendencies of president bush. but he has been blamed for his own foreign policy taken as a whole and stripped as much as possible of ideological blinkers. mr. obama s record is not as bad as his critics say. it s just not good enough. so is it just a set of examples that are beyond his control? that editorial is fascinating because it has all the different instances in which obama has struggled to get a lot of success. i think most people would agree with him avoiding use of force in these battle grounds of the middle east. it makes sense. not overreacting to ukraine makes sense. yet when you add it up, there is something missing. my own answer would be there are two things. the first is communicating to the american people and the world. this president doesn t do that as much as he needs to on foreign policy. second is credibility. people ask well, he doesn t fight this war or that war. what war would he fight? where would he draw the lines and mean it? i think the president is going to have to make clearer to the world precisely what he s prepared to do in an increasingly messy and dangerous situation especially in ukraine. sam stein, building on the comment david just made, do you think what s lacking in the president s foreign policy is some overarching aim or goal that seems to not define or give policy makers a sense of not only where we would fight but what our goals are around the globe? to piggyback on what david said and i m curious what the panel would say. i read the new york times editorial and stepped back and asked myself, what would you say if someone asked what was the obama doctrine? you couldn t answer that question. with respect to george w. bush you knew what his broader foreign policy is. i couldn t decide whether defenders would say his prudence, i would guess. critics say overly cautiousness. i m curious what people think. there doesn t seem to be at this juncture and we re six years in, a definitive obama doctrine with respect to foreign policy. i couldn t pinpoint one myself. i m not sure that s a bad thing. it might not be. i don t know. sam, i will tell you, you ve asked the question here. stricken of the ideological binders and just talk to the ambassadors across the world, the foreign leaders across the world, and david ignatius has heard this more than any of us. if i m wrong, let me know. that is the critique of the obama administration. that there s no over-arching policy. there s no vision. it is ad hoc in its approach. and again, this is not an ideological take. we have been hearing this from foreign policy leaders for four or five years. joe, i travel all over the world and i do hear that. there s a perception that this president is weak. problem is when you re perceived as weak, you re expected to do rash things to show you re not. i m glad the president isn t doing that. not worried he ll be rash. bland personality. all right. coming up at the top of the hour, senator chuck schumer joins us on set. also they say lumber jacking may be the most dangerous profession in the world. and this video oh! oh no! shows why when we return. oh, my gosh. ames becomes? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! a selling machine! ready for you alert, only at lq.com. 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. what is this place? where are we? this is where we bring together reliably fast internet and the best in entertainment. we call it the x1 entertainment operating system. it looks like the future! we must have encountered a temporal vortex. further analytics are necessary. beam us up. that s my phone. hey. [ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before. here we go. it s great. little girls love this. they love it. and they ll watch it over and over. i love little girls singing this. kids love it. moms and dads love it. we ve seen a million parodies of let it go. we have one more because it s from the united states marine corps. be the good girl you always had to be conceal don t feel don t let them know well now they know let it go let it go can t hold me back anymore i m never going back the past is in the past let it go yeah! yeah! whoo! that is so good. that video went crazy online after posted on facebook by a marine in texas. that is so good. another piece of viral video, check this out. a lumber jack shouting safety instructions while trimming a big branch off the tree. you ve got to be safe when you do this. oh! jeez. wow. no! that was last week in michigan. the man who posted the video says the guy on the ladder was not seriously hurt. how is that not. reporter: how can he not get hurt? it s like one of those trees in lord of the rings. the arms and everything. that s crazy. everyone s okay. thank you. that was disturbing video. thank you very much. can you make news you can t use happy, please? well, the marine thing was uplifting. that was cute. like the hamster eating the burritos? do that top of the hour for cinco de mayo. we ll show it to chuck schumer and see what he thinks about it. still ahead, a man who makes a living making fun of food. nothing tastes as good as thin. i could think of a thousand things. even unsalted french fries taste better than thin. you ever eat fries without salt on them? these fries could use salt, but that means i d have to get up and move. i d just imagine there s salt on them. comedian jim gaffigan is here. but first our own democratic convention. joeman shin and tim kaine join us. we ll be right back. [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. shcan print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. my mom works at ge. i dbefore i dosearch any projects on my home. i love my contractor, and i am so thankful to angie s list for bringing us together. find out why more than two million members count on angie s list. angie s list reviews you can trust. or how ornate the halls are. tall the building is, it doesn t matter if there are granite statues, or big mahogany desks. when working with an investment firm, what s really important is whether the people behind the desks actually stand behind what they say. introducing the schwab accountability guarantee. if you re not happy with one of our participating investment advisory services, we ll refund your program fee from the previous quarter. it s no guarantee against loss and other fees and expenses may still apply. chuck vo: standing by your word, that s what matters the most. but with less energy, moodiness, and a low sex drive, i had to do something. i saw my doctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron the only underarm low t treatment that can restore t levels 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, especially those who are or who may become pregnant, and children should avoid contact where axiron is applied as unexpected signs of puberty in children or changes in body hair or increased acne in women may occur. report these symptoms to your doctor. tell your doctor about all medical conditions and medications. serious side effects could include increased risk 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, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and increase in psa. ask your doctor about axiron. as it stands right now, the republican presidential nominee will either be jeb bush, rand paul, or a bag of flour with ronald reagan s face drawn on it. bag of flour! all right. people are asking, will donald trump run again? and the answer is, does that thing on his head crap in the woods? i actually don t know. i don t know if that thing on his head has a digestive wbr id wbr37380 system. welcome back to morning joe. joining us on set. the senior senator from new york, democratic senator chuck schumer. and from washington, nbc news white house correspondent and host of the daily rundown, chuck todd. chuck and chuck. we re going to talk about your chart and the minimum wage in just a moment. that was a good dinner. it was a great dinner. i enjoyed it. president was good. and mchale was good. mchale was adorable. here are some of the highlights from the responsibilities /b dinner. olympic snow boarding medalist is here. we cannot believe what they do. death defying feats. haven t seen someone pull a 180 that fast since rand paul disinvited that nevada rancher from this dinner. as a general rule, things don t end well if the sentence started, let me tell you something i know about the negro. just a tip for you. don t start your sentence that way. now that it s 2014, washington is obsessed on the midterms. folks are saying that with my sagging poll numbers, my fellow democrats don t really want me campaigning with them. and i don t think that s true, although i did notice the other day that sasha needed a speaker at career day and she invited bill clinton. mr. president, you have to admit, and you already have, the launch of healthcare.gov was a disaster. it was so bad. it was bad. look, i don t even have an analogy because the website is now the thing people use to describe other bad things. they say stuff like, i shouldn t have eaten that sushi. i was up all night healthcare.gov ing. boy, that latest johnny depp movie really healthcare.gov d at the box office. look at my new rug. did the dogs healthcare.gov on it? you can t get that out of shag. that was funny. he was really good. yeah. it was a good night. so we ve got a lot to talk about. we do. why don t we start quickly, though, a couple quick things. minimum wage. harold and i were talking about it before. joe manchin is coming on. how about a deal on minimum wage where we help workers where you raise the minimum wage not to the $10.10 because democrats aren t going to get that. but maybe to $8.50, $9.00 in exchange for keystone. i think that s part of our bill on energy efficiency next week. we re willing to see a vote on keystone. each side thinks they re going to win. keystone is a lot less important than it used to be. since it started there s a ton of oil and gas here in the u.s. we used to say if it s not from canada, it s in the middle east. now we re talking about exporting it. let s not move the goal posts. keystone s still important, isn t it? it s a job issue and a safety issue. we re going to transport it by rail or water. natural gas exports, why not increase that as well? 9,000 last month 288,000 jobs. keystone, 9,000 jobs. it is not the issue that each sides is making it to be. so minimum wage on minimum wage, why is $10.10 important to us? i want to go back to keystone for a second. okay. go ahead. pennsylvania is creating jobs across the state in pennsylvania that s not being created across new york state because this governor, the state legislature are over-regulating fracking. why don t we bring good jobs to upstate new york? they need good jobs. you re their senator. yes. what do you say to albany to get those good jobs in pennsylvania in upstate new york? well, i haven t stepped on the governor s issue on this one. he s being very careful because there are environmental concerns. but overall shouldn t he be a little less careful? overall democrats throughout the country has supported fracking. most of us have and it s worked well. would you like to see it in upstate new york? if it s done carefully. the governor feels it s going to be done carefully, i sure would. you would? wow. well, you are just like good. we need it. do you think there has to be a deal on minimum wage where you split the baby, the republicans get something they want. democrats get something they want. now here s something we can use for a visual. like rattner on this show. that s pretty good. that s attractive. here s the minimum wage chart. we created 288,000 new jobs. jobs are going up. private sector jobs. but wages are going down. they re paying so much less there s less money in the average middle class person s pocket. there s a good argument for minimum wage. since the early 1970s, they ve been going down. wbr id wbr40780 look, i hear you. /b so that s why $10.10 is important for one reason. and important to us. which is it s the bare minimum, you work 40 hours a week and you get out of poverty. why we push it, you should have wbr-id wbr40925 a fair shot of getting out of poverty if you work 40 hours a week. can you negotiate on the length of time on seasonal workers on other things? yes. and we ve told our republican colleagues we would negotiate. but i ll make a prediction here. just like unemployment insurance, they know they re on the wrong side here. we ll get a deal on minimum wage within the next six months. i don t disagree with you. we should index it to inflation. but there has to be a deal. president clinton gave a big speech where he talked about how he was criticized for cutting the capital gains tax. he got 6 million children health insurance. he got 9 million people moved out of poverty. the only question joe s asking is how do we cut a deal? you can have that conversation offline. but natural gas exports will help overseas, create jobs at home, and a larger stockpile of energy. there has to be some give and take there. we ll get a deal on minimum wage. there will be some kind of compromise. there are lots of different areas of compromise. and it ll happen. it s just that $10.10 is a pretty strong feeling on our side because it s the bare minimum out of poverty. if minimum wage back in 1960s with inflation would be $10.71 right now. senator, we had your colleague tom coburn on last week. he said there shouldn t be a federal minimum wage. the free market ought to take care of it. what do you think of those who oppose minimum wage, that it leads to the loss of jobs? economists are on both sides of that. i think what they don t do, those who say it will lose jobs, forget about all the money that would be pumped into the economy. i know. that creates. and they don t believe in that because that s dynamic scoring on our side. i want to bring up one thing, our next fair shot agenda item. this week elizabeth warren will introduce legislation on making it easier to pay for college. two parts. first, you should be able to refinance. in other words, there are tens of millions of young people and their families who are paying on hundreds of thousands of loans. you should be able to get it down to 3%. we re going to push that. by the way, this is one of the biggest things hurting the market. i totally agree. let s have elisabeth on this week as well. we re pushing this middle class agenda. i agree. let me ask you about the midterm elections. new indicators show wbr-id wbr42520 rough waters ahead for democrats. front page in the usa today, take us through that. the poll says republicans have their biggest advantage in two decades. numbers show voters shifting away from supporting democrats over the last six months. a majority of voters say the president isn t a factor in their vote. but the number of democrats voting in support of the president s record has fallen 16 points since the 2010 elections. the number of republicans voting against his agenda has increased still. when compared to this point and george w. bush s presidency, the president s approval is nine points higher. voters have showed a deep desire for change during both presidents second term. chuck todd, look at the usa today, not good news. not good news about the polls showing democrats not in good shape right now. that changes every week and a half. but look up top. i think you re going to see republicans holding this headline all day. health care spending up the most since 1980. of course it s only the first quarter, but we re going to be having this debate over the next six months as well. what do you make of these polls? the nbc news poll, the abc news poll. it does look like democrats have some tough sledding ahead over the next few months? it s may. the best number they have to tout is the one that happened on friday. right? it s that jobs number. you know, the one unknown here is, you know, we ve been told for three years that if there were some form of government certainty, then private sector in the economy would start to take off. we d start to see some consistent moves. they got their budget deal in december. so we have a we have sort of two years of certainty. there are no major things that are sort of up in the air between the two parties right now between congress and the president. there s no giant standoff. if you know, the what if there is three or four straight months of what we saw on friday where you have nearly 250,000 to 300,000 jobs created over that period? does that change the mind-set? to me it s about the only thing that could change the dynamic. because it does feel like we re not yet in concrete, but it s certainly a very heavy mix. it s drying quickly. that is of concern to democrats. the only thing that could change this dynamic, i think, is sort of this an economy that starts taking off that the public believes is taking off. sam stein, the sub-head on this top story, more americans visiting hospitals under obamacare. but last hour, though, you dug into the numbers. what do you find? well, this is sort of what was predicted when they were gaming out how the affordable care act would play out. which is as soon as you had a couple million people getting insurance for the first time, they would see doctors, they would go to hospitals. health care spending would spike. now, prior to this, health care spending had been on decline. the question was was that because of obamacare or because of a sagging economy? i think we need to look ahead. i mean, the next couple months will be a big indication of whether or not health care spending is out of control. for the senator, i m kind of curious along these lines. where is obamacare politically at this juncture? it s hard wbr id wbr44670 to tell on the polls whether democrats have gained anything from those enrolled? how will it play in november? two things. i think the negatives will be somewhat lower. the positives will be somewhat higher. i m not sure it will be in that positive. but i do think it will be less bad. i do think this and this is what all the polls show. joe s question is right. the good thing in the polls and that s why we re focusing on the /b agenda. whether it s middle class wanls, whether it s getting the economy going, whether it s health care, anything like that. so when we talk about substantive issues, we win. and that s we re trying to get the agenda back. i think by november the kind of issues we re talking about, college affordability, equal pay, minimum wage, jobs going overseas. will predominate over obamacare. they fired their shot a little too soon. all right. willie? do you think if you look at obamacare more broadly as sam stein pointed out in the last hour, it s difficult to talk about national polls because each state is different this time around. but if you talk to republicans they feel there s a wind at their back. how do you feel about the senate? i feel we re going to keep the senate. you do? yeah. you look at the four key races. alaska, arkansas, louisiana, north carolina where we have incumbents in red states. they re ahead in each one. even kay hagen is ahead by two, but she s had $12 million of unanswered commercials against her. and she hasn t even begun to put on her positives or go after her opponent whoever it s going to be negatives. so i think if you look this is how it always is. nationally it looks better for republicans right now. mainly because middle class incomes are declining. what we talked about here. and the public is sour. all right. but state by state looks much better for us. we will keep the senate. texas governor rick perry i want you to stay for this one has been mentioned among potential 2016 contenders. good luck. is being candid about my god. senator schumer. last time i checked, he s not on any rolls in republican primaries. rick perry is just fine. he talked about his disappointing bid for 2012. but he also suggested the door is far from closed for a political comeback. you ran in 2012. a lot of people thought that was a botched effort on your part. wbr id= wbr46200 /> how do you get a second look now? i would tend to agree with them on the botched effort side of it. what went wrong? listen, i think america is a place that believes in second chances. i think that we see more character out of an individual by how do you perform after you fail and you go forward. in kentucky, multiple horse races converged at churchill downs. mitch mcconnell tweeted this photo inside the track. but it was senator rand paul who drew the most attention hosting media mogul rupert murdoch around the luxury boxes. murdoch, no no vis when it comes to the matters of political imagery, allowed himself to be paraded around for six hours like a prized horse behind a proud jockey. amounted to a message to more establishment republicans that as he put it, i m very open minded. chuck todd, if you follow /b> wbr-id= wbr46800 /> rupert murdoch s history in endorsing candidates, anything is possible including a possible endorsement of rand paul or hillary clinton. i think much more likely to endorse hillary clinton than any republican senator out there right now. but let s talk about the first thing. i ve got to say, again, we absolutely pounded rick perry around this table in 2012 for good reason. he wasn t ready to run. he had some back problems, on medication for that. i know about that better than anybody else as far as what back pain does to you. this guy s looking pretty good in the early stages. are you a skeptic? you know, i know we re supposed to be skeptical of him because of it was such a poor effort. there s a part of me saying where s he going to raise the money this time? it s going to be harder for him to convince the major donors. that guy who showed up to meet the press yesterday, he s very comfortable in his own skin. there s something about when a candidate loses and accepts responsibility for the loss, it s amazing they can turn around. look. we have a history of our presidents having been humbled by an embarrassing loss. barack obama got thumped in a campaign for congress. bill clinton lost a re-election campaign for governor that was probably the most campaign he ever ran. losing made him a better candidate. george w. bush lost his first race for congress. you know, losing can do that, can humble you in a way. i have to say i thought rick perry seemed like a happy warrior to me. you could see him just sort of being this sort of tortoise kind of candidate. do not write him off. 1988, bill clinton actually booed at the democratic convention. four years later he was their saving grace. he was so bad that he actually went on the tonight show . johnny carson thing turned over the timer thing. he was a punchline. and senator schumer, you know this. politics, things can change. you know rupert murdoch, he s from new york, you re from new york. yep. spent a lot of time with him. he could endorse a republican. he could endorse a democrat. i think it s all safe for us to say around this table here he s not going to endorse rand paul. he s a neocon. rand paul is the opposite. i don t think he d bring himself to trust rand paul s instincts. but to go there, that was a smart political move for both of them. i admire that. one thing on the republican nominee in perry. he may be the comeback kid. here s the problem. the republican party needs to be somewhere in the middle. romney was sort of perry-like. but unless you move a little bit to the middle in the general election, you lose the only two candidates who have pushed the tea party off. christie, jeb bush. i don t think another candidate s going to come close to mitt romney is a creature of the middle and he lost. he wasn t. john mccain was a creature of the middle and he lost. bob dole was, he lost. different america. it is. no, senator. yes. we are one america. hey, joe. hey, joe. could you imagine the chuck schumer ads that are going to get run against them? he just endorsed chris christie. no. they can push off the tea party. that s true. note to self. always book chuck schumer after the white house correspondents dinner because he is loopy and possibly inebriated. any republican candidate that pushes off the tea party will not only lose the primary. even if they pass the primary you need both sides. that s why we re going to win. you can t push off the tea party and win the general. senator, you know what? you re fighting the last war. okay. we ll see. we will see. pinky bet. oh, my god. okay. senator chuck schumer, thank you. chuck todd, thank you as well. we ll watch you on the daily rundown wbr-id wbr49390 on msnbc this morning. ahead in our 8:00 hour, senator joe manchin and senator tim kaine. and army veteran wes moore with a special look at vets overcoming extreme obstacles when they return from serving abroad. plus democrats say republicans are just playing politics by harping on benghazi. our next guest says they re just afraid to confront the truth. republican congressman peter king standing by. and then louis takes us behind the scenes for a look at the white house correspondents dinner. his look. and it s awkward and weird and all over the place. louis, i m sure zbln lots of celebrities. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. it s a genuine thrill to be here in washington, d.c., the city that started the whole crack smoking mayor craze. between rob ford, justin bieber, and ted cruz, you just want to tell canada, hey, hey, relax. we already have a florida. 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[ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before. only from xfinity. 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! i m conscious there s another family at the heart of all of this. and that is the family of jean mcconville. let me be very clear. i am innocent in any attempts to abduct or kill mrs. mcconville. wbr id= wbr52200 /> i ve worked with others for the return of the bodies of others killed during the conflict and secretly buried by the ira. i will continue to do so. that was leader gerry adams after being questioned for four days of the murder of a widow with ten children. joins us now, republican congressman peter king of new york. so peter, we re going to talking about benghazi in a minute here. but when i started reading these stories, it fascinated me. we re on opposite sides of this issue when they came to the united states and i was actually angry that gerry adams came to the united states. and we sat there and talked. but there s peace in northern ireland now. it s extraordinary what s happened there. and i must say, when i heard this news, i was shocked that /b> wbr-id= wbr52800 /> the government was going back to 19 1972, a time of war for a horrific act of murder where i don t think there was any pressing evidence that gerry adams had anything to do with that. it would be like trying to arrest in 1958 for attacks that went on before israel became a state. so set this explain this to me. what s going on there? isn t this going to upset the balance that s going on between protestants and catholics? it certainly can. and i ve known gerry adams for over 30 years. this man has taken enormous risks for peace. you can talk to tony blair, to bill clinton. tony blair says how much he came to admire and respect gerry adams. he s the one person who kept his word throughout this entire process. and he brought about peace at tremendous risk to himself. now, he was saying there s no evidence against him. the only alleged evidence i m aware of is there s two people both of whom broke with adams because they were opposed to the peace process. and they were determined to get gerry adams. they made this on tape to boston college. they re both dead now. these are the hardliners who hated adams. they hated adams because he was forcing peace on the ira. exactly. that s what was so surprising to me. this is a guy who every day walks around with a target on his back because he dared to make peace in northern ireland. and he dared to move away from the violence of that conflict. a guy that walks around and is literally risking his life for peace in ireland is a guy now being arrested by irish authorities. i don t get it. it makes no sense at all. he was a person that was shot in 1984, he was almost killed. now he s being targeted by the ira by elements of the ira who are opposed to the peace process with the british. so he has put himself at risk. i think what part of this is is it s going to win big in the elections coming up in two weeks. i think there are elements in the blish security apparatus who don t want to see adams achieve these victories and they have not gotten other what happened 40, 50 years ago when there was so much on all sides. just last week the british government said it would not announce the massacre of 11 catholics in belfast was carried out by british paratrooper unit in the 70s. i agree, by the way. i think they should end the investigations and go forward. there are horrors on both sides. we are in a time of peace. it s so irony just last week a close friend of our family who is from northern ireland and very supportive of the catholic position was actually grumbling about that sinn fein and gerry adams went too far. i said who would you vote for if not him? he said i m going to vote for sinn fein because we have to move forward. then he s arrested takes us back to 1972. i just don t get pit. i want to turn now to benghazi. house speaker john boehner is forming a select committee to focus on the issue. he says the white house misled the american people by withholding documents related directly to the attack. democrats are indicating they actually might boycott the whole thing. i do not know why at all any democrat would want to participate in this by boycotting it it just becomes a redundant and partisan republican exercise. it s only a matter of time before democrats raise the follow question. would there be a select committee if it didn t want to have the power to subpoena the former secretary of state hillary clinton for obviously reasons pertaining to presidential politics. congressman king, it s willie. you said the idea of a boycott is wrong. you said it would be arrogant. you say democrats feel they have something to hide. what questions do you have left about benghazi? what do you think comes out of this select committee? what s left to know? first let me just talk about what george said there. to me the purpose of a select committee is to bring all of the elements together. right now there s too many separate parts involved and the whole picture can never be brought together. a lot of questions here. one, i have real questions. where was general petraeus during the entire time of the talking points? and as you look at the talking points and e-mails back and forth, clearly what happened here i believe is there was an ere ro for. the state department did not provide enough security. i understand these things. instead of owning up to that, they went to the phony story about the video causing this spontaneous demonstration. and from there you had elements from the white house like ben rhodes and people in the state department working to come up with a narrative so susan rice would go on television and tell a story. there s always politics. joe and i have been involved in wbr id= wbr56400 /> a lot of political issues over the years, but i just feel when you re talking about four americans being murdered, the government, the president, the state department, the cia, the national security council have an obligation to tell the truth. and they have not done this to this time. i think it is hard to boycott something where four americans have died, you have an ambassador killed asked for more backup and support. even moving forward, how do we prevent this from happening in the future? i think it s going to be tougher for democrats. hard to do. though george s point about it being transparent as a matter of raw politics is true. to that point, one of the things that democrats and many others are concerned about is the notion this will be a transparently political exercise. and it will run on forever. so is there a way in which the select committee s duration could be limited so that you wouldn t be looking at the potential of an ongoing investigation that would go out all the way through the end of the 2016 campaign and /b> wbr-id= wbr57000 /> conceivably 2017 if hillary clinton does happen to run. she may be president and being investigated over this. i support the select committee. i think there cab time frame put into it. this should not go on forever. from a political point of view, i think the worst thing republicans could be seen as is somehow encouraging a political fight over the fact that four americans were murdered. because it is so serious, we have an obligation to make it work, to make it work in an effective and efficient way. support the people on the committee making sure they function in a professional way and we not turn it into some kind of a show. it should be out of the way before the 2016 elections are in high gear. no doubt about it. all right, congressman peter king, thank you very much. good to have you on. good to have you on. thank you, joe. our own louis was in washington for the white house correspondents dinner. he deserves arresting. his 72-hour odyssey is still ahead on morning joe. arresting would be too good for him. liverpool s manager is confident they ll finish on top of the epl despite manchester city. and later he s a self-described male model and author of my dad is fat. we still act excited when we see fruit. we re like, yea fruit. at least it s not vegetables. because no one wants vegetables. when you re at a party and they have a vegetable tray, aren t you almost surprised? you re like, wow, that s a waste of money. i d rather eat a candle. comedian jim gaffigan here in the 8:00 hour of morning joe. customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. peace of mind is important when so we provide it services you bucan 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. we know we re not the center of your life, but we ll do our best to help you connect to what is. wbr id= wbr60000 /> well, good monday morning to you. let me give you your forecast to get you out the door. guthrie, oklahoma, this weekend. these brush fires started in a hurry. it started as a control burn. /b> wbr-id= wbr60600 /> i don t know why they were doing a controlled burn when it was 100 degrees and very windy. you can see how out of control it was. everything is bone try in kansas, oklahoma, and texas. expect a lot more in the way of brush fires in the days ahead. also we had this cool video from new mexico. a lot of solar flares as of light. the northern lights were spectacular over new mexico. got to see that in person once. 102 in wichita, kansas. it was very hot there. we re still very warm in the southern half of the country. chicago we re dealing with showers for you. new england, though, showers from yesterday are gone. we re going to clear it out there. we re still hot in the plains again today. just really a great lakes that we re watching the weather. overall looks like a quiet start to our work weekend. all right. up next, is the u.s. failing to lead from benghazi to ukraine republicans are openly questioning the white house s actions. chairman of the foreign affairs committee, republican congressman ed royce joins us next. and at the top of the hour, just how far are democrats willing to go on negotiating the minimum wage? senator joe manchin will join us with his solution in a bit. i m going to ask him if he s leaving washington any time soon so move back to west virginia. keep it right here on morning joe. okay, listen up! i m re-workin the menu. mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! 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[ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition in charge™. this and this. whip up this. munch on that. and dine out on this. that s 7 days a week. no tracking. no counting. no measuring. and you ll start losing weight right away wbr id= wbr62400 /> with our 2 week simple start plan. so jumpstart your summer and join for free. try meetings, do it online or both. weight watchers. because it works. try meetings, do it online or both. we cannot let the fans down. don t worry! the united states postal service will get it there on time with priority mail flat rate shipping. our priority has always been saving the day. because our priority. amazing! .is you! the amazing spider-man 2 delivered by the united states postal service. /b> wbr-id= wbr63000 /> with us now we have the chairman of the house foreign affairs committee, u.s. congressman from california. hello, ed. we had somebody on the set before say if only somebody like you were put in charge of the benghazi hearings, it would be less ideological and more americans might pay attention to it. what do you think? i think what we need to do is get our hands on the documents that the white house has been withholding. i mean, that s probably what the american people want to see. so regardless of who chairs, the question is what type of cooperation are we going to see out of the white house. and waiting 20 months to finally release some of these documents and only after a request, that leaves everybody questioning. why is it important? democrats think this is overally ideological. why is it important to have a select committee? well, you had four americans die there. you had a political spin that went on for months and months at least through the election trying to assert that, you know, this was about a very different reality than the one on the ground. when it happened on the ground as you talked before, it was a terrorist attack. this is not what the administration wanted to spin to wbr id= wbr64200 /> the public. so that s a political act. what s the theory beyond the question of how the talking points are put out by administrations all the time. it was a political campaign. there was a lot of uncertainty in the immediate aftermath about what happened. what s the theory of critics about what would be recevealed the worst case scenario? what s the dark part of what the failure was that happened? the conspiracy is the coverup itself, right? but if you want to call it a conspiracy. i don t know what else you what other conclusion you want to come to. you had a situation where you had people on the ground who needed to be defended. and you had a political act in the white house where they decided not to provide the assistance prior to the attack despite all the evidence and afterwards decided to say this wasn t because it wasn t an al qaeda attack at all. it wasn t a terrorist attack at /b> wbr-id= wbr64800 /> all. it was spontaneous. we had multiple investigations of what happened in benghazi, right? media investigations, congressional investigations. and for the first time we get some insight into how they were trying to spin this as a political argument that get out there and emphasize, efmphasize this was not a failure of policy. yes, it was. it was a failure also to listen to your ambassador and other people on the ground who wanted the assets to help defend that compound. this is a real issue. at that point in time, what was our libyan policy? obviously ambassador stevens knew what he was getting into it. this was a country he had deep roots and ties to. but we all know from the coverage that got us to that point, the complete chaos that libya was. so if you re talking about a policy failure that led to some type of conspiracy, what is the policy failure? the policy failure here is not listening to your assets on the ground. you heard the deputy chief admission, his testimony in the senate. you recall he relaid all the attempts to get things in place to defend. we now began to see that ran with the political spin that the administration was trying to sell at the time. that s one of the reasons, apparently, why they wouldn t allow the defense of the of the compound with the additional assets that might have protected those four americans. with hindsight being 20/20 in all of this, is the main reason this is flooked at now is becaue it s under hillary clinton who might be running in 2016. don t you think the main interest is it took 20 months to get to the bottom of this with a request that was made by an outside organization despite the fact that congress including my committee had requested these documents. wbr id= wbr66000 /> if you wait 20 months to get a document, it s a question in terms of what the administration is up to in not coming clear with the oversight responsibilities that congress has here. all right, ed. thank you so much. and again, the most important thing both sides have to remember so much. again, the most important thing both sides have to remember, four americans dead. that s what we have to focus on and figure out how we make sure it never happens again. congressman ed royce, thank you very much. thank you, ed. coming up, liverpool hopes to win its first championship in three years. roger bennett skipping into the room. i have no idea what he s about to say because i can never understand him. where did you go, where did you go when the world called for speed. .when the world called for stealth. .intelligence. /b> wbr-id= wbr66600 /> endurance. affordability. adaptability. and when the world asked for the future. staying ahead in a constantly evolving world. that s the value of performance. northrop grumman. wbr id= wbr67200 /> that s the value of performance. tigers, both of you. tigers? don t be modest. i see how you ve been investing. setting long term goals. diversifying. dip! you got our attention. we did? of course. you re type e well, i have been researching retirement strategies. well that s what type e s do. welcome home. taking control of your retirement? e trade gives you the tools and resources to get it right. /b> wbr-id= wbr67800 /> are you type e ? the was a truly amazing day. without angie s list, i don t know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we ve helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com goal! of course we re looking at, well, ronaldo, the man i love to hate. first of all, i was cheering wildly for your everton, cupcakes and they let me down. liverpool, they were play, manchester city, they re title rivals. 11 minutes later, sergio skated through the everton back line as if he was patrick cane on ice skates. i cannot tell if he s a brilliant man with awful moments or an awful money with brilliant moments. manchester city ended up winning this 3-2. they have two games left in the season. if they win them both, it not looking good for liverpool. no, it s not. but anything can happen. mourniho. just don t do that. that s the buckner slip. 16 seasons he s dreamed of winning it. he gave the speech, let s not let it slip lads and then i was just saying i thought at first this was the bill buckner moment for liverpool. it wasn t the bill buckner moment because he wasn t the heart and soul of the organization for 16 years. it would be as if ted williams dropped a fly ball for the last out in the world series and stopped the red sox from wbr id= wbr70200 /> winning. stevie g, to fall it s proof that god exists. oh, my god, what is wrong with you all? nbc sports, lever pool plays crystal palace. your prediction? i think anybody but arsenal will win. roger, thank you very much. mika, you are lovely. thank you are having me on. did you understand what he said? not a single word. as soon as the cameras go off, she s hammering me for information on norwich city. she knows more than she let s on. i do, i do. /b> wbr id= wbr70800 /> wbr id= wbr70800 /> and coming up, senator joe manchion and some of us have to settle down, i like to dip my pizza in ranch dressing. do you know how they make ranch dressing? butter milk and sadness. 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.. (laughs) im sorry, i have to go. at&t is building you a better network. /b> wbr id= wbr71400 /> wbr id= wbr71400 /> there was a boy who traveled to a faraway place where villages floated on water and castles were houses dragons lurked giants stood tall and the good queen showed the boy it could all be real avo: whatever you can imagine, all in one place expedia, find yours /b> wbr id= wbr72000 /> wbr id= wbr72000 /> when la quinta.com sends sales rep steve hatfield the ready for you alert, the second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! this and this. whip up this. munch on that. and dine out on this. that s 7 days a week. no tracking. no counting. no measuring. and you ll start losing weight right away with our 2 week simple start plan. so jumpstart your summer and join for free. try meetings, do it online or both. weight watchers. because it works. i m on expert on softball. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy /b> wbr-id= wbr72600 /> more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. reason good evening, mr. president, or as paul ryan refers to you, another minority that relies on the government to feed and house your family. no respect from his boss, no chance to get ahead. i really wish eric cantor would stop writing me. [ laughter ] you can just pick up the phone, eric. governor, do you want bridge jokes or size jokes? i can go both. i can go half and half. i know you like the combo joke. i m sorry, governor christie, i didn t know i was going to tell it. whoever wrote it will be fired. so i will be a man and own up to it just as soon as i know how it happened. and if i find any wrong doing on my part, i assure you i will be dealt with. i just looked into it, it turns out i m not responsible for it. justice has been served. can we just celebrate these pictures, by the way? it is so beautiful outside. after six months of just absolute garbage. look at that view, beautiful sunrise over the mall. it just gorgeous. and senator from west virginia joining the table, joe manchin. and the birthday boy, visor to president george bush, 5/5/55. 55, wow. no, i m 59 but i was born 5/5/55. we have chuck todd joining us as well. let s just talk a minute about chris christie. he actually he really looked good, he was in a good place, the jokes rolled right off of his back. we talked to him, we were going back and forth, we had a lively exchange i got right in his face. mark told this shot. we were debating book sells in new hampshire. he said i was selling a lot of books in new hampshire. i said i can sell more books in new hampshire than you. very good sense of humor. he seems to be in a good place, mika. everyone talks about fat jokes and whether or not they re appropriate. i don t appreciate it because look at this picture. i ve lost weight, okay? i m not that fat. look at mika in that picture. look at how angry you look. you look scowling. well, it s a long story. there was a lot going on there. it s a party, mika. have fun! the first part of rehabilitation is the ability to laugh at yourself. that s a good point, though. i ll tell you something else he s doing. he is staying away, he s working in jersey, like we said he should. he s not going on national shows, he s keeping his head down. i thought for me a moment when i was just reading the new york times a couple weeks ago and there s this long story on bridgegate and whatever they call it. i get halfway through the story wbr id= wbr75600 /> and i go vladimir putin is in russia right now. i don t want to keep obsessing about two lanes being closed back in november. and if i m thinking about that as an analyst, i m thinking a lot of americans are thinking, okay, fine, if he told the truth, let s move on. right, birthday boy? yeah, he s moving on. i think it s on to the next act. i don t know about that. i would say he looked physically terrific. we ll really happy for him about that. chuck todd, chris christie in terms of his appearance there and the whole story of chris christie being the butt of some jokes, what do you make of what happened over the weekend? that one joel mchale riff that you guys played, that was brilliant. that was just really well delivered. he hit the timing and it was pretty funny. but i agree with you. i saw governor christie. /b> wbr-id= wbr76200 /> first of all, you can tell he s losing weight, he looks physically terrific. he s absolutely making progress. kudos to him. congratulations to the governor on that front. you re right, he looked like he was comfortable. he got a ton of incoming. you thought maybe that s three, four monies old, is that going to resonate. that one riff by mchale was hilarious. were like, my god, i think governor christie got picked on too much. i was sort of flinching. it oddly sort of helped him. apparently he took the jokes much better than our good friend donald. yes, he did. so joe manchion, let me ask you something, are you thinking about leaving all of this stuff in washington, d.c., heading back home to west virginia? the only thing i have said is it not been a very productive time the last three and a half years. i said i want to contribute more. so i keep all options open. you can do something good every day, feeling like you ve made a difference in someone s life, waking up excited to go to work given. i want to feel that given. i m going to wait to 2014 to see what shakes out. i have a better platform in the senate to make a difference in the world, my country and my state. but if the leaders don t get together and it just going to be stalemate, i have to rethink it, too. i m not a spring chicken anymore. you look great. you are a spring chicken. come on. it s just a very dysfunctional place and culturally an unpleasant place to. a lot of people say, man, this is not a fun place to work. how much worse is it than you expected it to be? i didn t know what to expect from this standpoint. i always thought it was the highest honor in our country s public service to be able to serve in the senate. i keep hearing people say, well, it used to be that way in the good old days, it used to be this way. well, i ve not been there when anything worked. where i come from from west virginia, you don t embarrass people and attack people every day and then expect to work with them. i m expected to basically sit down across the aisle and raise money against them and what s most important? the country moving forward? the bess government is good politics. and minimum wage, i asked chuck schumer earlier, can we get a compromise, democrats over $10, republicans still fighting. do you think there as a compromise, maybe $8.50, $9, throw in keystone, both side, compromise? whatever helps workers? keystone will be by itself will keystone pass by itself? it should pass. it passed last year by 62 votes. why isn t it passing? ilt ridiculous. no one can give me a good explanation why. let s go behind closed doors. is this really all about donors on the far left pushing democratic senators from doing what they know? those are donors that i don t know very well. that s good. so i can t spack from that side of the bench, okay. with that being said, it doesn t make any sense and i don t think it helps democrats, especially democrats in challenging areas so we ve got to move forward. 10.10 is great but if we can t get it, give me something. chuck todd did you want to check in. i want to ask you this, senator. you re not the first former governor who comes to the senate and says, oh, my god, what have i gotten myself into? there s a wheel caucus of you guys, about 10 or 12 of ex-governors serving as senators and you guys are the ones that sort of feel the dysfunction than others. because you were executives, you got to make aity signatures and see it implemented whereas here you make a decision and see what government does with it. i understand that. why can t you guys get together and become a powerful caucus, lamar alexander, yourself, uch got mark warner. you guys are sort of are center left or center right in some ways. why aren t you banding to the and trying to become two pushbacks at harry reid and mitch mcconnell? we have formed a caucus and we are working together. some of those senators are not you for reelection. their state and their populous and basically where they have to be. the ten of us said, listen, we re going down this road together, swim or sink together, it would chang the whole country and change the world. i m hoping we can break out of this. it s becoming more contentious. no matter what happens, this election is going to be tight. no one is going to have 60 votes. people in the middle are going to start leading because the bottom lien is we ve got to move forward on issues and the economy and the jobs so let s look at the landscape because new indicators are showing rough waters ahead in the mid terms. a pugh/ usa today poll said republicans have their biggest advantage in decades. numbers show voters shifting away from democrats over the last six months. the number of democrats voting in the mid terms in support of the president s record has fallen 16 points since the 2010 elections. the number of republicans voting against his agenda have increased. still the president s approval is 39 points higher than president bsh s rating. 65% are saying it s time for different policies under president obama. here s the usa today poll, they talk about how democrats in many ways are in worse shape than they were in between. but you know what? i remember 1994 and how it felt that year. i remember 2006 when democrats swept. you sure remember what it felt like that year. i remember what it felt like in 2010. all three of those years, i felt it coming. i ll be honest with you, i don t feel that. when i go out there, i don t feel i don t feel what i felt those three years. i remember telling republican friends in the beginning of 2006, don t run. brother, you re going to get killed. don t run. they ran, they got killed. i don t feel that doesn t man republicans aren t going to win. i m just saying at this point in the election process, it doesn t feel like 2010. wbr id= wbr81000 /> there s a little uptick in the economy if it continues. listen, i got to get more than three words out of mark mckinnon. i know it his birs day. maybe he s already prepared for it and that s why he doesn t want to talk on the air. how do you feel about republicans this year? is it going to be a big year or not? i don t think it going to be a tsunami but i think the republicans will keep the house and have control of the senate. i think they ll have control of boat john mccain jis. just very quickly, i think the reason you dent feel that way is when we normally have these wave years, the party that catches the wave has been out of power. /b> wbr id= wbr81600 /> wbr id= wbr81600 /> the question is are voters so enamored with the party so-called out of power but are republicans fully seen as out of power or do they share some of the blame for the discussion in washington. i also remember 1998 when we were so so sure we were going to have a repeat of 94 and there would be an impeachment and it blew up in their face. what do you think? i simply look at the quality of the candidates we have. weep have the candidates in the most contentious races in the moderate, middle range. these are problem solvers able to work with us. when you look at kay haguen and mary landrieu, i think they ll success and they ll win. /b> wbr-id= wbr82200 /> it will be close but these are the time of people need to keep in the senate. they re quality people that can work with both sides. they re not to the far left, for right. quick un-for-hypothetical. if you were running for election this year, one, would you ask the president to come campaign for you in west virginia no. and, two, would you run away from obamacare or would you embrace it in part or embrace it in whole? you can t go back to having the most expensive health care in the world and being 34th in the world in terms of longevity. i wouldn t have voted for what we had today. but what the problem and the market as got to match up. if the product doesn t fit the market, the market will change the product. we basically have to get toward wellness. i to ask this following kwe following up. after newtown, when you go back, comfortably, if i ran into a republican primary anywhere in america, i would comfortably go and campaign on background chests for criminal will you comfortably take the position that ronald reagan took? i go back every day and talk common sense. and your nra friends understand it. you tell me you want to sell your gun that you have done know, sell your goon to someone you ve never met on the internet but on the other hand i m a law abiding gun owner, i m not going to send it to a stranger or wbr id= wbr83400 /> convicted felon or somebody who is not mentally stable or give it to a family member who is not worthy of it. if that s the case, don t you expect me to do the right thing on the internet? common sense is common sense. yes, it is. and your friends in west virginia i love joe. he s reasoning for governor, did you hear? happy birthday! mckinnon s been hanging out in colorado a lot. up know what that means. yeah, but he didn t need a law. coming up, wes moore joins us about his project on veterans and jim gaffigan will be here on set. be right back. weekdays are for rising to the challenge. /b> wbr-id= wbr84000 /> 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. can help your kids school get extra stuff. wbr id= wbr84600 /> they re the only cereals with box tops for education. you can raise money for your kids school. look for this logo. only on big g cereals. you can make a difference. every cereal box counts. 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? [ male announcer ] staples. make more happen. female narrator: the mattress price wars are on the mattress price wars are on at sleep train. we challenged the manufacturers to offer even lower prices. now it s posturepedic versus beautyrest with big savings of up to $400 off. serta icomfort and tempur-pedic go head-to-head with three years interest-free financing. plus, free same-day delivery, set-up, and removal of your old set. when brands compete, you save. mattress price wars are on now at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep /b> wbr id= wbr85200 /> wbr id= wbr85200 /> /b> wbr-id= wbr85800 /> all right. joining us now. from richmond s member of the armed services committee, senator t senator, you are ready for hillary. i am ready for hillary. what s her message? her message is she has the best experience both domestically and internationally. she has got the accumulated backbone, wisdom, judgment, scar tissue to be the best president of the united states beginning in 2017. okay. he made the time limit. okay. you made some really good points about her, which i would agree with in many ways. but that s not the message. what s the message? i think best qualified is the message. best qualified is the message. this is something i thought a lot about. of everybody out there who could run, who is thinking about running for president, she is the best person to be the 45th president. a and also the relationship she has with leaders. but it s going to be hard. 2016 is facing off against the super pac sludge factory. wbr id= wbr87000 /> if it was easy for a woman to be president, there would have been a woman president. if she s the right person and if it s going to be hard, the best thing i can do is get out early and start pushing. that s why i did it. not that there s anything wrong with it. another part of it is that she can win. my sense is i don t know national politics as well as i know virginia politics, but virginia is an important bellwether state. i feel confident if she runs she will win virginia s electoral votes and i think that means she has a great chance of being successful. obviously senator clinton looks incredibly strong right now for the democratic primaries and also the general election potentially for 2016 but nobody gets a free ride. absolutely. who do you think in the /b> wbr id= wbr87600 /> wbr id= wbr87600 /> democratic field is likely to step up and run besides senator clinton? i ve heard a lot of folks thinking of running, the vice president, governor o malley, schweitzer and others. some of it may depend on whether secretary clinton runs or not. there will be competition. we re democrats. that s the way we do things. i don t have inside intel about her decision-making process. i would suspect she wouldn t decide until later in the year. there s a lot of names out there. no one has asked me for my support, even secretary clinton hasn t asked me for support. but in thinking about who might run, i think she would be our best president, our best candidate and i want to encourage others to do what i ve done and get on board. this is robert thomas. you re trying to draft hillary into the race. /b> wbr id= wbr88200 /> wbr id= wbr88200 /> so hillary is not ready for hillary, though you are. and i say republicans are ready because they want to continue talking about benghazi. as this continues to play out, this will be what happened in benghazi as long as republicans and reporters are interested in digging. hey, tom, ahomas, i think wet to be talking about bends but i think we ought to be talking about how to make sure it never happens given. coincidentally, later today i m going to a former army base in virginia, fort pickett. i ve worked with the state department to help them make plans for an embassy training facility there. we ought to be talking about how to reduce the chances of violence at our embassies around the world and how to make sure /b> wbr id= wbr88800 /> wbr id= wbr88800 /> our people are safe. the congress is focused a little more on the blame game and that s not the issue here. senator kaine, come join us on set sometime. thank you. coming up, wes moore. and then expert food consumer jim gaffigan joins us with more of oh, that s not good. don t do that. don t do that. it s my book but that is so bad what you re eating. we ll be right back with more identify morning joe. everybody needs a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home fame, makes a man take things over /b> wbr id= wbr89400 /> wbr id= wbr89400 /> fame, lets him loose, hard to swallow fame, puts you there where things are hollow the evolution of luxury continues. the next generation 2015 escalade. fame he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. when sales rep steve hatfield books at laquinta.com, so he knows exactly when he can prep for his presentation. and when steve is perfectly prepped, ya know what he brings? 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[ male announcer ] once it s earned, usaa auto insurance /b> wbr-id= wbr90000 /> 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. female narrator: the mattress price wars are on the mattress price wars are on at sleep train. we challenged the manufacturers to offer even lower prices. now it s posturepedic versus beautyrest with big savings of up to $400 off. wbr id= wbr90600 /> serta icomfort and tempur-pedic go head-to-head with three years interest-free financing. plus, free same-day delivery, set-up, and removal of your old set. when brands compete, you save. mattress price wars are on now at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep /b> wbr id= wbr91200 /> wbr id= wbr91200 /> /b> wbr id= wbr91800 /> wbr id= wbr91800 /> want to get to the documentary and the issues challenging our vets. but first let s get to afghanistan. i don t think we ought to have tripled the number of troops in afghanistan, i think americans should have started to come home in 2009. but you re concerned about what s happening with the cia also, reports they re pulling back. you think they need to keep their footprint in afghanistan? this is trying to show a light on the reality that the vast majority of americans in afghanistan fligright now are n civilians. they re military, they re contractors. over the next years, we re going to have presidential elections /b> wbr-id= wbr92400 /> where we re concerned about who is going take control of the country, the largest population growth within afghanistan and massive amounts of troops and u.s. contractors are leaving. isn t it time for americans to come home after 12, 13 years of war? absolutely. i ve been in complete agreement on the fact that no one expected the wars to be this long, this expensive and this damaging. the question becomes what exactly do we hope and what do we expect from afghan going forward? whether or not that s a kinetic question or a political question. what are the longer term prospects from afghanistan five years, ten years out and what are the biggest challenges? the prospect unfortunately are not very good. the question is are they any better now than five years ago, then ten year ago. we could put a million troops on the ground in afghanistan. the question of afghanistan is never going to be a military solution, it s a political solution. let s talk about the military solution, what we re doing as a country for our returning vets and what we re not doing for our returning vets. coming back with wes moore, as you know, we re losing 20 vets a day to suicide. what are you revealing to all of us? with coming back, i wanted to show a sense of humanity of what we re talking about. these have been the nation s longest wars in the history of our country. the fact is the vast majority of americans have had zero connection to them. we wanted to add a as soon as of hu sense of humanity. we have vets coming back with significant challenges that we are now responsible for because these are veterans who when were asked, stepped up. we have extraordinary men and women coming back with great skill sets we have to utilize better. there s a scandal going on in va centers, are things getting better there in terms of dealing with back log, all the medical issues and all the stuff that department s been so criticized for. are we seeing progress? the truth is we re seeing progress but it s still not fast enough. when we have situations where you have veterans who are waiting 36 months in order to so a doctor, we know we still got work to do. the truth is, when our nation needed our veterans, we didn t ask our nation to wait. we stepped up instantaneously. so why when they come home are we asking them to wait. of lot of this comes down to the duration of the wars. i ve been meeting with families and v.a.s all over the country. last week there were about 250 vets in a room. i said how many of you would have expected if i asked you 12, 13 years ago we d still be in afghanistan? three people raised their hands. we also want more communication. a lot of veterans are waiting for feedback. we want to know what happens and what s going to do so this does not happen giveagain. the phoenix story is horrific. for that to be the back story, it s shameful. wes moore, it premieres next tuesday at 8:00 p.m. coming back with wes moore. recently they introduced a breakfast hot pocket, finally! i can t think of a better way to start the day. good morning! you re about to call in sick. hot pocket. jim gaffigan is here on set with food. just like mika, he s obsessed. well, he s studying the hot pocket. storm clouds are raging all around my door hey there can i help you? (whispering) sorry. (whispering) hi, uh we need a new family plan. (whispering) how about 10 gigs of data to share and unlimited talk and text. (whispering) oh ten gigs sounds pretty good. (whispering) yeah really good (whispering) yeah and for a family of 4 it s a $160 a month. what! get outta here! (whispering) i m sorry are we still doing the whisper thing? or? (whispering) o! sorry! yes yes! (whispering) we ll take it. how much money do you think you ll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i m going to have to rethink this thing. it s hard to imagine how much we ll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. what if it were more than something to share? what if a photo could build that shelf you ve always wanted? or fix a leaky faucet? or even give you your saturday back? the new snapfix app revolutionizes local service. just snap a photo and angie s list coordinates a top-rated provider to do the work on your schedule. wbr id= wbr97200 /> the app makes it easy. the power of angie s list makes it work. download snapfix for free. recently i saw an apple. and for a moment, just a moment, i didn t recognize. i m like what is that? oh, that s an apple! so used to seeing it in a pie. is peeling an orange even worth it? there s not even chocolate in this. some people use gathering apples as an activity. why don t we go apple picking? because i d rather die. i disagree. apple picking is fun. /b> wbr id= wbr97800 /> wbr id= wbr97800 /> that was a clip from the comedy special of jim gaffigan. a year ago mika put out a book that s literally changed the way comes out in paperback tomorrow. she poured her heart out and talked about her struggles with food, jim gaffigan, come on, call the freaking lawyers! it s amazing. we re both blond, both our fathers were part of the carter administration. he s just making it up right now. polish. no, what is that about? i m like the anti-mika. you play those clips and i m like this is just embarrassing. and then the hot pocket thing. what is the hot pocket? where s barnicle? that s a good question. he s reading mika s book in a bar right now, eat being fruits and vegetables. i do the audio version of /b> wbr-id= wbr98400 /> mika s book. oh, do you? what an awful thought. tell us about this. the food obsession continues. my sons and i have been following your hot pocket obsession for decades now. i deal with hard hitting issues with food. everything you want to do, i kind of explore answered just can t stop because it either that or feel my feelings, right? let me talk about the hot pocket, if i could. have you had the pizza in a pocket? because it s good. they had these out and i was tempted to bite into one but i don t want to have to run off in the middle of a segment. hot pockets is in the news more often than lindsey lohan. don t, mika, don t! you ll have to write another book. i could eat this entire plate of hot pockets. doesn t do it! num, num, num. this is from the recall batch, right? breaking news. they discovered some of the meat was bad in hot pockets. they have meat in hot pockets? and people that eat hot pockets already knew. michelle obama is rolling offve in her bed right now. how dare you are eat that? i could eat ten of those. what else do you talk about? i talk about weddings being absurd. why are weddings absurd? because they re ridiculous. i agree. but tell us why. it s prehistoric, medieval ceremony where daughters were exchanged as property yet over the course of centuries, it got worse. it s out of control what we do at weddings. joe, i didn t know we were going to talk about that. i haven t laughed once here. you re freaking out at this sight here. you re seeing a transformation here. it s a food coma. there s something that happens when you take a bite into a hot pocket, something that s so processed and so bad for you that you feel good. there s sugar in here, you know that? a lot. mika, i think you d be better off if you were wearing a pair of gloves when you ate that. it brings you back to bad things. jim, you have a new pilot coming out, hopefully? please take it away. it features you living in an apartment with five kids, two bedrooms, the wife, the kids. we had a two bedroom and we finally moved. we re now in a one bedroom. wbr id= wbr100200 /> career s going well, huh? so the pilot is i mean, it s a long shot but it s about my life being the father of five kids. it s an early standout. early standout. look at that family. somewhere in iowa, they created the hamburger called the gaffigan undead burger? yes. it s a zombie burger in demoan. your wife is adorable. how did you get her? brainwashing. maybe it was one of those traditional weddings you talk about. the burger, there s five patties, one for each of my children. there s jalapenos because i m a spicy latina and cheddar because /b> wbr-id= wbr100800 /> i m a hot latina. thank you for stealing the title of my book. i love it. we should go on tour. jim gaffigan obsessed. your children are adorable, your wife is beautiful. on the loose in washington. it just not right. i m not sure about this but we ll have his report from the white house correspondents dinner coming up next. wondering what that is? 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[ ship horn blows ] no, no, no! stop! humans. one day we re coming up with the theory of relativity, the next. not so much. but that s okay you re covered with great ideas like optional better car replacement from liberty mutual insurance. total your car and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what s your policy? woman: welcome to learning. spanish in the car.c on. passenger: you ve got to be kidding me. driver: this is good. woman: vamanos. driver & passenger: vamanos. woman: gracias. driver & passenger: gracias. passenger: trece horas en el carro sin parar y no traes musica. driver: mira entra y comprame unas papitas. vo: get up to 795 miles per tank in the tdi clean diesel. the volkswagen passat. recipient of the j.d. power appeal award, /b> wbr-id= wbr102000 /> two years in a row. double agents? spy thriller? you don t know aarp thanks to the aarp tek program, this guy is spying on his new grandson. aarp tek gets people better connected to technology, to better connect with each other. with social media, digital devices and apps. if you don t think hashtag love dad when you think aarp, then you don t know aarp find more surprising possibilities and get to know us at aarp.org/possibilities so ally bank has a that won t trap me in a rate. that s correct. cause i m really nervous about getting trapped. why s that? uh, mark? go get help! i have my reasons. look, you don t have to feel trapped with our raise your rate cd. if our rate on this cd goes up, yours can too. oh that sounds nice. don t feel trapped with the ally raise your rate cd. ally bank. your money needs an ally. he said i was supposed to get up here and make the press laugh. there s nothing i like better than a challenge. what began as an intimate affair between the president and press has evolved into a big weekend. technology is playing a role in all of government and society. we just came from a party where we saw the cast of veep and the cast of house of cards wbr id= wbr103800 /> all interacting with each other and it kind of blew my mind. if i could make a law, it would be that there is always a working budget. it is nerd problems. i am a nerd. there s nothing about my prom that was strong, man. organization, it s been a while. so the party s all weekend long at the white house correspondent dinner. but the brunch is the one you just don t want to miss. because jeffrey tambore is here. hi, joe! the best thing is that you always use this weekend to do something positive. today we re talking about dog tag bakery. it s a new bakery in georgetown. we re going to take disabled veterans and spouses and teach them how to bake and georgetown university continuing education program is going to teach them /b> wbr id= wbr104400 /> wbr id= wbr104400 /> how to be entrepreneurs. tammy s right, it is a great cause. you re trying to change veterans lives and their spouses so they can become contributing members to society. i wore the same dress as the girl who stole my boyfriend. my prom, i didn t get any. if you could change one law, what would be it? i would abolish the death penalty. you might as well throw in legalize pot. i would make sure no setting member of congress would never be able to go out and campaign against another sitting member. free ice cream every day! the eagle has landed. /b> wbr-id= wbr105000 /> let s go eat. it s a century-old tradition and one thing hasn t changed. it s all about who gets the last laugh. my favorite bit of yours was when you said you d close the detention center at guantanamo bay? that was a good one. these days they give john boehner a harder time than they give me. that means the orange is the new black. and gridlock has gotten so bad, you have to wonder, what did we do to piss chris christie off? what s the strongest moment from your prom that you can remember? i didn t go to my prom. wbr id= wbr105600 /> i stayed home and watched 60 minutes with my dad. i went to the prom, i had a girl, she said yes, i showed up, i killed it. there s nothing else to remember. i m definitely not a nerd. she is. i m a nerd actually, yeah. if there s one takeaway from the weekend, play like a champion. well, clayton, it s been one hell of a ride. we re not going to get our deposit back. was that clayton? i think that was dayton. look at louis. is that real tequila? it is. ready? oh, that s awful. okay, it s time for chuck. everybody that goes to the white house correspondent dinner, most people actually /b> wbr id= wbr106200 /> wbr id= wbr106200 /> never went to their prom so it really is like nerd prom. what do you get? that louis is the most charming idiot i know. happy birthday, man! thank you. 5/5/55. i want to salute great veterans. thank you. thomas? it s learned it s mark s birthday and louis smells like a gutter in tijuana. all right. chuck todd is next! second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! /b> wbr-id= wbr106800 /> . time to take care of business with century link s global broadband network and cloud infrastructure. we constantly evolve to meet your needs every day of the week. 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this weekend that injured nine people. so far two have been released from the hospital. doctors say the prognosis for the remaining victims remains unclear. nfl teams are on the clock. the draft beginning tonight right across the street from at 30 rock. the event is going to last three days. experts expect a few surprises as any pro-draft predictions could be misdirection. all right. that s going to wrap up a thursday edition of way too early. morning joe starts right now. i really have not talked to jeb about the presidency. it s hard for people to believe. i don t know. i could see you forgetting you were the president. i could see that. you were the president. i m pretty sure i ve always been a painter. pretty sure. pretty sure i ve always been a painter of cat and feet. good morning, everyone. welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, may 8th. with us on set we have the host of mad money, jim cramer. it s great to see you. same. it s been awhile. too long. you still mad? oh, more than ever. good. we love that. on the other side of the emotional spectrum, he s not mad never. he s very passionate the host of ronan farrell daily, rona farrell. mommy gave him the support system. you were a doter. i ve seen you two. is there a thing here? there s a thing. it s weird, but it s a thing. mother/son. wonderful boy. mother/son? so willie, i decided to change my plan. you know, we ve been taking all the money we make here, right? and the coupons that phil gives us you know i m not done introducing people. i know you re not. but i get little cesar coupons. by the way phil has given me a frequent flier thing. a card. any eastern airline flight on the east coast, i can use it. swipe it, go. he didn t have to do that. he didn t. but i m investing now in tech stocks. twitter. wow. he just lurched. and i got this mutual fund this whole mutual fund. all new internet stocks. no, no. say it ain t so. with a bow on top. is that bad? he put every cent he has in there. it is may of 2000. march was the peak and april was hideous. it feels like those not making money. what do you remember? twitter. as i sink with twitter. twitter is a company that we don t realize doesn t make any money. it s just a huge amount of fun. we all talk to each other on it like we do when we see each other except i m not being paid to talk you. and you guys aren t paying us to watch. it s just guys talking. that s not the idea. facebook makes a ton of money. facebook s better. i don t need your details. sorry. what is twitter s plan to make money? presumably it started out as something fun but they had an idea how to turn profit. sponsored links. maybe you go there. click on something you don t want to click on, make a mistake, they get paid. i do that a lot. we have msnbc political analyst gene robinson. hi, gene. good morning. how you doing? i m not mad either. you re never mad. gene s joyful. sometimes i m mad, but today i m not. we ll see if we can get you there today. joe manages on occasion. and jeremy peters. good to have you on board. thank you. okay. republicans say their investigation into benghazi has nothing to do with politics. but they re facing tough criticism. republican congressman trey gowdy who is leading a select committee investigating the attack says it would be wrong to raise money off of benghazi. here s what he said on morning joe yesterday. i have never sought to raise a single penny on the backs of four murdered americans. there are two still and even in a culture of hyperpartisanship, certain things that ought to be above politics like the murder of our four fellow americans. well, he personally has not, i guess. can t speak for the rest of his party. 30 minutes earlier the republican congressional committee sent out this fund raising e-mail. from a website called benghazi watch dogs.com. the e-mail lets recipients link to a page that asks for donations up to $500 and refers to them as benghazi watch dogs. willie, we yesterday had trey here. he was passionate. we agreed with him. i was warning democrats or republicans don t need to politicize benghazi. four americans dead. he comes out and says that and 30 minutes earlier his own party undercuts him and the credibility of his investigation by asking for $25 donations off of benghazi. give me a break. that s the problem right there. i thought yesterday trey gowdy was good on this show saying i ll do everything i can to get to the truth and not make this a political exercise. but all it takes a one e-mail like that to show the other side it is a political exercise. if they want to raise money off this issue. he said i m not going to raise one nickel over dead americans. then they did it yesterday. i don t know why political parties do this. political parties do it. it s the republican parties now that s been caught doing it. i mean, they have undermined the credibility of this committee. they need to promise they re not going to do it again over four dead americans with $25 donations. give me a break. it s disgusting. it really is hideous. if republicans expect this investigation to be taken seriously at all and not seen as the most naked of political exercises to animate the republican base in advance of the election, you know, look. there are a lot of democrats out there today saying as they were yesterday that this is all political. that this has nothing to do with a search for the truth. that it has to do with a search for votes and contributions. and the party seems to be, you know, eager to give evidence that that position is right. so they better clean it up fast if they want to be taken seriously. john, why don t we reach out to trey gowdy s office and see if there s anything they want to say during the course of this show in response. i m sure they will. he was very straightforward about where he stands. if i was him, i would be so pissed off. they really you know what? they really undercut his credibility. and with the number of hearings i m sure they re going to hear from him. he has to establish this is different if he wants to sell this to the public. they ve turned out 25,000 documents. there s been tens and tens of committee hearings and meetings. they ve got to prove there s substance there. that undermines everything they re doing. don t you think, though, that in a sense if you re looking at this strictly politically the republicans would be foolish not to capitalize on this. with i ve been to these town meetings across the country and benghazi comes up repeatedly. you cannot overstate how much this riles up the republican base. ultimately that s what s happening here. yeah. trust me. this is this is an important issue for a lot of americans, but when the washington establishment seeks to exploit it for political purposes or democrats like to pretend that nothing went wrong there, then americans look at washington d.c. you know what? on either side. and if you re trying to fund raise 25 bucks off 4 dead americans, that s why americans hate the washington establishment. absolutely. on both sides. meanwhile, former secretary of state hillary clinton is weighing in on the new panel. she says it s time for republicans to move on. there are a lot of reasons why despite all of the hearings, all of the information that s been provided some choose not to be satisfied and choose to continue to move forward. that s their choice, and i do not believe there is any reason for it to continue in this way, but they get to call the shots in the congress. well, of course that s what she d say. the white house in my opinion still stone walling. they hold back on important document where the white house ask coaching susan rice on what to say on the sunday morning talk shows. that began the center of this controversy. of course hillary clinton would like them to move on. they re not moving on and they shouldn t until the white house cooperates. it is in her best interest to move on as well. of course she wants it to move on. she s at the center of all of this. she was at the center of the 3:00 a.m. call. yep. perhaps there is no more vocal critic of mega donors koch brothers than harry reid. in a one-on-one interview with chuck todd, reid clarified why he s going after the businessmen and not other big republican donors. it is the two richest people in the world. and they are in it to make money. that s their whole goal here. is they have zeros to their billions. and i don t think that s the case you don t think that s the case with adelson? i know sheldon adelson. he s not in this for money. he s got he s not in this to make money. he s in it because he has certain certain ideological views. now, sheldon adelson views are in keeping with the democrats. so adelson, don t pick on him. he s not in it to make money. he s not. by the way, we were just sitting here thinking i know. it s so laughable, gene. i read my forbes richest people in the world, they re not the two richest people in the world, first of all. they are quite rich. i d like their money, don t get me wrong. but don t say they re the two richest people in the world. i don t think that s the problem. saying sheldon not in it for the money. but the headline in today s washington post, what does it say? it suggests that sheldon adelson is benefitting from his donations. he has donated to candidates around the country. many are siding with him to try and outlaw online gambling. adelson is, quote, playing three levels of chess. even bringing on democratic strategists including former senator blanche lincoln of arkansas to beat back competitors pushing online gambling. you can see more of that interview with chuck when he joins us at the 7:00 hour. gene s still laughing. it s because he loves america and gene s happy. aren t we shock snd we re shocked, shocked, that billionaires would like to make more money. shocked. and we think it s fine that they re giving lots of money to politicians so they can make more money. and advance their interest. harry reid says he s doing it because he loves america. well, you know, god bless him then. but he happens to live in the state of nevada, doesn t he? oh, i never really put that together. oh. hold on. hold on. i m connecting those dots right here. okay. thank you. i m always looking out for false equivalences. i think we buy into that too often. but here s a direct equivalent. it s absolutely true. it s just direct. yeah. they re trying to make more money. anyhow, don t get me started. jeremy, harry reid is so obsessed with the koch brothers, they re going to have to take out a restraining order pretty soon. but is this strategy working? he s banging this drum every day. is it working as we look at some of these races that come up in 14? i guess we ll know when the democrats release their next round of fund raising numbers. that s primarily what this is. it s a strategy to get democrats worked up about the involvement of these billionaires who could really with all of their money and all the spending they re doing in races on advertising could tip the balance. you know, i think this works, this strategy of going after the koch brothers works where they have business interests. that happens to be in the most contested states with senate races. alaska, north carolina, for example. where i think it gets a little bit harder for the average voter to connect the dots is in other places where the kochs are just more of a name. and that s all. you saw the latest wall street journal /nbc news poll that still half of americans don t know who they are. that s consistent with a poll a few months prior to that. on the other happened, half americans know who they are. quickly, jim cramer, tell us. there s huge money in this. one of the funny things about what harry reid said, funny as in contemptuous, there is so much money involved in gambling, in casinos and this is as cut throat a business move. fine, let him do it, show him adelson can do. he s trying to kill online internet gambling across america. it s addictive. you don t need to go to the casino. willie, you know this. i have always been against online internet gambling. go ahead. the thing he has to worry about, he has to make sure that relations with china are good. his big profit center is not in this country. it is over as the gambling mecca. and he has done incredibly well. the internet gambling, look. it s easy to kill because all you got taught is be able to say younger people get in that shouldn t. younger people can gam l. the statistics on addiction is major. online gambling is a horrible idea. horrible. and i ve seen it first hand with a lot of people. again, just there s tons of money involved in this. when harry reid says that sheldon adelson is doing it because he loves america and has nothing to do with making money. the share will get hit if it takes off. and get hit if china cuts off the cap. here s the problem. when you have that kind of a wallet, you can change the law on goomabling. if you go down the list. harry reid has that obsession with the koch brothers. we also see it as a bigger problem. it s on both sides. money s taking over politicians. it s not speech. and to the extent it is speech, it needs to be much more regulated. if all those people you named could only be in it for the same reasons sheldon s in it for. we d be a better koun troy. see the flags behind me, i love america too. in case anybody didn t know. okay right here. one more big story before we go to break. first lady michelle obama is lending her voice to an international push to rescue nearly 300 school girls kidnapped by terrorists in nigeria. she tweeted this photo and the message it s time to bring back our girls. the islamist militant group behind the abduction is being blamed for more violence. officials say hundreds of people were killed when gunmen attacked a village near the border with cameroon. militants reportedly opened fire at a crowded market on monday before setting fire to neighboring homes. survivors say the massacre lasted for hours. the village was apparently used by troops in their search for the missing girls. police were offering a $300,000 reward for information that helps find the young captives. the girls were kidnapped three weeks ago and the terror group is threatening to sell them into slavery. the incident has sparked outrage across the world. former secretary of state hillary clinton spoke about the kidnappings criticizing nigeria s government. the seizure of these young women by this radical extremist group boko haram is abominable, critical, it s an act of terrorism, and it really merits the fullest response possible first and foremost from the government of nigeria. the government of nigeria has been, in my view, somewhat derelict in its responsibility towards protecting boys and girls, men and women in northern nigeria over the last years. pretty tough there on the nigerian government. there was an ap account written up yesterday that gave basically a blow by blow of what happened during the kidnapping. there was a call from the school. they had lead time. someone tipped them off by two hours these guys were coming. they called the nearby military barracks, no help came. these guys were able to flee into the vast park where they are now. what can the united states be doing beyond what we ve done so far which is to send support? i think that technical support team will help a lot. it s the help they need. but it reveals a larger problem. african terrorism is on the rise. it is attacks by al shabab, al qaeda affiliates. i think this technical support team needs to be the kind of support we have in place in general. the united states? absolutely. african is predicting this is the next front in the war on terror for a long time. we just haven t done enough. gene? i think it s kind of a mistake to see boko haram as a pure terror group. in fact, it s more of a criminal enterprise. what we re talking about here, i think, at base is human trafficking which has been going on in that region, in that part of nigeria for a long time. the borders are for porous. they kidnap the wrong set of girls with the wrong set of parents this time. and they happen to get this #bring back our girls to trend and catch fire and drew the world s attention. you know, this is a group yes, it has now the islam iic ideology, but they ve been disowned by al qaeda. saying, jeez, these guys are crazy. they don t want anything to do with this. this is also just criminality that the nigerian government, frankly, if not complicit has been at least willing to ignore what s been going on. and former secretary clinton is right. they should be held to account for that. gene, thank you. still ahead on morning joe, congressman elijah cummings who says congress holding lois lerner in contempt is a throwback to the mccarthy era. he joins us on the 7:00 hour. plus tonight is the start of the nfl draft. it s our chance to bring in former nfl coach jon gruden. you know what? us doing that, i m sorry what? that s a throwback to the mccarthy era. next you re going to tell me we have donny osmond. oh, we have donny osmond. seriously? he s a little bit country. so he wasn t talking about the 68 election? no. we re going joe. up next, michele bachmann takes a strong stance against women s history. her reason in our morning papers. mike allen s here. he s got the politico playbook. but first here s bill kairns and a throwback to mccarthyism checking our forecast. bill, this rain this rain, sir, is un-american. sir. sir. it is. maybe we ll have congressional panels on that shortly. the rain going on in new york also back through areas of pennsylvania. it s all kind of associated with what happened yesterday in the central plains. five tornadoes were reported and a lot of large hail. that was the big predominant thing that happened. we saw numerous reports of golf ball sized hail from minnesota to texas. this video comes from oklahoma. some of this stuff was enough to put some dents in your cars. we re going to do it all over again during the day today. as far as the new york city area goes, all morning long into probably the early afternoon, periods of light rain. it s a narrow band. so if you re down from philadelphia southwards, you should be just fine. look how warm it s going to get. into the 80s today from pittsburgh all the way back to the washington, d.c., much cooler in boston. the big story will be the middle of the country again. it is may. this is our severe weather season. unlike last week, this isn t going to be a huge tornado outbreak. but if we re going to focus on one area, it s that area in red that poses a moderate risk of severe weather. it s going to be widespread in this little area from just south of minneapolis, southern minnesota, all the way down through central iowa including the ames and des moines area. we ll see one or two strong tornadoes. along with those, large hail is likely. that s where all the storm chasers will be later this afternoon. if we have any of those storms, we ll bring them to you and give you the details. the rest of the country looking just fine in the southeast. we leave you with a shot of a fairly rainy new york city on this thursday morning. more morning joe when we come right back. unlimited cash back. let that phrase sit with you for a second. unlimited. as in, no limits on your hard-earned cash back. as in no more dealing with those rotating categories. the quicksilver card from capital one. unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase, every day. don t settle for anything less. i ll keep asking. what s in your wallet? time now to take a look at the morning papers. nbc universal will pay $7.75 billion for exclusive broadcast rights for the lockuolympic ga through 2032. they will carry nine games over the next 18 years. it marks the longest u.s. olympic agreement in history. it s unbelievable. ask jen. she went to the olympics a couple months ago. how was that? fabulous. great weather. the chicago tribune. high school seniors fail to show progress on reading and math exams. in addition, 3/4 failed to show math comprehension. it s only a slight change from 2009 when the national exam was last administered to 12th grade students. the news gets worse. the washington post. the national history museum bill passed yet despite pushback from some including congresswoman michele bachmann. she said the proposed museum in d.c. may put too much emphasis on the feminist movement. in opposition to this bill because i believe ultimately this museum that will be built on the national mall on federal land will enshrine the radical feminist movement that stands against the pro-life movement, the pro-family movement, and the pro-traditional marriage movement. the potential museum would be funded by private donations. and a new report from usa today says despite invested more than $26 million, the national guard failed to sign up any new recruits. e in 2012 the guard saw nearly 25,000 potential recruits associated with nascar-related programs. only 20 met the qualifications and not one of them joined the service. the washington times fears about the impact of the sequestration cuts were exaggerated. only one federal employee lost a job. one. washington, d.c. oh, sequestration. oh, locusts are going to descend from the heavens and chew the flesh off the bones of 200,000 federal employees. one person lost their job? seriously? seriously? one. liberals were jumping out the window saying it s over. sir, it s over. sir. give me a break. the report also found virtually every federal agency reduced bonuses, travel time, and overtime. and the charlotte observer, pop star clay aiken. i love him. he should have beaten ruben. he so should have. how do you know that? that s true, you know? i know. he sang bridge over troubled waters. i know. it was amazing. he was great. so they re fighting through this democratic congressional seat. reports say aiken is holding onto a slight lead. but crisco with perhaps the most unfortunate name in this year s political campaign still says the race is too close to call. crisco says he s not going to concede despite trailing by 369 votes. he should come on. he should sing a song. you weren t a ruben guy? i thought he deserved to win. really? we can argue about this. clay s skills were better. he s a great singer. let s hope he edges out crisco. wait, why are you laughing? it s just in politics it feels like that s a tough name. crisco is like oily? yeah. crisco party. stuff like that. he just might win though. let s see. with us now in new york again the chief white house correspondent for politico mr. mike allen. good morning. good morning. happy draft day. happy draft day to you. right across the street. we ll talk about that in a minute. let s talk about keystone not whether or not it s going to get through or whether or not the president will approve it, but it s huge in washington. you ve got lobbyists on this, oil companies, there s a lot of money already being poured into this operation. turns out that keystone is definitely good for the economy. the d.c. economy. politico added it up. tens of millions of dollars is being spent on it. the irony here is when both sides really drove down, if you will, it s not a game changer either for the economy or the environment. but it has become such a symbol, you can compare it to years ago, acid rain. which was a decades-long fight. and so both sides are using this as a proxy for climate fights to come. and so not only do you have tons of advertising in d.c., you ve noticed at the metro stations especially around capitol hill, around the state department, all over those particular stations, there s signs about keystone. tons of ads on our tv. and all these fake groups, you know, vets for energy and americans for jobs. you can trace it back and figure out it s either for labor or for the oil bobry or one of the interested groups. putting the business fortunes aside, is the keystone pipeline a good thing for the united states of america in terms of jobs and energy? i think it s undeniably good for jobs. it takes a huge number of people to build a pipeline. and the kind of skilled jobs you like. that s why laborers are for it. yes. if they don t build it, they will have to take it by train. or it s going to go to china. and china is not going to refine it as well as we do. what happens in china four days later goes to los angeles. i think the climate change people are very u.s.-centric and don t understand the global politics of it which is canada wanted to send it here, it s a little cheaper and better. but they will send it away. it s not going to come out stay in the ground if there is no pipeline. i agree with you in terms of this thing has become much larger than it really should be. because there s lots of ways to get oil to refineries in texas and louisiana. this is just one of them. but it is the fastest and it is the quickest. what s your hunch, mike? does this get approved down the road? a long-time belief was the president would improve it. after the delay, people were not so sure anymore. yeah. 2016. but it s a part of the odd coalition. you have obama consultants on both sides of this fight. right. mike allen, it s a fascinating look at washington if nothing else at the moment. have a great day. coming up, the obsession with disney s frozen keeps growing. moms love it, kids love it, marines love it. it s politicians turns. we have the parody ad. but first how will the nfl owners react if an owner went on a racist tirade like donald sterling. richard sherman will weigh in. we ll have that next. can you start tomorrow? yes sir. alright. let s share the news tomorrow. today we failrly busy. tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. i want one of these opened up. because tomorow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. when csx trains move forward, so does the rest of the economy. csx. how tomorrow moves. there was a boy who traveled to a faraway place where villages floated on water and castles were houses dragons lurked giants stood tall and the good queen showed the boy it could all be real avo: whatever you can imagine, all in one place expedia, find yours woman: welcome to learning. spanish in the car.c on. passenger: you ve got to be kidding me. driver: this is good. woman: vamanos. driver & passenger: vamanos. woman: gracias. driver & passenger: gracias. passenger: trece horas en el carro sin parar y no traes musica. driver: mira entra y comprame unas papitas. vo: get up to 795 miles per tank in the tdi clean diesel. the volkswagen passat. recipient of the j.d. power appeal award, two years in a row. .i got lots of advice, but i needed information i could trust. unitedhealthcare s innovative, 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(anncr vo) that s health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. knows her way can run in high heels. must be a supermodel, right? you don t know aarp . because aarp is making finding the career you love, no matter what your age, a real possibility. go to aarp.org/possibilities to check out life reimagined for tools, support, and connections. if you don t think i ve still got it when you think aarp, then you don t know aarp . find more surprising possibilities and get to know us at aarp.org/possibilities all right. time for some sports. cramer and i were talking before the show about kevin durant s speech. watch it. you will feel great about this country. watch this speech. the part to his mom was beautiful. but if you watch the full 11-minute speech, he goes down the line. every teammate and talks about each about why he loves them and what they mean to him. and this is at his mvp conference. no notes. this is a speech that must be watched. everybody feels that athletes are selfish, just out for the money. you watch this and you will say the finest isn t. you will cry. you ve got to watch the whole thing. last night on the court in the playoffs, the thunder don t we have someone on today? his mother s coming on. isn t that cool? thunder and the clippers during the semis. durant playing like the newly crowned mvp. he had 32 points. thunder win 112-101 to even up the series one game a piece. in indianapolis, pacer had to have this one after losing the first game at home. and roy hibbert who d been criticized for disappearing all playoffs long had a huge game last night. season high 28 points. the big man wakes up. the pacers beat the wizards. that series now tied. playoffs continue tonight with the nets in miami and the spurs hosting the blazers for another pair of game two conference semifinal matchups. that first game wasn t close. they will win one back in brooklyn. none of that matter nous. they have turned brooklyn around. 2 million people, never knew it was a city until the nets came. they had a good team this year too. richard sherman is cashing in. he became the highest paid cornerback in the league after signing a four-year contract extension worth $40 million in guaranteed cash. that makes him the highest paid corner in the nfl. but it wouldn t be a sherman story without controversy. he was talking about donald sterling s ban from the nba. he told time magazine he doesn t believe roger goodell would have dolled out the same punishment. quote, we have an nfl team called the redskins. i don t think the nfl really is as concerned as they show. the nfl is more of a bottom line league. if it doesn t affect the bottom line, they re not concerned. his contract extension goes right in. richard sherman said i had the best imitation of him. can we see it? i m off my game. you can t say that. dwooel it at the break and we ll decide. real quick, we ve grot jon gruden coming in coming in in a little while. he ll be hosting the draft. what do your eagles need? our general manager has said we need a cornerback, need a safety. kelvin benjamin, i still think it goes that way. okay. we will talk to jon gruden in the 7:00 a.m. hour. and al 8:00 and ahead you made us believe. you kept us off the street. you put clothes on our backs, food on the table. you sacrificed for us. you the real mvp. wow. that beautiful woman right there wanda pratt, that s kevin durant s mother, she will join us here live with her reaction to that moving speech a couple days ago. . but first, time magazine tells us what vladimir putin really wants. don t go away. morning joe. when folks think about what they get from alaska, 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. a man who doesn t stand still. but jim has afib, atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat not caused by a heart valve problem. that puts jim at a greater risk of stroke. for years, jim s medicine tied him to a monthly trip to the clinic to get his blood tested. but now, with once-a-day xarelto jim s on the move. jim s doctor recommended xarelto. like warfarin, xarelto is proven effective to reduce afib-related stroke risk. but xarelto is the first and only once-a-day prescription blood thinner for patients with afib not caused by a heart valve problem that doesn t require routine blood monitoring. so jim s not tied to that monitoring routine. 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i think the first thing he wants is to erase the memory of the 1990s where russia was being humiliated by the west. but i don t think he wants open war. i think what we saw last night is he was losing control of what was happening in senior ukraine. one amazing photo, by the way. show the photo. you should know our correspondent in reporting the story was dragged out of his car, pistol whipped by pro-russian separatists, taken captive. it is a very dangerous story to be covering. i think that putin among other things realizes it is not possible to control some of the passions that are being unleashed. and so i think part of what we saw last night, has not pulled the troops back from the border yet. but by lowering the tensions, i think some of that is this was getting outside of even his control. is anybody in russia that can challenge vladimir putin on any front? or is he a de facto czar? in the course of these last weeks where his approval rating is back in the 80s, he s cracked down on bloggers, social media, so he s making it much harder. been killing journalists for years. it s just nancy, why is he so popular inside russia? well, i think it does go back to a proud country that did feel humiliat humiliated. the line between nationalism and patriotism and dangerous global threat is a continuous one. and i think there s been a lot of public support for it. but i also think no one wants to be saddled with a failed state or a long slogging bloody war which is what would happen if he had to send troops into ukraine. gene robinson, inside the magazine in the package about russia, there s a piece from our buddy john meacham. meacham says the president s critics say he s weak and whiney but he s doing what most presidents do, muddling through. a couple months into this thing bb how can we assess the president s moves? okay, i guess. i don t see what else the president could have done. he has european allies who have to come along who are reluctant to apply tougher sanctions. it s not clear that tougher sanctions would deter what russia has been doing in any of that. i think nancy is absolutely light about what putin wants. i think he wants to be remembered with the great after his name. he wants to be putin the great like peter the great in the transition of the czars. and that s how he thinks of himself. and i think ukraine is kind of very special to him and to russia. i think president obama kind of understands this dynamic and has done what can be done to try to contain it with the understanding that there s not that much we can do. we re not going to send troops, but we re going to reinforce nato and send a signal that, you know, you can t go but so far. couple other pieces. you have it s time to let teenagers drink again. the age 21 rule pushes kids towards pills and other anti-social behaviors. this is camille arguing a libertarian argument that the drinking age of 21 makes no sense. and part of her argument is that we are depriving young people from the ability to learn how to drink responsibly and socially in a sort of public setting that s been part of european culture, obviously, for centuries where you might get a glass of wine at a family celebration. and you learn how to use alcohol responsibly. what s happened with the 21-year-old drinking age which was instituted with the best intentions is it s driven drinking unmonitored. we ve seen a huge increase in binge drinking. we re seeing it let s be transparent here. we live in the same town. we do. and we re let s not even talk about 18 years and older. i m struggling. i have two teenagers. the drunk kids that stumble around our town every friday and saturday night. i m talking most of them. most of them. freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors. and those are high school kids. and they re binge drinking. how would this help? i don t think anyone is arguing that high school kids should be, you know but doesn t this bring it closer to i mean, if you move it down to 18, isn t that going to actually move the problem of children starting earlier to even younger? we already have the problem of children starting earlier. and i think what she is arguing is that we have made it impossible to help as adults to help them learn the difference between irresponsible drinking. so we ve got to go, but also just let people know also you ve got a story on a fascinating book by 43-year-old interesting title. marx 2.0. i was looking at saying that. thomas has caused a stir in financial and political circles. arguing that debate on the table. fairly obvious as far as the problem goes. people make more money on the investments than the rest of america makes on labor that we re going to have inequities. so his mainly opposite argument that wealth will trickle down, he s saying as the wealthy control more capital and the capital increases faster than the economy grows, that has the economy grows you re going have growing income inequality. he likens to where the u.s. is now to where france was in about 1789. we know now that went. we ll check out the latest edition of time. thank you, nancy gibbs. coming up, harry reid knows one big difference between koch brothers and sheldon adelson. hopefully chuck todd can help us. and news you can t use. that s straight ahead. mom! awesome! dad!! i missed you. oh. daddy. chevrolet and its dealers proudly support military appreciation month. with the industry s best military purchase program, for all that have served. grossemisconduct. ortho crime files. .disturbing the pantry. a house, under siege. homeowner calls in the big guns. say helto home defense max. with the one-touch continuous-spray wand. kills bugs inside. .and prevents new ones for up to a year. guaranteed. nothing to see here people. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®. when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? 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[ male announcer ] staples. make more happen. i m on expert on softball. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. how many points do you need? i need 18. that s all you need. that s all i need. what chance do you have of dating a girl who s a ten? four. name a kind of place where people keep checking their watch. at the airport. try again. restaurant. name a noisy insect. pass. name something a person s belly does. growls. try again. throws up. fill in the bank. a married couple might be deeply in what? love. try again. marriage. love was the number one answer. i m sorry, folks. you have to pick different things. hi, everybody. i m here in time for news you can t use. family feud, it was a long drive home for the family there. family feud, the first member comes up, is asked the questions is that still on the air. it is. the first family member gave a lot of the top answers. when she came up, if you say the top answer or an answer they gave, they give you this buzzer. you have to go on to the next answer. but she was unable to provide answers that had any scores associated with them from their polling. so she got the goose eggs and the ones she passed. the answer was love. well, that was the top polling answer. she could have come up with another fan. mika s not a family feud viewer. guys, that game just doesn t work. that doesn t make any sense. news you can t use. news you can use coming up at the top of the hour. it s too hard. you can t win it. news you can use coming up at the top of the hour. republicans attempting to fifth amendment rights. can you believe that? i will not walk a path that s been tread by senator mccarthy. i m not defending miss lerner, but i cannot vote to violate an individual s fifth amendment rights just because i want to hear what she has to say. congressman elijah cummings is our guest. and what happens when mom makes more money than dad. the new generation of bread winning women. all of that when morning joe returns next hour. maybe the roughest, most violent hour of morning joe ever. i m taking you on, kraimer. and when you put them in charge of making an unbeatable truck. . good things happen. this is the ram 1500. the 2014 motor trend truck of the year and first ever back-to-back champion. guts. glory. ram. customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. call or click to open your fidelity account today. can you start tomorrow? 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welcome back to morning joe. when you wake up, nicole and mika are talking about dresses. and jurs. she s injured. can i ask you something? have you or a member of your family been injured on the job? yeah. what happened? well, i was we have a standing cam over here. i was entering the building this morning and i was in a rush and it s swelling. it s down a little bit. it s ice. that must hurt. and the door was on top of my foot. and my 2-year-old has this great expression, he knocks something over and says uh-oh. i was alone and i said uh-oh. you can sue nbc. do republican dos that? yes, we do. the ethics rules of this state forbid me from promising you a big cash settlement, but i promise you a big cash settlement. one of my favorites. joining the table, the very injured and in pain and she s always in pain when she s sitting here with me, but today issue just in pain. and the host of msnbc now alex wagner joins us. and in washington, nbc news chief white house correspondent and political director chuck todd. chuck did it. here we go. back off of chuck. jim cramer, jeremy peters still with us as well. what? nicole is blaming you for her injury. she is now. he had that door rigged. how did she snow? the trickiness of powers at 30 rock. . who would blame you after all the terrible things she said about you? you spoke with senator harry reid yesterday and talked about why he was going after some businessmen and not other businessmen. take a look. they are the two richest people in the world. they re in it to make money. that s their whole goal here is to add zeros to their billions. i don t think that s the case you don t think that s thes say with adelson? i know sheldon adelson, he s not in this for money. he s in it because he has certain ideological views. now, sheldon adelson views are keeping with the democrats on choice, all kinds of things. don t pick on him. he s not in it to make money. don t pick of sheldon. but the headline above the fold in today s washington post suggests sheldon adelson is benefitting from this donations. he s donated to groups around the country and many are siding with him to try to outlaw online gambling. adelson as one of his team members called it is playing three levels of chess. even bringing on strategists including blanche lincoln of arkansas to pushback online gam ling. jim cramer and i were talking about how destructive online gambling is and the addiction it causes. this is about harry reid. and for harry reid to say sheldon adelson is not in it for his business interests seems absurd. it certainly is a reminder that i ve always said nevada is a one-party state. and that party is the party that takes place on the strip by the guys that own the strip. and it does seem as if it is amazing in some ways how you see this in nevada where members of both parties will line up and be supportive of these casino moguls. reid yesterday with me essentially endorsed brian sandoval, the republican governor. there s this power structure there that they all just sort of they re not as aggressive against each other if and you have to ask yourself if it s because the casino folks are happy. then others are happy. it was amazing to me what he said about adelson. when the governor may be running against harry reid two years from now. well, you know, reid s reasoning by the way was because there s no good candidates running against the governor. and it sounds like maybe you kill them with kindness. all right. i want to show another part of your interview. senator reid also weighed in on the prospect of hillary clinton running for president again. everybody knows i love the clintons. including chelsea. and do you want her to be the nominee? do you think there should be a healthy primary process? why nopt i rarely think primaries are healthy. oh, you don t think they re good for democrats. for anybody. why s that? em being facetious. you think it would be better for secretary clinton if she has a serious democratic rival. i believe that the primary was with obama and clinton was an extremely healthy process. i think it was wonderful. i think you are going to be in a new category, chuck, of fantastic awkward moments. that was strange. my god. but mika and joe, they all revolve around the same topic. yes, they do. hillary clinton pen people that didn t support her in 08. and you asking i m just saying, that s two. i ll wait until there s a third before i decide there s a pattern. i think there is a pattern. i ve seen it too. and i think it happened yesterday on our set before you went all everyone on the set we were talking about a story related to the clintons and everyone like this. sort of froze up. then you just went off which is good. yeah. still some i don t know. let s try alex wagner on this. alex, here s harry reid, the guy who went to barack obama way early in his senate career and said you need to run for president. where is he on hillary? he s not ready for hillary. i love the clintons. i don t want her to be the nominee, but i love the clintons. well, this is like the myth making and the fear amongering around the clintons like don t cross them otherwise a door in the floor opens up. also they are the future of the democratic party and incredibly accomplished. is that true? the door on the floor opens up. we are led to believe there is this clinton industrial complex where names are kept, sins are recorded. whether or not they are pouring over their notes on a nightly basis would be up for discussion. you can see in his especially now that barack obama is gone. saying he wants a healthy primary process. joe we re seeing this more and more. some hesitancy among high-profile democrats. not just blindly get behind hillary clinton. you wonder if it s look. you know, everybody s trying to figure how do they handle this stuff behind the scenes? were there real bitter feelings among the folks who pick eed oba over clinton. i mean, jim clyburn has told us about his uncomfortable phone call. you can t help but wonder that the way things went down in 07 and eigh 08, that when all this momentum was going towards obama, that maybe some of these wounds didn t heal inside the party. as much as we d like to think they did. we talked about south carolina and jim clyburn. that was really ugly when the race card was allegedly played by bill clinton. things got really ugly there. but nevada, there was also that scene of bill clinton wandering around the strip accusing the democratic apparatus out there of fixing the election. which is code for harry reid. right? right. accused harry reid of fixing that primary too. so there are obviously a lot of scars from 2008. that s what i think it is. scar tissue. really? i think it might be more of what alex is saying, but i m scared to say it. but i just did didn t i? you did, didn t you? yeah, kind of. i think. don t tell anybody. there are reports at some point everyone has to get on record saying this is the deal. and we ve seen it in the press too. anyhow, let s move on to the attack in benghazi in 2012 which has nothing to do with politics some say. but they re facing strong criticism this morning for attempts to fund raise off the attack which left four americans dead. republican congressman trey gowdy who is leading a select committee in selecting the attacks says it would be wrong to raise money off benghazi. here s what he said on morning joe yesterday. i have never sought to raise a single penny on the backs of four murdered americans. there are still and even in a culture of hyperpartisanship, certain things ought to be above politics like the murder of our four fellow americans. but about 30 minutes earlier, the national republican congressional committee sent out this fund raising e-mail from a website called benghazi watch dogs.com. the e-mail lets recipients link to a page that asks for donations up to $500 and refers to them as benghazi watch dogs. nicole, i agree with trey. don t fund raise off of the death of four americans. and yet the same morning the nrcc is trying to give donations of $25 to $500. it s stupid. and i think it s going to stop because it s unsustainable. the select committee is going to go forward and be taken seriously, they have to stop. what fascinates me about this story is democrats have no appetite to get to the bottom of why susan rice who to me is one of the most promising women and competent which in the obama administration, was denied the privilege of serving as the country s secretary of state because of what she said in large part because of what she said on five sunday shows. what she said on five sunday shows was we now know crafted by the white house. why don t democrats want to know how that message came together when it resulted in literally that secretary of state post was ripped out from underneath her because of what she did on the sunday shows. we now know the white house shaped that message. and the fact it s so political, that democrats have no appetite for understanding why she said what she said, i don t believe in the moment the white house is covering up what happened. but i think they are not being forthcoming about how those messages were crafted. and they re asked i said a couple days ago if i m practicing law and a judge asks for discovery and i m supposed to turn over everything pertaining to one subject and i don t turn over a document that goes to the heart of it which said susan rice, you are to say this and not this and came from the west wing, a judge would hold me in contempt of court. i would go to jail. and in the first place, they re trying to show hillary clinton. they re not going to find this out in the investigation. they re trying to show hillary clinton as quote, too tired, to go on the sunday talk shows. so they shove susan rice out there on something she s not qualified to talk about because it s not under her jurisdiction. it was under hillary s jurisdiction. then they gave her talking points on an issue she hasn t been following. scene she s basically set up to be knocked down. okay. couple things. i would just say 13 hearings, 25,000 pages of testimony. if that s not some kind of appetite to explore this, i don t know what appetite is. we re still in documents that the white house is holding back. i think it s fair to ask the question why was this all those investigations obviously didn t mean a whole lot, did they? because the white house we just find out last week is not cooperating. alex is right. the cia and the state department turned over enough information that we learned a lot of important things. these were not state department outposts which is a good fact for hillary clinton. they were cia outposts. that made the financial issue not a political football. and alex is right. there were hundreds of thousands of pages turned over except for the document created in the west wing. and let me tell you something. as the white house communications director, when the white house sends out talking points for a sunday show, they trump anything that came from anywhere else. but if you re-read that e-mail, i mean, everybody has focused on one of the four talking points. the other three are totally benign and exactly what you would expect from the white house. the fourth one, i think, is open to interpretation. there s a lot of litigation that will continue about that. but for this to launch a thousand ships where s the ambiguity? fir when you have something that goes to the heart of the matter? does it? yeah. when they say susan rice don t talk about barack obama s policy failure of policy. talk about a videotape. of course you know this goes to the heart. don t insult our intelligence on this. i m not. when they re telling her to talk about a videotape, you re saying that doesn t go to the haert heart of the matter? i believe the number one talking point on that e-mail was our job is to keep americans safe. we will not waiver in that. that was the number one. i ll wave that flag. these attacks were. reporter: that doesn t negate what happens at the end. there are two things to litigate here. one to your earlier point, why is this e-mail coming out now? there s a legitimate question. why is it? i don t know the answer to that. i think the white house should be asked. the second, there was an assessment the cia had as for whether these attacks were rooted in protest. that nuance was stripped from the e-mail ben rhodes sent. because we now know the cia, their analysis did not include any connection between the video. the cia testified that certainly there were protests in the region, but not that they were tied to the video. that s why the white house talking points are so i think are being viewed with such a degree of suspicion by republicans. can i raise a point here quickly? i think what we re really getting at here is what will the select committee in the house tell us that s new. alex you raised this question. four house committees have looked into this. i wonder if they decide to subpoena hillary clinton. the only new big splashy development i see coming out of this committee is getting hillary clinton before congress. and we don t know if that s going to happen. we know republicans would love to see her testify before congress, because they have been trying to prove for a year now that the obama administration and hillary clinton know more than they re letting on. and that s why you re seeing all this fund raising off this. you can bang up republicans for fund raising off of this, but it would be political folly for them not to. the enthusiasm, the intensity with which the right views this issue is very hard to overstate. you go to town meetings and you hear benghazi come up even more than obamacare sometimes. that s what this is about. i want to go to capitol hill, congressman from maryland elijah cummings. good morning. if the tables were turnd and the republican administration had not released an e-mail like that, wouldn t you be asking a lot of questions? yeah. i d be asking why. let me start off by saying wait a minute. speaker boehner can shut this fund raising effort down right now and he should. we all agree. you shouldn t be raising money in regard to this matter. joe, if you want to send out a message. send that one. i sent it out at the top of the 6:00 hour. so go ahead. and so with regard to the e-mail, you know, i don t know how they go about sending these things out. but i do know it takes time to have to go through and make sure they are obeying a subpoena. and i m an attorney. i know. i ve seen quite a bit. but at the same time going back to what alex said, keep in mind. as i recall, there s one reference to benghazi in this e-mail. and that the e-mail that they re talking about with regard to rhodes, it was consistent with what the cia was already saying. they have three parts to this investigation. one, the talking points. two, what happened that night. and three, what are we doing to keep our people safe? come on now. you just spent about ten minutes talking about their talking points. i want to make sure we keep our people safe. and hopefully this committee, if it s a fair committee and it s one that is truly bipartisan, we ve tried the partisan route and apparently that hasn t gotten us as far as we need to go according to republicans and we need to do something that is fair. as leader pelosi has said, even steven and be treated more like an ethics committee. so that there is bipartisanship with regard to issuing of subpoenas. bipartisanship with regards to wherever to discovery. and bipartisanship with regard to depositions and access to witnesses. that has not happened in my committee. i can tell you. it s been becausically one sided. you know, i agree with you. it needs to be a straightforward committee. i personally think there needs to be six republicans and six democrats on there. republicans don t need to fund raise off of it. but there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. and this e-mail that has been sent from the white house as nicole said, that takes precedent over everything else when it is i m sorry, joe. i have to disagree with you on that. no, no, no. hold on a second. don t twist my words. no, no, no. i m telling you what i m saying. when susan rice gets an e-mail from the west wing to instruct her what to say on a sunday talk show, if you don t think that takes precedent over any other document generated by any other department in the united states government, then you don t know how white house is run. well, i do know. and i know that whenever folks from the white house go out on these talks shows on sundays and others, they send out talking points. but we got to go back to the document. now, it does not take a select committee depending more and more of americans money to get to the bottom of that. i don t see what this select committee is going to be able to do that we couldn t do in our committee. keep in mind, we have chairman issa has four subpoena powers. he has used it without consultation from the democrats. he has that. let s talk about yesterday. lois lerner. let s stop talking about benghazi. i think you d agree with me we should move on. all right. the house voted yesterday, new york times jeremy peters reporting to find lois lerner in contempt. what s your take on that? you compared it to mccarthyism. oh, i m sorry. i thought i was talking to somebody else. if i have you here, why would i want to talk to anybody else? i thought you were talking to jeremy. let me say this. this is the first time since the 1950s and 60s that a committee has stripped somebody of their fifth amendment right and then at the same time went on to a contempt citation. and this is unprecedented except in the mccarthy era. 9/ even in that era it failed. i wonder where we re going here. it seems as if there has been an effort to, again, my argument was not that i don t want to hear what miss lerner had to say. i want to hear it. but you know what? there s something that is more significant than that. and that is upholding the constitutional rights of every single american. that s what this a isn t. jeremy, you wrote about it. tell us about it. well, i think it s certainly more than just about any episode that i ve witnessed on capitol hill in the last year, illustrated how far apart these two parties are. congressman, i would ask you, certainly the atmosphere that s so poisoned right now has led to democrats saying we re not going to participate or we don t think we should participate in any of these investigations that republicans are spearheading. so i just wonder with the benghazi select committee convening, what do democrats have to gain by participating in that? because mrs. pelosi has said she s not sure she wants democrats on that committee at all. well, i think pelosi wants fairness. and i can understand both sides of it. she s seen what s happened with the four investigations that have happened in the house and they ve been strictly partisan. and then she has also seen the way that we ve been treated in the oversight committee and other committees where a staff report is put out without any democratic input whatsoever. and that, you know, the subpoenaing of witnesses with no consultation from democrats. so what she s looking for is a fair situation. on the other hand, if we are not in the room, i m concerned about that because i can t imagine a hearing being at all fair if we re there. if we re not there. but at the same time i could understand leader pelosi s position that we don t want to legitimatize something that is obviously a partisan effort. all right. so it s a tough issue. all right. congressman cummings, thank you so much. it s always great to have you on the show. alex, stay if you can. then we ll watch you again on 4:00. and chuck todd, we ll see you at 8:00 and we ll give you an update on the lawsuit. on my foot. against nbc. and a story on tattoos. did you get a tat, chuck? you ll have to wait to find out. i may have started the process. it s hard not to get caught up. stop. also coming up the odds were stacked against us. everybody told us we weren t supposed to be here. we moved from apartment to apartment. kevin durant s mother joins us after that emotional speech by her son. and the rules for top earning women different than they are for men. yes. we ll talk about all that when we come back. 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. new at&t mobile share value plans. our best value plans ever for business. 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. the was a truly amazing day. without angie s list, i don t know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we ve helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com
here with us now, personal finance expert and contributing editor to money magazine, farnush author of when she makes more. ten rules for bread winning women. this is so timely because she makes more more often now. in her marriage. even though she makes less in general than men which is a whole other issue. i m disgusted by that. go ahead. 24% of married women today are making more than their male spouses. that s up four times since the 1960s. i m in this demographic, however, when i got to reach this point, i realize even with my experience covering the financial terrain for over ten years, helping people with their finances, i feel confident managing my own money. this was complex territory for me and my husband. you look at what is happening statistically when she makes more and enters a relationship, there s more divorce, more infidelity. i did my own survey of over a thousand women in this country and found she struggles how to make it all work from career to housework to her romantic relationship to money. which, i m sorry. let s just go right there. because i think men can t handle it for the most part even if they say they can. i think it s really tough. it can emasculate them. they must not pay rent in manhattan. my husband would think it was awesome if i made anybody close to what he makes. there s been a lot of headlines since i wrote this book like is bread winning women is problem? the reality is no. we want to celebrate this. the problem is we have antiquated expectations and different ideas of what it means. here s the deal. the long-term analysis, i think, has yet to be written. i like your rules. i want to get to them because they re really important. but i think women who make more probably burn out sooner. and it all balances out in the end. am i wrong? well, we live longer than men, that is for sure. also to your point about women who are successful wanting to balance all these other things is women are successful in the work place, one would assume all those career go getterism would translate to other areas and you want to make sure everything else was okay on the home front. when she makes more, she does more housework which is insanity. it s like she s trying to overcompensate. in every way. let s talk about that. you have good rules for bread winning women. face the facts. rewrite the fairy tale. definitely. that s over. i love number six. level the financial playing field. what are you talking about? especially in the relationship where she makes more, emotions can muck up how to manage money. you want to make everyone s money have meaning. that s what i get across in that chapter. i have to get to five. hack the hypotheticals. five, cater to the male brain. what is that? this is about sayi ining the are gender differences in how men and women need to be communicated to. you tell me you re doing too much housework and you re burnt out, this is how to communicate with your guy. men want to provide. they want to help. isn t it just sex? i don t get it. wait. i don t get it. well, there s that. what? are we all talking around the same thing here? honey, i need your help in this thing and give him the gift of duty. he wants to be your hero. it s not just i forgot to make dinner, help me. he needs to take over the domain. doesn t that just reinforce this whole male/female dynamic at the root of the problem? yes and no. i ll tell you two things. the couples that thrive most when she makes more are the ones who transcend expectations in the gender roles. then they can put the seamless app on their phone and they don t have the conversation. as long as there s dinner on the table. but you have to respect there are gender differences in how what our needs are and how we communicate to one another. you can t expect that your man will anticipate you. you can t. you ve got to communicate effectively. like i said and number six. buy yourself a wife. yeah. okay. some of these are really good. that s a great one. i think number five you might want to redo the definition. i m going to help you out here. well, the headline can ensite for sure. if you read the chapter, you will get it. i would love to have a wife that makes more money than me. because i wouldn t wake up at 6:00 in the morning or at 4:00 in the morning if i did. no, seriously. please, please. i would take a rich, rich wife. you are so full of b.s. no. seriously. oh, please. i think you got company. look at barnicle. he s got a woman that makes more money. he lives at fenway. that s the life i want! thank you so much. my pleasure. thank you. fascinating. coming up at 8:00, a closer look at the keystone debate but from the perspective by our neighbors to the north, canada s investors will weigh in. they re not happy and do not piss off the canadians. we ll be right back. passenger: road trip buddy. let s put some music on. woman: welcome to learning spanish in the car. passenger: you ve got to be kidding me. driver: this is good. woman: vamanos. driver & passenger: vamanos. woman: gracias. driver & passenger: gracias. passenger: trece horas en el carro sin parar y no traes musica. driver: mira entra y comprame unas papitas. vo: get up to 795 miles per tank in the tdi clean diesel. the volkswagen passat. recipient of the j.d. power appeal award, two years in a row. here s a good one seattle. what did geico say to the mariner? 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. on tomorrow s show, katie couric and deion sanders. that s great. katie is going to be talk about her new movie fed up. it s making a lot of waves. showed the trailer at thrive. everyone was talking about it. she s really excited about it. one of her latest and greatest works. i think what she should be most proud of. it s about giving up sugar. i m not going to do that. you might after you see the movie. then i m not going to see the movie. especially when it talks about our kids and diabetes. i love talking about this issue. so i appreciate it when people come on the show and make it a primary focus. katie couric, thank you. can t wait to see it tomorrow. we re go to have frosted flakes at the break. eric shinseki is pushes back on calls for his resignation. ahead in our 8:00 a.m. hour. up next, new research into the causes of dementia and how it could all come down to what you eat. stay with us. mine was earned in korea in 1953. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. 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[ male announcer ] staples. make more happen. here with us now from the mayo clinic, the president and ceo dr. john nosworthy. this marks the 150th anniversary of the mayo clinic. that s amazing considering all the work you do. let s talk about dementia right now. i m concerned about it because one of my aunts has an extreme version of it. my mom is suffering with dementia and has for some time. you re saying diet has something to do with it. i d be happy to do that. i have with me today dr. roberts who s an expert in this area of nutrition and dementia. i ll pass it over to dr. roberts. thank you. most people know that what they eat affects their hearts. but what most people don t realize is what we eat also affects our brain. we studied people 70 years and older. those who reported eating high amounts of carbohydrates in their diets, in particular sugar, were more likely to develop problems with their memory and their thinking and decision making. later in loo i have. this is what we called mild cognitive impairment which is a very strong risk factor for developing alzheimer s later on in life. so a diet heavy in sugars throughout their lifetime? or the use of sugar after they turn 70? well, we asked them the questions at the time when they were 70 years and older. so we asked them about the diet in the year prior to the study. this gave us an average look over a one-year period. what types of foods they were eating. sop if they had high carbohydrate intake and high intake of sugar, we found they had a risk of mild cognitive impairment which often leads to dementia later on in life. just one second. doctor, if you look at overall diet in life whether it starts at 70 or not in terms of increasing dementia, aren t a lot of these substances we are finding fairly addictive. and so you find that if you eat sugar as a child, it ends up staying with you for the rest of your life. it s hard to change that diet at 70. well, mika, i think you re right. i think there s a lot more need for research in this area. we need to continue to fund the nih and do the work that s necessary to understand this particular aspect of lifestyle, life decisions, diet. you re absolutely right. the habits we form when we re young do tend to follow through for mid-life and late-life. it s highly probable that the findings of what we re eating in mid-life do reflect what we eat as a child. but that s an area that needs more research. dr. roberts, could you tell us specifically what food groups are we talking about in terms of at age 70 or age 60 or whatever. what food groups should we be wary of eating? what the study specifically looked at right now was looking at the relative balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fats. and if you look at those groups, i think it s the relative proportion of what you re taking in terms of the calories that you re putting into your body that s important. if you re eating healthy protein, healthy fats, and a healthy amount of carbohydrates. typically if you reduce the amount of simple sugars which are the sugar you add to the food, the sugar you get from your desserts, the candy bars. those are the things we don t want you to be eating. we want you to be eating vegetables, healthy proteins, healthy fats. and there s a lot in the literature about fatty acids. fatty fish. and fruits and vegetables. those are the things we re thinking about. now, the reason these are important is if you go over on the calories and don t balance it out with the amount of exercise you re getting that s what tends to drive you down to develop diabetes. and our study show the people who had type 2 diabetes in mid-life were at high risk of having a shrinking of their brain when we looked at their brains in late life. and so this goes back to the question you asked initially. we need to start teaching people to have the right diet when they re young. when they re in preschool, middle school, adolescence. not wait until mid-life when we begin to tell people to change their habits. so this is something we need to stress. yes, dr. rosebud roberts and dr. noseworthy giving us another reason with their search into dementia on why to reframe the diet. the diet has been pushed over the past 10, 20 years citizen not the right one. thank you both. and thank you for 150 years of great work at the mayo clinic. we ll have katie couric on tomorrow looking at this issue. and what we need to be eating and what we are eating. and what you feed your kids. up next, espn s jon gruden is here to break down the draft. he s the best, man. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. 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? 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then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i m going to have to rethink this thing. it s hard to imagine how much we ll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. another fantastic year of gruden s qb camp. we got guys like teddy bridgewater, johnny manziel. but this guy, i ve always wanted is to see this guy in the quarterback chair. see you, coach. i ll tell you what. you look pretty good over there, man. and this is the real jon gruden. that s frank caliendo doing an amazing impersonation. coach, great to you have round. great to have you here. first of all, caliendo really has you down, doesn t he? i want to get him in here to do you three guys. he s killing me. i mean, my wife thinks he s me. what do you see happening tonight with johnny manziel? i think he s going to go number two overall. whether it be the rams or somebody is going to move up and take it kid. there s too much production. i think he brings a vibe to your quarterback. somebody s got to pay a price, take a chance and go get this kid. the consensus that clowney goes number one to house. do you think houston says why don t we bring johnny manziel in at number one. do you see that happening? i certainly could. i ve been a proponent of manziel. he s not a finished product. you ve got to have an imagination to coach johnny football and somebody is going to be very fortunate. what about the whole spectacle of the draft itself? it begins today, it s going to go on for six weeks, constant television. when you first started out, they could get in a room, go 10, 12, 15 rounds in four hours. what impact does it have on the game, on personnel and the teams? that s a great question. this has become such a national spectacle, with the immediate way it is, not just espn and the internet. there s so much knowledge out there and so much information that s accessible to fans, people are educated in football. people know a lot about these players. it continues to snowball and gain momentum every year. i have to ask you about a.j. mccarran, what round is he going to get drafted? i m surprised you re bringing up the crimson tide. you seem to do that every year. i got my e-mail saying they re strong at every position except the qb. i don t think he has a great arm or great mobility but i see him going in the third round. i m waiting for some of these great collegiates to become become great pro players. michael reid, what round? i think he s going to go late. it has nothing to do with the story line. he didn t do great at the combine. he didn t run real well and speed is the issue. and there s a lot of good stuff inside the ticker of derek carr, i think he s going to be a fine pro. jon, always great having you. thank you so much. coming up, chuck todd rejoins the conversation on his fascinating interview with the embattled v.a. secretary. you re watching morning joe. make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily. 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. can you start tomorrow? yes sir. alright. let s share the news tomorrow. today we failrly busy. tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. i want one of these opened up. because tomorow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. when csx trains move forward, so does the rest of the economy. csx. how tomorrow moves. [ ship horn blows ] no, no, no! stop! humans. one day we re coming up with the theory of relativity, the next. not so much. but that s okay you re covered with great ideas like optional better car replacement from liberty mutual insurance. total your car and we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. learn about it at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what s your policy? they are the two richest people in the world. and they are in it to make money. that s their whole goal here is to add zeros to their billions. and i don t think that s the case with any you don t think that s the case with adelson i know sheldon adelson. he s not in this for money. he s not in this to make money. he s in it because he has certain ideological views. now sheldon adelson, social views are in keeping with the democrats on choice, on all different kinds things. don t pick on him. he s not in it to make money. wow. that s amazing. that s pretty funny. we all laughed. did you see gene earlier? oh, gene was laughing? gene the laughing machine. nicolle wallace and chuck todd is in washington. joining us, nbc political analyst, form are chairman of the republic national committee, michael steele. that s twice he s says sheldon is not involved in politics for any financial reason. i m not picking on sheldon. i support him on this issue. but he is going around the country spending a lot of money to try to influence people to ban internet gambling. and, by the way, who if you have an expansion of internet gaming, who could end up being hurt by this? well, people that own brick and mortar casinos and who owns them? oh, right, sheldon adelson. what s bothering me with the infusion of the billion mayairb the political parties only have selective billionaire outrage. they re only mad at the billionaires that they re not pals with. they re missing the idea that we re allowing oligarchs, i don t care if they re liberal or conservative, whether it s bloomberg on guns or the koch brothers and regulations, you look at all of this and you say to yourself should the power to decide what issues we re debating lie in the hands of three or four people in american politics and that s what s corrosive in these systems. republicans are more concerned about democrats that spend a lot of money and vice versa. chuck captured it, deciding what we talk about and how we decide these issues. the fact that we ve got harry reid who all of a sudden now doesn t have a problem with sheldon adelson but before was screaming holy hell about the guy, along with the koch brothers, is just such a disingenuous load of crap well, that s one way of putting it. that is one way of putting it. harry reid, at least he was very equivocal about hillary clinton, the prospect of hillary clinton running for president again. take a look. everybody knows i love the clintons, i don t need to say more, including chelsea. and do you want her to be the nominee? do you think there should be a healthy primary procesprocess? why not? rarely do i think primaries are healthy. is that right? you don t think they re good for democrats? for anybody. why is that? why go through the trouble? why not just be anointed i m being facetious. i thought you were. you think it would be better for hillary to have an rival? i think the process of going up against clinton was wonderful. oh, my god. that was awful, chuck! no, no, you were brilliant, chuck. but it was so awkward on the other side. you re like mr. magoo, inspector clouseau mixed along with somebody else and all of a sudden they say these things that sink them. bumbling along. you did a great job here but there were about four or five times that we all sort of erupted in laughter with the responses. i m with you. and the awkward pauses. to me it s what makes a harry reid interview somewhat compelling. he s this mix of he s so mild mannered on one hand, his demeanor. but, man, he s got a sharp tongue. when he paused, it was making my me wonder what does he really want to say? i wish i could read the thought bubble in his head. when was the last time that harry reid did an interview that someone on his staff didn t have to clean up afterward? i m not characterizing my interview. did you have no interview with anyone on his staff afterward? with one thing the folks that used to work with him just say you get used to the point that harry reid is harry reid and he will say what he wants and he seems to be unafraid. by the way, i asked him about the harsh language he uses, whether it was on the koch brothers or form are president bush. he claims he has never had a regret about a single thing he said, name calling and this evenings li things like that. that s harry reid. what do you think it is about the state of our national politics that on both sides there s unrest, harry reid among the democrats and mitch mcconnell among the republicans? to me it means there s something bubbling beneath the surface that can be very troubling. that is playing out with the establishment types and gop party of the tea party. now the democrats are going to come into this phase as you get closer to 2015 with hillary at the top of the ticket or not is that the establishment really needs to control the way the politics flows. harry reid has been very good as a checkpoint along the way. that interview was one of those examples that, yeah, whatever i didn t like about hillary in 2008, i still don t like. i m afraid to say it. but i m afraid to say it but if i need to, i will. you look at jim clyburn, very important, an recall primary state. he s angry with the clintons, he just wrote about it in his books and a lot of scar tissue in 2008 when he suggested it was rigged. but i love him. but i have no intent of making her road easier. it s interesting to go after the koch brothers. i d ask chuck the fact that harry reid continues to go after the koch brothers, it s kind of falling on deaf ears. there are certain base democrats that get all riled up on it but they re not making that case otherwise to make those two villains of the right. this is an entire democratic campaign strategy because they have this idea if they demonize the koch brothers, they can somehow make the republican candidates in some of these places, they can turn the koch brothers moo bain capital, for instance, feigned a w find a is there a business where the koch brothers are advertising and they can localize it and make the republican own it. step one is raise the name idea of the koch brothers, so reid is using his senate time to do that. but in our most recent poll, we checked out what the koch id was. it seems now they re having the conversation with themselves for the koch brothers, they haven t created some sort of anger in the middle with persuadable voters. amid calls to resign, the head of the department of veterans affairs will stay the course. jim, tell us about the scandal that s weighing on the military right now. mika, it seems we ve heard of all of this before. the v.a. has long been accused of not providing american s veterans with the military and medical care that they need when they need it. this case is different. it rises to a different level where the allegations appear to border on something criminal. the latest scandal comes out of the v.a. hospital in phoenix where as many as 40 veterans reportedly died while waiting for treatment. secretary aaron shinseki said he was surprised by the allegations but accepts full responsibility. are you willing as secretary of v.a. affairs to accept full responsibility? i am. i asked the inspector general to go and conduct a complete, detailed, thorough investigation. reporter: some in congress and the american legion demand shinseki resign. but he brushed it off. will you resign? i would say i serve at the pleasure of the president. reporter: it s alleged hospital administrators buried appointments in a secret list and then ordered the files destroyed. it really cuts to the core of our country s confidence in the v.a. the entire public has lost confidence in the v.a. congress is poised to way in on all this as early as today. we expect to see subpoenas issued for v.a. hospital records that they have failed voluntarily to provide to congress. a round of hearings is expected next. congress will want to know what happened here and what went wrong and was there any criminal activity involved. given shinseki s background or career, is there a level of huge shock that he has been unable to make a crack, a dent into the v.a. bureaucracy? it s as bad today as it was five, six, ten years ago. i ve followed general shinseki and now secretary shinseki for years. he s always been one to hide his emotions, high shock or anger or frustration really. but when i asked him yesterday do you really completely understand the level of outrage over all of this, he said, i think i do. he is so focused on getting the job done in sort of a militaristic-type fashion, we do this, this, this, hourly he doesn t seem to grasp the level of heart break and in some cases some suspect as a result of what may be criminal activity. it just doesn t seem to register with him at this point. i believe he is angry, he says he was taken by total surprise by these allegations. but this spreading to at least four or five different medical facilities. jim, thank you so much for being on this morning. thank you. chuck todd, we ll see you today at 9:00. in tattoo parlor, right? i want to say today s show has really shown your range. thank you, mika, after beating me up. i ve been back handed praising you. at least you admit it was backhanded. is this the same tattoo parlor with nancy pelosi? it is the same tattoo parlor where they did the little fake gag. this was on our trend political question. someone your house with a tattoo. it s one of those cultural this evening things we all know but haven t seen it in a number. everyone you know probably has a tattoo and notice we re not judging you anymore, there s not a stigma anymore. well no, it is less so. you see it everywhere. you re like, whoa, there is sort of a radical change over the years. i know you upper east siders don t have tattoos but the upper west siders. barnicle? a couple. chuck and i are on the all-ink team. straight ahead on morning joe, kevin durant s having a year to remember and he says it s all because of one woman. i wasn t supposed to be here. you made us believe, you kept us off the street, put clothes on our back, food on the table. you sacrificed for us. you re the real mvp. his mother wanda pratt is going to join us later. that is so moving. and up next, it isn t just washington who has something at stake with the keystone people line. but first here s bill karins. how can you not root for kevin durant. i want to show you some pictures from the central plains yesterday. we dealt with severe weather. we didn t get the tornado but we did get the hail. i think the hail was very impressive. today it could be enormous, like the type of hail shattering windshields. ardmore reported golf ball-size hail. let s wrap up yesterday. five tornadoes, none of those caused any injuries or fatalities, the hail was widespread. the same store is lingering in the central plains. texas, minnesota, wisconsin at risk from severe weather today, tulsa, little rock, dallas. if we re going to get any baseball size hail, the size of your first, it s going to happen in the red area today. from des moines to aims, just south of minneapolis. if you re also the new york city airport around 30 to 45-minute delays. low ceilings, light rain moving through this morning. that s not going to be in d.c., though. if we get any storms in d.c., it will be late today. the greatest threat today will be hail. getting warmer in the d.c. area, feeling more like summer, temperature about 81 degrees. you re watching morning joe. 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. abecause the more you know, the more we can help you. cut. lower. shave. chop. and drop your insurance rates. if you want to save hundreds, talk to farmers. we are farmers bum - pa - dum, bum - bum - bum - bum [announcer] the more you know, the more you could save. farmers could help you save hundreds on your auto insurance. call your local agent or 1-800-470-8496 today. 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washington. there are 84 pipelines right now between canada and the u.s. there are 84 pipelines between canada and the united states? why is this such a big deal? that s the question we have. when we look at the state department reports, it basically says that if the oil doesn t come on a pipeline, it will come on rail. and they ve been proven to be correct. the amount of oil, crude oil on rail coming to the united states has grown 50% one year and the next year. what the consequences? higher emissions, higher risk for people. again, according to the state department, and higher costs. so the state department and canada both support the peopleline because it s better for the environment and safer for people close to the transporting of it. that s right. for three reasons we support it. it s become the people opposed to it five years ago said if you have do not approve the pipeline, the oil will stay in the ground. that s fallen like a house of cards in terms of the facts because the oil is just coming done on rail. when you look out your window and see more tanker trucks, you see more tanker cars on railways, you should know it s a consequence partially of not approving a pipeline and having go on rail. the oil is coming from canada, from north dakota and montana. it s just the way it s getting to the gulf coast. what about legitimate environmental concerns, though, around nebraska and the water ways and potential leakage? we re all familiar with leakage. what about legitimate environment an concern environmental concerns? there was concern about the route in nebraska and it was moved away from the aquifer. the highest security was put in place and approved by the state of nebraska and by the state department in the u.s. what s the impression that you have to sort of try to explain or translate to your government or your public about the state of the politics around this issue? we re a democracy, unlike some of the other places that import to the united states. i m sorry, this has become one of those polarized issues where on one network people celebrate the peopipeline, on another it s become incredibly polarized. we would like it to go back to a fact-based, merit-based decision. when people talk about an energy efficient bill in the senate. it s more energy efficient to transport oil on a pipeline than it is to transport it on a truck or on a rail car. now, there is a role for rail but to have people say no to the pipeline is actually to say yes to higher greenhouse gas emissions. are people surprised that president obama has been mired in the politics of all this? we thought the state department would inform the president and the american people. we like a fact-based decision making in our country. we don t do that much here. you have that great quote that you re entitled to your own opinion but you re not entitled to your own fact. we would like the second part of that. you hear varying numbers of figures, 25,000 jobs, 50,000 jobs. what are the fact-based everything i m using is coming from the state department, not canadian talking points. isn t that amazing? 44,000. the obama state department says 44,000 jobs? yes. the obama administration says 44,000 jobs, the obama administration says this is coming out of the ground anyway. it s stunning. with all this information, though, do you feel, does the canadian government feel and canadians feel let down by the the administration? i feel the only way for the debate to go forward is for people to say factually canada is going to get its oil from other places. we have routes to the east going to india, we have routes to the west. we have these two routes to the united states and keystone is one of them. we prefer obviously to work in our neighborhood to have energy independence with canada, the united states and mexico. so somebody has got to stand up and say the oil is coming down and it s either going to come down on a pipeline or it s going to come down on rail and it s going to come down on trucks. somebody has to stand up and say that because it s higher emissions the way it s coming down as we speak today. all right. why don t we leave it right there, ambassador gary doer. thank you so much. great to have you on the show. coming up, fedex answers the age old question, really? does size matter? the answer is yes. business before the bell is next and we ll explain why. early in the evening, just about supper time good. woman: vamanos. good. driver & passenger: vamanos. woman: gracias. driver & passenger: gracias. passenger: trece horas en el carro sin parar y no traes musica. driver: mira entra y comprame unas papitas. vo: get up to 795 miles per tank in the tdi clean diesel. the volkswagen passat. recipient of the j.d. power appeal award, two years in a row. how much money do you think you ll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i m going to have to rethink this thing. it s hard to imagine how much we ll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily. can you start tomorrow? tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. tomorrow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. csx. how tomorrow moves. this bill would designate yogurt as the official state snack money. what exactly are we defining as a snack? you have breakfast, lunch and dinner and then you have snacks. did you consider, say, the potato chip? no. cheese cake? cheese cake of thought more of a desert. raisins? no. cashews? never. can we consider the carrot cookie? the bill is passed. and lastly let me talk about the state muffin. that s real. that was real? real as in that really happened in a legislative context? it did in albany. they can t figure out how to bring jobs to upstate new york, but they can talk about yogurt and pretzels. stop lying to our viewers. that did not happen. there s no way that happened. ha, ha, ha, very funny political show, that did not happen. no one is going to get me to believe that happened. sarah, a question was asked in the tease regarding fedex about size. do you have the answer? yes, turns out size does matter for fedex. all right, let me write that down. okay. check. this is a huge change, especially for those of us, including myself, who order toilet paper or paper towels online. fedex is going to change the way it prices ship big size. it s called dimensional pricing instead of just by weight. it s a big deal because people increasingly order everything on amazon.com, not just heavy stuff like books. they order paper towels and toilet paper. zappos, the shoe company, which is owned by amazon, they get free shipping to get customers more interested and to buy online. is this going to have to be a shipping cost on the customer or are online retails going to raise their costs to absorb this? and the fed chief is going to be speaking on capitol hill, day two. she sees economic growth but she is worried about two things she flagged, the housing market, a potential slowdown there, no longer contributing as much to the economic recovery and geopolitical tensions like what s happening in russia and ukraine. cothank you so much. coming up next, this is big, barnicle. coming up, my first 45 i ever got was an osmonds we love them. course you do. why would you not love donnie osmond? see if he can turn it around and see if people can start hating him. i don t think it s possible. we ll try. donnie osmond up next! do you want my love or are we through no matter what kind of business you own, at&t business experts can help keep it running. seamlessly. so you can get back to what you love. when everyone and everything works together, business just sings. you re an emailing, texting, master of the digital universe. but do you protect yourself? apparently not. when you access everything, you give everyone access to everything about you. but that s ok. while you do your thing. 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[ alert rings ] get lifelock protection and live life free. i dbefore i dosearch any projects on my home. i love my contractor, and i am so thankful to angie s list for bringing us together. find out why more than two million members count on angie s list. angie s list reviews you can trust. with us now, talking about their samsung phone it s a a commercial right here, baby. you re converts. we look at each other and see the phones and go, okay, we just connected. you know what they call that? i m not going to put it down but i don t like it. once i went to the samsung really? oh, yes. there s no going back. once you go samsung you never go back. how are you, guys? good. thanks for having me on. award winning singer donny osmond. it was my first single. no. one bad apple doesn t spoil the whole bunch girl do you know that was written for the jackson 5? no. i m picking songs that influence me and one of the songs of michael jackson s ben. that was written for me. no? i was on tour and they said let s get michael to sing it. a beautiful song. everybody song on this album has a story like that. you guys really lined up, late 60s, early 70s, the jackson 5 and the osmonds, man. it s hard for people who follow how old were you? i was. 5. i was like 12, 13 when one bad apple hit and 13, 14 when puppy love hit. how did you survive this when, let s face it, michael had a much rougher run of it and you look at child stars time and time again. joe, can i poii can point to things. my parents, i have great parents. family. it gets down to that. i married up. as a matter of fact, it s our 36th anniversary today. no way! where is she? get over here. come over here! it s your anniversary, come on. that s not going to work over there. i got to tell you something. sit on my lap. 36 years. and they called it puppy love this is debbie. i m thomas. i just want to say something, she s not just my wife. she s my business partner now. we just came out with a company called donny osmond home. it went from 0 to 60 overnight. home furnishings. she s amazing. so now we re working together. what s your name? debbie. what do you think the secret is to a long marriage? i don t know, honey, what do you think? she s always right. did you see that? i don t know. there s no secret. i think you just work at it and you have fun and enjoy the journey. whatever it is, you two should sell it because you look amazingly happy. we just found out we re having our seventh grandchild. there s no way you re a grandmother. what is it did donny that keeps you in love with him? ooh. i don t know be careful. i could kick you off my lap. he s just a really sincere, great, down-to-earth kind of person. 36 years. what present did he give you sn today? today? being on this show. actually, we re in town to do some meetings for donny osmond home. it s a work in progress. we just found out home depot is going to carry some of our products and wayfair.com is carrying, bill.com is coming on board. we have manufacturing partners calling us. who would you describe the taste you two are embracing with donny osmond at home? it s a style of comfort and casualness and something you can bring your family into and relax. it s not traditional or stuffy. you two are relaxed right now. it s not a traditional interview, sitting on the lap. has this ever happened? no. how about this one after 36 years that s not happening. i ll let you go back and sit. debbie, congratulations. whoo! i liked it when he sang to you. that was nice. i love this week, this is my week off, i can come to new york and celebrate our anniversary. we re in vegas next week. marie and i are celebrating our 1,000th show. we were supposed to be there for six weeks in 08. we just got the award for best show of las vegas third year in a row. oh, my gosh! and that s saying a lot. that s the entertainment capital of the world. how are you guys you re like the benjamin buttons ageing in reverse. must be that mormon lifestyle. both of you guys. you guys look amazing. i don t know. you work out, you eat well, give us some secrets. he just did. you don t see her on a bad day. do you do i m a little bit country, i m a little bit rock n roll. oh, yes. this is amazing. a couple weeks ago after the meet and greet, there were four generations of ladies, there was the great grandmother, the grandma, the mom and the little girl. she was 5 years old. the great grandmother new me from the andy williams show and i said how does this little 5-year-old know me? she said every time we get in the car she says i i want to hear donny osmond s anaconda song. i said there is no anaconda song and she started singing anaconda puppy love that s so cute. your wife made the show this morning. i love it. i love her. happy anniversary. have a good day. we re going to top this, believe it or not. i know it s hard because donny osmond is right here. hold on. it s going to be okay, donny. there wasn t a dry eye in the room as kevin durant declared his mother the real mvp. oh, that tops it. his mom, wanda pratt joins us next. is that okay? that s great. my music makes me whole, i m a little bit country and i m a little bit rock n roll let s share the news tomorrow. today we failrly busy. tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. i want one of these opened up. because tomorow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. when csx trains move forward, so does the rest of the economy. csx. how tomorrow moves. you always get the lowest price book any flight or hotel and if you find it for less we ll match it and give you fifty dollars back that s the expedia guarantee stick with innovation. stick with power. stick with technology. get the flexcare platinum from philips sonicare and save now. philips sonicare mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! [ female announcer ] the complete balanced nutrition of great-tasting ensure. 24 vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and 9 grams of protein. [ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition in charge™. 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? [ male announcer ] staples. make more happen. i love basketball so much, i love playing it. i just never thought that i could make it to college, nba or stand up here today in front of you guys and be an nba mvp. it s just a surreal feeling. i failed so many times and got back up. i ve been through the toughest times with my family but i m still standing. [ applause ] and last, my mom. i don t think you know what you did. you made us believe, you kept us off the street, put clothes on our back, food on the table. when you didn t eat, you made sure we ate. you went to sleep hungry. you sacrificed for us. you re the real mvp. [ applause ] okay. every time we watch that, we all start crying, but i hear she s crying, too. and she should and for good reason if a good way. that was oklahoma city thunder start and the nba s 2014 most valuable player kevin durant, playing tribute to this woman, the real mvp, his mother. welcome to the show. thank you so much to all of you. this is thomas roberts. i was hoping you would be here in person so i could get a hug from you. can you put your arms towards the camera for a virtual hug? of course, of course. it s hard to watch that video and not well up for anybody. you have to be heartless. how special was it for you to see that honor for your son, so long overdue in many regards but to know how special you are in his mind s eye to be named the mvp? oh, wow. i was just really overwhelmed by it. i knew that he s would mention me, but i did not know he would do it so distinctly. and it really just kind of touched my heart. i was overwhelmed. and i was pleasantly surprised of course. mike. miss pratt, first of all, thank you very much for the gift of your son. who gave us all a gift the other day with that incredible, emotional speech. but secondly, there are those of us who believe that the hardest job in america is being poor. and being poor and a single mom raising children, as you did, could you talk about the degree of difficulty involved in rai raising your children when you fear what might happen on a street corner on their way to school and taking care of those boys. talk about that a bit. well, we were we had very humble beginnings of course, but it was our life. and i decided that i was going to make the best of it. the way that i had to help my boys to stay away from the ills that were in our area is that i was always involved in their lives. i made it my business to sacrifice my personal desires and wants and sometimes my needs for their goals and dreams. so i was always there. some considered me as a hovering mother, but i felt it would be best if i knew their friends, their friend s parents, if i knew the environment, what was the sea pleasant rec center, know the environment there. i made it a point to be in their lives. michael steele. wanda, thank you for the hug first off. i appreciated it all the way here in chicago. but you know, your story and your son s story is very familiar to many of us. and as your son was talking and listening to you now, it reminds me of my mother. this weekend is mother s day. just contextualize for moms out there that balancing act of raising your kids and providing for the family but then looking at a moment like that, that shot of you in that moment where you teared up, what was in your hea heart? was it like a job well done or there s more to do? how do you push yourself even after you ve achieved the success and seen the success for your son, do you still push more or do you sit back now? well, i i m learning how to sit back. that part is really difficult for me. as mothers of young men knows, but my sons, they are helping me to do that. there are times when they come to me and they ll tell me that they need to talk with me, so i try to wait for that opportunity, but it s a learning process for me. but i m trying. you know, wanda, when kevin said you kept us off the street, put clothes on our back, food on the table, when made sure we ate, you went to bed hungry, kevin gave us all an extraordinary mother s day present and you have today as well. thank you so much for being with us. wanda pratt, thank you. thank you. thank you. happy mother s day. i want another hug. don t be greedy. yes! there s always another hug from mom. thank you so much, wanda and thank you for your extraordinary example. coming up next, what if anything did we learn today? [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 with less energy, moodiness, and a low sex drive, i had to do something. i saw my doctor. a blood test showed it was low testosterone, not age. we talked about axiron the only underarm low t treatment that can restore t levels 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, especially those who are or who may become pregnant, and children should avoid contact where axiron is applied as unexpected signs of puberty in children or changes in body hair or increased acne in women may occur. report these symptoms to your doctor. tell your doctor about all medical conditions and medications. serious side effects could include increased risk 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, headache, diarrhea, vomiting, and increase in psa. ask your doctor about axiron. he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. when sales rep steve hatfield books at laquinta.com, so he knows exactly when he can prep for his presentation. and when steve is perfectly prepped, ya know what he brings? and that s how you ll increase market share. any questions? can i get an a , steve? yes! three a s! amazing sales! he brings his a-game! la quinta inns and suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! la quinta! we cannot let the fans down. don t worry! the united states postal service will get it there on time with priority mail flat rate shipping. our priority has always been saving the day. because our priority. amazing! .is you! the amazing spider-man 2 delivered by the united states postal service. time to talk about what we learned today. we all look forward to nicole who has a mother s day announcement. one of my favorite mother, barbara bush, is running a literacy fund and they will match any donation 100%. wow! coming up, chuck todd and the daily rundown next. majority rules. my exclusive interview with senate majority leader harry reid. he pulls no punches and has some fancy footwork when it comes to 2016. and jim clyburn on t
white house cover up revealed. you can see it tonight at 9:00 p.m. eastern time, saturday 10:00 p.m. eastern and sunday at 9:00 p.m. eastern. that is it for this special report. fair, balanced and unafraid. greta goes on the record right now. this is all on the record. stone walled. memory loss at the white house. this was like two years ago. dude, really? on the record searches for answers in benghazi. plus union thugs intimidating care takers of the disabled. one woman taking her fight to the supreme court. i don t want to be forced to join a union. and you can t miss this. ivanka trump on the record tonight. that first big development in benghazi. speaker of the house john boehner announcing the house will form a select committee to investigate the benghazi atta s attacks. also the oversight committee announcing it will subpoena secretary of state john kerry. good evening, sir. good evening, how are you? good. what do you think about this select committee? i m glad the speaker did it. i had called for it several months ago despite the pact that i m on one of the committees of jurisdiction. i think 20 months is too long to get answers to questions and i think with the ben rhodes memo that was the straw that broke the camel s back with respect to the speaker. not only are we trying to get questions with respect to benghazi we re also investigating what appears to be a white house cover up and one of the worst explaza magss for why they din turn the document over is i think the speaker just finally lost his patience. i m glad he did what he did. what difference does this make? how does this make a big difference in the investigation? well, instead of having the department of defense with armed services i mean, we were so pigeon holed or fragmented. foreign affairs has jurisdiction over the state department. armed services over the department of defense. oversi oversight fills in the gaps. if you want to have them all sitting at the same table, you need a committee that has the power to do that and a select committee would have the power. it crosses all jurisdictional boundaries. you have subpoena power and you can work in a really coordinated effort and, you know, i think our chairmen have done the best job they can do but you have a tendency to stick within your own and we need somebody to cross the lines. we need the lines to disappear frankly. secretary of state john kerry has been subpoenaed by house oversight. why? well, greta, if you go back and read some of the old quotes and i know administration officials hate it when we go back and read what they said a year ago but a year ago he said with respect to benghazi if you re having any trouble getting information let me know. well, mr. secretary, we re going to let you know. we re not getting the information. this e-mail we should have gotten is it bureaucracy or hiding it? well, i have evidence that not only are they hiding it but there s an intent to hide it. i can t disclose that evidence yet but i have evidence that there was a systematic intention mall decision to with hold certain documents from congress and we re just sick of it. so we re going to get him to come explain why we re getting documents 20 months late. all right. are you going to be on this select committee? the speaker is going to make that decision. do you want to be? here s what i can tell you if he thinks i m one of the best questioners in congress. what i told him today is you need to put the best questioners. the best investigators in congress on that select committee. i think jimmy jordan is great. the speaker can decide whether he thinks an old washed up prosecutor from south carolina is good or not but i m going to help the committee regardless of what position if any i have. i will volunteer to be a summer intern because i want the family members of those four victims, each of whom i promised i will get you the truth, i want to be able to keep that promise. all right. congressman, i want to play a sound bite for you. this is president obama today answering a question about the crisis in ukraine and listen carefully, sir. the notion that this is some spontaneous uprising in eastern ukraine is by all the evidence of well organized trained, armed militias with the capacity to shoot down helicopters, generally local protestors don t possess that capacity of surface to air missiles or whatever weapons were used to shoot down helicopters. do you think he wants a do over on that or not? you know what, if you didn t know better you would think that he was a republican member of the house describing what happened in benghazi. the only thing he left out is the protestors were using densive moves, military moves that have to be trained. i am stunned that he said that about the ukraine when the evidence is just as good if not better with respect to the attack in benghazi. i m sure he would like to rephrase that answer to the question. do you think his staff gasped? it is a description of benghazi that so many people said that the fire power on the ground in benghazi was significant power. it wasn t just a bunch of fire crackers or something. i think his staff has been gasping a lot lately. when you have someone that s supposed to be a professional communications person sounded like that using the word dude and when you have them trying to say a memo was not benghazi when you produced it in response to a subpoena about benghazi. they have been gasping a lot this week. congressman, thank you, sir. if you hear any news about this select committee, do let us know. yes, ma am. but you do the same. if you hear something you let me know, okay? i will, indeed. yes, ma am. now the one the congressman just mentioned is from last night s special report. to say former white house spokesman down played the benghazi talking points controversy is a giant understatement. did you also change attacks to demonstrations in the talking points. maybe. i don t really remember. you don t remember. dude, this was like two years ago. dude, it s what everybody is talking about. so think about this one, in 2004, he was driving an obama campaign bus for the press. in 2012 as they were losing their lives being murdered he was in the situation room and the president was not. joining us our political panel, john, i wouldn t make that remark about he s not in the situation room, maybe he could be in the oval office. but the fact is that they haven t told us where he was. so even so it s a good question. so that s part of the big question. what exactly was the president doing the night of the attack? did we do everything we could to save these people. the other scandal on the other hand is did the administration mislead or high about a terrorist attack in order to further political or ideological narrative that suited their needs. i think the way he responded last night with the dude, it was so juvenile it almost seems as if he didn t understand the seriousness of the question. we had four people murdered and he s worried about dude, it was two years ago and the e-mail, if it was directed the rhodes e-mail was more worried about policy than dead people but that s what i thought. he didn t help the cause. the most interesting part of the interview was when he played the cia s testimony of saying we didn t blame this on the video and they said where did it come from? he said newspapers. someone decided to take what happened in a newspaper over our own intelligence. or the chief on the ground for the cia. dude. yes i only go by dude now. but it s a classic, again, if you re about doing communications strategy which is you re in a defensive position which is where tommy was the answer is to make it seem like not such a big deal. you guys are blowing this out of proportion. you guys are spending that much time on it. we aren t spending that much time on it. it s hard to win that battle when there s four dead people. if there s four people killed that day in downtown washington it would still be front page news in the washington post if it was unsolved. would it be. yeah. would be. but there s the sense at a this has been the white house contention on so many issues. it s not just dealing on this issue but everything else which is the media is going to turn something into this big side show. we re not going to get sucked into it. we don t want to be part of that narrative. we re just going to make it look like you guys are the problem. is it benghazi select committee any big deal? well, the democrats don t want it to be portrayed that way. harry reid said this is nothing but rekindling a bedunked right wing conspiracy theory. they want to portray it that way. who can it hurt the most? president obama isn t running again but hilary clinton might and she was secretary of state. what was she doing at the time? the sper view last night first came to my mind the 2008 campaign by hilary clinton. the 3:00 a.m. phone call. who is going to be ready to take that 3:00 a.m. call? the president wasn t even in the situation room during a major emergency. the 23-year-old aid who doesn t believe this is important at all. and there are four dead americans including the first ambassador killed since 1979. he said well it s just old news. i don t know why it happens in politics it s okay to give up the investigation and i think essentially that s where we re at. but let me ask you another question. i want to add tommy veitor and the interview is picking up steam online. i tweeted this, is bret baier changing his twitter name to dude and he said i think i ll leave it. next time carny uses bush as an excuse respond, dude, that was 5 years ago. and tommy himself chiming in. no doubt that bret baier is a good dude. thanks for having me on. should he be the news dude from now on? i think the whole thing was what happened on social media. first the dude comment and then the throw back thursday. he made a comment that going on and talking about benghazi is part of the throw back thursday agenda and that is inappropriately making light of such a serious situation. this can only backfire. going to john s point too about well, both of yours about the select committee and what are they going to find? the bigger problem right now for the administration even though the president is not up, his party, and his approval ratings impact those on the ballot this year. when you look at and this is an old poll now and the last time the washington post asked the question do you think that republicans are raising a legitimate concern or is this just political posturing, americans were split. but when you asked do you think the obama administration is honestly disclosing what it knows or covering something up? 55% said covering up. that s the bigger issue right now which is the e-mail itself, the content of it is almost not as important as the fact that it looks like there were other e-mails there and that s what we re going to get into and that becomes a bigger problem for the administration. and i think what was really striking was how the interview last night really displayed how much hilary clinton was at the center. as the attack was on going she issued a statement citing the video. the weekend before susan rice went on the sunday shows she gave a speech as the four bodies were laying there and talks about this video. we know from the e-mails that the reason they massaged the talking points is there were concerns about policy and messaging from the state department leadership. who is that? hilary clinton and those closest to her. in the state of confusion and terrorism is a state of confusion, everyone is uncertain is once the dust settled is you still have president obama going on david letterman and going on the view and not explaining to joy when she asked about the video, they r talking video. go figure. thank you. cheryl atkinson has been all over the story from the beginning. there s still a story to be told. do they want to talk? where are they? who is talking to them? why have we heard from them? we re trying to reach them and get them to come forward. i hear some are about to or want to and i do think there s still stories to be told from military officials. i have spoken to some of them who have some firsthand knowledge of events that took place that night and it s just a lot of pressure not to come forward. fear of doing so. fear of careers. fear of a will the of things. this is always to the point, the whole idea with the video and sort of dragging their feet providing information was that a political calculus because this was two months before the was up for re-election or was this just a giant blunder in a government? it s hard to say without documentation but if i were working the obama campaign 8 weeks before the election and i saw what looked to be north africa and this region blowing up at embassies in the middle east and north africa i would be concerned at how this was going to be portrayed or exploited by the opposition coming into the campaign and i would be working on developing strategies to mitigate that. i m sure we can assume that happened. how about the families of the four killed. one mother is outspoken and terribly distressed. i m sure the others were like wise but haven t been so vocal. are they still are they complaining or are they speaking out or are they grieving and dealing with their loss? i haven t spoken to any of them lately but two families in particular are desperately unhappy and feel like the promises to get to the bottom of it and chemothem informed haven t been full filled. ambassador steven s mother wants all of it to be put to rest and doesn t want it to be points higher lit si politizis ed. they don t want his death used as political football. she has written something and says to her it s about the white house using the intelligence community for its own political purposes and lying to the american public in order to win elections. it s about abuse of power and that s the big deal. rather them do it now as opposed to using it as an effort to maintain an election and the intelligence community. we do know another unanswered question is that the deputy cia director was working with the white house on revising the talking points in a way that he said would not embarrass the state department. he said the cia was trying to do in making some of its own disclosures. why would morell making changes to the talking point that differ with his then boss, why isn t the head of the cia doing this? why is the deputy director able to overrule him? why is the white house working with him on this effort to massively overhaul those talking points? i think there are a lot of unexplained things that we still need to know answers to. we both live in washington. if there are four unsolved murders in georgetown right now from september 11th, 2012 it would still be front page news at the washington post and other places. yeah, i think. this is not front page news. i would say regardless of the spin from the opinion blogs that get picked up and they re trying to counter this story because their surrogates are representing those they feel are being accused, despite that spin, a neutral look at this story will look at it as a very important story in history. when it s looked back upon and the journalist those of us that didn t cover it as aggressively as i think we should have won t be viewed kindly in a neutral view of history down the road. does the administration know who did it and where they are? they do know who did it and they do know where they are. why are efforts being made to get them? to pick them up or do something? they are it s my information they re waiting and they re waiting. there s sensitivities with, they feel, moving into another sovereign nation and taking actions that they feel could either put troops in danger or stir up even more trouble by doing so. i think they re trying to be very careful. their feeling is from what i understand, they think time is on their side. they will eventually get the people that were responsible. they don t have to rush it and they don t have to create a political crisis or put people in too much danger. shayrl, thank you very much. thank you. a mother that takes care of a disabled son taking on the union. why she s taking them to the supreme court, next. and next up, advice to president obama. he may not want to listen but he should. my advice off the record, of course. coming up. 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well, you all know her. we know her. ivanka trump. she is an extremely successful business woman. unemployment rate dropping to 6.8%. but now the important question what kind of jobs are being created. according to the national employment law project there s more lower wage jobs han the prerecession higher paid ones. nice to see you. boy, that s grim news for people that lost their jobs and are having to go out and get jobs and they re lower paying. what do you think? i think it s a problem and it s evidenced by the numbers we re seeing in terms of even the 6.3%. i m not sure that anyone is really smart enough to understand what that number means and how that number is being calculated and i have a feeling it s a whole lot higher than the 6.3%. but there s a big issue. there s a big issue that s happening where a lot of our talent is being deported out of the country. people who are getting educations, many young people i know, you know, it s not 20 years ago when people graduated from college they would have never thought to pick up and move to asia to work. now, you know, the next generation of americans are thinking about their opportunities around the globe in a very global context and there s a lot of people leaving and very talented people that are leaving because of the uncertainty of this country and because of the tax regimes that we re subject too and many of the other challenges facing young entrepreneurs as they re contemplating starting business. a more optimistic note. you do a lot of big projects and employ a lot of people. what are the projects you re working on. a lot. we have a hotel company that s the fastest growing hotel company in the world. we ll have hotels by 2020. two of which are very exciting projects of ours that we have under construction now. the famous old post office building on pennsylvania avenue in washington d.c. which we are converting to a super luxury hotel with gorgeous ballrooms and banquet facilities that will be open in summer of 2016. we also are finishing off a renovation, $250 million renovation at the iconic resort in miami florida. so 800 acres right in the heart of miami. we have rebranded it. we have our hands full and tons of projects around the globe from rio to vancouver to china. you do a lot in the development part of the trump enterprise. what do you like most about your job? one of the things that s amazing about real estate development is that there are so many different skill sets you can bring.interesting. there s the finance element of putting together a transaction. there s the acquisition component. the creative element of having a vision and bringing that vision to fruition and then i think for people that love development there s the tangible nature of it. this isn t trading stocks and bonds that you never actually touch and feel. this is building something that exists long after you. so one of the amazing things as we build hotels, we build golf courses, obviously very high end condominiums is you watch people using them and enjoying them after the fact and it s amazing. all right. go ahead. no, i was just going to ask you instagramed a picture of you having fun with your two children. they re not smiling. you re having fun with the picture. what happened. my daughter, i have to instruct her not to smile mord to get her to smile for a photo. with her everything is a negotiation and she s only two. joseph is a happy little baby these days. but we have fun. i love instagram but sometimes i forget that everyone actually sees it. i know, that s funny. let me ask you a question i always ask your father. is he going to run for president or do you want him to run for president? well, as an american, i would love for him to run for president. he is incredibly smart. incredibly knowledgeable. he has had tremendous experiences which would prepare him for the challenge. as a daughter, it s more complicated. obviously it s a very tough life and the political one is a challenge. but i think he would be a phenomenal president and one of the things that i think is key is he has strong viewpoints but he always listens. so i think that s something we don t see enough of in politics. he s always asking questions. he s always listening and always interested in what other people have to say. ivanka thank you. i hope you ll come back. you re a little hard to catch up with. thank you. any time for you greta. thank you. thank you. now it s time to show you what we are watching. we put together the most amazing pictures and videos out there tonight. take a look. a squirrel caught on camera going nuts. literally. it all started with a 17-year-old tourist visiting a park in florida. he started to take a selfie next to the squirrel but then the camera flashed and the squirrel got spooked and climbed on to the teen s shirt and hung on to his back. mow that s a selfie. and a time-out at a softball game. running on the field and stealing two players gloves. that s something you don t see every day. and he goes and gets gloves. now he s stolen the left fielder s glove. that s really something you don t see every day. he s wreaking havoc on this game. the dog giving back the gloves and running back to his owner. that s what we re watching tonight. if you want to see more of the videos we just showed you, i know you go, go online. but these photos creepy. but a clever photographer is sneaking into a deserted shopping mall for a reason. what story is he trying to tell about america s cities? he s here to tell you next. plus i m going to talk to you off the record. i have advice for president obama. he may want to listen to it before the white house correspondent s dinner. i ll tell you what it is off the record of course. coming up. 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i started taking these a couple of years ago because i thought there was a big disconnect between americans and kind of the reality that surrounds them. i thought americans lived in a bubble and i wanted to show some of the most broken and abandoned parts of the country. and i started sharing them across my social media site like instagram and facebook and i got quite a response from it. what do you do? sneak into abandoned shopping centers and start shooting away? i shifted my first project was autopsy of america. i went all over to different buildings and structures, hospitals, homes. i wanted to focus on something that they would connect with more. i started to come across abandoned shopping malls and i thought that would be a real powerful symbol so i started doing that late in 2013 until just up until 3 or 4 weeks ago. is it hard to find subjects or is this every place you turn around with your camera there s another abandoned building that was decayed? it would almost seem that way sometimes. i go to some of the worst areas of the country and my city has been hit pretty hard, cleveland, as far as population loss, loss of manufacturing jobs over the last several years and even up in 2013 we re the only major metropolitan city that lost jobs in 2013. so it s been a challenge for us i think. what s hit you the hardest? when you go through these buildings and these houses? what s hit you the hardest? it s emotional for me. my father is a long time auto worker in the area. and to see the devastation, when you go to like gary indiana or even cleveland, detroit, it s emotional. i remember growing up at these malls and these structures where it was filled with people and a once thriving and vibrant economy just kind of shattered literally. so it s, you know, it s emotional for me. breaking down sometimes. it s hard to see. seth, these photos are just indescribable. they re unbelievable and tell such an incredible story. thank you for joining us. thanks greta, appreciate it. first white house press secretary getting flippant with the media about benghazi and now nancy pelosi and while she s at it, leader pelosi slamming the gop. benghazi, benghazi, you can sit around and talk about benghazi but the fact is that s what they don t want to talk about, jobs, growth, immigration reform, voting rights, you name it. is benghazi no big deal? look, i think if it s about the talking points, most of america has decided that they want to get to other things. but i also think the administration because of the way it drags this stuff out instead of just pushing all of these e-mails and stuff out like last year and getting them all out there has sort of let this happen this way. you know, the way the white house has handled this is sort of the flippant. especially the guy last night saying it s been two years. four people were murdered. it s like, let s not forget that and investigations are supposed to be aggressive until they get solved. it s like instead they re in defense mode. yeah and they re treating this like the partisan attack they see it to be. but the problem is the opposite of that given there are four americans that lost their lives and there s unanswered questions about why they weren t defended. i don t think they view it s still an open question about and i don t really view the talking points as a big issue. nine or ten or 15 days or a month later, whatever day it was, the president said benghazi was an act of terror. they were wrong. do you know, it was bizarre. and i think that s what stick with people. what was the point. there are four dead bodies. it s terrorism and they were all singing this other tune about some video and it s just bizarre. i agree with that. what i m saying is the real issue here is why did an ambassador have little or no real security in a place like lybia or septembn september 11t that goes back to the august 16th classified cable that catherine harris reported on. that s all i m trying to say. for me, i really wish that that was where the focus is. the focus on the e-mail from rhodes where he got an e-mail from the cia deputy director a few hours earlier. it s all like i don t know who did those talking points or why, but i really think it s kind of a it really is kind of an issue that s really not as important as some of the other things that we should be we should be getting to the bottom of. it makes me suspicious when people start hiding things. but who knows. maybe we ll find out. we ll fine out or whatever but joe, thank you. thank you. this is absolutely horrible. more than 300 teen girls kidnapped from their dorm taken by armed islamic militants. nobody knows if they have been murdered or sold into slavery or marriage. so what is being done to find them? 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trwith secure wifie for your business. it also comes with public wifi for your customers. not so with internet from the phone company. i would email the phone company to inquire as to why they have shortchanged these customers. but that would require wifi. switch to comcast business internet and get two wifi networks included. comcast business built for business. more than 300 schoolgirls kidnapped. armed islamic militants draggling them away from their school in nigeria. 276 are still missing. heather, this story is practically unglues me it s so awful. everyone in the capitol is distraught. what s the latest. do they even know where these girls are? whether they re alive? is this ransom for real? i don t know about the ransom. we have gotten reports from the field about ransom requests and also the militants actually trying to sell the girls for wives for as little as $12. but all of those report unconfirmable. the latest is now the number of girls is growing. originally we were told it was 129 girls kidnapped. now they re saying it was almost 300 and most of them are still missing. how were they kidnapped? out of a dormitory in the middle of the night? no, apparently these girls were all in school. and the militants came to them dressed in uniform and told them there was going to be an attack. and this area is very volatile. it would be very easy for them to believe there would be a with the exception of two who were reportedly killed by snake bites, but there s no photographs or details or actual confirmation of this either. are the ones who kidnapped them? is it islamic militants proven or suspected? that s suspected. there s no other group in nigeria who would be suspected, and this group has in the past kidnapped women to use as their wives, as cooks, stuff like that. heather, thank you very much. i think there s a profoundly important story that everyone needs to pay attention to because this is absolutely cruel and awful. thank you. thank you so much. okay, let s go off the record. i have some advice for president obama. i know, he probably says he doesn t need it, but he might want to listen to this. tonight is the white house correspondents dinner. he s the guest of honor. he will be the roast of the media. that s what all the guests are supposed to do, roast the media, and yes, be funny. we ve had funny moments. laura bush stole the show in 2005. i said to him the other day, george, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you re going to have to stay up later. and president clinton was always funny. for $10,000, you can have a private meeting with vice president gore to discuss reinventing government. and for $20,000, you don t have to go. and president reagan. i remember the story of the fellow here a while ago running for congress as a republican. he stopped by a farm to do campaigning, when the farmer heard he was a republic nl, his job dropped and he said wait right here while i get ma. she s never seen a republican before. and president obama. i wasn t sure i should actually come tonight. biden talked me into it. he leaned over and he said, mr. president, this is no ordinary dinner. this is a big [ bleep ] meal. and president bush 43. ladies and gentlemen, here i am. here i am at another one of these dang press dinners. i m absolutely delighted to be here. as is laura. she s hot. muy caliente. but the speechwriters went way too far at the correspondents dinner one year, making fun of not finding weapons of mass destruction in iraq. those weapons of mass destruction got to be somewhere. nope, no weapons over there. okay, some laughed, but it really wasn t funny, at all. so here s my advice to president obama. no benghazi jokes. there s absolutely nothing funny about benghazi. not even a smidgen of humor. that s my advice, and that s my off the record comment tonight. if you have an important story, issue you think i should take off the wire, tell us about it. and panic and fear under the streets of a major u.s. city. a crowded subway derails. the latest is next. capitato make it happen? that makes it real? what s a vision without the expertise to execute it. 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. 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. when you didn t dread when youbedtime becausenner with anticipaof heartburn.itation. my mom works at ge. 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 directly to your door with nexium 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. a speed read our way through the news. a subway train with 1,000 people onboard derail in a new york city tunnel. eight cars jumped the track. more than a dozen people hurt. the rest evacuated through an emergency exit. and fox news announcing donald sterling is fighting prostate cancer. meantime, the nba is moving forward with its effort to get sterling to sell the clippers. the nba has banned him if life from for his racist rant. no, it s not the beatles. it s the royals. princes william and harry arriving in nashville. cameras catching them as they walked into a tennessee restaurant for a prewedding dinner. now to the u.k., british police launching a hunt, looking for five monkeys stolen from a zoo. some of the monkeys are endangered species and police warn the thieves may try to sell them. thanks. we ll see you monday night. right now, speaker newt gingrich and i have a joint poll question. go and vote on our joint poll question. up next, the o reilly factor. good night from washington, d.c. the o reilly factor is on. tonight diversion subterfuge. benghazi, benghazi, benghazi. whyerant we talking about something else? benghazi is a corpse. they tried to rouse it today, and it fell right back down. so the democratic excuse making begins, as evidence pointed to a white house benghazi cover-up mounts, will the main stream media help the left downplay the story? we ll tell you. i hope jeb runs. i think he would be a great president. does likely presidential contender jeb bush have what it takes to topple democratic darling hillary
edition of politics nation growing hope, live from the sweet auburn festival in downtown atlanta. we ll look at ways we can all give back to our communities and improve the lives of people around us. we hope to see you there. thanks for watching. i m al sharpton, hardball starts right now. a tail of dark sposs. let s play hardball. good evening. let s start with the right wing efforts to scare off people with benghazi and scare off minorities who might vote democrat without outright voter suppression. this is aimed at the elections this november, obviously. one, drive up the suspicious right, including the second amendment people by saying the ghovt is lying to them about the death of u.s. diplomats, about the irs, about fast and furious to catch cross border drug dealers. two, change and restrict voter laws to discourage and confuse democratic voters. bottom line, a big republican victory this november. a veritable thumping of the democrats, set setting the stage of two years of administration frustration and obama hatred that seeds right up until the 2016 election. let s start with the conspiracy mongering here in washington to betray those serving the country overseas. who in the words of john baldwin, leaving americans to die at the hands of terrorists. to cheat conservative groups out of their tax dollars, and in some underhanded way, be in cahoots of the international drug trade. the goal, ramrod the republican base to the polls. michael steele was chairman of the republican party. joan walsh is editor at large of salon. house speaker john baner who green lighted the benghazi select committee laid out the gop strategy yesterday. it s about stoking conspiracies to get the truth. when is the administration going to tell the american people the truth? they have not told them the truth about benghazi. they not told the truth about the irs. they have not told the truth about fast and furious. now, only one would have to guess if they re not willing to tell the american truth, it must not be very pretty. democrats are criticizing the republican effort to score political points by stoking these conspiracy theorys. let s listen to congressman elijah cummings on the house vote to hold former irs official lois lerner in contempt of congress. this is unprecedented even in the mccarthy era. even in that era, it failed. i wonder where we re going here. let s hear hillary clinton on the house selection committee of benghazi. benghazi, the new investigation. are you satisfied with the answers? and are you content with what you know what happened? absolutely. i mean, of course there are a lot of reasons why despite all of the hearings, all of the information that s been provided some choose not to be satisfied and choose to continue to move forward, that s their choice. and i do not believe there is any reason for it to continue in this way, but they get to call the shots in the congress. let me go to michael steele, former republican national chairman. it seems to me the message here just to get it straight is a broad conspiracy that all the democrats do on all the issues that seem to matter is to hide stuff. it s all about hiding stuff. hiding ben gas zi, hiding irs, hiding on this fast and furious campaign with a particular goal of going to the hardest right, the gun people. it seems to me to be playing to the fringe. this is people who will vote prawn if they do vote. this is to get them out to vote and angry. you re driving your base. just as we ve seen democrats do in the past. and event to meant the left to drive home that base on a particular issue. i don t see the hyper sensitive to what republicans are doing in that instance. it all plays itself out ultimately in the end. you ve got to get through a primary process an you got to figure out how once you lay down these markers you either deliver the goods or you re going to get the rath of the voters who reject your political play. it s a political risk, but that s where the politics are. i think it s completely risky but i think you do, too. ultimately. what do you think of this whole strategy of basically alerting, igniting, turning on, exciting, scaring up, whatever, the right wing, the far right who are very suspicious of government, period, no matter who s running it, who are willing to believe the irs is evil. they re concerned about louing their guns to anybody. john bald sin is saying we killed out in the field. it s vicious stuff and i think boehner is being coached in how to sell it. he obviously is. for john boehner to be bringing up fast and furious at this point really smacks of desperation at this point. the whole conspiracy has eric holder in ka hoots with the gun control people to set this up to eventually have a big takeaway of guns. that s at the bottom of what they re upset about fast and furious. holy concocted on the fringe of the right and nurtured by fox news. john boehner shouldn t be talking about fast and furious. he shouldn t be talking about any of this, but that in particular. i just have to say one thing to my friend michael. yes, we want to get out our base. but when harry reid talks about the koch brothers they are oligarcs pouring millions of dollars into our political process in large measure to line their own pockets. they re not lining deeply right-wing agenda. that s not a lie. the rest of this is based on lies. are we now calling robert gates a lion? leon pi n leon panetta a liar? the benghazi stuff is really, really dirty. the koch brother is doing what everybody is doing on the left. and they re doing it through their wallets, through political action commit feeps they re doing it in very legal ways. you can buy it or not buy it. that s your prerogative. the same in terms of what the parties are talking about more broadly. i get on one level there may be concerned about how we do some of the stuff or do we push that envelope as far as we should. but there are 12i8 still substantive questions on all the issues that should be discussed. what are they? you have the floor, michael. i want to ask you this. do you believe leon panetta, a credible moderate democrat, do you think he went out there to kill chris stevens? me let him lie in the field? of course not. do you believe that loi lois lerner who is a bureaucrat was sitting there talking to the obama people about how to screw the right wing? do you believe she s in cahoots with the that we re still investigating, chris. we don t know. she hasn t told us. she is a federal employee probably for life and you re y saying she s can i just say something about don t use that word with me. that says something that you re not a stoner. don t start talking like one. go ahead, joan. here s theling about loi lois lerner. she exercised her fifth amendment right, we all have them. eli january cummings talked about this. her lawyer made a proffer to darrell issa s committee and the committee that congressman cummings sits on. he was willing to give a vague outline of what she knows to talk about some kind of possible, you know, protection from prosecution. they wouldn t even go there with her. they were much more interested in a witch hunt and a trial. you don t get to say to the congress of the united states on something like this, oh, we ll just tell you vaguely what we were doing. not vaguely. you just used that determine. the cavalry has arrived on the democratic side which it rarely does. we ve caught him. the american people have caught the republicans making money on this. and this is something that s not up for debate, right? the national republican campaign committee is out there raising money on the house select committee hear on benghazi with an e-mail that reads, quote, stand with congressman trey gowdy, the benghazi select committee as we fight for the truth about what happened with the benghazi attack. help fight liberals by donating today. using benghazi, including one from super hog john bolton. here s how politico describes it. a john bolten e-mail accused obama, clinton and leon panetta ofrefusing to admit leaving americans to die at the house of terrorists. and elijah cummings called on speaker boehner to end republican fundraising off the benghazi probe. they have been using the deaths of these four americans for political campaign fundraising. i call the speaker of the house to end that process right now. with all due respect, if the republicans want to fix the problems with their partisan investigation, they need more than just a new chairman. i have tremendous respect for mr. gowdy, and i m glad that he said the fundraising should not be done on the deaths of these four people. and i hope that the republican conference will finally agree with that. we are better than that! here s the question, are they or aren t they? house speaker boehner was questioned rather well by luke russert of nbc about whether it was appropriate to raise money over the deaths of americans overseas. by the way, one of these fundraisers asked for $500 for the four dead americans. it was ruthless. here s luke res sert going after boehner asking if he thinks it s appropriate. speaker boehner, should the nrcc fundraise off your earths with the select committee? our focus is on getting the answers to those families who lost their loved ones. period. is. but should the nrcc, they re fundraising off of it right now? is that the right thing to do? our focus is getting the truth of these four families of the american people. o. the campaign committee, which you are very involved in is fundraising off of this. why is that happening? our focus is getting the truth for the american people and four families. no controlling legal authority. why didn t he answer the question? let s put it out here. he should back up his chairman of the select committee, congressman gowdy is absolutely right. there should be no fundraising on this issue. it is disrespectful to the deceased. it is disrespectful to their families. and it is disrespectful to the process that the republican leadership wants to pursue. so if you re serious about the impact of benghazi, then show it by pulling back off fundraising. you re going to raise your money. you don t have to the chairman of the republican national committee says it s wrong to raise money off of benghazi. yes. i support chairman gowdy 100% on this. he s absolutely right. and the leadership need to back him up. this is a stunning abdication of leadership by john boehner, seriously. but it goes back to when he once said it wasn t his business to tell the american people or the members what to think whether the president was born in this country. for him not to back up trey gowdy to say of course we re not going to fundraise on this and i want to stop, it s stunning he wouldn t do that. you re one of these reporters who keeps your file cabinet in your head the whole time. you remember, you re so good at remembering it, you re right. and by the way, i m sure chairman reince preibus wi everything you say on this. it s horrible, it s ridiculous. morm morally, it s absurd. michael, you caught them on it better than i could. new republican restrictions were going to make it harder for people to vote. in north carolina, we talked about scaring up votes. they re scaring it away. wee got signs now as of the primaries this week in north carolina, a state i ve come to love, they re screwing people out of voting and it s already working. plus, a school assignment, believe this or not in 2014, asking eighth graders out in california to write whether the holocaust was real. was it just an ignorant assignment or evidence that holocaust denyability is gaining ground in schools? finally, let me finish to night with how nasty campaigns can come back to bite you. it comes two days after establishment republicans fend off tea party challengers. but the story behind the headline is not good for progressives. despite its cent setback, the tea party has pushed the republican party so far to the right that the party s establishment candidates are in turn becoming more palatable to its hard right. so the right is getting together. we ll be right back. here at lifk doing our thing: protecting you in ways your credit card company alone can t. get lifelock protection and live life free. 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. [ 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®. that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. we know you do so much more. 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 republicans have launched a nationwide assault to suppress the votes of blacks and other groups likely to vote democrats. there s a frightening new look at the early fruits of those efforts. the state s new laws which the new york times has called the country s most sweeping restrictions on voting in the country were in effect for the first time this tuesday and the results were not pretty. while most of the severe parts of the law don t kick in for a couple of years, not until 2016, election watchdogs on the ground in north carolina are already noticing some disturbing trends. new realities. i according to a summary of monitoring work, quote, the law s disqualifications of votes cast in the wrong precinct caused major confusion. the state s campaign to inform voters about the upcoming id requirement was carried out in a wildly inconsistent manner. when the law kicks into full gear, this is me talking, it will likely only get worse. of course that s the point. republicans in the state have passed the law last year. eliminates same-day voter registrati registration, kills a popular programs to preregister high school students and slashes early voting. a and there are voter id laws. if republicans have the way, what s happening in north carolina will be coming to a city near you. eugene robinson is a political analyst and pulitzer prize winning columnist with the washington post. and brian pearlmudder is with the voter defender project. brian, i want to start with you on the ground. what was your reaction? how do you assess the results of the voter laws as they re affecting the finds of voters and minds of voters and the good people trying to vote? we had over 300 people on the ground in 36 counties in north carolina. what we noticed was that people were confused when they came to vote, especially in places like boone and in halifax county. voters who were showing up to vote at precincts and the state, you know, in specific counties have been changing and moving precinct locations. that the out of precinct voting regulations that wuld not allow people who are voting out of precinct for their votes to count. folks showing up at the wrong precinct were shuffled around and very confused about where they needed to vote. used to be if you showed up at the wrong precinct, because you went to what you thought was the closest place, they would still count your vote. now what happens? yeah. now your vote doesn t count. you have to be at the right precinct. and so where i was in boone, north carolina, there were students who were showing up on the campus, it s split into two. so students who were showing up with their roommate to go vote at a polling location would be inevitably at the wrong they would pick the wrong precinct and have to walk a little over a mile to get to the other precinct. just regulations like this make it harder for students to vote, republicans to vote. and this is all purposeful. look at this. a republican in north carolina actually went on the record during an interview with the lady sh daily show to gloat about how this would hurt democrats. it s going to kick the democrats in the butt. if it hurts lazy blacks, so be it. and it just so happens a lot of those people vote democrat? gee. well, you know, it s amazing when you have the eye of the tiger here. anyway, yellen was forced to resign. you re not supposed to say it out loud. what you re supposed to say out loud is this is to protect the integrity of the voting process. we can t have voter fraud. this is all ostensibly to solve a problem that doesn t exist. no, they have a problem, though. it s a different problem. democrats are voting democrats. it solves a different problem. aren t you amazed? you grew up in south carolina. you saw it all. were you surprised this guy was willing to come out and say this is to keep blacks from voting. i was surprised, actually. even back then they would keep up a pretext. they would say they were looking for truly literate voters. they wouldn t say lazy blacks. he talks like mr. poll tax, mr. literacy law. he doesn t seem to have any problem saying that. when you go around there, are you surprised that people are so openly or are they so openly flagrant about the goal to keep blacks from voting? yeah, i think that there is this intense reactionary wave of people in north carolina, but there s also a group of folks, you know, in this grassroots earth that is mobilizing people in north carolina to fight back nens against these immoral laws. people are tired in north carolina and they want, you know, the voting process to be meaningful. so we ve been mobilizing people on the ground and all over the place to really fight back against this legislation. by november, is there going to be a fair vote in north carolina or is it going to be tilted? the table tilted against kay hagan from getting reelectriced. the laws, the way people are being reinforced, is this going to tilt the table against kay hagan? i think what we re seeing right now, and hopefully, everyone is able to vote in north carolina. but what we saw in the primary, and this is a primary election, where there s a very small turnout. people were already confused about what was happening with this law. when it was being implemented, if they needed an id. some people were asking folks and telling them they needed an id for 2016. other precincts, they wouldn t ask and tell people about these regulations. it s creating this confusion and this hysteria in north carolina. and when you have millions and millions of dollars coming into the state, the last thing we need is more confusion and more la i i layers on top of that. we re going to be on the ground making sure everyone can get to the polls. it is definitely a concern that we have. so you have boehner in the white shirt doing the white shirt job. his job is to get out the crazy right wingers, scaring them about benghazi and irs and fast and furious. even though these are words he would normally not speak. at the same time, you scare up the vote on the right, you have to scare up the liberal vote. it s pretty much two-pronged. tilts the playing field. why are they doing this when they re already ahead? this is what nixon did and ruined his career. this is what he did in 72 when they were going to kill mcgovern. but they had to go break into offices and cover it up. why are they going so crazy here. they re going to win anyway. they may not be sure they re that far ahead. you look at the polls. north carolina is a state that s been changing. they got a huge hispanic vote now. you know, it s a changing state. it s changing week by week. it s not as secure as you think. when you roll up the score in any game, you pay later for it. i think they re trying to roll it up in a nasty way. thank you, gene robinson. they re skeptical, but i think they would be in good shape now if they weren t so dir about it. up next, a new washington project michelle bachmann was for before she was against this project. this is hardball a place for politics. you probably know xerox as the company that s all about printing. but did you know we also support hospitals using electronic health records for more than 30 million patients? or that our software helps over 20 million smartphone users remotely configure e-mail every month? or how about processing nearly $5 billion in electronic toll payments a year? in fact, today s xerox is working in surprising ways to help companies simplify the way work gets done and life gets lived. with xerox, you re ready for real business. or how ornate the halls are. tall the building is, and life gets lived. it doesn t matter if there are granite statues, or big mahogany desks. when working with an investment firm, what s really important is whether the people behind the desks actually stand behind what they say. introducing the schwab accountability guarantee. if you re not happy with one of our participating investment advisory services, we ll refund your program fee from the previous quarter. it s no guarantee against loss and other fees and expenses may still apply. chuck vo: standing by your word, that s what matters the most. 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(husband) that s good to know. nineteen years ago, we thought, wow, how is there no way to tell the good from the bad? so we gave people the power of the review. and now angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. you can easily buy and schedule services from top-rated providers. conveniently stay up to date on progress. and effortlessly turn your photos into finished projects with our snapfix app. visit angieslist.com 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! . i m page hopkins here s what s happening. the house has voted to investigate benghazi. speaker john boehner insists the focus of the pabl will be finding the truth about the panel that left four americans dead. nigeria helps in the zsearch fo more than 200 schoolgirls. and there s at least two tornadoes confirmed in minnesota. now we re going to take you back to hardball. steven noted survivors of other unimaginable crimes. every day that you have lived, every child and grandchild that your families have brought into this world has served as the ultimate rebuke to evil and the ultimate expression of love and hope and you are an inspiration to every single one of us. on behalf of all of us, thank you for the example of your lives and sharing your stories with us in the world. welcome back to hardball. that was president obama last night speaking at steven spielbe spielberg s shoa foundation, which documents the stories of holocaust survivors. there s a reminder as to why it s so important that survivors share their stories with the world. because believe it or not. there are teachers in america who are actually encouraging debate about whether the holocaust ever took place. the rialto unified school district gave its eighth grade students perhaps the most disturbing, ignorant essay assignment imaginable this spring. when tragic events occur in history, there s a debate about their actual existence. for example, some people claim the holocaust is not an actual historical event but instead is a propaganda tool that was used for political purpose and monetary gain. based upon your research in this issue, write an argumentative essay in which you can explain whether or not you believe the holocaust was an actual event in history or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth. after the district was criticized for that assignment, school board fishes who first defended that assignment, but the board later apologized. the associate dean recently spoke at a rialto school board meeting. and with me is a special guest tonight, martin goldsmith, a journey of remembrance. he traces the root members of his own family took as they tried to flee the holocaust and were subsequently taken to au auschwi auschwitz. his grandfather and uncle beth perrished there at that death camp. i want to start with the bad news then a get to this excellent book by martin goldsmith. rabbi, tell me about this what was your reaction when you heard about the fact that school kids were given an open question arnt parentally, was there a holocaust. well, actually, chris, first offal all, amen to what the president said last night about survivors and the unique role they play with young people in terms of giving hope and guidance for the future. the actual reality was a lot worse. it wasn t just one teacher. there were five teachers who collaborated on this project. there was someone within the district curriculum who reviewed it. we still don t know if this was just the ultimate stupidity or something worse. but 2,200 eighth graders in rialto were given 18 pages to look at, told to quote reliable documentation, which was quote, unquote, provided. anne frank was a hoax. stuff down loaded from hate sites. maybe it was supposed to be designed for critical thinking, but what it did was elevated hate with historic fact. and maybe one of the good news i reported to you, there was another call that was down there last night. thankfully, we still have a few holocaust survivors and they ll be there to give a human face, the human touch to these unbelievable statistics. to humanize what happened after the holocaust is important. this will allow a person to come to their own conclusion, current events are part of the basis for measuring iq. the middle east, israel, palestine and the holocaust are on newscasts discussing current events, teaching how to come to your own conclusion based on the facts to test your position, be able to articulate that position then depend your belief with a lucid argument is essential to good citizenship. martin, i ve watched for years when people who are jewish go on c-span even and you get this reaction from crazy people. anybody who reads these follow-up comments online. the anti-semitism is out there. but here teachers saying that s one point of view. exactly. it s astounding. and my grandfather and uncle were two of the 6 million, two of the 1.1 to 1.5 million people murdered 234 auschwitz. i was outraged when i heard about this. you went back and just for your own human need went back and retraced how people who were in your family on the st. louis that was sent back from america, sent back from cuba, ending up in three-quarters of the cases going to the death camp. exactly right. my grandfather alex goldschmidt, helmut goldschmidt, more than 200 refugees turned away first from cuba then the united states, then canada. the ship sailed back to europe. my grandfather and uncle got off the boat in france, spent the next three years in various french concentration camps before being shipped to their deaths in auschwitz in 1942. three years ago, my wife and i retraced their steps beginning in the small lore saxony village where my grandfather was born in 1879, going to all the places in france they were held and hitting in the polish city where auschwitz is. that s important to go back, tell the human story of a guy like this who i ve been listening to on radio, classical music. somebody you know says look, my family, i went back and traced it. it happened in human terms. we know they have all the names in israel of people who were killed. but these people keep from 5.5 million visitors to the museum of tolerance. young people want to know the truth. they will identify with the message. sometimes they have more common sense than the adults in the room. but when you have teemp, five of them, and an assignment on core things of teaching about critical thinking down loading hate material, you know, what s next? we monitor websites that say harken back to the great old days of slavery and say blacks were better off then or the martin luther king website that s put up by white supremists that denigrate. we should be using the hate materials to teach critical thinking, not legitimatizing the hate message to young minds. it really was a disastrous dpigs on the ground. and we ll take care of the young people that went through this, but i sure hope the rialto school district will take a hard look in the mirror. something is very broken there. some holocaust deniers say give me a chance i ll finish the job. and then tler other biogots who say i don t want to deal with what happened. those people are in some way more dangerous. the great irony is i think the government of germany has, as a country, i was just over in berlin with my wife, you see the way they ve recognized it with berlin with that encredible memorial to the horror. and at least they re doing that over there now. anyway, thank you. rabbi and my new friend albert goldschmi goldschmidt. it s a great human story. it really is a great story about going back and it s a road picture, if you will, of a man tracing a tragedy. it s a great book to read. hey there can i help you? 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(whispering) we ll take it. 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. koch industry s 88% political contributions are to republicans. georgia based flowers foods, parent company of wonderbread. of the political contributions they ve made, more than 99% has gone to republican candidates. well, the company that gives the greatest percentage to democratic candidates, citizens bank, the american subsidiary of the royal bank of scotland. we ll be right back. i m m-a-r-y and i have copd. 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 [ 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®. we know you do so much more. (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. if you just stayed with these sim boards, you wouldn t have those are problems with those highfalutin computers. get it right. weigh know who the democratic nominee is going to be and no one is going to dispute it, keith. sometimes in campaigns the candidate is the last to recognize the best timing. i remember that when he counted the ballots, he counted the delegates in 2008 and it looked like barack obama was winning and he named the fact that he was winning and had won the nomination fight. next month will mark six years since the death of my friend. he drew answers that in some cases changed political history. his son, luke russert, of course, has written of course he is his son but has written the preface of the tenth anniversary paper back edition of tim s book about his dad, big russ & me. i know why i loved my dad. he was my best friend. but now years after his death, i often wonder why the guy who threw around games, made me laugh and recite vocabulary cards. my dad could relate to anyone. luke russert is nbc s congressional correspondent and joins me right now. luke, it s great. thanks for having me. first of all the book was great. if luke russert tim russert had not been a star of our immediate wrum, of news gathering and news analysis this book still would have been great. what s great about it, you have come far because you ve done all of this in your youth. but your dad came from a regular family, working-class family. his father was a garbage man. and what i love in fact, we were talking how we re careful with our garbage now. we always make sure the senior producer and i agree, we make sure personally because of this book never to leave sharp objects in the hefty bags because they cut the hands are or the guys. the garbage guys. the moment that got to me in this book you have to read this book is the emotional moment when tim is riding around in a garbage truck with his dad. and even though that s not the most celebrated job in the world, the pride he had in being with his dad. it s something that resonate ed so vividly with him. and i remember my father often talking about how he was able to interview popes and presidents. but some of his proudest memories were, in fact, on that garbage truck with my grandfather. and one of the things he documents in the book he learned the val you you of hard work on the back of that garbage truck, and that he knew for a fact after he did it for a summer there s no way he could have lasted the dozens and dozens of years my grandfather did it. one he especially poignant mome my father decides he s going to go on to college and graduate school and succeed, it s the last day in the garbage truck he takes off his uniform and throws in the back and the guy riding says you ll be back soon enough. he says, no, i m not coming back. i have to get out of here. my grandfather is very supportive of that but wanted him to know the meaning of hard work, the meaning of what would happen if you flunked out. it was remarkable. when i complain about a writing assignment late at night, i think how hard my dad worked. i can do it. your dad was driven, driven to get the answers. he was like an irish cop if in the interrogation room. finding out the answer. i watched him on meet the press. he would come in with that m manila folder. he would keep it aside. during the interview he d open up with the real question, david duke, why did you hate america so much that you joined the nazi party? and there was no answer. or you say the three biggest job producers are the issue and he had no idea who they were. what his method was, he learned in law school. he was prosecutorial. his idea was nobody was going to outresearch him. he would read constantly. he would read at work. he would read at home. he would have mounds and mounds and mounds of research. tons of legal briefings, if you will. and he would read it all, and he would anticipate ten steps ahead from whatever answer his guest would give. oftentimes you see now, you come forward as a host and i ve been guilty of doing it as well and i m sure you are. you have three or four thoughtout questions and you don t listen clearly enough to the response his guest was giving. he was an aggressive listener and would sometimes throw away his preprepared questions. excuse me, what you said is spin. the reason i know i read all these documents. this follow-up is key. of all the time, the best question comes out of the last answer, which is true. i could do it all day. i m here to sell the book. i think it s a great personal story about america. this is. it s a story of growing up. and it s about fathers and sons. i m going to read your preface. you re very kind. thank you for having me. we ll be right back after this. 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. 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. whatever happened to good? good is choosing not to overshoot the moon, but to land right on it. good is maxwell house. good to the last drop let me finish tonight with this insidious plan to scare up right-wing voteders and scare off the votes the of those who tend to vote democratic. this is just the kind of campaign mentality that leads to trouble on the part of those who pursue it. everyone knows the republicans are heading for a good election night this november. they are poised to win the senate. poised, at least, and to pick up five to ten seats in the house of representatives. you know it. they know it. believe me, smart democrats know it. so why this plan to roll up the score are to bring out the crazies on the right and drown out 0 the progressives including many minorities who will be intimidated by the new republican pushed voter laws. i ve watched how exactly this kind of stuff blows up in your face. it did with richard nixon in 1950 when he called his senator opponent pink right down to her underwear and when he took a sure win for re-election and turned it into watergate. the trouble with nasty politics like the kind we re getting from the house leadership is it makes you look nasty. it makes it look like you re moneygrubbing on the debts of those four american depp mats, like you re ready to kill a little more faith in government to get a few more votes. it s a rotten deal, and the people who play it will pay for it. maybe not this year but in the years to come.
we look forward to seeing that kick off. that s going to do it for a wednesday edition of way too early. morning joe starts right now. the top democrat in the u.s. senate majority leader harry reid has now mentioned the bill nra koch brothers this year more than 140 times. er in in it to make the money. an attempt to buy our democracy. it s dishonest, deceptive, farce and unfair. it is wrong. incorrect. [ laughter ] erroneous. [ laughter ] even the keystone debate, mr. president, they re one of the main owners of all that stuff up there. that ugly tar stuff in canada. they are, if not the largest, second largest owner of that stuff up there. [ laughter ] good morning. hey will. good morning, it s wednesday, may the 14th, on set, along with me, we ve got joe here that s here. that s all. msnbc. it s a good show, right? yes. you can t always predict who is going to be here. it s exciting. it s interesting, it remains the name of the show. mike barnicle is here. former communications director for george w. bush, nicolle wallace. jon stewart went in last night. and landed another blow right here. this guy spent millions fighting online gambling. tens of millions fighting organized labor. in the 2012 presidential election he gave $90 million to republican candidates. perhaps because he thought he would help him take on quote, radical islam and unions. yeah, that s right. laugh harry reid is going to crush this guy. so don t pick on him. wait? sorry, what did you say there? don t pick on the billionaire that puts money in politics. he s not in this for money. he s in it because he has certain ideological views. [ laughter ] what the [ bleep ] difference does that make? [ laughter ] what are his ideological objections to online that the largest gambling casino has? i can t tell overt internet who is under age. i can t tell whose got financial difficulties. i can t tell who is not gaming responsibly. but if you come to my casino [ laughter ] you don t enter without answering a very detailed financial solvency questionnaire. if you lost john stevens, you lu lost everything. he didn t make a distinction between the koches and the adelsons. and also speaking of daily show skits, let s continue with news about karl rove. karl rove is dullinging down that hillary clinton should be prepared for scrutiny about her health if she decides to run in 2016. the republican strategist pushed back who claimed he openly claimed the former first lady had brain damage. he said, of course, she doesn t have brain damage. still, it s pretty clear where he s trying to aim voters attention. my point was, if hillary clinton were going to run for president, but she would not be human if this didn t enter into consideration. this will be a topic in the 2016. they will be 69. she will be 77 if she serves two terms and this ends up being an issue. clinton s spokesperson blasted rove s remarks saying hillary clinton has recovered 100% from the blood clot from 2012. a republican and the white house getting involved as well. this was not clever. this wasn t an insinuation. this was karl rove running head first into a brick wall. nothing drives people away from a decent office than this kind of attack. they say why would i put my family through this. it weakens in both parties, it weakens the fabric of both. here s what i say about cognitive capacity, that dr. rove might have been the last person on election night to recognize and acknowledge that the president won re-election in the state of ohio. we ll leave it at that. go back to the newt gingrich comment it weakens the fabric. that s tough talk coming from newt. we go fresh off the thrilla in manila. we ll let you be the one around the table to defend karl rove this moraning. he didn t say brain damage he said she was wearing a kind of glasses that were associated with severe brain trauma or something like that. which i find this fascinating because she wore coke bottle glasses in college. you have ever seen those pictures of hillary in the late 60s and early 70s? what s karl thinking? i think she couldn t wear her sunglasses, she they gave her a pair of glasses. she was wearing the same style four years ago and her traumatic brain injury didn t get in the way of being the most successful secretary of state in history. let me try to explain karl. what karl let me try to explain karl. hey, i feel different. karl didn t just stumble into this line of questioning about hillary clinton s health, okay? he s one of the most prepared and deliberate speakers. and when he gave speeches at the white house, people were always doing you know, reading research. so this karl s nature, is that things are talked through. he plans these types of thing. so are you telling me that he thought through this before saying this? well, i think he thought through and is probably, you know, maybe not in front of what s his strategy? well, i think injecting questions about her health crisis from a few years ago is something that karl thinks is fair game. and i think that the fact that we re having a three-day conversation about hillary s age and health, he is in this objective. it s not about hillary s age and health. it s about whether karl rove suffered brain damage. well, to some. but some of the people that may be thinking about 2016 have definitely given some thought to she is giving it all she has. that s all i ve got. karl rove you know what can we go back to jon stewart, is there anything else? you gave us an ending. i mean listen, katrina was easy compared to this. well, when you rebecome president, you release the results of your colonoscopy. you know what karl was trying to do. if she becomes president, there will be countless discussions, over the years she will release her this comes directly from the stupid part of it you re talking about. ronald reagan got inaugurated at 69. when he starts at 69 and leads at 77, i think about ronald reagan. that s not a bad thing. there anything that they can device to try and diminish hillary clinton, they re going to use brain damage, benghazi, boko haram now. that s what this is. that s all this is. jim peters go ahead. i was going to follow up on what nicole was saying, she s exactly right, this is not accidental. hillary s health is something that democratic strategist have been whippering about for about a year now, when they talk about what can ruin her candidacy, it s always a question of her health. here s a case of the most public visible case really spilling out into the open. now, one thing i think this is not, and you ve heard some of this chatter over the last couple of days, i don t think this is sexist. i think you would have had these questions come up about biden. it s ageist. nicholl, remember i told you, they released that ad, how many houses did john mccain have? well, he can t quite remember. that was an attack against his family wealth and his age. and his age, right. these questions were going to come out, anyway. i think the question is whether or not karl rove has temporarily taken it off the table by being so crass about it. but the other thing that shouldn t get lost, it is interesting, look at how the clintons respond. their first response is pretty funny. she s 100%. but they escalated throughout the day to near hysteria through the end of the day, whoever gave the initial response should be given the job of rapid response and whoever gave the second or two should be the understudy. for people that don t sit around sets like this or don t talk to journalists, there have been questions off camera, speculation. i only say this because jerry was talking about republicans. it wasn t just republican a lot of reporters were worried about her health. of course, they had absolutely no evidence whatsoever. they were worried. they were worried with justification after that fall. with some justification, it took her a while to come back but it was speculation. and karl rove didn t help himself and he didn t help the republican party by speculating like he did. when we get the results of all of these personal data, colonoscopies and everything else, i think we ll find out she s healthy as a horse. there you have it. marco is clarifying remarks? yeah, going back to the climate change remarks. senator rubio found himself the target of unwanted headlines after he recently entered the climate change debate talking at the national press club. the potential 2016 presidential contender tried to clarify remarks he made on sunday. here are the original remarks and what he had to say about them yesterday. i don t agree with the notion that some are putting out there including scientists that somehow that are actions that have is an impact on our climate. let me get this straight, you do not think that the human activity, the production of co2 is caution changes? i do not believe that human activity is causing changes the way the scientists are portraying. i do not propose the laws they pass will do anything about it. headlines notwithstanding, of course, the climate is changing because climate is always changing, that s a measurable you can see. there is climate change. i ve never conceded that the climate is not changing. that s not the question before me as a policymaker. the question before me as a policymaker, is that if we ban all coal in the u.s., if we ban all carbon emission information the united states, will it change the dramatic changes in climate and the dramatic weather impacts that we re now reading about? and anyone that says that we will, it not being truthful. but for you to go out and say if you pass this bill that i am proposing this will somehow lead to us have less tornadoes and hurricanes, that s not an accurate statement. seems rational to me. listen, i may be out of step with my party on this. i don t know where you have to live to think that the climate isn t changing dramatically. and miami is one of those places where they haven t seen dramatic change. it s not the same thing as acknowledging that climate change is real. i guess what s interesting about this, i m not exactly sure who marco s audience is. he says he believes in climate change. i do believe, like he said, that we re not going to pass legislation they re going to stop tornados and hurricanes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and the left is but that s a defensible position. that is a more defensible position. but i m just saying all the republicans i ve talked to. and i ve been talking to a lot of them for a very long time over the past four or five years, they believe in climate change, they believe that humans are responsible for climate change. the only thing they don t believe that the federal government could combat and impose massive cut jacks because it makes extremist and trillion they res. without getting china and other parts of the world that are doing more. they re doing more, actually. right. so in a time in the world, everybody is saying, steve, we ll go to you, we re going to be in competition with china for the next 100 years and china is going to outcompete us. at that time, we re supposed to usually disarm and let the chinese continue to damage the atmosphere more than us? and we re supposed to be worried about what tom steyer and other people say? i don t believe that. and even if we do what we do in that direction, without putting millions of americans out of work. i agree. first, the same people, the middle people, do want to have some kind of coordinated change to climate change. they re so effective? the reason, nicole, they are not effective, if you re a country on your way up, and you don t have all the resources and you say, wait a minute, you guys have polluted the air for 200 years, don t i get a chance to pollute the air for a while while i m economically developed. china, they don t have any clean energy. they have coal. and imported oil and really expensive natural gas and that s it. and they don t have any nuclear yet. so it s going to be very hard for them to do what they have to do, but he have to do it. and it thirdly, joe, there are policies, nonetheless, there are policies out there that we could put in place that would destroy millions of jobs that would put us on a path for a more responsive behavior. for example, we ve not increased the gas tax since 1983. the highway trust fund is going broke. we could raise the gas tax, rebate that to americans so it didn t cost jobs and get more balanced. jeremy peters on the hill, you look at polls, and i don t think climate change is at the top when it comes to intensity. i would suspect because of that we re not going to see another pass or do anything on the climate for quite some time. democrat stride in 2009. even the president was reluctant to get involved but they dragged him into that battle at the last minute. any legislation on the hill that marco rubio would have to be concerned about voting on before the election and the rest of the candidates? there was a bill that fell apart this week in the senate, an energy bill that was actually quite modest, the fact that it fell apart in a filibuster just shows how difficult it is to get even the smallest things through on climate. what well, you have your moderate democrats that like the landrieus and others who do not support this legislation? no, it fell over keystone. there was a land mass that landrieu and bagich wanted to approve. the white house has not decided what it s going to do. and if it ultimately decides it s not going after this, they are going to wait until after the legislation to do that because they don t want it to hurt senators like begich and landreau. i thought it was fascinating having the canadian ambassador here last week. he kept doing the talking points that i thought came from the koch brothers, i asked him where he got it, he said, oh, the state department study. our state department? our state department. this is one of the most widely overpoliticized decisions. a lot of very rich liberals don t want barack obama to pass this legislation. and what do they have to worry about? because they got millions and millions of dollars. it s just the 50,000 people that aren t going to have jobs because of it. i hope that makes you feel better. go to your yacht, polish it you won t polish it, you ll have somebody else polish it. that would be a really good paying job that makes you feel bad about yourself. have them buff your fingernails, too. coming up on morning joe, we re going to be talking to senators rob portman and john tester about some of the most pressing issues in washington including the keystone pipeline and the controversy surrounding the v.a. that s atrocious. and former yankee great willie randolph is going to be on set. and larry kudlow and joy reid. and miles nadal. former secretary time geithner is standing by. first, though, not fun, bill karins. across the country, just a crazy weather pattern. record highs on the coast. it s been snowing a couple days in colorado. how about this yesterday, it was 52 in boston. that was it. in d.c., it was 92. 40-degree swing in the northeast alone. this morning, we are tracking showers and a few storms up there around the capital district, albany, schenectady and troy. and albany you ve got showers, pittsburgh, a shower or two. later this afternoon, cooler today in d.c. and baltimore than yesterday. this is where we should be this time of year in the 70s. chance of storms from pittsburgh to buffalo. and how about out west. the drought is bad enough. now we re getting one heat wave an another. areas that don t see a lot. san francisco, san diego, 90s to 100 today. how about this for l.a., 101 today. 100 tomorrow. we finally cool it off by the weekend but the fire danger is really high. and in the middle of the country, i mean, it s cold. it s a chilly, cold morning. a lot of extremes out there. if we re going to get any tornadoes 0 are severe weather, we ll watch out for you from nashville to louisville, back up to the ohio valley. more morning joe when we continue. we ll be right back. when folks think about what they get from alaska, 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. he gets a ready for you alert the 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it could have been canada, luxembourg. but, no, this guy was former u.s. treasury secretary. he s out with a new book stress test: reflections on financial crisis. wait wait to read this. i m glad you finally got more people in the treasury department. let s start there. you had a couple of dogs wandering the hallways the first year. it was actually hard. that was a challenge. you could hear the echoes of footsteps. you had. but that first year, it was so shocking to us that you were going through the financial crisis of our lifetime and you couldn t get staffed. you. we had great people, we really did. i know you had great people. it took you a while, though. what was the challenge? don t say you had great people again. you didn t just win the nfl okay, the super bowl. talk about the tough start. well, the world was burning still. remember, in january 09, the country was falling off the cliff, complete was shrinking at the rate of 9%. we had already put trillions of dollars in the financial system, but things were still frozen or falling apart. right. we had to find a way how to right the ship, how to land a plane safely. yeah, we had challenges. off the top, steve ratnor. ratnorwas fabulous. obviously, this book has ignited talk about what happened. different points of view, left, right, all that stuff. looking back, i think the central concern people have is did we do too much for the banks? did we give them too much money, too cheaply, not fire enough ceos, more pain from the share 408der, more pain from the executives who got bonuses. how do you feel about that? was there stuff that could have been done differently, i know you had legal constraints but wasn t there something that could can be done differently? i think the huge damage done by the crisis and all the bad people that caused the crisis, they say, really, seriously, you couldn t bring a tougher measure of justice more quickly for people. but that was a classic panic. we were risking the great depression. and the first challenge was to land the plane safely. once we landed the plane, we moved quickly to try to clean up the system and bring a much better response. it s true, you could look back and say, was it tough enough on them? but the first obligation, the most important obligation was to protect the risk of massive unemployment, a great depression. we did that, it wasn t messy, but we did that effectively. better than any government has in the last 100 years in a financial crisis. you write about being handed talking points by a white house official it was actually my treasury colleague. i m not trying script you but suggesting messages that you had a pretty visser ral negative reaction to. i certainly have been in the position that they may have been in of wanting a cabinet secretary to echo a message. seeing it from your perspective i know you worked with some of my former colleague in the bush administration. you can talk about how political your job got and how difficult that was? i think one of the most important tests of government in a crisis is the ability to put policy above politics. it s impossible, isn t it? no, it s not. in fact, i think that was a great moment for the united states. if you look at that moment, you know, the transition between a republican and a democratic president, you know, the world at the edge of a great depression. you had two presidents with bipartisan support, mostly from democrats at that point. basically put politics aside. and do what s necessary to help pull the country back from the abyss. it was a pretty big moment. with the t.a.r.p. and all of that? with the first to break the back of the panel. then the stimulus to put money back in the hands directly of the american people. and then the range of the financial system. i got a pretty good test of government at a terrible time. and we passed that test much better than other governments who sat there, were paralyzed by their politics. or played politics with the crisis. a pretty good moment for the bank. you mentioned in january 2009, we were on the brink. that was a term we heard a lot. the country s about to go over the cliff in the fall of 2008. what does that mean explicitly and specifically? i mean, what would have happened if we hadn t taken that step back? take a look at the great depression, there s no memory of it. you know, people didn t live through it. but in the great depression, unemployment went to 25%. and gdp fell by 25%. and it took a decade to try to get back to some measure of security for people. and that s because we allow it as a country, a financial panic torsion escalate and bring the system to collapse. and why does that happen, it s like the lights going out. it s like the power not functioning. if the company can t get oxygen, people can t borrow and businesses fire people on a brutal scale and people are trying to protect themselves. that produces a certain set of conditions, panic leads to crash. that s why it s so damaging. and then, of course, they have massive innocent victims in that content. so how close were we? right at the edge. paulson wrote he thought we were three days away from the atms not working. people were talking about burying gold in their backyards. you could hear panic and fear in the voice of the leaders of the world and largest corporations at that time. mika does that. unrelated to the economy. jeremy peters is in washington, the new york times has got a question for the secretary, mr. secretary. mr. geithner, one of the prime takeaways of this book is just how complicated your relationship with larry summers is. he promoted you to various senior positions. he was your mentor. and as you know, the president was strongly considering him for chairman. federal reserve, twice, actually. do you think that president obama made a mistake by not picking him? no, i think that janet yellen is going to be excellent. i watched her make judgments at a very complicated time. and i think she s going to be an excellent chairman. i have just huge respect for larry summers, i think month more talented person in the country. henry kissinger said about larry summers, you should give him a permanent office in the oval office to vent any idea. he s a great person to work for. he s a pretty challenging, demanding guy. i used to say, what matters is the ratio between the thrill and the torture. and with larry, the thrill was higher? much greater than the torture. a couple issues before we wrap it up, one, what you had to say about elizabeth warren s hearing. she said she were made for youtube hearings, sort of show trial, explain. well, that was sort of a gentle way to put it. like they were witchhunt, talk about that? i ve got a lot of respect for her. it doesn t sound like it. i do. she did a great job in standing up with the agency and protecting from a form of abuse. she was excellent. there s a lot of oversight process. what made them show trials? well, you know, people didn t like what we were doing. it was unpopular stuff. it was essential, necessary stuff, very effective stuff but it was deeply offensive to people. it looked like we were giving money to the arsonists. the core paradox of what it takes to break a financial panic to keep the lights on. and there are going to be collateral beneficiaries of that. and that s deeply offensive. she gave a lost voice to that concern and she was very eloquent in making that case. speaking of arsonists, a handful of banks still control 50%. too big has gotten even big. you re right, you always worry about too big to fail. and this is something we should always worry about. it s like a federal war. you should be on it. the big bank s concern, still approaching 50%? well that s not the way to think about it. that risk for the country is say much lesser risk today because of reforms we put in place. i ll give you examples. we mate capital requirements the limits on risk much, much more conservative than they were before the crisis. why? we had much better tools to put banks on the line when they screw up. let s say they re not going to because they ve strengthened. let s say citi has a crisis, we re bailing them out or do we let citi fail? we re in a much better position to let them fail that doesn t do too much damage. was it a mistake not to save lehman brothers? it s not like financial security. we don t give presidents a set of tools to react. we don t do that because of other concerns. we don t want to leave the market with expectation. if you could do it all over again, would you? if we had the authority with the authority, would you save lehman brothers? you don t want to save everybody in a financial crisis. it s a mistake to do that. you have to make sure you do we didn t have this authority until after the panic. we want to make sure we can protect the rest from the failure of the rest. you want to make them fail to use a different metaphor, you want to draw a fire brig around the couordinates. should they have been saved? in retrospect, with full knowledge at that time, what we should have done, we would have escalated much more quickly to prevent the panic from spreading. of course, now, we ultimately did that, but it took a lot more work because the fire was burning too hot at that point. all right, tim geithner, thank you so much for coming in. thank you, nice to see you guys. the book is stress test: reflections on the financial crisis. you can read exempts on our website mojo/msnbc.com. first, americans are hitting the bottle harder than ever before, we ll explain why in your morning papers and morning joe sports next. de who s got twond rhooves and just got ae. claim status update from geico? this guy, that s who. sfx: bing. and i just got a.oh no, that s mom. sorry. claim status updates. just a tap away on the geico app. the expedia app helps you save with mobile-exclusive deals download the expedia app text expedia to 75309 expedia, find yours and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase i make a lot of purchases for my business. like 60,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards even cash back. and my rewards points won t expire. so you can make owning business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can. all right. let s take a look at some of the morning papers. the wall street journal crews, are racing to save hundreds of miners after a deadly accident in turkey. at least 201 people are dead with more than 200 others still trapped deep underground. almost a mile under there. the coal mine is located in the town. soma, about 150 miles from istanbul. nearly 800 people were in the mine when a fire triggered an explosion. the fire is under investigation. two children are recovering from serious injuries after a gust of wind swept away one of those bouncy houses. my son loves those. oh, my gosh. this is that bouncy house that parents like myself. and me. and you. have been putting in your yards for your young kids birthday parties. three children were playing inside one of these bouncy houses when it was ripped from its stakes and sent it flying high in the air. a witness took this photo that we were showing. you one child escaped with only minor injuries. look at that. look how high those three little children are up inside that bouncy house. one escaped with no injuries. another boy has some broken bones after falling 15 to 20 feet in a parking lot. while the third has a serious is head injuries after landinging on a car. this is horrifying. terrifying. horrific. they re usually staked down when you see them in the yard. but maybe that s not strong enough when the wind picks up. from the parade of papers the san francisco chronicle, google wrote the global web of dominance got more difficult. the right to be forgotten. meaning google can be forced to erase links to content about individual people on its search engines. that includes documents. the quote, other documents, very important for mike barnicle. if there s ever going to be a senior staffer for elizabeth warren, he will not pass through the background check. that s correct. because of the quote, other documents. other documents that are in mike barnicle s computer main frame. your confirmation are going to be interesting. legal experts say this decision will only impact operations in europe and citizens of the e.u. and from the l.a. times, army sergeant kyle white is the latest recipient of the congressional medal of money for this heroism in afghanistan in 2007. white was honored for his actions for his ambush where he helped other soldiers and maintained radio contact all while injured. some were present at the ceremony. he s the seventh living recipient for a medal of honor for actions in iraq and afghanistan. sergeant white is going to be joining us in the studio on monday. can t wait to meet him. the telegraph, the united states has become the world s biggest consumer of wine, all right, passing france for the first time in history. that s something to be proud of, right. a new study said wine drinking continues to climb at a record pace, meanwhile, the popularity of wine is fading in france. u.s. consumers bought 2.9 billion liters of wine. still, the average frenchman drinks six times more wine than the american. so per capita was trailing behind. we got to get to work on that. willie, nba playoff action. a wild one between the clippers and thunder. let s go to the fourth quarter. okc had been down about 13 points with four minutes left. kevin pierce. and durant on the break lays it in. a two-point game. clippers quick inbound to chris paul. he turns it over. no foul called. the ball ends up out of bounds. this one is reviewed. and in a controversial call, the thunder get the ball back. so 11 seconds to play. another controversial call. russell westbrook of oklahoma city is fouled shooting a three. he hits all three foul shots. the thunder take a 105-104 lead. with six seconds on the clock, chris paul is stripped. he loses the ball again. the thunder come back for a 105-104 win. and a 3-2 series lead. clipsers head coach doc rivers was steaming after the game. that s our ball. we win the game, and we got robbed because of that ball. it s clear, everybody in the arena saw it everybody was shocked when they said oklahoma city. that was our ball. we got two more games to play. but that could be a series-defining call. and that s not right. wow, that s pretty strong. the series goes back to l.a. society clippers get a chance to even the series back there. the wizards blew out the pacers. they were on the brink of elimination. 102-79. it s coming back to d.c. tonight, the nets fight for their lives in miami. miami can close that out, and the spurs can do the same against the blazers. what about the rangers, down 3-1. 3-1 in the series come all the way back against the mighty pens. a couple of good one in the stanley cup playoffs. blackhawks and wild in game six. and the rangers and penguins in a huge game seven. and he scores! patrick kane, one hand, and chicago is headed to the western conference final. carried back off the wing and worked on by mcdonough. swatted on the cross. score! and the rangers are going to the conference final. rangers come all the way back down, 3-1 in the series to win game seven. they ll face the winner of tonight s other game seven between the canadiens and the bruins. the blackhawks will face the winner of the ducks/kings. that series is tonight. can the bruins do it, mike? yes, they can. well, those are two evenly matched teams. it s go to be a great game. there will be fights tonight. if you can get boston and new york in the conference finals. still ahead from morning joe from the men who brought you freakonomics. and at 7:00, magic strikes back. he s heard enough from donald sterling. his reaction. he says enough is enough. we ll be right back on morning joe. 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[ male announcer ] ask your doctor about xarelto® today. for more information including savings options, download the xarelto® patient center app, call 1-888-xarelto, or visit teamxarelto.com. this and this. whip up this. munch on that. and dine out on this. that s 7 days a week. no tracking. no counting. no measuring. and you ll start losing weight right away with our 2 week simple start plan. so jumpstart your summer and join for free. try meetings, do it online or both. weight watchers. because it works. time for mika. she s faxed them from the south of france. the wall street journal did she bury her gold in the south of france or westchester county, what do you think? put it evenly. you never know when the people are going to rise up. i mean if marie antonette had buried her gold in two different places she might still be with us. the wall street journal editorial board writes this. harry reid has essentially shut down the senate as a place to debate and vote down policy. he s refused to vote on on all but nine amendments since july. mr. reid is worried some of those amendments might pass with support from democrats, thus embarrassing a white house that opposes them. not too long ago it was understood that any senator could get a floor vote if he wants it. the minority party, often democrats, used this right of amendment to sponsor votes that would sometimes put the majority on the spot. it s called politics. rightly understood, this meant the senate debated national priorities and worked its bipartisan will. jeremy peters, i ve been about cushion harry reid for a couple years, what s with this wall street journal editorial? i think often when you re talking outrage along these lines, it s often a little bit stronger when you are the person who is on the brunt of the perceived injustices. right. and in this case, i think that s what s happening with the wall street journal. i doubt that they would be crying so loudly if this were republicans and not a democrat. but, jeremy, we heard a thousand stories about those terrible republicans that won t pass democratic leases of legislation through the house. the question is can republicans fairly make and i m not leading you here, i m curious, can we not fairly make the aim argument about harry reid not allowing the amendment in the senate? because he thinks it s going to pass? absolutely. this is where republicans have clearly said that harry reid has obstructed business in the senate just as republicans have obstructed it through filibuster. now, which is worse? i m not going to make that call. but you do have to understand, i think, to get a real firm grasp on this debate, you have to understand where this is coming from. and the reason why harry reid does block amendments on these bills is that republicans routinely filibuster everything. all right, very good. willie, what s next? coming up next, we re going to explain the story behind this photograph. ooh. hmm. i hate snakes. oh, i hate snakes, especially that kind. stay with us. here at fidelity, we give you the most free research reports, customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. when sales rep steve hatfield books at laquinta.com, so he knows exactly when he can prep for his presentation. and when steve is perfectly prepped, ya know what he brings? and that s how you ll increase market share. any questions? can i get an a , steve? yes! three a s! amazing sales! he brings his a-game! la quinta inns and suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! la quinta! i ve still got it when you think aarp, then you don t know aarp . life reimagined gives you tools and support to get the career you ll love. find more real possibilities at aarp.org/possibilities humans. even when we cross our t s and dot our i s, we still run into problems. namely, other humans. which is why at liberty mutual insurance, auto policies come with new car replacement and accident forgiveness if you qualify. see what else comes standard at libertymutual.com. liberty mutual insurance. responsibility. what s your policy? a lot going on in congress yesterday. there was a hearing. i mean, there s so much going on, boom, boom, boom. real quick, there s a snake in the bathroom at texas a&m. a 12-foot rock python. came in through the back door. a little control and a bucket to get rid of it. it was an aggressive one. it was somebody s pet who got loose. it happens. it happens. willie, you were talking about it yesterday on the judiciary committee hearing. were you watching that? i actually was. very clean people. i was on the judiciary committee. very clean people. hungry people, but a clean people. but those hearings are long. you get hungry. thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank you and member connors for your willingness to work to make progress on this issue, and in making sure that other surveillance cannot be used in a similar way. i m pleased this be addressed in the amendment. take a look, willie, on the right, a lot of ear wax, this happens. check it out. oh, my god. wax smeared on the teeth. seconds, anyone? oh! oh. oh, oh ear wax. that s disgusting. who eats it? it s awful. enjoy your breakfast. oh! that s awful. republican or democrat, joe garcia. democrat. thank you god. okay. they at least have one of them. thank god. the pride of the 26. coming up at the top of the hour, magic johnson reacts to donald sterling in that so-called apology. i cannot believe, he brought up aids? yes, he did. plus, senator rob portman and senator jon tester showing patience for the v.a. scandal. by the way, jon tester very clean ears. chuck todd joins our conversation coming up in a couple minutes. stay with us. 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.. (laughs) im sorry, i have to go. at&t is building you a better network. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. 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[ laughter ] jews help blacks eww unless what he s doing is workshoping new material for donald sterling literally comedy jam. jeremy peters with us. and with us from washington, nbc news correspondent and host of the daily rundown chuck todd. winning columnist and associate editor of the washington post and msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson. we re going to talk in two seconds about the sterling controversy. but, chuck todd, we had a lot of elections last night. a lot of races. a couple have stood out. what are your thoughts? well look, it s a generational change in nebraska. this is a couple of young guys taking over the nebraska republican party. pete ricketts tried to run for the senate a few years back now is a heavy favorite to be governor. and ben sass. i think what s unique about sass, a lot of groups are saying, hey, we want a race, we want a race. but the establishment is split in this race. now, sass went after mitch mcconnell a way back. he did. this is about mcconnell. but paul join was for sass. i had sass on my show yesterday. he said he d vote for mcconnell as leader. she d try to put an end to that. i think he s going to be a little moron johnson than he s going to be ted cruz. a lot of people are trying to figure out where is this guy going to fit on the senate. i d put him more on the johnson side. he s now a big favorite to win state wide, right? slightly. absolutely. and shelly is a heavy favorite in west virginia. be west virginia s first republican senator in over half a century. but she is, dare i call this person a pro-government republican. they do exist, and that s about what you have to be ideologically in place like west virginia which actually likes federal dollars coming into the state because she s going to be somebody like a murkowski, collins, the republicans that do a lot of bipartisan deals. sound goods. let s go straight now, the latest from sterling, some quotes that i can t believe. the earthquake of the sterling interview, the ripple effect continues because we re one day after donald sterling attacked magic johnson. the former laker star is fighting back. magic was dragged into when v. stevian know post evidence this image on instagram. it s a photo made public by tmz sports. and sterling told her not to bring magic johnson or any other african-americans to clippers games to that original racist rant that was made public. it was days ago that sterling went after magic again, this time for having hiv. what has he done? can you tell me? big magic johnson, what has he done? he s a business person. whose got aids. did they do any business? did he help anybody in south l.a. i think it s hiv, it didn t focus on aids. what kind of a guy that has sex with every girl and then he catches hiv. is that something that we want to respect and tell our kids about? i think he should be ashamed of himself. what does he do for the black people? he doesn t do anything. here s a man who we would think would be educated. and a man who would is smart enough to build this type of wealth. he s reaching, he s trying to find on to something that s going to save his team. am i upset? of course. but at the same time, i m a god fearing man. i m going to pray for him and hope that things work out for him. the problem is, he s living in the stone ages. he can t make those comments about african-americans and latinos. he just can t do it. gene, i don t know where to begin with the ignorant statements. let s leave hiv out of it and instead talk about the fact that for a very long time, magic johnson has focused on going into inner cities and creating economic development and bringing hope to the hopeless in a lot of african-american communities for some time. in fact, that s what i ve associated him with over the past 10, 20 years. yeah, so many ignorant statements, so long time. it just shows how out of it and how divorced from reality donald sterling is. and i think sometimes invested certainly tens of millions of dollars, i don t know if it s hundreds of millions of dollars into low-income communities across the country, created economic opportunity. he has walked the walk, in addition to talking the talk. and is the last person in the world that you would say such an ignorant and prejudice thing about. but there you go. that s donald sterling. that s the donald sterling we ve come to know. and not exactly love. mike barnicle, how can this guy remain associated in the nba? i can t see any judge thinking that there s any way that he would have any standing, to have any part of any team? well, he can take them to court, certainly, but there s no way he s going to end up with the l.a. clippers at the end of this, with whatever litigation proceeds. i choose to go back to what is soon to be ex-wife reference last week when she said she thought certainly that donald sterling was in the early stages of dementia. he s got to be. who would do that? it s possible, the racism goes back a bunch of years, guys. yeah. so it s not like this stuff wasn t buried down in there. maybe even his sensor is turned off. no doubt. there s no guard rail now, so he s going right off the cliff. it s insanity. and it s just i don t know i don t know how this guy, and we ve asked this question before, thomas, how is this guy been allowed to be an owner since 1981, the nba had to know, had to know. well, they did know that he had racist tendencies. yeah, they had the largest judgment go against him for discrimination and a payout that he and his wife had to make based on discriminatory practices. so the nba does know what s there. if they have something to leverage him out and he agreed, mike, as you point out, he knows what s in the laws of nba ownership. if they have majority of those owners saying he s got to go, he s got to go. that s something that he agreed to on the front end. and according to his work philosophy, if magic johnson made such a mistake and should fall into the background and never be heard from again, what s his problem? he s made such a horrendous mistake that he should drop off the face of the earth. obviously, he has nobody around him that can counsel him. and he s stumbling from one crisis to another. it s unbelievable. speaking of surprising, it s not quite along those lines. but karl rove is actually doubling down on the suggestion that hillary clinton should be prepared for serious scrutiny about her health should she decide to run for president in 2016. we ve got the republican strategist that is pushing back against the new york post head line. he questioned whether the former first lady may have brain damage. it s pretty clear where he s trying to aim the voters attention. my point was, that hillary clinton wants to run for president, but she would not be human if this didn t enter into consideration. and my other point is this will be an issue in the 2016 race. whether she likes it or not. she ll be 69 by the 2016 election. and she ll be 79 if he ends up erving two terms. clinton s camp blasted back saying she s recovered 100% from a blot clot in 2012. it wasn t just clinton pushing back, a well-known republican and white house jumped into it as well. this wasn t clever, ant it wasn t insinuation. this was karl rove running into a brick wall. nothing drives decent people running away from public office more than this type attack. it weakens the fabric of democracy. here s what i would say about cognitive capacity which is that dr. rove might have been the last person in america on election night to recognize and acknowledge that the president had won re-election, including the state of ohio, so we ll leave it at that. chuck todd, what s going on? i mean, i just don t understand why would karl rove bend over backwards to make hillary clinton look like a more sympathetic figure? i am curious. it s amazing the conspiracy those are i heard yesterday. rove did this, he s doing the old lbj here. make them deny that they have brain damage. throw it out there and then say, oh, i didn t say brain damage, brain damage, brain damage, you know, but i m trying to get it into the ether. and then i ve talked to other folks who say that rove truly was sort of shell-shocked that that got out there. that wasn t what he meant. well, he didn t exactly spin it very well yesterday. and he didn t spin is very well, no. look, the fact is she s the same age, she s going to be the same age as reagan was. if you re going to go down this road and claim she s going to have health issues, and things of that nature, then you may have to be throwing your own guy, ronald reagan under the bus a little bit. so i think this is a dangerous, tricky road to go down. and as we saw, with rove, you go down this road, and you stumble down this road, i mean, i agree, at any point, any presidential candidate has deputy release their health records. i don t care if they re 45 or 70. at the end of the day, i think it s important, the american public wants to know, they want to make their judgment about who the running mate is, things like that. so that is fair game. but to sit there and say it only really applies to her. and you go down that road, it s going to look a little sexist if you re not careful. and it s going to backfire. you obviously have known hillary for a very long time. and you re absolutely confident. while you said legitimate there are a lot of people legitimately concerned after her fall that she s doing fine. look, i think she s doing fine. you watch her during her time as secretary of state, all the travlgs all the wear and tear and meetings she did. yeah, she had a little health problem, but probably would the rest of us after what she went through. regardless of what rove was doing, it s clear what what he was doing. if somebody like joe biden decides he wants to be in the mix two or three years older than hillary, it s going to apply to him. senator marco rubio found himself the target after recently entering into a climate change debate. speak at the national press club, the potential 2016 contender looked to clarify remarks he made sunday. here are the original markings and what he said yesterday. i don t agree with the notion that some are putting out there including scientists that somehow there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on our climate. let me get this straight you do not think that human activity, production of co2 has causing change? i do not believe human activity is causing changes to our climate. i do not believe the laws that they will pass will do anything about it. headlines notwithstanding i of course, the climate is incorporate challenging because the climate is always changing, that s a measurable you can see. i ve never disputed that climate is changing. i pointed out that climate is always changing. it s never static. that s not the question before me ace policymaker. the question before me as a policymaker, if we ban all coal, all carbon emission information the united states will it change the dramatic weather impacts that we re now reading jab and anyone who says that we will is not being truthful. but for me to go out and say if you pass this bill that i m proposing this will somehow lead us to have less tornadoes or hurricanes, that s just not an accurate statement. there we have him cleaning up his language but former president gore speaking about the calculus around climate change. he s said it s not complicated and why candidates are carving out their positions now. they will face primary opponents financed by the koch brothers and others who are part of their group, if they even breathe the slightest breath of sympathy for the truth. sympathy for the truth. jeremy peters, let s talk to you about the whiplash effect that we re seeing from senator marco rubio. obviously what he had to say to jonathan karl did not go over well at the national press club and he s giving a different answer on climate change. i think this is what happens when you re thinking about running in a republican primary at the same time trying to become a viable national figure. you have to say one thing that on the one hand doesn t alienate the base. in this case, the republican base doesn t want to hear that global warming is man-made or a serious problem. but on the other hand, the majority of americans feel this is a real issue and that it needs to be dealt with at a federal level. so you ve also seen this pattern from other contenders. possible contenders for the republican nomination. remember what happened with rand paul when he came out and said that republicans need to stop talking about voter fraud. and voter i.d. he got slammed on the right, even though what he said, this is offensive, republicans need to be careful about the way they re talking about this. it s offending african-americans. yesterday, he walked those statements back, saying, well, i didn t say i didn t say that these laws are a bad idea. all i was saying is that we need to not talk about them as much. a lot of times these guys are trying to have it both ways. chuck, off of what jeremy just said, potential candidates trying to have it both ways, not offending the base. karl rove s comments about hillary clinton. the base, not only the republican, but specifically, the republican base, where does this potential field of candidates go in appeasing the base, while perhaps alienate oeg they have a demographic problem anyway in this country. can they shoot the middle here? is there a middle for them? i don t know, they have a we talk about a demographic problem. i go back to the term and color phrase of 2013, this is a period of time where it s not exactly where the democratic party was in a great place in virginia. and he used climate change, he used some of these issues. but climate change was one of them, to define his opponent as out of the mainstream. you won t believe what he said about this in suburban in a suburban part of the state. this is there is a sort of a suburban wing that used to exist of the republican party that s sort of pro-business. the old eisenhower, rockefeller republicans. the children of them are starting to vote democrat. not because they re enthusiastist perhaps about the democratic party but they re just they ve gone all brian sullivan to reference that. but they go, wait a minute, what s going on over here? and they feel as if you can t have rational discussions about certain policy issues. and so that s the voter that they ve also turned off in suburban america. and 2016, the clintons are very good at wooing suburban america. and climate change that can turn off potential with right-leaning republicans. gene robinson, a fascinating story in the front page of the washington post, your newspaper. you read the article, he has conservative challenge from the right in his district. there was this weekend, where cantor was booed by republican act that visits. quite a turn of events for a guy who was seen as the conservative alternative to john boehner just a year ago. what s going on? well he s in trouble. and it s hard to figure why or how. because he s gone so far out of his way to try to define himself as the more tea party-friendly member of the leadership. of the leadership duo. and the one who will, unlike john boehner was really with the tea party. now, he faces this challenge that seems to be getting serious. i mean, i don t know that i don t know that you can call him in grave peril at this point. you know, look, the majority leader in the house in a safe district, isn t supposed to be in trouble at all. at this point of the cycle. and i think it shows something that s happening in general about the republican party through these primaries. even though the so-called establishment candidates are winning a lot of races. they didn t win last night in nebraska, particularly. but they re winning a lot of races. but the tea party is bringing the staekt farther to the right in some cases. cantore will probably be brought yet further to the right. this, i think, could present problems for the republican party in the general election. we shall see. all right. thank you so much, chuck todd, thanks. we re going to be watching the daily rundown at 9:00 a.m. eastern. you guys go after it, right? the irrational middle, that s what america needs. angry middle. the angry middle. they saw it yesterday. gene, stay with us if you can. former yankee second baseman willie randolph is here to explain why the yankee way it s the way it is. and senator jon tester is here later this hour. up next, his energy bill was derailed by the controversial keystone pipeline. we re going to get senator rob portman s thoughts on that and much more. you re watching morning joe. be right back. 0 second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! you always get the lowest price book any flight or hotel and if you find it for less we ll match it and give you fifty dollars back that s the expedia guarantee unfortunately, many americans live on the outskirts of hope. some because of their poverty. and some because of their color. and all too many because of both. our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. and this administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in america. that s lyndon johnson 50 years ago, declaring a war on poverty. now with the republican senator from ohio, rob portman who has revealed his ideas for a conservative plan to take on poverty. thank you so much, rob, for being with us. you you bet. we thought it was an either/or. you have to be republican or you have to fight against poverty. what are your plans? paul ryan s been talking about a focus on poverty, too? what are we willing to do to help in this area? well, first, just the opposite you know, from either/or. lyndon johnson just talked about opportunity, rather than despair. i mean, lieu technical economy today, joe, we re clearly at a point of despair, in the sense that poverty is up the rate of poverty is up. 47 million below the poverty line. we also have a weak economy coming out of a recession. the recovery is not adding hope and opportunity to the middle class, as well as people on the poverty line. so the question is, what do we do about it? i think there s two major things. one is, we need to grow an agenda. and you and i have talked about that, that includes transforming all of the economy, from the health care system to tax code regulations and so on. that s what jfk talked years before this. a rising tide lifts all votes. and second, even with a rising tide, people are going to fall through the cracks and end up on the shoals. we talked about prevention and treatment and recovery. some of the models there, two decades ago, you and i worked on this issue of drug abuse from a republican perspective, but also a bipartisan perspective. i ve done this with regard to prison re-entry with second chance. my point is there are ways to get at this with constructive conservatism because we know it would. if we re talking about this, i m just pressing you a little bit here, if you came out and said i ve got a plan to take on poverty and tax cuts, et cetera, et cetera, a lot of people are going to roll their eyes and say, well, that s the republican party we ve been hearing about for 50 years. there has to be a spending component to it if you re going to get people s attention. are you and other republicans willing to invest in some of these programs to make a difference? yeah. i think we do. we invest in what works. i talked about yesterday, joe, of the fact that we should use federal funds to leverage local and nonprofit private funds. this has happened with regard to the drug issue. the example i used was this legislation that was passed two decades ago that i offered that talks about how to get community coalition, started. it turns out there s like 5,000 coalitions that have been sparring for the act. it has to be funded at the local level. it involves the whole community coming together. the idea is it s not going to be solved from washington. also evidence-based approaches, i talked about the second chance and the fact that it requires that we use the best practices and the federal government has a big role to play there because some of the best research is done at the federal level. you can bring together best practices. you can go online and see the website it s called what works. gene robinson with the washington post. senator portman, good to talk with you. thank you. does the republican party have any plans to address poor people? to try to communicate with poor people on these issues and to try to sell a program that, frankly, does sound like what republicans have been say for a long time. and what a lot of team think has not worked. yeah, look, i don t think republicans have talked about this for a long time, john kennedy s admonition that a rising tide lifts boats. in a growing economy, some people will be left behind. i think we saw that in 1980, for instance. we saw that in the economy. and yet, ronald reagan actually talked about how do you deal with people who have drug addiction problems and therefore there are broken families and therefore there are problems. we need to get back to that. i specifically talked yesterday that you re not able to deal with some of the broken communities until you deal with drug addiction and the impacts, particularly, the impact that s disproportionate on communities with the current war on drug which is i don t think is working. and secondly, the record number of people in prison and not dealing with them when they get out. 95% of them are going to get out. that s a conservative approach otherwise taxpayers are picking up the tab for two-thirds of those people getting back in the system. there are ways to deal with those things. i don t want to cut you off. we ve got a lost people that want to get at you, rob. here s steve rattner. you had a couple references to kennedy s quote a rising tide lifts all boats. but it was a lot more than nap it was after his famous visit in 1960 when he in fact launched the war on poverty. launched what became head start. and your party was in the process of trying to cut all of those things. you of course voted against raising the minimum wage. i know you think costs jobs but would raise 4 million or 5 million people out of poverty simply by getting them to $10.10 an hour. so what is wrong with those programs? steve, first of all, regarding the minimum wage, since you talked about that i strongly support programs that create jobs. i don t support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour because it s going to create fewer jobs. the issue with regard to poverty isn t the minimum wage, with all due respect as much as it is about jobs. as you look at it, as you know fewer there been 0.3 of 1% of people are under minimum wage and under the poverty line. why? because most people under the poverty line need a job. it s not about the minimum wage, it s about a job. the problem about raising the minimum wage too fast and too high, you re going to eliminate jobs. the budget office has joined and said if you do what the president is proposing it will result in jobs being lost not gained. why not do things like making the earned income tax credit work better. things that could affect work. i do support that in ohio. that would. i think states should be able to do that. i think we re getting off track on some of these political discussions. i know it s very popular, the minimum wage issue. again, ohio s got a higher minimum wage index. mike barnicle. senator, these are admiral goals but how do you attack poverty in this country when many members of your party have voted to cut food stamps. they ve voted to repeal health care, you talk about a rising tide lifts all boats. how do you talk about a rising tide that lifts boats still filled with the hungry and rising ill-health? i do believe that the rising tide theory is important. in fact, i think it s necessary. you got to have a stronger economy. you ve got to have growth. there are five or six things that we should do immediately to get the economy moving again. dealing with health care costs. and the competitive global economy. we ve got to do a much better job really reforming all of our institutions of our country as other countries have done when we have not. my point is that s not enough. it s not sufficient. the question is how do you come up with ways that are practical, i call it constructive, to actually look at what s worked. and deal with the issues. i don t believe it s going to happen from washington alone. by the way, lyndon johnson said that later in that same speech which is this is not going to happen in washington, it s going to happen in the field. it s going to happen in private homes in public lawsuits from the courthouse on up. he even acknowledged this is not something that s going to happen in washington. but washington has an important role to ply. that s what i tried to lay out in my speech yesterday. rob, thank you for being with us. senator rob portman. tomorrow morning on the show, glenn greenwald is going to join us on his new memoir on braying the edward snowden story. coming up this hour, the bouncy house that went from a good time to a really scary scene. what led to these photos. oh, my god. and what happened to the kids inside. we ll be right back. here at fidelity, we give you the most free research reports, customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. peoi go to angie s listt for all kinds of reasons. to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie s list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you ll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we re expecting, i like the fact i can go onto angie s list and look for pediatricians. the service providers that i ve found on angie s list actually have blown me away. find out why more than two million members count on angie s list. angie s list reviews you can trust. so i tri ed depend so i and it made the difference between hearing about my daughter s gym meet, and being there. yeah! nailed it! unlike the bargain brand, depend gives you new fit-flex®, our best protection. it s a smooth and comfortable fit with more lycra strands. hi sweetie! get your free sample at depend.com. that, my friends, is everything. and with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase. not just everything at the hardware store. not everything, until you hit your cash back limit. quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. say it with me everything. one more time, everything! and with that in mind. what s in your wallet? all right, gang, so two children in upstate new york are recovering from serious injuries after a gust of wind swept away a bouncy house. you can see the image there. three kids were actually playing inside. hey, you can guys take down the lower third. and go back to that other shot. i want to put a perspective how high this thing went. yeah, go back to the next shot. just right there. wow. look how oh, my god. how high three little children are inside that bouncy house that we ve all had, if we have kids. nicolle, you can t even look at it. my 3-year-old loves that. three little kids. we ve all had these at birthday parties, right our kids have all done them at birthday parties. and apparently, it was staked down. it had been staked down, joe, you re right. this gust of wind came along and blew it up 50 feet in the air. this gives perspective of where the ground is and cars parked nearby. one child escaped with only minor injuries but another boy has broken bones after falling 15 to 20 feet in the parking lot nearby. while the third has a serious head injury after landing on a car. heartbreaking for the parents. it s just a simple toy that a lot of parents book for birthday parties for their kids. my kids aren t going in one of those. yeah. if parents that don t want them anymore, there s there s a good reason. i m done with the tent. unless the stakes go down 40 feet to to aquifer. oh, my gosh, that s horrible. thomas, what s coming up in the 8:00 hour? all right. a big hour coming up how to think like a freak. that s what i m talkin about. that s what i m talking about. the men behind the book freakonomics are back with tips how to train your brain. and what secretary eric shinseki needs to say in his senate testimony needs to keep his job. how about i quit. jon tester is standing by to join us live. straight ahead. we re back after this. cars are driven by people. they re why we innovate. they re who we protect. they re why we make life less complicated. it s about people. we are volvo of sweden. i got more advice than i knew what to do with. what i needed was information i could trust on how to take care of me and my baby. luckily, unitedhealthcare has a simple program that helps moms stay on track with their doctors and get the right care and guidance-before and after the baby is born. simple is good right now. (anncr vo) innovations that work for you. that s health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. 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. and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase i make a lot of purchases for my business. like 60,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards even cash back. and my rewards points won t expire. so you can make owning business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can. democratic senator from montana a member of the veterans affairs committee, senator jon tester. senator, thank you for being with us. you with all that has come out in the past few years, shouldn t the head of the v.a. resign? no, i don t think he should. if you look at all the things that are positive from the v.a., there s a lot from the positive standpoint. i think they ve done a remarkable job, when you consider all the folks coming back from iraq and the injuries to the vets are pretty intense, especially the ones we can t see. i think the v.a. is doing a pretty good darn job. that being said, if one veteran dies because somebody screwed up on a wait-list, that s far too many. first of all, i ve got to say, there are a lot of veterans that would take exception to you saying, quote, the v.a. is doing a pretty good job. if you think the v.a. s doing a pretty good job. i think you may be one of people in washington, d.c. that think that v.a. is doing a good job, but maybe one of the few people in america who believe that. i couldn t disi agree with you more. i ve been around the state of montana. i ve talked to veterans for the last eight years. and i m not a veteran. i ve talked to veterans. and i can tell you almost truly without exception they truly appreciate the v.a. is it perfect? absolutely not. does it need to be improved? absolutely. we need to work on it, especially when it comes to mental health issues. but overall, i will tell you that the v.a., and i d know it s in vogue right now to politicize everything that s going on with the v.a. but the bottom line is, we need to get to the bottom of this, we need to find out if there s wrog doing and hold people responsible. it s not in vogue with all due respect, senator, there s been a waiting list that s been extraordinarily long. an you ve got parts of the v.a. that are actually cooking the books. and possibly killing veterans. we need to get to the bottom of that. but i will tell you, the waiting list, we knew was coming. it was coming. and i can tell you that this secretary has reduced it by 45%. that being said, it s being increased by 45%, too. because we re having veterans come home from iraq and afghanistan as we wind these wars down. and i think it s good we re winding these wars down but we ve got to be realistic. the fact is, the waiting list is too long. secretary shinseki has made it a priority. and he s worked hard at it. and he needs success. in the meantime, what has congress done? well, we ve had sequestration and shutdowns and anything but certainty to the v.a. so when we see politicians badmouthing the v.a., they re pointing a finger at the v.a. and three back at themselves. that s bad mouthing the v.a. paul reichoff is bad mouthing the v.a. he s not a politics. and there are are millions of other veterans for some reason don t share your rosy scenario of the v.a. let me tell you, the v.a. has plenty of room to improve. but they do plenty of things right, too. i think if we want to focus on the negative and we don t want to focus on ways to improve the v.a., then we ll be right where we are right now. asking for resignations when we don t have all the facts. we need to get all the facts and then we need to act appropriately. well senator, instead of focusing on the negative, you come from a big state. let s talk about accessibility from ptsd treatment. you get in the car and drive for hours some veterans before they get properly treated. what can you do about that? what should the v.a. be doing about it now? well, what we need to do, we need to get both in the v.a. and the private sector more mental health care professionals throughout. this could be the biggest issue fatesing this country over the next 20 or 30 years. what the v.a. is doing about it, they re trying to hire as many folks as they can to serve areas both urban and rural. they re working on telehealth which is critically important. with success, by the way, even better than eye-to-eye work that they ve done with the folks that have ptsd and tbi. look, it is a business issue. i don t know that we ve got one psychologist east of montana. and there s a big area east of billings. there needs to be work done there, no doubt about it. all hands on deck to get it fixed. senator jon tester, thank you for being with us. greatly appreciate it. thank you. i don t get it. i don t it s an outrage. well, you talk about i don t get that, i talk to veterans all the time. we have them on the show. i talk to veterans all the time that wonder why shinseki should still be there. they are killing vets in phoenix. they are cooking the books. i don t know if he if he s lobbying for another facility. in his state. i don t understand that. well, and you talked about i m sorry, that is that s political in itself. that is one of most remarkable disconnects, political disconnects from a guy i ve always respected. i don t get that. he s a good guy. he s heart s in the right place. but the reality is the v.a. is an incredible mess. at outrage more senators going the house of representatives, the american flag, we have to take care of our veterans. and even came on saying shinseki who he has covered a long time and he doesn t get it, he doesn t get it, giant should be gone. i m shocked that you ve got a united states senator saying this is about politician? it s about vets. coming up next, yankee great willie randolph joins us. wow. [bell rings] [prof. burke] at farmers,we make you smarter about your insurance,because what you don t know can hurt you. what if you didn t know that collisions with wildlife on the road may not be covered? and that you could be liable for any accidents on your property? the more you know,the better you can plan for what s ahead. talk to farmers and get smarter about your insurance. we are farmers bum - pa - dum, bum - bum - bum - bum [announcer] call 1-800-farmers and see how much you could save. now former second baseman, now coach for the yankees, willie randolph. we re just talking about what you re doing now. you managed the mets for how many seasons? three and a half years. you had a great run as a coach and player with the new york yankees. what s next? i hope i get the shot to manage. i got the opportunity and lived the dream. i grew up in brooklyn, new york. i rooted for the mets as a youngster. i got a chance to manage the team. my life has been really charmed and really blessed. and then also captain of the yankees. living both worlds and just understanding the game has been good to me, i love the game but i d like another shot and see if i can get better at it. you ought to get another shot. your career with the yankees spans almost 30 years. you put it all together and you saw some things. yes. you were there for reggie jackson, you were there in the 80s with don mattingly, you saw jeter come up from the minors and watch him grow under that great yankee run with joe torre. can you put into words what the experience was for you? it was a great experience for you, a 21-year-old kid to be a part of a world series championship. the yankee way means a winning tradition, a legacy that s rich in championships. everyone can t win, it s not easy to win championships. i was fortunate to get traded by the pirates to the yankees and it just took off for me, again, storybook. the yankees for me are about family, tradition. the steinbrenners gave us an opportunity to win. i was fortunate to play with great players, hall of famers. how would you like to be joe girardi trying to handle jeter s farewell tour? how hard is it to know when it s time? the players don t know it s time. your hear feels i can do that. i went through that a little bit with mike piazza. he did a great job of saying you got to give me a day off, i m okay with this. derek is a different thing. it s got to be a tough thing for a father and son to go to the game and jeter has the day off. it s a tough, tough pill to swallow. when you talk about the hear, though, do you have a conflicted heart when it comes to new york and mets and yankees? i know the book is called the yankee way but you grew up a mets fan. do you have a conflicted heart over where your allegiance really lies? i m conflicted but the best of both worlds. when you manage a team, it s like a father/son. as a player, you leave it on the field. i enjoyed playing more than managing. but when you think about me, i m a yankee. you know, i got the world championship rings, i was captain of the team. the ring says it all. distracting. we re all surprised you didn t say the mets way. and i was the honor of being one of eight yankee captains. that was special. i probably have some pin stripe blood in my veins but the love the mets. that ring, though, look at that bling. this was actually, 2000 world series. imagine living in this town? this was the most nerve racking. the true subway series. they re going on right now but had is the real subway series. there a lot of great stories, including the one where you went to yankee stadium as a fan and heckled derek jeter. you got to read the book. still ahead, magic johnson s reaction to donald sterling s so-called apology. that was an apology? i don t think so. you re watching morning joe. but did you know we also support hospitals using electronic health records for more than 30 million patients? or that our software helps over 20 million smartphone users remotely configure e-mail every month? or how about processing nearly $5 billion in electronic toll payments a year? in fact, today s xerox is working in surprising ways to help companies simplify the way work gets done and life gets lived. with xerox, you re ready for real business. scotts wraps each seed in a brilliant water smart plus coating, that feeds, protects, and holds in moisture to make growing thicker, healthier grass easier. now let s spread your newfound knowledge! seed your lawn. seed it! i tr ied depend last weekend. it really made the difference between a morning around the house and getting a little exercise. unlike the bargain brand, depend gives you new fit-flex®, our best protection. it s a smooth and comfortable fit with more lycra strands. get your free sample at depend.com. how much money do you think you ll need when you retire? then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. i was trying to, like, pull it a little further. 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[ alert rings ] suffered brain damage. karl rove better be careful of what he s talking about because karl rove saying somebody else has brain damage, yeah, take a look at this and then we ll talk about it. tell me you never saw this man move, doing the dance, the karl rove dance sickening, isn t it? welcome back to morning joe. mike barnicle is with us, steve rattner, mark halpern and joy reid. thinking on the whole brain damage thing. we picked through that a couple of years ago. he didn t say brain damage but said was wearing glasses that suggested he had a traumatic brain injury when of course these are the same type of glasses that you wore in college. those milk bottle glasses. from the yale days. you remember that. i think this will go down in history as a miscalibration by carl because of of the way he let it come out. i m not 100% certain he wanted this in the blood stream. this was a private event. people can say, as nicole did yesterday, people had no know this was going to come up. he had to know this was going to come up. but the clean-up was not handled well either. what she said in private obviously is in private. obviously she didn t have brain damage. i just disagree with her on issue. the republican party is in crisis right now. doesn t look like jeb bush wants to run, people are worried about chris christie, there s another other establish candidate. the big gun, the big brains at the presidential level is what can we do to intimidate hillary clinton from running or try to make the conversation about her about the past and negative. i think that s part of the package that carl s part of now but i don t think he planned this. well, joy, this sure isn t a way to intimidate her. if i had my opponent throwing a wild charge like that at me or let s say a member of my family i d go, okay, well, so they re going to just hand me this election then, aren t they? it was a stupid thing to say and it was stupid to not back down from it. yeah, i mean, the source of it obviously he s now backing off saying he didn t really say that but it comes across, if true, as a schoolyard taunt, needlessly petty and small, a stupid insult. as somebody who grew up wearing glasses, it comes across like a schoolyard, foolish taunt. it doesn t in any way get to hillary clinton as secretary of state. like what you re supposed to go after if you re being serious about running against her is the actual content of the work she s done as a public figure, the content of what she did as secretary of state. this petty stuff and speculating about her having brain damage, it isn t even serious politics. and talking about her being old, when karl rove says she ll be 69 if she wins, 77 when she gets out, you know what i think? think of ronald reagan, who was 69 when he was inaugurated, 77 when he was out. i would take eight more years of ronald reagan. i know a lot of people would. but republicans, who are listening to karl rove, i don t even think republicans get it. can t you just see hillary clinton saying to rand paul i m not going to use the youth and inexperience of my opponent against him? exactly. you re reminding people she has a lot of experience in public life. people who know her and know politics understand she s a serious person. the republican party is in existential crisis right now. their kind of republicans now are trying to disqualify her. it s the strategy president obama used to disqualify mitt romney. they re saying our only hope of winning now until we have a candidate that can match up with her until we have a candidate in the electoral college, is to disqualify her. that s where the energy is now. is karl rove more wary of hillary clinton or more leery of the existing republican field? he would like a horse to get on. until they have a horse, there s a one-word job description for the party right now, who can beat her? they don t have anybody gung-ho who can beat her, to try to start enough noise who can beat or damage her. the tea party got a much-needed primary victory last night, some are saying. the nebraska former bush official, ben sasse captured more than half of the votes. he s scored endorsements from sarah palin and ted cruz and outside groups including club for growth. they spent millions on sasse. when he called out senator minority leader mitch mcconnell to show some, quote, actual leadership on obamacare but yesterday he down played that rift and told chuck todd he would absolutely support mitch mcconnell as leader. and pete rickets, businessman who won the primary in nebraska had the backing of ted cruz, who campaigned out there for him. so ricketts has to be the favorite for that state. a lot of tea party got behind him and establishment got behind him as well. he was a unifying candidate, wasn t he? but he is an outsider. mcconnell is someone who will come to washington like senator johnson of wisconsin or mike lee from utah, he s not going to come and play nice. i don t think he ll be as far outside the mainstream of the party in terms of attitude as ted cruz. he ll be a senator and peter ricketts will be senator most likely. and magic johnson was first dragged into this controversy after sterling confronted his then mistress over a photograph. stiviano posted the image of magic johnson on it instagram. sterling told her not to bring magic or any other african-american to clippers game during that original racist rant and then sterling went after magic johnson again, this time, believe it or not, for having hiv. what has he done? can you tell me, big magic johnson. what has he done? well, he s a business person, he he s got aids. did he do any business? did he help anybody in south l.a. i think he has hiv, he doesn t actually have full-blown aids. what kind of guy goes to every city, has sex with every girl and then he catches hiv. is that somebody we want to respect and tell our kids about? i think he should be ashamed of himself, he should go into the background. but what does he do for the black people? he doesn t do anything. here s a man who we would think would be educated and a man who would is smart enough to build this type of wealth and own a team, to have an incredible platform to change the world but he s doing it in a negative way. he s reaching. he s reaching. he s trying to find something he can grab on to to help him save his team and it s not going to happen. am i upset? of course. but at the same time i m a god fearing man, i m going to pray for him and hope that things work out for him. the problem is he s living in the stone ages. he can t make those comments about african-americans or latinos. he just can t do it. joy reid, why don t you tell us what donald sterling is thinking when he goes on tv and says that? the only thing i can think of between that and what he said to v. stiviano on the phone, here s a man who has a desenep sense o inadequacy, just his girl friend being a picture in magic johnson what kind of fool would say that? he has to know, does he not? we all know what magic johnson has done in communities and cities over the past 20 years. the investment, the financial investments, the risk he has taken to help the disadvantaged, he s done so much. forget the ignorance about aids or hiv, the more ignorant statement has to do with the fact that magic has been doing exactly what he said blacks should do. it s insanity. he s a deeply ignorant man who obviously knows very little about magic johnson other than the way he makes him feel. this is magic johnson in the 1980s the idea of hiv/aids terrified people. magic johnson probably more than any other single person has humanized the issue of hiv, has made people understand it in the real sense. it is considered heroic in the african-americ african-american community both for the way he has contributed to the community and why doesn t magic johnson age? magic looks like he did 25 years ago. he s magic. that s right. he s magic for a reason. you have lebron coming out and saying he will not play basketball next year if this creep is still running the clippers or has anything to do with the clippers. i m not that familiar with the nba board of governor rules and apparently if the majority of owners is against sterling returner so he will be done. the larger issue, joy alluded to it, do you remember the day the news broke that magic johnson and hiv? of course i do. at that stage of the hiv crisis, he provided it s impossible for people too young to remember but there was such a panic. i remember americans going to restaurants and feverishly wiping down their silverware when they got to restaurants because they were afraid they were going to get, posed to the hiv virus. magic put a loving face on the epidemic. we all thought, oh, my god, in two, three years magic is going to be dead? that s right. no, that was a turning point in that battle that we owe an awful lot to magic for as you were saying, joy. arthur ashe and magic johnson are the two people who did more to end the panic for hiv/aids than anyone else. the federal government refused to use the word aids, people fighting for basic drug care. people thought he would die almost immediately. his survival in and of itself but also his really just incredibly dignified champion of just living with hiv, besides the fact that he was just an ignorant fool who should be out of the nba, that is stupid. magic of 91, that s the on thing people would be thinking about now. now that s way down on the list. people don t even think about it. talking about living with hiv and making a big difference in american society, the guy did it. joy, thank you for being with us. do you know what your show is going snto be? we re going to be talking about this and we re going to be talking about the nigerian girls. this is a very personal issue to me and we re going to stay on that story until we see a resolution. that s great. can t wait to watch that. are you following my advice? my staff can hear this, by the way. i told her to stay at home, relax. i ve done it a couple of times. pixar has swimming pools and volleyball courts. you got to be in the right mindset. do not come in here for your meeting. i m talking to the staff. don t watch this, just this part. it s not about you, it s about joy. coming up, our reaction to the interview of time geithner with larry kudlow. and calm down brian sullivan, boy, he s fired up. coming up next, speaking of freaks, the authors behind freakonomics are coming up. they want to teach you how to think like a freak. bill karins, what do you have for us? you can t say freak and lead into the weathercast, joe. we re into some freaky weather. it was only 66 degrees in san antonio, it was 92 in washington, d.c. and out west, an incredible heat wave on top of this historic drought. let s add in the santa ana winds and it s one of those days of firefighters are going to be gearing up and be ready. it s a very dangerous day. winds could gust in the mountains up to 80 miles per hour. 80 miles per hour and 100 degrees. that s like having a hair dryer blower. record heat expect, 100 on thursday. they don t cool off in southern california until friday and especially the weekend. heavy rain and possibility of a few severe storms, maybe isolated tornado or two, it goes through pittsburgh, columbus, louisville, tupelo. if you have any problems at the airport, it will most likely be with the thunderstorms. how about los angeles, 101 today. early in the season for that. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. and you re younger than you realize really. so our business can be on at&t s network for $175 dollars a month? 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(gnome) go and smell the roses. female narrator: the mattress price wars are on the mattress price wars are on at sleep train. we challenged the manufacturers to offer even lower prices. now it s posturepedic versus beautyrest with big savings of up to $400 off. serta icomfort and tempur-pedic go head-to-head with three years interest-free financing. plus, free same-day delivery, set-up, and removal of your old set. when brands compete, you save. mattress price wars are on now at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep . hey, with us now, it s the wildly popular freakonomics series, authors steven levitt and steven dubner. they re out with their latest installment. i like the first one, think like a child. we don t want to make our way through the world like 8-year-olds exactly because there are a lot of things kids need to do that they can t do. but what they can do is be relentlessly curious, and their brains are physiologically sharper. we re start to deteriorate at about 22 years old. we suggest people channel the inner child as best as they can. especially when you re trying to come up with good yquestions an creative solutions. give us an example how you can do that at work. think like a child? yes. kids don t know anything about the world and they have a lot of solutions. a lot of answers people come up with people think you re nuts but and also learn to say i don t know. and as adults we tend to present a theory or possibility as a certain tear. put away your moral compass. we don t mean to say people shouldn t be moral. nobody wants to live in a world where people don t have a strong moral compass. but if you re trying to solve a problem and you walk in thinking you know what s the right thing to do and what s wrong, you will exclude a whole set of possibilities. put your moralali itit itit iti aside and you can come back to it later. also in the book i still think you can be an astronaut. i d like to if we still had nasa. you re limiting yourself. he already looks like an astronaut. thank you very much. could have been. you talk about don t be afraid to quit. a lot of people, once we get on a certain path, we don t want to trigger any type of failure in our lives because we get comfortable with being on a path. why do you try to get people to not think of that as a bad thing. quitting and failure are two different things. the worst failure is looking back at our life and doing the same thing and wondering why you do that. the people who quit are happier than the ones who don t. from freak to frank. you tell great stories. tell bus the hot dog eating contest and what lessons he teaches ees us. i love this story and this guy. kobiachi, he wanted to solve the problem and he approached it totally differently. instead of doing what everybody else did, fasting, starving themselves, instead of thinking how can i eat more hot dogs, he thought how can i eat one faster? he broke the process down and the first time out doubled the world record. from like 25 to 50? it would be like usain bolt running the world record in like 4.5 seconds, somewhere between a taxi and a cheetah. we ve heard about creative destruction, that does lie at the heart of it. like you said, you don t drive the car off the cliff. sometimes well, all of this is about getting out of your comfort zone and not doing what everybody expects you to do. absolutely. it s about thinking. it s about not just sleep walking through life but thinking about what you want to do and taking control and doing it. so who is your favorite freak that you studied that put the big light bulb over your head? barry marshall was an australian medical young doctor who figured out what causes ulcers, okay? it doesn t sound like a big game he also figured out what causes stomach cancer. at the time ulcers were thought to be from stress and stomach issues. he went and found out it was about bacteria and solved stomach cancer by looking at a problem, asking questions, hey, what are those bacteria being here, was ostracized by the medical community and finally was recognized and won the nobel peace prize. i know hough to eat a hot dog faster now. and you can go out for thai food to celebrate. let your freak flag fly high. you can read an excerpt on moj mojoe.com. coming up, your favorite internet stock is most likely collapsing. i told up not to invest in pets.com, you didn t listen to me. we re going to dig into it when we come back. 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, my friends, is everything. and with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase. not just everything at the hardware store. not everything, until you hit your cash back limit. quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. say it with me everything. one more time, everything! and with that in mind. what s in your wallet? female narrator: the mattress price wars are on the mattress price wars are on at sleep train. we challenged the manufacturers to offer even lower prices. now it s posturepedic versus beautyrest with big savings of up to $400 off. serta icomfort and tempur-pedic go head-to-head with three years interest-free financing. plus, free same-day delivery, set-up, and removal of your old set. when brands compete, you save. mattress price wars are on now at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep you mentioned that in january of 2009 we re on the brink and that was a term we heard a lot, the country was about to go over the cliff in the fall of 2008. what does that mean explicitly and specifically? what would have happened if we hadn t taken that step back? think of the great depression. there s no memory of it. people didn t live through it but in the great depression, unemployment went to 25 and gdp fell by 25% and it took a decade to get back to some measure of security for people. that s because we allowed as a country a financial panic to escalate and bring the system to collapse. and why does that happen? it s because the light s going out. it s like the power grid not functioning. if the economy can t get oxygen, just to mix some more metaphors, companies can borrow, then businesses fire people on a brutal scale and that produces those set of conditions. panic leads to crash. that s why those things are so damaging. and they have massive innocent victims in that context. how close were we? we were right at the edge. paulsen wrote he thought we were three days away from the atms not working. people were talking about burying gold in their back ya s yards. they cut out the part where they explain that s exactly what mika is still doing, burying gold in her back yard, west chester, south of france, all over the place. that of course was tim geithner earlier. mike barnicle did not have a lot of nice things to say about elizabeth warren. i don t think he likes elizabeth warren. i don t know that he doesn t like her. but i think he clearly felt abused by her in the settle of setting her up for questioning, youtube moments rather than oh, i think he doesn t like her. okay. we re going to talk about that and much more. we re going to ask why too big to fail has got i don t know even bigger. brian sullivan is trying to recover from yesterday. larry kudlow, miles neddal, a cast of thousands will be with us when we return on morning joe. are those made with all-beef, karen? yeah, they re hebrew national. but unlike yours, they re also kosher. kosher? yeah, they re really choosy about what goes in. so, only certain cuts of kosher beef meet their strict standards and then they pick the best from that. oh man! what d we do? they re all ruined. help yourself! oh no, we couldn.okay thanks. when you hot dog s kosher, thats a hot dog you can trust. hebrew national. the was a truly amazing day. without angie s list, i don t know if we could have found all the services we needed for our riley. for over 18 years we ve helped people take care of the things that matter most. join today at angieslist.com and i get a lot in return with ink plus from chase i make a lot of purchases for my business. like 60,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards even cash back. and my rewards points won t expire. so you can make owning business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can. predibut, manufacturings a prettin the united states do. means advanced technology. we learned that technology allows us to be craft oriented. no one s losing their job. there s no beer robot that has suddenly chased them out. the technology is actually creating new jobs. siemens designed and built the right tools and resources to get the job done. i got more advice than i knew what to do with. what i needed was information i could trust on how to take care of me and my baby. luckily, unitedhealthcare has a simple program that helps moms stay on track with their doctors and get the right care and guidance-before and after the baby is born. simple is good right now. (anncr vo) innovations that work for you. that s health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. can we just stop saying the republican party. as someone who grew up in a conservative household, i don t recognize the republican party of even my youth. i don t like what i see. i don t like the far right, i don t like the extremism. they ve pushed me away. as somebody who is pretty much not religious, right, pro same-sex marriage, pro legalization of marijuana for the most part, okay, what party is this? what party am i supposed to be in when i m a fiscal conservative who believes that small government can often be better. there are times for larger government. so we keep saying the republican party and i love you guys and i love the show and i come on all the time but i don t know who the republican party is anymore. i don t know in the republican party knows it s not a party i can get on board with because i don t like the small minded attitude, a lot of the right-wing stuff that comes out. well, come on down, come on down. give this guy a cup of decaf. a ticket to new hampshire. that was brian sullivan on our show yesterday. brian is back today. lexapro is doing a remarkable thing in his life for the past 24 hours, along with larry kudlow and miles nadal. brian sullivan, i hear not just republicans but a lot of conservative republicans that oppose obamacare, that oppose higher taxes, that oppose more regulations, that are larry kudlow and joe scarborough conservatives who say you know what, just keep the crazy at home, we want to actually win elections and change america for the better. so i don t know that you re i mean, i m hearing this from the most conservative, ideological people out there, which is just stop winning election. by the way, i want to thank everybody for the support. that was obviously unexpected and a little bit out of character. i appreciate everybody writing in. you didn t just win the academy award. it s like baseball. if the pirates bat .320 as a team but every team bats better and they keep losing, does l thr batting average really matter? the republicans have lost five out of six of the last popular elections? we ve last five out of six elections. larry kudlow, people are doing some really, really stupid things. harry reid should be going to boxing matches in nevada in his pajama and flip-flops. he should have been beaten. keep your eyes open. he s on the ropes. i think this is a year where the big tent philosophy is going to work pretty nicely. it worked last night in nebraska. tea party support. the republicans are going to have the upper hand on economic growth and obamacare. tease are very important issues. with all respect to brian, i am not in favor of legalizing pot, i never will be in favor, i don t think the republican party should be in favor of legalizing pot, but if a state wants to do it, let the state do, it don t get in the way. i would say the same thing regarding certain key social issues. if certain states want gay marriage, that s up to the state. but the national party, let s focus on getting america back to work, right? and you re going to see that, is going to be the big theme. this is the worst economic recovery since world war ii, the job situation still remains very difficult and, frankly, obamacare is not only bad for the economy, it s going to be bad for health care and health care costs. my advice to the gop, big tent is number one and, two, keep your eye on the balls that really matter. steve rattner, every time on the house floor we started getting to social issues, the republican party would split, work, jobs, taxes, regulation, getting people back to work, we d be united. this economy, a lot of unrest in the economy. unemployment numbers are going down. last quarter that we flatlined, maybe because of weather. but you have a great chart here talking about how we ve got two americas. we ve got the america on wall street that s setting records every day and we ve got the america on main street that s been losing real wages since 1973. it s true. the stock market has been hitting new highs pretty much every day. it s up 32% last year, 3% this year. is there a bubble? is there a bubble? i m sure people on this panel have an opinion about it. looking at the price-to-earnings ratio, how expensive is the stock market in this goes back to 1910 and uses a measure developed by robert shiller, an economist. and it s not as high as it was in 1929 and it s not as high as it was in 2000 and not quite as high as it was in 2007 but other than that, it is higher than it s been. does it mean the stock market can keep going up some more because of these irrational bits of exuberance? sure, it can. but your chart doesn t end we re in a bubble now? it suggests stocks are on the expensive end but not in the bubble we ve had before. explain what happened to internet stocks. look what s happened. twitter down 47%, groupon down 46%. some of that are questions that have questionable business models. i don t think many think groupon is the greatest business in the world, twitter when it went public, the valuation was crazy. the whole market is sort of rotating at the moment away from internet stocks. can i make one point? steve is right as far as this chart goes. this is a ten-year average of price-to-earnings multiples. now, bob shiller is a smart guy. i m not here to put him down, this is not necessarily the best way to measure it. look at last year or this year or a year ahead,or really around 15 times earnings and that s not bad. my advice, sometimes kudlow is right, sometimes kudlow is wrong, i wouldn t jump out of the market right now. housing and consumer spending. housing is stable temperature it stable. larry said trade at about 16 times earnings currently. and on that basis the s&p 500 could be 1950, 1975 next year. s&p earnings are supposed to be 117 this year, gross 6%. if you believe what lee cooperman says, which is stocks are the best house in a good neighborhood currently, they re fair live priced. they re not cheap in relation to what they ve been historically and they re not over live expensive. so why is main street still suffering and why is wall street doing so well? when you look at the unemployment rate that has declin declined, it s mostly because people have left the workforce. there s only about 150,000 job being created monthly. the answer is simple. why has main street suffered and wall street done so well? because wages have not increased, and what hasn t gone into wages has gone into corporate profits. workers are simply not sharing in this prosperity. the wage point is exactly right. it s exactly right. and i think that s because of the slow growth in the economy and i think that s because of poor economic policies. but i want to make a point, wall street versus main street. no, won t buy it. 50% of the households in this country own stocks. when you talk about main street, union people, cops, fire, teachers are all in pension funds and the pension funds are doing very well because the stock market has done very well. in queens your cop is making $120,000 a year, your school teach ser making $120,000 a year, they re putting some money into pension funds and that money is being matched and then some. those pension funds have gone up a lot since the bottom in 2009. teachers make $120,000 a year? how much? did you say they make $120,000 a year? in this city? absolutely. look at the recent de blasio settlement, it s going to be more than that. how much is the market in unrest in ukraine and overseas? they don t seem worried at all. the bond yield has gone down. but to steven s point, the stock market continues to go up. perhaps we are the cleanest dirty shirt in a bag of laundry. do i want to push back a little on what steven said, incomes have not gone up, that is well founded, well known, accurate. but let s not forget corporations have paid out this huge gain in money to health care over the last 20 years. any corporation will say we have given our employees a raise, it just hasn t been in their paycheck, it s been in benefits. if the president s health care plan works and does as advertised, if we can bend that down, corporations will then transfer some of those savings to workers actual paychecks. that s a fair point. but the balance of the evidence is workers have not had much pay increase. to larry s point, sure. has some direct interest in the stock but the vast preponderance of the gains in this stock rally have gone to the famous 1%. i just don t think the evidence supports that. i m not making this stuff up. half of the households in this country either directly or indirectly through pension funds or 401(k)s and what have you own shares. the most important issue is about job creation. if the republican party focusses on that single issue about job creation throughout the entire economy, especially in small business, that is the critical issue. way to stimulate the economy and benefit main street is through job creation. and that s the gop message inside the big tent. if they stick to their knitting on that, they re going to do very well. all they need is a policy now. we ll find it. at least we have focus. that s what we need. thinking like a child, thinking like a freak. larry kudlow, good to have you all here. and harry reid on the koch brothers when we come back. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. 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