from re-signing as president. all secret service or any secret service in the room? out. there can be no greater fall from no greater height. fyffe men were nabbed in the democratic national headquaters in washington. white water controversy. i have nothing to say about it. he s thinking what am i going to do? andrew johnson s impeachment was over policy. he did not deserve to be president of the united states. i am not a crook. one thing leads to another. a great and profound crisis. you re in the office of the president of the united states. how can you talk about blackmailing, keeping witnesses silent. william jefferson clinton. i did not have sexual relations with that woman. the impeachment effort against him failed by a single vote in the senate. president nixon. aye. there it is. impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. i have impeached myself. good evening. the constitution s impeachment clause was written by men who fought a revolution to escape the tyranny of kings and now they wanted to keep the president from becoming a monarch. in one version, the grounds for impeachment were treason and bribery. also proposed mall administration. but james madison said that was too vague. what if he asked a president were to cook up speculation. in other words, what if the president were a crook? so george mason of virginia came up with the additional phrase. high crimes and misdemeanors. and that is article 2 section 4 of the constitution. there was a moment in our history where it saved american democracy but at other times it s been turned into a cheap political trick hurled at opponents as a weapon. so which is it today? to answer that question, we need to understand the past so we know whether impeachment will work when we really need it. they re seriously talking about impeachment. they ll immediately try to impeach the president. well on our way to impeachment. the word impeachment was used at least 12,000 times in 2018 and that s just on cable news. i am impeachment, impeachment. impeach trump. thousands are in the streets out here this evening. this is just one day after donald trump was elected president. but the outcry is hardly surprising. donald trump is the most polarizing president in an already bitterly divided america. we will impeach him. the people said but he hasn t done anything wrong. oh, that doesn t matter. we will impeach the president. we have been through periods of polarization before. the difference now is that we don t have a common baseline of facts. we disagree on reality. that dangerous state of affairs, we disagree on the facts of reality itself is reflective of how americans feel about impeachment. in november exit polling, 77% of democrats favored removing the president from office. just 5% of republicans supported impeachment. is there evidence to support an impeachment case against donald trump? as a legal matter, there s enough material alleged now that if true would support an impeachment charge. but says harvard law school s noah feldman, that doesn t mean the president could or should be impeached. we ll explore that question later in the hour, but first we need to go back to understand what happens when democracy defends on impeaching the president. we now think of watergate as a time when america came together and forced a crooked president out of office but to richard nixon and the republican party, the watergate scandal was a partisan war. i had a partisan senate committee staff. special prosecution staff. media. in the fifth column i gave them a sword and they stuck it in and they twisted it. the real story of the war nixon describes is one that few americans know. it s a story of a small group of men who turned impeachment into an act of patriotism. it all begins on june 17th, 1972. five men were arrested early saturday while trying to install eves dropping equipment at the democratic national committee. why was someone breaking into the democrats campaign offices? i again proudly accept that nomination for president of the united states. richard nixon won the presidency in 1968 by promising to get america out of vietnam. are you listening nixon? but as the war dragged on, the anti-war movement exploded. as nixon campaigned for a second term, he feared vietnam might give his enemies the ammunition to defeat him. and so his men planned a series of dirty tricks. i suppose he went up the wall. to cripple the democrats. one of them was the watergate break in. in 1972, nixon won re-election by a historic landslide. i richard nixon do so let mely swear. but the watergate story was still growing. so just weeks after the election, richard nixon declared war on the press. the press is the enemy. the press is the enemy. write that on the blackboard 100 times. sound familiar? you are the enemy of the people. go ahead. well, i called the fake news the enemy of the people. there are other reminders of the present day. donald trump directs particular anger at certain news organizations. it s like the failing new york times that s so bad or cnn that s so bad and so pathetic. they are the fake, fake, disgusting news. nixon went after the washington post that lead watergate coverage. i want it clearly understood that from now on ever no reporter from the washington post is ever to be in the white house, is that clear? absolutely none, ever, to be in. now that is a total order and if necessary i ll fire you. do you understand? i do understand. nixon hated the press because it was bigging into the very story that he was desperate to hide. that the white house does deeply involved in the cover up. nixon s approval rating soared but then came the crack in the white house defense. in the summer of 1973 all of america was riveted by the senate watergate hearings. what did the president know and when did he know it? as the country watched white house council john dean turn on his president. i began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency. dean testified that the watergate burglars were blackmailing white house aids. the white house was now being directly subject to blackmail and i didn t know how to handle it. i told him i could only make an estimate that it might be as high as $1 million or more. he told me that that was no problem. it was john dean s word against the president of the united states. nothing less than richard nixon s presidency may ride on whether the public believes john dean or not. most republicans continued to stand by their president. but then, from a little known white house aid, a dramatic twist. my name is alexander, portal, butterfield. are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. it was a bombshell. the pressure is on the president to produce the tapes. had it not been for the tapes he would have completed a second term. instead he will spend the rest of his presidency trying to keep anyone from hearing them. the white house made it clear today that president nixon decided not to release tapes of his conversations. if i were to make public these tapes, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect from now on. he fought subpoena after subpoena. i never heard or seen such distorted reporting. even as he tried to tell the american people that watergate was a press creation. what is it about television coverage of you in the past weeks and months that has so aroused your anger. don t get the impression that you aroused my anger. one can only be angry with those he respects. mr. president. finally, a drastic step. nothing like this has ever happened before. the offices have been sealed by the fbi. a mass firing of the men pursuing the tapes. the saturday night massacre. the news sent reporters scrambling for their telephones. a profound crisis in which the president set himself against his own attorney general in the department of justice. does it have to do with the resignations attorney general? it might. the attorney general, the deputy attorney general and the special prosecutor were all out. it changes the politics of the situation for richard nixon. most demanded impeaching nixon. nixon was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor and as the months went on, he was forced to turnover the tapes. white house council john dean s system turned out to be entirely accurate. they were going to cost a million dollars over the next two years. it was clear, nixon s defenses were beginning to crumble. would you consider the crimes to be impeachable if they did apply to you? well, i have also quit beating my wife. the meeting will come to order. in july of 1974 in a packed hearing room, the committee began to debate removing the president. make no mistake about it, this is a turning point. whatever we decide. the committee chairman was a democratic liberal from new jersey. he was new to the job. some doubted whether he could handle it. a highly partisan prosecution if ever there was one. many were angry and still improvab improvable. for republicans, impeaching their president was political suicide so they kept holding out for more evidence. the weight of evidence must be clear. it must be convincing and let s keep to those two words. you can t substitute them for anything else. clear and convincing. but you can t and should not remove the highest office in the world for anything less than clear and convincing. but as emotions began to run high the facts were calmly recited and documented and something surprising happened. there s an obstruction of justice going on. someone is trying to buy the silence of a witness. the father of maryland s current governor was moved by the evidence. the thing that s so appalling to me is that the president when this whole idea was suggested to him didn t rise up and say get out of here you re in the office of the president of the united states. how can you talk about blackmail and bribery and keeping witnesses silent? this is the presidency of the united states. one, by one, they put conscious over party. i cannot condone what i have heard. i cannot excuse it and i cannot and will not stand still for it. i wish the president could do something to absolve himself. perhaps the most conservative southerner was walter flowers of alabama, he served as the segregationist george wallace s campaign chairman. i wake up nights, at least on those nights i have been able to go to sleep lately wondering if this could not be some sorted dream. impeach the president of the united states. but he did vote to impeach. even though he said it gave him an ulcer. even conservatives reached across the aisle to say thank you. it has been very fair. this has been both historic and honorable. republicans understood that they were not going to carry their base if they voted for impeachment. and some of them did it anyway. all of those in favor signify by saying aye. all of those opposed, no. aye. the committee improved three articles of impeachment. obstruction of justice, contempt of congress, abuse of power. no, no. aye. aye. no. no. aye. chairman peter rodino left the room and cried. official impeachment would come later with a full house vote but it never happened. nixon s wall of republican defenders had crumbled. there s a countdown of sorts on tonight. a countdown toward the end of the nixon presidency. tonight at 9:00 eastern daylight time the president of the united states will address the nation. it was over. i have never been a quitter. to leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. but as president i must put the interests of america first. therefore, i shall re-sign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. the impeachment the framers had imagined, it worked. democracy worked. there s the president waving good-bye and you hear the applause. the scandal itself triggered a loss of faith in government and in politicians. it would be 25 years before impeachment would come up again. your testimony is subject to the penalty of perjury. do you understand that, sir? i do. this time it was a completely different story. ear. their gps took them to places out of a storybook. and they called grandma when manny felt sad about not being able to swim. overall, they shared 176 pictures. but when the moment came, they held their breath, and watched their son learn to believe in himself. not this john smith. or this john smith. or any of the other hundreds of john smiths that are humana medicare advantage members. no, it s this john smith. who we paired with a humana team member to help address his own specific health needs. at humana, we take a personal approach to your health, to provide care that s just as unique as you are. no matter what your name is. no matter hat your name is. [inaudible conversation] [laughter] i m okay. my mom washes the dishes. .before she puts them in the dishwasher. so what does the dishwasher do? cascade platinum does the work for you, prewashing and removing stuck-on foods, the first time. wow, that s clean! cascade platinum. in 1978 a bright eyed 32-year-old bill clinton was running for governor of arkansas. i tried to bring out the best in people through politics but i haven t been very happy doing it. he and his wife hillary were also investing in real estate. a nice little patch of land in the ozarks. that plot of land on the white river, a two-bit real estate deal that ended up losing money would change the course of history. are you a subject or a target? did they read you your rights? decades later. the white water controversy. white water. that lead to a sex scandal. william jefferson clinton is impeached. that became the second presidential impeachment in american history. how on earth did that little corner of arkansas i hereby deliver these articles of impeachment. explode into a constitutional show down. somehow one thing leads to another and we re on the house floor debating whether the president of the united states should be removed from office. i did not have sexual relations with that woman. when we think of the clinton impeachment, we think of a certain white house intern but before there was monica, there were the mcdougals. jim and susan. he might never have been impeached if not for them. it was jim mcdougal that convinced the clintons to invest in white water and they had other financial ties as well. so when they landed in legal trouble for fraud. if i m found guilty i ll go to the slammer. whitewater development is not going to go away. there s too many questions. the clintons came underfire too. questions have been raised about their financial and personal involvement with mcdougal. in the end nothing came of it but it planted the seed for something much bigger. something that would lead to this ultimate constitutional confrontation. there was a growing drum beat for a independent council to investigate white water. we did nothing improper and i have nothing to say about it. thank you. old story. clinton had a faithful story to make. block a special counsel and take a beating in the press it appears to be a case of the president s past coming back to haunt him. or give in, leaving himself open to a potentially limitless investigation. the president gave in. i don t want to be distracted by this anymore. let them look into it. i just want to go back to work. years later he would call that one of the biggest miscalculations of his presidency. one you have an independent council appointed with no budget or no limits, the prosecutor will keep looking for the crime until they can find it. the first special prosecutor as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. about to wrap up his investigation quickly. let s get out of the way he was replaced and his successor ken star was far more aggressive. our job is to gather facts and to get at the truth. expanding the inquiry way beyond whitewater. how is this whitewater. the investigation leads in all of these different directions. this is truly a wildly historic night. no one could have been happier with star s aggressive approach than newt gingrich and the republicans. there s been a sea change in american politics. we re winning. they had swept into congress in 1994. this is an earthquake. preaching a new gospel of strict orthodox conservatism. newt gingrich reshapes the republican party. our base wants this, we do this. we do not compromise with democrats. president clinton became the democrat the republicans despised the most. he was morally corrupt they said. i expected with marijuana a time or two and didn t inhale. created with the truth. i was bill clinton s lover for 12 years. and a womanizer. these tabloid allegations were false. they viewed him as almost an imposture as president. the law is the law. meanwhile, ken star had been digging into the clintons for more than two years for no avail. are you going to be working for congress or the courts or the public? his investigation was winding down. then out of the view, some explosive tape recordings came his way. i never expected to feel this way about him. conversations with monica. we fooled around. that were secretly recorded by her co-worker. if you get to orgasm that s having sex. no it s not. yes it is. no it s not. he expanded to look into her. my instant reaction was that s nuts. i couldn t believe star was going down this road. you understand, sir, that your answers to my question today are testimony that s being given under oath. yes. star learned that the president was testifying about her in another matter. it s just humiliating what he did to me. a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by paula jones. your testimony is subject to the penalty of perjury. do you understand that, sir? i do. in his testimony, clinton was not truthful about lewinsky. i never had sexual relations with her. i never had an affair with her. star now had a case for perjury. there s new allegations of infidelity and perjury this morning against president clinton. over the next few months, all hell broke loose. charges of sex, lies, and audio tapes. clinton kept denying the affair. there is no improper relationship. the allegations i have read are not true. but star was able to get her dress that had clinton s dna on it. the president was forced to tell the truth. indeed, i did have a relationship with mrs. lewinsky that was not appropriate. in fact, it was wrong. this goes into considerable detail. there was, in fact, semen on that dress. many viewers may find it offensive. they released a detailed x-rated account of the scandal. listing lying under oath and obstruction of justice. it s easy to forget in hindsight but bill clinton was in real danger of being pushed out of office. many of his fellow democrats were furious with him. let justice be done though the heavens fall. they came to the white house like the republicans did with nixon in 1974 and said your time s up, that would have been it. but clinton, the ultimate come back kid i never should have mislead the country. was able to rally the party and the country back to his side. i will continue to do all i can to reclaim the trust of the american people and serve them well. his behavior may have been reprehenceable but he was hardly the threat to the public that impeachment was designed for. the american public agreed. the democrats scored a shocking upset in the midterm elections gaining seats in the house. the lewinsky issue didn t carry any wait. newt gingrich that predicted a big republican victory. we had a chance to win startling victories all over the country. lost his job as speaker. sobering a disappointment election. impeachment is a two-edged sword. you may intend to use it against your enemy but it could very well hurt you even more politically. president clinton was thrilled thinking he was in the clear. on capitol hill, tom delay is known as the hammer. but hardcore conservatives were hell-bent on impeaching him anyway. the house has no choice but to proceed with an impeachment inquiry. some republicans preferred a lesser punishment for clinton. ce censure rather than impeachment but that took the option off the table. republicans were given a choice. either impeach him or let him off. which is it going to be? article one is adopted. we have witnessed history. the house impeached bill clinton almost entirely along party lines. the president re-signed and his legacy will be forever scarred today. on this article of impeachment. in the senate, he is easily acquitted. william jefferson clinton is not guilty. in retrospect it s viewed as a partisan effort. the american people spoke and said we don t really want to impeach this president. congress took the law that created his job. a bipartisan acknowledgment that things had gone too far. women will be silent no more. but today in the me too era, clinton s impeachment is being seriously reconsidered. his affair with a young intern seen by many as an abuse of power. my greatest mentor, hillary clinton. democrat kirsten gillibrand that holds hillary clinton s old senate seat and is now running for president said in 2017 that bill clinton should have re-signed. the kind of behavior tolerated a long time ago will never be tolerated today and we can t allow it to be tolerated today. rtphone. i became an engineer because of them. now i m at verizon building a powerful 5g experience for america. we call it 5g ultra wideband. when i think of where people might go with it. i think of them. 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[ chanting usa ] the country supported president bush as he took the united states into battle to destroy sadam hussein s weapons of mass destruction. but there were none and the occupation of iraq was a tragic mess. an anti-war movement grew quickly. and it used impeachment as a weapon. bring down these war criminals, like bush, he needs to be impeached. impeachment talk got louder. will the house come to order? and democratic congressman introduced dozens of articles of impeachment. but the leader of the democrats, nancy pelosi wanted none of it. impeachment is off the table. disagreements over policy were not intended by the founders to be the basis for a serious attempt at impeachment. it s not a crime or a misdemeanor under the constitution to make a mistake. after bush s mistake, the country was totally polarized in it s view of the president. and the partisan gap was the widest ever reported. ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states and the vice president of the united states impeachment fever would only get worse under the next president. change has come to america. in 2008, barrack obama was elected on a promise, to help heal the country s extreme partisan divide. but the candidate who had campaigned on yes we can ran into a wall of republican opposition. no you can t. the tea party formed around an almost fanatical opposition to barrack obama. in 2010, it propelled a wave of new republicans to congress. what does it feel like? it feels bad. this new hyperpartisan congress presided over a growing impeachment movement. when you promise that you re out to impeach the president, you can make a name for yourself. you can raise money. you can rally the base. impeach him. really? impeachment is not supposed to be used as a rallying cry to get people to vote for you. both sides played around with it. impeachment campaigns against president s bush and obama never gained legitimacy or real legislative support so one could argue who cares? it s only talk. if you play around with impeachment that way, over time, the american people are going to misunderstand it s constitutional power and it s necessity. when barrack obama left office he was more popular than george bush but the gap between the people who loved him and the people who hated him was even larger than it had been with president bush. the stark polarization of the last few years is the worst in american history with one exception. the period around the civil war on april 15th 1865 president lincoln was assassinated. the country was still deeply divided over the civil war. enter andrew johnson. the vice president who succeeded lincoln. johnson was a southern democrat who lincoln picked to create a national unity ticket. there s few things historians agree upon but this is one, andrew johnson was one of america s worst presidents. he was essentially an incredibly racist, neo-confederate that was dead set against congress s program of reconstructing the south. republicans in congress despised andrew johnson. he stood for the repression of african americans whom a war had just been fought to liberate. president johnson vetoed almost all the measures to give civil liberties and representation to blacks. the republican controlled congress decided to wage a political war. it set an impeachment trap for him. that trap was called the tenure of office act. congress passed a law over johnson s veto that said he could not fire his own cabinet members. when president johnson fired his secretary of war, the house approved 11 articles of impeachment against him. one of which accused the president of bringing congress into ridicule and disgrace. their entire approach to impeachment was partisan and ideological. however bad a president andrew johnson was, there were no grounds to remove him. the country was one vote away from removing president andrew johnson from office, essentially because congress did not like him or his policies. johnson basically agreed to cease all the behavior that had been so problematic to go along with the congressional reconstruction program. historians today regard the impeachment trap as unconstitutional. impeachment fell into disrepute. johnson s impeachment would serve as a warning about the consequences of a partisan impeachment in a sharply divided country. it raises blood pressures and in some proverb ways it actually makes impeachment harder to use when you might really need it. woman 1: i had no symptoms of hepatitis c. man 1: mine. .caused liver damage. vo: epclusa treats all main types of chronic hep c. vo: whatever your type, ask your doctor if epclusa is your kind of cure. woman 2: i had the common type. man 2: mine was rare. vo: epclusa has a 98% overall cure rate. man 3: i just found out about my hepatitis c. woman 3: i knew for years. vo: epclusa is only one pill, once a day, taken with or without food for 12 weeks. vo: before starting epclusa, your doctor will test if you have had hepatitis b, which may flare up, and could cause serious liver problems during and after treatment. vo: tell your doctor if you have had hepatitis b, other liver or kidney problems, hiv, or other medical conditions. vo: .and all medicines you take, including herbal supplements. vo: taking amiodarone with epclusa may cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. vo: common side effects include headache and tiredness. vo: ask your doctor today, if epclusa is your kind of cure. don t worry. travelocity is there for you with 24/7 customer service. now, if your flight runs out of those mini bottles? then, you can worry. travelocity. wander wisely. travelocity. (door bell rings) it s ohey. this is amazing. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications haven t worked well enough. and it helps people achieve control that lasts. so you can experience few or no symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, control is possible. at the end of each of my specials i have always stood before you and given you my views of the topic at hand. i m going to do that now but in a slightly dicfferent way. i thought it best to ask the basic questions we all wonder about and then listen to what our experts had to say. it s important to understand that impeachment is a political process. and impeachable offenses at the end of the day, whatever congress defines as such. but we live in a constitutional republic history. so what can we say about the mandate of congress under which it can impeach a president? in other words, what are high crimes and misdemeanors? high crimes and misdemeanors, which is the phrase used in the constitution, has a very concrete specific meaning. high means pertaining to high office. so if your crime or misdemeanor has nothing to do with your office, you re not really covered by the framers idea of impeachment. if you look carefully at the reasoning of republicans and democrats, who have voted for impeachment over the course of our history, you ll notice that they always come back to the idea that some action or some pattern of conduct by the chief executive represents a threat to our democracy and to our constitution. one of the questions we must all wonder about is why is it that we hear so much talk about impeachment these days? bush, obama, and now trump. impeach 45! when did this all start? it really has been about 20 years from the clinton impeachment that impeachment talk has so overtaken our political discourse. president trump came to office with about 1/3 of the american public already supporting his impeachment. that s extraordinary. and that gets us to the elephant in the room. has donald trump committed offenses that could be considered impeachable? like money laundering, which some suspect in his real estate deals. or fraud involving trump university. or tax evasion, which is why some theorize he won t show us his tax returns. crimes that trump may allegedly have committed before he had anything to do with the presidency, done count as crimes and misdemeanors and they would not be impeachable offenses in my view. what about the issue of obstruction of justice? obstruction of justice is a charge that was used both against richard nixon and against bill clinton. and if it s real, it s a very strong ground for impeachment. harvard law professor noah feldman says that when the president fired james comey he may have committed obstruction of justice. my own view is that he could have done so if he did it with corrupt intent. it s true that the director of the fbi works for the president and the president has the right to remove him on any whim that he might have. but the fact the president can remove comey doesn t mean that it s permissible for him to do it if he did it for gain. to prove that you d need a smoking gun. it s very hard to prove corrupt intent. feldman does see possible charges in another case. michael cohen s sworn testimony that the president directed him to make an illegal payment to stormy daniels. cohen says it was made to influence the election. a president who distorts the electoral process and breaks the law in doing so is someone who is potentially impeachable. the president thinks it s a witch hunt. what about special counsel robert mueller s russia investigation? if there were evidence that donald trump further colluded with russians in a way that undercut the legitimacy of the election, that would be an even deeper parallel to the richard nixon case. to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion. of course we don t yet know what mueller may have found in his investigation. but there was one area where i was surprised to find considerable agreement among our experts. all spoke with wariness about wielding the sword of impeachment. impeachment is capital punishment for a presidency. it s something that congress should not consider unless all other avenues are no longer open. and what would an impeachment process look like in the deeply divided america that we live in today? a lot of folks think that impeachment just falls out of the sky like some kind of sword of damocles. and i m here to tell you that it doesn t. congress has to decide whether impeachment is the right move. unless there is overwhelming proof that the majority of the country accepts, impeachment will not bring this country together. it creates a crisis of domestic governance. it activates the worst kinds of partisan tribalism on all sides of the aisle. the only circumstances where i would actively support impeachment would be where there was evidence so glaring that failure to impeach would essentially show the hypocrisy of the whole system. in other words, america might be too polarized today to be able to deal with an impeachment honestly and responsibly. that s a dark verdict on the state of our politics, but it rings true, and it has a worrying consequence. when you live in a world of broken politics and when you live in a world of extraordinary partisan polarization, it just may not be possible to generate the consensus necessary to use the impeachment power. that s a scary thought. there may be circumstances where we just can t wait for the next election. and i don t have a reassuring answer to that. throughout this special report i have tried not to tell you what to think about this explosive issue but to give you the facts and context to help you think. i hope i ve succeeded. and that is our program tonight. i m fareed zakaria. thank you for joining us. she sees a bit of gray and thinks. (screams) luckily, there s magic root cover up from l oreal. three seconds to flawless roots 3.2.1. done! the number one root concealer in the world. magic root cover up from l oreal paris. tit can t be found on. just any map. a place miles from the beaten path. overcoming twists and turns, ups and downs.. whatever life throws. a place to always strive for. for all the journeys that make us stronger. webut some of us turn outhose dreams.. into action. the bookers. the doers. the hit that confirmation button and let s go! - ers! because bookers know that the perfect place to stay. is right there for the booking. be a booker at booking.com the world s #1 choice for booking accommodations. i switched to geico and saved hundreds. that s a win. but it s not the only reason i switched. geico s a company i can trust, with over 75 years of great savings and service. now that s a win-win. switch to geico. it s a win-win. the latest inisn t just a store.ty it s a save more with a new kind of wireless network store. it s a look what your wifi can do now store. a get your questions answered by awesome experts store. it s a now there s one store that connects your life like never before store. the xfinity store is here. and it s simple, easy, awesome. it s a time of enormous turmoil. shut up in here! the 60s are over, dad. michael at the foul line. a shot. good! we intend to cover all the news all the time. we won t be signing off until the world ends. isn t that special? any tool for human expression will bring out both the best and worst in us. and television has been that. they don t pay me enough to deal with animals like this. people are no longer embarrassed to admit they watch television. we have seen the news, and it is us. slowly but surely, the 1970s are disappearing. the 1980s will be upon us. and what a decade it is coming up. happy new year! as we began the 80s in the television world, the landscape was on any given evening 9 out of 10 people watching only one of three networks. more than 30 million people are addicted to it. social critics are mystified by its success. what is it? it s television s primetime prairie pot boiler dallas. a move like that will destroy all of ewing oil and it will ruin our family name. i assure you, a thought like that never crossed my mind. brother or no brother, whatever it takes, i ll stop you from destroying ewing oil. dallas established new ground in a weekly hour-long show. that literally captivated america for 13 years. dallas is a television show which in some ways is rooted in the 1970s, and one of the crazy things that emerges is this character, j.r. ewing, as a pop phenomenon. tell me, j.r., which slut are you going to stay with tonight? what difference does it make? whoever it is has got to be more interesting than the slut i m looking at right now. he was such a delicious villain everyone was completely enamored by this character. at this point, so many people were watching television that you could do something so unexpected that it would become news overnight. who s there? [ gunshots ] the national obsession in 1980 around who shot j.r. it s hard to imagine how obsessed we all were with that question. but we were. who shot j.r. is about as ideal a cliffhanger as you possibly could get. who did shoot j.r.? we may never get the answer to that question. the people who produce that program are going to keep us in suspense for as long as they possibly can. who shot j.r. and then we broke for the summer. then coincidentally the actors went on strike and it delayed the resolution. and it just started to percolate through the world. i remember going on vacation to england that summer and that s all that people were talking about there. we know you don t die. you couldn t die. we don t know that. well, how could you die? you couldn t come back next season. that s what i mean. i couldn t come back but the show could still go. but you wouldn t. what is that show without j.r.? well, that s what i figure. i guess if you don t know by now who shot j.r., you probably do not care. last night some 82 million americans did. and they watched the much touted dallas episode. it could become the most watched television show ever. who shot j.r. is a reflection of old-fashioned television. it s a moment that gathers everybody around the electronic fireplace, which is now the television set. one special american television program. a critic said it transcends in popularity every other american statement about war. and something special happened today to mobile army surgical hospital 4077. that will touch millions of americans. it was the kind of event that would draw the world s breath. stage 9, 20th century fox studios. the end of the korean war. the television version m.a.s.h. it s been an honor and privilege to have worked with you. i m very, very proud to have known you. there were those landmark times when shows that had been watched through the 70s and into the 80s like m.a.s.h. had its final episode. and we were all sad to see them go. i ll miss you. i ll miss you. a lot. all over the country, armies of fans crowded around television sets to watch the final episode and to bid m.a.s.h. farewell. the finale of m.a.s.h. was unprecedented. 123 million people watched one television program at the same time. i really should be allowed to go home. there s nothing wrong with me. when we ended the show, we got telegrams of congratulations from henry kissinger and ronald reagan. the size of the response and the emotional nature of the response that we were getting was difficult for us to understand. who shot j.r. and the last episode of m.a.s.h. are the last call for the pre-cable world of television. it s like they are the last time that that huge audience will all turn up for one event. all right. that s it. let s roll. hey. let s be careful out there. dispatch, we have a 911. armed robbery in progress. when quality does emerge on television, the phrase too good for tv is often heard. one recent network offering that seems to deserve that phrase is hill street blues. hill street is one of the changing points of the entire industry in the history of tv. we had all watched a documentary about cops and had this real hand-held in the moment quality that we were very enamored of. the minute you looked at it, it looked different. it had a mood to it. you could almost smell the stale coffee. we didn t want to do a standard cop show where, you know, you have a crime and you have your two cops and you go out and catch the bad guy and you sweat him and he confesses and that s it. cops have personal lives that impact their behavior in profound ways. what about him? is he here or elsewhere? don t get excited. we re working on it. how is this for logic, ferillo? if he s not here, and if he s not elsewhere, he s lost. we didn t say that, counselor. never in my entire life have i listened to so much incompetence covered up by so much unmitigated crap. find my client, ferillo, or i swear, i ll have you up on charges. there would be these ongoing arcs for these characters that would play out over five, six episodes, sometimes an entire season. and in a way for certain stories, over the entire series. and no one had really done that in an hour-long dramatic show. these past four months, i ve missed you. i had to find that out. come home. i think in the past people had watched television passively. and the one thing i think we did set out to be were provocateurs. you fill it out. what the hell is the matter with you, man? i ll tell you something. they don t pay me enough to deal with animals like this! the first thing they see is a white face and all they want to do is listen to me. it was a white man that pulled the trigger, not a black one. it was a white one. it set a trend. the idea that an audience can accept its characters being deeply flawed. even though they re wearing this uniform. and i thought that that was important, to finally get across. don t do it. no biting. we wanted to make a show that made you participate. made you pay attention. and i think that worked pretty well. and the winner is hill street blues. 21 nominations. and we went on to win eight emmys. it put us on the map, literally. and that s when people finally checked us out. programming chief of one of the networks used to say to me about shows like hill street and st. elsewhere what the american people wants is a cheeseburger and what you re trying to give them is a french delicacy. and he said your job is to keep shoving it down their throat until after a while they ll say that doesn t taste bad. and maybe they ll even order it themselves when they go to the restaurant. nice for you to join us. the success of hill street blues influenced everything that came after. then of course you saw shows like st. elsewhere koechlt. do you know what people call this place? not st. elegius. st. elsewhere. a place you wouldn t want to send your mother-in-law. when it first came on, it was promoted as hill street hospital. you gave your patients the wrong antibiotics. you don t know what medications they re on. you write the worst progress notes. you re pathetic. pathetic! bill. what? dr. morning needs you right away. i m sorry. st. elsewhere broke every rule there was and then built some new rules. called a little while ago. they ran a routine panel on that pint of blood. t-cell count was off. they would have tragic things happen to these characters. there was real heartache in these people s lives and you really felt for them. i ve got aids? television at its best is a mirror of society in the moment. st. elsewhere challenged people and challenged you as an actor, much less the audience to think. the stuff they gave you was extreme in what they did, whether they were dealing with aids or having one of their main doctor characters raped in a prison. they tackled lots of difficult subjects. st. elsewhere was run by people trying to stretch the medium and in the 80s, television producers were encouraged to stretch the medium. clear. -sport legend, bo jackson. 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(vo) quickbooks. backing you. likewise!ee you again! please. cosmopolitan? nope! i ll have a stella artois. your stella, miss. thank you! wild night, huh? white russian? nah, gary, gimme a stella art-toes. excuse me. good choice. well, changing can do a little good. dude abides. i feel most times we re high and low high and low if i had my way enhance your moments. san pellegrino. tastefully italian. now i m wondering if yourool i loves still strong. tayed too long. san pellegrino. ooo baby, here i am, signed, sealed, delivered, i m yours applebee s 3 course meal now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. and something amazing happens. that s our inspiration for fancy feast medleys. wild salmon primavera. tastes amazing. also in pate. fancy feast medleys. a lot of people used to say i was there. now people say they watch it on television. a lot of excitement connected to sports in the 80s. you used to have to depend on the five minutes at the end of your local newscast. there just hadn t been enough. give us a whole network of sports. there s just one place you need to go for all the names and games making sports news. espn sportscenter. what happens in the 1980s is sports becomes a tv show. and what are tv shows built around? they re built around characters. you can t be serious, man. you cannot be serious! you got the absolute pits of the world. you know that? mcenroe, the perfect villain. the new yorker that people loved to hate. borg the cool swede never giving any emotion away. what tennis really wants is to get its two best players playing over and over again in the final. whether they are john mcenroe and bjorn borg or chris evert and martina navratilova. that s what we want to tune in over and over. three match points to martina navratilova. this man has a smile that lights up a television screen from here to bangor, maine. and then there is magic johnson, this urban kid from michigan and larry bird, this guy who worked carrying trash. one plays for the los angeles lakers. the other plays for the boston celtics. it s a great story. lakers had several chances. here s larry bird. magic johnson leads the attack. look at that pass. oh, what a show! oh, what a show! when those championship games are in primetime and people are paying attention to that, television feeds into those rivalries and makes them bigger than they ve ever been before. somewhat primitive skill. they re just as good as dead. every mike tyson fight was an event. because every fight was like an ax murder. when he fought michael spinks, the electricity, you could just feel watching it on teefgs. tv. tyson was made for tv because there was drama. it s all over. mike tyson has won it! not a lot of junior high school kids can dunk. especially at everybody tries. i think that he is starting to transcend his sport that he s becoming a public figure. michael jordan becomes the model that every other athlete wants to shoot for. they want to be a brand. and that s what television does for these athletes. turns them into worldwide iconic brands. the inbounds pass comes in to jordan. michael at the foul line. a shot. good! bulls win! athletes in the 80s became part of an ongoing group of people we cared about. we just had an enormous pent-up demand for sports and the 80s began to provide. thank goodness. cable television is continuing to grow. it s estimated that it will go into 1 million more u.s. households this year. with cable television suddenly offering an array of different channel choices, the audience bifurcated. that s an earthquake. i want my mtv! i want my mtv! i want my mtv! a new concept is born. the best of tv combined with the best of radio. this is it. welcome to mtv, music television. the world s first 24-hour stereo video music channel. music television, what a concept. mtv was pow, in your face. you were not going to turn us off. mtv did nothing but play current music videos all day long. so let me get this straight. you turn on the tv, and it s like the radio? i m martha quinn. the music will continue nonstop on mtv music television s newest component of your stereo system. when mtv launched a generation was launched. 18 to 24-year-olds were saying, i want my mtv. i want my mtv videos. i want my mtv fashion. yo. mtv was the first network really focused on the youth market. and becomes hugely influential because they understand each other. the audience and the network. mtv had a giant impact. visually and musically on every part of the tv culture that came next. freeze, miami vice. friday nights on nbc are different this season thanks to miami vice. it s a show with an old theme but a lot of new twists. described by one critic as containing flashes of brilliance nonetheless, shot entirely on location in south miami, the story centers around two undercover vice cops. i don t know how this is going to work, tubbs. i mean, not exactly up my alley style and persona-wise. heaven knows i m no box of candy. television very much was the small screen. it was interesting about tony s pilot screen play for miami vice is that it was exactly not that. very much the approach was, okay, they call this a television series. but we re going to make one-hour movies every single week. here we go. stand by. action. police. they were just describing the show as a new wave cop show. yeah, it s a cop show for the 80s. we use a lot of mtv images and rock music to help describe the mood and feeling of our show. in a lot of ways you don t get miami vice without mtv because in a lot of ways miami vice was a long video. the music was such a big part of that show. there was an allure to using great music that everybody was listening to as opposed to the routine kind of tv scoring of that period. i can feel it coming in the air it not only wasn t not afraid to let long scenes play out. it would drag a car going from point a to point b could be a four-minute phil collins song. you know. and it was. oh lord being able to take a television series like miami vice and let s really kind of rock n roll with this until somebody says stop or are you guys crazy, you can t do that, and nobody ever did. freeze! police. i don t keep track of regrets. i never count the wrinkles. and i don t add up the years. but what i do count on, is staying happy and healthy. so, i add protein, vitamins and minerals to my diet with boost®. boost® high protein nutritional drink has 20 grams of protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals your body needs. all with guaranteed great taste. the upside- i m just getting started. boost® high protein be up for life. each day justin at work. walk. and after work. he does it all with dr. scholl s. only dr. scholl s has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort. to keep him feeling more energized. dr. scholl s. born to move. whooo! want to take your next vacation to new heights? 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hammond? private investigator? oh, you are probably wondering about the goat. just let me drop off my friend, and then we ll talk. when we entered the 80s, a lot of one-hour dramas that were lighthearted like magnum p.i. were very popular. after m.a.s.h. went off the air, the next season there wasn t a single sitcom in the top ten. first time that had ever happened in tv history. the prevailing feeling was that the sitcom was dead. brandon tartikoff, nbc programming chief, says reports of the sitcom s death were greatly exaggerated. time and time again, if you study television history, just when someone is counting a form out, that s exactly the form of programming that leads to the next big hit. so 1984 the cosby show comes on. bill cosby is not new to tv. he s had other tv shows. but the cosby show is very different. it stands apart from everything else he s done. i wanted mine scrambled. coming up. they talked about parenting. before that, the kids were cool and the parents were idiots. cosby says the parents are in charge and that was something new. instead of acting disappointed because i m not like you, maybe you can just accept who i am and love me anyway because i m your son. [ applause ] that s the dumbest thing i ve ever heard in my life! it helps the casting, if anything helps a lot in television. and the kids were just great. if you were the last person on this earth, i still wouldn t tell you. you don t have to tell me what you did. just tell me what they re going to do to you. unlike every other show on tv, it s showing an upper middle class black family. this wasn t all in the family. they weren t tackling deep issues. but that was okay. the mere fact that they existed was a deep issue. the decade was waiting for something real. in other words, unless it s real, it doesn t seem like it moves anybody. if someone is feeling something, you get to the heart, you get to the mind. and fudge hit the hearts and minds, you ve got yourself a hit. how was school? school? dear, i brought home two children that may or may not be ours. the cosby show brought this tremendous audience to nbc. and that was a bridge to us. our ratings went way up. sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name even the theme song to cheers puts you in a good mood. good evening, everybody. norm! what s shaking, norm? all four cheeks and a couple of chins, coach. by the end of the cheers pilot, not only did you know who everybody was, but you wanted to come back and see what was going to happen. it s like all you have to do is watch it once. you re going to love these people. these are universal characters, and the humor worked on so many levels. i was up until 2:00 in the morning finishing off kierkegaard. i hope he thanked you for it. you have to create a community that people are identifying with. and cheers gives you that community. i ve always wanted to skydive. i ve just never had the guts. what d it feel like? i imagine a lot like sex. not that i have to imagine what sex is like. i have plenty of sex. and plenty of this, too. why don t you just get off my back, okay? in the first episode there was a rather passionate annoyance. i was saying, something s going on here. a really intelligent woman would see your line of b.s. a mile away. i never met an intelligent woman that i would want to date. on behalf of the intelligent women around the world, may i just say, phew. we saw what ted and shelley had together. we said oh, no. we ve got to do this relationship. ted and i understood what they were writing right away. if you ll admit that you are carrying a little torch for me, i ll admit that i m carrying a little one for you. oh, i am carrying a little torch for you. well, i m not carrying one for you. diane knew how to tease sam. sam knew how to tease diane. and i guess we knew how to tease the audience. this incredible chemistry between the two of them ignited the show. that s what drove the show for the first five years. what s the matter? oh, i m devastated. i need something expeditious and brutal to blast me into sweet oblivion. make it a mimosa. we had the luck to be able to rotate the cast and every time we put somebody in, they were explosions. there was something very special about that setting, those characters that i never got tired of writing that show. sophisticated surveys, telephonic samplings, test audiences. all of those things help to separate winners from losers and make midcourse corrections. but you can t cut all comedies from the same cookie cutters. all you can hope is that every night turns out like thursday. yo, angela! next. how rude. quick, i ll give him that. all television said, oh, maybe sitcoms are alive again. and that s all that it took. it took one success. a few years from now, something new may tempt the people who pick what we see. but it s a very safe guess that whatever gets hot for a season or two the good men and women who create good television comedy will be laughing all the way to the bank. delicious boost® high protein nutritional drink has 20 grams of protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals. boost® high protein. be up for life. travelocity is there for you. not right in the room. that d be awkward. but you know, online, on the phone, when you realize you want to extend your stay. travelocity. wander wisely. 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but it took the christine craft incident, i think, to bring that conversation out into the open. this coming sunday, a new television network opens for business. cnn. cable news network. you re throwing all the dice on this one. why not? nothing ventured, nothing gained. well, on that original point, mr. turner, thank you very much, indeed. i wanted to see what was going on in the world. and there was no way that you could do it watching the regular television stations. news only comes on at 6:00 and 10:00. but if there was news on 24 hours, people could watch it any time. we decided on june 1 and barring satellite problems in the future, we won t be signing off until the world ends. it was widely believed it was a fool s errand. how could this possibly find an audience? well, he did. camera three. good evening. i m david walker. and i m lois harp. now here s the news. president carter has arrived television news before this was stuff that had already happened. for the first time, cnn brought the world to people in realtime. cnn, the world s most important network. i didn t do cable news network because somebody told me it couldn t be done. i figured it was a very viable concept, and i went ahead and did it. it was after we announced we were going to do it that the detractors showed up. is cable news network just going to be a new means of delivering the same kind of fare? no. it already does provide different fare. and cable news network is a perfect and maybe the best example of that. people love news. and we had lots of it. and the other guys had not very much. so choice and quantity won out. new york city, hello. the major catastrophe in america s space program. i am lou dobbs along with financial editor myron kandel. jessica mcclure trapped for almost three days now in a dry artesian well. the iron curtain between east germany and west berlin has come tumbling down. good evening, i m pat buchanan, the conservative in crossfire. the american people appreciated the new television. they certainly came to cnn in droves. mr. gorbachev and i both agree on the desirability of freer and more extensive personal contact between the peoples of the soviet union and the united states. we began to realize that the best way to get a message to a foreign leader was to have the president go in the rose garden and make a statement. because everybody was watching cnn. cnn was a breakthrough. it changed the whole world. it changed quickly. the network news business. that business that we weren t the only ones. and it was hard. it s hard to be on the top little perch and have to come down off it. a special segment tonight, the network news. the first in a two-part series on the profound changes taking place in television news. changes being brought about by business, competition and technology. there were a variety of reasons why people who worked at the broadcast networks were freaked out in the 1980s. one of them was cnn and the rise of cable. another was being taken over by foreign entities in corporate america. new owners spent billions buying the networks recently, and all of them want their money s worth. people began to find out that news could be a profit center. and that focused a lot of attention on us. a lot from people in wall street, for instance. if you think about the news divisions of cbs, nbc and abc, they were part of a really proud tradition. a journalistic tradition that really matters. we serve the public. this is not about profit and loss. the people who worked at those news stations were totally freaked out by what it meant they were now owned by these larger corporate entities. the television news isn t profitable at some point, there won t be any more television news on the networks. i worry about people only worried about money and power getting a hold of television. it has higher purposes than that. we have seen the news, and it is us. tremfya® can help adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis get clearer. and stay clearer. most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. before starting tremfya® tell your doctor if you plan to or have recently received a vaccine. tremfya®. stay clearer. janssen can help you explore cost support options. tremfya®. stay clearer. check it out, our unlimited plan on the brand new samsung galaxy s10. oooh. premium entertainment on the infinity screen! people have seven different premium entertainment options to choose from. cause people are different. like how you cut the crust off of your sandwiches, and i eat them. and i m pretty laid back and casual, and you. iron your jeans. i m actually very happy you noticed that. cool. that s cool. at&t has the only unlimited plan that gives you your choice of top-tier entertainment. buy a new galaxy s10 e, and get one free. more for your thing. that s our thing. likewise!ee you again! please. cosmopolitan? nope! i ll have a stella artois. your stella, miss. thank you! wild night, huh? white russian? nah, gary, gimme a stella art-toes. excuse me. good choice. well, changing can do a little good. dude abides. bipolar i disorder can make you feel like you have no limits. but mania, such as unusual changes in your mood, activity or energy levels, can leave you on. shaky ground. help take control by asking your healthcare provider about vraylar. vraylar treats acute mania of bipolar i disorder. vraylar significantly reduces overall manic symptoms, and was proven in adults with mixed episodes who have both mania and depression. vraylar should not be used in elderly patients with dementia, due to increased risk of death or stroke. call your doctor about fever, stiff muscles, or confusion, which may mean a life-threatening reaction or uncontrollable muscle movements, which may be permanent. side effects may not appear for several weeks. high cholesterol and weight gain; high blood sugar, which can lead to coma or death; decreased white blood cells, which can be fatal; dizziness upon standing; falls; seizures; impaired judgement; heat sensitivity; and trouble swallowing may occur. you re more than just your bipolar i. ask about vraylar. i feel most times we re high and low high and low if i had my way enhance your moments. san pellegrino. tastefully italian. sometimes ambition in a woman is considered to be a dirty word unfortunately. i don t hear the female voices reverberating in the halls of power in this business. i m sure there aren t more shows about women. talking about who they are. directing seems to be an area that is almost impossible to break through. i think the 80s were the era when women were being looked at with a little skepticism, but definitely with more acceptability. you could see the door opening. but it wasn t wide open. cagney and lacey was huge. that there would be two women and they had a serious job and they solved crimes and were out on the streets. they were tough. that was emblematic or maybe out in front a little of what was actually happening in the country. so we re a terrific team. this is true. there had been by that point hundreds of buddy cop shows. but these buddies were women. that had never been done before. i didn t go after this job because i couldn t find anything else. all right? i did not come here because i needed some kind of work to help pay the orthodontist. this means something to me. what the hell are we talking about here? we didn t even realize this was going to be such a big deal. and strangely, all these guys would say to us, well, yeah. i mean, it s a good script, but who s going to save them in the end? come on. we re taking you out of here. my wife. you don t take one more step. you understand me? sergeant nelson, you have until 8:00 tomorrow morning to turn yourself into i.a.d. phyllis! if you don t, i will. > it was the time where you really saw an emergence of women on television who were not necessarily just 20 and blond and had a small role. but women who had substantial roles. thank you for being a friend travel down the road and back again it was unpredictable that an audience, a young audience, a not so young audience and lots in between, could relate to those older ladies. ma, if you couldn t see, why didn t you call me to come get you? i tried to. but every time i put in a dime and dialed, a condom popped out. i got five in my pocket. here, dorothy. a lifetime supply. she was recently named along with norman lear and gym brookes as one of television s most gifted creator writers. when you look back at the past women s role models on tv, it s easy to see susan harris s impact. susan harris was the greatest writer in my opinion of her generation of that time. singularly. so, you know, all credit to her for coming up with so many iterations of something so amazing. do you think there is a woman s voice as a writer? woman s voice? well, generally, they speak higher, softer. i should know not to ask that of a writer. yes, of course, there s a woman s voice. women have a different perspective. women laugh at different things. so yes, there very definitely is a woman s voice. oh, do you know how many problems we have solved over a cheesecake at this kitchen table? no, dorothy. exactly how many? 147, blanche. hi, brian. it s cutthroat primetime time this fall was some 23 new shows compete in one of the hottest ratings races in years. here s one just about everybody predicts will be a big hit. designing women on cbs. four friends forming an interior decorating business and giving each other the business. suzanne, if sex were fast food, there would be an arch over your bed. she created would be one of the funniest most unusual shows in designing women. they were a different group of women than you really saw on television. they were fiesty. they were sexy and linda s voice came through shining. men can get away with anything. look at reagan s neck. it sags down to here. everybody raves about how great he looks. can you imagine if nancy had that neck? they d be putting her in a nursing home for turkey. they had given me 23 minutes to address whatever topic i wanted. it s a privilege. it s more than the president of the united states gets and it s thrilling to have that every week. i d be lying if i said i didn t put my opinions in the show. you look like you re in need of male come ppanionship here. trust me when i tell you misassessed the situation at this table. i am a woman and i am a writer but i don t really enjoy being called a woman s writer. i think labels are harmful to us. with murphy brown, just about everything about that program felt new. the civil rights movement and the woman s movement had just begun to be reflected in the programming that you saw on television in the 80s. murphy, you know it s for men only. and they have great dinners with great guests and i don t get to go for one reason and one reason only and it has to do with something that you ve got and i don t. a tiny, pathetic, little y chromoso chromosome. murphy brown was so popular and such a strong independent tough woman. no matter what you think of a guest or their views you re obligated to ask the questions in a dig anified manner. he thinks it s neat that his office chair swivels and he s calling me unprofessional. back. choose glucerna, with slow release carbs to help manage blood sugar, and start making everyday progress. glucerna. 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(music stops) ready to go? but. i. getting a volkswagen during the sign then drive event. it s almost that easy. with practically just your signature, you can get a 2019 volkswagen jetta for zero down, zero deposit, zero first month s payment, and zero due at signing. you wouldn t accept from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? flonase relieves your worst symptoms including nasal congestion, which most pills don t. flonase helps block 6 key inflammatory substances. most pills only block one. flonase. johnny carson is making the transition from the king of late night to a national treasure. he was a throw back to the old show biz stuff. it s been a long time. well, you have been busy with other things. the tide is starting to turn in terms of where late night television is going to go but johnny is holding out. he was not necessarily of his time in the 80s. but he did sustain a certain timelessness. he s the king. my next guest not only has a college degree but, he also has a high school degree as well. he s hosted the tonight show practically as often as johnny carson and now he has his very own show, weekday mornings at 10:00 on nbc. david letterman originally had a one hour daytime show and nbc after 13 weeks decided to cancel it. today is our last show on the air. have these people been frisked? it was a failure in terms of the ratings but not in terms of introducing us to letterman. thank you for being with us tonight. thank you for having me. i appreciate it. and in spite of all of this nonsense that goes around in the background. stay withes. don t give up. stay with us here in new york. dave is back in new york. you re going to host a late night television program that premieres on monday night. what are critics likely to say tuesday morning? i don t much care because i found a way to deal with that. pills and whiskey. you re on. oh, i m on? i m enjoying listening to you snort. they gave him the late night show after the tonight show and at the time people thought who is going to watch television at 12:30 at night? who s up? young people, college people. is it going well? this is the first show. this guy needs support, dave letterman. he was anti-establishment. he was thumbing his nose to any existing social structures. who are the women out there by the way? neighbors. i ll get rid of them. hey, excuse me. keep it moving. he spoofed the whole notion of talk shows. please say hello to tom hanks. there he is. no one could go on and try to steer it toward a point of view. i wouldn t stand for it. you were on to do one thing and one thing only. be as funny as the rest of the show. we could send a crew home couldn t we? as a comedian you wanted the biggest artist that you could get. he wanted his thumbprint out there and that s the most important thing. paul, do you have any accompanying music here for the small town news? paul schafer ladies and gentlemen. the show making fun of itself and turning itself inside out that way was something kind of new. don t we look like guys that you could see hanging around together? absolutely. would you like to hang around with me? no. i ll say this again. this is the stupidest show. i thought i would never want to do this show with you. now why? because you thought i was a [ bleep ]. there was one rule i keep trying to abide by and unfortunately i only get to it about 12% of the time and that is its only television. we re not doing cancer research. there s nothing sacred about
slowly but surely, the 1970s are disappearing. the 1980s will be upon us. and what a decade it is coming up. happy new year! as we began the 80s in the television world, the landscape was on any given evening, 9 out of 10 people watching only one of three networks. more than 30 million people are addicted to it. social critics are mystified by its success. what is it? it s television s primetime prairie potboiler dallas. a move like that will destroy all of ewing oil and ruin our family name! i assure you, a thought like that never crossed my mind. brother or no brother, whatever it takes, i ll stop you from destroying ewing oil. dallas really did establish new ground in terms of a weekly one-hour show that literally captivated america for 13 years. dallas is a television show which in some ways is rooted in the 1970s. and one of the crazy things that emerges is this character, j.r. ewing, as a pop phenomenon. tell me, j.r., which slut are you going to stay with tonight? what difference does it make? whatever it is, it s got to be more interesting than the slut i m looking at now. such a delicious villain. everyone was completely enamored by this character. at this point, so many people were watching television that you could do something so unexpected that it would become news overnight. who s there? [ gunshots ] the national obsession in 1980 around who shot j.r. it s hard to imagine how obsessed we all were with that question. but we were. who shot j.r. is about as ideal a cliffhanger as you possibly could get. who did shoot j.r.? we may never get the answer to that question. the people who produce that program are going to keep us in suspense as long as they possibly can. we shot j.r., then we broke for the summer. then coincidentally the actors went on strike. it delayed the resolution, and it just started to percolate through the world. i remember going on vacation to england that summer, and that s all that people were talking about there. we know you don t die. i mean, you couldn t die. we don t know that. how could you die? you couldn t come back next season. that s what i mean. i couldn t come back but the show could still go. oh, but you wouldn t. what is that show without j.r.? well, that s what i figure, yeah. i guess if you don t know by now who shot j.r., you probably do not care. last night some 82 million americans did. and they watched the much-touted dallas episode. it could become the most-watched television show ever. who shot j.r. is a reflection of old-fashioned television. it gathers everybody around the electric fireplace, which is now the television set. one special american television program. critics said it transcends in popularity ever other american statement about war. and something special happened today to mobile army surgical hospital 4077. that will touch millions of americans. it was the kind of event that would draw the world s breath. stage 9, 21st fox studios, the end of the korean war, the television version m.a.s.h. it s been an honor and a privilege to have worked with you. and i m very, very proud to have known you. there were those landmark times when shows that had been watched through the 70s and into the 80s, like m.a.s.h. had its final episode. and we were all sad to see them go. i ll miss you. i ll miss you. a lot. all over the country, armies of fans crowded around television sets to watch the final episode and to bid m.a.s.h. farewell. the finale of at m.a.s.h. was unprecedented. 123 million people watched one television program at the same time. you know, i really should be allowed to go home. i there s nothing wrong with me. when we ended the show, we got telegrams of congratulations from henry kissinger and ronald reagan. the size of the response and the emotional nature of the response that we were getting was difficult for us to understand. who shot j.r. and the last episode of m.a.s.h. are the last call for the pre-cable world of television. it s like they are the last time that that huge audience will all turn up for one event. all right. that s it. let s roll. hey. let s be careful out there. dispatch, we have a 911. armed robbery in progress. when quality does emerge on television, the phrase too good for tv is often heard. one recent network offering that s seems to deserve that phrase is hill street blues. hill street is one of the changing points of the entire industry in the history of tv. we had all watched a documentary about cops and had this real hand-held, in the moment quality that we were very enamored of. the minute you looked at it, it looked different. it had a mood to it. you could almost smell the stale coffee. we didn t want to do a standard cop show where, you know, you got a crime and you got your two cops, and you go out and you catch the bad guy, and you sweat him and he confesses, and that s it. cops have personal lives that impact their behavior in profound ways. well, what about it? is he here or is he elsewhere? don t get excited, costa, we re working on it. how is this for logic? if he s not here and he s not elsewhere, he s lost. we didn t say that counselor never in my entire life have i listened to so much incompetence covered up by so much unmitigated crap. find my client, or, i swear, i ll have you up on charges. there would be these ongoing arcs for these characters that would play out over five, six episodes, sometimes an entire season. and in a way, for certain stories, over the entire series. and no one had really done that in an hour-long dramatic show. these past four months, i ve missed you. i had to find that out. come home, pizza man. in the past, people had watched television passively. and the one thing i think we did set out to be were provocateurs. you fill it out. what the hell is the matter with you, man? i ll tell you something, they don t pay me enough to deal with animals like this! the first thing they see is a white face and they want listen to me, it was a white finger that pulled the trigger, not a black one, it was a white! it set a trend. the audience can accept characters being deeply flawed even though they are wearing this uniform. i thought that was important to finally get across. no biting! we wanted to make a show that made you participate. made you pay attention. and i think that worked pretty well. and the winner is hill street blues. 21 nominations. and we went on to win eight emmys. it put us on the map, literally. that s when people finally checked us out. programming chief of one of the networks used to say to me about shows like hill street and st. elsewhere, what the american people want is a cheeseburger. what you are trying to give them is a french delicacy. and he said, your job is to keep shoving it down their throat until after a while they ll say, that s doesn t taste bad. and maybe they ll even order it themselves when they go to the restaurant. nice for you to join us. the success of hill street blues influenced everything that s came after. and then of course you saw shows like st. elsewhere. you know what people call this? st. elsewhere. a place you wouldn t want to send your mother-in-law. when it first came on, it was promoted as hill street hospital. you give your patients the wrong antibiotics. you write the worst progress notes. you re pathetic. pathetic! bill? what? dr. morning needs you right away. i m sorry. st. elsewhere broke every rule there was and then built some new rules. the blood bank called a little while ago. they ran a routine panel on that pint of blood. t-cell count was off. they would have tragic things happen to these characters. there was real heartache in these people s lives and you really felt for them. i ve got aids? television at its best is a mirror of society in the moment. st. elsewhere challenged people, and they challenged you as an actor, much less the audience, to think. the stuff they gave you was extreme in what they did, whether they were dealing with aids or having one of their main doctor characters raped in a prison. they tackled lots of difficult subjects. st. elsewhere was run by people who were trying to stretch the medium. and in the 80s, television producers were encouraged to stretch the medium. okay, clear. it s a reminder of your struggles with psoriasis. but what if your psoriasis symptoms didn t follow you around? 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right? something like that. ya. uh, aren t you supposed to draw it first? stay in your lane, bro. just ok is not ok. especially when it comes to your network. at&t is america s best wireless network, according to america s biggest test. buy a new samsung galaxy s10 and get one free. over. hey, want to try it? ok here you go. over. under. hey whoa, pop, pop. your shoe s untied. ensure he s well taken care of, even as you build your own plans for retirement. see how lincoln can help protect your savings from the impact of long-term care expenses at lincolnfinancial.com. not this john smith. or this john smith. or any of the other hundreds of john smiths that are humana medicare advantage members. no, it s this john smith. who we paired with a humana team member to help address his own specific health needs. at humana, we take a personal approach to your health, to provide care that s just as unique as you are. no matter what your name is. a lot of people used to say, i was there. now people say, they watched it on television. there was a lot of excitement connected to sports in the 80s. you used to have to depend on the five minutes at the end of your local newscast. there just hadn t been enough. you know? give us a whole network of sports. there s just one place you need to go for all the names and games making sports news. espn sportscenter. what happens in the 1980th is sports becomes a tv show. and what are tv shows built around? they re built around characters. you can t be serious, man. you cannot be serious! you got the absolute pits of the world are you know that? mcenroe, the perfect villain. the new yorker that people loved to hate. borg, the cool swede never giving any emotion away. what tennis really wants is to get its two best players playing over and over again in the final. whether they are john mcenroe and bjorn borg, or chris everett and martina navratilova. that s what we want to turn into over and over. three match points to martina navratilova. this man has a smile that lights up a television screen from here to bangor, maine. and that there is magic johnson, this urban kid from michigan, and larry bird, this guy who worked carrying trash. one plays for the los angeles lakers. the other plays for the boston celtics. it s a great story. lakers had several chances. here s larry bird. magic johnson leads the attack. look at that pass. oh, what s a show! oh, what a show! when those championship games are in primetime and people are paying attention to that, television feeds into those rivalries and makes them bigger than they ve ever been before. the idea is to challenge me with somewhat primitive skill. they re just as good as dead. every mike tyson fight was an event. because every fight was like an ax murder. when he fought michael spinks, the electricity you could just feel on tv. tyson was made for tv because there was drama. it s all over! mike tyson has won it! not a lot of junior high school kids can dunk. especially at but everybody tries. everybody tries. i think that he is starting to transcend his sport, that he s becoming a public figure. michael jordan becomes the model every other athlete wants to shoot for. they want to be a brand. and that s what television does for these athletes. turns them into worldwide iconic brands. the inbounds pass comes in to jordan. here s michael at the foul line. a shot good! the bulls win it! athletes in the 80s became part of an ongoing group of people that we cared about. we just had an enormous pent-up demand for sports, and the 80s began to provide. thank goodness. cable television is continuing to grow. it s estimated it will go into 1 million more u.s. households this year. with cable television offering an array of different channel choices, the audience bifurcated. that s an earthquake. i want my mtv! i want my mtv! i want my mtv! a new concept is born. the best of tv combined with the best of radio. this is it. welcome to mtv music television. the world s first 24-hour stereo video music channel. music television, what a concept. mtv was, pow, in your face. you were not going to turn us off. mtv did nothing but play current music videos all day long. so let me get this straight. you turn on the tv, and it s like the radio? i m martha quinn. the music will continue nonstop on mtv music television, the newest component of your stereo system. when mtv launched, a generation was launched. 18 to 24-year-olds were saying, i want my mtv. i want my mtv videos. i want my mtv fashion. yo. mtv was the first network really focused on the youth market. and becomes hugely influential because they understand each other. the audience and the network. mtv had a giant impact, visually and musically, on every part of the tv culture that came next. freeze, miami vice! friday nights on nbc are different this season thanks to miami vice. it s a show with an old theme but a lot of new twists. described by one critic as containing flashes of brilliance. shot entirely on location in south miami, the story centers around two undercover vice cops. i don t know how this is going to work, tubbs. i mean, not exactly up my alley style and persona-wise. heaven knows i m no box of candy. television very much was the small screen. what was interesting about tony yerkovich s pilot screen for miami vice, it was very much not that. very much the approach was, okay, they call this a television series. but we re going to make one-hour movies every single week. here we go. stand by. action! police, police! they were describing the show as a new wave cop show. it s a cop show for the 80s. we use a lot of mtv images and rock music to help describe the mood and feeling of our show. in a lot of ways you don t get miami vice without mtv because in a lot of ways miami vice was a long video. the music was such a big part of that show. there was an allure to using great music that everybody was listening to as opposed to the routine kind of tv scoring of that period. i can feel it coming in the air tonight it was only not afraid to let long scenes play out. it would drag a car going from point a to point b could be a four-minute phil collins song, you know. and it was. hold on being able to take a television series like miami vice and let s really kind of rock and roll with that until somebody says, stop, are you guys crazy, you can t do that. and nobody ever did. freeze! police! for everything that i give, i get so much in return. hearing all of stanley s stories about his home, and everything that he s learned over the years, it reminds me that this is as much for him as it is for me. join our family of home instead caregivers and help make a world of difference. home instead senior care. apply today. home instead senior care. i love my babies, love my boys. since i m a truck driver, you know there s times that i m gone for, like, three weeks at a time. even if i m 3,000 miles away, i m connected with my boys. every day i can video chat with them. i could be in the middle of wyoming. even if i m like waaay. out here, i can still reach my kids. baby, you you see me? (sons) hey, daddy! (vo) there for you when it matters most. unlimited on the best network now comes with apple music on us. get a free galaxy s10e when you buy the new galaxy s10. only on verizon. likewise!ee you again! please. cosmopolitan? nope! i ll have a stella artois. your stella, miss. thank you! wild night, huh? white russian? nah, gary, gimme a stella art-toes. excuse me. good choice. well, changing can do a little good. dude abides. than the education there sof a young mind.portant let s go. let s go. let s go. except maybe being first in line to the grand opening of the world s largest rollercoaster. [ cheering ] the volkswagen atlas. more room means more fun. want more from your entejust say teach me more. into your xfinice remote to discover all sorts of tips and tricks in x1. can i find my wifi password? just ask. [ ding ] show me my wifi password. hey now! [ ding ] you can even troubleshoot, learn new voice commands and much more. clean my daughter s room. [ ding ] oh, it won t do that. welp, someone should. just say teach me more into your voice remote and see how you can have an even better x1 experience. simple. easy. awesome. thomas magnum? hammond? private investigator? oh, you re probably wondering about the goat. just let me drop off my friend, and then we ll talk. when we entered the 80s, a lot of one-hour dramas that were lighthearted like magnum p.i. were very popular. after m.a.s.h. went off the air, the next season there wasn t a single sitcom in the top ten. first time that had ever happened in tv history. the prevailing feeling was that the sitcom was dead. brandon tartikoff, nbc programming chief, says reports of the sitcom s death were greatly exaggerated. time and time again, if you study television history, just when someone is counting a form out, that s exactly the form of programming that s leads to the next big hit. 1984 the cosby show comes on. bill cosby is not new to tv. he s had other tv shows. but the cosby show is very different. it stands apart from everything else he s done. i wanted my scrambled. coming right up. they talked about parenting. before that, the kid were cool and the parents were idiots. then cosby says, the parents are in charge, and that was something new. instead of acting disappointed because i m not like you, maybe you can just accept who i am and love me anyway because i m your son. [ applause ] that s the dumbest thing i ve ever heard in my life! [ laughter ] it helps the casting a lot in television. the kids were just great. if you were the last person on this earth, i still wouldn t tell you. you have to tell me what you did. just tell me what s they re going to do to you. unlike every other show on tv, it s showing an upper middle class black family. this wasn t all in the family. they weren t tackling deep issues. but that was okay. the mere fact they existed was a deep issue. the decade was waiting for something real. in other words, unless it s real, it doesn t seem like it moves anybody. if someone s feeling something, you get to the heart, you get to the mind. if you can hit the hearts and minds, you ve got yourself a hit. how was school? school? dear, i brought home two children that may or may not be ours. cosby s show brought this tremendous audience to nbc. and that was a bridge to us. i mean, our ratings went way up. sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name even the theme song to cheers puts you in a good mood. evening, everybody. norm! norman! what s shaking, norm? all four cheeks and a couple of chins, coach. by the end of the cheers pilot, not only did you know who everybody was, but you wanted to come back and see what was going to happen. it s like all you have to do is watch it once. you re going to love these people. these are universal characters, and the humor worked on so many levels. i was up until 2:00 in the morning finishing off kierkegaard. i hope he thanked you for it. you have to create a community that people are identifying with. and cheers gives you that community. boy, i tell you, i ve always wanted to skydive. i ve just never had the guts. what s did it feel like? i imagine a lot like sex. i have to imagine what sex is like. but i have plenty of sex. and plenty of this, too. why don t you just get off my back, okay? in the first episode, there was a rather passionate annoyance. i was saying, ah, something s going on here. a really intelligent woman would see your line of b.s. a mile away. i ve never met an intelligent woman that i d want to date. on behalf of the intelligent women around the world, may i just say, whew! you saw what ted and shelly had together. we said, oh, no. we ve got to do this relationship. ted and i understood what they were writing right away. if you ll admit that you are carrying a little torch for me, i ll admit that i m carrying a little one for you. well, i am. carrying a little torch for you. well, i m not carrying one for you. diane knew how to tease sam. sam knew how to tease diane, and i guess we know how to tease the audience. this incredible chemistry between the two of them ignited the show. that s what s drove the show for the first five years. what s the matter? oh, i m devastated. i need something expeditious and brutal to numb my sensibilities and blast me into sweet oblivion. how about a boilermaker? make it a mimosa. we had the luck to be able to rotate cast, and every time we put somebody in, they were explosions. buh! there was something very special about that setting, those characters, that i never got tired of writing that show. sophisticated surveys, telephonic samplings, test audiences. all of those things help to separate winners from losers and make midcourse corrections. but you can t cut all comedies from the same cookie cutters. all you can hope is every night turns out like thursday. yo, angela! next! how rude. he s quick, i ll give him that. all of television said, oh, well, maybe the sitcoms are alive again. and that s all that it took. it took one success. a few years from now, something new may tempt the people who pick what we see. but it s a very safe guess that whatever gets hot for a season or two, the men and women who create good television comedy will be laughing all the way to the bank. helps keep me feeling dry, how will they know i worked hard? i ve gotta make stuff harder. there, that s hard. i can choose from all their different hotel brands. like a doubletree for my cousins. a homewood suites for my uncle. a hampton for my sister and her kids. and the waldorf astoria beverly hills for me. can i get a..? thank you. book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee. book at hilton.com first tattoo? yeah relax, amigo, it s gonna look ok. only ok? no worries boss, i m one of the tattoo artists in the city. you mean one of the best tattoo artists in the city? right? something like that. ya. uh, aren t you supposed to draw it first? stay in your lane, bro. just ok is not ok. especially when it comes to your network. at&t is america s best wireless network, according to america s biggest test. buy a new samsung galaxy s10 and get one free. travelocity is there for you. not right in the room. that d be awkward. but you know, online, on the phone, when you realize you want to extend your stay. travelocity. wander wisely. this is my last broadcast as the anchorman of the cbs evening news. for me it s a moment for which i long have planned but which nevertheless comes with some sadness. for almost two decades, after all, we ve been meeting like this in the evenings, and i ll miss that. and that s the way it is, friday, march 6th, 1981. i ll be away on assignment and dan rather will be sitting in here for the next few years. good night. uncle walter had dominated, certainly cbs, but in a way, the country. people used to say he was the most trusted man in the country. once walter cronkite retires, all three network news anchors within a period of a couple of years switch over to a new generation. the 80s may have been the last gasp where people watching the media liked and trusted the media. nuclear arms and how to prevent global destruction are expected to be the major topic of president reagan s news conference tonight. that conference will be nationally televised within the hour. leslie stahl is at the white house. the white house is hoping that tomorrow s in the 80s, women came into the newsroom. when i first joined, it was 72. there are very few. by the 80s, there were more and more. the decade of the 80s was still a time of sink or swim. you had to be resilient in your own way to survive in a period when you were going up against a lot of people who still didn t think women had what it took. these are some of the most famous faces in broadcasting. all of whom happen to be women. the best producers, i m going to get fired the best producers at cbs news are women. and they are at the level of taking hold and making decisions about individual pieces. they are not yet executive producers of all the news shows. but they will be. the past 24 hours, christine craft has taken her cause to many of the nation s news and talk programs. i didn t set out to be joan of arc, but i think that what happened to me deserves some attention. kristine craft had a very successful career, but there she was in her late 30s and the tv station said to her, we re taking you off the air because you ve gotten older and you re not as attractive as you once were, which was outrageous. she decided to make an issue of it. she filed a lawsuit and it became a huge national topic of discussion. a jury said she got a raw deal because she is a woman. so women in television news everywhere were asked, what do you think about kristine craft? i think unfortunately in recent years, the emphasis has been increasingly on physical appearance, and to the extent this decision helps swing the emphasis back to substance and to good journalism, i think we ve got something to be happy about. it was important to make the point that what mattered was, what s kind of reporter are you? but it took the christine craft incident, i think, to bring that conversation out into the open. this coming sunday a new television network opens for business. cnn. cable news network. you are throwing all the dice on this one. why not? nothing ventured, nothing gained. faint heart ne er won fair lady. well on that original point, mr. turner, thank you very much indeed. i wanted to see what was going on in the world. and there was no way that you could do it watching the regular television stations. news only comes on at 6:00 and 10:00. but if there was news on 24 hours, people could watch it any time. we decided on june 1 and barring satellite problems in the future, we won t be signing off until the world ends. it was widely believed it was a fool s errand. how can this possibly find an audience? well, he did. ready camera 3 good evening. i m david walker. i m lois harp. now here s the news. president carter has arrived television news before this was stuff that had already happened. for the first time, cnn brought the world to people in realtime. cnn, the world s most important network. i didn t do cable news network because somebody told me it couldn t be done. i figured it was a very viable concept, and i went ahead and did it. it was after we announced we were going to do it that the detractors showed up. is cable news network just going to be a new means of delivering the same kind of fare? no. it already does provide different fare. cable news network is a perfect and maybe the best example of that. people love news. and we had lots of it. and the other guys had not very much. so choice and quantity won out. new york city, hello. the major catastrophe in america s space program i am lou dobbs along with financial editor myron kandel. jessica mcclure trapped for almost three days in a dry artesian well. the iron curtain between east germany and west berlin has come tumbling down. good evening, it s patrick buchanan, the conservative on crossfire. the american people appreciated the new television. they certainly came to cnn in droves. mr. gorbachev and i both agree on the desirability of freer and more extensive personal contact between the peoples of the soviet union and the united states. we began to realize that the best way to get a message to a foreign leader was to have the president go in the rose garden and make a statement. because everybody was watching cnn. cnn was a breakthrough. it changed the whole world. it changed quickly. the network news business. that business that we weren t the only ones. and it was hard. you know, it s hard to be on the top little perch and have to come down off it. a special segment tonight, the network news. the first in a two-part series on the profound changes taking place in television news. changes being brought about by business, competition, and technology. there are a variety of reasons why people who worked at the broadcast networks were freaked out in 1980s. one of them was cnn and the rise of cable. another was being taken over by foreign entities in corporate america. new owners spent billions buying the networks recently, and all of them want their money s worth. people began to find out that news could be a profit center. and that focused a lot of attention on us. a lot from people in wall street, for instance. if you think about the news divisions of cbs, nbc and abc, they were part of a really proud tradition. a journalistic tradition that really matters. we serve the public. this is not about profit and loss. the people who worked at those news divisions were totally freaked out by what it meant that they were now owned by these larger corporate entities. the television news isn t profitable at some point, there won t be any more television news on the networks. i worry about people only interested in money and power getting hold of television. it has higher purposes than that. we have seen the news, and it is us. if you have a garden you know, weeds are lowdown little scoundrels. don t stoop to their level. draw the line with the roundup sure shot wand. it extends with a protective shield and targets weeds more precisely. it lets you kill what s bad right down to the root while guarding the good. roundup sure shot wand. and to stop weeds before they start, also try roundup landscape weed preventer. roundup brand. trusted for over 40 years. you wouldn t accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from your allergy pills? 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(v.especially when your easily distracted teenager has the car. the worst. at subaru, we re taking on distracted driving [ping] with sensors that alert you when your eyes are off the road. the all-new subaru forester. the safest forester ever. that there s a lobster i in our hot tub?t. lobster: oh, you guys. there s a jet! oh.i needed this. no, i can t believe how easy it was to save hundreds of dollars on our car insurance with geico. we could have been doing this a long time ago. so, you guys staying at the hotel? yeah, we just got married. oh ho-ho! congratulations! thank you. yeah, i m afraid of commitment. and being boiled alive. oh, shoot. believe it. geico could save you 15% or more on car insurance. that guy s the worst. sometimes ambition in a woman is considered to be a dirty word, unfortunately. i don t hear the female voices reverberating in the halls of power in this business. i m surprised there aren t more shows about women talking about who they are. it seems to be an area almost impossible to break through. i think the 80s were the era when women were being looked at with a little skepticism, but definitely with more acceptability. you could see the door opening. but it wasn t wide open. cagney and lacey was huge. that there would be two women and they had a serious job and they solved crimes and they were out on the streets, they were tough. that was emblematic or in front of what was happening in the country. so we re a terrific team. there had been by that point hundreds of buddy cop shows. these buddies were women. that had never been done before. i didn t go after this job because i couldn t find anything else. all right? i did not come here because i needed some kind of work to help pay the orthodontist. this means something to me. what the hell are we talking about here? we didn t even realize this was going to be such a big deal. and strangely, all these guys would say to us, well, yeah. i mean, it s a good script, but who s going to save them in the end? come on. we re getting out of here. you don t take one more step. you understand me? sergeant nelson, you have until 8:00 tomorrow morning to turn yourself in to iad. phyllis! if you don t, i will! it was the time where you really saw an emergence of women on television who were not necessarily just 20 and blond and had a small role. but women who had substantial roles. thank you for being a friend travel down the road and back again it was unpredictable that an audience, a young audience, a not so young audience, and lots in between, could relate to those older ladies. ma, if you couldn t see, why didn t you call me to come get you? i tried to. every time i put in a dime and dialed, a condom popped out. i got five in my pocket. here, dorothy. a lifetime supply. she was recently named along with norman lear and jim brooks as one of television s most gifted creative writers. when you look back at the past women s role models on tv, it s easy to see susan harris impact. susan harris was the greatest writer, in my opinion, of her generation, of that time, singularly. so all credit to her for coming up with so many iterations of something so amazing. do you think there is a woman s voice as a writer? woman s voice? generally they speak higher, softer. i should know not to ask that of a writer. yes, of course, there s a woman s voice. women have a different perspective. women laugh at different things. so, yes, there very definitely is a woman s voice. oh, do you know how many problems we have solved over a cheesecake at this kitchen table? no, dorothy. exactly how many? 147, blanche. hi, brian. it s cut-throat prime time time this fall, as some 23 new shows compete in one of the hottest ratings races in years. here s just about one everybody predicts will be a big hit. designing women on cbs. four friends forming an interior decorating business and giving each other the business. suzanne, if sex were fast food, there would be an arch over your bed. linda bloodworth-thomason created one of the funniest, most unusual shows in designing women. they were a different group of they were a different group of women than you really saw on television. they were feisty and sexy, and linda s voice came through shining. a man can get away with anything. look at reagan s neck, it sags down to here. and everybody raves about how great he looks. can you imagine if nancy had that neck? they d be putting her in a nursing home for turkeys. they had given me this 23 minutes to address whatever topic i want, and it is such a privilege, more than the president of the united states gets, and it s kind of thrilling to have that every week. i d be lying if i said i didn t put my opinions in the show. excuse me, but you lovely ladies look like you are in need of a little male companionship here. trust me when i tell you you have completely misassessed the situation at this table. moving on to scene g. i am a woman and i am a writer, but i don t really enjoy being called a woman s writer. i think labels are harmful to us. with murphy brown, just about everything about that program felt new. the civil rights movement and the women s movement had just begun to sort of be reflected in the programming you saw in television in the 80s. murphy, you know the dunfree s club is for men only. and they have great dinners with great guests, and i don t get to go for one reason and one reason only, and it has to do with something you ve got and i don t. a tiny, pathetic, little, y chromosome. murphy brown was sea change because she was so popular and such a strong, independent, tough woman. no matter what you think of a guest or their views, you are obligated to ask the questions in a dignified manner. jim, she was unprofessional, am i right? well, i do you believe this, jim? he thinks it s neat that his office chair swivels and he s calling me unprofessional. naysayer said no one would subscribe to a car the way they subscribe to movies. we don t follow the naysayers. 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[ laughter ] johnny carson in the 80s is making the transition from being the king of late night to being a national treasure. he was a throwback to the old show biz stuff. i ve been on with you for some time. it s been a long time. well, you ve been busy with other things. and the tide is starting to turn in terms of where late-night television is going to go, but johnny is kind of holding out. he was not necessarily of his time in the 80s, but he did sustain a certain timelessness. he s the king. [ laughter ] he s all right, he s just playing. playing? my [ bleep ]. my next guest not only has a college degree, but he also has a high school degree. that s right, i do. as well. he s hosted the tonight show practically as long as johnny carson and now he has his very own show, weekday mornings at 10:00 on nbc. what you re witnessing here is a good idea gone awry. a fun-filled surprise turning into an incredible screw-up. david letterman originally had a one-hour daytime show, and nbc, after like 13 weeks, decided to cancel it. today is our last show on the air. monday, las vegas [ booing ] have these people been frisked? it was a dismal failure in terms of the ratings, but not in terms of introducing us to letterman. david, thank you for being with us tonight. thank you very much for having me, i appreciate it. in spite of all this nonsense that goes around in the background, stay with it and don t give up. and stay with us here in new york. i like being here. thank you very much. dave is back in new york. you re going to host a late-night television program that premieres monday night. what are critics likely to say tuesday morning? i don t much care because i found a way to deal with that, pills and whiskey. david, you re on. oh, i m on? i m sorry. proceed. i was enjoying listening to you snort. they gave him the late night show after the tonight show. and at the time, people thought who is going to watch television at 12:30 at night? who s up? i ll tell you who s up. young people. college people. i know this is the first show and i think this guy needs a little support, dave letterman. he was anti-establishment at his core. he was thumbing his nose to any existing social structures. who are those women out there by the way? neighbors. i ll get rid of them. hey, excuse me. keep it moving. come on, get out. he kind of spoofed the whole notion of talk shows. it s the late-night guest cam. please say hello to tom hanks. there he is. no one could go on the david letterman show and try to steer it towards a point of view or push something in particular. he just wouldn t stand for it. you re on to do one thing and one thing only, be as funny as the rest of the show. you know, we could get in a two-shot here, david. we could actually send the crew home, couldn t we? as a comedian, you want the biggest audience that you could get. for dave, he knew a lot of things that he would do were going to alienate people, and he didn t care. he wanted his thumbprint out there, and that s the most important thing. it s time for small-town news. paul excuse me, paul? do you have any accompanying music here for small-town news? paul shaffer, ladies and gentlemen. the show making fun of itself and turning itself inside-out that way was something kind of new. i mean, don t we look like guys you d see hanging around together? absolutely. would you like to hang around with me? nope. i ll say it again, this is the stupidest show i thought i would never want to do this show with you. now why? because you thought i was a [ bleep ]. there is one rule i keep trying to abide by, and unfortunately, i only get to it about 12% of the time. and that is, it s only television. we re not doing cancer research. if the 40-year-odd history of commercial broadcasting has taught us one thing, there is nothing sacred about television. steven is upstairs. dave, i was just curious, is there any way i can get mtv on this? actually, steve, that s a that s just a monitor and all you can get on that is our show. oh. that s okay. there was a degree of cynicism that was needed in the art form at that time, and it was a cynicism that became common sense after a while because it never got old. i ve watched johnny carson. and you are no johnny carson. [ laughter ] good day. welcome to the great white north, canadian corner. i m bob mckenzie, this is my brother doug. today we got a real big show there was a second city chicago company, there was a second city toronto company. the toronto one is the one that fueled the sctv series which originally was syndicated and got to the states that way. hail, caesar! hail, hail! hail, hail. thank you very much for that marvelous reception. i particularly want to thank my supporters over there in the cesarean section. it s healthy to be an outsider. as a comedian, and canadians are always outsiders, but they are looking at the other culture which is right next door to them. i love you, i want to bear your children! it was the type of comedy that had only been accessible if you could have gotten into the improv clubs in chicago and toronto. i had never seen anything like second city tv. james bridgeman, parkdale. sorry, no, never mind, i m sorry. it was far more conceptual in its humor because it didn t have to be performed in front of an audience. and there was also just the idea that it was this sort of low-rent thing. it was this sort of by the seat of their pants kind of operation that gave it an authenticity. now that our programming day has been extended i m going to be spending where do you want me to put the kielbasa, mrs. brickley? put it in the fridge, butch. you were rooting for the show and the characters they created. there was just something you got behind. whereas snl, right from the gate and through the 80s, was this big enterprise. after five golden years, lorne decided to leave and so did those close to him, including me, al franken. so nbc had to pick a new producer. now most knowledgeable people, as you might imagine, hoped it would be me, al franken. well, there was a real question of whether saturday night live would continue at all, whether it would just die. the press hasn t been overly kind. yeah, i read that stuff. saturday night live is saturday night dead? oh, come on. from yuks to yuck? my favorite is vile from new york. that s funny, that s funny. they were having a hard time. and then came the man to save the show, eddie murphy. there was buzz about him so you tuned in. and there was this kind of explosion of talent in front of your eyes. in the hot tub burned myself it really kind of rejuvenated the show. i am gumby, dammit! you don t talk to me that way! after a while, the show regained its status and clout and became even more of an institution than it had been. hey, bob. hey, peters. looks great today. listen, if you re unhappy with my work, tell me now! you re through! do you hear me? through! you ll never work in this town again. don t leave me hanging by a thread. let me know where i stand! we were a little worried because we had a new cast, but everyone loves us. you guys have been so nice to us during our stay. isn t that special? i am hans. and i am franz. and we just want to pump you up. a lot of things they could do on saturday night live they couldn t do on a sitcom. the humor was more daring and more satirical, and it was political. you still have 50 seconds left, mr. president. let me just sum up. on track, stay the course. a thousand points of light. stay the course. governor dukakis, rebuttal? i can t believe i m losing to this guy. i ll get it. it s garry shandling show. people were taking all the old principles of comedy and trying to turn them into something new. we spent years watching sitcoms and dramas and talk shows and by then we knew them by heart, that if somebody played on that and parodied it, we got it instantly. i appreciate you coming in under these conditions, lewis, i really do. you want to hold the credits? okay. we were going to show the credits and you screwed that up because you re late. the garry shandling show was aware of the fact that it was a situation comedy. it highlighted the cliches in funny ways. are you looking into the camera? no. no, i didn t don t look into the camera. i didn t. don t. you don t come in here and look in the camera. i didn t. i ll bop you. i will. if i see a tape of this show and you re looking into the camera well, it s about that time. pee-wee s playhouse on cbs, a so-called saturday morning kids show that adults could watch and wink at each other as they were watching it is very clever. good morning. what s today s secret word? today s secret word is good! it was a show certainly for kids, and it was for stoned baby boomers who were totally wasted on saturday morning and watched pee-wee s playhouse and saw god. i sure had a lot of fun. see you all real soon. see you all real soon. until then, everybody be good. don t you get the one of those travel sites? they tell you that, but when you book at hilton.com, you get the price match guarantee. so if you find your room at a lower rate, hilton is like. we re gonna match that rate and give you an extra 25% off. what would travel sites do if you found a better price? that s not my problem, it s your problem. get outta here! whoa, i really felt that performance. it s just acting, i m really good at it. book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee. if you find a lower rate, we match it and give you 25% off that stay. 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(avo) switch to sprint today. get a samsung galaxy s10e on us when you lease your next generation galaxy phone. for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com 1968, the summer before junior high school, and i don t mind saying i was a pretty fair little athlete. the wonder years was a guy in modern times looking back on his childhood. that in itself is not new, but the wonder years did it with the wit and with the music. it was a brilliantly written show and a great performance by that entire young cast. hey, steve looks like my baby brother and girlfriend have found each other. she s not my girlfriend. kevin arnold has to cope with all the timeless problems of growing up during one of the most turbulent times that we ve known. kevin arnold is just like a regular kid except in the 1960s, and he s not really aware of many of the events. like in one of the episodes, the whole family is watching the apollo 8 take off, but i m just sitting there trying to call a girl. the first episode of the wonder years, anybody who saw it remembers the ending where, you know, the first kiss with winnie and kevin arnold. the song they play is when a man loves a woman. that moment seemed so pure and so real. when a man loves a woman can t keep his mind on nothing else the 1960s is about rebellion, about being students. by the 1980s, it s time to grow up. and so they shave their beards give up their dashikis and put on power suits, a whole new notion. ah, the yuppies. last year the politicians were talking about winning their votes. now the young urban professionals and the rest of their baby boom generation are being wooed by advertisers and their agencies. by the 80s, it was pretty clear that the generation after the generation of the 60s may be embodied by alex keaton on family ties, seemingly to be a lot more interested in the corner office than the new jerusalem. you re a young man. you shouldn t be worried about success. you should be thinking about hopping on a tramp steamer and going around the world. the 60s are over, dad. thanks for the tip. you weren t laughing at michael j. fox s character for being too conservative. you were laughing at the parents for being too hopelessly liberal. what is this? i found it in the shower. that s generic brand shampoo. no! this is him. this is the guy i ve been telling you about. this is everything you d want in a president. the genius of family ties is it allows a youthful reaganite to emerge that s focused more on the future, focused on a critique of the 60s. michael j. fox as alex keaton really became the center of the show. and writers were smart enough to see that they had something special, and they wrote to that. it s not fair, alex. yeah, there is nothing you can do about it, jen. my advice to you is that you just enjoy being a child for as long as you can. i know i did. it was the best two weeks of my life. alex is a little bill buckley. the wall street journal is his bible. he has a tie to go with his pajamas. he is a very conservative and very intense 17-year-old. the first thing the teacher will ask is what you did over the summer. a lot of kids will say i went to the zoo or i went to the beach or i went to a baseball game. what are you going to say? i watched the iran contra hearings. if mom and dad thought this generation was going to the dogs, think again. this is the generation that has discovered hard work and success. american culture is changing in the 80s. and in terms of television, there s a whole notion of demographic segmentation. networks were beginning to not be afraid to appeal to a very specific demographic. hey, handsome. look at that shirt. is that a power shirt or what? nice suit, alan. good shoulder pads. you looking to get drafted by the eagles? 30-somethings said we re not going to have cops, lawyers or doctors. we re just going to be about people. what are we doing here, why did we start this business? to do our thing. but right now we have two wives, three kids, four cars, two mortgages a payroll. and that s life, pal. thirtysomething is a very important show as you are going into this era of television being more introspective and more emotional. and some people weren t buying it. but for other people when they were talking about things like having kids and who was going to go back to work and some of these issues that hadn t been talked about a whole lot, it was important to people. i was so looking forward i was so looking forward to doing this. to be a grown-up for just an hour. in the beginning, there was talk of this being the yuppie show. and you mentioned it tonight. you said if there were a category for the most annoying show, this might win as well. what some people perceive as annoying has nothing to do with yuppie. i think yuppie is a word made up by demographers and advertisers to sell soap. it doesn t have anything to do with what the show is. thirtysomething was not a giant hit, but it was a niche hit. it attracted an enormously upscale group of advertisers. the network cared who was watching, not how many were watching. and that was more and more catching on in the 80s. the prosecution will ask you to look to the law, and this you must do. but i ask of you to look to your hearts as well. thank you. l.a. law was partly a classic lawyer show. but it was intertwined with their personal lives and different lawyers who were sleeping together and trying to get ahead. the reality level on that show was like a foot or two off the ground. and you re willing to go with that because it was a whole new spin on a law show. tell the truth. if you had to do it all over again and she walked into your office and she said take my case, would you? well of course you would, because it is juicy, newsy, exciting stuff. it was really fun to take the hill street blues format and use it to frame an entirely different social and cultural strata with vastly different results. i wonder if i might engage with my client privately. certainly. what are you having for dinner tonight? i was planning on having you. okay, skip lunch. the formula had gotten established of how you can do a dramatic show, and yet still have an awful lot of fun. we didn t used to be able to accept that very easily in a tv hour. and even before the 80s were out it s like, okay, i get it. so it is like, all right, what are the rules now? what are you doing? i m doing what i should have done all along. what i wanted to do originally. what i should have done last night. stop that, david! stop that, david! i m calling the police, david. hello, police. the networks realized there was an audience looking for something less predictable than traditional primetime fare. moonlighting was another of those shows that said, okay, i see the formulas that we ve had up to here, let s do different things. hello. hello. we re looking a little pale today, aren t we? who have we here? i don t know. moonlighting was a really experimental show. they had a shakespeare episode, they had a black and white episode. they did a musical episode. they tried a lot of different stuff. i don t give a flying fig about the lines in my face, the crows feet by my eyes, or the altitude of my caboose. well, i m at a loss. i don t know what a flying fig is. that s okay. they do. there is no trouble on the set. we have a very volatile relationship. there is a hate/love element to it. the flirtations were great and bruce and cybill were great. glenn caron kept them apart for a long time and bravo to him. what they did is they took the sam and diane dynamic from cheers and escalated it. cheers was will they or won t they? moonlighting was, do they even want to? stay away from me. here i come. but i don t want you. i never wanted you. yeah, right. does entertaining mean at some point stopping the tease of dave and maddie? do they get together at some point? that s going to be resolved this year. we like to think of it as two and a half years of foreplay. people who had been watching moonlighting for years were waiting for this moment. and your emotions are already there built on to the emotions you re seeing on the screen. so when be my baby by the ronettes starts playing, it s like a perfect storm of romance. the night we met i knew i needed you so oh! oh! ozempic®! 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(laughing) call today. comcast business. beyond fast. in recent years, it seems that television has become a kind of electronic confessional. where guests are willing to expose painful and sometimes embarrassing aspects of their lives quite readily to millions of viewers. at the beginning of the decade, we get the dominance of phil donahue, and that s sort of a maturation of women s issues, he seemed to talk to them in the audience, he seemed to talk to them through the tv screen. i m glad you called. kiss the kids. we ll be back in just a moment. if you look at the body of work we ve had, you re going to see the 80s there. i m not here to say you re wrong, but let s understand this. when you bring a moral judgment without knowing them, against them for the way that they look, they feel that confirms the reason for their rebellion, if that s what you want to call it. he really believed that daytime television needed to talk about the ideas we were thinking about, the issues we were concerned about. i don t want to characterize his question, but why don t you get this fixed instead of doing this screwy stuff? there s not a single recorded case in history of any transsexual that ever, through psychological treatment, changed. it has never happened yet. and we were putting very important people on the program. all kinds of people. gay people. people going to jail. people running for office. sometimes the same people. it was a magic carpet ride. you really do paint a very, very grim picture of the sitting president of the united states. let me just say this, i think he s probably the laziest president i ve ever seen. the audience for phil donahue built and built and built and led the way to oprah. hello, everybody. oprah has a particularly magical combination of her own background, her own experience, her own incisive mind, and empathetic spirit. thank you. i m oprah winfrey, and welcome to the very first national oprah winfrey show ! i was surprised at the rocket pace that oprah took off. because it took us a lot longer. the donahue show rearranged the furniture, but oprah remodeled the whole house. there are a lot of people out there watching who really don t understand what you mean when you say, you know, we re in love. because i remember questioning my gay friend saying you mean like you feel about him the way i feel about it s kind of a strange concept, you know, for a lot of people to accept. oprah was connecting with people in a way that no one had on tv before. and it was really special to see. did you know that for the longest time i wanted to be a fourth grade teacher because of you. my, i was not aware of inspiring anyone. i think you did exactly what teachers are supposed to do, they create a spark for learning. it s the reason i have a talk show today. oprah winfrey now dominates the talk show circuit, both in the ratings and popularity. i want to use my life as a source of lifting people up. that s what i want to do. that s what i do every day on my show. we get accused of being tabloid television and sensational and so forth, but what i really think we do more than anything else is we serve as a voice to a lot of people who felt, up until perhaps my show or some of the others, that they were alone. that is what 67 pounds of fat looks like. i can t lift it. it is amazing that i can t lift it but i used to carry it around every day. there s nothing more endearing to an audience than to have that kind of honesty and humility and courage on the part of a host. and that, i think, has a lot to do with her power. it feels like i can do some good here, and i really do think that show does a lot of good. american television is drowning in talk shows. but it s never seen anything like morton downey jr. i want to tell you sit down and shut up! other competitors come and take the television talk show in two different directions. so you see the phenomenon of daytime television shows becoming less tame and more wild. the 80s brought a lot of belligerence to television. whether it was morton downey jr. being the offensive caricaturish person that he was, or geraldo. he did his own outlandish things. stay with us, ladies and gentlemen. we re going to get into the mind of another all-american boy who came under the influence of satanism and took part in a crime without passion or motive geraldo rivera takes the power of the talk show to a whole other level trying to put people on stage who hate each other, who are going to fight in the case of the temple and the church of satan, we have not had problems with criminal behavior. but when you hear story after story after story of people committing these wretched crimes, these violent crimes in the devil s name. the more tension there is, the more conflict there is, the more violence there is, the more ratings go up. and the american people love to complain about it, but they also love to watch. geraldo rivera is back in a controversy tonight. rivera drew sharp criticism with his recent television special on devil worship. but today he found himself in a real free-for-all. i get sick and tired of seeing an uncle tom here trying to be a go ahead. sit down. hey, hold it. hold it. rivera suffered a broken nose but said the show will be broadcast later this month in its entirety. well, that s not something i would have done. but there was a lot of hypocrisy. one of the major magazines put the picture of geraldo getting hit with a chair on the cover, and the article said isn t this awful, look what s happened to television. yet they couldn t wait to use it to sell their own magazine. let s go to the audience, all right? i want to speak to you guys. over the years, broadcasting has deteriorated. and now in this era of deregulation, it s deteriorating further. give people light, and they will find their own way. relax, america will survive the talk shows. the way they subscribe to movies. we don t follow the naysayers. starts with looking buiat something old,nk and saying, really? so we built capital one cafes, with savings and checking accounts you can open from here in 5 minutes. this is banking reimagined. what s in your wallet? if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, every day can begin with flakes. it s a reminder of your struggles with psoriasis. but what if your psoriasis symptoms didn t follow you around? that s why there s ilumya. with just 2 doses, a majority of people were clear or almost clear. and over time, even more people were clear or almost clear. all with dosing 4 times a year. after 2 initial doses. plus, ilumya was shown to have similar risks of infections compared to placebo. don t use if you are allergic to ilumya or any of its ingredients. before starting treatment, your doctor should check for tuberculosis and infections. after checking there is no need for routine lab monitoring unless your doctor advises it. ilumya may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms, or if you plan to or have recently received a vaccine. this could be your chance to leave your psoriasis symptoms behind. ask your doctor for ilumya today, for a clearer tomorrow. conventional wisdom says you can t make a 400 horsepower sedan, that s also environmentally conscious. we don t follow conventional wisdom. your favorite restaurants now it doesn t matter dash. where you are. it doesn t matter what you re hungry for. it doesn t even matter how many you are. restaurants come to you. delicious at your door. download doordash. first order, no delivery fee. the big thing that changes in the 80s is the number of hours spent watching television goes up. the number of hours spent talking about television goes up. one of the symbols of this phenomenon is entertainment tonight. hi, i m tom hallic. welcome to our opening night. the premiere edition of entertainment tonight. all of the critics were kind of unanimous in that they said it will never last because there simply isn t enough entertainment news to fill a half hour every night. entertainment tonight has surveyed critics in the united states and canada to find out which television shows had the most impact on television viewers over the years. up until this time, nobody had done television like this. nobody. burt reynolds, the hottest actor in hollywood. i m surprised to see you here. i m glad to see you. oh, thank you. we can meet here every night if you like. thank you. a lot of what makes successful television programming is being in the right place at the right time. and it was the right time. entertainment journalism evolved as viewers got more curious and had more access. until that point, the entitlement business had been something we didn t know all that much about. we could go behind the scenes in our effort to really give an insider s look. the crafty old j.r. of dallas fame was with his mother actress mary martin as he was presented with a star on the hollywood walk of fame. it was very honorific of the industry. they would do serious coverage of it. it wasn t salacious. and you would see actors speaking as actors instead of on a johnny carson show. what are you like on camera? i m like this. this is on camera. this is on camera. it was the beginning of a lot of money being made talking about entertainment and celebrities. robert redford plays the good guy in the movies but don t tell that to his neighbors in utah, they are still bitter and redford is the target of their ire. the audience grew and grew. and that was showing us the appetite for celebrity news was big. it was big. get ready for lifestyles of the rich and famous. television s most dazzling hour of excitement. hi, i m robin leach in monaco. the glittering gem of the riviera. and you ve got a vip ticket to prince ranier s private party. your sunday newspaper is still delivered with the comics around the news. and that was what i always thought lifestyles was. we were the comic around the news. except we did it as seriously as they did news. finally in the driving seat of his own career, he burned rubber in a new direction. david hasselhoff, rock idol. it was a time where pushing the limits with wealth and ostentatiousness in a lot of cases was very comfortable. one of the earliest stories we presented to you on lifestyles was about the amazing real estate wizard donald trump. if he didn t shock and surprise you back then, he s had plenty of time since. with all of this costing billions, not millions, do the figures ever frighten you? the answer is no, it s my business, it s my life. it s my lifestyle. i love it. the good, the bad. does this bring with it political aspiration? no political aspiration. your show has gotten a lot of ridicule. there are people who say it s nothing more than trash. that doesn t upset me, because i think it s the best trash there is on television. i am not in the business of brain surgery. i am in the business of fluff. that s the fantasy element. at a time when the access is possible. it s escapism and it s aspirational. you want to stand in a hot tub with a glass of champagne, rock on. we ve never seen that kind of wealth ever before. we didn t mock it. we didn t say it was right, and we didn t say it was wrong. we were just through the keyhole. sometimes it absolutely amazes me. i walk away from a shoot and i think, well, we did it again. there was more of everything in tv by the 80s. your opportunity for watching stuff is increasingly vast. nbc presents real people. my name s michael lee wilson. it dawned on me the application of a small motor on a pair of roller skates might really be a great thing. somebody once said that each one of us will be a star for 15 minutes, and i think that that s probably going to happen. american culture used to be a culture that celebrated privacy. in the 1980s as we re watching celebrities play out on stage, hey, i want to join, too. all the world becomes a stage. you start seeing shows like real people or the people s court. the people s court. where reality television is taken one step further. to see more tv producers had to come up with new and different ways to give them television. don t be stupid! get over here! i told you not to be stupid. what cops did was, it took away the script and just brought the camera people and the crews on location to try and catch actual things happening. cocaine. possession of a stolen firearm no less. what else are you going to do? s. that s not a bug, that s not a bug! 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[ upbeat music starts ] the spacious volkswagen tiguan. more room means more fun. what is that? uh mine, why? it s just that it s. lavender. yes it is, it s for men but i like the smell of it laughs i never count trthe wrinkles.s. and i don t add up the years. but what i do count on, is staying happy and healthy. so, i add protein, vitamins and minerals to my diet with boost®. boost® high protein nutritional drink has 20 grams of protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals your body needs. all with guaranteed great taste. the upside- i m just getting started. boost® high protein be up for life. first tattoo? yeah relax, amigo, it s gonna look ok. only ok? no worries boss, i m one of the tattoo artists in the city. you mean one of the best tattoo artists in the city? right? something like that. ya. uh, aren t you supposed to draw it first? stay in your lane, bro. just ok is not ok. especially when it comes to your network. at&t is america s best wireless network, according to america s biggest test. buy a new samsung galaxy s10 and get one free. likewise!ee you again! please. cosmopolitan? nope! i ll have a stella artois. your stella, miss. thank you! wild night, huh? white russian? nah, gary, gimme a stella art-toes. excuse me. good choice. well, changing can do a little good. dude abides. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. bonvoy. discover the new language of travel. bonvoy. marriott bonvoy. 30 hotel brands. endless experiences. rewards reimagined. to save 30% on all the medications we carry. so go directly to petmeds.com now. with this ring with this ring i thee wed. i thee wed. with my body with my body i thee honor. i thee honor. the biggest television event of the 1980s is the marriage of charles and diana. it s like the world stops when that happened. that was like, just massive. this was the final act of a spectacle that may never again be seen in this century, if ever. the archbishop of canterbury called the wedding of prince charles and lady diana spencer today the stuff of fairy tales. good evening. the royal couple at this hour is off on the honeymoon, while a lot of people here in london tonight are still talking about the events of the day. when you have great moments like the royal wedding, they are part of history and it s done beautifully and everybody has a chance to watch it all on television and everybody just wants to drink a toast to chuck and di. a princess who must now be aware, as it was on this day, that every single move she makes in public will be recorded and observed. a very difficult life indeed. we ll be back in just a moment with some closing observations and one final look at what has justifiably been called the wedding of the century. by the authority of the state of new york, i pronounce that they are husband and wife. you may kiss the bride. your wedding was seen by an astonishing number of people. 16 and 19 million viewers. how do you account for that kind of popularity? oh, i can t. i can t. the way it s grown is just amazing to me. it did appear in the 80s it was a good time for daytime season operas, especially for a show like general hospital which had that huge success with luke and laura s wedding. i remember when luke and laura got married because it was nighttime newsworthy. the soap opera discovers the blockbuster mentality, the sweeps month mentality. like what can we do to get even more people watching? you have a wedding. you have a kidnapping. you have an evil twin. and primetime stole from daytime. after dallas proved that ewing oil was better than real oil for cbs, the networks rushed to give the public more. the great primetime open operas of the 1980s, dallas, dynasty, they re all about excess. this is about being over the top, stabbing each other in the back, going for the gusto, and having fun. i know what s wrong with you. the empty-armed madonna. mourning the baby that she couldn t have and the baby that she almost got to adopt. that is it, isn t it? you miserable bitch! there was a bigness to the stories. and they could afford to do it on a network if you are doing one episode a week. you can t do that if you are doing five episodes a week for a daytime show. so just the production value gave it that pizzazz. if you can t have it, watch other people with it, or so say the three networks who are programming nearly 40% of their primetime fare with series about the very rich and the public is devouring it at such a rate that make-believe money has become ratings gold. the characters were larger than life, they were more evil and more cunning and manipulative. and more gorgeous. i mean, really, look at the way they were dressed. look at the way they lived. everything, it was fascinating. alexis. yes? i didn t thank you for your present. it s he you should slap, dear, not i. we all wanted to live like everyone on dynasty, like the carringtons. and it all just ended up being a wonderful picture of fun and debauchery. greed was encouraged in the 80s. there was a sense of conspicuous consumption being okay. and those shows kind of exploited that. primetime families like the carringtons who live here in luxury on the dynasty sound stage are not the only rich folk on tv. in the last five years, more than half of all new shows have featured the wealthy. ten years ago, that figure was zero. it was an accident. your father s dead. falcon crest was a wine family. there is lorenzo lamas and ronald reagan s first wife jane wyman is on that show. emma is pregnant. i know a doctor who can take care of it right away. that will never happen. all of those shows were, oh, my god, what s next? what s going to happen with that? he can t get away with that. you tune in, it was appointment television. what will become of the missing twins on knot s landing ? they all had spinoffs. the colbys was a spinoff for dynasty. they were seeing how much they could max this stuff out. because it was really successful. where is your son miles? isn t he going to be part of this venture or is he just playing polo as usual? the colbys could always find room for another trophy. you had these people fighting over oil and mansions and it was fantasy, but in a kind of so over the top way that it was fun. there s nothing devious about using your femininity. these shows took themselves so unseriously that they were camp, but that was okay with the central audience that was loving them. it was entertainment. we weren t trying to do high drama. we were there to entertain. we were glossy. there was no getting around it, we knew what we were there for, and we did it as best we could. to cover the essentials in retirement, as well as all the things you want to do. because when you re ready for what comes next, the only direction is forward. if old sphow will theyense helps know i worked hard?, i ve gotta make stuff harder. there, that s hard. my son forest, he was born while my husband was deployed. i video chatted the entire birth. i had great connectivity. his entire platoon was standing next to him. they kept telling me, you gotta push! you gotta push! they all got to meet forest, all together. about 50 of them. and they all started crying. it was the sweetest thing i have ever seen. (vo) there for you when it matters most. unlimited on the best network now comes with apple music on us. get a free galaxy s10e when you buy the new galaxy s10. only on verizon. you can t buy family bonding moments like this. actually, you can. and with the travelocity price match guarantee, you won t lose any sleep over how much you paid. travelocity. wander wisely. take me to your best friend s house going around this roundabout oh, yeah australia s most important export may be neither its animals, nor its beers nor its films. could be 55-year-old rupert murdoch. he is in the process of building the most extensive media empire in history. it was presumed to be complete and rupert murdoch having disrupted the newspaper business and television business in britain. i don t see why there should only be three broadcast networks. he says i m going to make another broadcast network. meantime, he will have to become an american citizen if he is to own tv stations here. something he says he is willing to do. some people are saying it will take you 20 years to get your fox network on par with the big three. are you prepared to wait that long? sure, i intend to live that long, but i don t believe in the 20 years. the idea of murdoch s idea for a fourth network was like ted turner starting cnn. it s ridiculous. what does he know about television? we don t have to reach everyone. there s no question we have an inferior lineup of stations to our counterparts. it means we have to work harder to get our message across and get shows sampled. we have to differentiate ourselves from the networks. we have to do things they would not do. fox started throwing anything against the wall not sure what was going to go. first shows were things like 21 jumpstreet. joan rivers in terms of late night. we have been banned in boston, which is wonderful. and the tracey ullman show it was a sketch show. and they needed something to go between the sketches. again they were looking for something different. i got to have those candy bars. you better not be thinking of stealing those candy bars. that s it! the simpsons would never have come along had it not been for the tracey ullman show. ultimately crime hurts the criminal. that s not true, mom. i got a free ride home, didn t i? bart! fox was thrilled that it was different. they said, sure, be experimental, do whatever you want. we re just happy to have a show on the air. i m home. married with children was their first big, big hit in that way that said if all the rest of television is going this way, we re going that way. bud, kelly, you want to come down and help me in the kitchen? there, that should buy us about 10 minutes. seven more than we ll need. the title of married with children on the script was not the cosby show. how great. you have to love that. they were taking the piss out of american families fun. great fun. never wanted to get married, i m married. never wanted kids, i got two of them. how did this happen? the bundys were like a reaction to the perfection of the huxtables. you had this wonderful black family and these horrible white family. it was a lot of fun to be had and al and peg bundy. after fox introduces married with children, it does very well, then back on abc, they came up with another major hit roseanne. you think you just sit up here on your thrown. oh, yeah? yeah, and you think everything gets done by some wonderful wizard. poof, the laundry s folded. poof, dinner s on the table. you want me to fix dinner? honey. i m fixing dinner. oh, but honey, you just fixed dinner three years ago. typical american families weren t on television for the longest time. the donna reed days, the father knows best. hardly anybody lived that way. that was the way advertisers wanted you to live. i know what just might make you feel better. me too but i bet it s different than what you got. if you can subvert whatever common stuff is said about families and about parenting. what s in this? lead? oh, i got you kids new leg irons. her loudness and her unfilteredness were key to why we liked her. she was saying stuff about working class people, stuff about men and women. so it was about marriage and about raising kids and about how hard it is. great. i m just going to look like a freak. that s all. what else is new? shut up. this is why some animals eat their young. tv in the 80s was a big decade for the evolution of comedy, for the evolution of drama. it just pushed everything forward. you think perhaps this generation are paying more attention to the dialogue to the relationships they see on television than years previous? clearly the people watching our shows and 30 something and cheers and st. elsewhere. these are shows smartly written. it s their words that define them, and i think that s what people like. what we re supposed to be here is the one thing people can trust. if you go out like a bunch of night riders, what are you but just another vicious street gang? that spawned an extraordinary number of shows that really carved out a unique niche for themselves. we began to turn television into an art form. and for the first time, people were proud to say, i write for television. up until that point, television was second class. in the 80s, it was something else entirely. and it was new, and it was kind of interesting. it s like everyone in the 80s starts to want to tell their stories. that s what really changes things. the unexpected was more welcome in the 80s. predictability lost its cachet. television has an impact on every era, every decade. television still shapes the thinking of america like no other element in our country. sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. it gave rise to people pursuing artistic content in a way that i think has raised the bar in television production exponentially. i love you guys. there s a shift in the 80s from just wanting to placate the audience to wanting to please and challenge the audience, and that s the decade when it happened. we had one hell of a run, didn t we partner? yeah, we did, sonny. i m going to miss you, man. i m going to miss you, too. give you a ride to the airport? why not. captions by vitac www.vitac.com we ll be doing for tv what f.m. did for radio. there are some that have accused your videos of being soft porn. we like to call them tastefully smutty. a group that s never had any problems saying how they feel, u2. what are your dreams? to rule the world. michael jackson is the man of the 80s. music to a beat and talk. it s rap music. i ll speak my mind heavy metal. it glorifies sex and violence. it hates authorities. and adolescent boys
under which i will bear false witness against the president, nor will i make up lies to ease the pressure on myself i look forward to being fully and completely vindicated. good morning and welcome to a.m. joy. well, it s kind of hard to hear that first part over those lock him up chants, but this is the spectacle that the presidency of the united states has been reduced to, a defiant roger stone, just hours after the predawn raid of his florida home, almost seeming to enjoy the circus as he becomes the sixth trump official or adviser to be indicted or found guilty of crimes in the mueller investigation. stone was charged with obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering for allegedly lying to congress about his contacts with wikileaks as they released stolen democratic e-mails during the campaign now, it s unclear exactly how long roger stone could face imprisonment if convicted, especially if mueller is holding back charges as a way to get him to spill some tea on his buddy, donald trump joining me now is sam nunberg, a former trump campaign adviser who last march testified before mueller s grand jury after saying that he would defy his subpoena, and then very wisely, i would say, sam, did not. so, i want to get your initial impressions of just the entire thing that happened yesterday, the takedown of roger stone and his sort of presentation of himself after his initial hearing. well, i think roger everybody, roger s allies, outside people expected he was going to be indicted what we didn t know, or anybody knew, is what it would be. and i was very surprised that this is, not to belittle the charges, completely processed. they did not put him as part of a conspiracy to defraud the united states. right. perhaps they re holding on to that for some reason with that said, this is something that roger loves, a fight like this. whether you like roger or not, this is something, what roger is basically built for. as long as he is able to put up a legal defense, he will have witness lists like you will not believe. he will have theatrics going on outside. and he will try to make a spectacle, because to him, it s about convincing a jury. all he needs is one juror. yeah. and so, we ll find out. in terms of him flipping, which i know you would want to get to, i think that that s dependent on a couple issues. the first is he is extremely loyal to the president this was one of the major problems we had together during the 2016 campaign. but it would also depend, i think, on the way the president s legal team and the white house talks about him. yeah. do you think he s expecting a pardon it s a good question. i can t speak for him. i ve never discussed this with him. let me be very, very careful when i answer this but i think in the back of a lot of these people s minds, they are expecting pardon let s talk about the actual substance of charges i went through and read the indictment yesterday and let s just go through a couple of things that were alleged. one of them was this question of how roger stone was making all of these predictions, some of them on twitter, about whose time in the barrel was going to be next, about what was coming and whether or not he was interacting with the trump campaign during it here s one element of the indictment on or about september 18, 2016, stone e-mailed person two, who is now known and i think has been confirmed by him to be randy credico, an article with allegations against then candidate clinton related to her service as secretary of state. stone stated, please ask the head of organization one, which would be wikileaks, for any state or hrc e-mail from august 10 to august 30, particularly on august 20, 2011, that mentioned subject of the article or confirm this narrative. it sounds as if stone was intending to use wikileaks as essentially a place to mine opposition research on hillary clinton. would that be accurate yes look, i think roger would have used wikileaks i think roger would have even gone into the embassy and met with julian assange, had he been invited, but he didn t and in terms of this, it s that he made himself this has been my issue and this is one of the reasons why it was very difficult for me to go into a grand jury, somebody who s worked for me, is because he made himself such a target during this process, which he didn t have to do for a bunch of reasons that they then started looking into this. and now when you re looking into person two, person one, we re talking about randy credico and jerome corsi right, author of the birther conspiracy, with whom he s now fighting speaking of jerome corsi, on or about august 22nd, 2016, person one, who is corsi, e-mailed stone. the embassy plans two more dumps, first when he was in europe, second in october, impact plan to be very damaging. would not hurt to start suggesting hrc is old, her memory bad and has had a stroke. and now let s start looking at what actually happened you had info wars and the right started, you know, ginning up these allegations that hillary clinton was mentally feeble, physically feeble. and then about a month later, she caught a cold and the mainstream media picks it up there s a washington post headline about clinton s health being a major issue. so, these things were actually implemented. a, are you surprised that jerome corsi and stroej and randy credico were doing this by e-mail, creating an e-mail paper trail essentially of their working with wikileaks did they not think it was illegal to use hacked material. as roger said to me and as i ve testified, and this is basically public, is when i would tell roger, i would say i highly suggest you not do this for a bunch of reasons, make yourself you suggested he not do this. i suggested that, one, as he was doing it and doing these tweets and things, that you re making yourself a target one, it looked like hillary clinton was going to win and she wasn t going to be happy with you. and number two, the fbi under hillary clinton, especially after what they did during the election, is going to have to look into him. and number three, and this goes back to the pardon, what would donald trump do for him? right. would donald trump be appreciative because trust me, he wasn t. he did not treat roger well, he did not give roger inauguration tickets roger stone didn t have inauguration tickets well, he did end up getting them, but not directly, i don t believe, through other intermediaries. so you don t think trump even appreciated appreciated? i don t think he appreciated roger or me, no. do you think the officials having the back-and-forth conversations i know at one point there are e-mails the new york times found where steve bannon is e-mailing back and forth with someone who s telling him you need to get in touch with roger stone, you need to get in touch with these guys. reporter matt boyle, right. that s all public. that s in the back end. yeah. on the top, what you re talking about is in that july time frame, i don t know specifically who it is trump. could it be donald trump who instructed them in that later paragraph? it could be, but i don t know. but yes, it could be. there is a paragraph in the indictment that says they were instructed by a senior campaign official to go back to no, it says a senior campaign not to correct it s like the senior campaign official was instructed to go back right, right. and they made sure to not and that s at the same paragraph where they re extremely particular in writing senior campaign official contacted, senior cam it could be. who else would roger stone have had a personal relationship with besides donald trump himself on that campaign well, in that time frame, things were a lot different. and going through just to understand, once paul manafort got in to the campaign, first under the auspices that he was going to help trump during the campaign, and then basically it looked as if roger was going to roger and i were going to get what we wanted right. from one point, push cory eyw lewandowski out, roger was not affiliated with the campaign because he doesn t have to answer to trump. right. but i would assume, and i don t know this they re talking about manafort and gates. okay, because those would be the people he would know. in that july time look, i was asked, and others have been asked, how often did donald trump talk to roger stone? how often do you know did roger stone talk to paul manafort and rick gates. yeah. i am sure they re in their proffer sessions, both of them, they were asked extensively about this michael caputo has said during his voluntary interview they asked him about a certain meeting between them so look, i think that they re talking about either rick gates and manafort there. okay. at the very least. and roger stone is who recommended that donald trump hire manafort in the first place because they used to be business partners, is that correct? and tom barrack tom barrack also recommended that manafort be tom barrack recommended it to the kids but roger but then donald trump called roger when he was about to make the move because it was essentially pushing cory to the side. right. said explain to me what s going on with this convention, could i really lose the delegates at that point? now remember, that s a point where donald trump even won the state of louisiana in the primary but got less delegates than ted cruz. so they re worried about delegates. was there any indication in your mind that one of the reasons that the campaign wanted paul manafort was his experience, his very particular experience in dirty campaign tricks, to be blunt? because that s what roger stone self-identifies himself as being expert in. did the trump campaign want manafort because of his history of doing dirty tricks in places like ukraine in elections? no, i don t believe so. i believe they wanted just for delegates? for the convention. he came in there as the convention manager he came in there as the convention manager trump was losing at that time delegates to cruz, even though he had won more states. right. he was getting destroyed in caucus states, something like 8-1 in some states even, and they needed delegates. and lewandowski was completely unprepared for a delegate fight. i don t believe i don t know, but i could tell you that i can tell you that ukraine wasn t the issue. it was losing your nomination at the skroension. but ukraine okay, quickly, there s also a lot of witness intimidation that s spelled out in the indictment, and i ll give you one of them. on multiple occasions, including on or about december 1, 2017, stone told person two, randy credico should do a frank tan gellie before the house select committee on intelligence to avoid contradicting the testimony. that is a character in the godfather part 2 which stone and person two discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and claims not to know critical information he knows. this kind of bullying, threatening the guy s dog, to take his dog, the sort of moblike attitude, did roger stone ever treat you that way when he knew that you were going to go and testify? is. no, he did not. he never asked you to lie absolutely not. he did not and the other thing is, he got upset, i believe, because i said publicly and through private that i m no longer going to speak to him after being in the grand jury. yep. to protect both of us, but frankly, more to protect him than me because i wasn t going to obstruct justice. yeah. and ironically, if i m on a panel authority on wednesday, this comes out on a friday and i m telling michael caputo, he s being stupid, he s witness tampering and he s not donald trump. he s not the president of the united states who s going to get indicted by the justice department now, that may be in the president s articles of impeachment by congress, but no, you can t get away with this now, had they called me in, for instance, for things like we discussed, i would have laughed it all off and i did it s roger with randy, i don t know how do you know him well? no, but do i know him, yes. i ve known him throughout the years. and he did advise, at least according to this indictment, he tried to tell roger stone, you probably should change your testimony and not lie, and stone did it anyway. they wanted him to lie. and that s what s very strange to me here because at the end of the day, the issue is, why, according to this we ll see roger s defense but according to the justice department, why would roger not say i was talking to jerome corsi? that s a good question. we ll talk about that on the other side of the break. coming up, our russiagate panel will join the convsaertion, and that is right look at them there. looking fabulous right after this quick break always a catch. like somehow you wind up getting less. but now that i book at hilton.com, and i get all these great perks. i got to select my room from the floor plan. very nice. i know, 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[ dobaxter.ng ] it s bedtime. peace of mind should never be out of reach. [ voice command beep ] xfinity home. xfinity home connects you to total home security you can control from anywhere on any device. and it protects you with 24/7 professional monitoring. i guess we re sleeping here tonight. xfinity home. simple. easy. awesome. call, go online or demo in an xfinity store today. if you re convicted, do you think the president will pardon you? pardon me if you re convicted, do you think the president would pardon you? the only person i have advocated a pardon for is marcus garvey how strong is your allegiance to president trump i am one of his oldest friends. i am a fervent supporter of the president. yes, roger, okay. marcus garvey. yep, we get it back with me, sam nunberg. mia wiley, jill wine banks, msnbc contributor and former assistant watergate special prosecutor,barbara mcquade, msnbc contributor and former u.s. attorney, paul butler, msnbc legal analyst and former federal prosecutor and michael nance, author of the plot. thank you for being with me, mega panel we have to talk about the threat to randy credico s dog in the indictment, stone put in an e-mail to randy credico you are a rat, a stoolie, you backstab your friends. run your mouth, my lawyers are dying, rib you to shreds. stone also said he would take that dog away from you, referring to credico s dog on or about the same day, he said to person two, i am so ready. let s get it on. prepare to die. what person puts that in writing and isn t worried he ll ever be caught i think if the full e-mail i think randy may have released the full e-mail to marvin jones and i was mentioned in that e-mail, actually, too. yeah. you d have to ask roger that. what i would say is it s not good, especially when randy s going to bring his dog and brought his dog to the grand jury. right, to court. so, imagine the grand jury is looking and somebody presents this e-mail and randy s sitting there with his dog saying were you intimidated? you had an exchange with randy credico about this. yeah. randy credico and i were both on ari melber s show together at some point in time after the threats, but he was talking about the fact that he had been threatened and offset before the show began, he was visibly shaken he kept talking about it over and over, about the threats and intimidation, talked about his dog. he took that very seriously. i know it may sound funny to right. it was not funny to him at all, you know. and it is, if you think about mob tactics where people kill animals and leave them on your doorstep, it is not funny. and it was clear that it was not funny to him and he took it very seriously and he was visibly shaken. and there he is, randy credico you see on the screen bringing his dog in. i have to say, it sounds like mafia tactics, the sort of language in it is very mob sounding, right? well, i think that s what roger was trying to do. that s what he was going for? i don t think he thinks he s mob, i think it s schticky. does donald trump operate that way as well michael cohen is now afraid because of veiled threats to his father is this the way they operated when you were dealing with roger stone and donald trump well, with roger stone, i think he s always citing godfather. he cited this to me over the years. i m not going to say it s appropriate to send that to randy. in terms ofif trump i don t think donald trump is mafioso, but i think he looked at himself more as george steinbrennerish. or richard nixon. exactly. well, in terms of just like wanting to hurt employees, not literally, but play employees against each other, you know, always get people off, leave them off kilter, things like that. i m sorry, jill. i was just going to say, i think that it s really more mob sounding and who would have ever thought that my organized crime prosecution days are as relevant as my watergate days in talking about this case, because that s how they talk. yeah. and you know, it isn t funny to threaten an animal. people are very i mean, i m a dog lover, so i took that as a very serious part of this indictment. does this feel to you like an organized crime sort of, i don t know, the way that robert mueller is going about it, is this the way an organized crime prosecution would proceed? well, either that it s the same as watergate, too i mean, you start and you start building up and you surround the main character that you re trying to get at right. so, it s a normal prosecution, whether it s but i would say rico certainly sounds like something racketeering, influence, corrupt organization it certainly sounds like a law that could be applied to this situation, for sure. yeah, absolutely. and i was just going to say, on the intimidation, we do know that stormy daniels has also claimedthat she was really threatened in terms of her daughter in this context of whether or not she would come forward with her story so, it s not new in terms of the allegations. absolutely. well, i want to bring the rest of the panel in. if anyone has questions for sam, feel free. he s going to stay with us and who s just jumping in there? yeah, this is paul. so, sam should know that this isn t new because after sam started talking to robert mueller, then roger stone went on instagram and called sam a rat and a snitch. right. i m wondering, sam, did you take that as a threat? no, i did not but i told roger, it s not he shouldn t worry about me taking it as a threat, he should worry about the way he s talking to other people and randy credico certainly took it as a threat, and certainly his grand jury testimony, he said so. once again, i even had an argument with caputo on air about this i said, roger is not the president of the united states they may put that in articles of impeachment against the president, but they re not going to indict him on it. roger can get indicted on witness tampering. yeah. i didn t take any of his threats seriously because i know roger stone. and paul, just to stay with you for a second, were you surprised that and sam brought this up earlier were you surprised that among the charges against roger stone that was not included was something like conspiracy against the united states, that kind of a charge because the substance of the indictment is directly about collusion with wikileaks i m not surprised because this is act two, so i think act one was the indictment of the 12 russian intelligence officers for trying to throw the election to donald trump. act two now is the information that s important is how open and receptive the trump campaign organization was to receive the criminal matters from russia, stolen e-mails, and how roger stone lied to congress about the trump campaign s organizations, the close relationship or receptiveness. so, i think act three, joy, will be the american co-conspirators who we have reason to believe are people at the very highest level of the trump campaign. yeah. barbara mcquade i believe has a question barbara, go ahead. you know, one of the things i m curious about, sam, is do you know remember in july of 2016 when president trump made this promise that on monday you re going to hear some big dirt on hillary clinton, and then it didn t happen. do you know, number one, what he was talking about? and number two, why he didn t follow through i don t know, number one number one, i don t know it seems to me that in light of the timing with the trump tower moscow meeting, i am sure robert mueller does know. in terms of number two, i have heard from others that worked at the campaign at that time that their explanation is we were just disorganized and eventually we spoke about hillary clinton later in the week, but that s not something that i wasn t with the campaign then in fact, i think i was being sued at that point. right. so. yeah. let me get malcolm nance in here, because the wikileaks part of it, what you ve heard from defenders of donald trump is that there s nothing wrong with it because they were just mining research just like any other campaign would the problem, of course, is what wikileaks was doing and who they were partnering with feel free to comment, or if you have a question for sam, feel free as well. my comment is quite simple. it s that wikileaks has already been determined by u.s. intelligence, including donald trump s former director of cia, now secretary of state pompeo, to be a nonstate hostile intelligence agency. and further to what paul was saying a little bit ago, i think the next tier is not going to be the american co-conspirators i think it s going to be julian assange and the wikileaks organization so that they can now pressure all of the other people who had had communications with them by showing that they have a link with an actual now-indicted agency the way that they did with the russian personnel for the most part, you know, i find this all fascinating, because roger stone to me is just playing this character role where he thinks he is a gumba, that haas a mafioso, and he is about to find out what a ton of bricks really, really feels like yeah, all right well, when we come back, i do want to talk about the wikileaks aspect of this as well ch more with sam and my panel when we come back. roger s in a relationship with trump has been so interconnected that it s hard to define what s roger and what s donald whether it would be clearly a trump presidency, i think it s influenced by stone s philosophy roger s relationship with trump, they both see the world in a very similar way if trump is elected president, i think roger will see one more very significant impact he s had on world history. all right my panel is back with me as we discuss the indictment of longtime trump confidante roger stone. we re talking about the julian assange sort of factor in all of this and you had a question for sam. sam, you ve said in the past many times that you ve talked to roger stone 15 times a day. frequently, yes. and roger stone has said multiple times that he talked to trump regularly and constantly, you know and you ve had this e-mail exchange with roger where it s very clear in this period where he s trying to get e-mails, august 4th e-mail 2016, where he s saying, yes, hillary clinton s up by 15 points, but that won t last. mm-hmm. what knowledge did you have of how many conversations he was having directly with donald trump during this time i don t want to go specifically into it because of my grand jury testimony in the case for the united states, but i will say that in and of itself tells me something. but what i will say is that they did talk frequently, but it was less frequent towards the end of the campaign because of the way the campaign was operated manafort was no longer there and bannon and kellyanne and allies, lewandowski. but i believe they had some conversations in october, but that s up to roger in the first week of august were they having conversations i would think so. i would think so. would roger stone have been in a position to know, since he was talking to donald trump, you know, and that senior levels of the campaign were advised at a certain point, there s been an attack on the democratic national committee, wikileaks has something to do with it well, assange if they were advised that, would they have known that i think assange went publicly in june and said he had these e-mails. what i will say is in my senate intel, as opposed to mueller, special counsel s office, senate intel was very, very they asked me numerous times about the clinton health issue, the clinton health issue all i would say is that, just so the audience understands, this was an issue in conservative spheres, conservative media, since as early as 2013 she had an issue with there was something that the bill de blasio but info wars and jerome corsi and company accelerated that directly after wikileaks dumped it. i would also tell you that roger and i had conversations with then mr. trump in even mid-2014 about using her health. wow, interesting. so, just with that said, it doesn t mean that i m just this is something that was going on ed klein of all people wrote about it so, this was something the clintons were well aware of during their campaign. i think sam may be making some news here if he s saying that around august 4th, this e-mail that roger stone was in contact with then candidate donald trump, because sam got another e-mail on august 4th from roger stone roger stone said, i dined with julian assange last night. and now roger stone says that was just a joke. sam, did you take that as a joke i didn t remember that e-mail so, that e-mail was only presented to me in the grand jury, not during my voluntary. what i remembered is i had a conversation with roger. i had not spoken to him. and i said to him, so, where have you been? and it was a friday afternoon or so and roger said to me, oh, i met with julian assange. as i ve said, roger told me that they were going to release information about the clinton foundation my initial initially, i said to him, well, does he have any new information about benghazi and i would point to the fact that assange didn t release anything related to either one, so at that so, did i believe him initially when he told me? i didn t have any reason not to believe him, but when it didn t pan out and roger started making these public statements, i thought that this was just another, you know, dangerous but publicity-type sinking stunt by roger to stay relevant within the campaign and within the public sphere of the campaign. all right jill winebanks. sam, i would like to ask you because i think people would like to know, the evidence now gathered and presented in this indictment is so strong against roger. right. and he s still saying i m not going to plead guilty, i am going to stand firm. when is someone going to get to him to make him realize that he is going to be convicted the evidence is just too clear he can t get away with this. i think that roger and donald trump are very similar in this whole idea that people tell me that donald trump will fly off in a helicopter and wave good-bye sometime next summer of 2020 and everything will be okay and he ll take a deal. i don t believe it i think that they will fight things, both will fight towards the end. roger s the kind of person where he would think, i ll do a year in jail and i ll come out and give speeches. wow barbara mccade. you know, this is about the penalties for what he s done have up to 20 years. it won t be a year in jail. i think he has missed expectations barbara mcquade, jump in. as a follow-up to jill s question, has stone ever said anything to you about how he would anticipate if he was ever charged, he could count on president trump to give him a pardon no. i noticed even yesterday when roger stone was giving his comments from the white house steps, when someone asked a question he couldn t hear, he said pardon me, is that a shrouded, veiled request to the president? one of my issues with roger is, if roger has a loyalty and affinity, and i ll say to donald that i used to have and i don t have anymore after how i was treated. but they have a longer relationship and i think roger looks as himself now as if he s helping as if he s helping the president by fighting this charge and not being one of those people on the screen that may be indicted but has not been found guilty yet that s the way roger probably sees it, that he s part of helping save the trump presidency. but donald trump is a stunningly disloyal person is there you don t have to tell me you ve said it yourself there s a great piece. i recommend people go back to the jeffrey toobin article the dirty trickster, where donald trump is insulting roger stone, where every quote by trump is an insult of roger stone. why in your view does roger stone exhibit such loyalty towards somebody who doesn t seem to be loyal to him? well, roger s given it back to trump in some ways. i don t want to go into the past. okay. i would just say that while roger may not publicly disparage trump, he has gotten back at him in the past. in the past. they have a very long, complicated relationship is what i would let me play the moment in july of 2016 this will look like a flashback to you, malcolm. this is when donald trump announced, essentially, his collusion with wikileaks to get dirt on hillary clinton. but it would be interesting to see i will tell you this, russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press let s see if that happens. that will be next. malcolm, is there an innocent explanation for why a campaign that seemed to be in very close touch with wikileaks and mining information would make that kind of a statement if they were unaware of the origin of that hacked information absolutely not. and what you are seeing in that video, and we discussed that on that very day quite extensively, you re looking at conspiracy in plain sight. donald trump had already had conversations about that otherwise, it wouldn t have popped into his head and then within hours, russian intelligence was trying to hack hillary clinton s e-mails, which they successfully did not do, all right? they got around to other people, but not to her but this brings a question that i have for sam in the first week of october 2016, president obama made a nationally televised address along with the director of national security and the director of national intelligence and had said to the nation that the united states was attacked and that the information that was stolen by russia was being used in a disinformation warfare campaign intended to impact the election. at any time did you or roger stone ever have pause to think, hey, wait a minute, we may be part of an operation which is being carried out by a foreign government like the president and the national intelligence community are asserting, or was it just your loyalty to donald trump at that time superseded any thought of defending the constitution malcolm, first off, i had nothing to do with it. i was sued in july they have e-mails. i did not say very nice things about donald trump up until around the day before, up until around the second debate or so i was fine with him winning the election, but i had one, i had nothing to do with it. i endorsed ted cruz. i was sued number two, i told roger, one of the reasons i warned him about this was because he was making himself a target but number three, i would also just say, roger conspired against himself here, because he did not get what he wanted he may have he would have, i think, but he didn t. we re out of time, but i have to ask you this question, sam, and one of our viewers is asking this as well if you knew these to be bad people or disloyal people who you don t seem at this point to have much regard for, why did you spend so much time worrying with them? because that wasn t the way it was when i worked for trump from 2011 to mid-2015. this started for me when i made the decision to not be campaign manager because i wouldn t be a good campaign manager. it s not what i do i m not an operations guy. what about stone? they were notorious for years. roger stone, why did you hang out with him roger, we were very close at that point roger and i i did a lot of work with roger, and i was day-to-day handling, let s just say the trump account. i would look at him as the senior partner and i would be the day-to-day associate, something like that didn t see how bad it was at the time it isn t like the way it is now. but we didn t have the special counsel, so sam nunberg, thank you very much i appreciate you sitting through with all of this jill weinbanks, thank you very much. an epic fail for the deal maker in chief coming up i ll speak with somebody who may know all too well why trump couldn t deliver there goes our first big order. 44, 45, 46. 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of &. & if your customer also forgets socks! & you could send him a coupon for that item. coming up, donald trump dabbles in witness intimidation. we found out how jared kushner really got his security clearance. and we ve got to talk about how trump shut down the government for 35 days only to wind up exactlwhy ere he started stay with us we ll be right back. janice, mom told me you bought a house. okay. [ buttons clicking ] [ camera shutter clicks ] so, now that you have a house, you can use homequote explorer. quiet. i m blasting my quads. janice, look. i m in a meeting. -janice, look. -[ chuckles ] -look, look. -i m looking. it s easy. you just answer some simple questions online, and you get coverage options to choose from. you re ruining my workout. cycling is my passion. you re ruining my workout. take prilosec otc and take control of heartburn. so you don t have to stash antacids here.. here. or here. kick your antacid habit with prilosec otc. one pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn. i find it disturbing that the special counsel s office released a press release prior to informing my attorneys that i would be charged today friday was not a good day for donald trump not only was his longtime con ciglary, roger stone, arrested, but trump also suffered a massive and humiliating defeat at the hands of house speaker nancy pelosi, who backed him into a corner and got him to end his government shutdown and the misery that he d inflicted on millions of americans without a penny for his vanity border wall so, after 24 hours like that, you might be left wondering, well, whatever happened to the art of the deal? tony schwartz is co-author of trump: the art of the deal. all right, so, tony, i want to go through a couple quotes from the book that you wrote. here s one that seems particularly relevant. i never get too attached to one deal or one approach for starters, i keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how h promising they seem at first this was under a section called maximize your options. why do you suppose donald trump didn t follow that advice when it came to the pretend wall roger stone made up? well, what we now know is that health a terrible negotiator and actually always has been if you go back to the art of the deal which was a title i came up with, it came into my head in a moment i ve lived to regret. yeah. 30 years ago, it s a title that i came up with as a marketing message, not as an actual expression of reality if i was looking through the art of the deal this morning and realized most of the deals in the art of the deal were failed deals there were three casinos that failed, there was this attempt to get rid of tenants on 100 central park south that failed, the united states football league that failed this man has been a failure for his entire career. he earned i m sorry he didn t earn he inherited $400 million. right we re mixing your mic. i got it. thank you so much. he inherited $400 million and, you know, compared to almost any other way kite have been invested did nothing with it. yeah. i guess the thing is, it was such an effective presentation that americans by and large know donald trump because of that he got the apprentice because of that presentation of who people thought he was. before you wrote the book, did you have doubts about his acumen as a bigmusinessman or realize after the thing was a success, realize this was untrue. i will tell you honestly i woke up this morning and i started thinking about this and i dissolved in tears because i the notion that i made this choice to do this still feels to me unbearable and the tears i think were almost tears of joy that the truth could finally come out that story i was referring to about 100 central park south i wrote that for new york magazine before i met him and it was about trump s utter and complete failure at trying to harass tenants out of a building i had an experience with him the cover picture was of him looking like a thug. he loved it and put it up on his wall i knew exactly who he was. that s why i have been in be absolution for a very long time. donald trump, this is you writing for donald trump, i play to people s fantasies. people may not always think big themselves but they can get excited by those who do. a little hyperbole never hurts people want to believe something is the biggest and greatest. it s an innocent form of exaggeration and effective form of production. promotion. sorry, promotion. i think that s fundamentally true exactly. people want to think big and why donald trump as an idea for a lot of voters this will make our country big. when it comes to governing a country, making a promise like stringing a medieval wall acros the southern border that is unfeasible and somebody who is a builder should know it s unfeasible, his supporters are married to this idea, how do you break people of a big idea once even the person per vaing it understand it is not possible? could he tell them it is not possible you know, i don t think you can break the core of the base i watched ann coulter on bill maher last night and she represents the base. this is a nightmare. i mean people who believe, you know, the most repugnant kind of ideas, so i don t think it s ability th about that i think it s about recognizing through this process what you can learn from it. one of the things that you can learn is that the people have power, so you watch the air flight controllers call in sick yesterday, end of shutdown this cannot ever happen again, joy, so long as a reasonable personal of those flight controllers or those fbi agents or those irs workers simply decide, we re sick and as soon as they say that america shuts down trump doesn t have to isn t going to go up against the democrats to try to keep the government to avoid closing down the government. yeah. or to make the government close down he s going to go up against the people and he will lose. yeah. another thing i think we ve learned is that donald trump doesn t do well against strong women who push back. i want to this is a short sound bite bit speaker nancy pelosi who even the media doesn t seem to have caught up with her very clear answer on the wall take a listen. [ inaudible ]. have i not been clear on a wall she s been really clear i mean, what has donald trump sort of how does he deal with strong women apparently he crumbles in front of them. he has had strong women work for him, so that s an interesting fact about him donald trump will find a way to use anyone if it s in the service of his goals. right. she doesn t work for him. she doesn t work for him and she is what she has that is so rare is a combination of power and elegance in other words, she can be circumspect and respectful in exercising that power and that s what he doesn t understand. yeah. if somebody comes slashing back at him trump can always out slash. if someone is graceful, that s a word that doesn t exist in his vocabulary. tony, thank you for coming today and also thank you for bringing a superstar with you. let s take a look at who you brought. that s my little grandson jonna. hey. he s here to support me. he is doing an excellent job. i think he is a star i proclaim jonah a star. hi, jonah. do you want to talk to the people he s like, no, i don t, but you re adorable. more am joy after the break. d. but when it comes to colon cancer screening. i m not doin that. i eat plenty of kale. ahem, as i was saying. .with cologuard, you don t need an excuse. all that prep? no thanks. that drink tastes horrible! but.there s no prep with cologuard. i can t take the time off work. who has two days? and i feel fine - no symptoms! everybody, listen! all you need is a trip to the bathroom. if you re 50 or older and at average risk, cologuard is the noninvasive option that finds 92% of colon cancers. you just get the kit in the mail, go to the bathroom, collect your sample, then ship it to the lab! this is your year! own it! cologuard is not right for everyone. it is not for high risk individuals, including those with a history of colon cancer or precancer, ibd, certain hereditary cancer syndromes, or a family history of colon cancer. ask your doctor if cologuard is right for you. covered by medicare and most major insurers. billions of problems. dry mouth? parched mouth? cotton mouth? there s a therabreath for you. therabreath oral rinse and lozenges. help relieve dry mouth using natural enzymes to soothe and moisturize. so you can. breathe easy, there s therabreath at walmart. . i had to use the services here because i got to the point that i was only eating once a day to stretch out what i had, and there s some good people here and they helped me. once i get behind that room door, i m crying my eyes out and i m like i promised them that we would never be homeless again, we would not want for nothing and we would not need for nothing. what could happen to your family if the shutdown continues? [ inaudible ]. welcome back to am joy. 35 days, that s how long the longest government shutdown in u.s. history lasted before the president, who said he would be proud to shut the government down, finally gave in and allowed it to end. supposedly temporarily but those 35 days have come at a huge cost for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers impacted, not to mention the millions of federal contractors who will never be made whole for 35 days, government workers like the ones you just heard, didn t know when they would get their next paycheck putting their homes and their credit in jeopardy 35 days were hard-working americans with good, honorable jobs, were forced to line up at food banks just to put food on the table. 35 days in which important government functions like food safety inspections were at risk. the government shutdown even temporarily shut down operations at a major new york airport on friday and caused long lines and long delays at airports across the country as unpaid air traffic controllers stopped showing up for work maybe because they could no longer to put gas in their cars. fbi agents warned about the impact the shutdown would have on efforts to stop terrorism and members of the coast guard were forced to rely on charity. it s worth noting that the fbi agents who arrested roger stone before dawn yesterday were also unpaid federal workers for 35 days donald trump put the country s safety and economy and his own citizens income security at risk, and for what for a vanity project that now indicted roger stone made up during the campaign, that donald trump s speech writers had him promise mexico would pay for donald trump shut the government down for 35 days and the one thing he said that is true, is that he owns it. i am proud to shut down the government for border security i will take the mantle and shut it down. i m not going to blame you for it. joining me is maria inhossa, and tara dadowel, business and political consultant, barbara rest, former vice president at the trump organization, author of alone on the 68th floor and david johnson, founder of d.c. report.org and author of it s even worse than you think. certainly the shutdown was even worse than anybody thought it would be i want to come to you on this first. a couple of you at this table know donald trump personally the pain that donald trump caused, we were talking to tony schwartz and he talked about the tactic that sometimes donald trump would use to empty a building, allowing misery to take hold in the building and making the building unlivable so the tenants would essentially take themselves out of the building. yes. evict themselves. does it surprise you that donald trump would use that same kind of a tactic on the whole country just to get a wall that he must know he cannot get i don t think his perception was he was using it on the country as much as he thought he was using it on the democrats in the house of representatives yes, he will do anything to win. there s no question about that he lost. which is kind of does he know when he s lost is he aware? i think he must know he lost this he may never admit it. maybe he struggles admitting it to himself i think he is aware. the number of paychecks most affected have missed was two, 25,419 civilian xwleerps filing initial unemployment claims during a one-week period, $8.7 billion the amount that could be taken out of the economy if that shutdown had gone to the end of the month and 53% which is the personal of people who blamed donald trump for the shutdown. tara, i m going to ask you the same question, having known donald trump, does any of that impact him at all? was this just i m going to win this particular issue and it doesn t matter who is hurting? it doesn t matter to him who s hurting. we know he ripped off small business owners, ripped off contractors, continues to do so at the d.c. property as well by the way and who knows what other properties i don t think any of that mattered to him. who did it matter to it mattered to some of those senators in swing states who are up for re-election in 2020 that s who it mattered to and you had six defect and others of them putting pressure on him as well you had republican donors putting pressure on mitch mcconnell and donald trump as well remember, in the 2013 shutdown it was republican donors that got mad at their own party and put pressure during that time, pre-trump. i think that s that was the shutdown was that the shutdown that ted cruz initiated. yes, correct. that debacle. one of the things that did come out of this is that donald trump s own team and own family revealed themselves. these are things that people weren t surprised by probably, their attitudes, but i want to play a little bit of the way they spoke about the federal workers who were going through hell during the shutdown take a listen. mr. secretary, there were reports that there are some federal workers who are going to homeless shelters to get food. well, i know they are, and i don t really quite understand why. in terms of the workers who are coming to work and not getting paid what would you say to them? listen, it s not fair to you and we all get that, but this is so much bigger than any one person it is a little bit of pain, but it s going to be for the future of our country huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days between christmas and new year s and we have a shutdown and they can t go to work and then they have the vacation, but they don t have to use their vacation days and then they come back and then they get their back pay and they re in some sense better off. as soon as this thing goes, the switch will be turned off and payments made and we will go back to normal this is just a glitch. a glitch. volunteers, lara trump saying it s a little bit of pain. spoken like people who ever missed a meal, never ever struggled. extraordinary that they would say those things out loud. i want to take a moment and actually tell you what i said to my students at depaul university in chicago who are all they were not their family did not work for the federal government, but in the sense of the other side of the story, what is this all about? this is about a wall that is to keep people like me and my students and their families out. it is a wall that is racist. okay that s why there is all of this human suffering. what i say to my students, look, we re living through a really dark period. you re living through a dark period that will be talked about for centuries. you re surviving it. understand that there s a contx here, right. so they the chinese exclusion act, there wasn t a wall but there was a chinese exclusion act. let s not forget how many jewish refugees were refused entry when they were escaping hitler and this country was like we can t have them. this is part of the long continuum and those people not getting paid have this relationship now with something that is tied to racism. yeah. and for me it s like the long-term impact on my students is they re mental, how do you feel about the fact that you wake up every day knowing this is happening because they re trying to keep you out the other side of it, joy, the good news right, is that my students are all highly politicized. yeah. much more politicized than they would have been two years ago. i foe it it s like well thank you on that very point, david, you know, a lot of the kind of conceit has been that this is stephen miller acting through donald trump he is so determined and stephen miller is one of the many aides that donald trump brought in who has this uf mystic alt-right perceptive where nonwhite immigrants need to be locked out or deported or their naturalized citizenship taken away, there s too many relative to the population, but donald trump seems to be the most enthusiastic of all the policies fed to him by roger stone and others, this is the one that he seems to be the most married to. are we putting too much on a strategy that came from stone or that s coming through stephen miller and missing this is what donald trump is passionate about? well, he s passionate about it because he was able to rally audiences to it and he thought he could do something about it, although he utterly failed at that and should if he wanted a wall built taken care of it during the previous two years. we have a white house full of stone cold racists led by a man who is utterly heartless and doesn t care about you it s absolutely bizarre that donald trump in his inaugural addressed promised he would focus on the forgotten man just put that up against what s happened in the last 35 days and ask yourself who got forgotten here yep. so he it s the applause he got. he s going to take heat from the right about this and donald will come up some time in the next 90 days, if not less, with a new story to explain away what s happened here. he s already done that. he s claiming that he s going to declare a national emergency, previously been declared for wars, terrorist attacks, the cuban missile crisis, he will use that power to try to get his wall made. here he is so let me be very clear, we really have no choice but to build a powerful wall or steel barrier. if we don t get a fair deal from kurng congresses the government will either shut down on february 15th again, or i will use the powers afforded to me under the laws and the constitution of the united states, to address this emergency. first of all, nobody believes, even mitch mcconnell, as sort of ob be see kwees you as he is to donald trump will let him shut the government down again. you worked in the building side of the trump organization, does he understand logistically you can t building that sort of thing. you have to know it isn t even possible certainly everything is possible, but the question is why is he asking for $5.7 billion when this is going to cost $50 billion see that s what bothers me and why would anyone ever allocate money for a project that you don t know what it is there s no designs there s no idea of what s been there s a rio grande river you cannot pill build a wall across there is topology that makes this absurd. some things will make it difficult. but it s not that the idea that it s absurd in that it can t be built. you know, certainly you can t build it down to the core of the earth so people can t get underneath it either what s absurd about it is that we don t know even what we want to build and how much it s going to cost. the idea that this is a national emergency, that s i think the thing that s so offensive, the idea that anyone from latin and central america would want to come here and flee here for asylum is offensive to not just donald trump but to his supporters right again, the wall is because we know it s been said on this network, on other networks, it needs to be repeated, there is not a crisis of people coming across on this border. that s not the the crisis is that people are seeking refuge, but undocumented immigrants and seeking and looking for work, the mexican economy, i was just there, rocking my mexican earrings. they are cute. mexico and our economy in mexico, booming. right. people are not actually leaving mexico coming to look for work here central americans are seeking refuge and desperate and what this wall is about not just the wall but saying okay, limit all of the refugees that can come into the united states impact it forever. you used that word cleansing, it s a difficult word to hear but the fact is that that s the way people feel. to be honest, i was reporting the story of the building of the wall in 2007, joy, george w. bush wanted to build a wall segments of it were uilt, boeing corporation got $28 billion to build a cyber wall, a wall, with $28 billion where did they go to. steve king built [ inaudible ] just in closing the nancy pelosi factor, she completely schooled him here how do you think that makes someone like donald trump feel very, very, very small. first of all, the only thing that donald trump got was nancy pelosi s spine that s what s made this deal trump clearly miscalculated. i said on this show, trump surrounds himself with yes people and a lot of those are amateurs, mercenaries and criminals and when you have those people advising you, they don t understand how congress works. they don t understand how nancy pelosi works they miscalculated they allowed him to believe that she was going to fold. nancy pelosi was never going to fold trump learned that firsthand he s been defeated nancy pelosi has emerged from this stronger. and i think that right now he s going to be looking for ways to lash out and looking for things to do, but i think he realizes that he ran up against as we say the wrong one. david kay, that sounds like your book. well the people he s dealt with and dealing with now donald surrounds himself with people who will tell him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear. it has to be simple because he s not that smart ta he s a terrible negotiator i ve had to negotiate with him many times over the past 1-231 years. nancy pelosi knows how to keep her troops in line and hold firm she isn t concerned by the immediate response of fox news as donald is which led us into this whole thing. somebody told me this morning, that those gadflies on the right who really told him what to do, told him to shut the government down, this is their peak of power. if they cannot punish him or make him pay for not getting them a wall where does their power go maria, tara, barbara, david, thank you all very much. coming up, that security clearance that jared kushner waited over a year to get, it may not shock you to hear this, but it turns out top-level security officials neverwanted him to have it at all. hi there, this is a commercial about insurance. but let s be honest. nobody likes dealing with insurance. see, esurance knows it s confusing. i literally 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(ringing) ( ) the future only happens with people who really know how to deliver it. the future only happens amazon prime video so when you say words like. show me best of prime video into this. you ll see awesome stuff like this. discover prime originals like the emmy-winning the marvelous mrs. maisel. tom clancy s jack ryan. and the man in the high castle. all in the same place as your live tv. its all included with your amazon prime membership. that s how xfinity makes tv. simple. easy. awesome. my name is jared kushner, i am senior adviser to president donald j. trump. let me be very clear, i did not collude with russia nor do i know of anyone else in the campaign who did so. i had no improper contacts. donald trump s son-in-law had so many foreign entanglements that two career security specialists at the white house recommended that he not receive a top security clearance citing concerns about potential foreign influence on kushner that s according to two sources familiar with the matter ultimately the specialist s concerns were overruled by a trump appointee who overruled concerns about at least 30, 30, 3-0, other trump officials, an unprecedented number joining me is maya, barbara, and malcolm nance, author of the plot to destroy america. maya, ever heard of anything like this, four levels of security clearance, the cia has to grant you the top one and they refused to give that to jared kushner but this person who was situated in a person to essentially bring in people, carl klein, just overruled and overruled, and got him a clearance. ever heard of anything like this i never heard of anything like this. you know, as counsel to the mooar of new york city the mooar has to request a security clearance to have certain conversations with washington. you know the idea folks are responsible for the national security, the expert pz, would be so ignored in a context with jared kushner who remember has no experience in foreign affairs. right. what he does have is a significant number of business ties which is where you have foreign governments like china, like mexico, like united arab emirates trying to fig out how to use and manipulate the financial interests for their own. even if jared kushner has all the best intentions you would not expect to see that but 30 people means you re really ignoring fundly your experiments in terms of how we protect the country and these are nonpolitical experts this gentleman was political, carl klein let me play for you, malcolm, bradley moss rachel did an excellent opening block about this very alarming fact about what jared kushner was able to get and here he is, he s a national security attorney, who specializes in litigation related to national security and federal employment and security law and he is talking about how unprecedented this was i ll say this, in 12 years of representing people across the intelligence community, defense contractors, government personnel, military personnel, i ve never seen this this what is we always feared. this is what we were worried was going to happen when the president broke with the custom of not bringing his kids in and family they brought jared kushner in, ivanka trump in, there were obvious, clearly identifiable foreign influence concerns, foreign personal financial too is, extensive foreign contracts and travel, that the two adjudicators said no, makes complete sense to me. malcolm, as we put up a couple headlines that happened while donald trump was president about jared kushner discussed secret channel to talk to the russians, jared kushner is china s trump card, oversees contacts raised concerns as officials seek leverage. the wooing, how the saudis have a friend in the white house. as a national security professional yourself tease out what bradley moss was saying what is the fear in the intelligence community of somebody getting a security clearance that they really ought not have i ll tell you, i held a top secret sci security clearance with special access programs jared kushner would have many, many higher levels access of that if he is working in the office of the president. the security concern is quite simple and i have never heard of a person ever editing their actual sf-86 security application form like jared kushner did with i believe over 100 modifications to it that s because anybody who modified their clearance of application once had their clearance pulled and never given access also jared kushner, one of the concerns that fbi had, was at the point where they were going to adjudicate his process, they had come up with the term unclearable. i had never heard of this term unclearable. that means that there is something in your background whether it s usually financial in your contacts with foreign powers that means you are a national security potential national security threat to the united states. this is why the cia with would not allow jared kushner access to their programs because that means that he would either they suspected he would either give away top secret information, sell top secret information, or would compromise their intelligence operations. clearly whoever the individual was that made these determinations not just for kushner, but for 30 other individuals was hyper partisan and to be quite honest, every one of those people need to have their clearance pulled immediately to make sure that none of them are spies or selling this information that is terrifying. barbara mcquaid, if you re robert mueller, are you thinking about calling in carl klein and asking him about this, given that what s being investigated according to the new york times is whether the president of the united states might be an agent of a foreign power i think so. not just merely to look at whether, you know, jared kushner made false statements on his clearance forms, background forms, or are at risk of security concern, but whether this is part of the same conspiracy we want people to have access to this information so it could be shared with russia as all part of this conspiracy that in exchange for assisting the president and becoming elected there were certain quid pro quos they would get in exchange, one of which may have been the sharing of classified information i think it absolutely fits within the scope of that investigation and so why you know, carl klein, it s a legitimate question to ask him why did you overrule the opinions of career intelligence professionals 30 times in this administration i think that s a fair question. oh, my goodness in the words of adam, scaring is caring but you re terrifying me right now. malcolm nance, sharing or selling information is a worse case scenario. we know jared sought a back channel with russia, headlines how he would whatsapp with mbs with the saudi crown prince. this is quite alarming. it is you know there s an additional point that i m going to terrify you with right now, the counterintelligence professionals who are making these determinations that people shouldn t have it are now going to or have probably thought about this individual, mr. klein, to determine was he allowing a network to set up within the white house was he himself either influenced by a hostile foreign power or by political preference within the white house and allowing these unclearable individuals to come in there to set up like i said a network where they could be compromising the national security of the united states. if i was in counterintelligence at the fbi and definitely at the cia, i would be pulling my hair out right now because we all know jared kushner as you mentioned in the previous segment, asked a foreign power to use foreign crypto graphic communication systems so he could speak behind the back of the united states government you know what, the house needs to rip this thing apart because i think that what we re going to find is, individuals for their own personal benefit may have been using this information that they were given access to that they should never have ever seen. before we go, i want to mention we at nbc did try to reach out to carl klein and unable to get comment. this is scary. thank you malcolm, maya and barbara. you will be sticking around. donald trump and his long time consig larry are engaging in something that could land them in more trouble and we ll talk about that next. now that i ve got you here for a minute, or two actually, i ve got to tell you something. with the capital one venture card you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase, every day. my credit card only earns double miles on airline purchases! well, you earn double miles on this and on everything with the venture card. thanks! hey, by the way, how d you get in here? same way you did. cross-checking. nice. what s in your wallet. oh, c mon! to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it s best to make you everybody else. means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight and never stop. 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(cell phone vibrating) and now she s ready for the catwalk. life, lived jason s way. chase. make more of what s yours. wave come from more money more problems to more mueller more problems it s about you re attacking his father-in-law, mr. trump mr. giuliani, you attack his father-in-law and allude to him being a criminal because he s from the ukraine this is a mob technique to send a message to the individual that mr. trump has called a rat for telling the truth. after endless tweets and verbal attacks from donald trump and his tv lawyer giuliani, michael cohen sought to postpone his testimony to take place early next month citing ongoing threats against his family looks like cohen may not have a choice since the senate intelligence committee subpoenaed him to testify and his lawyer lanny davis says cohen will comply. joining me legal analyst maya wiley, former u.s. attorney barbara mcquade, msnbc legal analyst paul butler and former special agent douglas cologne. you specialized in labor racketeering when you hear stuff like what i m going to play right now, tell me if it sounds familiar to the cases you dealt with take a listen. he should give information maybe on his father-in-law because that s the one that people want to look at because where does that money that s the money in the family. i guess he didn t want to talk about his father-in-law. he s trying to get his sentenced reduce. his father-in-law is ukrainian. that s not a crime. has millions and millions it s not he comes from the ukraine. he may have ties to something called organized crime. what do you make of these guys you have implied threats and you have direct threats. in this case you have the implied threat where, you know, the old put your hand on the shoulder and say hey, don t worry about this, that and the other. you know what, how is your granddaughter doing? does she still take piano lessons on 23rd street and park avenue she has a whole life ahead of her. that s the implied threat to the family if you go back to stormy daniels, when trump moichael cohen ask his fixer his job was to make sure he got someone to take care of the problems that trump encountered. go back to the time she was in a parking lot and someone accosted her f that was from michael cohen, he would be the person who actually sent someone to intimidate her now that cohen is now outside of the loop, he s alone in the cocoon of the trump circle, now he knows how people move so he now thinks it may be someone coming after his family. that same threat goes towards your father-in-law who then goes down to your wife, which goes down to your children. i think it s the same line of threats. and to your very point here is lanny davis, cohen s lawyer, talking about just that. the family of michael cohen has been called out by donald trump once again he ducks or lies about what he knows he s done, which is to attack a father-in-law and a wife as a way of getting to mr. cohen and that is called witness tampering, obstruction of justice. paul butler, it is ironic, as douglas pointed out, cohen used to be the guy who delivered the implied threats. now he is on the receiving end does that in a sense make him a better arbiter of what it is what he s up against when it comes to donald trump? it does and this case it worked because after these threats from trump and giuliani, then cohen says he s not going to testify. ultimately it s not his choice he could be required to give testimony to congress. but the other irony is with rudy giuliani who made his name as a prosecutor going after mob families and now he s acting like the same kind of thugs who he sent to prison. you know, joy, if [ inaudible ] said to a witness, man, i see your father-in-law, that around the way dude would be in handcuffs. it shouldn t be any different when the president of the united states does it ff in fact it should be worse because this is the most powerful man in the world and he has the ability, the justice department reports to him, so he has the ability to carry out these threats even if he can t be indicted, at minimum it s abuse for office which is grounds for impeachment. i want to go back to the point paul made about rudy giuliani originally it was a u.s. attorney the job you used to do as well when you hear him engaging in these tactics a lot of people has expressed shock about what has happened to him but what do you make when you hear an attorney, lawyer, former prosecutor, engaging in this threatening behavior too it s an absolute disgrace and also i agree that it does amount to witness tampering i think that some people are maybe faked out by the fact that this is so open and notorious. ordinarily when you have these kinds of threats and intimidating lines they come privately or behind closed doors so they can t be detected. here because they re on twitter i think it gives sort of the geist that they can t possibly be criminal because who would commit a crime in brought day lye president we prosecuted street gangs on threats they made on social media about people who were rats and weak links to intimidate them all the statute requires is to knowingly intimidate to influence or prevent someone s testimony. the fact that rudy giuliani and president trump are saying this out publicly does not in any way minimize the criminality of it. and they re doing it in such plain sight. here are democrats talking about this intimidation an what effect it will have on their determination to hear from him before congress. take a listen. efforts to intimidate witnesses scare family members or prevent them from testifying before congress are textbook mob tactics and we condemn them in the strongest terms. this is a letter written by some democrats. when our committees begin discussions with mr. cohen s attorney not appearing before congress was never an option this isn t going to stop michael cohen from having to be heard. it s not going to stop michael cohen from because he s going to be subpoenaed. he s not going to have a lot of defenses to that subpoena. congress has strong subpoena power. the thing here to remember is, michael cohen, we knew that he had some concerns about people he wanted to protect because it was very odd that he didn t enter into a cooperation agreement with the u.s. attorney s office for the southern district and yet, was giving them information and it was quite clear that he was protecting someone which was also very public and you have to assume that donald trump understood what he was trying to protect and recognized that he could utilize that i mean that s at least one interpretation when you add to that, though, that robert mueller is probably not very excited about michael cohen testifying because he s got ongoing investigations and he doesn t want, obviously, anything that might interfere with that so, you know, i m sure that the democrats are obviously having those conversations about how to protect the investigation. but very clear that there s intimidation here, very clear i absolutely agree with paul that this is an abuse of power and just remember william barr, so the nominee that donald trump picked to head the attorney general s the u.s. to be attorney general, highest lawyer in the land, took the position that the president can be the prosecutor in chief which they would use then as a defense saying we didn t intend that we re just directing prosecutions douglas, one of the things that the speaker pelosi in her lengthy statement about the indictment of roger stone, it was about the kind of people that donald trump surrounds himself with, and you know, you ve already seen roger stone threatening to, you know, harm someone s dog, calling them a rat, donald trump using language you re a rat of anybody who testifies, paul manafort and questions of whether he was afraid to talk about what he knows because of all the nefarious characters he s represented there is a theme that feels almost like we re talking about to be blunt a mob prosecution. is that over the top to say that that s what this is starting to feel like? you think about it, you have the five families in new york and donald trump was a developer in new york so he had to be familiar with what goes on in terms of the corruption with the labor unions and, you know, this 5% mob tax that goes on, everything that s built in new york, so he s been familiar with that kind of behavior. if you watch the hand movements that kind of hand stuff that goes on back and forth, that s sort of reminds me of watching some of the guys we used to deal with looking at what s going on now you start to wonder saying, is he taking the same behavior and bringing it over into the oval office because i think what sam nunberg said yesterday that roger stone, you re not donald trump, you can t intimidate people like donald trump, you re not the president, so those birds of a the feather who flock together you see the same pattern going on. the idea there was a time in new york city when there was this sort of emblematic idea of corruption of municipal corruption, donald trump s father operated in that world and got a lot done, probably didn t pay a lot of taxes he was supposed to pay, come up in a context of city government he thinks he can ma nip nate. this is not what washington is right now. not even what new york is right now. or new york or any place. things have changed substantially for the better, not to say there isn t continuing corruption, but no question this was a deeply corrupt city and yes in real estate quite frankly not all real estate developers are criminal, this isn t what i m saying, but the depth of corruption in real estate transactions significant, lots of money, very new york, very, very tough yeah. i think it s not coincidental we have not had a person of donald trump s particular background in terms of what he did for a living go to the white house because it s exposing, sort of a glass prison everything about you comes out maya, barbara, paul, douglas, thank you all very much. up next, if nancy pelosi showed us one thing this week, it s that a woman could be the most formidable adversary for donald trump. in the latest woman to enter the 2020 race may be taking notice that s next. oo, saying [indistinct conversation] [friend] i ve never seen that before. i have. i have. your mornings were made for than psoriatic arthritis. as you and your rheumatologist consider treatments, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once daily pill for psoriatic arthritis. taken with methotrexate or similar medicines, it can reduce joint pain. .swelling and significantly improve physical function. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened. as have tears in the stomach or intestines, serious allergic reactions, low blood cell counts, higher liver tests and cholesterol levels. don t start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. your doctor should perform blood tests before and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you ve been somewhere fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of psoriatic arthritis. don t let another morning go by without talking to your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. my mother taught us long ago she would say to me, cam ma la, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you re not the last when we look at where we are at this moment in the history of our country, i think our founders gave us the right charge they said stand together take care of each other. and serve your country as leaders. and that s what we do today. california senator cam ma la harris is already on the campaign trail in south carolina after confirming what a lot of folks already expected this week, she s running for president in 2020 and joins a growing list of democratic candidates vowing to take on trump with dozens more potentially poised to jump into the race joining me is donna brazile, author of colored girls who have considered politics. i ve got the book right here you have done a lot of jobs, managing the al gore campaign, running the dnc. you are the expert i want to talk to about this race. i want to talk about the idea of a woman running. here are the four already out there. cam ma la harris, kristin gillibrand, tulsi gabbard. what do you say that the country s not ready for a president. the country has been ready for a woman president for a long time another woman, mary anne williamson is an author and she s someone very inspirational, she is also out there in the hawkeye state running where it s potential amy klobuchar will get in the race over the next two weeks, another woman that has a very strong background and i do believe that perhaps more women my jump into the race look, this is a very historic year for the democratic party. we will have a report number of candidates we know that they re out and about, traveling throughout this country, but is america ready? absolutely will it happen in our lifetime, joy? absolutely col it happen in 2020? yes. okay, what would women candidates have do differently because we know women are judged differently. there are a lot of guys that will be in it, joe biden, bernie sanders, an indianapolis a mayor in indiana named pe beto potential what would a woman have do know the rules, understand that in order to win the nomination you have to go out and build a coalition. i think several of the women, liz warren, kamala and others are capable of building the kind of coalition you need, in the hawkeye state, the grinder state, palmetto state but you ve got to build a strong coalition that can accrue delegates, get on a ballot. one key this year because superdelegates will not be as prominent although we retain our voices in terms of the first ballot, it s important to get small doper individual volunteers to get behind your candidacy. they have records of accomplishment and just take a page from hillary clinton who received 66 million votes in the general election, over 4 million votes more votes than bernie sanders in the 2016 primary. hillary had a very diverse operation. she was able to get delegates not just in the early states but she understood that you had to build a coalition in the south and you had to build a coalition in the midwest take a page from hillary clinton and i think you ll have a recipe for is success in 20. you re a campaign pro because you know the nicknames of all the states that s how you know somebody s been in the game. i ve worked on so many presidential campaigns, i delight in the fact i get calls from my kids now i have 300 kids, different daddies, of course i get calls and i m thinking about gillibrand, klobuchar and terry mcauliffe, last night, cory booker, joe biden jesse jackson, walter mondale, michael dukakis, bill clinton, al gore, i got them all. i m are upping out of time. you were running the dnc when the hack took place. you had a lot of scared people didn t know who stole it, what was going on what do you make of the indictment we ve seen of roger stone? first of all, our country was under attack income 2016 it was an attack on our democracy and yes, they used the democratic party to throw the first it was a cyber attack but it had a very strong impact on not just the 2016 election but it s still impacting our country now. i would hope these individuals it will tell the truth, will face the jury and help us as americans get our country back on track this was an attack on our democracy. and they should go to jail the donna brazile. i believe in due process, but let me tell you, this was an attack on our democracy. i know you know a lot of people personally impacted this is the book for colored girls, a storied history in american politics. have a great weekend coming up at the top of the hour, a behind the scenes look at mar-a-lago and its role in the trump presidency but first, more after the break. aaaah! 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[ indistinct talking ] -deductible? -definitely speaking insurance. -additional interest on umbrella policy? -can you translate? -damage minimization of civil commotion. -when insurance needs translating, get answers in plain english at progressiveanswers.com. -he wants you to sign karen s birthday card. it s a high honor. always a catch. like somehow you wind up getting less. but now that i book at hilton.com, and i get all these great perks. i got to select my room from the floor plan. very nice. i know, i m good at picking stuff. free wi-fi. laptop by the pool is a bold choice. and the price match guarantee. how do you know all of this? are you like some magical hilton fairy? it s just here on the hilton app. just available to the public, so. book at hilton.com and get the hilton price match guarantee. if you find a lower rate, we match it and give you 25% off that stay. if you find a wer rate, we m[ dobaxter.ng ]e you it s bedtime. peace of mind should never be out of reach. [ voice command beep ] xfinity home. xfinity home connects you to total home security you can control from anywhere on any device. and it protects you with 24/7 professional monitoring. i guess we re sleeping here tonight. xfinity home. simple. easy. awesome. call, go online or demo in an xfinity store today. that s our show for today. am joy will be back tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. up next, frances rivera has the latest. thank you so much good day from msnbc world headquarters in new york, 9:00 out west welcome to weekends with alex witt. three big headlines this hour, a temporary solution to the shutdown but a bigger battle looms. new reaction moments ago from roger stone about his indictment plus, michael cohen and threats he says made him postpone his house testimony. the secrets of mar-a-lago and how president trump bought it for less than $3,000. how did that happen? the author of a new book about the president s gilded palace explains in minutes. but first, new this hour, long time trump friend roger stone emerging fro
television. slowly but surely, the 1970s are disappearing. the 1980s will be upon us. and what a decade it is coming up. happy new year! as we began the 80s in the television world, the landscape was on any given evening, 9 out of 10 people watching only one of three networks. more than 30 million people are addicted to it. social critics are mystified by its success. what is it? it s television s primetime prairie pot boilers dallas. a move like that will destroy all of ewing oil and ruin our family name. a thought like that never crossed my mind. brother or no brother, whatever it takes, i ll stop you from destroying ewing oil. dallas established new ground in a weekly hour-long show. it literally captivated america for 13 years. dallas is a television show which is rooted in the 1970s and one of the crazy things that emerges is this character j.r. ewing as a pop phenomenon. tell me, j.r., which slut are you going to stay with tonight. what difference does it make? it s got to be more interesting than the slut i m looking at right now. such a delicious villain. everyone was completely enamored by this character. at this point, so many people were watching television that you could do something so unexpected that it would become news overnight. who s there? [ gunshots ] the national obsession in 1980 around who shot j.r. it s hard to imagine how obsessed we all were with that question. but we were. who shot j.r. is about as ideal a cliffhanger as you possibly could get. who did shoot j.r.? we may never get the answer to that question. the people who produce the program are going to keep us in suspense as long as they possibly can. who shot j.r. and then we broke for the summer. then the actors went on strike. it delayed the resolution, and it just started to percolate through the world. i remember going on vacation to england that summer and that s all that people were talking about there. we know you don t die. you couldn t die. we don t know that s. how could you die? you couldn t come back next season. i couldn t come back but the show could still go on. but you wouldn t. what is that show without j.r.? that s what i figure. i guess if you don t know by now who shot j.r., you probably do not care. last night some 82 million americans did. and they watched the much touted dallas episode. it could become the most watched television show ever. who shot j.r. is a reflect ion of old fashioned television. it gathers everybody around the electric fireplace which is now the television set. one special american television program. critics said it transcends in popularity ever other american statement about america. it trns skended every statement about war. something happened today to hospital 4077 that will touch millions of americans. it was the kind of event that would grab the world s breath. the end of the korean war. the television version m.a.s.h. it s been an honor and privilege to have worked with you. i m very, very proud to have known you. there were those landmark times when shows that had been watched through the 70s and into the 80s, like m.a.s.h. had its final episode. and we were all sad to see them go. i ll miss you. i ll miss you. a lot. all over the country, armies of fans crowded around television sets to watch the final episode and to bid m.a.s.h. farewell. the finale of m.a.s.h. was unprecedented. 123 million people watched one television program at the same time. i really should be allowed to go home. there s nothing wrong with me. when we ended the show, we got telegrams of congratulations from henry kissinger and ronald reagan. the size of the response and the emotional nature of the response that we were getting was difficult for us to understand. who shot j.r. and the last episode of m.a.s.h. are the last call for the pre-cable world of television. it s like they are the last time that that huge audience will all turn up for one event. tv is growing up with cable. tv is growing up with content. tv is growing up with different genres. the fundamental thing that cable did, that the vcr did, or the remote control did is it gave consumers more choice. everything was about to change. 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mary hammond? the private investigator? oh, you re probably wondering about the goat. just let me drop off my friend and then we ll talk. when we entered the 80s a lot of one-hour dramas that were light hearted like magnum p.i. were very popular. after m.a.s.h. went off the air the next season there wasn t a single sitcom in the top ten. first time that had ever happened in tv history. the prevailing feeling was that the sitcom was dead. the nbs programming chief says reports of the sitcom s death were greatly exaggerated. time and time again if you study television history just when someone is counting a forum out that is exactly the form of programming that leads to the next big hit. 1984 the cosby show comes on. bill cosby is not new to tv but the cosby show is different. stands apart from everything else he s done. i wanted my eggs scrambled. coming up. they talked about parenting. before that, the kid were cool and the parents were idiots. cosby says the parents are in charge and that was something new. instead of acting disappointed because i m not like you, maybe you can just accept who i am and love me anyway because i m your son. that s the dumbest thing i ve ever heard in my life! it helps the casting a lot in television. the kids were just great. if you were the last person on this earth, i still wouldn t tell you. you have to tell me what you did. just tell me what s they re going to do to you. unlike every other show on tv, it s showing an upper middle class black family. this wasn t all in the family. they weren t tackling deep issues but that was okay. the mere fact they existed was a deep issue. the decade was waiting for something real. in other words, unless it s real, it doesn t seem like it moves anybody. if someone is feeling something, you get to the heart and the mind. if you can hit the hearts and minds, you ve got yourself a hit. how was school? school? dear, i brought home two children that may or may not be ours. the cosby show brought this tremendous audience to nbc. and that was a bridge to us. our ratings went way up. sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name even the theme song to cheers puts you in a good mood. hello, everybody. what s shaking, norm? all four cheeks and a couple of chins. by the end of the cheers pilot, not only did you know who everybody was, but you wanted to come back and see what was going to happen. it s like all you have to do is watch it once. you re going to love these people. these are universal characters, and the humor worked on so many levels. i was up until 2:00 in the morning finishing off kierkegaard. i hope he thanked you for it. you have to create a community that people are identifying with. and cheers gives you that community. i ve always wanted to skydive. i ve just never had the guts. what s did it feel like? i imagine a lot like sex. but i have plenty of sex. and plenty of this, too. why don t you just get off my back, too. in the first episode, there was a rather passionate annoyance. something is going on here. a really intelligent woman would see your line of bs a mile away. i never met an intelligent woman that i would want to date. on behalf of the intelligent women around the world, may i just say, phew. you saw what ted and shelly had together. we said, oh, no. we ve got to do this relationship. ted and i understood what they were writing right away. if you ll admit that you are carrying a little torch for me, i ll admit that i m carrying a little one for you. oh, i am carrying a little torch for you. well, i m not carrying one for you. diane knew how to tease sam. sam knew how to tease diane, and i guess we know how to tease the audience. incredible chemistry between the two of them ignited the show. that s what s drove the show for the first five years. what s the matter? i m devastated. i need something brutal to blast me into sweet oblivion. make it a mimosa. we had the luck to be able to rotate cast and every time we put somebody in, they were explosions. there was something very special about that setting, those characters that i never got tired of writing that show. sophisticated surveys, telephonic samplings, test audiences. all of those help to separate winners from losers and make midcourse corrections. you can t cut all comedies from the same cookie cutters. all you can hope is every night turns out like thursday. yo, angela! next. how rude. quick, i ll give him that. all television and, oh, maybe sitcoms are alive again. and that s all that it took. it took one success. a few years from now, something new may tempt the people that pick what we see. it is a very safe guess that whatever gets hot for a season or two those who create good television comedy will be laughing all the way to the bank. take me to your best friend s house going around this roundabout oh, yeah don t just dream book your next vacation.. be a booker at booking.com it s no ordinary day at denny s it s crepe day. a family tradition we started about twenty-two minutes ago. and from the looks of it, this tradition is going to last awhile. denny s has new crepes! see you at denny s. we like drip coffee, layovers- -and waiting on hold. what we don t like is relying on fancy technology for help. snail mail! we were invited to a y2k party. uh, didn t that happen, like, 20 years ago? oh, look, karolyn, we ve got a mathematician on our hands! check it out! now you can schedule a callback or reschedule an appointment, even on nights and weekends. today s xfinity service. simple. easy. awesome. i d rather not. all right. that s it. let s roll. hey, let s be careful out there. dispatch, we have a 911. armed robbery in progress. when quality does emerge on television the phrase too good for tv is often heard. one recent network offering that seems to deserve that phrase is hill street blues. hill street is one of the changing points of the entire industry and the history of tv. we had all watched a documentary about cops and we were very enamored. the minute you looked at it, it looked different. it had a mood to it. you could almost smell the stale coffee. we didn t want to do a standard cop show where you got your crime and you got your two cops and you catch the bad guy and you sweat him and he confesses. and that s it. cops have personal lives that impact their behavior in profound ways. well, what about it? he here? don t get excited. we re working on it. how is this for logic? if he s not here and he s not elsewhere he is lost. he s not lost. never in my entire life have i listened to so much confidence covered up by so much unmitigated crap. find my client, or i swear i ll have you up on charges. there would be these ongoing arcs for these characters that would play out over five, six episodes, sometimes an entire season, in a way for certain stories over the entire series. no one had really done that in an hour long dramatic show. these past four months i ve missed you. i had to find that out. in the past, people had watched television passively. and the one thing i think we did set out to be were provocateurs. you fill it out. what the hell is the matter with you, man? they don t pay me enough to deal with animals like this. all they see is a white face and all they listen to me. it was a white man that pulled the trigger, not a black one. it set a trend. the audience can accept characters being deeply flawed even though they re wearing this uniform. i thought that was important to finally get across. we wanted to make a show that made you participate. made you pay attention. and i think that worked pretty well. and the winner is hill street blues. 21 nominations. and we went on to win eight emmys. it put us on the map, literally. that s when people finally checked us out. programming chief of one of the networks used to say to me about shows like hill street and st. elsewhere what the american people want is a cheeseburger. what you are trying to give them is a french delicacy. and he said your job is to keep shoving it down their throat until after a while, they ll say, that s doesn t taste bad. and maybe they ll even toward order it for themselves when they go to the restaurant. the success of hill street blues influenced everything that s came after. and then st. elsewhere. you know what people call this? st. elsewhere. a place you wouldn t want to send your mother-in-law. when it first came on, it was promoted as hill street hospital. you gave your patients the wrong antibiotics. you write the worst progress notes. you re pathetic. bill? what? dr. morning needs you right away. i m sorry. st. elsewhere broke every rule there was and then built some new rules. blood bank called a little while ago. they ran a routine panel. t-cell count was off. they would have tragic things happen to these characters. there was real heartache in these people s lives and you really felt for them. i ve got aids? television at its best is a mirror of society in the moment. st. elsewhere challenged people and challenged you as an actor, much less the audience to the stuff they gave you was extreme, whether they were dealing with aids or having one of their main doctor characters raped in a prison. they tackled lots of difficult subjects. st. elsewhere was run by people trying to stretch the medium and in the 80s, television producers were encouraged to stretch the medium. clear. there was more drama. they were getting a little more adventurous with the types of shows that were getting a shot. what are you doing? what i should have done all along. what i wanted to do originally. what i should have done last night. stop that, david. i m calling the police, david. hello, police? the networks realized there was an audience looking for something less predictable than traditional primetime fare. moonlighting was another show that said, okay. i see the formulas we ve had up to here. let s do different things. hello. we re looking a little pale aren t we? who do we have here? i don t know. they had a shakespeare episode, a black and white episode. they did a musical episode. they tried a lot of different stuff. i don t give a flying fig about the lines in my face, the crow s feet of my eyes or the altitude of my caboose. well i m at a loss. i don t know what a flying fig is. that s okay. they do. there s no trouble. we have a very volatile relationship. there is a hate/love element to it. kept them apart for a long time and bravo to him. what they did was they took the sam and diane dynamic from cheers and escalated it. cheers was will they or won t they. moonlighting was do they even want to? stay away from me. here i come. but i don t want you. i never wanted you. yeah right. does entertaining mean at some point stopping the tease of dave and maddie? do they get together at some point? i hope so. that is going to be resolved this year. we like to think of it as two and a half years of foreplay. people watching for years were waiting for this moment and your emotions were already there so when be my baby by the ronnettes starts playing it is like a perfect storm of romance. the night we met i knew i needed you so medications seem to be the number one cause for dry mouth. dry mouth can cause increased cavities, bad breath, oral irritation. i like to recommend biotene. biotene has a full array of products that replenishes the moisture in your mouth. biotene definitely works. it makes patients so much happier. you eat right. mostly. you make time. when you can. but sometimes life gets in the way, and that stubborn fat just won t go away. coolsculpting takes you further. a non-surgical treatment that targets, freezes, and eliminates treated fat cells, for good. discuss coolsculpting with your doctor. some common side-effects include temporary numbness, discomfort, and swelling. don t imagine results, see them. coolsculpting, take yourself further. he d be proud of us. protect your family, your business and everyone who counts on you. see how lincoln can help. . a lot of people used to say i was there. now people say they watched it on television. there is just a lot of excitement connected to sports in the 80s. you used to have to depend on the five minutes at the end of your local newscast. there hadn t been enough. you know? give us a whole network of sports. there s just one place you need to go for all the names and games making sports news. espn sportscenter. what are tv shows built around? they re built around characters. you can t be serious, man. you cannot be serious. mcenroe the cool villain. what tennis really wants is its two best players playing over and over again in the final whether it s john mcenroe or chris everett that s what we wanted over and over again. and three match points to martina navratilova. this man has a smile that lights up a television screen from here to bangor, maine. and then there is magic johnson, this kid from michigan, and larry bird this guy who worked carrying trash, one place for the los angeles lakers the other place for the boston celtics. it s a great story. several chances. here s larry bird. magic johnson leads the attack. look at that pass. oh, what a show. oh, no. when those championship games are in primetime, and people are paying attention to that, television feeds into those rivalries and makes them bigger than they ve ever been before. every mike tyson fight was an event because every fight was like an ax murder. when he fought michael sphinx you could feel the electricity on tv. there he goes! tyson was made for tv because there was drama. it s all over! mike tyson has won it. not a lot of high school kids can dunk. everybody tried. he has become something of a public figure. michael jordan becomes the model every other athlete wants to shoot for. they want to be a brand and that s what television does for these athletes. turns them into worldwide iconic brands. here s michael on the foul line. a shot. the bulls win! athletes in the 80s became part of an ongoing group of people that we cared about. we just had an enormous, pent up demand for sports, and the 80s began to provide thank goodness. cable television is continuing to grow. it is estimated it will go into 1 million more u.s. households this year. with cable television suddenly offering an array of different channel choices the audience bifurcated. that s an earthquake. i want my mtv! i want my mtv. i want my mtv. a new concept is born the best of tv combined with the best of radio. this is it. welcome to mtv, music television, the world s first 24-hour stereo video music channel. music television. what a concept. mtv was, pow, in your face. you were not going to turn us off. mtv did nothing but play current music videos all day long. so let me get this straight. you turn on the tv and it s like the radio? i m martha quin. the music will continue nonstop on mtv television the newest component of your stereo system. a generation was launched. 18 to 24-year-olds were saying i want my mtv. i want my mtv videos. i want my mtv fashion. mtv was the first network focused on the youth market. they understand each other the audience and the network. mtv had a giant impact on every part of the tv culture that came next. miami vice. freeze. friday nights on nbc are different this season thanks to miami vice a show with an old theme but a lot of new twists. described by one critic as containing flashes of brilliance nonetheless shot entirely on location in south miami the story centers around two undercover vice cops. i don t know how this is going to work, tubbs. i mean, you re not exactly up my alley style and persona wise. heaven knows i m no box of candy. television very much was the small screen. it was interesting about the pilot screen play. he said it was very much not that. very much the approach was okay they call this a television series but we re going to make one-hour movies every single week. here we go. stand by. they were just describing the show as sort of a new wave cop show. yeah. a cop show for the 80s. we use a lot of mtv images and rock music to help describe the mood and feeling of our show. in a lot of ways you don t get miami vice without mtv because it was a long video in a lot of ways. music was such a big part of that show. there is an allure to using great music that everybody was listening to as opposed to the routine kind of tv scoring. it not only was not afraid to let long scenes play out, it would drag a car going from point a to point b could be a four-minute phil collins song. you know. and it was. being able to take a television series like miami vice and let s rock n roll with this until somebody says stop, are you guys crazy, you can t do that, and nobody ever did. freeze, police. (airport pa sound) i see your face looking into my mine and all of these doubts run through my head can you be with me meet acqua panna a water with a perfect mineral balance for a smooth taste. thanks to a unique journey through the nature of tuscany. i feel much better acqua panna. meet the smoothest taste on earth. sleep number 360 smart bed. it senses your movement and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. it s the final days to save $1000 on the new queen sleep number 360 special edition smart bed, only $1,799. ends sunday. what is that? uh mine, why? it s just that it s. lavender. yes it is, it s for men but i like the smell of it laughs another wireless ad. great. so many of them are full of this complicated, tricky language about their network and offers and blah blah blah. look. sprint s going to do things differently. and let you decide for yourself. they re offering a new 100% total satisfaction guarantee. try it out and see the savings. if you don t love it, get your money back. see? simple. now sprint s unlimited plan comes with one of the newest phones included for just $35 a month. so switch now. for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com you ever wish you weren t a motaur? sure. sometimes i wish i had legs like you. yeah, like a regular person. no. still half bike/half man, just the opposite. oh, so the legs on the bottom and motorcycle on the top? yeah. yeah, i could see that. for those who were born to ride, there s progressive. in recent years it seems television has become a kind of electronic confectional where guests are willing to expose painful and sometimes embarrassing things in their lives quite readily to viewers. at the beginning of the decade we get the dominance of phil donahue and that is a sort of maturation of women s issues. he seemed to talk to them in the audience, through the tv screen. i m glad you called. kiss the kids. we ll be back in just a moment. if you look at the body of work we ve had, you know, you ll see the 80s there. i m not here to say you re wrong but let s understand this. when you bring a moral judgment without knowing them against them for the way that they look, they feel that confirms the reason for their rebellion if that s what you want to call it. he really believed that day time television needed to talk about the ideas we were thinking about, the issues we were concerned about. i don t want to characterize his question but why don t you get this fixed instead of doing this screwy stuff? there is not a single recorded case in history of any transsexual that ever through psychological treatment changed. it has never happened yet. and we were putting very important people on the program. all kinds of people. gay people, people going to jail, people running for office, sometimes the same people. it was a magic carpet ride. you really do paint a very, very grim picture of the sitting president of the united states. let me just say this. i think he is probably the laziest president i ve ever seen. the audience for phil donahue built and built and built and led the way to oprah. [ applause ] hello everybody. hello! oprah has a particularly magical combination of her own background, her own experience, her own incisive mind, and empathetic spirit. thank you. i m oprah winfrey and welcome to the very first national oprah winfrey show! i was surprised at the rocket pace oprah took off. it took us a lot longer. the donahue show rearranged the furniture but oprah remodeled the whole house. there are a lot of other people out there watching who really don t understand what you mean when you say we re in love. i remember questioning my gay friends saying, you mean you feel about him the way i feel about it is kind of a strange concept for a lot of people to accept. oprah was connecting with people in a way that no one had on tv before. and it was really special to see. did you know that for the longest time i wanted to be a fourth grade teacher because of you? i was not aware of inspiring anyone. i think you did exactly what teachers are supposed to do. they create a spark for learning. that s the reason i have a talk show today. oprah winfrey now dominates the talk show circuit both in the ratings and popularity. i want to use my life as a source of lifting people up. that s what i want to do. that s what i do every day on my show. we get accused of being tabloid television and sensational and so forth but what i really think we do more than anything else is we serve as a voice to a lot of people who felt up until perhaps my show or some of the others that they were alone. this is what 67 pounds of fat looks like. i can t lift it. it is amazing to me that i can t lift it but i used to carry it around every day. there is nothing more endearing to an audience than to have that kind of honesty and humility and courage on the part of a host. and that i think has a lot to do with her power. it feels like i can do some good here and i really do think that the show does a lot of good. american television is drowning in talk shows. but it s never seen anything like morton downey jr. i want to tell you the story. sit down and shut up. other competitors come and take the television talk show two different directions. you start seeing the phenomenon of day time television shows becoming less tame and more wild. the 80s brought a lot of belligerence to television. whether it was morton downey jr. being the offensive, caricaturish person that he was, or geraldo. he did his own outlandish things. stay with us, ladies and gentlemen. we re going to get into the mind of another all american boy who came under the influence of satanism and took part in a crime without passion or motive. geraldo rivera takes the power of the talk show to a whole other level trying to put people on stage who hate each other, who are going to fight. in the case of the temple and church of satan we have not had any problems with criminal behavior. yet when you hear story after story after story of people committing these wretched crimes, these violent crimes in the devil s name? the more tension there is the more conflict there is the more violence there is the more the ratings go up and the american people love to complain about it but they also love to watch. geraldo rivera is back in a controversy tonight. he drew sharp criticism with his recent television special on devil worship but today found himself in a real free for all. i get sick and tired of seeing uncle tom here sucking up trying to be a white man. you sit down. hey. hold it. sit down. rivera suffered a broken nose but says the show will be broadcast later this month in its entirety. well, that is not something, you know, i would have done. but there was a lot of hypocrisy. one of the major magazines put the picture of geraldo getting hit with a chair on the cover and the article said, isn t this awful, look what s happened to television, yet they couldn t wait to use it to sell their own magazine. let s go to the audience. all right? i want to speak to you guys. over the years broadcasting has deteriorated. and now in this era of deregulation it is deteriorating further. give people light and they will find their own way. relax. america will survive the talk shows. stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection or flu-like symptoms or sores, have had cancer, or develop new skin growths, or if anyone in your house needs or recently had a vaccine. alert your doctor of new or worsening problems, including headaches, seizures, confusion and vision problems. these may be signs of a rare, potentially fatal brain condition. some serious allergic reactions and lung inflammation can occur. talk to your doctor today, and learn how janssen can help you explore cost support options. remission can start with stelara®. explore cost support options. take me to your best friend s house going around this roundabout oh, yeah i got it! what? what? l.a. bookers book apartments and vacation homes as easy as hotels. ridin scooter! l.a. baby! l.a. baby! be a booker you re welcome. at booking.com you re welcome. if you look around, we re not all so different. we all want somewhere we can be ourselves. and while we ve made some changes, we ve kept what matters most. so come in, sit down and connect in the place that s made for it. see you at denny s. for a dos equis. dos equis. every now and then i get a little bit hungry and i also need a side of nachos. one more round nachos. every now and then i order dos. and i need dos equis tonight. and i d also like some hot wings. make your summer jams even hotter. with dos equis. keep it interesante. . houston. go ahead. we arrived 1968, the summer before junior high school, and i don t mind saying i was a pretty fair little athlete. the wonder years was a guy in modern times looking back on his childhood. that in itself is not new, but the wonder years did it with a wit and with the music. it was a brilliantly written show and a great performance by that entire young cast. hey, steve, it looks like my baby brother and his girlfriend have found each other. she s not my girlfriend. kevin arnold has to cope with all the timeless problems of growing up during one of the most turbulent times that we have known. kevin arnold is just like a regular kid except in the 1960s, and he s not really aware of many of the events. like in one of the episodes, the whole family is watching the apollo 8 take off, but i m just sitting there trying to call a girl. the first episode of the wonder years, anybody who saw it remembers the ending where the first kiss with winnie and kevin arnold. the song they play is when a man loves a woman. that moment seemed so pure and so real. when a man loves a woman can t keep his mind on nothing else the tone of the baby boomers in the 1960s is about rebellion, about being students. by the 1980s, it s time to grow up. and so they shave their beards, give up their dashikis, and put on power suits, a whole new notion. oh, the yuppies. last year the politicians were talking about winning their votes. now the young urban professionals and the rest of their baby boom generation are being wooed by advertisers and their agencies. by the 80s, it was pretty clear that the generation after the generation of the 60s may be embodied by alex keaton on family ties, seeming to be a lot more interested in the corner office than the new jerusalem. you re a young man, you shouldn t be worried about success. you should be thinking about hopping on a tramp steamer and going around the world. the 60s are over, dad. thanks for the tip. you weren t laughing at michael j. fox s character for being too conservative. you were actually laughing at the parents for being too hopelessly liberal. what is this? i found it in the shower. that s generic brand shampoo. no! this is him. this is the guy i ve been telling you about. this is everything you want in a president. the genius of family ties, it allows a kind of youthful reaganite that s focused on the future, that s focused more on a critique of the 60s. michael j. fox as alex keaton really became the center of the show. and the writers were smart enough to see that they had something special, and they wrote to that. it s not fair, alex. yeah. there s nothing you can do about it, jen. my advice to you is that you just enjoy being a child for as long as you can. i know i did. it was the best two weeks of my life. alex is a little bill buckley. the wall street journal is his bible. he has a tie to go with his pajamas. he s a very conservative and very intense 17-year-old. the first thing the teacher will ask is what you did over the summer. a lot of kids will say i went to the zoo or i went to the beach or i went to a baseball game. what are you going to say? i watched the iran contra hearings. if mom and dad thought this generation was going to the dogs, think again. this is the generation that has discovered hard work and success. american culture is changing in the 80s. and in terms of television, there s a whole notion of demographic segmentation. networks were beginning to not be afraid to appeal to a very specific demographic. hey, handsome. look at that shirt. is that a power shirt or what? nice suit, alan. good shoulder pads. you looking to get drafted by the eagles? 30-somethings said we re not going to have cops, lawyers or doctors. we re just going to be about people. what are we doing here, why did we start this business? to do our thing. but right now we got two wives, three kids, four cars, two mortgages, a payroll. and that s life, pal. you be the breadwinner now. is that what i am? 30 something is a very important show as you are going into this era of television being more introspective and more emotional. and some people weren t buying it. but for other people when they were talking about things like having kids and who is going to go back to work and some of these issues that hadn t been talked about a whole lot, it was important to people. i was so looking forward i was so looking forward to doing this. to be a grown-up for just an hour. in the beginning, there was talk of this being the yuppie show. and you mentioned it tonight. you said if there were a category for the most annoying show, this might win as well. no, what some people perceive as annoying has nothing to do with yuppie. i think yuppie is a word made up by demographers and advertisers to sell soap. it doesn t have anything to do with what the show is. 30 something was not a giant hit, but it was a niche hit. it attracted an enormously upscale group of advertisers. the network cared who was watching, not how many were watching. and that was more and more catching on in the 80s. the prosecution will ask you that you look to the law, and this you must do. but i ask of you that you look to your hearts as well. thank you. l.a. law was partly a classic lawyer show. but it was intertwined with their personal lives and different lawyers who were sleeping together and trying to get ahead. the reality level on that show was like a foot or two off the ground. and you re willing to go with that because it was a whole new spin on a law show. huh-uh, tell the truth. if you had to do it all over again and she walked into your office and she said, take my case, would you? well of course you would, because it is juicy, newsy, exciting stuff. it was really fun to take the hill street blues format and use it to frame an entirely different social and cultural strata with vastly different results. i wonder if i might engage with my client privately. certainly. what are you doing for dinner tonight? i was planning on having you. in that case, skip lunch. the formula had gotten established of how you can do a dramatic show, and yet still have an awful lot of fun. we didn t used to be able to accept that very easily in a tv hour. and even before the 80s were out, it s like, okay, i get it. so it s like what are the rules now? what are you doing? you said you re part of a change going on. i m doing what i should have done all along. they have strong viewpoints and letting them do what they want to do. what the best television is, it dryschs itself by its voice. we re supposed to be here and the one thing people can trust. if you go out there like a bunch of knight riders what are you but just another vicious street gang. that was a core group of brilliant people. the audience s demands were changing. obvious television has changed a lot since the first emmy was awarded 35 years ago. it s as though the contemporary audience yas westerning for more stories about themselves. as the 80s came to an end, everything changed. when we look back at the 1980, 10 and 20 years now, we will be disgusted at some tv you just mentioned, the violent programs but one great thing happening now and will happen increasingly throughout the decade is the replacement of rotten entertainment programming by news and talk and information programming on all three networks very slowly. will it be rotten news? well, so far most of the news oriented programs, information, magazines on the networks have been surprisingly at least to me surprisingly good. imagine what it was like back when the rolling stones would shock parents everywhere. my, how times have changed. i see hustling. i see killing. that s what i rap about. you can take me out of the ghetto, but you can t take the ghetto up out of me, though. it s a tough time to grow up in. and nirvana and kurt cobain in particular reflect the angst. i learned how to write for myself, and it s pretty ironic that most people related to it. boom, there it is, platinum record. country music has taken over the airwaves and the record charts. the honeymoon s over. now we re getting down to real commerce. aren t these girls just crazy? yeah, they are.
they tried to say, seven or nine. you need seven or eight days. no, i have to get back on the air. most people do it in nine. but no. that s very dangerous and no. we want to get to the top, let s go. that s very mika. i m going to be jogging to the top of mt. kilimanjaro, yes. exactly. well, you know, willie, go to times square and there s a mcdonald s there and you have to walk upstairs to eat it. why do they do that? they need a people mover to get us up to the seating area. yeah, i need to be able to recline. big mac in your hand. okay. we ll get to the news. we have our crosses to bear. but the world awaits i m going to put it on instagram. it was my daughter and me. it was our time together so i m i m going to post a few pictures on instagram and leave it at that. it was a great experience for us. well, i m impressed. really cool. to the news. thank you. it s good for all three of us to be together again. we haven t seen you in so long, willie. it s august. it s good to have all right. to the news. see you in a couple of months. after 11 consecutive weeks of mass protests, hundreds of security officers from a chinese paramilitary force are staged across the water from hong kong. the new york times reports that by amassing the troops within view of hong kong, china s communist party is delivering a strong warning that the use of force remains an option for beijing. the times notes that xi jinping has ruled with an iron fist. we ll follow that and meanwhile twitter and facebook are suspending accounts that are tied to the anti-campaign against those in hong kong. those in china amplified the messages and images that portrayed hong kong s protesters as violent and extreme. the times notes that although both facebook and twitter are blocked in china, recent activity over the hong kong protests suggests that beijing will use those services to spread its messaging outside its firewall when it deems necessary. also this morning, guys, says that trump s policies are directly to blame for a new and ongoing resurgence of isis in iraq and syria. the u.s. defense department s report says that president trump s partial troop withdrawal has emboldened isis and the report notes that the troop drawdown has forced the united states to rely on third party monitoring in some areas include agent the 70,000 person refugee camp. that according to the new york times. quote, it s evolving into the hot bed of isis ideology and a huge breeding ground for future terrorists. the report states that isis currently has an estimated 14 to 18,000 combatants, continues to conduct guerrilla attacks across iraq and syria and can tap into the reported $400 million war chest. joe? so, katty kay, this is something that the trump administration was warned about. it was something that people inside the pentagon warned donald trump about as did people across the foreign policy community. so now people inside his own administration and the pentagon are saying that yes, his actions have led to the resurgence of isis. it s obviously something we have seen before. and you just wonder whether he s going to double down or whether he s going to actually do what barack obama started and keep isis on the run. so a multiple fronts the administration is facing the prospect of isis resurging. syria, iraq, but also in afghanistan. we had a story a series of ten coordinated attacks in afghanistan on monday in an area where we know that i.s. is present just at the time that the americans are trying to negotiate some kind of peace deal or effectively withdrawal agreement for american forces from afghanistan. and it has to be a reminder of this report and what we have seen happening in afghanistan in the last few days that it s very complicate. if you pull back american forces in a way that s too precipitous or is not coordinated, is not thought out, does not leave behind some kind of political solution then this is an organization that re-emerges, whether it s in the form of al qaeda in some areas or in the form of islamic state in other areas and it risks jeopardizing exactly what donald trump wants to do. this is why barack obama when he pulled back from iraq, that created the space for islamic state to emerge in syria. if you pull back, there is definitely this risk. it s something that the president has wanted to do but now he s seeing you know, in all three of these countries there s the prospect for them re-emerging. and mika, you know, you have the same concerns in afghanistan. we saw what happened in iraq. everybody rightfully became impatient and wanted troops to come home from iraq. i certainly understand that. and i wanted it as well but that created a void that led to isis. barack obama dismissed it as a regional threat before having to start this process that eventually led to the destruction of isis in iraq and syria. donald trump followed through on that, but now donald trump seems to be repeating the same mistake. and not only talking about repeating the same mistake there, he s talking about repeating that mistake in afghanistan. lindsey graham, other republicans, some democrats, are sounding the warning that if you do this, our troops are going to just have to go back over there and fight isis again. there are no short cuts in a war against terrorists. the federal election commission is pushing back against the president s claims of voter fraud in the 2016 election. trump tweeted yesterday, quote, wow, reports just out. google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for hillary clinton in the 2016 election. this was put out by a clinton supporter, not a trump supporter. google should be sued. my victory was even bigger than thought. oh, my goodness. nothing is bigger than thought. according to a washington post analyst trump appears to be references a study by psychologist robert epstein whose testimony before the senate judiciary committee last month was featured in a segment on fox business moments before the president fired off his tweet. while epstein identifies himself as a democrat who backed clinton, that s a convenient figure since clinton won by about 2.9 million votes nationally. but the post points out that s not what epstein said in his testimony. he estimated a range of 2.6 to 10.4 million votes with 15 million votes being the possible shift in 2020. that s 2.6 million estimate he said was the rock bottom estimate. it s unclear what mythology was being used. ellen weintraub yesterday disputed trump s claims. there is no evidence of rampant voter fraud in 2016 or really in any previous election. people have studied this. academics have studied this. lawyers have studied this. the democrats have studied this. republicans have studied this. and no one can find any evidence of rampant voter fraud either historically or particularly in the 2016 elections. and fec chair ellen weintraub joins the conversation ahead on morning joe. willie, you now expect donald trump to start talking about crowd size. for many people yesterday suggested that this was once again the president looping, not a good look for him and still ridiculous that he is still claiming that there was massive voter fraud when he has absolutely no evidence of it. yeah. the author of the study ron robert epstein said yesterday he didn t say that google manipulated the votes and that the president twisted his words. gene robinson, it started with the inauguration numbers, you know, the crowd size at his inauguration. he is obsessed with the idea that america is not celebrating his victory that he didn t win by as much as he thinks he did, he lost the popular votes. that somehow the questions around russia call into question how he won the election. this is a thorn in his side since the day he was elected. size always matters to this president and he s completely obsessed with this idea because it s true that he that he won a very narrow electoral victory and lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. and this drives him crazy and will continue to drive him crazy. but, you know, so if he s focused on these numbers, you know that first segment we talked about these incredible problems of the rise of isis d and, you know, hong kong s streets are full of demonstrators and all this stuff going on in the world. the president is obsessed with his crowd size at the new hampshire rally last week where he insists that people mention that his crowd was bigger than elton john s. very, very big on that. and instead of and instead of thinking about you know, hong kong and afghanistan and these places where there s all this turmoil, he s focused on greenland. we re doing to buy greenland apparently. it s just a real estate deal and that s what he s obsessed about. it s just insane, but here we are. 2019, welcome. have a nice summer. well, yeah. ellen weintraub will be on our show and she s consistently dating back a few months ago saying there was not voter fraud in the 2016 election. meanwhile the nypd reached a decision to fire officer daniel pantaleo for using the chokehold during eric garner s deadly arrest five years ago. an issue that was brought up at the most recent democratic debate. officer pantaleo used a chokehold that was prohibited by nypd. he did that for seven seconds. 11 different times garner said he couldn t breathe. he knew he was killing eric garner and yet he has not been brought to justice. that police officer should be off the street. he should be fired. he should be fired now. civil rights division of the united states department of justice said charges should have been filed but this united states department of justice usurped and it s because that president did not want those charges to go forward. and they overrode a decision by the civil rights division. garner was selling the loose cigarettes when pantaleo placed him in the chokehold and garner said i can t breathe 11 times in that video. so the police commissioner made that announcement, james o neill, that the officer has been fired and the police union is disputing that and it will put a claim in to have pantaleo reinstated so he can get his benefits and remain on the job. this has been a simmering issue in this city and this country that helped in part to inspire the black lives matter movement. it really has. and gene, you know, we have the video evidence. yeah. you know, there were a few members a few members of the u.s. senate that tweeted some things about ferguson that were not borne out by video evidence or by eric holder. here we saw on camera eric garner being murdered and i guess the question is what took so long? what took so long? i mean, this was this was ruled a homicide eventually. this is a process that ground on. there was a question of, you know, whether whether criminal charges would be file and, you know, local level. at the federal level filing. that whole thing had to drag on and then after all this was over and i do agree with the democratic candidates that the possibility of a federal prosecution does seem to have been foreclosed by the administration. one wonders how high up that went. but there was this whole administrative process that had to go on and of course there are union rules and everything in new york. so it took five years. it took all of this time to get to the point of acknowledging what we see clearly on the video. and what we knew at the beginning and it is just obvious that this is an officer who should have been off the street. there will be appeals, by the way. and there s an appeals process that the officer can go through. so unfortunately, this is not really over yet. and it s just gone on far too long, mika, for the grieving family and also for new yorkers to know that they have a reason to believe that if somebody is murdered on the streets of new york, that there s going to be justice even if it s the police officer who is guilty. and, you know, again, it s for me it s disappointing that it took a democratic presidential debate to finally get people moving on this. i m glad it finally happened, but you would hope that it could happen without that having a democratic presidential debate finally pushing people to move on this. as gene said you can see and hear it on videotape. yeah. just we ll revisit this and finally, amid increasing concerns about a possible recession, the trump administration is reportedly weighing steps to help strengthen the economy. according to the washington post, several senior white house officials have started talks about whether to push for a temporary payroll tax cut in an effort to put more money into americans pockets. the post said the potential move comes amid growing concerns about the economy among president s top economic aides and discussions about the idea are still in the early statements and could include other types of tax breaks. the new york times adds that in addition to a potential payroll tax cut, the administration is mulling possibly reversing some of president trump s tariffs. the times said that the president has not been briefed on the tax cut idea which would need to be approved by congress and it isn t clear if he would support the cuts. the white house is disputing these reports telling nbc news that cuts are not being considered. the administration continues to push back over concerns about the state of the economy. however, nearly three quarters of economists surveyed by the national association for business economics believes the u.s. will tip into recession by the end of 2021. according to the poll almost 40% predict a recession as early as the end of next year. joe, it feels like the president s foreign policy mirrors his economic policy which is basically chaos. well, the tweet about green land, tweet about stolen elections never stolen, again, not focussing on the big issues out there. katty, so most economists believe this recession is coming and of course we can see a slowdown coming in germany, a slowdown obviously some economic problems in china in part because of trade wars that are now impacting the u.s. economy. the president has a $16 billion socialist scheme to pay off big agricultural interests who are impacted by his hoover like protectionism and now we re talking about even more tax cuts for a nation pushing up on $23 trillion in debt. again, to help push along an economy that is being hurt by donald trump s protectionism. yeah. so much for the wonderful conservative economic ideas of no deficits and free trade, right? that all seems to have gone out the window. i mean, in some ways the white house has an economy that it can celebrate. the market the dow is at 26,000. it was at 19,000 on the day donald trump got elected. unemployment is low in the country, growth has been high and wages have been picking up in some sectors. the problem is what s coming around the corner and that is what is making the white house nervous because whether it is in 2019 or in 2020 or in 2021, the majority of economists do seem to agree that we re headed for a downturn. we have been on a boom rise since 2008, since after the crash. things have been growing pretty consistently. it would not be unexpected in the cyclical nature of the economics that we do have a downturn at this point. we had a sugar high from the tax cuts that the president passed and you look at a range of factors around the world or warning signs here in the united states. and it s hard to believe that some kind of a downturn isn t coming. of course that s going to cause a lot of headaches for a president who unlike previous presidents has tied his own fortunes to the stock market. you know, that s a problem for him. you tie your for chu on the economic growth and the stock market and then turns down, you can blame other things you can blame the press. you can blame google. you can blame the federal reserve chair but at some point the voters are going to look at his record. well, nbc news has learned that jeffrey epstein signed a new will just days before his death. we ll explain what that means for the accusers who are suing his estate. plus some new brand poll numbers are just crossing on the democratic race for the presidency. two of the big takeaways involve joe biden and kamala harris. that s just ahead. but first, here is bill karins with a check on the forecast. where does bill karins, where does he land? is he in the top three yet? i m working on it. i give people entertainment and that can give me a little boost. i m going to try to give you a little bit here. you have never seen this before. out of stapleton, colorado. we have shown you bounce houses blowing around. what in the world, pill? this was going to be like a movie night where they set the air mattresses up yeah. that didn t work out so well. i hate when that happens. yeah. that s so funny. it is kind of funny because nobody gets hurt. oh, my gosh. like domino s. i know. thank you, bill. no problem, guys. i ll work on my poll numbers too. we re watching early morning wake-up call in iowa. we have had lightning, hard to sleep with the storms in the des moines area and this is going to head into st. louis and into peoria. we have enhanced risk of severe storms with winds up to 75 miles an hour. it s kind of rare we get severe storms like that it will be another hot day in the middle of the country. not as bad as in the north east. it will be a little less humid, but still hot. it s the time of the year that everybody is over it. everyone will feel like 100 degrees and the relief comes into wednesday, thursday, friday from the great lakes, ohio valley and this weekend in the northeast is going to be picturesque beautiful. you have to wait there to get there. new york city looking down on top from the world trade center that s governor s island on the left. beautiful shot of lower manhattan. it will be a nice summer day. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. every day, 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he s the best candidate, but because he s the one who can beat donald trump. certainly, i mean, what obviously what she s saying maybe you like the candidate s health care plan better. maybe you like your candidate s plan on education better. maybe but let s look at the bigger picture. and the bigger fight. figure out who can best beat donald trump. and of course, you have a long way to go. there s no way to predict that. nobody would have predicted that donald trump would ever get elected president of the united states at this stage. back in 2015. but as they move closer and closer, that certainly from every poll i have seen, mika, that is going to be what democrats most democrats are going to be focusing on, who can win. so cnn has new national polling out this morning on the democratic race for president. and joe biden is out in front with 29% support of democratic and democratic leaning voters. that s up seven points compared with the late survey. bernie sanders is at 15% and senator elizabeth warren is at 14%. their support is largely unchanged since earlier this summer. kamala harris meanwhile has dropped significantly. she stood at 17% support in the june poll, but now has the backing of 5% of potential democratic voters. so willie, obviously, that first cnn poll had the impact of the first debate. right. many people believe senator harris did very well. this second debate didn t go quite as well for her. that is a bit of a precipitous drop, but again, the first may have been more of a flashbulb, but joe biden is still holding strong right there and bernie sanders and elizabeth warren in second or third place. some polls had been released lately, you have actually got elizabeth warren in second place, but it s a three-person race right now, no doubt about. i yeah. that poll shows us again what we have seen in most polls there are three tiers. you have joe biden, come down to elizabeth warren and bernie sanders in many ways fighting for the same vote and then a drop-off from there. kamala harris had been leading the third tier and nipping at the heels of sanders and warren and tied with them in some polls so that s a significant drop for her. gene robinson, it s something of an enigma. she is so impressive in many ways and she hasn t we ll stipulate how early it is in this process has and been able with the exception of the first high she got off of the first debase performance in miami hasn t been able to climb up to where people thought she would be at this point. yeah. she seemed to on the way. she seemed to have established herself and seemed to have made this at least for a while a four-person race because she was very close to harris and warren and we have to see maybe her number in this poll could be kind of an outlier. i haven t seen that low in some time. but, you know, she never did sort of consolidate that bounce from the first debate where s she people i think democrats are looking for who can beat donald trump in that first debate people saw somebody who could be on a general election debate stage with donald trump going toe to toe and slicing him to ribbons basically with her sort of prosecutorial chops. i mean, she s very, very good at that. and she hasn t built on that. and even the polls that have her higher than 5% don t see her really gaining ground. and so i m not quite sure what that is. it is early as you say. we ll see what happens in the next debates. i think she s got a lot of eggs in the basket of south carolina and so we ll see if her numbers in that state begin to move up as well. well, katty, mika said there were two big takeaways from this poll. one involved kamala harris. we certainly see what that is. the other, joe biden. joe biden up seven points in this poll from the last cnn poll despite the fact that there have been several gaffes. many people have said he s too old. he s making one mistake after another on the campaign trail. of course the defenders of joe biden said well, he s making the gaffes since he was 29 years old. so it may not he s a nice guy. it may not have anything to do with age, but be that it as it may, you may hear them talking about teflon joe because nothing is sticking to this candidate. yeah. if being old and white was a problem in the democratic primaries, then we wouldn t have the top three where we are. because they re all three of them, all white people, they re in their 70s. joe biden was seen by the commentary not to have two good debates, the second not as bad as the first, but not stunning and many of us came out of the second debate thinking can we see that person up against donald trump on a debate stage holding his own? being able to give as good as he got as you asked him mika, in your interview with him, how would you perform better than you did when kamala harris attacked you, because you have to, and he came back with that rather strange reply about doing push-ups. that seemed to signal a problem for many people watching it from the outside, from the kind of those of us who follow these things. but for the voters you re right, joe. there doesn t seem to be very much that joe biden does or does not do that shifts his rankings. he s still convincingly out ahead. it s tempting at this stage to say, perhaps a big part of that is still just name recognition. the ads are only going up the paid ads going up now in iowa and in new hampshire. but there have been two rounds of debates. and others have been out there pretty consistently now for six months so i don t think you can be name recognition. there s something about joe biden that people like and there s something about him that they believe is the right person as jill was just saying to take on donald trump. yeah. jill biden s message may not have been entirely inspiring for a bumper sticker, hold your nose and vote for my husband. but she is on to something. if you look at poll after poll, anecdotically, they want to win. democrats just want to win and that shows up in polling in places like south carolina where voters by a vast majority say i m willing to compromise someone who doesn t agree with me on all of my policies to win. i want somebody who can beat joe biden. now, the argument against that, elizabeth warren and others are saying wait a minute. every poll head to head shows me beating donald trump too so that electability question for joe biden isn t right because when you go down the list, fox news poll had it the other day. almost all of these top tier candidates beat donald trump head to head right now. yeah. you know, mika, before people become outraged by what jill biden said maybe you don t like joe biden s health care plan as much as your candidate s health care plan, come on. just look back at these presidential elections especially these primaries. what people promise in the primaries are very rarely followed through on. they get churned up between the campaign and when they get into the white house. and then good luck getting half of it through the house and good luck getting a tenth of it through the senate. it s just the way it is. so if somebody is promising you whatever you want, like donald trump promised universal health care. donald trump promised lower premiums. donald trump promised lower co-pays. he promised more expansive coverage. yeah. before of course deciding no, i don t want to do any of that. you look at the difference between barack obama and hillary clinton. on health care, and the 2008 campaign, completely. what was a huge issue in a campaign completely got churned up and spit out by the time barack obama was actually president of the united states. so you have to look, just generally at these candidates and say who s going to be the best leader, who can take on donald trump? who can beat him, again, nowhere if you can t beat him. coming up on morning joe i think we can get something really good done. i think we can have some really meaningful background checks. that was the president just a week and a half ago. now it appears he s backing away from background checks. what a surprise. we ll have new reporting on his recent interactions with the nra just ahead on morning joe. don t miss your golden opportunity to experience thrilling performance. now at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. get 0.9% apr for 60 months on all 2019 models. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. repair the enamel on a daily basis. with the new pronamel repair toothpaste more minerals enter deep into the enamel surface. you have an opportunity to repair what s already been damaged. it s amazing. what s already been damaged. and i recently had hi, ia heart attack. it changed my life. but i m a survivor. after my heart attack, my doctor prescribed brilinta. it s for people who have been hospitalized for a heart attack. brilinta is taken with a low-dose aspirin. no more than 100 milligrams as it affects how well brilinta works. brilinta helps keep platelets from sticking together and forming a clot. in a clinical study, brilinta worked better than plavix. brilinta reduced the chance of having another heart attack. .or dying from one. don t stop taking brilinta without talking to your doctor, since stopping it too soon increases your risk of clots in your stent, heart attack, stroke, and even death. brilinta may cause bruising or bleeding more easily, or serious, sometimes fatal bleeding. don t take brilinta if you have bleeding, like stomach ulcers, a history of bleeding in the brain, or severe liver problems. slow heart rhythm has been reported. tell your doctor about bleeding new or unexpected shortness of breath any planned surgery, and all medicines you take. if you recently had a heart attack, ask your doctor if brilinta is right for you. my heart is worth brilinta. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. joining us now for the must read opinion pages, politics editor for the daily beast sam stein. this must be a special issue. let s start with okay. let s retire the prep school thing. really? even for me. sam s kind of grown up. somebody that runs it into the ground. lock at sam. he s looking kind of old now. yeah. actually. aging yeah, he s haggard. like washed up. like andy gibb after his prime. yeah. to now he s sort of aging teen sensation. what does that make us, joe? hey, willie, don t you think we have kasie d.c., i m looking better by the day. i m benjamin button. do we put aging teen sensation no. aged. leif garrett. he was cute. i want to see if you remember, guys, do you have that special graphic we had for mike barnicle? oh, right. a button you can push. alex? what was it hot story. hot take. remember that? hot take. mike s hot take. nice. we need something like that for sam. sam s washed up worries. aged teen sensation. an article would say something completely obvious for everyone and here comes the fire. well, remember the first year we had we had look at that. that s just right. the first year we had to put underneath mike s wife works for bank of america any time he came on the air? sam s wife works for facebook. just say. sam, how are you doing? i m miserable. this is the worst this is the question we ask, sam. this is the worst segment i have been a part of. it hasn t even started. he s got a lot of negativity. he s always negative. why is it that every time he comes on, he says this is the worst segment i have ever been on? it keeps getting worse. really? kind of like the like the trump presidency. you keep saying this is the worst morning joe can become. towards sam stein and it keeps getting worse. all right, sam, let s see what insights you have. we ll turn the page. since you have such opinions. let s start with andrew sullivan s latest column the limits of my conservatism in which he writes a conservative who becomes fixated on the contemporary left s attempt to transform traditional society and who views its zeal and remaking america as an existential crisis can decide that in this war, there can be no neutrality or passivity or compromise. it is not enough to resist slow, query or even mock the know strums of the left and they should be attacked and forcefully. in the left is engaged in the project of social engineering, the right should do the same. abandon the liberal democratic moderation and join the fray. the left is correct. that americans are racist and sexist, but so are all humans. the question is whether at this point in time america has adequately managed to contain, ameliorate and discourage the deeply human strait traits. moderate change wins and creates conservatives willing to defend incremental liberal advances. radical change bent on transforming human nature generates resistance and creates reactionaries. it has been, sam, quite i won t say a transformation by andrew sullivan but the trump era has brought out well, actually i think he s done some his greatest work during the trump administration trying to explain the likes of let s say stephen miller and trying to explain some of the radicals and what pushed them where they were because as andrew explained and of course for those that aren t familiar, you should be with andrew sullivan s work, he was one of the most steadfast defenders of barack obama for eight years but it is fascinating. he just keeps trying to explain even though he s disappointed in everything that he s seeing in the conservative movement. he is not seeking out heretics. he is still seeking converts and that sounds a lot like what joe biden is saying on the campaign trail. yeah, i mean, i appreciate the piece for its attempt to try to take what is so many people complex problem, why did this happen, why did trumpism happen, and to explain it. and to try to apply various thesis to what is going on. i don t necessarily agree with them and i think the excerpt you just read to be honest about it seems like something someone who is the beneficiary of privilege would write which is you know we need moderation in our social change. well, that s easy if you re not someone who is suffering right now from some societal ills. but i do appreciate that andrew sullivan took time in this case to talk and to figure out michael antoine, former national security issue in the trump administration and someone as he described as brilliant would join forces with a president who some people would say is not brilliant. what is it about someone like trump to michael antoine? to a degree what biden is representing politically is an attempt to try to understand the other side. to say you know, we have more commonality than differences. and maybe moderation and steadfast leadership is not a bad thing in a time of trump. the extent of the appeal of that is what really will determine biden s success but as you noted in these polls, it seems to be doing pretty well for him right now. yeah, you know, gene, we live in a country that you re either for trump or against trump it seems. there s not a lot of willingness from the extremes on either side to accept someone on the other side of the fence and i think what andrew is getting another a little bit here it may be time for both of the sides to look at some of the people in the middle, not as extremists or to call everyone who voted for donald trump a racist and never accept them back into your side. maybe to have a conversation rather than a fight which is what we seem to be having every day. yeah. actually i don t think a lot of people who are opponents of donald trump take that position. that everybody who voted for him is a racist or is will never be accepted back into the polite society again. that s the way trump and his most fervent supporters portray the opposition. right. and this is really donald trump s genius is for driving wedges. and for exasperating the divides that already exist in the society. and for increasing anxieties rather than soothing them. so he tells people, you know, be afraid of demographic change. be afraid of immigration. be afraid of all the change that is happening organically around you because it threatens you. whether it does or not he tells people that it does. and so this sort of split that andrew is writing about and t the it isn t happening in a vacuum. it is all being encouraged by a president whose talent for driving wedges is really unique. we haven t seen anything like this in american politics in a long, long time and certainly not from a president. this is just it s an extraordinary time and i use extraordinary in the you know, in its in the sense not a good sense. but in it s something that we just really haven t seen before. right. well, i think what makes andrew s work so important to the trump administration is that he is bending over backwards. he is bending over backwards to try not only understand what is happening, but explain to readers what may not want to actually read about this. explain to readers why it s happening. and actually what he s doing is actually the antithesis is what donald trump is doing and perhaps i start with myself, do a better job with. and try to explain what s happening, why it s happening. and, you know, i always think, mika, i thought from the beginning of the trump administration about how donald trump is temporary. and every president anybody who occupies the white house only rents. they don t buy. and donald trump is the same and we have to worry even now about what happens after trump how we bring the country back together. i m reminded of what i think is one of the most extraordinary speeches in history, abraham lincoln s second inaugural address where he talks about how americans have to come back together with malice toward none. this is a man who personally suffered through the civil war. he saw because of the south, he saw 700,000 americans slaughtered on battlefields and yet his job was to bring america back together. i think if abraham lincoln can talk about with malice toward none, that s great challenge for all of us on all sides to figure out how we stitch this country back together again. even when we have a president who has very openly shown us that he thinks his pathway to re-election is division. through hate. we ll have more must read opinion pages ahead. also ahead there are changes at the top of the agency that oversees u.s. prisons in the wake of jeffrey epstein s death. plus, buckingham palace releases a statement acknowledging epstein and denying the sexual misconduct allegations against prince andrew. morning joe is back in a moment. you re out there, quietly running the world. creating jobs and fueling the economy. you re small business owners, and there s nothing small about your business. that s why with dell small business technology advisors. you ll get tailored product solutions, expert tech advice and one-on-one partnership. to help your small business do big things. call an advisor today at 877-buy-dell that a handle is just a handle. chair is just a chair. or. that you can t be both inside and outside. most people haven t driven a lincoln. it s the final days of the lincoln summer invitation event. right now get 0% apr on all lincoln vehicles plus no payments for up to 90 days. only at your lincoln dealer. it s how we care for our cancer patients- like job. when he was diagnosed with cancer, his team at ctca created a personalized care plan to treat his cancer and side effects. so job could continue to work and stay strong for his family. this is how we inspire hope. this is how we heal. we love you, daddy. good night. i love you guys. cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. woman 1: this is my body of proof. man 1: proof of less joint pain and clearer skin. man 2: proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis. woman 2: .with humira. woman 3: humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it s proven to help relieve pain, stop further irreversible joint damage and clear skin in many adults. humira is the number one prescribed biologic for psoriatic arthritis. announcer: humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. man 3: ask your rheumatologist about humira. woman 4: go to mypsaproof.com to see proof in action. mika, you know, we kid as crusty the clown says because we love. and i think or we just say what we think. no. no. we kid because we love. right, willie? i mean, we joke around with sam stein but there is no doubt he is the brock holt of morning joe. he s that utility guy that really is the heart beat of the team and up dare i say the heart beat of america. i think you re making fun of him again. no, i m not. yes. he is. because his mom no. willie, his mom is so wonderful. she might see this and might get mad. i love his mom. she s great. we love you, sam. willie i m like rafael devers not like brock holt. having a good year. go with brock holt, i guess we ll do with brock holt, thanks, joe. i was the aging teen sensation on this show and i have aged out of it. so i have passed the torch to you, my friend. thank you. such an honor. well, i don t feel so bad in you re comparing yourself to the best young hitter for the red sox since ted williams. then i guess we don t need to build you up. that said, t.j., were we able to get the song queued up? no, we were not. that s never going to happen. asking him to do his job, like forget it. seriously. coming up the president and the allies are dismissing any thought of a possible recession but new reporting that the administration is eyeing ways to bolster the economy. you know, they already did that socialist $16 billion scheme where they paid off the biggest agricultural interests in america. yeah, that socialist scheme. now they re trying to found new ways. and new poll positions in the democratic race. who earned a spot on the next debate stage? we ll be right back. we ll be right back. we present limu emu & doug with this key to the city. 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[ applause and band playing ] only pay for what you need. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. would shakespeare have chosen just some pens? methinks tul pens would serve m lady well. thanks. and a unicorn notebook! get everything on your list. this week s doorbuster - sharpie markers and ticonderoga pencils for $1 in store or online from the advisors at office depot officemax. sleep number 360 smart bed. you can adjust your comfort on both sides - your sleep number setting. can it help us fall asleep faster? yes, by gently warming your feet. but can it help keep us asleep? absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable. so you can really promise better sleep. not promise. prove. and now, all beds are on sale! save 50% on the sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus 0% interest for 24 months and free home delivery. ends saturday right now, congress is working to end surprise medical billing. that s when patients are hit with medical bills they thought would be covered by insurance. but what congress is considering would cut money that vulnerabe patients rely on the most. that means seniors, children, and americans relying on medicaid would be hurt. it s already too hard for people to get basic medical care with hospitals closing and a shortage of er doctors. tell congress we can end surprise billing without shredding the safety net. paid for by physicians for fair coverage. we know in our bones this election is different. the stakes are higher. the threat more serious. we have to beat donald trump. and all the polls agree joe biden is the strongest democrat to do the job. no one is more qualified. for eight years president obama and vice president biden were an administration america could be proud of. our allies could trust and our kids could look up to. together, they worked to save the american economy, to pass the historic affordable care act, protecting over 100 million americans with pre-existing conditions. now, joe biden is running for president with the plan for america s future. to build on obamacare, not scrap it. to make a record investment in america s schools, to lead the world on climate. to rebuild our alliances. most of all, to restore the soul of the nation. battered by a bullying president, strong, stable, steady leadership. joe biden for president. i m joe biden and i approve this message. nice. joe biden with his first ad out in iowa. purchasing nearly $500,000 worth of cable and broadcast ads that will air across iowa during the next three weeks according to the des moines register. welcome back to morning joe. tuesday, august 20th. still with joe, willie and me we have politics editor for the daily beast sam stein. wow. let s yeah. have i told you lately i love you this is as depressed as i have ever been. but we played this song for you, sammy. just for you. i mean, it s a timeless classic, don t get me wrong. still kind of washington anchor for bbc world news america, katty kay is with us. pulitzer prize winning columnist and associate editor of the washington post, eugene robinson. joining the conversation nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c. on msnbc, days away from baby d.c., kasie hunt. this is so exciting. i can t wait. i m excited too. i would have felt very left out because of that and also i mean, i feel like sam should get the backstreet boys. but i love that song. kasie, you re not helping matters. so thank you. i m just excited about the baby. all right. also with us, host of msnbc s politicsnation and president of the action network, reverend al sharpton. great group. joe biden s ad, what did you think? well, if politics is all about contrast and it usually is when you re going up against an incumbent, then there s a great contrast there. you have a very hopeful, almost reaganesque vision of where this country can be. you see a lot of smiles. you see a lot of hugs. you see joe biden talking about expanding education. also something that is so important, while everybody else is talking about scrapping obamacare. scrapping the affordable care act, joe biden is embracing it and saying, hey, you know what? let s move forward. we did great things with that, but let s make it even better that s strong message. and it s quite a contrast with donald trump, mika. what did you think? i liked it a lot. i think it harkened back to some of the positives of the obama era but it didn t depend on them and he stood up for administration in the ad. his experience speaks for itself. when you re making a decision in the democratic field, it s hard not to look at joe biden s experience not just professionally with decades serving in washington and then wanting to go back again. which is saying a lot about who he is. but also personally and you look at what this nation is looking for. kind of a reaffirmation of who we are. yeah. it feels like he s the perfect vessel for that. that s my opinion. that s how i personally feel. you know, but before we actually go to the rest of the panel, let s alex, can we play the ad one more time? and i want to have everybody look at it one more time and then going to go around the table really quickly, get thoughts. we know in our bones this election is different. the stakes are higher. the threat more serious. we have to beat donald trump and all the polls agree joe biden is the strongest democrat to do the job. no one is more qualified. for eight years president obama and vice president biden were an administration america could be proud of. our allies could trust and our kids could look up to. together they worked to save the american economy, to pass the historic affordable care act, protecting over 100 million americans with pre-existing conditions. now joe biden is running for president with the plan for america s future. to build on obamacare, not scrap it. to make a record investment in america s schools. to lead the world on climate, to rebuild our alliances. most of all, to restore the soul of the nation. battered by an erratic vicious bullying president, strong, steady, stable leadership, biden for president. i m joe biden and i approve this message. so reverend al, first of all, i want to know your thoughts on the ad but also isn t it something you see in charlottesville and you see the white supremacists with the torches. the neo-nazis with the torches. and separated from that now a few years it s obvious that is the defining moment so far of the trump presidency that tells you everything you need to know about the divides between how donald trump wants to govern and how his opponents are going to try to explain to americans they want to govern. what are your thoughts? i couldn t agree with you more. i think, first of all, about the ad, i think it was well done. because it does set joe biden in the whole legacy of the obama years and at the same time it deals with the contemporary scene that we re dealing with like a defining moment with charlottesville and this whole rank and acrimony we have come to almost see as normal under the trump years. one of the things that i think that was superintendental here is he answers the question of how he s going to project himself because they keep saying the age question. well, joe biden is in his 70s. he s eight or ten years older than me. how do you try to campaign as a new thing rather than being the continuity of what you felt was best and stable? i think that ad does that. he promotes himself as the continuity of good years this country saw. and as someone that can deal with the contemporary scene. i think it was done well and i think it is the way he can try to sell his candidacy without trying to act like a man in his mid 70s as all of a sudden becoming a new rock star. right. and willie, he the ad s very powerful, very strong. it is obviously going to help him. the question of course is how does he do in the next debate? how does he do in all of the debates? he s been spotty up to now, but certainly he survived the first two despite i would say subpar performances at times. and yet, he s still doing well. ads like that aren t going to hurt him, are they? remember the conventional wisdom going into the second debate was he was so poor in the first debate he better have a great second debate or else. well, he didn t have a great second debate, he had a fine second debate and he s still doing well. holding his position at the top of the polls. i took away what you took away, which was let s build on obamacare. that was a line in the sand with elizabeth warren and bernie sanders who said again and again, they want to get rid of private insurance and have a medicare for all plan. he was reminding people he think that s a bad idea. i would be careful with him on this electability question though. who s the person who can beat donald trump? it s me. something joe biden said something as well. we have that fox news poll from last week that shows not only joe biden beating donald trump, but bernie sanders able to make that case. elizabeth warren able to make that case and kamala harris able to make that case and democrats can raise their hand and can say, i m the one as well who can beat donald trump. we have some new cnn national polling out just this morning on this democratic race for president. joe biden out front 29% support of democratic leaning democratic voters. and bernie sanders at 15%. and elizabeth warren, 14%. their support is largely unchanged and kamala harris has dropped significantly. she stood at 17% support in the june poll. now has the backing of 5% of potential democratic voters. meanwhile, castro at 2% has now met both the polling and fund-raising thresholds to make the third democratic debate stage next month. so far, ten candidates have met the qualifications for the september debate in houston. kasie, if we go back to that poll, kamala harris got a bump from first debate when she confronted joe biden and she moved way up, but way down 12 points at least in this cnn poll. i think the key test for her is and always has been quite frankly, you know, she s had a number of very strong moments, but they haven t necessarily translated into a sustained, you know, visible support in polls that last over time. we saw this when she announced that campaign, she had the great crowd. she came out of the gate very strong and then there were some questions about where she stood on important policy issues. whether she was ready to answer the tougher questions about where she stood in that period. then of course she had the breakout moment against joe biden in the first debate. and didn t necessarily repeat that performance in the second debate. so i think the same question that has you know, we have been asking about her all the way along is still there and that s a question of durability. you know, i think for joe biden it s a similar thing but, you know, these polls are showing that he does have that quality that we were all wondering if he could actually hold on to. when he first got into this race. i mean, the polling has consistently showed people seem willing to stick by him and, you know, i think you really see that in the ad that they laid out. i mean, they re making as the reverend pointed out a case f for it s the return to normalcy case, right? you know, the democratic party has been split the last two years really of trump s administration on, you know, how do we beat him? do we throw out this system, do we essentially make the same type of argument that trump made in 2016 and say we have to start all over, or do we argue hey, you know what people want is stability, continuity. make america boring again. i think you re seeing obviously joe biden stake that territory out in an eloquent way. yeah. so speaking at a native american presidential forum in iowa yesterday, senator elizabeth warren apologized for her past claims of native american ancestry. i want to say this. like anyone who is being honest with themselves i know that i have made mistakes. i am sorry for harm i have caused. i have listened and i have learned a lot and i am grateful for the many conversations that we have had together. and it is a great honor to be able to partner with indian country and that s what i have tried to do as a senator and that s what i promise i will do as president of the united states of america. interesting. meanwhile, at warren s town hall last night in st. paul, minnesota, organizers said they had to move the event outside. the campaign estimated that 12,000 people attended the event. you know, elizabeth warren, joe, kind of want your thought on the apology. my personal take is that if, you know, a certain group feels the need for one, then you give one. so at first i was like oh, did she really do that? then i thought, maybe she had to. and i have been in that position on a much smaller level before. if an apology is needed that s the right thing to do and to show you have that self-reflection is important. but that crowd this is the elizabeth warren i predicted years ago. this woman is the little engine that could. yeah. it s remarkable. and first of all, as far as the apology goes, how many apologies? well, she was speaking at a native american forum. well, she s given that apology, she should not continue to apologize her way to the democratic nomination. that said, you never know what you know what s the room? what room are you speaking to? and at this point, sam, nobody s really in a position to judge elizabeth warren s political decisions because she has made all the right calls over the past several months. she was down at 4, 5%. she was mocked roundly when she went back to oklahoma and talked about her dna test. most people thought she would have never a lot of political experts said she d be out by the end of august. she has just kept doing everything right. pushing forward and in minnesota yesterday, my gosh, 12,000 people there. that sets her apart from the field she s running against. i mean, i don t think it s appreciated the sense of despair that was surrounding her candidacy early on right after that dna snafu. the fund-raising had dried up. associates of her were talking about going bare bones with respect to campaigning because the money wasn t there. doing something like john mccain did in 2008, just taking coach flights everywhere. and what she s done is she s you know, she s essentially foresworn any high dollar fund-raisers and just gone really selfie to selfie in this case. although they re not technically selfies and built up this momentum in real tortoise versus hare like way. she s the second best democratic candidate next to joe biden surpassing bernie sanders although bernie sanders has a grass roots fund-raising juggernaut. i want to jump back to biden because i think it s an important contrast with warren. what struck me about that biden ad was the first phrase. you know in your bones. i don t think that was accidental that they talked about bones. the reason is because they want to make the case that he is firm. that structurally you understand what you re getting. that he s sound versus an erratic president an that you should go with a person that you trust and the administration that you know. and that is a formula that s worked really well for him. what warren is gambling on is that people are willing to try something new. and what she s essentially build her candidacy on is a vision of a new democratic party that isn t tied to barack obama necessarily. i don t know how well that plays for her. clearly it s good and it s helpful and it s drawing a huge amount of crowds and supporting momentum but in the modern democratic party with donald trump as president, it seems to me at least at this juncture, it changes when people start voting, that voters want a sense of stability. and biden s ad makers understood that. or at least they seemed to understand it. and they re going for this great imagery which is structural soundness versus an erratic bully. and so far it s worked pretty well for him. she s obviously fighting with senator sanders in that same lane. we ll see if she can continue to push past him. rev, i want to ask you about the big news here that you were directly involved in in new york city. officer pantaleo of the new york police department fired yesterday by commissioner o neill. five years, july of 2014 after he put eric garner in a chokehold that ultimately killed eric garner as he was selling untaxed loose cigarettes on a street corner in staten island. what s your reaction to the news yesterday? i think it was the right decision. i just think it was very late in the process to take five years to fire a policeman who in fact on tape killed someone with a chokehold which was against the training and against the policies of the police department. it shouldn t take five years to fire him. i understand the process but i think the process is wrong. so i was involved from day one. i talked to the the mother called action network and spoke to me the first day we started the rallies and then throughout the years worked with others so we were glad to see him fired. he should have been prosecuted in my case and let a jury decide the criminality. but when the judge of the departmental trial said not only did he cause the death, but he misled the investigators, you have to now wonder what other policemen in a local grand jury might have misled in a guilt or perjury. this is not over. we want to see a law against chokeholds. we ironically yesterday had a law that i was involved in in california, where the unarmed young man was killed in 2018. they passed the stefan clark law about police should only use deadly force when absolutely there s no other options. we want an eric garner law in new york. the struggle continues. it was good but it was late. very late. the police union is not happy about the decision. they re going to appeal, they want the officer reinstated. garner said i can t breathe 11 times. 11 times on tape. what is your read on why it took so long to get here? they were told by the federal government, the police department, that they were investigating, don t interfere with their investigation. then we had two attorney generals under the obama administration investigating and then it went to the trump administration who immediately began back tracking on what the civil rights division was. trying to do. i think the local police department now must have a law saying we will only regard outside investigations for a year. and then we ve got to move on. because who s the loser is the city of new york. if you have policemen being paid that broke your policies, broke your training, then why should the citizens and the taxpayers have to pay for that? so i think that the whole outcome of this will change how you deal with the timetable but we need a law. chokeholds not only be against police policy but against the state law. see where the appeal goes. attorney general william barr removed the acting director of the federal bureau of prisons in the wake of accused sex trafficker jeffrey epstein s suicide. barr announced yesterday the acting director hugh hurwitz will be demoted to assistant director of the re-entry services division. dr. kathleen hawk sawyer who led the prison bureau from 1992 to 2003 will become the new director. the move comes nine days after epstein was found dead in his cell at the metropolitan correctional center in manhattan. the facility s warden has been temporarily re-assigned and the two guards tasked with watching epstein have been placed on leave while the fbi and doj investigate the conditions that led to epstein s suicide. meanwhile, nbc news has obtained new documents that show epstein signed a new will just days before he was found dead in his cell. the documents were filed in the u.s. virgin islands. they show an estate worth more than half a billion dollars, but the final amount has yet to be determined. the will states epstein s fortune will go into a trust which according to documents was created the same day the will was signed. also this. buckingham palace now trying to put distance between prince andrew and jeffrey epstein. this follows video obtained by the british tabloid the mail on sunday that it says shows the prince inside epstein s new york city mansion waving good-bye to a young boy. nbc has not determined when the video has been shot or if it s in fact the prince. the mail said it was shot two years after epstein served time for a sex crime against a minor. the duke of york has been appalled by the recent reports of the alleged crimes. he deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he could condone any such behavior is abhor rent. let s bring in legal analyst danny cevallos. good morning. let s go back to the will a few days before jeffrey epstein died in his cell, before he s believed to have killed himself in his cell, the will is signed. what do you read into that? the bureau of prisons policy actually recognizes revising a will of one of the factors that made lead to the inference that someone has suicidal tendencies but the challenges of preparing the will is something that s very confidential and done with your lawyers. so it s something that the bop or the prisons may not have known about. the correctional facility may not have been aware that he was revising his will. and then for attorneys you can t have a rule that says any time an inmate or a detainee wants to revise his or her will it s a sign of suicide because then we would disincentivize preparing wills in general. taken under the totality, he might have suicidal tendencies. so epstein s attorney can t say, why are we doing this now? you can t hold the attorneys liable because someone wants to prepare a will, but remember, they fought to take him off suicide watch and they had to say he s not a suicide risk. otherwise, they would have kept him on suicide watch. what about prince andrew here, buckingham palace is denying that he knew anything about any of this. his name has been sort of floating around and circling around this story. do you see any evidence of his direct role or direct participation in anything that epstein has been accused of? nothing yet. but here s the fascinating thing. is he subject to civil jurisdiction in american courts? there s a long standing rule that sovereigns, even when they re visiting the united states have immunity. but that s usually reserved for heads of state so the queen would be a good example. so the question arises is is does prince andrew qualify for this immunity? guess who gets to make that decision and it s not reviewable by the courts is the head of the executive branch and that would be president trump. so interesting enough, whether or not prince andrew is up against the civil in the united states, it s into trump. we heard that men were breathing a sigh of relief when epstein died, so can they be exposed at some point? yes and no, in the sense that epstein can t cooperate with the government but at the same time now that epstein is gone the attorney general said in so many words we re still looking to hold someone liable. so maybe when epstein was alive as a high profile defendant, the government was primarily interested in him. now that he s gone, the government says someone has to pay. so even those in his periphery, his circle may still be concerned and the government seized a lot of evidence from his mansion on the upper east side. who knows who that implicates? that evidence lives on even if the creator of that evidence epstein is no longer with us. all right, danny cevallos, thanks so much. good to see you. mika? all right, we have a lot more politics to get to with our panel. and as we go to break you know, donald trump the other day said that quote if he tells a soldier to commit a war crime the soldier will go do it. he said they ll do as i tell them to do. we have spent 7 1/2 years with an authoritarian president who ignored our constitution. we don t need four more years of that. wow. that was mike pompeo back in 2016 while campaigning on behalf of marco rubio s presidential bid. concluding with quote, it s time to turn down the lights on the circus. susan glasser has a sweeping new piece in the new yorker examining how the former congressman went from a sharp critic of donald trump to the future secretary of state. it s worth the read. morning joe is coming right back. unpredictable crohn s symptoms following you? for adults with moderately to severely active crohn s disease, stelara® works differently. studies showed relief and remission, with dosing every 8 weeks. stelara® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections and cancer. some serious infections require hospitalization. before treatment, get tested 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good morning. katty kay has the first question for you. so mr. delaney, you have not managed to qualify for the next round of debates. what are you going to do to change that? you have only a few days left before the end of august. is there any way you can get on to that debate stage? yes. we do think there s a way to get on the debate stage, either for third or the fourth debate. that s what we re focussed on. but not necessarily the third debate? you think it doesn t matter if you don t get on the debate stage? maybe not about the third debate, but we feel confident we ll get on the fourth debate stage. there s some reporting that people in your campaign, people close to you, have suggested this is the time for you to pull out. you spent over $20 million of your own money. you are not breaking through in the polls. what do you bring to the democratic race at this point other than playing some kind of role of spoiler? isn t it time for the party to have fewer people on the debate stage so they can rally around a candidate in order to take on donald trump? well, first of all, that reporting as we said very clearly wasn t accurate. including the amount of money we have spent on the campaign. the campaign has only spent 9 or $10 million. so that whole report was inaccurate. my team never suggested i leave the race. so everything about that reporting was factually inaccurate including the amount of money we spent which is the most obvious thing is inaccurate. listen, we have an economic vision for what this country needs. i m the only person running who is both a successful business leader and served in the congress of the united states. and we need a new economic vision for this country. trump s economic model isn t working. what my democratic opponents are running on doesn t make any sense. it s a bunch of impossible fairy tale economics. we need solutions that hard working americans are dealing with and we need to get our economy on the right track for the world that we re going into. which includes ending this trade war that the president has gotten us into and quite changely all the candidates i m running against effectively follow trump s policies on trade. i m the only candidate running for president who actually supports president obama s effort to get us up to the transpacific partnership. we would be in an entirely different place if we had entered that trade agreement. so what is unique about my candidacy is my economic vision about how we make capitalism more just and inclusive for the future and that i have real solutions to health care, to climate change, to infrastructure to the problems that workers are dealing with, which is their wages are too low. and half the country can t afford their basic necessities. these are things that it takes someone who has been a leader in the private sector and a leader in government and i m the only one running who has that kind of experience. hi, congressman, this is kasie hunt, good morning. you just talked about impossible promises and fairy tale economics. i want to set aside the tpp for a second because it became very clear even in the democratic race the last time that s something that s become anathema to democratic voters. but i m curious, how do you think joe biden is making impossible promises and engaging in fairy tale economics? so let s just go back to the tpp for a second because i don t think it s true let s set it aside though. i would to move on past that conversation. what you and were talking on the debate stage, you and joe biden and michael bennet have stood apart from the many of the other progressives in the field and i understand why. right. i m curious what are your other contrasts with joe biden because i think people who look at this wide field maybe say, hey, you know, this the reason, you know, we have all of the extra candidates in the field. and it may be hurting what would otherwise be a stronger front-runner. so i d like to know why you re still running against mr. biden. well, you know, the difference between myself and vice president biden is i have new ideas. so what we need in this country right now is we need new ideas to deal with structural inequality, to deal with how we deal with the global economy. to deal with the kind of things to make capitalism more just and inclusive and we need new ideas but the ideas needed to be grounded in the facts. they need to be real solutions an we need to tell the american people how to pay for it and how we ve get them done. i think where i m different than a lot of people running there s a whole bunch of people running on impossible promises, fairy tale economics and then the vice president is in this category, everything is fine, business as usual. we just need to continue what we re doing. i don t necessarily subscribe to that. we need some new ideas as to how to reshape this economy to help workers. so that s where i think i m different. i have new ideas but the ideas work. i tell people i m going to pay for them. i had the only bipartisan climate bill in the whole congress, it was a completely new idea. so those are the kind of things where i think i m different. by the way, i don t think most democratic voters actually think the field is too big. i think most democratic primary voters think this thing is just getting started. the dnc may think it s too big, they may want to shrink the field and, you know, commentators may think it s too big. but if you talk to most voters if you actually go outside of washington and new york and talk to voters they re just dialing in at this point. is the sense that i get. and no one has talked to more democratic primary voters than i have. i have been to over 99 counties and they re looking for new ideas but they want real solutions. by the way, joe scarborough here. by the way, we have still half a year before iowa. right. a very long way to go before people start to vote. so you talked about new ideas. let s bring up an issue which of course you won t be able to answer in 60 seconds or so. but it s really an issue that s been at the heart of american unrest, american unrest now for years. i remember living in upstate new york in the early 1970s and for the first time seeing plants close down. some of them moving overseas to japan. i remember visiting a friend in pittsburgh in the early 1980s and watching that city the infrastructure of that city collapse. we have seen it now for almost 50 years and of course some cities have recovered. others have not. but there have been large segments of american society gutted from industrialization and the fact that machines, robots, automation, can now do the work of 200 people that used to fill up an assembly line. how do we get past that? because the pace is not slowing down. it s only quickening. right. and that s why we need new ideas, joe. what you just described is the central issue facing this country. how do we create an economy for everyone everywhere. that s why i found that the artificial intelligence caucus in the congress to actually have a plan for how artificial intelligence and machine learning play out. what we have to do is we have to create real incentives for people to invest in communities left behind. i m calling for one-quarter of the government contracts in this country to go to firms that have half of their employees in distressed communities. i m calling for a $2 trillion national infrastructure program, the biggest since the creation of the federal highway system with a disproportionate allocation of the dollars to communities left behind. i led the opportunities zone in the congress to invest in the communities and i think we need to think about how we ll deal with climate change from a technology standpoint, things like direct air capture machines. those need to be left located in the communities. so those four things that i just described there is a huge agenda for ensuring that both the private sector and the public sector is investing in communities that have been hollowed out, just absolutely hollowed out, across the last several years. they re shrinking, they re aging. that s huge pressure on the health systems and the educational systems. i m the only candidate that actually has an agenda to create millions of jobs in these communities. but it s in part because i understand how the private sector works because i started two businesses from scratch. created thousands of jobs. and i have been in the congress and i know how to actually create the incentives to get the private sector to invest in the communities. but what you re talking about in many ways is a central issue. you know, last year, joe, 80% of the venture capital in the united states of america was invested in 50 counties out of 3,100 counties. that s not a country of opportunity. that s a country of birth right where you have to be born in the right city to have a shot. we have to change that and that s got to be central to this economic debate that the democratic party has in 2020. all right, john delaney, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. and still ahead, the highest ranked democrat yet comes out in favor of president trump s impeachment. plus, we ll read from gene s new op-ed entitled trump in melting down again. morning joe trump is melting down again. morning joe is coming right back. every day, visionaries are creating the future. so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. the united states postal service makes more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. e-commerce deliveries to homes spending time together, sometimes means doing nothing at all. holiday inn. we re there. so you can be too. right now, congress is working to end surprise medical billing. that s when patients are hit with medical bills they thought would be covered by insurance. but what congress is considering would cut money that vulnerabe patients rely on the most. that means seniors, children, and americans relying on medicaid would be hurt. it s already too hard for people to get basic medical care with hospitals closing and a shortage of er doctors. tell congress we can end surprise billing without shredding the safety net. paid for by physicians for fair coverage. they give us excellent customer otservice, every time.e. our 18 year old was in an accident. usaa took care of her car rental, and getting her car towed. all i had to take care of was making sure that my daughter was ok. if i met another veteran, and they were with another insurance company, i would tell them, you need to join usaa because they have better rates, and better service. we re the gomez family. we re the rivera family. we re the kirby family, and we are usaa members for life. get your auto insurance quote today. live look at capitol hill in washington, d.c. congressman ben ray lujan of new mexico has become the highest ranking house democrat to call for president trump s impeachment. lujan the fourth ranking democrat in the house issued a statement yesterday writing quote, i support moving forward with an impeachment inquiry which will continue to uncover the facts for the american people and hold this president accountable. this is not a position i have reached lightly. he cited the mueller report and trump s inaction on election security for his decision. lujan who is running for the u.s. senate in 2020 becomes the 125th house democrat to call for president trump s impeachment according to an nbc news tally. so gene, your latest piece is titled trump is meting down again. you write in it, evidence suggests that trump is meting down again and for good reason. fears of a global recession greatly exasperated his self-destructive trade policies have sent the financial markets tumbling. he berates jerome powell for not cutting interest rates fast enough to goose the economy. he has grand owe thoughts like imposing a naval blockade to enforce regime change in venezuela and he can t stop railing against the recent fox news poll that shows him losing to four of the leading democratic contenders. the astonishing thing is this that the president of the united states is raving like a lunatic and everyone just shrugs. the truth is, we don t have an actual presidency right now. we have a tiresome reality show whose ratings are starting to slide and the star sees the cancellation on the way. one of the most jarring is his ability to continue to go lower as far as in the breaching of constitutional and political norms and also his successful ability to continue shocking an increasing and increasing the chaos around his oval office. you know, there is no bottom. i mean, you know, you have to stop looking for the bottom a long time ago. we ll keep spiraling down down down down down. and this is crazy. i mean, listen to what the administration has been saying about the economy over the last few days. last few weeks really. on the one hand it is saying oh, everything s fine. it s great. it s terrific. no worry, no problem. on the other hand, the president is berating poor jay powell, you know, cut interest rates, we have to cut them now, you have to do quantitative easing, do this and that. and there s no recognition that the instability and the craziness that s driving the market down and prompting the fears of a recession are largely caused by his own wrong headed trade policies and all the trade wars that he s started. the trade war with china, the trade war with our allies. it is just insane. you don t have to stand back very far to say this is lunacy. it s all self-defeating. it is all a mess. no telling where and how it goes, but if you re a big institutional investor what are you going to do? you re going to run to safety because, you know, and duck you know, try to find some cover until this storm is over. and that s kind of where we are. we re just waiting for this trying to ride the storm out. and of course, reverend al, you have the highest ranking democrat so impeachment. most americans aren t there. but at the same time, americans can t be even republicans have to be concerned about a president who in the same week he s attacking fox news and the fed chair and everybody in sight is talking about how google stole the popular vote election from 12 million votes. here then with all the chaos going on around him and also across the world, what s he talking about after new hampshire rally? he talks about how he broke the attendance record previously set by elton john. what s a good democrat and more importantly, what s a good republican to do in times such as these? maia angelou said if somebody tells you who they are, believe them. i think what many of us into whatever we ultimately do by who we were more successful in our coming up, the only thing donald trump was successful at in his life was the apprentice. he was not successful in real estate. his father did it early. he basically kept things going, put his name on buildings he really didn t own. but the apprentice was hot. he s ane entertainer. he is seeing the ratings are fading so he s looking for the next shock value. the next what will keep the crowd going. he s not trying to make sense. he s trying to make the show more contemporary and more appetizing to this thing he is playing to like he did in the apprentice. he once called me and begged me to go on the apprentice. i m saying you to, we re looking at a man trying to make a statesman out of a showman and he doesn t know the difference. that s why he s causing the trade wars which lead to a recession. that s why he s threatening fox that you may not get one of the big debates when the democrat chooses the democrat is chosen to run against me because you dare to have a bad poll against me? i mean this is not someone serious. he s a showman in the dressing room trying to figure out how do i go out on that stage. i m too fat now, the act is too old now. i don t know if they love me anymore. so he s looking for a new act. unfortunately has serious ramifications for the rest of us. wow, well put. he is also trying to shock people who previously thought they could no longer be shocked by his act. that s why he resorted to, well msh many would say facist comments. his crowds chanting send them back and, of course, donald trump condemned it the next day. took it back. and then backed down, just like he backs down all the time and said they were good people. you know, they could do whatever they wanted to do. he wasn t going to criticize them. sam, what does your reporting tell you and what can you pass along to us about the give and take on impeachment between nancy pelosi and chairman jerry nadler. where does nancy pelosi stand today? what is likely as it pertains to starting an inquiry to impeachment in the house? some things are a little up in the air because everyone is out on recess right now. but where we were right before then was that the party essentially was trying to have it two ways. jerry nadler is saying we re now investigating donald trump for the possibility of impeaching him. i don t think that they re going to be able to thread this needle rhetorically. you know, most people can see through it. this is just an attempt to pacify some louder voices in the party. but it s where nancy pelosi seems most comfortable being which is she still wants to have a vote. some of the members in the moderate districts have not come out in favorite of it. some freshman members have not come out in favor of it. she doesn t want to put them in a place of vulnerability. then there is this fear even if the house were to proceed on this, of course, the senate would do nothing. that guess gets you to a place where trump can say they tried to impeach me and couldn t. that s where we stand right now. of course, all this changes as his erratic behavior continues. they say they support an inquiry and proponents can say it doesn t matter what the senate says, we have a moral obligation to proceed on this path. let s see what happens the first couple weeks of september when people are back. they ll have heard from people in the districts and maybe the momentum will have shifted. as you know better than anybody here because you covered the speaker so closely, nancy pelosi never wanted to pursue impeachment really. she s respectfully listened to the arguments for it. will she come home from this recess or come back to washington from this recess and see now this majority of democrats who do want to pursue and reconsider or will she able to put it off as we head into the 2020 election which has been her hope all along? it s been an evolution. she is willing to be the one to take the incoming fire for that. i think this thing about lujan, he is high ranking and running in a senate primary against a progressive. this is becoming an issue in situations like that. so i m hesitant to read too much into this and, again, i think she is really willing to do what she thinks is necessary and that s likely to stand in the way of this impeachment inquiry. all right. kasie hunt, next time we see you, we ll see baby. thank you so much. thank you for the support. absolutely. sam stein, thank you as well. still ahead, the president regularly claims that the u.s. steel industry is coming back. but hundreds of steel workers who are about to lose their jobs in michigan may disagree with that. plus, president trump has claimed that isis has been defeated but defense officials may not agree. a new report by the defense department s inspector general says the terror group is still very much a threat. also ahead, at his rally in new hampshire, president trump claimed he would have won the state in 2016 had it not been for thousands and thousands of people coming from unknown locations. now the chairwoman of the federal election commission is hitting back saying that is simply not true. she joins our conversation ahead on morning joe. lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose. so you can enjoy it even if you re sensitive. yet some say it isn t real milk. i guess those cows must actually be big dogs. sit! i said sit! let s get down to business. the business of atlanta on monday. . cincinnati on tuesday. .philly on wednesday. .and thursday back to cincinnati . modernized comfort inns and suites have been refreshed because when your business keeps going, our business is you. get the lowest price guaranteed on all choice hotels when you book direct at choicehotels.com. i m a faster laptopd could help. plus, tech support to stay worry free. worry free. boom! ha.ha. boom! now save $249 on this lenovo ideapad, plus total tech solution at office depot officemax or officedepot.com. to the wait did frowe just win-ners. prouders everyone uses their phone differently. that s why xfinity mobile let s you design your own data. now you can share it between lines. mix with unlimited, and switch it up at anytime so you only pay for what you need. it s a different kind of wireless network designed to save you money. save up to $400 a year on your wireless bill. plus get $250 back when you pre-order a new samsung note. click, call or visit a store today. our economy, i think, still fundamentals of our economy are strong. wow. okay. the fundamentals of our economy are strong. an infamous phrase used by then presidential nominee john mccain just hours before the u.s. financial system went into total meltdown. remember that? well, the trump white house obviously learned a thing or two from that, right? the fact is the fundamentals of our economy are very strong and you know it. okay. wow. good morning, welcome to morning joe, everyone. i guess maybe they didn t learn. it is tuesday, august 20th. along with joe, willie and me, we have washington anchor for bbc world news america. associate editor of the washington post and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. great to you have all this morning. great to have everyone. willie, great to see you again. i wasn t here yesterday. i want to congratulate mika summiting kilimanjaro. i can t wait to see the pictures. i walked up 57 th street and totally out of breath. i stopped and had myself a cold drink. i can t believe did you that. so cool. it was nutty. i ll post pictures. it was hard. i m not going to say like oh, wow i m so cool. you really have to know no, i think that one must train before one does such things. and it was hard. thank you. they don t train, willie, they just in fact, she tells me they got to the base camp and they said we re going to do this. we want to do it in 5 1/2 days. and they were like well they tried to say can you do seven or nine? she needs seven or eight days. i m like, no, i have to get back on the air. most people do it in nine. but that s very dangerous. no, no, we want to get to the top. it s very mika. i m jogging to the top. yes. yeah. exactly. well, you know, willie, you go times square and there is that mcdonald s and you have to walk upstairs to eat it. why do they do that? people movers to get us to the seating area where we can enjoy our number 6. i need to be able yeah, i need to be able to recline. okay, we re going to get to the news. the world awaits photos. i m going to go to instagram. it was my daughter and me. it was our time together. i m going to post a few pictures on instagram and leave it at that. it was grate experience for us. impressed. but let s get to the news. thank you. and it s good for all three of us to be together again. i feel like we haven t seen new so long, willie. it s august. good to have all right. so let s get to the news. after 11 consecutive weeks of mass protests, hundreds of security officers from a chinese parra military force are staged across the water from hong kong. the new york times reports that bypassing the troops within view of hong kong, china s communist party is delivering a strong warning that the use of force remains an option for beijing. they note that china s leader has governed with an iron fist and few analysts doubt that china would act if he believed the country s sovereignty over the territory was jeopardized. we ll follow that. twitter and facebook are suspending numerous accounts they claim are tied to a chinese disinformation campaign against hong kong s pro-democracy protesters. they said yesterday in recent weeks accounts that owe ridge nalted in china acted in a coordinated fashion to amplify messages and images that portrayed hong kong s protesters as violent and extreme. the times notes that although both facebook and at which time rer blocked in china, recent activity over the hong kong protests suggests that beijing will use the services to spread the messages outside the fire wall when they deem necessary. also this morning, a new report by the pentagon s inspector general says president trump s policies are directly to blame for a new and on going resurgence of isis in iraq and sear yachlt the report says president trump s spontaneous partial troop withdrawal earlier this year emboldened isis. the troop draw down forced the united states to rely on third party monitoring in some areas including at a 70,000 person refugee camp set up by u.s. backed forces that according to the new york times. it s evolving into a hot bed of isis ideology and a huge breeding ground for future terrorists. the reports states that isis currently has an estimated 14,000 to 18,000 combatants, continue to conduct gorilla attacks and can tap into a reported $400 million war chest. joe? so this is something that the trump administration was warned about. it was something that people inside the pentagon warned donald trump about. so now people inside his own administration and pentagon are saying that, yes, his actions have led to the resurgence of isis. it s obviously something we ve seen before. and you just wonder whether he s going to double down or whether he s going to actually do what obama started and keep isis on the run. on multiple fronts now the administration is facing isis resurging. sear yashg syria, iraq, and also in afghanistan. there were ten coordinated attacks on monday in an area that is is present just at the time that the americans are trying to negotiate some kind of peace deal or effectively withdraw agreement for american forces from afghanistan. and it has to be a reminder of this report and what we ve seen happen in afghanistan in the last few days. it s very complicated. if you pull back american forces in a way that is too precipitous or is not coordinated or not thought out, does not leave behind some kind of political solution, then this is an organization that re-emerges whether it s in the form of al qaeda in some areas or in the form of islamic state in other areas. and it risks jeopardizing exactly what donald trump wants to do. this is why barack obama when he pulled back from iraq that created this space for islamic state to emerge in syria. if you pull back, there is definitely this risk is something the president wanted to do. now he is seeing it in all three of the countries there is a prospect for them re-emerging. everybody rightfully became impatient and wanted troops to come home from iraq. they wanted it as well. but that created a void that led to isis. barack obama dismissed it as a regional threat before having to start this process and eventually led to the destruction of isis in iraq and syria. donald trump followed through on that. but now donald trump seems to be repeating the same mistake. it s not only talking about repeating the same mistake there, he s talking about repeating that mistake in afghanistan. there are no short cuts in a war against terrorists. the federal election commission is pushing back against the president s claims of voter fraud in the 2016 election. trump tweeted yesterday, wow, report just out. google, manipulated from 2.6 million votes for hillary clinton in the 2016 election. this was put out by a clinton supporter, not a trump supporter. google should be sued. my victory was bigger than thought. according to a washington post analyst, trump appears to be referencing a study by psychologist robert epstein whose testimony before the senate judiciary committee last month was featured in a segment on fox business moments before the president fired off his tweet. and while epstein identifies himself as a democrat who backed clinton, that s a convenient figure since clinton won by about 2.9 million votes nationally. but the post points out that s not what epstein said in his testimony. he estimated a range of 2.6 to 10.4 million votes. that s 2.6 million estimate, he said, was the rock bottom estimate. it s also unclear what mythology was being used. fec chair yesterday disputed trump s claims. there is no evidence of rampant voter froud in 2016 or really any really in any previous election. lawyers studied this. the government studied. this democrats studied. this republicans studied this. and no one can find any evidence of ram pant voter fraud historically or in the 2016 elections. and the chair ellen weintraub joins the conversation ahead on morning joe. you expect donald trump to start talking about crowd size. for many people yesterday,ed that this is once again the president looping not a good look for him and still ridiculous that he is still claiming that there was massive voter fraud when he has absolutely no evidence of it. yeah. and the author of the study actually came out yesterday and said he didn t say google manipulated the votes and the president was twisting words. gene robinson, here we are again. the president of the united states disputing the numbers around the election. it started with the inauguration numbers, you know, the crowd size that is inauguration. he is obsessed with the idea that america is not celebrating his victory that he didn t win by as much as he thinks he d he lost the popular vote. that somehow the questions around russia call into question how he won the election. this has been a thorn in his side. size is always a matter to the president. he is obsessed with this idea because it s true that he is he won a very narrow electoral victory and lost the popular vote by three million votes. and this drives him crazy. and will continue to drive him crazy. so he is focused on these numbers, you know, that first segment we talked about these incredible problems of rise of isis and hong kong streets are full of demonstrators. there is all this stuff going on in the world. the president is obsessed with his crowd size at the new hampshire rally last week where he insists that people mention that his crowd was bigger than elton john s. he s very big on that. instead of thinking of hong kong and afghanistan where there is all this turmoil, he is focused on greenland. we re going buy greenland, parentally. it s a real estate deal and that s what he s obsessed about. it s just in sane. here we are, 2019. welcome. still ahead on morning joe it s clear that daniel pantaleo can no longer serve as a new york city police officer. carrying out the court s verdict in this case i take no pleasure. i know many will disagree with this decisionment that is their right. there are absolutely no victors here today, not the garner family, not the community at large and certainly not the core ageous men and women of the police department. they put their own lives on the line every single day in service and to the people of this great city. today is a day of reckonning but can be a day of reconciliation. we must move forward together as one city. the nypd fires the officer seen on video using a chokehold during eric garner s deadly arrest five years ago. that story is next on morning joe. every day, visionaries are creating the future. so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to work. the united states postal service makes more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country. e-commerce deliveries to homes liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, hmm. exactly. so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh. what s up with your. partner? not again. limu that s your reflection. only pay for what you need. liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty this is not just a headache. this is not just a fever. this is not just the flu. it s meningitis b. and you re not there to help. while meningitis b is uncommon. once symptoms appear, they can progress quickly and can be fatal. sometimes within 24 hours. before you send your teen to college. make sure you help protect them. talk to your teen s doctor. about meningitis b vaccination. your business is up and running, but is it going beyond fast? comcast business gives you high speed internet. we also have solutions like powerful wifi that gives your entire business more coverage and automatic internet backup that can keep your business running. and it all starts with our gig-speed network. so give us 10 minutes. if we can t offer you faster speed or better savings than your current internet service, we ll give you 300 dollars for your time. call now to get your comcast business 10 minute advantage. comcast business. beyond fast. the nypd reached a decision to fire officer daniel paint lay yoe for using a chokehold during eric garner s deadly arrest five years ago. it was an incident brought up at the most recent democratic debate. officer pantaleo used a chokehold that was prohibited by nypd. he did that for seven seconds, 11 different times eric garner said he couldn t breathe. he knew what he was doing. he was killing eric garner and yet he has not been brought to justice. that police officer should be off the streets. he should be fired. he should be fired now. the civil rights division of the united states department of justice said charges should have been filed but this united states department of justice failed and it is because that president did not want those charges to go forward and they overrode a decision by the civil rights division of the united states and department of justice. eric garner was arrested on staten island five years nag 2014 for selling loose untaxed cigarettes when officer pantaleo placed him in that deadly chokehold. garner said i can t breathe 11 times in that video. so, joe, the police commissioner here yesterday made that announcement, james o neill. it s going to put a claim in to have pantaleo reinstated so he can get his benefits and remain on the job. but this has been a simmering issue in the city and country for five years that helped to inspire the black lives movement. black lives matter, excuse me. and it really has. gene, you know, we have the video evidence. yeah. there were a few members of the u.s. senate that tweeted some things good ferguson that were not by video evidence or by eric holder. here we saw on camera eric garner being murdered. and i guess the question is what took so long? what took so long? this was ruled a homicide eventually. and this is a process that ground tlon was a question of, you know, whether criminal charges would be filed at the local level, federal level that, whole thing had to drag on. and then after all that was over and i do agree with the democratic candidates that the possibility of a federal prosecution does seem to have been foreclosed by the administration. there was this whole administrative process that had to go on and, of course, there are union rules and everything in new york. so it took five years. it took all this time to get to the point of acknowledging what we see clearly on the video. and what we knew at the beginning. and it is just obvious this is an officer who should have been offer the street. there will be appeals, by the way. there s an appeals process that the officer can go through. so unfortunately, this is not really over yet. coming up, president trump says the economy is booming. so why is the white house scrambling to shore it up? that s next on morning joe. chair is just a chair. that a handle is just a handle. or. that you can t be both inside and outside. most people haven t driven a lincoln. it s the final days of the lincoln summer invitation event. right now get 0% apr on all lincoln vehicles plus no payments for up to 90 days. only at your lincoln dealer. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, hmm. exactly. so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh. what s up with your. partner? not again. limu that s your reflection. only pay for what you need. liberty, liberty, liberty, liberty would shakespeare have chosen just some pens? methinks tul pens would serve m lady well. thanks. and a unicorn notebook! get everything on your list. this week s doorbuster - sharpie markers and ticonderoga pencils for $1 in store or online from the advisors at office depot officemax. so, every day, we put our latest technology and unrivaled network to 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the administration is mulling possibly reversing some of donald trump s tariffs. the times says that president has not been briefed on the tax cut idea which would need to be approved by congress and it isn t clear if he would support the cuts. the white house is disputing the reports telling nbc news that the cuts are not considered. the administration also continues to push back over concerns about the state of the economy. however, nearly three quarters of economists surveyed by the national association for business economics believes the u.s. will tip into recession by the end of 2021. according to the poll, almost 40% predict a recession as early as the end of next year. the tweet about greenland and the stolen elections that were never stolen, again, not focusing on the big issues that are out there. some believe this recession is coming. we can see a slowdown in germany. a slowdown and obviously economic problems in china. in part because of trade wars that are now impacting the u.s. economy. the president has a $16 billion socialist scheme to pay off big agricultural interests impacted by his hoover like protectionism. and now we re talking about even more tax cuts for a nation pushing up on $23 trillion in debt again to help push along an economy who is being hurt. so much for the wonderful conservative economic ideas of no deficits and free trade. in some ways the white house has an economy they can celebrate. the market the dow is at $26,000. it was at 19,000 on the day donald trump got elected. unemployment is low in the country. growth has been high. and wages have been picking up in some sectors. the problem is what s coming around the corner and that is what is making the white house nervous because whether it is in 2019 or in 2020 or in 2021, the majority of economists do seem to agree that we re heading for a down turn. we ve been on a boom rise since 2008 since after the crash. things have been growing pretty consistently. it s not unexpected in the cyclical nature of economics that we do have a down turn at this point. we had a sugar high from the big tax cuts that president passed. those now seem to be filtering out of the system. you look at range of factors whether it s around the world or warning signs in the united states and it s hard to believe that some kind of a down turn isn t coming. of course, that s going to cause a lot of headaches for a president who unlike previous presidents has tied his own fortunes to the stock market. and that, you know, that s a problem for him. you tie your fortunes to the economic growth and stock market and then that turns down, can you blame other things. you can blame the press, google, federal reserve chair. but at some point the voters are going to look at his record. coming up on morning joe, trump blames google for manipulating the 2016 election in favor of hillary clinton. chairwoman of the federal election commission will address the president s latest claim of voter fraud. that s next on morning joe. that s next on morning joe. spending time together, sometimes means doing nothing at all. holiday inn. we re there. so you can be too. he borrowed billions donald trump failed as a businessman. and left a trail of bankruptcy and broken promises. he hasn t changed. i started a tiny investment business, and over 27 years, grew it successfully to 36 billion dollars. i m tom steyer and i approve this message. i m running for president because unlike other candidates, i can go head to head with donald trump on the economy, and expose him fo what he is: a fraud and a failure. doprevagen is the number oneild mempharmacist-recommendeding? memory support brand. you can find it in the vitamin aisle in stores everywhere. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. enterprise car sales and you ll take any trade-in?rom that s right! great! here you go. well, it does need to be a vehicle. but - i need this out of my house. (vo) with fair, transparent value for every trade-in. enterprise makes it easy. how you watch it does too. tv just keeps getting better. this is xfinity x1. featuring the emmy award-winning voice remote. streaming services without changing passwords and input. live sports - with real-time stats and scores. access to the most 4k content. and your movies and shows to go. the best tv experience is the best tv value. xfinity x1. simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. we should have won new hampshire. that was taken away. new hampshire was taken away. it was taken away from us. but we should have. we did great in new hampshire. we should have won new hampshire. but that s okay. i m not holding it against you because it was no the your fault. you have a lot of voter fraud. many, many people voted that shouldn t have been voted. some people voted many times. what i m saying is we need voter identification. we need voter id. wow. president trump speaking to reporters on sunday and before that at his rally in new hampshire last week telling supporters that voter fraud cost him the states four electoral votes. wow, report just out. google manipulated from 2.6 million to 16 million votes for hillary clinton in 2016 election. in was put out by a clinton supporter, not a trump supporter. google should be sued. my victory was even bigger than thought. hillary clinton responded. storty you re referring to is based on 21 undecided voters for context. that s about half the number of people associated with your campaign who have been indicted. that s context. joining us now, chairman ellen weintraub. also with us editor at large and msnbc contributor kara swisher. great to have you on the show. ellen, i d like to start with you. you put out a letter to president trump asking him to clarify his information. what struck you as untrue or factually questionable? this is not the same claim. i asked the president if he has proof this actually happened and he needs to turn that over to law enforcement authorities because that is a serious problem. but no proof was forthcoming then. i didn t anticipate any proof coming forth now. facts matter, mika. they matter because the american people deserve the truth from their leaders but they also matter because they have policy consequences. there are real threats to our democracy from abroad. from align foreign actors and there are bipartisan bills in congress that are teed up and ready for votes that are not happening. there are bills to make sure that the state and local officials have the sources and cybersecurity tools to protect themselves against real foreign attacks. there are bills to ensure we have better disclosure so people understand where they re getting their information from on line. bill to crack down on shell corporation that s are hiding foreign money. bills to make sure there are actors that are trying to intervene in our elections. that s where we have to focus our attention. and when we re distracted from that and looking for measures to protect against problems that are existing and we re not addressing the real and serious threats to our democracy. the president as we just saw in that clip said that some people voted many times in the 2016 election. have you seen any evidence of that? no evidence. no evidence that anyone voted multiple times? no. i think the washington post looked and found four instances of voter froud aftaud after the election. scholars have looked into the claims of voter fraud over the years and have not been able to document them. one scholar looked at every election from 2000 to 2014 over a billion votes and found about 31 instances of possible voter fraud. these are not changing results. that s not where we need to be focusing our attention. let me ask you about the specific claim that brought you out yesterday and brought you on the show this morning. the president tweeted this. we ll get kara to weigh in afterward as well. google manipula nip late many i 2.6 to 16 million in the election. what do you make of that? the author of that stud yan the study itself is disputed. the author himself has said that what the president said is not what he meant and not what the study means. kara, you studied google closely. you re critical of google when you feel it needs criticism. what do you make of the president s claim here? it s a lie. it s a flat out lie. i think ellen is even understating the situation. this is using twitter again, using a tech thing to spread lies. that s all that is. google has a lot of issues. there are a lot of issues with google and the tech companies but this is not one of them. i don t even understand it. i don t understand how can you repeat such a lie by the president and by anybody on these platforms. it is spreading false information. it s also getting in the way of passing real laws that are the real threats which was talking about which is foreign influence which is severe. election tampering, voting machine tampering, all kinds of things we do have to deal with which has been stopped by this administration. and these bills should be passing. and it s really disturbing to then attack a tech company for something that is not their fault. and again, i would blame google for a lot of things but not this at all. so i wonder whether the president is referring back to the 2016 election and specifically the case of new hampshire where in a sense what is really happening here is setting up the next election because if you use this argument that there was voter froud, of course fraud, you can apply that to any close race s there a risk if there is a close state that is critical to his re-election campaign, that then gets disputed on the grounds of voter fraud? well, i m very concerned on two fronts about that. one is that when you have close races that the voters who support one candidate if their guy doesn t win, they might not accept the results. we have a long history of well run elections that people trust and voter integrity destroying that trust is really damaging to our democracy and very hard to build up again. and the other problem is that the kind of measures that people are suggesting to address the voter fraud that doesn t actually exist will, in fact, have the possibility of deterring real american citizens from exercising their vote. i want to see every american citizen exercising their right to vote and not be deterred by measures that are being thrown up for false reasons. yeah. i m not going to ask ellen why she thinks this might be happening. i appreciate her just focusing on the facts. what should going doll? what does a tech company do? they can t do anything. you know, on one hand they can engage with the administration, i suppose and say this is not true and release a statement or they just stay away from it. i think a lot of people trust google more than they trust president trump in this way. you know? in some cases they have fallen down on the job like at youtube and other places in terms of hate speech and video that s shouldn t be there and things like that. but in general, people do trust google for the information they provide. you know, they one thing they were talking about was this vote button that they had on the screens which i think would influence an election. it gets people to vote. that s what should be happening. people should be voting. and people should not have things in their way to vote. if i were google, i would say nothing. that s how a lot of companies that are attacked by president trump, i just move along and keep going. i don t know if there is any way to fight this. i mean, i guess ignoring him somehow diminishes him possibly. we still value our facts. kara swisher, always an honor to have you on. great to see you. ellen weintraub, my here roechlt thank you both for being on this morning. thanks. take care. and time now for business before the bell. u.s. steel announced they plan to temporarily lay off 200 workers as it haults production at one of the michigan facilities in the coming weeks. joining us now, cnbc s dominick chu. this is the great lakes facility in michigan. the job reductions will affect less than 200 people. but u.s. steel says the layoffs could last longer than six months. the company has been dealing with lower steel prices and less demand from the bigger customers like automakers and also farm equipment makers as well. it has been a big turn since president trump first put on the taxes for imported steel. it did help though boost the price of american made steel but then the shares of many of these american steel makers are steady declines over the course of the past few months and years here because of worries about falling demand. the on going trade war already taking its toll on american consumers as well. president trump acknowledged that possibility which is why he delayed the tariffs on certain items until december. but now america s biggest home improvement retailer echoing the concerns about the u.s.-china trade war. they re saying it could hurt consumer spending down the line. home depot reported sales that missed analyst projections earlier this morning. they say in part because of the rest of the year could see a potential pullback by consumers over that consumer spending picture with the u.s.-china trade war. and we re going to end thing onz a lighter note, folks. americans not only continue to spend on their homes but they do on dining out as well. and three fast food chains in particular are turning up the heat in the kitchen so to speak when it comes to has the best chick sandwich. it started with pop eyes tweeting about the new sandwich and then chick-fil-a tweets about how good their sandwich is. popeyes tweets back. and wendy s mocks both of them about how they re fighting about who has the second best chicken sandwich next to wendy s. it goes on for a couple more rounds. you get the picture. and now shake shack is getting involved. anybody who makes a chicken sandwich mainly with pickles, i don t know about you. i ve been here early this morning and i think i m going to get a chicken sandwich. sounds great. all right, dominick chu, thank you. senator jeff mushgly joins us next and a look at what is making headlines in a few of the early voting states. in iowa, the des moines register leads with presidential hopefuls work for union votes. in massachusetts, one of the super tuesday states, the boston globe goes with warren apologies for missteps on ancestry. and in south carolina, the island packet l back. lling run . we ll be right back. i don t know what s going on. i ve done all sorts of research, read earnings reports, looked at chart patterns. i ve even built my own historic trading model. and you re still not sure if you want to make the trade? 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what was surprising to me was how quickly the president faded away. i thought it would take a couple more weeks. he ended up about what i anticipated which is let s not act. it s very difficult in this senate. we had a bipartisan bill that had more than 50 votes that joe manchin and pat toomey put together. they led very well on it. we had a foundation for moving forward but it s going to take presidential leadership and that s missing. joe, i don t know what polls the white house aides are showing president trump but the public polling on universal background checks is something like 90 or 97% support including a majority of republicans and a majority of gun owners. it s overwhelming. 9 out of 10 americans support a universal background check and want background checks expanded. the overwhelming majority of republicans do. the number of gun owners do as well. senator, if you have an issue that 9 out of 10 americans support, yet you have a president and mitch mcconnell trying to get in the way of americans getting what they feel they deserve on gun safety, what can you do? what can like minded democrats and republicans do to push for universal background checks to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists and domestic abusers? the key is absolutely to get it on the senate floor but we can t do that without mitch mcconnell supporting it. that is the challenge of the way the senate is structured. the privilege given to the majority leader is now being abused continuously in terms of preventing the senate from addressing issues america wants addressed. what really strikes me about the numbers of american support is there is not that much difference between democrats and republicans on this issue. what is different is you have a very powerful lobby, the nra, that provides a lot of money and a lot of megaphone if you will for candidates and that shows their influence and also shows the corruption that is inhabiting congress with the amount of money that has the door is open to in campaigns. whoever showed the president the numbers inside the white house on background checks were cooking the books. 9 out of 10 republicans support expanding background checks. let s move on to your book. obviously, it brings up one of the critical challenges in the trump administration. talk about why you wrote the book. well, i wrote this book because 14 months ago i went down to the border to find out what this zero tolerance was all about and what i found was child separation, children being ripped out of their parents arms and put into cages and then up the road an hour in brownsville found a former walmart stuffed with what turned out to be 1500 boys inside there. there are so many ways this administration is deliberately mistreating migrant children and migrant families. this is not america. we have to shine a bright light on this. so i wrote the book to shine the bright light and to put together the many pieces of the puzzle at the border, at the internment camps, at the for profit child prisons so people could understand the big picture and then to call people to action. we re going to need outside force to push and say, this is not acceptable. this human rights abuse is done by our government on our territory with our tax money. only we can stop it and we have to. senator, when you talk to your republican colleagues and when you ve come back from your trips to the border and talk to them about what you have found down there, how much disquiet do you hear from them privately when you re talking to them one-on-one? i would say they squirm. because they feel they are locked into president trump s aggressive mistreatment and they haven t spoken out before and they feel, well now if they do they have to explain why they didn t previously. and besides, when the president is emphasizing if you will some myths like this is an issue not of dignified and respectful treatment but open borders, they are fearful of the president s megaphone and fearful of their base. senator, you ve been shining a light on this for more than a year and has been front and center now for sometime. do you see any change since you first went down there, is there any movement from the administration or some willingness to move? we have seen change but mostly driven by the courts. the court shut down the bulk of the child separation but the front door has been closed but the administration has been using a back door for hundreds more children separated from their parents without acceptable cause. they still have the system of a for profit prison they plan to reopen called homestead. they still have the megacenters like casa padre that has more than a thousand boys in it. they still have the mistreatment at the border. the border blockade leaving children trapped in very hostile, dangerous cities across the border. none of this is acceptable. americans don t want to see children treated as pawns in a political power play. this is not who we are. we ve seen essentially the statue of liberty and her torch extinguished. that is not okay. we have to relight that torch. you ve been shining that light for sometime now, senator. thank you so much. the book is america is better than this, trump s war against migrant families. senator jeff merkley of oregon, thanks for your time. thank you so much. joe, final thoughts this morning? well, you know, i go back to gene robinson s column about how donald trump is getting worse. it s something we ve also read recently in the atlantic. jonathan lamire at the associated press reported a few weeks back that people around the president continue to be shocked that he s, in fact, becoming more of a chaos president than before. so expectations continue to drop and the president keeps going past those already low expectations. what about you? well, i think the president, we ve seen reporting this morning from the washington post and the new york times that they are focusing in the white house on the economy and perhaps putting in new policies to bolster the economy, the signal, the sign, the tell katty from the president of what he is actually concerned about is the thing he ensures us on twitter he is not worried at all about that the economy is fine and everything is fine then turns the corner and starts tweeting about anthony scaramucci. what are your final thoughts this morning? yes. i think it is about the economy. we re in this era of being told we just have to think positively. i m hearing exactly the same thing out of downing street and prime minister boris johnson as out of the white house. if only people thought positively everything would be okay. the tariffs and brexit, do they respond to positive thinking? i m not sure. not so sure. that does it for us this morning. thanks so much as always for watching. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. thanks, joe. hi there. i am stephanie ruhle. it is tuesday, august 20th. here s what s happening now. the white house insists the economy is very strong but their actions may tell a very different story. after spending the weekend telling the american people there is no reason to worry, the president s economic team is reportedly exploring options to boost the economy in case things get worse. i have to bring in jeff bennett at the white house. help us understand the message and the mission. because the administration is pushing back on one of the ideas reported that they re looking into a payroll tax. the white house is saying everything is a-okay. what s really happening?