t it? [chris] ever try to. [tom] quit?of course! my best time was six days. the worst was .uh.23.4 seconds. [chris] so can i ask you. [chris & tom] why are you still smoking? [tom] [sarcastic] it s so much fun. [chris]why not call the smokers helpline? the program s free,and. [tom]and they ll tell me. you oughta quit. [chris] not so. just tell them you re ready to quit. then,they ll tell you how. [tom] really? you wouldn t have that number on you,would you? now we head north to intchester for the manor larchmont. the waterfront estate is surrounded by the open waters of the long island sound. as he will see, the home s interior is definitely beautiful. hi. we are here on this beautiful day in larchmont, new york, overlooking the harbor. i am the architect that designed the reconstruction of this 1950 s home. there s a lot to show you, so let s get started. at we deliberately.ouse the simplicity of the portico belies the magnificence of the rest of the home. once inside the front door, the first thing you see is this amazing beer. this this amazing view. this writer waterfront estate is surrounded with 270 great views of larchmont harbor and long island sound. leads us toairwell a calm and comfortable sanctuary. fireplaceis the big surrounded by really cozy chairs. it s a great place to get some work done or have a friendly conversation. is complemented by this grand living room. it is surrounded by water on three sides and it s really about bringing the outside in. to that extent we designed the room to resemble the bridge of the ship. a lot of this is 20th century modern and the wall paneling details are found throughout the first floor. in the dining room, it seats up to 16 people and is great for formal dinner parties or holiday gatherings. this leads right into the kitchen. this is truly the heart of the home. we deliberately placed the island in the middle so the cook could participate in everything going on in the rest of the room. the counter tops that look like black leather are actually black granite. into theen flows family room. we designed the space knowing this is where our clients are truly going to live, whether it is cooking, doing homework, reading, hanging out on the couch, watching a movie. watching the sunrise, watching the sunset. there is nothing nicer than falling asleep in a room like this to the sound of waves. was to capture these terrific views and calm surroundings. crown moldinge and the use of the ceiling. the best thing about this bedroom suite is the balcony. it overlooks the grounds, but look at this harbor. speaking of which, let s take a look out back. where everything happens. whether you are walking along the water s edge or throwing a frisbee on this great big lawn or having a cup of tea on the dock, this backyard truly has everything. menk you so much for letting show you this beautiful state in larchmont. but now, if you will excuse me, i am going to go enjoy the rest of this beautiful day. coming up, a designer creates a mom s sanctuary in just one day.
welcome back to open house. an artare headed to collector s dream home in pasadena. this is state features one of the asked restaurant style kitchens i have ever seen. this house will fit any buyer s needs. hi. . am gary gold i am the executive vice president of built-in is states. welcome to this example of contemporary craftsman in pasadena, california. this is ideal for art collectors with unbelievable art walls. the house is also ideal for entertaining. we have this beautiful living room. . dedicated area then we have this gorgeous formal dining room. it also opens up to this inner courtyard. when i say this home is an entertainer s dream, i was not kidding. check out the kitchen. you have a grill for burgers and dogs. .ou have a hard-core wok green how you make beans and 30 seconds. there is the deep fryer. this is the more refined side of the kitchen. you got stainless steel subzeros. you have all stainless steel cabinets and it is blended with the wood cabinets on the uppers which pull it all together and beautiful cedar countertops. adjacent to the kitchen, you have this informal family room with more note one of three informal kitchen stops in the house. this is a nice place to grab a nosh, watch some tv, hang out. bedroom just feels right. first a ball you have these windows that open up to the gorgeous backyard. you have vaulted ceilings. you have this bright, cheery, really cool bedroom. the master bath has dual vanities. extra makeup area. walk-in closet. just beautifully elegant, just right. not over the top. this backyard whether you are hanging out during the day or entertaining at night is awesome. you have this expansive seating area. you have a beautiful spot. huge pool. basketball court. placesre just different to lie out here, sit, hang out. as a really cool entertaining area. thanks for joining me on this tour of this incredible pasadena contemporary sound out and i will see you soon. sabo coming up after the break, a designer s mission to find a mom a sanctuary in just one day. welcome back. she is on a mission to give a busy mom in long island her own peaceful space. but can she create a mom s sanctuary in just one day? well, let s find out. hi, i m courtney. we are in new jersey at my client s home. is going to be designed to be a mom s sanctuary. she has a busy husband and 4 yes, for children. she needs a space all her own. my name is sonia. my husband and i are parents of four children. house, moved into this he got his office and the children to go over every room with their games, their toys. i just need somewhere of my own where i can read a book or relax and have quiet time to myself. we are about to get started transforming this room. but first, let s look at what we are working with. over here we have what was probably a really nice television about 15 years ago. we have a sofa that was also probably part of another home or era. we have a beautiful piano that i know a lot of family members use. over here, a football a with very little people. and over here at pinball machine. first of all, we need to clear out everything. let s get started. bye-bye. daughter s legos. there is pain and then there is stepping on a lego pain. changing an old lamp can make a huge difference for little money. and this will catch all the light in the room. this is amazing. i am going to take some pictures now. i am going to put them in different frames. is allthis, because this four of your children together. sonia has this amazing patio and it would be crazy not to utilize it in some way. you can t treat it like an extension of the room. my favorite feature about this room is it has tons of light. you would be crazy to book and their treatments on these. if you are lucky to have floor to ceiling windows, let them lock. no window treatments. right, we are done. i think it looks amazing. i love it. i hope that some you does. we will break it down show you how we did it. i started with one really good piece some of which is what i recommend for any room. in this case, it was the couch. which added an old rug gave it a big pop of color and a touch of modern aesthetic. i wanted to add a little bit of light and a lot of drama. so i went for these egg, bold, and hanging mirrors. of theflect all beautiful trees outside each window. something really easy and affordable these overlays. i love them. they come in a bunch of different shapes and sizes. they look really cute. least certainly not we have the outdoor area. not only does she have a cute seating area, but there is a fire element. it looks amazing. i think it better get her now and show her what i did. wait for it. and open your eyes. oh, my goodness. [laughter] i can t believe this is the same room. the couch! it looks different. it looks like a grown-up room. and it continues. ,ou can enjoy your backyard spend time with your family see the kids. we all fit on your new catch. do you kids love it? all: yes. it is perfect. thank you so much. you are very welcome. i think i could use a space like that. what room in your house would you want to revamp? join our facebook family and let us know. if you missed something on today s show or want to see these fabulous homes again, head toopenhousetv.com. thanks for stopping in. i am sara go [chris]still smoking up a storm? [tom]yeah.pathetic,isn t it? [chris] ever try to. [tom] quit?of course! my best time was six days. the worst was .uh.23.4 seconds. [chris] so can i ask you. [chris & tom] why are you still smoking? [tom] [sarcastic] it s so much fun. [chris]why not call the smokers helpline? the program s free,and. [tom]and they ll tell me. you oughta quit. [chris] not so. just tell them you re ready to quit. then,they ll tell you how. [tom] really? you wouldn t have that number on you,would you? good evening from south africa. president obama will begin making his way here to south africa tomorrow. to attend tuesday s public memorial service for nelson mandela. for three days now, south africans have been honoring and celebrating the man who helped unlock racist suppression and led his nation into democracy. it was a day of prayer and reflection. richard engel is also in johannesburg tonight and has this report. reporter: south africans let the holy spirit overwhelm them. they came to pray here because nelson mandela prayed here. fire master tom was growing up. mandela was in prison. they met only after he walk free. he was a friend. is he blood and flesh like us? because he was so good. reporter: for many here, mandela was more than just a prisoner turned president. he taught a lesson. we must always be humble, kind, and we huft love each other. the love that is everybody. reporter: even the u.s. ambassador got into the spirit singing kumbaya. it was incredibly powerful. if that singing did not stir your spirit reporter: this is a very special church. there were race riots here. black residents ran and took shelter in the building. they were chased down by police. it has now become a symbol of defiance against apartheid. and the symbols of joy we saw here were around the country. there were services of many faiths but one unifying message. we are greatful for his courage and dignity in adversity. and for his mighty power of forgiveness. forgiveness. reporter: at churches nationwide, they prayed for two men who forgave the sins of others. as he closes his eyes, we begin to believe that now we have someone who cares so much for us, who will open our eyes going forward together with the saints. reporter: in africa today, they remember mandela and it seems, began to elevate a sanlt. now to developing news back home. much of the eastern half of the country getting hit by dangerous snow and ice. we get latest from weather channel meteorologist psych seidel. reporter: the win storm barreled into the northeast on sunday with heavy snow and sleet. temperatures were as much as 20 degrees below average. in wisconsin today, a series of crashes on the state s snow-covered highways. at least one person dead and a dozen more injured. some critically. on this stretch of i-94, first responders arrive to the scene of a major pileup that shut down the interstate. there is probably in excess of seven semis and 30 plus vehicles. reporter: in texas, the brutal cold has left up to an inch of dangerous ice on the road. made it about 10 miles and three hours. and by that time, they shut down 35 and we got, we pulled off here and we ve been stuck here ever since. reporter: also stuck on the side of the highway. a report he from our dallas affiliate kxas. take a look at this. you re looking at about a dozen semis stuck in the road, all over the road. it is absolutely impassable. reporter: travel by air wasn t any easier. more than 2,000 flights canceled today. a quarter flying through the dallas airport where more than 3,000 passengers spent the night. they canceled me again today. i m like, wow, i m trying to see what i can do to get back home. reporter: utility company are scrambling to restore power to more than 100,000 customers still sitting in the dark and warning that tree limbs and lines weighted down by the ice could continue to cause new outages for several days. in baltimore, icy conditions as the vikings/ravens game. they have to clear the vikings. reporter: take a look at lincoln financial field in philadelphia where the eagles/lions game was played in heavy snow. this is wild. reporter: creating a whiteout conditions that hid the gridiron from view. while football fans choose to tough it out today, officials are asking people to stay off the roads for the next few days during one of virginia officials say could be an historic ice event. freezing rain will continue to be an issue. at least until sunrise tomorrow morning west of washington. meanwhile around new york city, an inch or two of wet snow. by monday morning s rush hour, temperature climb to about 40. lester? thanks. we re back in a moment with nelson mandela s impact on young people in america. michelle. and we own the paper cottage. it s a stationery and gifts store. anything we purchase for the paper cottage goes on our ink card. so you can manage your business expenses and access them online instantly with the game changing app from ink. we didn t get into business to spend time managing receipts, that s why we have ink. we like being in business because we like being creative, we like interacting with people. so you have time to focus on the things you love. ink from chase. so you can. [ female announcer ] may your holidays be merry and bright. merry pringles. [ female announcer ] may your holidays be merry and bright. every day we re working to and to keep our commitments. and we ve made a big commitment to america. bp supports nearly 250,000 jobs here. through all of our energy operations, we invest more in the u.s. than any other place in the world. in fact, we ve invested over $55 billion here in the last five years - making bp america s largest energy investor. our commitment has never been stronger. . finally tonight, it was not long after he became president of south africa that nelson mandela returned to washington and paid a visit to the campus of howard university. his presence there is still being felt after all those years. here s nbc s kristin welker. ist master of my fate. reporter: some of the students here at howard university were not even born when nelson mandela spoke on their campus in 1994, a few years after their release from prison. it is with gratitude that we remember the ways in which our university embraced and supported the liberation struggle in south africa. reporter: today, the young men and women at this historically black college say those words and then mandela s legacy still resonate. he taught that no one is born hating anyone. you re taught that. and if you can be taught to hate, you can be taught to love. he wanted love. it was his most powerful message. i think the most important lesson is just, never give up and just never allow yourself to be defeated. reporter: so as people pay tribute to the larger than life leader in south africa and all across the united states today, here at howard, they have come to this exhibit on campus set up a month ago to reflect. what word do you associate with nelson mandela? courage. visionary. humanitarian. reporter: she hopes to become a teacher and plans to one day pass along mandela s lessons to her students. it gives them the tools to think critically about society and what would you like to see? what will you do to fix it? reporter: for this south african, a recent graduate, the loss is more personal. we have been expecting his death but still, when it actually happens, it does something to you. it is a sad moment. a time grieving. reporter: but there is also celebration. his name is up there with gandhi and martin luther king jr. and we sit and think, his messages, we should apply them to our life like other great peacemakers. he is truth in service. reporter: a man who united different races, a nation, and now generations. nbc news, washington. that s nbc nightly news. brian williams will be here tomorrow from south africa. i m lester holt reporting from soweto. have a good night, everyone. i love watching tv outside. and why can you move the tv out here? the wireless receiver. i got that when i switched to u-verse. but why? because it s so much better than cable. it s got more hd channels, more dvr space. yeah, but i mean, how did you know? i researched. no, i-i told you. no. yeah! no. the important part is that you re happy now. and i got you this visor. you made a visor! yes! that i ll never wear. ohh. [ male announcer ] get u-verse tv for just $19 a month for two years with qualifying bundles. rethink possible. announcer: nbc sports, exclusive home of the nhl, premier league, the sochi olympic winter games and primetime s number one show, sunday night football. a look at the mercedes-benz superdome, the home of the new orleans saints, and tonight the site of a tussle for first place in the nfc south as the surging carolina panthers pay a visit on sunday night football. drew brees and the saints are coming off a short and unproductive week following a blowout loss monday night in seattle, and the matchup doesn t get much easier tonight, but at least the saints are back in new orleans where they re a perfect 6-0 this season. cam newton and the panthers have been one of the nfl s biggest
early. morning joe starts right now. this book is 656 pages of shameless name dropping. jim? tanz mean prime minister ma zin go pin dand i do some planting at a women s cooperative in. she just happened to be hanging out with many zen go in lamb deez zi. not impressed. there was no way on earth one woman can be in so many places at once. [ cheers and applause ] hillary clinton. now who s a name dropper, stephen. really? name dropper, that s not what my good friend tom hanks calls me when we re hanging out at george clooney s place. i loved george. i wish i could have joined her when i had lunch with merrill street and raphael pereira. oh, raffy is such a cut-up, especially when we go camping with oprah. oh? does that surprise you? no, o is what her real friends call her. i know paul mccartney. i negotiated with hamid karzai. i shared an office with steve carell. i ve held high level talks with chinese state counselor. well, now you re just making words up. i will have you know, madam, i once did an entire show with president bill clinton. i hate to break this to you stephen, but i ve met him, too. good morning. it s wednesday, august 6. good stuff. she did great. she looked great. she was funny. she should take him on in the stump if she runs. former communications director for president george bsh nicolle wallace. contributor john heilemann, political writer for the new york times, nicholas poff sorry. i ve said it a zillion times. also in washington, white house correspondent for the wall street journal carol lee. i want to thank all of you to join us this morning. a lot to talk about. of course, the news out of afghanistan, just devastating for the military and it continues. this is the front page of the wall street journal. it s the lead there. also the lead story in the washington post. it s the lead story in the new york post. everybody talking about that. we ve got that to cover and an awful lot more this morning. but this morning let s start with the pentagon investigating that attack in the military base northwest of kabul that left a two star army major general dead. that s the highest ranking american killed in the iraq or afghanistan wars. in fact, you d have to go back to 1970 in vietnam to have another officer with that high of a rank killed. 55-year-old major general harold green was the second highest american serving in afghanistan. he saw the transition efforts to hand over to afghan troops. other coalition officers were at camp tuesday when an afghan soldier opened fire, seriously injuring several before being killed by return fire. the 15 wounded they included eight americans, two british, one german and four afghans. these insider attacks as we all know have been largely on the decline as international presence has started to wind down. in 2012 is when it was the worst here. the two attacks so far this year. to talk about it more let s bring in nbc news military analyst, retired general barry mccaffrey. first i have to ask you what are you thoughts about the tragedy in afghanistan? a huge loss, very talented officer, phd in political science, one of our real technical experts. remember this comes on top of 22,000 plus killed and wounded in afghanistan. there s been a pretty bloody conflict. i think the lack of transparency in reporting these insider attacks is something we ought to be concerned about. we re only talking about the ones that result in u.s. killed by the insider attacks. there are many more than this actually occurring. a huge chasm of trust opening up between the afghan security forces and the nato forces. so tell us what we re not hearing. why are these attacks being swept under the table? i think a lot of it, of course, is just an understandable feeling and a part of the isap nato headquarters. they don t want to accentuate the growing insecurity throughout the country. the reason i make a point of this, joe, looking forward, 10,000 troops spread out in small packets across the country. our combat forces zero out, very vulnerable, not just killed and wounded but abduction. it s a policy process we ve got to think really carefully about. what s the best way forward? at the end of the day afghanistan is going to make it based on afghan people, political leadership, police and army. a robust u.s. embassy with a lot of u.s. marines around it, maybe holding open the airfield at bagram is what we should be doing and not thinking about an enduring presence throughout the country. this is an ethnic civil war that we re unlikely to change substantially with a 10,000 person footprint. general, we were talking about the logistics of how this would work. we are working hand in hand, literally that s how our soldiers are handling this. how would it work? would you envision our troops staying in a secure facility or embassy and troops will come in for technical training or for strategic training, how would the interactions work under what you envision sf. i m less clear on how it would work than the valabilities of leaving packets of troops all over afghanistan. right now we have intelligence officers throughout the country. they do pretty well. remember they re backed up by not just combat forces of the u.s. army, but also medevac helicopter support, all that s going to disappear as we drop to a very small footprint. again, i think we have to rethink that policy. we ought to find out how many of these inviteder attacks are occurring that don t result in deaths. we ve got a giant lack of trust going on at the lowest level between afghan police and army and nato forces. general, before we go, i need to ask you about this. obviously afghanistan on the front pages of all the newspapers today. over the past several weeks we ve been seeing on the front pages of all the newspapers israel and gaza. before that syria would bump in and out. it seems to me, though, when i talk to military men and women, foreign policy analysts, they say the most dangerous thing happening on the globe right now is not even in the ukraine, it s in iraq, it s in syria, it s i.s.i.s. you ve been there. you fought there. do you agree right now that what s happening with i.s.i.s. is something americans should be paying closer attention to? well, it s just another indication of an enormous shift. these post world war i boundaries in the middle east didn t make any sense on religious and ethnic grounds. there s going to be a readjustment. it s going to be bloody, take ten years to sort it out. at the end of the day we re more likely to see kurds and shia, if they don t trust each other, historically they re well argued that they shouldn t. inside iraq, for god s sake, when sunnis had control of the country, they slaughtered hundreds of thousands. general barry mccalf free, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate you coming in. thank you. you see the polls yesterday? almost makes you feel bad for the president. it makes me feel bad for everybody. it s bad everywhere. the president at his lowest approval rating ever. congress at its lowest approval rating ever. the republicans are hey, this is great for republicans, because the president is at his lowest ever. 75% of americans think we re going in the wrong direction. hey, republicans 80 seals, 90 seats, maybe 1,000 seats. hold on a second, r approval rating is at 19%. democrats are at 32. not much better. holy cow. this is like the friends and family plan. friends am family report what s happening in congress. republicans at 19%. the president horrible at 40. the president ain t running for re-election again. republicans still sitting at 19%. you ve had bill kristol. you ve had moderate becomes, me, you, a lot of people saying for two years now it is not enough to be against barack obama. you ve got to do more than investigate. you ve got to do more than spit on the ground and grumble and scratch yourself when you go back to your district and grunt and say i m against barack obama. shut down the government. you ve got to do something. they re at 19%. republicans, you can be pissed off at me if you want to. i don t know. it s the first republican elected in my district since 1873, won four landslides, won by 70%, 80%, i don t know, maybe i know something about this. i know you don t like when i talk about when i was in congress. we love it. i love it. that s why you re on the set right now! that s the only reason. most of america can listen to you talk about that, the mood of the country would lift. oceans would part. sunshine and rainbows for everybody. let me tell you, at this point right now people would look back to this time as when the oceans receded, the earth began to heal itself. what else is he going to do for us? what else happened? the oceans would part, i think the big greek columns would be erected. the playing of frogs in washington according to those polls. but now the oceans is apparently not receding, locusts are coming from the heavens and eating the flesh of people in washington, d.c. look at the numbers, barack obama s approval rating 40%. a lot of people not happy about that. 54% disapprove. not sure, 6%. we have a couple more years of this going. you keep going through the polls. the other polls, nick, republicans sitting at 19%, democrats at 32%. republicans win the generic ballot, 42-43%. 44.3. this number is troubling, 36 approval on foreign policy, 60% disapprove. it shows when the world is a mess, as madeleine albright said, people hold the president responsible. you go down the approval/disapproval on foreign policy americans say we don t care what s going on in foreign policy, but boy when it s going bad they turn on the president. a lot is happening. there s a sense of the world is spinning out of control and the average person isn t quite sure why and they blame the president. i think the average person doesn t think the president understands why. the public has lived through chaotic times. the public doesn t feel like the president understands. you look as the world is spinning out of control. i had a good friend say last night to me. things are crazy, what s happening? i m scared. this was a liberal democrat. you look at the approval ratings we just flashed up, 36% approve of the foreign policy handling, 60% approve. those are george w. bush numbers. yes. the difference being a lot of the disapproval around bush s foreign policy. be had hundreds of thousands of troops deployed. people. reporter: very anxious and very angry. what was the low of your approval rate sglg that was george w. bush minus 13 percentage points towards the end. about this time i think he was sitting about the same as barack obama. he started plummeting soon after that. the interesting thing about this is the point you just made, in terms of practical consequences, no doubt the country is depressed and having a bad summer. that 43 to 44 congressional balance, it s not a wider spread, you ve got the cross-tabs of this poll saying not a wave election. this doesn t look like 2006, doesn t look like 2010. voters are not hugely motivated in looking toward the midterms. the people who thought this was going to be another big wave election seem on the basis of this poll to have been wrong. i don t know where the wave comes from. no galvanizing issue right now. or candidates. there s also not a group of candidates running on change or running on a new direction or running on a cohesive or understandable foreign policy. the republican party is pretty fractured. you don t have what you had in 2010 where you had a new force, new energy, the tea party movement comes in and all get swept in, the establishment candidates winning last night. pat roberts, another establishment candidate. our insurgencies abroad are bad for barack obama. insurgencies at home for the gop are bad for the gop. there isn t a central organizing thing for anybody. moreover, when you look at this poll, at first i thought, this is like we re mad at everybody. it s two different houses casts potses on other houses. half of the people say i want to elect a congress that doesn t block the president. two different countries here and they re divided. carol lee, you cover the white house. what are they going to do over the next two years to turn this ar sflound we seem, do we not, when you re in there day in and day out, we seem to be stuck in a holding pattern? that s absolutely right. if you look at part of the problem, i think, if you look at what the president is saying, what his message is publicly, there s a total disconnect between clearly what the american public feels and what he is saying is going on in the economy. on friday he came out and said things are getting better. clearly people don t feel that way. the president was campaigning, raising money in california a few weeks ago and he was saying people feel better than they did five years ago. some of the folks who were interviewed who participated in this poll explicitly said they don t feel better than they did five years ago. so i think what the white house has to contend with is how you match the president s rhetoric and how he s approaching the public on this issue with what you re seeing in this poll which is that people are not feeling good about the future. the 79% of people who think their kid s future is not going to be better than their own, that s a huge number. that is a massive number. nicole, things aren t getting better. listen, the economy is getting better. i ve got a news flash for everybody. you don t feel it and it certainly maybe it s what ronald reagan said, a recession is when your next-door neighbor has lost their job. a depression is when you ve lost your job. the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. the divide is sickening and continues to grow. but the situation for the middle class is far better today than it was two years ago, four years ago, five years ago. things are getting better. it doesn t show up in these poll numbers. and i wonder how much of that i m not blaming the president at all. i will. he s made it all political, joe. it s all political. this is a stylistic thing. the guy, i ll just say it, everybody that knows him, everybody that talks to him, everybody that works for him says the guy doesn t like his job. he doesn t want to be there. he also makes everything political, even the good things. even when he goes out and talks about making community college less expensive. that s something more available to a lot of families than a four-year university, it s wrapped in politics. when he goes out and talks about income inequality or making taxes more fair for families, it s always wrapped in politics. don t all politicians do that? i don t think so. i think obama has taken it keep a straight face. i think obama has politicized things that previous presidents have not taken to such a political i think the trash talking, the den grading of republicans, every policy announcement in a political wrapper is a loser. john heilemann, what say you? there s a deeper thing going on. no doubt the economy is in a better place than it was three years ago and the unemployment numbers are better and jobs are being created. in the end we still have flat wages in this country for the last 25 years and great inequality. people still feel that. the question about whether people think the world is going to be better for their kids and grandkids and about whether they see improvement, even if they have a job, they re not keeping up even with minimal inflation. 40% of people have someone in their household who has lost their job in the past five years. can you imagine how that echoes through the country? it s a sense of insecurity that is always there. it could be me next. even if you have a job, it doesn t mean your life is getting better. carol, you re right. there has to be great frustration for the white house. they see the economic numbers that look more positive than they were two, three years ago. and so does the president pivot back for the 28th time to a new job, hey, i m going to focus on jobs now. it has to be extraordinary frustrating. is there any indication that he is going over the next couple years, especially if republicans win the senate, is he more inclined to have to sit down and strike deals with republicans that don t like him anymore than he likes them? well, they would tell you that he has been trying to focus on jobs and the economy, he s stuck to that message di des despite some criticism that he should be folk kug cussing on some of the foreign policy issues on the front pages of the newspapers. but i think there is a theory emerging out there that if the senate switches over to the republicans, that the president will be freed in some way and be able to sit down and cut deals with republicans without having nancy pelosi and harry reid pulling him further to the left and that he does want to cut deals and they would be able to get things like some of the trade policies that he s been pushing which drem kratz do not like or tax reform, comprehensive tax reform. the republicans want that, or even immigration reform. they still hold out hope for that. so there s the silver lining, if there is one, and we re not going to see a wave election this year, the republicans will do well, and there s a good chance that the senate will go. but it seems like, you know, there s a possibility he could make some progress on some economic issues if it flips. carol, the worst thing that happened to bill clinton, new democrat bill clinton was he was strapped with some left wing democrats in congress that would stop him from moving to the senate. the second republicans took over in 1994, the guy spent the next six years striking deals and making things happens. who knows? you never know what happens in washington, d.c. and you never know what happens on morning joe. still ahead on morning joe, the nation s katrina vanden heuvel and ari fleischer join us. they are going to scrap in the 7:00 hour. they ve got to boxing gloves. it s going to be amazing. plus reagan revisited, modern conservatism with the 40th president of the united states and how a lot of conservatives kind of forgot every single lesson he tried to teach them. the steroid era. anthony voss strikes a deal to reveal his entire performance-enhancing network. this is huge. espn s collin coward is going to be here. the herd is in the house. a whole lot more in a few minutes. we ll be right back. you owned your car for four years. you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends. three jobs. you re like nothing can replace brad! then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement, we ll pay for a car that s a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? 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[cheering] the fastest in-home wifi for your entire family. the x-1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. time to take a look at the morning papers. the first photos of sergeant bowe bergdahl since his release from the taliban emerged yesterday as he prepares to be questioned by an army investigator. the images taken by his lawyer yesterday, the first glimpse of him since returning the the u.s. he ll be meeting with a general to discuss the circumstances around his capture in 2009. he was released after five years in a prisoner swap last may. from the new york times, a scary scene unfolded yesterday in times square in new york city. there were two double decker tour buses and they collided. 15 people, mostly pedestrians were hurt. what you can see in this earth cam footage. a bus hit a light pole, falling onto a sidewalk full of people. her head lodged before a dashboard. first responders had trouble get together the scene in the heavy traffic and crowds with many arriving on foot. you do that very well, by the way. the wall street journal, 21st century fox has withdrawn the bid to take over time warner. fox cites an 11% drop in the price. the deal would have united the two largest movie and tv studios in what was once the biggest media merger in a decade. the funny thing is, after they announced the deal, time warner s stock dropped, rupert s stock goes up. guess what? he s in a better position to do the deal now than he was yesterday. you know what the lesson of that is? rupert always wins. i ll tell you another guy who always wins, donald trump. in the philadelphia inquirer the donald is suing the have his name removed from the two remaining casinos in atlantic city he used to control. the real estate mogul reveals the plaza and taj mahal are deteriorating and tarnishing his brand. he hasn t operated the casinos for several years. one already closed, two set to close next month and one up for bankruptcy tomorrow. a reason we call him abraham lincoln of our time. look at him. he s a born leader. if they re not treating his casinos right down in atlantic city, you got to take care of it. that s the whole problem is having casinos in atlantic city left. falling apart, not up to the standards of the donald s other properties. this is a high class problems to have, buildings with your name on it in a city you left a while ago. my favorite donald trump moment. he s $9 billion in debt and the banks are going after him. he goes out to a press conference. he s like, i m going to be fine. can i ask a question, just one question. has anybody in this room been in $9 billion in debt before? okay, fine. you don t know how to handle it. i do. he told the banks, foreclose on me. you can foreclose on me. i tried to have the same conversation with my credit card company last month. didn t work. can t pull it off. you re not the abraham lincoln of our time. if you ve ever taken a train overseas, you ve probably seen the sign that says mind the gap. here is why. got his leg trapped. rescuers rush over. the passengers decide to get involved landing a few hands to push the train off the man just enough to get him free. he escaped unharmed. how is his leg? his leg was not available for comment. with us, chief white house correspondent mike allen here with the morning playbook. mike, it says rand paul wants to run for president. ah. does that make you sigh? it makes me tired. nicole just don t hold back. i think rand paul had a very bad week. i think offending the dreamer on the stump. i think he s stitching together. mike, i ve said it before. i like rand paul, and if like yahoo! they want to do whatever they want to development i voted for his father in the primary in 2012. i you know what? i carry the scars. this guy is not going to be president of the united states, and in large part, i think it s because of his former positions, they re going to catch up with him, all the stuff that s gone in the past is going to catch up with him. one of those things, his position on aid to israel in 2011, it s a newly elected senator, he actually talked about cutting foreign aid to the middle east, and here are his original comments. let s take a listen. you want to end all foreign aid as well, right? the other day, 71% of the american people agree with me, when we re short of money, when we can t do the things we can t do in our country, we shouldn t be shipping it overseas. what about the $3 billion that goes every year to israel. you want to eliminate that as well? i think what you have to do, when you send foreign aid, you send quite a bit to israel s enemies. it looks like egypt gets almost the same amount. really, you have to ask yourself are refunding an arms race on both sides. i also have a lot of sympathy and respect for israel as a democratic nation, as a fountain of peace and democracy within the middle east. but at the same time i don t think funding both sides of an arms race, particularly when we have to borrow the money from china to send it to someone else, we can t do it anymore. never introduced any legislation that targeted israel in any way. spent the last three months trying to target aid to hamas and the palestinian authority. i think to print headlines saying rand paul wants to end aid to israel is just not true and inappropriate and really doesn t represent the truth. i ve spent three months trying to end aid to hamas. when you print an article, it s inflammatory and it s also trying to ask you a perception or develop a story line of me that s just frankly not true. it s frankly not true except for the fact that it s true. you go back and look at the clip. he says he s going to end all foreign aid. he includes israel in that. and again, mike, i like rand. i like a lot of the positions he stands for. he runs around saying he s going to end all foreign aid to israel. we have to be grownups on the world stage. who likes foreign aid? none of us like foreign aid. guess what? you have to do it if you re running the free world. that s right, joe. you know you re in trouble when you re referring to your own words as inflammatory. that s going to be a problem. like paul krugman, when i quoted his words back to him, he s like, come on, these are sleazy tactics they re your own words. rand paul is in the same position. they re his own words. we have a piece up this morning, rand versus rand looking on his evolution on a variety of issues, drones, immigration. he was a senate candidate that once talked about having buried electrical fences at the border. of course, it evolved as he got in. his staff is he hasn t changed his position but come to realize what you can get done. joe, a huge moment coming up for smat tore paul who has had a great spring and summer, doing well in the invisible primary of buzz, message, travel. he s in iowa right now. we learned that at the end of september, early october, he s going to give a speech on the topic that joe, as you know, is his biggest problem, the biggest hurdle to him getting the nomination, foreign policy is isolationist. he s going to give a speech at the national defense university where he s going to argue on the spectrum, be involved everywhere, be involved nowhere. he s smack in the middle with ronald reagan, george h.w. bush we shall see. sometimes candidates who underpass their past, look at me, i got elected to congress despite the four years i did in a turkish prison. they did a movie about it. wasn t it a great movie? what do you think the percentage of likelihood is that before the end of the year we ll see rand paul campaigning in a yamaka? pretty high. he was in iowa. i m not knocking him. i m just you know what? this is what i do. this is what i do. i get paid a lot to be wrong. so i m sure i ll be proven wrong here. he s a fascinating guy. he s a fascinating candidate, and i think he has absolutely no chance to actually be elected president of the united states. we shall see. carol lee, thank you for being with us. thank you. hope you ll come back soon. sure. up next, you know what? she didn t seem too excited. she was like sure this is the last time. you ve already burned your bridges with the paul administration. two years before he becomes the 45th president, you ve already burned him. beat the rush. burn him down. i m right on this. i m right on this case. they ll forgive me. most people forgive me. isn t he right on the foreign aid. doesn t your average voter is like why are we giving this money? no, he s wrong. coming up next, one of the most entertaining voices in sports talk radio about to join us onset. he is a god. the herd is in the house. colin cowherd will be right back talking about roids, college football and every question that real millions of viewers have sent in. in new york state, and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. female announcer: sundayduring sleep train s triple choice sale. for a limited time, you can choose to save hundreds on beautyrest and posturepedic mattress sets. or choose $300 in free gifts with sleep train s most popular tempur-pedic mattresses. you can even choose 48 months interest-free financing on the new tempur-choice, with head-to-toe customization. the triple choice sale ends sunday at sleep train. sleep train your ticket to a better night s sleep it s not going to be longer than that. this is my show. we ll be here for five hours. the herd is with me, colin cowherd is here. his mom when he was born said he shall be called the herd and he is. colin, thank you for being was. the book you herd me. i ll say it if nobody else will, is out in paperback next month. also here, mike barnicle. what s going on man? i m a huge fan of yours. that s awesome. you know what, my wife is in florida doing work. i said you re not going to believe what show i m on this morning. she said don t even do that. i said morning joe. i don t explain stuff, i show up on tv. i don t know how it works. you just show up on stuff. so your friends, a buddy of mine, paul finebaum, at times the most hated man in the state of alabama. i love him because he says whatever he wants to say. you say whatever you want to say, man. paul and i get along. i was on his show yesterday. he s very polarizing. i tell people in the northeast, they love baseball but they don t get college football. guys, just think of fenway park and all the passions. like nine of those down near atlanta. that s what the south lives for. just respect and love their passion. it s the same in liverpool with their soccer teams. america is amazing. depending on the time zone you re in, the passion changes. in the south and paul is at the center of it, they live for that sport. listen. it ain t the nfl. we grew up with the nfl bed sheets. we don t care about sunday. we care about saturday. you wake up on a saturday morning in nashville, huntsville, ever boyd has their sports page. they are in their restaurant or bar, it s 7:00 a.m. they re there to that cbs or espn game turns off at 11:30. you say this year, it taint sec going to win the national championship, it s going to be acc. you think fsu. i think florida state will meet up with oklahoma in a championship. i don t think they re as complete as alabama. they don t have to go to baton rouge. auburn s schedule is outrageous, the toughest college schedule i ve ever seen, especially october on. alabama has the most complete roster. i don t leave them yet at quarterback. i think georgia is really good. if you look at florida state through the acc, i think they ll mow through it. oklahoma will lose one game but find their way to it. out west, i think ucla will escape. the sec deserves in my opinion two teams in this forum. it s like the electoral college. the reality is based on population ohio is more important than rhode island, california is more important than maine. based on the population in the south and their high school players that go to sec schools, they deserve more votes and more people in the college football play-offs. they should have two a year until somebody proves what are the reasons i can t watch the nfl anymore? i ll watch occasionally. i m sorry, the guys are just they look roided up man. you ve got these guys that weigh 800s, they run four two forties. why is it that baseball does the right thing and police themselves but nobody else does. it s almost like baseball cut themselves off at the knees. they should have dragged the nfl with them and everybody else. the george mitchell report when baseball said we re going to get george mitchell and find out who is using, i said on my radio show, i thought it was an absolute horrible decision. here is our laundry, we ll hang it out. nobody else does. baseball by far and away now has the best system. people do a more moderate version of testing. the reality is baseball is, once again, what is the national narrative this morning on baseball? there s a user, a seller, anthony bosch. we re not talking about the race. last night yankees tsh tigers. the american league east is wide open and we re talking about anthony bosch. shouldn t the nfl do what major league baseball has done? you re really i can just sense that. i want to. it is an unnatural sport. tim miklaszewski who is the pentagon sport. he used to do radio. tom landry was looking at how fast and big everybody is getting, tom landry said this isn t my game anymore, it s too dangerous. this isn t the game i started with. roger goodell has tried to limit shots above the shoulders and has been panned by his own players for it. the nfl totally understands. the concussion issue is the one issue that can bring down the league. you have a powerful company, it s lawsuits or certain things that can bring down a company. in the nfl it s the concussion issue, they re trying to lessen the injuries. the reality is high school players are bigger, steroid use is up in high school, college players are bigger, the game is faster. now it s no huddle. now it s spread. there s a lot of issues here with injuries in the nfl. the bosch report, it was aimed principally that he was selling steroids to high school kids, not major league ball players, not nfl football players, kids, and that s where the root of the danger is. that s why you have to have stronger drug policies at that level. i heard a story yesterday on radio, not sure where it was, that kids now are not just taking hgh, young boys, for football, they re taking it to just look better. they just want to look better. hey, old dudes are doing that. you see these 65-year-old guys you never see donny deutsche? they re out here. you think barnicle s physique is natural? everybody is taking hgh. the juice is loose. you re not a user or believer yourself? no, i m not. i m a believer in the lord. you look great. i do. you should see barnicle without a shirt on. it s something. you guys are both, despite this hectic life, you both really have aged well. [ laughter ]. i ask you this question, so i don t watch the nfl on sundays anymore. i m an sec guy and european football. i love the epl. i ve got to ask you about mike francesa. is he still over at fan? yes. i saw him one time working at cbs for a couple years calling football games. alabama is playing boston college and he says, like when boston college is going down the field, if we don t get a first down here, we re in trouble. i love this guy. he falls asleep. it s awesome. he s a runaway beer truck, as we say in the south. remember what he was saying? they use both of their feet? he s old school, and he loves baseball, that s great. he loves the nfl. he does a fine job. but i kind of poked him in the ribs the other day, he asked a soccer guy on the other day, can they kick with both feet? soccer is not going away. memo to ann coulter, the american media talk show host for a variety of reasons, fifa sales are up, espn and fox are all in. can i ask you this question, can we execute seth blatter? i don t like him. the biggest issue with the sport from the american perspective isn t necessarily the scoring. it s not. baseball and hockey. it s fluid. there s a lot of movement. the bigger issue is we don t really trust it s the flopping. a little bit. we don t trust fifa. when you ask sports fans, it s like waste disposal in some cities. who is running it? who is making money on it? so that s the big issue. match fixing. i have no idea what you re talking about. yes, there is match fixing all over the place. fifa, they got to clean it up. ironically, it s the united states who some of them seem to loathe that is going to end up cleaning it up. the big sponsors who want to get involved don t want to get involved in a corrupt sport. soccer is not going away. i understand that. how does it prosper? we re not a 1-0 country. there s connective tissue on why it will work. years ago when i was done, i came home i was down. now my dad played, more connectability. now i can play in more leagues. i can buy merchandise. it s everywhere. by the way, we have an explosion in this country. latino explosion in some cities. we now have the mls is profitable, ten teams are profitable. four need bigger stadiums, seattle, kansas city, portland. they re doing well. it s never going to be the nfl and it will probably never be baseball but it is getting bigger. all the kids are playing the video games. if you do one thing and one thing only to increase your life expectancy by four or five years, buy you herd me. alabama will lose at tennessee. i predicted yesterday. i bring you on to say that? they re really good. if i here rocky top i m going to kill myself. come back. i will. hey pal? you ready? can you pick me up at 6:30? ah. 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(vo) there s good more. honey, look at all these smart rewards points verizon just gave me. ooh, you got a buddy. i m like a statue. i just signed up and, boom, all these points. .and there s not-so-good more. you re a big guy. .oh no. get the good more with verizon smart rewards and rack up points to use towards the things you really want. get the lg g3 for $199.99. who s more excited about back to school savthe ladies?ples? these guys? or these guys? when you get guaranteed low prices on everything you buy the most, everybody gets excited! staples. make more happen for less. helping you find a dentist you ll want to go to for the rest of your life. we ve helped over 8 million people find that dentist, and we can do the same for you. call 1-800-dentist today. welcome back to morning joe. at the top of the 7:00 hour, it s a free-for-all. katrina, ari, we re talking about the new nbc news wall street journal polls that have come out. shockingly bad numbers well, for everybody. we ll talk about what it means when we return. life with crohn s disease or ulcerative colitis is a daily game of what if s . what if my abdominal pain and cramps come back? what if the plane gets delayed? what if i can t hide my symptoms? what if? but what if the most important question is the one you re not asking? what if the underlying cause of your symptoms is damaging inflammation? for help getting the answers you need, talk to your doctor and visit crohnsandcolitisinfo.com to get your complimentary q&a book, with information from experts on your condition. you drop 40 grand on a new set of wheels, then. wham! a minivan t-bones you. guess what: your insurance company will only give you 37-thousand to replace it. depreciation they claim. how can my car depreciate before it s first oil change? you ask. maybe the better question is, why do you have that insurance company? with liberty mutual new car replacement, we ll replace the full value of your car. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. when la quinta.com sends sales rep steve hatfield the ready for you alert, the second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! where do what are you doing with scratch craigthat key jake? i m thinking of scratching your car. well, you should stop thinking that. you re a little too precious with it. don t touch my dart, jake common it s for your own good, you ll thank me later. move out of the way, so you don t get hurt, i mean it. it s gonna happen, might as well be from a friend. jake. step back, jake. (tiger roar) we re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov ahhh! what is it? there are no marshmallows in this box of lucky charms! huh. weird. seriously? what? they re magically delicious fill their bowl with the meaty tastes they re looking for, with friskies grillers. tender meaty pieces and crunchy bites. in delicious chicken, beef, turkey, and garden veggie flavors. friskies grillers. ari, how great is the herd? we should just taublg sports. he s the sports guy. he s fantastic. welcome back to morning joe. a live look at new york city. as i say that, you know t.j. is going to move away from the shot of new york city. thank you, t.j. aren t you going on vacation again sometime soon? yes, next week. disney land again. he goes on these cruises and disney land more than anyone i knew. he needs them from living here. that s true. i work around the clock and i wear people down. they want me to gone vacation. i refuse. i love where i am too much. nicolle wallace is here with us. former white house press secretary ari fleischer, sports communications ari fleischer. i think i need to be better friends with this guy to get tickets. editor and publisher of the nation katrina vanden heuvel. you checked your calendar because you have a morning joe calendar up in your kitchen and it s been a year. it s been a year? we ve missed you. well, i m back. great to have you back. thank you. we need your husband in here, too, to talk about russia. yes, a lot to talk about. also former white house communications director and now managing director of skd anita dunne. good to see you, too. great to see you, joe. how are you? i m doing wonderful. i heard you say you don t want to go on vacation. it s obviously different from congress or anybody in washington. you can tell you re in new york this morning. actually i am in new york. i think i go on vacation more than congress. i m glad to be here now. i love being here. i want to bring all of you together here for us to break bread and talk about the meetings of some of the most depressing poll numbers ever. we ve got new nbc news/ wall street journal polls to run through. let s start with the president and we ll start there and go line by line by line. if you re at home and you re going, oh, this is going to skew against barack obama, joe is a republican, he s so biased. don t worry, it s even worse news for republicans. let s start with obama, job performance. 40% approval rating, 54% disapproval. this next full screen explains so much. obama foreign policy, 36% approve, 60% disapprove. anita, let me start with you. you worked at the white house. obviously you have tons of friends inside the white house. we re a long way from hope and change. we re a long way from those greek columns, from all the promise of 2008. it s looking fairly grim inside the white house with these numbers. what gives? obviously it s a summer full of challenges for the white house and for the world internationally as well as continued challenges at home. i think what you ve seen the president do is do as much as he can, and he will continue to do as much as he can despite a congress that, as you rightly pointed out, is far more unpopular than he is and frankly is refusing to do just about anything. they re giving the phrase do nothing a bad name. i think both internationally and hear at home, he s doing what he can do and internationally, i think if you look at what s going on, that the president is continuing his policy of diplomacy and of leadership without committing troops everywhere. that is actually i think very much in line with what the american people are looking for. ari and nicolle, you worked for presidents with low numbers. what s going on? our pitcher is getting shelled and not able to throw anything over the plate. it s not the problem he s doing what he can. it s what he s not doing that s gotten him into so much trouble. what is he not doing? i think two fundamental things that. first is the failure to get the big budget deal with john boehner. it set off the tenor of nothing is going to happen in washington. whose fault was that? everything accumulates up. the president is always the one that has to lead and get things done. democrats would say republicans were out to make him fail from the very beginning. the second big issue where he didn t get something done is where he drew the red line in syria and failed to act. that sent a bad signal particularly in the middle east where people didn t think america was going to get involved or back up our words with any deeds. if you look around the middle east, one of the reasons there s so much trouble in the polling numbers, there s a sense that the president isn t up to handling any of these challenges. katrina? i think there s a fundamental disconnect between the inside the beltway pundit polling class. you re not skewing bias, but history. first of all, these poll numbers are not as low. we ve seen others over the last few years. americans want to engage with the world, but they don t want to listen to the armchair warriors. they don t want there wasn t a great gusto to go into syria. there isn t a gusto to go into ukraine or get too involved in the middle east. i think we need to step back and understand there s a wisdom among the american people in that front. i also think that for president obama, though i ve said this before, it s the worst of both worlds. americans say in polls, don t get involved. you don t get involved and bad stuff happens and you re to blame for that, too. i think of the president i have a lot of issues with the president on foreign policy, but i think he has made a decision that america cannot police the world without detracting from the resources it needs, for the real security of people at home and dealing with security challenges. we agree a lot on that front. i m saying the great irony is a less involved america is a america that can t control what s going on out there, and he pays for doing what the american people tell them they want them to do. that goes to the big thing in the poll. america can t control the world s destiny anymore. of course we re a major power, but we re not, quote, the indispensable nation. i think a lot of americans may be having trouble dealing with that. the big number in the poll is americans believe the country is going in a wrong direction and losing faith in their political institutions. this isn t new. if you ve been watching cnn, the sixties, let s go back to vietnam and the assassinations of king and bobby kennedy, look back at the summer of watergate. this country has experienced crises of confidence in their government. are we allowed to say thoegs cnn documentsry are awesome! like the music one i m going to say it. i just gasped. i sat there i don t want a lot of tv, especially prime time tv. i m on tv and flipping around. joey they ve got brian wilson, i ve never seen this. i m going to get in trouble. those are awesome! some of us were too young to remember the 60s. i was glued at age 13. katrina brings up one, 70% of americans say we re going in the wrong direction. 80% of americans say d.c. is going in the wrong direction. in the 60s there was the chaos in the street. in the 70s, an ugly decade, too, you still had a washington that works. it doesn t work anymore. why doesn t it work? it doesn t work because the republicans have refused to govern. get her, nicolle. i like her too much. they have made destruction their mode of governance. i was talking to carl bernstein and others last night. did carl bring up mccarthy? part of watergate had to do with the republican party who said good buy to nixon. barry goldwater walked into nixon s office and said it s not going to work anymore. you had a republican party that had moderate wings. this is a tired dispute. we know this now. what do we do with a country that is in gridlock? you have to also say that the problem is the center has been hollowed out over the left and the right. this is an important point to bring up. then i ll be quiet. if you look at democrats elected since 2006, they re far more progressive now. the joe liebermans are gone. there s been a hollowing out. in the house there s been a hollowing out because of gerrymandering which is just horrific. in the senate there s a natural hollowing out. there aren t people in the middle that can bring the left and the right together. president bush had senator kennedy and john mccain to work with. he was able to govern. you may not have liked the things he did. he did govern and did have some partners, not a lot. but some partners in the democratic party when it came to education and immigration. there were people to talk to. i d like to ask anita if she thinks the way president obama governed makes it easier or harder for hillary clinton to mount a campaign for the presidency. i think everything president obama has done, he s basically run a global experiment to see what would happen if america completely withdrew from the world stage and didn t exert any influence. he said he doesn t believe in the embodiment of american exceptionism. he says he doesn t believe america has a role to play. i think while americans don t want to see troops on the ground, they do want to believe america can make a difference. but part of not approving of his job and foreign affairs isn t just that we don t like what s happening in the world. we don t like that president obama acts like there s nothing america can do. so, anita, you always hear the generals are always fighting the last war. has there been an overcorrection? if there has been, i think a lot of americans would say it s understandable, after ten years of war, after ten years of occupation, an overcorrection may be in place here. i m a little surprised to hear nicolle mouthing the republican talking points. i love when people say that. thank you. i was going to say nicolle i m going to help you with your base. please accuse her again of being a republican. we ll say it one more time and you can put it in your resume. here is the thing which is, if you look at this, this idea that somehow this administration and the president are disengaged from the world is simply ludicrous. this morning, joe, we have leaders from over 50 nations in africa in time for a historic summit. by the way, that is a very important continent for the future. these are important relations for the united states in the future. secretary kerry who has successfully helped afghanistan negotiate a recount in their presidential election. we know a little about recounts here. no always that easy to do. you have diplomacy happening everywhere right now. the idea that somehow this president has disengaged from the world is so far nicolle, let me finish. i want to go back to the republicans in congress. i was working on the hill in the bush administration, a big part of that time working with tom daschle, the democratic leader. the reality is the democrats worked with the bush administration. the republicans from day one made a decision that they weren t going to work with president obama, and i have to tell you it s a very different situation. i ve been on both ends of pennsylvania avenue there. anita, let s move on to congress, a perfect segue. nbc news/ wall street journal, they sur vaifd americans, americans came back when asked what they think about congress and their response was congress sucks. congress s job performance 14% putin almost got that high a number in this poll. 79% disapprove. ari, i have to ask you about this, there is my concern, it s your concern. a lot of republicans concerns. party approval, gop, only 19%. 54% unfavorable. the dems sitting at 31%, almost double. how many times do we have to say this? republicans in the house have to do something. it s not enough to just pass bills that you know harry reid is going to kill. by the way, i blame harry reid as much as i blame the republicans. guess what? harry reid is not the party in opposition, the republicans are. we haven t made our case on why republicans should take control. you worked in the house when i was there. what do they need to do? what does john boehner need to do to break through with a positive message instead of, we re going to investigate benghazi, we re going to investigate the irs, investigate, investigate, investigate. we re going to sue. and yes, investigate them all, but you ve got to have policies that excite americans, too. i spent about 12 years in the house and almost six years in the senate. two points, one, the 2014 election is going to be just like 2006. it s a rejection election. 2006 was a rejection of george w. bush and his policies in iraq. 2014 is setting up the same way against president obama. so you don t have to as republicans politically speaking do much between now and the election other than win the election on the basis of anti-obama, but it s the day after. it could be a false narcotic for republicans. you could take the senate, probably gain a few in the house. it s the day after. republicans have to turn the corner. i m looking the see who the presidential contenders will be and whether they can speak as a more inclusive fashion. we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform and republicans should do it early in 2015. let s say republicans win the senate. when we won in 94, we can say these are the ten things we promised to do. dam it, we re going to fight and we re going to do it. we got 70% of it done. the day after john boehner gets re-elected, the day that mitch mcconnell is speaker of the house if he wins, what do they say they stand for? like i just said, the first thing is comprehensive immigration reform, keystone open they might. everything is about might when you get to the congress. nobody can ever say what they re going to do. let me put it in a human context. what we ve witnessed is a republican party unwilling to pass long-term unemployment insurance. you have people in this country who look to congress, look to their representatives, look to government to assist when people are down and out to provide jobs that in this country today, people work full-time and still live in poverty is a scandal. i don t think that is a matter of left or right. i think it s a matter of right and wrong. i think this is something obama with his poll ratings not great, he has a three-to-one advantage over congress which has refused to govern on behalf of people in this country. don t mean to interrupt you, katrina, only to make your point. guys, do we have the number of americans who support raising the minimum wage? here is some fascinating numbers. we re taking this out of the partisan context. nicolle, you look at things americans support the most? guess what? they re bipartisan. democrats will be very excited that the overwhelming majority of americans want the minimum wage raised. republicans will be very excited that the majority of americans want corporate tax rate cut. tax reform in general. but specifically they want corporate tax rates cut. democrats will be thrilled that the majority of americans want the top 1% to be taxed higher. 60% of americans want comprehensive immigration reform. 60% minimum wage and the overwhelming number of americans are like me, they want us to invest in our infrastructure. by the way, any republican on cap hole hill that thinks you can run against bob byrd and his off-ramp to nowhere in west virginia, you re in the wrong decade. i ve given 400, 500 speeches on college campuses, et cetera, et cetera. i ve never heard one person say you re a communist, you needless investment in our infrastructure. how about our airports? our airports are crumbling, our bridges are crumbling. nicolle said something interesting about senator kennedy and senator mccain. you see eruption ofs what i call trance partisan coalitions. just the past week, sherrod brown and david vitter worked on banks too big to fail. two weeks before that on the va. and on the issue of how many people in this country are disenfranchised because of drug arrests. by the way, i want to talk to the two republicans on the set here. that s me politely telling you to hold on one second. republicans have such a great opportunity to run against the big government and to run against big business. most americans want the banks broken up. most americans republicans want the banks broken up. republicans can t be seen as captive to wall street, and they re running against a woman, if she gets the nomination, that s captive to wall street. she and bill clinton are wall street. they are so intertwined. why can t we have candidates say break up the banks, don t give wall street advantages? why can t we punish corporations that take their offices overseas to avoid our taxes? they live here, they get the benefits of being here. if you want to get denmark s tax rate, then you and your family have to move to denmark because you re not allowed to live here. if you live here, we re going to tax you. joe, i think you re seeing a lot of that, when you look at the republican desire to break up a bank that provides huge subsidies to major corporations so they can do business abroad. republicans are trying to do that. i think the fascinating dynamic that s going to change for our party, if hillary is the nominee, it s not going to be as much as a left-right fight as a future-past fight. republicans have the ability to paint hillary as the candidate of the past. i ll go back to katrina. we ll keep everybody here and anita, also. if i m a progressive, i can t be excited about hillary. she s intertwined with wall street. are you excited about the prospect of hillary clinton being the democratic nominee? no. i don t get excited about candidates. good for you. i m excited about what i see as the energy right now in a part of the democratic party which is this progressive populist energy which isn t just elizabeth warren. i think it s that bill that pushes senator clinton, former secretary of state. to the left. not to the left, but to really listen to those. i don t want to make it partisan or petty. it s not about hillary clinton. it s about the future of this country and what i believe we will disagree what i believe is needed. people believe this country is moving in the wrong direction. they don t see people there is a recovery in this country, and i think a president should be marked on the subsive accomplishments we ve got to go to break. i want to ask anita, also, there is a recovery out there. i want to ask anita why that s not showing up in the polls. anita, ari, katrina stay with us. still ahead on morning joe, the fall of richard nixon and the rise of ronald reagan. the author of the invisible bridge joins us later in the hour. plus ebola patients back in the united states, but the virus continues to spread across west africa. will it spread here as well? first, a 72-hour cease-fire appears to be holding, thank god, but for how long. we ll discuss how a long-term bill between israel and hamas can be brokered. that s coming up next. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. it s never been easier to find a dentist. watch. dentist. at 1-800-dentist, we ve helped over 8 million people find that right dentist. we can do the same for you. so don t put it off. call 1-800-dentist. so don t put it off. 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(soothing sound of a shower) with millions of reviews, tripadvisor makes any destination better. could help your business didavoid hours of delaynd test caused by slow internet from the phone company? that s enough time to record a memo. idea for sales giveaway. return a call. sign a contract. pick a tie. take a break with mr. duck. practice up for the business trip. fly to florida. win an award. close a deal. hire an intern. and still have time to spare. go to comcastbusiness.com/ checkyourspeed if we can t offer faster speeds - or save you money - we ll give you $150. comcast business. built for business. an neat tax let s finish up business from the last segment. let me ask you, you look at all the economic numbers, it looks like there s a recovery. the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer. we all have to figure out how to stop that. the middle class slowly making gains over the past year or so. why isn t that reflected in the polls? i think that the deposition of the recession and the fact that so many people are still feeling the effects of it comes through very clearly in the poll. we just had our sixth month of job creation over 200,000, the most the lowest number of new unemployment claims since 2007. it is slow, though, and always been a very slow process. the poll shows for the first time since i think since the recession, that more people think that we re not in a recession than we are in one. let s be clear. for people the economy is personal. in washington they talk about it as policy. i think katrina talked about the disconnect. that s one of the biggest disconnects. i also want to go quickly to something ari said about a wave election. there s no signs this is a wave election out there. in 2006, the democratic party was an alternative to the republican party. that s how waves develop. 2008, a wave election, 2010 obviously a gigantic wave election. now you have a republican party that is the alternative to obama that has a 14% approval rating in terms of its congressional leadership and policies. so i think it s a very different dynamic and it means a lot of these senate races in particular will be fought out on a state-by-state basis. i think you re absolutely right. i think tom cotton is ten points ahead. that s going to be a battle. luis nan is always a battle. we don t know what s going to happen in alaska. i think it s going to be a fascinating election. anita, thank you for being with us. we appreciate it and hope you ll come back soon. thank you for having me, joe. by the way, nicolle tell nicolle i said surprised for a reason. great to see you guys. great to see you, too. from domestic politics to israel, the 72-hour cease-fire between israel and hamas is now in its second day and appears to be holding. let s hold our breath there. people are out in the streets and the shops have reopened. but there were early concerns when hamas fired rockets into israel five minutes before the cease-fire took effect. negotiations for a long-term truce are currently under way in cairo. with us from tel aviv, senior correspondent and member of the editorial board, ari, the author of my promised land. ari, we love having you on the show. thank you for being back with us. thank you for having me. we got into it on the set again yesterday with donny deutsch. it seems to me the great tragedy, for me looking at this from my safe cloistered view from the united states, the past month has seemed to strengthen hamas which i think is in nobody s best interest. do we, though, have a chance with hamas being forced to deal with egypt? do we have a chance for palestinian moderates to finally have their say and have a chance to broker a reasonable deal? i think we actually do. when you look at the last months you realize that july in this country was the cruellest of months. we ve seen dark forces erupting and a real tragedy evolving. now the challenge is to bring about a much better august. the terrorists, the warriors, the generals that head the world, now it s time for the diplomats to be reasonable and wise and lead the way forward. let me tell you where i think things are, what we ve learned in this terrible month is two things. one, the gaza suffering which is unbearable. the second, israeli vulnerability which is unbearable as well. we have to deal with both simultaneously. the only way to do it is in a sense to lift some of the economic siege on gaza, but tie the military siege of gaza. in the larger term i would say it s time for a marshall plan that will really rebuild gaza. power stations, hospitals, schools and give real hope for the people of gaza while fighting the fanatical extremist hamas and while disarming it. so only a double track policy which will give hope to the people of gaza, but will be very tough with hamas and will bring about a demilitarization of gaza, will give us hope. i think there s a chance for it. i m sorry. i was just going to say, this time for some reason, appears to be different. we heard yesterday there weren t anti u.s. slogans out in the streets of gaza. you had some people in gaza blaming israel, blaming egypt but also blaming hamas. it appears that a lot of palestinians are ready to move away from this zero sum game. either they win or we lose. the question is, do you believe you ve written a lot about this, do you believe that benjamin netanyahu faced with this opening to actually empower moderates in palestine that will work towards a two-state solution, does he have the political courage to take that opening? i think there is a certain clans i m not very optimistic, but i think there is a chance. let me tell you what this depends on. as we ve seen, there are no saints in the middle east. yet i do believe there are good guys and bad guys. the good guys are the ones who love america and want stability. the bad guys are the ones who hate america and want instability. the good news is there is a potential alliance between the good guys which is egypt, the moderate palestinians, israel, with the support of saudi arabia, the gulf countries and jordan. if we will work out a concept that brings together these moderate forces, none of them perfect, definitely some of our arab neighbors, i do not admire their democratic values and the way they treat their citizens and yet they are relatively moderate and want stability and they are with america, if america will lead a real coalition of moderate israelis, mad rat palestinians and sunni arabs, i think we can create a context in which hamas will be isolated. radicals of the region will be isolated and then the dark forces, namely iran, the islamic brotherhood, i.s.i.s., hamas, al qaeda, islamic jihad, all of these will retreat. the result right now has some promise in it, but the solution, as i told you last week is only a political one. if we see assertive diplomacy, creative diplomacies, deals with the middle east as it is, i think there s reason for cautious hope. ari fleischer, there is reason for cautious hope because you look, and this is the first time this has happened. you do have uae, the gulf states, saudi arabia, jordan. you even have the palestinian authority. you, of course, have egypt who is playing a key role in this, you a lot of arab states that are also turning on hamas. 80% of the gaz sans before this attack began were turning against hamas. there is an opening if netanyahu and the moderate palestinians take it. i think you just put your finger on the changing winds of the middle east. ari, this is ari. i ve always wanted to say ari, this is ari. have you ever seen a potential realignment like this before in the middle east, especially saudi arabia which has worked behind the scenes with israel over the past many years, vis-a-vis iran. have you ever seen a potential realignment where arabs are willing to work with israel against what is really radical islam in the form of hamas? i think there is a great potential. what we ve seen look, in the middle east, nothing is like what meets the eye. if you really want to understand the region, you have to understand everything is multilayered here. what you actually have seen in the last weekend is egypt, israel and the moderate palestinians working together to try to stop hamas, and it worked. this is what brought about the cease-fire. if we enlarge this concept, i look at it from america s point of view. america on the one hand for very good reason is sick and tired of the middle east, for very good reasons. on the other hand, there is no way to run from the middle east. if you run from the middle east, the middle east chases you. we ve seen that in 9/11. the only sensible policy i see is for america to lead the alliance of the moderates that will bring some sort of stability to a deeply unstable region. i think if we see that, it will be good for the moderate palestinians for the people of gaza who will be different from hamas and gradually will move away from hamas. it will be better for all the moderates, for israelis, and it will serve america s interest best because it will give her the leadership it needs. as i told you, i think america is god s gift to humanity. america saved us all in the 20th century, and i wish america would lead us all in the 21st century. in order to do that, there is a potential of american leadership creating this alliance of moderates and giving some sort of reasonable modest hope to this trouble, violent region. ari, thank you so much. we love having you. we hope you ll come back very soon. katrina, a great opening. july was such a horrid month, such a depressing month. as ari said, you do have arab states moderate arab states that used to say something behind the scenes and then say something completely different in their state-sponsored broadcast bashing america, bashing israel. is there a chance for moderate palestinians and israelis to come together with a two-state solution? ari said something important at the top of his interview which is, we ve seen the generals and the warriors, the military men and people. now it s time for diplomacy. but too often that diplomacy has been is undered, broken, by steps taken by israel, not in its own security. hamas, yes, on both sides war crimes have been committed. but israel is a very powerful state. america is it $3 billion a year in military aid and others? at the same time he works . i want to say this country deserves a broader debate about israel. there s a richer debate inside israel about that. we re having that debate here. the media has not provided as much a little more of an opening this time around. but your debate here sounds like a one-sided debate. we have the ambassador to the united nations there s let me talk. let me talk. for the plo. katrina, you have to admit, you talk about israel. hamas fired 3,000 rockets into israel into civilian neighborhoods. you and i know if mexico fired one rocket across the rio grande, we would be in mexico city nightfall and there would be people executed and the united israel must be secure, but have you seen gaza katrina katrina, i agree with you. but you re talking about an asymmetry in a debate, and i m telling you that we re trying to provide symmetry. but you can t just come here and say, well, gee, it s israel that always if you say to me the right wing in israel i feel has worked against the best security of israel. there s a great documentary called the gate keepers with five former leaders of the masad who worry katrina. undermined israel s security. katrina, the only thing anything is ace symmetrical is israel has been forced to play defense. if they weren t unable to shoot down those rockets, the death toll would be more than what has happened in gaza. ari, gaza has been ravaged. who is going to rebuild gaza? that is the international community s mandated mission. we ve got to go to break. i have scars on my back for being down the middle on this. i am pro israeli. the reason i m doing it is because i m hearing my republican friends saying it and my conservative friends saying, my liberal friends saying it, people who don t give a damn about politics seeing what s happening in gaza, they ve said enough. we support israel. we want israel to be safe. but enough with the gaza suffering. i think that s exactly what ari said. he talked about a marshall plan. i support a marshall plan for the people of gaza, the oppressed people of gaza, oppressed by history and the terrible situation they re in. but i lay the blame of that oppression at hamas feet right now. we have an opportunity to isolate hamas and give them hope. i think that s a symmetrical debate. we need a political solution, not a military one. i agree with you 1,000%, and i think there is an opening and i m hopeful hamas is being isolated. that s a great idea. we re going to be talking, speaking of symmetry, to the plo ambassador to the united nations coming up next hour. i know you ll stick around and wake up your children to see that with us. coming up next, boy, a book that has sparked debate. called the invisible bridge about ronald reagan, charges of plagiarism flying around back and forth, but by one of the best conservative historians over the past decade who happens to be a liberal. we ll be right back. vo: this i. the summer of this. the summer that summers from here on will be compared to. where memories will be forged into the sand. and then hung on a wall for years to come. get out there, with over 50,000 hotels at $150 dollars or less. expedia. find yours. conservatives, even pat buchanan told me, joe, you have to read nixon land, it s a great book. it is a great book. his book on goldwater was absolutely amazing. a lot of conservatives talking about rick pearlstein who has written extraordinary books. his latest is controversial the invisible bridge. we ll be talking to rick about that. and ronald reagan: the rise and fall of ronald 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in return with ink plus from chase. like 50,000 bonus points when i spent $5,000 in the first 3 months after i opened my account. and i earn 5 times the rewards on internet, phone services and at office supply stores. with ink plus i can choose how to redeem my points. travel, gift cards, even cash back. and my rewards points won t expire. so you can make owning a business even more rewarding. ink from chase. so you can. it s amazing stuff. with us historian rick pearlstein, the author of the invisible bridge. also with us in washington, professor of history at rice university, douglas brinkley, co-ed tore of the new book the nixon tapes. rick, first of all, huge fan of your first two books, nixon land and the invisible bridge. pat buchanan, bill kristol. if you want to understand american conservatism, it s a great place to start. this book is controversial. craig shirley, a good friend of moin and of this show, there have been charges about plagiarism, i guess the times talked about it. so there s passages that look like they re lifted directly from some of craig s reagan books. what do you say? that s nonsense. we both used the word fess tune. i m calling it fess tune gates. what kind of plajist links source notes to the pages he s supposedly plagiarizing. a lot of the passages are the same. they re not the same. you re saying that put up the second passage. he thinks i got that from him. but actually i got it from an african-american paper, the atlanta world from 1976. and the thing that i write is completely richer. it s the second passage i think that your producer showed me was the one in which reagan was shown on camera laughing at what was going on at the convention reagan dissolved into laugher. what that doesn t show is then in my book i say he dissolved into laughter and then he saw himself on the screen dissolving into laughter and stopped laughing when he realized it looked bad on tv. that s from my original research. craig s thing i thought i was friends with him. people should read his book. anyone who is interested in ronald reagan should read his book because it s a good book. he wants my pumped, shredded. it want his read. he s also a public relations professional. his clients are people like ann coulter. the first thing they did was send out a letter to their role decks saying people could join their offensive, that s the word, and rick is trying to put a new spin on reagan and he said we can suggest tweets that you can use. so it really strikes me that this is an ideologically motivated thing. we ll get craig on at some point. maybe both of you on at some point. i would love to. i would really love to talk about this book. not to stay negative. like i said, i could not be larry king tweeted it was controversial and that s why he was reading it. again, your first two weeks i mentioned were extraordinary books. i thought you took a more negative tone toward reagan in this book. is that a fair assessment? i just kind of report what i see. what do you see? well, one thing i see, i write about this in the pref foss. it s very important to understand that opinions about reagan have always been divided. they ve been divided since he was in high school. i tell a story about how there was a cartoon in his high school yearbook making fun of him. some guy says, i m drowning, and reagan goes out and saves him. the guy says, no, don t save me, i m trying to commit suicide. reagan says you ll have to postpone that. i m trying to win a medal. people saw him as this phony ever since then. but other people saw him as a hero that they wanted to i m late. in the preface i quote a letter from a woman who writes him who said you need to save the country just like you saved someone when you were a lifeguard. by the same token, i had a friend who couldn t bring herself to read the manuscript because she was still so mad at ronald reagan. the bottom line s i m trying to bring back the idea the fact that ronald reagan is a controversial figure that has always divided america. it seems you re more sympathetic to richard nixon more than ronald reagan. people have told me they came away from the book more sympathetic to reagan. i don t know. i didn t go in with that agenda. it seems like reagan books are defensive voided in two. they either treat him as providential, put on earth to defeat the evil empire. i ve written a few of those. let s bring in doug brinkley. it s fascinating. people are still trying to get their arms around this man. we talked about what churchill would have said, he s still a mystery wrapped in a middle. there are parts of ronald reagan that i didn t know. absolutely. he s become a beloved figure. you have reagan national and all the rest. his presidential library is the most visited. the big reason everybody talks about reagan and generates such interest is because we may be living in the age of ronald reagan still. by that i mean the two big political figures of the 20th century from pure politics was franklin roosevelt and ronald reagan. fdr told america that the federal government is there to help you. it was there to plant trees with the shelter belt in the depression and all of those you know, it s here to feed the poor during the new deal. it was here to do social security. and then the government won world war ii, the atomic bomb on the manhattan project, federal government, harry truman continued creating government. the nsc, the pentagon, the joint chiefs of staff, the cia. dwight eisenhower, interstate highway system, biggest public works in history. kennedy did the moon. all this federal government. even nixon creates the epa, jimmy carter fema and then reagan. the revolution comes in 81 and it s a roll back that reagan is talking about. rolling back the great society and some of the new deal programs and that s where we are right now. rick. yeah, but he likes certain parts of government. he certainly liked the cia. he was on the rockefeller commission that investigated the cia and he was livid that they were taking on this part of the national security state that truman had started. so and of course when he was president he was quite pragmatic. he didn t roll back government like a lot of you guys had hoped. in fact conservatives all through his presidency had said reagan had sold out reaganism. bill buckley had to go to california in 1967 to defend ronald reagan against conservatives who said he was a sellout. what i m wondering listening to this is part of the root of the disagreement that other conservatives have with you and this book is that they are into mythdom. let s maintain mythdom about ronald reagan. it s far too early for him to be a myth. for the record, it s far to early to say conservatives have turned against this book. i m just saying i m a huge fan of your first two books. i just thought you gave reagan tougher treatment than you gave goldwashington goldwater or nixon. i m reading the whole thing and conservatives should as well. let the readers judge for themselves, i guess. loo look, if this guy is the most important man to ever walk the planet, shouldn t we be studying him, warts and all? look, people have always been underestimating ronald reagan. richard nixon underestimated ronald reagan and william f. buckley said he couldn t possibly imagine this guy as president. but there s this great nixon tape in 1971, you know. nixon and kissinger are sitting around. i think nixon or kissinger says can you imagine ronald reagan sitting in this chair. and kissinger is like no way, he s going to start a nuclear war. that was 1971. you can get it on youtube. two years later because he s such a rising political figure, they bring him in on the consultations and say we have a problem. egypt is exaggerating the number of israeli planes that they re shooting down. reagan says that s no problem. just announce that we re going to on a one for one basis replace every israeli plane that egypt says it shoots down and kissinger was like astonished at this guy s intelligence and he said i wish i had a guy like that on my staff. so i just brought that story into the public record. all right, very good. rick, thank you so much for being with us. congrats on the book. this discussion will continue and we ll see if we can get craig on and you guys can break bread together. duke it out. exactly, duke it out. the book is the invisible bridge. rick, thanks again. doug brinkley, thank you as well. coming up next, we re breaking on the latest nbc news/wall street journal polls. they are ugly for both sides. chuck todd will be here but there s a ray of hope in the poll and chuck will tell us what it is. i have absolutely no clue. plus pretender or contender. one way or another rand paul is making an impression in iowa, and the global market is reeling. did you see this? they were reeling yesterday as russian troops assemble on the border of eastern ukraine. is this the first step before a larger act of aggression? is war coming in russia? morning joe will be right back. my motheit s delicious. toffee in the world. so now we ve turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i m janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. i never really thought i would make money doing what i love. we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. israeli troops today finally pulled out of gaza. was this a celebration of a victory or just relief at their return? uncertainty too whether hamas forces ensure no more rockets are fired into israel. we have to talk about demilitaryizing israel. nancy writebol has arrived safely. afghanistan is still a war zone. the pentagon confirming moments ago that an american general was killed. major general harold green, the deputy commander of the security transition in afghanistan he wasn t there he was help krt icf. we re going to see a lot more of this as our combat forces zero out. we re not going more and more vulnerable not just to killed and wounded but to abductions. rand paul is in iowa where he is running and sometimes ducking. if you have a question, i m happy to answer it. i get paid a lot to be wrong. i m sure i ll be proven wrong here. he s a fascinating guy, he s a fascinating candidate and i think he has absolutely no chance to actually be elected president of the united states. you re talking about real hard choices. which would you rather fight, one horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? we d have peace peace here, there a peace, everywhere a peace. welcome back to morning joe. so great to have you guys with us. man, the first two hours of flown. this hour, don t blink because it s i mean we have so much stuff to fill, and you re here with some really happy news, chuck todd. america needs prozac. no, no, you re going to tell us these poll numbers are like prozac for america. absolutely right. chuck todd is here, he s got some polls. also we ve got managing editor of the news website, bobby ghosh, sara eisen and op-ed columnist dana milbank is here to cheer us up because dana always cheers everybody up. he writes only about the happiest things in washington. he s polly annish, i beneficiary he had would be a bit more biting at times. the economy is better. and see that s the thing, okay. the economy is no. hold on. the economy is better, sara, right? right. but nobody is noticing that it s better. well, no, they do notice. that was what was interesting about our poll. they know the economy is better. it s just not better for them. why are they so depressed? it s a number of things. first of all, they re not recovered from the recession. yes, financially they have recovered, but there are still one in three americans that are either supporting a child over the age of 21 or a parent over the age of 65. the great recession made that. so you have these folks sitting there, they re digging out and sitting there going i m still dealing with the recession. yes, my income, by the way, flat, but i have a job and all these things, so i m still dealing with it even though you keep telling me the economy is better. so, sara, like 70% of americans, i m a politician so i round up or down. 70% of americans think we re going in the wrong direction. 80% of americans think washington is going in the wrong direction. talk to those 70% of americans and tell them why the economy is getting better, why things are improving. well, we saw a 4% growth number last week for the second number. that is a big deal. but you sort of do have this two-speed recovery going on between income. low income, middle income hasn t seen a recovery and wages is the story of why most americans aren t feeling it. adjusted for inflation, they haven t gone anywhere during this entire jobs recovery. the good news is, though, job openings are at the highest level in multi years. the good news is we ve seen several months now a stretch of 200,000 plus jobs created in this country. easier to get a job now. employment rate going up because more people are actually looking. so easier to get a job. we need to see those wajges stat to go up. let s look at those numbers again. you would have thought yesterday people were jumping out of their windows. oh, my gosh, the stock market crashed. we re almost at 16,500. the numbers have just exploded and people don t feel it on main street at all. only half of the population owns stocks. they have been burned by the financial crisis. unless you have it in your mutual fund and retirement portfolios, you re not feeling a recovery in the stock market. look at these numbers from the poll. 64% of americans are not satisfied with the state of the economy, 35% are and that 1% not sure. but you just said the stock market is rewarding companies for streamlining, for hoarding cash, for cutting people. the stock market does not reward companies for investing, for being entrepreneurial, for creating new jobs. so i think that that s why this is even worse on how people feel. the president s job approval, 40%. born policy just bleak. 36% approve, 60% disapprove. dana milbank, my god, here we are 2014, coming up on a midterm election. this is so lined up for the republicans, they are going to sweep through there. it s going to be a prairie fire sweeping across america. but wait, you look at congress job approval rating and the american people say they suck. it s 14% approve of congress job performance rating. here s the party approval, dana. the gop 19%. only 19% have a favorable impression. 54% unfavorable. democrats, i was about to say all the way up at 31%. my parents were glad when i get 31s on my math tests but nobody else is. so, dana, washington, d.c., man, if i m an incumbent, i m thinking this year going into the election that i actually there is a chance that i could get challenged. it s bad news for d.c. it is bad news overall for d.c., but let me add some cheer and light to this. that s why you re here. that s why i m here, because i m always the glass is always half full for me. i don t think these numbers are that bad for president obama given how awful things are overall. and it s not just the economy that s bad. americans are depressed. 76% in this poll don t think their children are going to have a better life than they have had. so far they re right if we re talking about the millennials. 60% think the nation is in decline. when you ve got those kinds of numbers, more than 70% on the wrong track, for the president to be where he is, is quite extraordinary. and the pollsters are saying this does not indicate the sort of wave elections, so people are sort of universal in their discussion. so, dana, in the past you d look at right track, wrong track. you d look at the president s approval ratings and you d be able to predict for the most part other than 1998 what would happen in off-year elections. why is that not the case this year? because of the disgust with washington, 70% is universal. it s also because there s only so many ways voters can register their disgust because very few people are actually vulnerable when you look at the house in particular. and then, you know, you look at the senate. like last night s primaries, you don t see a lot of anti-incumbent antagonism out there in the voters. they re depressed, they re disgusted with washington. they don t know particularly what to do about it. and, dana, of course every republican in washington, d.c. is going to be holding their breath and waiting for your answer on this because they know they can t wait to hear the answer to this. what is wrong with the republican party? oh, they ll be fine, joe, don t worry about it. no, i don t know that they will. i mean the question we ve been asking all morning is what do they stand for? i know people hate to talk about like when i ran for congress. i m sorry, i could talk about when i was a high school football coach. it wouldn t be as applicable. when i ran, everywhere i went people are saying what are you going to do if you actually get elected. i say we re going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, shove it through the house. if you were a republican in 2014 and people says what are you going to do other than investigate, investigate, and i m not talking the investigations, but what are you going to do other than investigate, seriously, what is the answer a republican can give? i mean i would say the campaign slogan boiled down for november is not that guy. so we are not president obama, we are not the democrats, and they figure and they re probably right, that will be enough to get them across the finish line this time. that s of course not enough in the long term and even in 2016 term because you actually do have to have some sort of an alternative here. so i mean they re playing a very short-term game here which may work and may feel that validated their strategy going into this but i don t see where you go starting in december. you know, chuck, i always love to say that i m living proof that in off-term elections you can beat something with nothing. in presidential elections you actually have to stand for something. i m not so sure in 2014 that s the case anymore. tom cotton should be up by ten points in arkansas. he s not. republicans should have closed out mary landrieu by now in louisiana. they have not. georgia, still up in the air. there are a lot of red states where democrats are still holding on. part of the issue is independents are totally throwing up their hands. you see interest in this election by independents cratering. one of the reasons our poll says this isn t a wave election. interest is lower now than 06 or 10 to wave elections. the voters don t have amnesia. they voted for change three of the last four elections and they didn t get it and they re mad. by the way, you want to know what the future of the republican party looks like and what happens when the whole thing blows up in your face? what s that? look at kansas. kansas is a mess right now. sam brownback, a conservative. sam is in trouble. he s in big trouble. he only got 62% in a primary. he didn t really have a real challenger. why is sam in trouble right now? there s a couple of things. one is he was very aggressive and basically trying to leave the charge to purge his party of moderates. he put in a tax bill that was fiscally the moderate republicans argued it was fiscally irresponsible, it was too much that he didn t pay for it. he went very much with a very aggressive tax-cutting policy. the wall street journal loves it, but half the party inside of kansas doesn t. but this is a state. the republicans are in charge. this is full-on being in charge. you can t point your finger at anybody else. and you re seeing almost an implosion here, an ideological implosion taking place inside of kansas. obviously the book years ago what s the matter with kansas talked about why do rural folks in kansas vote against their economic self-interests. but there s a different way, if you want to understand how the national republican party and congressional republicans could see the whole thing collapse on them, go look at kansas. sara, one final question about the polls and then i want to talk about afghanistan with bobby and just unbelievable news that came out yesterday. so it s fascinating, we were talking about this last hour. you look at what americans want. they want the banks broken up in this wall street journal poll, they want corporate tax rates cut, very conservative, right? but they also want minimum wage raised. which conservatives don t love. and you can there are all of these contradictions. but there is actually a consensus that is not left or not right on economics. they want the 1% to get taxed more. a lot of different things going on here. and that s a reflection of the sluggish growth and sluggish income growth. what the business community wants from washington right now, immigration reform, we know that, and that s sort of on both sides of the aisle. corporate tax reform, also going to be very tricky to pull off. the party that campaigns should campaign on those factors that will boost the economy and will boost normal americans way of living and their incomes. you heard president obama talking to the economist magazine earlier this week, hostile with ceos and the business community saying that they live in the hamptons and they should stop complaining. what the business community wants from the republican party is less regulation, dodd-frank financial regulation and obamacare and more proactive reforms. you talk about a reflection of cost cutting. they need to invest and have the confidence to hire. it starts with the ceos, say what you will about them and about businesses. if they get that confidence, that could go a long way to restoring incomes and helping the economy. the top ceos may not say it in front of a camera, but you talk about a lack of distrust in the president of the united states exactly. it is hostile. but the supposed party of business, this is a republican party that wants to dump the import/export bank, doesn t want to do immigration reform. the business community s agenda is not the republican the irony is obama is closer to what they want to get done i don t know about that. i know that, look, the epa thing is a different story, some of these regulations. but let s talk about immigration reform and import/export, obama is their best ally. dana, it is something and the president can t seem to win for losing with wall street. and this has been this has been a bizarre relationship since 2009. he s done a lot of things. he didn t crack down on the big banks a way a lot of his own supporters want him to crack down. there are a lot of punitive measures that he could have taken. and the justice department could have taken against some of the malfeasance that occurred. he didn t do it, and yet he s still very unpopular on wall street. he hasn t been able to profit from that. chuck is right, there is a huge amount of antagonism. mo brooks from alabama who just yesterday or the day before was talking about the war on whites. he was making an argument against the wall street journal editorial page. there s a huge divide there. if you look at the facts on the ground since then, they have little reason to be frustrated with him as opposed to what they re getting from congress but i think there s a long hangover effect there. if i were groucho marx, the duck would have come down because dana got in the war on whites phrase. congratulations, dana. you said the magic phrase. we gave people a bunch of lists on how to improve the economy. 78% picked this. increase fines and jail time for executives at financial institutions who broke the law would help. so you ve got a public out there that s actually ticked off that nobody went to ceos are upset that, hey, you re not doing the corporate tax rate. the public is upset that a ceo isn t in jail. and that s what the president is responding to. there s a disconnect between america and the east coast. a republican candidate that goes out and is anti-big business and anti-big government does big things. watch out for rand paul. they re just not out there. rand paul running away from some of the things he said. he does run away. just a couple of years ago. literally we saw him run away. he literally ran away from the dreamers and now he s running away from what he said about cutting off all aid to israel. this morning changing stories from domestic to international. the pentagon is investigating an attack that left a two-star army major general dead. the highest ranking american killed in iraq or afghanistan. the 55-year-old major general was harold green, the second highest ranking american serving in afghanistan. he was overseeing the transition efforts in handing over u.s. responsibilities to afghan troops. green and other coalition forces were at camp tuesday when an afghan soldier opened fire, seriously injuring several others before being killed and returning fire. bobby, my god, you look at this poll and there is so much to talk about. we could talk about russia, a possible invasion, what it did to the markets yesterday. we could talk about what s happening in the middle east. we re going to with the ambassador to the united nations for the plo coming up, but of course this hasn t happened since, i think, 70 or 71 in vietnam. the situation in afghanistan is just a mess. you talk about americans looking around going what s going on. so many americans still want to know why we re spending $2 billion a week in a war that we just can t win. well, i think that drawdown that the president has promised couldn t come fast enough for many americans. it is the most senior military official killed since vietnam. since we are desperately trying to look for good news this morning, the number of green on blue killings has actually come down. the target was a big one this time. 2012 was huge. nearly 50, last year nearly 15, this year this is only the fourth, i think, all year, which is a smaller number. that s very small consolation. the opportunities for green and blue violence will reduce so fewer american soldiers, knock on wood, will die. but what this tells us is there is still a gigantic mess we re leaving behind there. if the afghan military cannot stand up, and the indications are not good, if they cannot stand up, that quickly will very quickly devolve back again into this cess pit and it will pull its neighbors, pakistan again and it is once again the place from where terror will be exported around the world. it s unbelievable all the lives that have been lost, all the money that s been invested in iraq and in afghanistan. here we are 12 years later, 13 years later, we re still looking for that thomas jefferson figure. guess what, he s not there. well, he s not. it s been three months since presidential elections and they still haven t figured out who the president is. the two candidates are still fighting. john kerry tried to mediate there and that still hasn t happened. they re still counting the votes all over again. there s no one who s behaving like a statesman. never mind thomas jefferson. no one is willing to behave like a statesman. everyone is behaving like a narrow tribal or ethnic leader. and that s the nature of the problem. we would settle for far less actually. the afghans would settle for far less. wouldn t political rivals in a country that cared about this, they d be both serving in the government. wouldn t at this point that s what kerry tried to do. and that s what george washington did. he brought a bunch of rivals into that cabinet. you know, there actually is a model. i know, there is. chuck todd, thank you for being with us. dana, thank you for bringing your own special brand of sunshine to morning joe. you have lit us up. thank you for coming, i hope you ll come back soon. we loved having you. still ahead on morning joe drugs on the diamond. has baseball successfully moved on from the steroid era? plus, will the peace in gaza hold? we ll be discussing that with the ambassador of palestine to the u.n. but coming up next, is a tech bubble ready to burst? the co-founder of foursquare, dennis crowley, is here to explain what s next for silicon valley and his company. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. everybody s excited about the back to school savings at staples. from the customers, to the staples associates. with guaranteed low prices on laptops, you ll flip out! now go tell your friends. staples. make more happen for less. where the reward was that what if tnew car smelledit card and the freedom of the open road? a card that gave you that i m 16 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eastern airlines. it didn t work out well for me. of course pets.com an ever lasting symbol of the internet bubble. did any of you know what eastern airlines is? i knew pets.com. the question is are we in the middle of another tech bubble. with us the founder of foursquare, dennis crowley. i found out you re not in silicon valley, you re in silicon alley. what exactly is silicon alley when it s at home? i think silicon alley now is just all of the tech activity that s happening in new york. i ve never found the one specific alley. you ve been looking since 98. since i moved in 98 i thought it was one street and i think it s most of downtown manhattan at this point. you ve got a pretty good streak, though. you ve got some great tech startups. yeah, we re doing okay. foursquare hob going for five years strong and i had a company before this. so is there a tech bubble? are we worried about a tech bubble? i was watching the pets.com commercial. i haven t seen that in forever. back then, that was people trying to sell a little bit of everything on the internet. the people that are selling stuff on the internet have figured it out. i think what companies like four square are doing now is trying to reinvent the world through this lens of data analytics and how can we reinvent the world with data. i think it s an entirely different game now than it was back then. sara, you look skeptical. i ve been seeing these evaluations, they re eye-popping. you mentioned eastern airlines. does it make sense to you that uber, which is not a public company yet, is valued more than united airlines or whole foods? that s the valuation these types of companies are getting. you look at the potential of these companies. it s like is uber going to reinvent transportation logistics? are they going to be the broker by which people go and pick up their driverless cars. who knows what that future looks like but they re in a good spot to execute it. i was going to ask about the data analytics bring up. he who has the data wins, as we know with the nsa. so how are you trying to expand the footprint of what we ve come to know foursquare to be and how you see it moving beyond that so that you stay futureproof. what we ve been trying to do is build these amazing personalized local search ing n engines. why should all of us get the same search results if we re looking for lunch or dinner in this neighborhood. we should learn from the way people experience new york city to give everyone different results. what if i don t want people to know where i am. it s not about people knowing where you are. its new foursquare is how can we take all this information about where people have been in the past and help you find spots perfect for you. like a yelp. but much smarter. with yelp all of us get the same results. but what foursquare is trying to do is you would get different results, you would get different results. thomas and i would get faur different results. if you re interested in creating a tech alibi, foursquare could be your end. i just learned that german factory orders fell off. way to bring that in. as dennis is pointing out you sound like a consumer that has used this as a tech alibi. no, not yet. but since we re thinking about it, i m always thinking about things. of course you are. but joe is bringing up the contrast about the fact that he doesn t want people to know where he is so why is foursquare a viable service for him to use? and you ve got a new app, right? it s called social media. social. i never tell people where i am until i left three days ago. hey, look, it s beautiful in nantucket. one of the things we found out is not everyone wants to share their location all the time. so for the people that do want to do that, we launched a separate app for them and called it swarm. you can download it now. it s called swarm? swarm, yes. swarm is the one where you want to share that you re traveling to all these exotic places. i m going to line that one out. the new foursquare app is all about learning about the things that you like and so we can drive you toward the places we think you d love. let s say i want to find the best music spots in brooklyn and williamsburg. i go on the new four square app. yeah, either type in i m looking for live music or scroll over to night life. based upon where people are going in realtime and based upon what people have said about those places, we help you find the best things that fit your taste. so we re talking about jobs. we re talking about americans being unhappy. i get that you re trying to transform industry and you re trying to change the world. what about jobs? what s up when it got acquired by facebook had 55 employees. are you guys creating jobs? i think we re creating jobs. it s very difficult to find software engineers that are incredibly talented. can i ask you about the immigration crisis, the immigration debate. how important is it for you to be able to get immigrants that, say, graduate from m.i.t. and then they have to go back home? it s tricky because we hit we re only allotted a certain amount of visas every year and we hit that limit every year. there s always people we d love to pull in but are above that limit. so it makes hiring talented engineers even harder because we re up against those restrictions. how much of a difference would it make for you as far as global competitiveness if you didn t have those restrictions. i don t think it s just us. we would pick up a handful of engineers per year, which would be a huelp for us, but across te companies in new york and in the valley, i think it would make a big difference. all right, dennis, you ve convinced me there is no tech bubble and i m getting your new foursquare app. what s that watch? it s called anuka. so this for the camera. it s called a nuka watch. does it tell time? it does, yes. what else does it do? it tells the future. tells the future? in the future, four square is awesome. oh, that is so awesome. so, sara, before you leave, we always look at german factory orders to figure out what s going on. as you should. and you say german factory orders fell off a cliff and this is important. because it is the russian factor. obviously the sanctions are starting to hit russia. europe and russia have a very close trade relationship. russia is the eighth biggest economy. thomas was just telling me this. this is not a small emerging markets economy, as thomas knows. so putin moves troops to the border of the ukraine, we feel it here yesterday on wall street. you saw it. just a headline, vulnerability, it s a fragile market out there. the geopolitical tensions especially in russia and ukraine are shaking confidence right now. dennis, thank you so much. thank you for having me. appreciate you being here. check out more on our website on afternoon mojo to find out more about dennis, foursquare and the watch that he wears. coming up next, israel and hamas are taking the first steps toward a long-term truce but a deal won t be struck without conditions. we ll talk about the prospects for a more stable cease-fire with the palestinian ambassador to the united nations coming up next. 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. my mom works at ge. thank ythank you for defendiyour sacrifice. and thank you for your bravery. thank you colonel. thank you daddy. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance can be one of them. if you re a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. we re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov we re now in the second day of a 72-hour cease-fire between israel and hamas that for now still appears to be holding. with us now the ambassador for palestine to the united nations, ambassador riyad mansour. thank you for having me. i was talking to an israeli journalist earlier and he talked about the horrors on both sides. he talked about the palestinian suffering. i mean saying things that you don t usually hear from israelis, that it s just that we may actually have an opening. is there an opening for peace out of this terrible tragic month of july? i hope so. it is not going to be easy, it s going to be very difficult. we have a delegation prese representing all the palestinians in cairo that has been there in a few days. i believe there will be an israeli delegation going to cairo today as well. i hope that we can begin the discussion in order to not allow for a 72-hour cease-fire but for a long cease-fire and to deal with the root causes of this situation. and hopefully lasting peace. yes. do you think the palestinian authority is going to have more authority to negotiate with israel on a long-term peace deal since you have the saudis, the egyptians, uae and a lot of other states trying to bolster you and trying to push aside some of the more extreme elements of hamas? we succeeded in april of reaching an agreement to have a national consensus government. and that national consensus government represents everyone, including hamas. so for us in this national consensus government under the leadership of president mahmoud abbas, if we succeed by being empowered by everyone, including the international community, to be responsible for the transition of rebuilding gaza and having a long-lasting cease-fire and then to move into the political situation of negotiating the end of occupation and the independence of the state of palestine so we can have two state solution living side by side in peace and security, then that would be the best thing not only for us, for israel and for the entire region. ambassador, you talked about the national consensus government that you agreed to in april. hamas was at that point at its historical weakest moment politically as well as militarily. what is your assessment of hamas position now after a month of fighting? there are some who say that hamas in some ways is stronger, at least politically, and if that is so then the dynamic within the coalition government changes. is hamas a political force that now you have to reckon with? hamas is a significant political force among the palestinians. the israeli government waged this war for several reasons, including the reason that they wanted to destroy the national consensus government, to keep us divided and, therefore, weaker so that they can make us in a weaker position in terms of negotiation. now the challenges for us is not to allow the israeli government succeed in the destruction of the national consensus government, but to allow the national consensus government to lead the negotiation in cairo, to succeed in the negotiation there, to show the palestinian people in the gaza strip that it is the government that was able to make a difference in their lives by lifting the siege, opening the borders, allowing our fishermen to fish deep in 12 miles or beyond in the mediterranean sea where they can get most of the food for the people in gaza in terms of fish. if we succeed in these challenges, and i believe that the gentleman that you referred to, he was saying you cannot have success in dealing with the situation in gaza without lifting the siege against the people in gaza. he is absolutely correct. we need to show especially the young, 50% of the people in gaza are under 18. we have to give them hope. so with that, and i ve made no secret of the fact that i m a long-time supporter of israel, but with that i would love for the borders to be open, for there to be the possibility. the egyptian border and more movement and less of a siege mentality there, but how do we guarantee security for the israeli people so hamas doesn t use that opportunity to just rebuild its war machine that not only undercuts israel, but undercuts what you re trying to do? well, we have to build on things that succeeded in the past. right. hamas and israel reached a cease-fire agreement in the year 2012 under the auspices of the egyptians. president abbas was not involved in that. now we have a national consensus government that represent everyone, including hamas. if we have that cease-fire and build on it and add new things to it, such as the possibility of putting in place an observer force or group of people to observe the cease-fire, for the israelis that that observer force will create a deterrent atmosphere so that nobody will be firing anything from gaza towards israel, for us in the gaza strip, it will create a deterrent element where the israelis will not be executing palestinians in gaza and attacking gaza as they wish. so this new additional element which we are dewait batbating - and also so israeli people don t have to worry about rockets raining down on them from ha hoss. but also when you have 11,000 killed and injured in four weeks, 80% of them are civilians, large number of children, this is a tragedy. it s so huge that is impacting the entire population, entire nation of the palestinians, including half a million displaced. there s no doubt it has been july has been one of the most tragic months, and let us hope that peace comes out of it. thank you so much. thank you very much for having me. and we hope you ll come back. nicolle had five or six questions, we just don t have time. okay. coming up, how baseball explains america. the author of that new book explains our obsession with america s national pastime. we ll be right back. think the tree we carved our names in is still here? probably dead. how much fun is this? what? what a beautiful sunset. if you like sunsets. whether you re sweet or salty. you ll love nature valley sweet and salty bars. with us now, the senior correspondent for mlb.com, hal bodley, he s the author of how baseball explains america. one of the most important books written about baseball. that s a pretty damn good review by the new york daily news. that s true. it s also such a thick and deep part of our culture, baseball. explain what you ve been doing with your whole life, and it s all right here in this book right now. after covering baseball for 55, 56 years you have a lot of memories, a lot of tapes stored away, interviews you ve done with a lot of people and that type of thing. i wanted to bring it altogether. i thought i could do a memoir. i talked to ted williams in his underwear. i flew on air force one with george h.w. bush. then i thought, hey, that doesn t really work too good. what about baseball and how essential it is to our society. every day. i challenge you, can you go an hour without using a baseball term in your language. you probably can t but it s such an important part of our society. it s essential, the people who have a great passion for the game. they love the game and made it possible. i tried to tie all that in and it s been very, very rewarding for me. i think all of us on this set agree that baseball was such an integral part of our country and our country s culture. do you worry at all about the pace of the game and the fact that the demographics of baseball are increasingly people our age and you re not too far from our age and we re losing some younger baseball fans because of the pace of the game? no question, mike. the games, when they last over three hours, i covered a nine-inning game in tampa bay the other day that was four hours long, it was so awful. i think the velcro, the players are tightening their gloves after every swing of the bat, that type of the game. they do have to speed it up. i think it s a big concern that we haven t been able to bring the youngsters into the game, the little boys. my dad took me to yankees stadium in 1950, the world series with the phillies. we sat behind the dugout. joe dimaggio came to the plate. he put his arm around me and said pay very, very close attention to this because this is something you re going to remember the rest of your life. do dads take their kids to the ballpark as much as they used to? i m not sure they do. we have a contagious type of thing where kids get really involved. i think if the games were played more in the daylight and not so late at night, that would certainly help. so anthony bosh arrested yesterday. brings back the question of steroids, you have a chapter in the book about steroids. we all lived through the steroid era. we may or may not be over. i was a san francisco giants season ticket older. i watched barry bonds break all those records. context y contextualize it. how do we look at that era and put it in proper context? i think our society struggles with it, obviously. i think that decade of the steroid era, it s very, very important we recognize it. if we ever use those record books, we have to have an asterisk in there. i think saying this is during the steroid era. for me personally i will never vote for any of these players that have tainted the game and been involved with steroids. so it s a very, very important thing. i was just going to say quick debate here, let s talk about something important. the greatest decade for baseball. i grew up in the 1970s. you had the oakland a s, hank aaron, willie mays was still playing, lou brock. it was an extraordinary decade. but you disagree with me. i do. i really do, joe. because i talked to tom brokaw, he wrote that great book the greatest generation. and i said to you agree with me that the 1940s was the greasest generation in baseball? the greatest decade in baseball. and he said positively. i ll tell you the reason why. joe dimaggio s 56-game hitting street, ted williams batting over .400. you had all of these good players going to war. above all that, jackie robinson in 1947 breaks the color barrier. that has to be the greatest. it was very, very important to our society and to baseball. you know, you talk about baseball, though. i really do mark so many moments of my life. 1975 obviously what happened in game six, but i will forever remember being in dalton, georgia, at my grandmom s house on april 8, 1974, when al downing pitched that pitch to hank aaron. i mean there are just these are the moments that mark our lives, right? really. it s how baseball explains america. you know, it s so important. and that moment when hank broke that record, that has to stand. and the fact that there was somebody that had peds that helped go above that record the records are so sacred in baseball. it s still hank aaron. we shall return. it s how baseball explains america. hal bodley, thank you so much for being here. always my pleasure. we ll be right back. where the reward was that what if tnew car smelledit card and the freedom of the open road? a card that gave you that i m 16 and just got my first car feeling. presenting the buypower card from capital one. redeem earnings toward part or even all of a new chevrolet, buick, gmc or cadillac - with no limits. so every time you use it, you re not just shopping for goods. you re shopping for something great. learn more at buypowercard.com i m alex trebek. if you re age 50 to 85, please listen carefully. the lock i want to talk to you about isn t the one on your door. it s a rate lock for your life insurance that guarantees your rate can never go up at any time, for any reason. many policies don t have one but you can get a lifetime rate lock through the colonial penn program. this plan was designed for people on a fixed income with coverage options for just $9.95 a month. that s less than 35 cents a day. your rate is locked in for life and coverage can never be cancelled. your acceptance is guaranteed. you cannot be turned down because of your health. call for your information kit and gift. both are free, with no obligation. we needed 30 new hires for our call center. i m spending too much time hiring and not enough time in my kitchen. need to hire fast? 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(loud engine sounds!) what! how s it going? heard you need a ride to school. i know just the thing to help you get going. power up with new cheerios protein. female announcer: sundayduring sleep train s triple choice sale. for a limited time, you can choose to save hundreds on beautyrest and posturepedic mattress sets. or choose $300 in free gifts with sleep train s most popular tempur-pedic mattresses. you can even choose 48 months interest-free financing on the new tempur-choice, with head-to-toe customization. the triple choice sale ends sunday at sleep train. sleep train your ticket to a better night s sleep let s talk about what we learned today and i was just told we have one second. mike barnicle what did you learn? anything with colin cowherd is a huge day. thomas. orioles. bobby. the ambassador to the united nations is a floridian. in a country where everyone is depressed and gloomy, this is the happiest place in america. you might turn back to barnicle for another thing about the sports guy. what, hal bodley? i have no idea what s going on here. chuck todd, we owe you about 30 seconds, we re sorry. stick around, here s chuck with all of the nbc news/wall street journal polls. you ve got to watch it, it will change your life. see you tomorrow, bye. his first bakery in a small hawaiian town. making bread so good, that people bought two loaves one to take home, and one to eat on the way. so good, they grew from here. to here. to here. but to grow again, to the east coast they needed a new factory, but where? fortunately, they get financing from ge capital. we not only have teams dedicated to the food industry, we re also part of ge, a company that s built hundreds of factories. so we could bring in experts to help king s hawaiian make sense of transportation routes, supply chains, labor pools, and zoning to help them make the right decision. and, i d like to think, to make their founder proud. if you just need a loan, just call a bank. at ge capital, we re builders. and what we know, can help you grow. when folks think about wthey think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america.
hello, iowa! i m back! she s back and clearly running. she says she hasn t decided yet but that s what someone does when they run for president. they go to iowa, joe. yes, they do. they go to iowa. they go the steak fry. harold, isn t that what they do? i don t know. harold. that s what i heard. jeremy peters would know. when you re running for president write a book, check and then go around the country talking about what your beliefs are. check. use that book tour. then do you go to iowa? i think new hampshire is next. exactly. so that is basically a run for president unless she says it isn t. right. so the silliness like will she or won t she we don t do that any more. let s look at the images. harkin, clinton, hillary, they are at the steak fry and grilling steak. yeah. that s big. okay. i like steak. 5,000 people showed up. that s great. they were very excited. all very upset when she said, a little joke i haven t decided. they all said boo. because they want her to run. you know what s thor to here, joe. i ll tell you what the story is. i like hillary clinton. but what hillary clinton has done over the past year or so is why americans hate politics. why? it just is. what? she s having fun. she s having steak. you re secretary of state. you play it safe. you then write a book. you say absolutely nothing. you go around on a glorified book tour where you say nothing. you want people to ask you to run for president so you can say i m not running for president we don t know yet. you go to these stupid events. you re either running or not running. she s running. that s okay. there are enough things going on in the world, we have enough crises that maybe playing safe, we need a politician that doesn t just sit back and act like a robot and just like get programmed in and do like no creativity. no spontaneousity, nothing from the heart. this is the problem for people who month her and like her. she puts on that political hat and then she s a robot. she goes through the motions. she doesn t reveal herself. she didn t do it against barack obama that s why she lost in 2008. it wasn t until her back was against the wall and had to stop acting like a robot on the campaign trail and instead had to be herself that hillary clinton started winning. she s been a robot here for two years, playing safe, writing books, telling us absolutely nothing, going to iowa, doing absolutely nothing. and just begging people to beg her to run for president of the united states or not while people are getting their heads carved off. this is not a game. this is not some little chess match. this is something that actually matters. and these families that have been around for like decades and who are now getting their children ready to run, and i m not just talking about the clintons, i m talks about the bushs and these two american families. you know what? if you want to run, run. if you want to save america get your ass out there and save america. stop playing your stupid political games because more people are out of work and if they do have jobs they got two or three crappie jobs. the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, terrorists are carving heads off people who are trying to help in the middle east and you are playing games rubbing your hands together like hamlet jeb if you re going to run, run and if you re not going to run tell us. hillary, if you re going to run just say you re going to run and stop playing games. we got to roll up our sleeves. if you re not going to run, then get the hell out of the way. so other people can get out there and we can start having a serious debate. what did ted turner say, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. hey hillary, lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. i don t want to see you eating steak. i want to see you talking about how we re going to stop isis, not behind some cute little pre-packaged plan that some of your handlers fixed up or somebody helped you write in a book. same with you jeb. come on mr. savior of the republican party. if you re the savior of the republican party, then get out there or listen to your mom and just stay home. but stop having it both ways. let s not cover that story. let s cover real news. i ll end with this. in iowa with a teasing statement it s true i m thinking about it. oh, shut up! shut up, hillary. shut up, jeb. no. you guys, if the two great families that have look where we are right now, right? right? you guys have done really great haven t you? america is in a great place after 25 years of bush-clinton rule. what a way to go. if you re going to run, run. give us new ideas that help us face the next 25 years. by the way, i would really like george h.w. bush to run. i know. wouldn t that be wonderful. identify always loved jeb. he s my favorite politician. of all leaders he s my favorite leaders. i m sick and tired of the cat and mouse game. maybe i ll run, maybe i won. hillary the same thing. let them ask me to run and it will make me feel so good. i agree with you. do it or don t do it. john and alex in the control room, we have kasie hunt coming up later talking about hillary in iowa. can we scratch that and anything else that happened in iowa that was ready for elizabeth group. there was a whole other bunch of stuff happening. if she can come in to her raw tape that might serve our purpose. mika, how was your weekend? it was okay. okay? yeah. mine was really relaxing. it was. i just got a little revved up. i can tell. i m sick and tired of the games. i don t understand the calculation. nfl story will set you off again. jeremy wants to talk. you raise an interesting point because behind the fact of all of this empty political rhetoric, the kabuki, oh, i m thinking about it stuff, you forget hillary is actually extremely well positioned to run on her foreign policy credentials right now. with the world on fire you would think she would be hear some ideas but you re not. that s the problem. maybe some criticism or concern. that s why americans hate politics. honesty. it s all calculation. all right. thank you, jeremy. is it too early to start running? how would you do it if you were advising her? run then. i get it. how would she begin the talk? i m running for president. i know i m supposed to sit back and play it safe but have you seen the middle east is on fire. you know what the democratic party is right now lost. the democratic party may actually lose control of the senate. we re going to face two miserable years. i m going out on the campaign trail and put my heart out on my sleeve an tell me why democrats are so important, why democrats need to win, why it s critical you don t let the tea party take over the senate and house. they will talk about how i work with the democratic senate and the house to get people back to work, get good jobs with good wages, stop the isis threat in the middle east. now is the time. don t calculate. we have definitely heard you. i ll get to more news here because we have lots to get to. a vote is expected on capitol hill are there tranquilizers on this? you need some. a u.s. plan to arm and train syrian rebels in the fight against isis. several arab powers say they will help strike target from the air but putting combat force on the ground is elusive. commitments from overseas is vague with concerns that the military campaign could end up helping the syrian government and in turn its supporters in iran. while a majority of americans back the administration s push for action nearly 70% lack confidence the u.s. will accomplish its goals. fewer than four in ten approve the president s foreign policy. let s bring in nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel live in istanbul, turkey with the latest on this. richard? reporter: good morning. secretary kerry is in paris today and he s attending a conference. he s sounding much more optimistic than in the past. he s talking about dozens of nations that have signed on to join this coalition. in the arab world today the arab newspapers are all talking about an arab coalition that arab states have signed up, that some although not named are even willing to join in combat operations. so if you ask the state department and we ve been talking to state department officials they tell you that this is starting to work, that a coalition is starting to come together. the main question is what happens after you bomb? the bombing isis is relatively easy. they are not hiding. they are operating in training camps. they are moving in visible vehicles that they were, many of them they captured from the iraqi army, american armored vehicles. then who is going to go in to replace them? if you started bombing, for example, the main syrian city where isis is based right now, the city where it s been holding many hostages, the force that s more likely to take over after that bombing is hezbollah and iran and the syrian government of bashar al assad. actually, let me ask you. as we look for allies overseas, you re standing right in the middle. obviously a country that s not been the best ally in anti-terror operations. in fact, we wonder about their commitment not only there but also against hamas and several other terror groups. where is turkey right now? reporter: turkey is in a very strange position, very difficult position because if you looked recently the outgoing u.s. ambassador, he issued some statements that were very controversial here. as kerry was touring around the middle east he came out and said in the past turkey has aligned itself with groups that the united states doesn t support. he meeting with groups that united states considers terrorist organizations. lot of criticism against turkey for allowing it s very long border with syria to be a transit point for foreign fighters, militants can arrive from around the world and pass through the border, oftentimes with the turkish government and the turkish military looking the other way. some tightening of security has happened along the border but turkey hasn t committed itself to intervening militarily in this coalition. that s partly because turkey is trying to show independence. and the militants from isis are holding more than 40 turkish diplomats hostage and very possible turkey at least publicly come out and says it supports these actions that those hostages could be killed. nbc s richard engel. thank you very much. of course the horrible news over the weekend the militants threaten to execute a fourth western captive after releasing video on saturday showing the beheading of a british aid worker david haines. he was captured by militants in syria 2013. the terror group says it will now kill hostage alan henning. let s turn now to nfl. multiple sources tell nbc sports that ray rice will appeal his indefinite suspension for lying about what occurred in a casino elevator with his then fiancee. rice is expected to say he told officials the truth. what did or did not know about the altercation is leading to growing calls for commissioner roger goodell to resign. a woman s advocacy group flew this banner that had this hash tag, #goodellmustgo. response to the case led to powerful statements from sports broadcasters on sunday. it s the biggest mistake of roger goodell s career. he should have never been in the court process because then you have to be the investigator. then you have to look into all the details. he has other things too many inconsistencies. he should be the supreme court justice. there should not only be a trial court, an appellate process and if it gets to roger let it get to roger. this is a big mistake and it has to change. i spent this week answering seemingly impossible questions about the league s biggest stars. mom, why did he do that? why is he in jail? why did he get fired? and yesterday why don t they even have control of their own players? the nfl patient seeing is believing. if they had to see that video to be moved to action shouldn t those that support the league demand action. we all wait on the answer to the central question, what exactly does the nfl stand for? what does it stand for, harold? i ll tell you, the commissioner has got a lot of questions to answer. he probably brought more of this on to himself than he expected early on. you know, if, indeed, some of these things they are saying is true the video was there, he may have known some of this he has a real problem. if those things are not true, here are some of the things but i m not convinced he has to resign if the video he didn t know about the video or everything what about the two day suspension for somebody getting the hell beaten out of them. willie said it best. that was the initial response of the nfl. if that was a response, then he may have to answer that as well. i don t understand why are they are they so blind to the culture of violence in the nfl because it s surrounding them? it s such a part of the life of so many of these players? well, i wouldn t go as far to say i think this is a cultural thing. i m not sure violence that people domestic violence. that players are committing. first of all if you look at the incidents. the incidents outside of the nfl are far greater than in the nfl. we need to talk about this as a society and culture overall. that being said i think the commissioner has got to be able to respond honestly to these questions and if indeed he didn t see the video, didn t know about this, no one in his office knew about it it s hard to say he has to resign. if he did know about it he has a real problem. mika, he makes so much money. he does. if he didn t know about the video how do you say he needs to resign. or a two game suspension. ray rice basically saying that he lied. if that s true then i think you re right he has a real problem the commissioner does. he has three different sources saying he knew. there s a much bigger problem. as you go through this, mika, you see what happened in the past several weeks. you have a cluelessness when there was an interview with norah o donnell. he s sitting there and parsing words. for the billions of dollars they make they should hire a pr person. you guys make billions of dollars. you can t hire one good pr person that can help you on here? just maybe they called baltimore and talked to the own there are. he seems to know you get it out. which always suggests to me if they are not getting it out there that means there s more there. that means that they don t want light to be shone as a disinfectant. one of the problem is, you both talk about the dollars and money that roger goodell makes and the nfl makes. where do they make the money from? where is the money coming from? sponsor, right? isn t that how it works. have any sponsors pulled out? where s gatorade? where s the big names that flash the stadiums and make commercials. where are they on this? we re sitting here condemning the nfl rightfully show, for their stupidity, bone head edness and support for domestic violence. but these sponsors are in the same boat. they are paying for it. they are paying to watch football and then the side effects of it, domestic violence, play out and they are making money off of it and paying the nfl. how much longer. what about women s organizations. they need to pull out unless something happens. women s organizations are speaking up. women s organizations are going to the games. i like what women s organizations are doing. but they don t have the power. i misspoke. what about products that are focused on women. correct. i totally agree. that are still sponsoring that. all products. if you re a major sponsor i know what you re talking about women wearing ray rice jerseys. that s sick. is covergirl a sponsor of the nfl, guys? we ll get a list of their sporns. check and see. i ve seen somebody do a mock up on twitter. if you were a business and you focused on women, selling to women and you re still a sponsor of the nfl you got a serious problem. i think if you re a business in general and sponsor the nfl and have not talked about this in your corporate community and decided to either speak to them or make a move then you re complicit, because you re paying them for this. they are making money. as long as nfl is making the money they have a business that s running and allows them to be arrogant and tone deaf and put things like domestic violence under the rug and pretend it doesn t exist. you re paying for it, sponsors. you re paying for it. covergirl has an nfl collection. covergirl needs to do something. still ahead on morning joe we ll check with kasie hunt who is in iowa. she has the elizabeth warren story. we ll find out the answer to the big question on everybody s mind, what kind of steak did they serve. and outage at six flags. and what went on during the palin family brawl of 2014. sources close to the palin family are now weighing in. that s so, so funny. there we go. look at this one. it s monday. a brand new start. your chance to rise and shine. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner, you can do just that. with our visionary cloud infrastructure, global broadband network and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable - secure - agile. and with responsive, dedicated support, we help you shine every day of the week. centurylink your link to what s next. hey there, i just got my bill, and i see that it includes my fico® credit score. yup, you get it free each month to help you avoid surprises with your credit. good. i hate surprises. surprise! at discover, we treat you like you d treat you. get the it card and see your fico® credit score. when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! a selling machine! ready for you alert, only at lq.com. we ve always been] at the forefrontumman, of advanced electronics. providing technology to get more detail. detect hidden threats. see the whole picture. process critical information, and put it in the hands of our defenders. reaching constantly evolving threats before they reach us. that s the value of performance. northrop grumman. not to worry. let s take a look at the morning papers. from our parade of papers the washington post north korea sentenced two american matthew miller to six years of hard labor over claims he committed hostile acts while visiting the country as a tourist. reports say miller ripped up his visa after arriving in the country and said he was seeking asylum there. north korean authorities accuse him of entering the country illegally as a spy. the u.s. says north korea is using miller and two other detainees as political bargaining chips. we looked at the new york times and ukrainian prime minister says russian president, vladimir putin, is intent on conquering quote all of ukraine. the prime minister also said he supports sanctions imposed on russia by the eu and u.s. and that only membership in nato would allow ukraine to fight back against aggression from the kremlin. despite a cease-fire negotiated earlier fighting continues in ukraine. the new york post, miss new york was named the new miss america on abc last night with the help of a red plastic cup. what? kira kazantsev is she s the third straight winner from new york and during the talent portion the new miss america took a page from the movie script of 2012 s pitch perfect. i ll tell you what happened. she says she chose that talent to show little girls they can do whatever they want and still succeed. a good reason. it s so cute. kate does that whole cup thing. my daughters do too. social media was not very impressed. all right. congratulations to the new miss america. yeah. you watched it. i ve seen it once or twice. not 47 times. i ve seen it 47 to 48 times. it s a good movie. the times about a power outage at six flags in new jersey temporarily shut down rides leaving passengers stranded on the tracks. park officials say riders were safely removed from stalled attractions within 20 minutes but a faulty transformer is to became. this marks the latest in a series of issues at six flags theme parks this summer. last week the traffic a recently closed roller coaster at magic mountain in california caught fire. that s not good. that isn t good. in july at the same park a tree branch caused another ride to derail. that s not good. let s go the anchorage daily news. a source close to the palin family is speaking out with an account of the drunken brawl that broke out at a party. police in alaska confirmed sarah palin and family were present at the event but a source says they did not start it. the palin family says the fight began when track palin was confronted by his sister s ex-boyfriend. the source adds todd palin came to the aid of his son. track suffered four cracked ribs. the fight involved about 20 people and they are still reviewing the case. wow. all right. she s been re-editing everything. no worries. here with us from des moines, iowa and the warren thing, we have msnbc political correspondent kasie hunt. you ve redone no i want to hear about hillary. you ve done everything but the hillary part, right? reporter: yes. something like that. although i would like to mention, mika you asked a few weeks ago what does frying steak involves. they don t fry the steak at the steak fry. it s grilled. they call it that because other events at the time were called fish fries. actually they did fry the fish at the fish fry. one of the interesting takeaways. the crowd was excited to see her. she tantalized with whether or not she was going to run for president. but i will say, we talked to a lot of people in the crowd and there was to a certain extent a sense there was still maybe looking for an alternative or that hillary hadn t really made the case yet. there were a lot of people there who were looking for her, looking to see if she had improved from last time. it took her seven years to swallow her pride and come back to iowa. you know after her loss to edwards and obama in 2008. then on the flip side there was also a small, i will say table that said ready for warren. several people wearing elizabeth warren hats and talking about the idea that maybe hillary clinton isn t liberal enough especially for what is a particularly liberal activist community of democrats here in iowa. bernie sanders held a competing event in des moines, also drew something of a crowd not over 5,000 people that came to harkin s final steak fry. joe biden will be here next week. there s a sense here while people don t necessarily see a very strong alternative to hillary at this point there s some interest in finding one. all right kasie hunt live in des moines, iowa. tantalizes the crowd. that s fascinating. i like the fact that they call it a fry, it s really a grilling. they fried stake. ever fry stake in a skillet. really good. coming up why roger goodell s job is almost certainly safe. that s next in the must read opinion pages. in a few minutes he s calling at any time worst week in the nfl s history. sports reporter tells us how the nfl can turn things around. we ll be right back. angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. by making it easy to buy and schedule service by top-rated providers, conveniently stay up-to-date on progress, and effortlessly turn your photos into finished projects with the angie s list mobile app. visit angieslist.com today. no question about that. but your erectile dysfunction - that could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment s right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. into one you ll never forget. earn triple points when you book with the expedia app. expedia plus rewards. take and. exhale.in. aflac! and a gentle wavelike motion. aahhh- ahhhhhh. liberate your spine, ahhh-ahhhhhh aflac! and reach, toes blossoming. not that great at yoga. yeah, but when i slipped a disk he paid my claim in just four days. ahh! four days? yep. find out how fast aflac can pay you, at aflac.com. time now for the must read opinion pages at 33 past the hour. leslie morgan steiner writes in the washington post he held a gun to my head. i loved him. i wish the world could give gentleman any rice and other victims of relationship violence the dignity they deserve. instead of condemning her for loving a troubled man. let s educate ourselves about the twisted psychology of abusive love. firing roger goodell won t do. i m not sure that s the only thing should to be done. the next one is from the new york times. ray rice and his rage. it is a couple s decision. whether a union is salvageable and worth the effort to save it. but too often victims of abuse feel that they have no choice. they just feel trapped. staying doesn t excuse the abuse itself and it can actually embolden the abuser. harold, you have one other? new york times, nfl stands by, if you want to understand why goodell s job is safe this is why. the only people who can fire him are the 32 nfl owners and they have zero interest in letting him go. he makes them money. currently the nfl takes in about $10 billion overall. goodell has told them he wants to make it a $25 billion a year business by the year 2027. you can practically see their mouths watering at the prospect. so it s all about money, right, harold? no doubt. a big part of it. again, if the video was there and the commissioner knew about this and in his interview with norah o donnell is not telling the truth then he s going to have a real problem and the momentum is building that he will likely face a big, big sacrifice. what do you think? have to give up his job. obviously there s more to be done here. there s public outcry. we re seeing from hannah storm to everybody else showing up on their broadcasts talking about this. 45% of the nfl fans are women. these are people trying to support the league. they are making money and bigger outlook on this is how do they continue to make money. it is roger s position sustainable going forward and will be public outcry. owners make the ultimate decision. they do. job safety. they are his bosses. they look at the bottom line and has bush, barclays, mcdonald s, covergirl, gillette, head and shoulders, old spice. do you want to give money to the nfl. why would covergirl especially? i don t understand. i don t get it. there are many more. we can make a list. let s make a full screen of the sponsors because if we call out roger goodell and burn him at the stake it seems silly since he s the one whose job it is to make money for league and he s doing very well because they are giving it. nfl are enablers. it s money. people are saying the nfl are enablers to domestic abusers. the sponsorers are enablers of the nfl who has been an enabler to the abusers. how do you teach the people who are being paid millions and millions of dollars to be athletic/violent on the field to turn that off in their personal lives. so there s a big difference here. you have to turn that off. there are some people who do it really well. we re talking about the nfl. most of the nfl does that well. we don t know that. we just don t know that. i don t think that s the case. i think women are treated pretty shabbily. they cover everything up. they were covering this thing up. all right. coming up on morning joe, star vikings running back adrian peterson sits out sunday s game because of child abuse. not everybody in agreement about the severity of the charges. i m from the south. every black parent will be in jail under those circumstances. does the nfl have a serious problem or are we overreacting? boston globe s reporter dan shaughnessy was at the vikings/patriots game yesterday. he joins us next. we ll be right back with more morning joe . you can eat that on weight watchers? looks amazing. looks like my next dinner party. that s only 4 points? with weight watchers you can enjoy the food you really want. dine out on favorites. or cook up something new. i can do this every day. join for free and start losing weight now. learn how to eat healthier, while enjoying the foods you love. get inspired at meetings, online, or both. weight watchers because it works. my mom was wrong. she did the best she could. she was wrong about some of that stuff she taught me. i promised my kids i won t teach that mess to them. you can t beat a kid to make them do what. that s correct. thousands of things we ve learned since then. now we re to the point, the only thing i m proud about is the team that i played for. they did the right thing. yes. take them off the field. i don t care. we re in a climate right now, i don t care what it is. take them off the field because you know what? as a man that s the only thing we really respect. that makes so much sense. can you believe this week for the nfl, you have child abuse charges coming out on friday. you got all these domestic abuse. damage from repeated pounding on the field. that was former vikings receiver and current espn analyst chris carter with his take on the other issue facing the nfl over the weekend. adrian peterson, star running back for the minnesota vikings was booked and released from jail after being indicted for allegedly abusing his 4-year-old son. they are determining what happens next for peterson who was deactivated. we re seeing quick action. let s bring in veterans sports columnist for the boston globe, dan shaughnessy who is in. minnesota after covering yesterday s vikings/patriots game. characterize it for us. how bad was this past week for? the worst week in the history of the league. in 1963 they played games two days after john f. kennedy was assassinated and that was something that commissioner pete roselle took to his grave. he felt badly about that. this week it s worse. so much personal conduct on the part of players, so much outrage from fans. seeing the ray rice video at the start of the week, the week ends with adrian peterson arrested for child abuse. another team took a player off its field another let its player play. a ton of stuff. i don t understand the decision by the 49ers, obviously san francisco has long been recognized as one of the most progressive places in america yet seem to be behind the times of north carolina on an issue like this. a guy is arrested for beating up his pregnant girlfriend. she has bruises all over herself and the 49ers comes out aggressively supporting him and then playing this guy. i think they are falling back on has he been charged? they are going back the legal process hasn t played out yet. that s the kind of thing that gets you in trouble. you saw with goodell earlier in the week with the ray rice. the legal process in new jersey basically let him go with a year of counselling. that s what i don t understand. if somebody you worked with in the newsroom at the globe beat up their fiancee who was pregnant, got arrested for it, would they show up at their desk the next morning and be working for the globe or be suspended? any other place in america would not let these people come through the door until they were cleared of the charges, right? i think you re right. if it becomes public record, you re out until the thing plays itself out in the judicial process. i would agree with that. here s a language they understand. money. and as far as we ve seen, dan, there s no sponsors pulling out, right? well, this you hit this earlier in your program, mika. you know the ratings for yesterday s games are going to being a great. they always are. this is america s favorite television program. that s what matters. i don t think you see people okay some planes flying overhead protesting and women s groups here and there, people write nice editorials how bad this is. people watch the games. they love their football. the jets blew a big league. at a big story. monday fight football. eagles are playing, indianapolis. that s the story. this is our modern day gladiators. people want their football. thank you. we see you around fenway all the time. from worst to first to worst. has anybody done that before. has anybody gone from worst to first to worst joe, it s not been done and they plan to go worst, first, worst, first. knocking on good. we love the red sox. boston globe s dan shaughnessy. still ahead this morning isis skuts another hostage this time a british aide worker prompting prime minister david cameron to call it an act of fire evil. what comes next in the usa s war against terror. plus white house officials finally get around to calling the conflict a war. yeah. that s new language. that s what is it. does that mean we ll see boots on the ground. we ll have that bait after this break. we ll be right back with more morning joe. your business is more reliable, secure, and agile. machines will be sprayed to be made. and making something stronger. will mean making it lighter. one day, factories will work with the cloud. one day. is today. before the names theodore, eleanor, and franklin were indelibly etched into the american consciousness. and the course of human history was forever changed by their individual endeavors. a prominent family made a point of teaching the value of altruism, the power of perseverance, and the virtue of helping out one s fellow man. when la quinta.com sends sales rep steve hatfield the ready for you alert, the second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! with centurylink visionary cloud a brinfrastructure, and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable, secure, and agile. matt salmon. matt good to have you on the show. matt, always great talk towing. what do you and your committee think? what do the foreign affairs committee think where the president is now. they are finally calling it war. is the president moving in the right direction? yeah. i think he s moving in the right direction but i think a lot of it is way too late. i think we have to move decisively and as for this idea of just having a vote in congress about arming and providing weapons and training for the free syrian army, i don t think that goes far enough. honestly i think we are at war. we know that they pose a threat to everything that we stand for. we don t know who the moderates really are and this vetting process is discombobulated at best. are there any moderates over there to fund? i don t think there are. ultimately if we ll declare war let s do it. i support an authorization of force. i think that congress ought to assert itself. the decade old authorization of force, i don t think is adequate. i think we need to have another authorization of force. can we not admit cannot your committee, foreign affairs committee, congress, president not admit that we ll be helping assad by going after aisis? these people claiming they are a third way they are full of it. there s no third away. you get assad or you get isis. isis poses a bigger threat to our national security. that s clear. what we recently saw over the weekend with isis and free syrian army doing a truce, there is no clear path to victory by relying on other forces in that region, and let s come clean with the american people. i know that we re all war weary. everybody is. but the fact is they do pose a threat to everything we care about and if we re serious about wiping them out let s go in and get the job done. gentlemen have jeremy peters. congressman, good morning. you say you don t think the president has gone far enough in his strategy to defeat isis. so then i wonder specifically what would you do different? because it sounds like what you re saying is we need boots on the ground, right? why don t we be straight with the american people. there are boots on the ground. you might not want to call them boots on the ground but the people that are there, over 1,000 troops that are already there right now their families actually consider them to be boots on the ground and so if we re going to take them out let s do everything we have to do. what is that? is that ground trooms? it needs ground troops, absolutely. the commanders of our military ought to be calling those shots and not politicians. harold ford? i follow up on jeremy s point. matt good to see you, brother. one quick question. what would the resolution look like in your mind. should the president ask for a specific authorization to put ground troops on the ground. i agree with you. troops on the grounds, families would know. what should the president ask for and what are you willing to vote for? he should ask for an authorization of force similar to what president bush asked for a decade ago and we ought to give that to him. we re at war with these guys. let s quit candy coating it. let s go in with everything we got and finish it this time. let s take care of isis once and for all. that might be easier said than done. that s one point of view. you can t have it both ways. you can t blow everything up. that creates new hatred. if you go over there get the job done. if you re not stay home. that s my point. we can t go in halfway. congressman salmon, thank you very much. coming up a surprise guest is joining us. here s a hint. she worked in the white house and on the presidential campaign trail. she s been cast in a hollywood blockbuster . she s written two awesome books naming one of the jobs in the book. she s taking on a new job on one of the most influential panels in america. our mystery guest joins us. don t ruin it for us. means keeping seven billion ctransactions flowing.g, and when weather hits, it s data mayhem. but airlines running hp end-to-end solutions are always calm during a storm. so if your business deals with the unexpected, hp big data and cloud solutions make sure you always know what s coming - and are ready for it. make it matter. sfx: ambient park noise, crane engine, music begins. we asked people a question, how much money do you have in your pocket right now? i have $40, $53, $21, do you think the money in your pocket could make an impact on something as big as your retirement? not a chance. i don t think so. it s hard to imagine how something so small can help with something so big. but if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge sfx: crowd cheering might not seem so big after all. i don t think they need any advice. nicole is smarter than i ever will be. she will kick my ass on the s.a.t.s. i was a 1.62 grade average in my first year of college and i dropped out to tell jokes in a bowling alley. when you have people that like each other in real life, respect each other in real life and talk about the pertinent issues of the day that s must see tv. rosie got it. i didn t gate 1.62 in my first year in college. what did you get? half of that. look at nicole s hair. she s so excited as well about having nicole on board and rosie. she says i think we can do something with this show now. she s so excited. season premier of the view is today. have you ever seen hair like that on my head. the new co-host of the view. nicole when you started talking to me about this, i could tell you were like this isn t going to happen. i remember. i called you on a friday i said this is going to happen. i talked to you for help. you gave me great advice. remember what you said. you said be smart and wear better shoes. did you get any better shoes. her shoes were really bad. she was like bordering on grandma. might as well go in there with birkenstocks. how are your feeling about the show? i m a little nervous. i wish i could bring barnacle today. but it s going to be fun. i mean i have to say that i love what we do every morning so much that i didn t make the leap to even think that anything else could possibly fall in the category of being that interesting or that fun or that loose. but i joined the show in august. i was on morning joe that morning. it helped i was a little overtired, i think. it was awesome. they were awesome. they are so funny. wicked funny. wicked smart. they play that down. they are crazy smart. i think we ll have fun. you ll have fun. congratulations. on these issues you know i m always right so i ll tell you you ll being a great. i know this. thank you. for sure. have fun. i ll miss you guys. i ll be back soon. a great group. i love it. it s going to be fun to watch. let s go to the top of the hour. washington anchor for bbc, katty kay is joining us. we start with nfl. ray rice will appeal his indefinite suspension for lying about what occurred in a casino elevator with his then fiancee. rice is expected to say he told officials the truth. what nfl did or did not know about all the terrify occasion is leading to growing calls for commissioner roger goodell to resign. a woman s advocacy group flew this banner that re read #goodellmuread #goodel read #goodellmustgo. it s the biggest mistake of roger goodell s career. he should have never been in the court process because then you have to be the investigator, then you have to look into all the details. he has other things. too many inconsistencies. he should not be concerned with it. he should be a supreme court justice. there should be a trial court, appellate process and if it gets to roger, it gets to roger. this is a big mistake and it has to change. i ve spent this weekend answering seemingly endless questions about questions. mom why did he do that? why is he in jail? why didn t he get fired. yesterday, why don t they even have control of their own players? the nfl apparently seeing is believing if the nfl and ravens had to see that video be moved to significant action shouldn t those who support the league demand the same to see action, to see change before believing as we all wait on the answer to the central question, what exactly does the nfl stand for? it s a good question. goodell, still appears to have support from the league. however dallas cowboys owner jerry jones says 100% of the owners are in goodell s corner. we re us now alan schwartz, correspondent for the new york times. he writes this. during thinks eight years as nfl commissioner goodell has deflected many crises that threatened the league s integrity and public image from player misconduct to team misconduct. he has survived them all largely because team owners are pleased with the soaring revenues. their calculation is that the profits are worth any set backs that result from a crisis-management style that has been called everything from clumsy to last week conspiratorial. reporter: the building we re sitting in right now should we all march up into ted s office and say we won t participate any broadcasting associated with nbc because nbc broadcasts sunday night football? i mean, you know, the transit property of protest has its l limits and we need to expect the nfl to present better explanations for why it does things the way it do but in terms of the sponsors and demanding something of the sponsors, if we do that we must demand the same from ourselves. ouch. t.j. could you have ted turn off his camera. come on. first of all, though happy to do that. we can march out en masse. i don t pay millions of dollars to support the game. should nbc not benefit the nfl and say we re not going broadcast the game next sunday. maybe. i m asking you about sponsors. if you think sponsors have a role since money is what your very first theme here is that money is trying this. how do you stop this sort of like hemorrhaging of domestic abuse cases not being handled well if sponsors don t get involved? look it s not for me to say that sponsors should boycott the nfl. that s not my role. it s yours and that s beat the. my job is to discuss perhaps more of the overarching issues and discuss what the choices are. what people choose to do. what are the choice? the choices are sponsors can say we re not going participate in the nfl any more because or temporarily because we feel as if they have done things that societally disturb us. have you heard of any sponsors that have done that yet? no. and i think that the sponsors act the same way that the nfl does. they believe i m not saying it s correct but they believe that this will blow over just like michael vick s dogfighting ring, just like ray lewis when there were grave concerns about what happen that night. right. excuse me? i said right. it means i m agreeing with you. you don t have to be offensive. you can relax. i didn t hear you. i said right. do you agree with dan shaughnessy that this past week has between worst week in the history of the nfl because you bring up other things like everything else this too will pass. there was a weekend in 1963 when pete roselle decided to play games the sunday after kennedy was killed. that wasn t much of a hoot either. there was never much of a week with this much bad news. it was enough to take the nba and atlanta hawks off the sports pages. so when you consider that it gives you and idea of how much people are jumping on this, and it s obviously reasonable. the league needed to have unve unequivocal proof of what happened and why didn t they see that video. it s a fair question. why did it take ray rice s word for it and now they say well you didn t tell us truth. how many witnesses, you know, necessarily tell the truth. now rice even says, the gm of the ravens says he did tell the truth. we have that to deal with. even so, i mean you don t you don t, you know, in the witness room, you don t have the perp go no it didn t happen. they go okay. alan schwartz, thank you. harold, he went back 50 years. i think this is i guess dan shaughnessy was talking about it and last week we talked about when pete roselle decided to play a couple of play nfl games a couple of days after jfk got shot. if this is not the worst week in the nfl it certainly is one of the two worst weeks in nfl s history, and the question is, do sponsor keep turning the other way. i m an nfl fan. there are things we got think about. by the way, i ve been an nfl fanny entire life. the new york times won t stop take ads from people. he feels that strongly the new york times should do the same. so i get the indignation. but if goodell saw this video or had knowledge of it, if he lied to norah o donnell he ll lose his job. the momentum is building for that to happen. put that aside. we have a domestic violence problem in our country. the incidents of reports are greater outside the nfl than they are in the nfl. that doesn t excuse nfl from dealing with this. adrian peterson and all these other issues. maybe they are protected by the type of behavior that we ve seen from nfl in the past couple of weeks. if that s the case there are people who have to be held accountable. all this indignation in the nfl, we should have indignation in society. let s talk outside of the nfl. if somebody at this network beats up their wife who is pregnant and they have bruises all over their body i want to beat him up. if they do that, they are not working here on monday. no doubt about it. inside nfl, in san francisco, supposedly the most progressive place in america, can you beat up your fiancee, you can put bruises on your pregnant fiancee, and you can show up to work and get paid millions and millions of dollars. that doesn t sounding frommive to me. i think society has it better. i agree with you. they should not be playing, period. why are they? that s something they should not be playing. if the league has made that decision. tommy has the answer. he ll answer it right now. they are hiding behind the legal system. if you put an to end any business policies into context here there are certain places that will put employees into work situations that will allow judicial vetting to take place. who knows what will happen in other situations. but in the 49ers situation yeah we saw him play. when it comes to ray rice from what happened with goodell, how they investigated this, they should probably change their policy on how they are going to investigate their players going forward. not leaving it up to the team specifically, how they are going to go ahead and look at these video instances. we know how nfl loves to review the tape. so why not review the tape of what happened. the casino had enough camera there s. i think we re at a time where everybody sort of have to put their cards on the table. everybody. katty kay, jump in. remember when players, i guess, turned their jerseys inside out when a team owner was racist recently. it led to his demise. by the way the whole league stopped. the whole league stopped. because racism is wrong. just like domestic violence. beating up women that are half your size. i just don t understand why there s even a debate, like all the cards should fall on this house. i completely agree. after the first tape he should have been out, right? every woman would agree and every man would agree that was totally unacceptable behavior and if this was just a one off you might think it was an unfortunate mistake on the nfl s part but it s systemic. this is far more than a one off. you get to the stwraet you think the organization thinks it s above the law, you re making so much money, that your players are such superstars, you know, you get into that bubble mindset of thinking the rules of behavior and the rules almost of society and law do not apply to us as individuals. and i think that totally has to stop and that s where, you know, the organization has to step in and lead by example. not keep thinking we can protect our own. i mean, can you think of analogies here. think of the catholic church thinking we can somehow cover up what has happened because we re so big and powerful and we don t want to get out in front of this. mika u-bring up a great point. you have a racist creep making cell phone call saying racist things. horrible things. the entire world stops. players turn their jerseys inside out. sponsors say they are going to leave. the whole world just stops because of words that are said. offensive words. a woman getting assaulted. now you compare that to women getting beaten up and knocked out inside of elevators. pregnant women getting battered and abused. women getting beaten up, thrown on the couch with guns, tossed into a shower, choked, threatened and everybody hey, hey, you know what? you know what, alan goes come on, man. alan with the new york times, come on, man. why don t you guys just stop showing it too. why doesn t the new york times stop and the nfl too. maybe the new york times jeremy peters, let me ask you, why does the new york times hate america. my bigger point, here you have words from a racist creep and the whole world stops. then you get 300 pound men beating the absolute hell out of women and it s like hey it s cool. to hannah storm s point my daughter walking the dog is wondering why several people in this story still have their job and why they are not in jail. i had no answers for her. there is to be some people that are as shocked as i am. this is the first time in my entire lifetime that i did not see one play of one nfl game. i refused on principle. there has to be other people out there. if we re looking to the nfl for answers we re looking to the wrong people. if we expect them to lead the way for how we re supposed to handle a big issue which is domestic violence in our country don t you look at the catholic church to clean up their mess. they are the wrong people to look at too, joe, because they have been epically long. we re looking at pope francis to clean it up and he s met with six abuse victims. who do you look to? i don t know. we have to figure it out. there s hope in pope francis. the nfl, we can t look to ray rice and janay rice. they don t want to be the face of the nfl. janay rice and ray rice think he should still be playing. they handled it unfortunately now these cases have to be examples. maybe they could have been benched for a year and put into rehab. and maybe that would have helped actually keep this reaction from happening. but it s very clear they don t give a damn about mess abuse and they think it s okay. for us to look to them for ans to solve this won t happen. the tone is set from the top. you talk about the nba s response to donald sterling s racism. the commissioner was so forthright and so stern how inappropriate for one of their owners to behave that way. we haven t seen that from nfl. if we were to see that nfl would need to come up and take a much harder line. still ahead on morning joe, we ll explain why actress danielle watts who standard in the blockbuster film django was detained. he s outraged. a wedding photo lost in the attacks of 9/11 found its way back to its owners after a 13 year search. that s a heart warming story and that s next. you can eat that on weight watchers? 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[ laughs ] [ male announcer ] with the taste of our chicken florentine farfalle skillets for two. bertolli. italy is served. before using her new bank of america credit card, which rewards her for responsibly managing her card balance. before receiving $25 toward her balance each quarter for making more than her minimum payment on time each month. tracy got the bankamericard better balance rewards credit card, which fits nicely with everything else in life she has to balance. that s the benefit of responsibility. apply online or visit a bank of america near you. when la quinta.com sends sales rep steve hatfield the ready for you alert, the second his room is ready. you know what he brings? any questions? can i get an a, steve? yes! three a s! he brings his a-game! the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there s someone around the office who hasn t had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i m looking at you phone company dsl. go to comcastbusiness.com/ checkyourspeed. if we can t offer faster speeds or save you money we ll give you $150. comcast business built for business. let s take a look at the morning. frers the telegraph pope francis married 20 couples in the first mass wedding at the vatican in 14 years. even though the church considers sex outside of marriage a sin, one of the brides was already a mommy. some of the other couples were also living together before exchanging vows. the mass wedding comes three weeks before bishops will hold a meeting on the vatican s views on family issues. if you have a child what does that mean. you know what that means. what does that mean? that s how i learned about the birds and bees. and i said you did that twice? anyway. i have an older sister. the times of london, queen of england is warning scots to think carefully about the independence vote. that will soften up. they will decide whether the nation will permanently split from the uk. polls show the anti-independence movement has a slight lead. the los angeles times, actress danielle wats claimed she was detained by lapd for a public display of affection. she was in django. she s an actress in that movie. she claims she was handcuffed and put into a squad car after refusing to show her i.d. she was fully clothed and had done nothing wrong. police said they were responding to a call for indecent exposure. wats is lack. her husband is white. he said he believes police mistook his wife for a prostitute. okay. i m confused. i think i get it. we need more information. you get that? ah-ha. profiling? what? yeah. okay. yeah. so the new york daily news after years of searching, a woman has found the owner of a wed fog to uncovered in 9/11 rubble. elizabeth keith posted the photo online with hope somebody would recognize the faces. social media came through when 68,000 retweets helped identify the owner. the image belonged to the man who was working on the 77th floor. usa today, phillies pitcher was ejected from a game for making a lewd gesture to fans after he blew a save. he was ejected after he grabbed his crotch while walking off the field disorders the dug out as the crowd booed him. he gave up a career-high of four runs. after the game he had this to say. basically came over and said that i did an inappropriate gesture and i had no clue what he was talking about. that s when i got upset. okay. well, i think we all can judge whether that was inappropriate or not. hard turn for you. good luck. thank you, guys for this. seat belts on. go ahead. we ll move to foreign policy. how is that for a transition? very good. what a strange sports story. here with us now from washington the president on chicago council of global affairs and former ambassador to nato, today the survey is being released of american public opinion and u.s. foreign policy. thank you very much mr. ambassador for being with us. mr. ambassador there s some surprises in this survey. one seems to be that republicans aren t all neo-cons and democrats aren t all passivists. republicans and democrats have about the same view when it comes to the real big question we ve been asking for 40 years which is whether or not the u.s. should have an active role in world afirst. indeed for the first time, a few points, democrats are more likely to say yes to that than republicans. six in ten in both cases. republican views have really changed over the past eight years. 20% in 2006 thought that the u.s. should stay out of world affairs. that s now doubled 240%. more democrats than republicans want america to be active in world affairs. and very interesting. what do you think is behind these trends, these numbers? the most important is the collapse in republican opinion with regard to the iraq and particularly the afghan war. in 2007 republicans thought that 85% of republicans thought that afghanist afghanistani war was worth the cost. it s down mid-20s. similar with iraq, about 70% of republicans thought the war was worth it in 2007, it s now down 240%. so you see a disillusionment within the republican party. southern like republicans, going back, i won t say to their isolationist strain let s say to their skepticism, all the way back to mr. republican senator taft? well, i think republicans are actually now becoming where democrats have been for a long time and indeed where independents are. they are more skeptical about the use of force particularly when it comes to large ground forces to deal with problems in the world. but i wouldn t say that they are necessarily against engagement. they are just not as gung ho as they used to be. ambassador, thank you very much for joining us this morning. fantastic. he s the president of the chicago council on global affairs which has these new numbers out. we re looking at papers here. redskins, man. rg3, man. it s not working out the way they thought rg3 would be working out. look at this on the daily news. adrian peterson, obviously, jailed for whipping with a stick, a boy and here she is on the front. it s a sickness that s come over the nfl. yeah. hard to watch. i agree. coming up, wealthy and powerful. we ll take a closer look at roll calls new list of richest members of congress. she called her 2008 experience there quote excruciating. hillary clinton returns to iowa looking to get back into good graces with voters who could propel her into the white house. we ll hear from some young democrats who tell us they are a little bit skeptical about her potential candidacy. whenwork with equity experts who work with regional experts that s when expertise happens. mfs. because there is no expertise without collaboration. it s monday. a brand new start. your chance to rise and shine. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner, you can do just that. with our visionary cloud infrastructure, global broadband network and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable - secure - agile. and with responsive, dedicated support, we help you shine every day of the week. centurylink your link to what s next. it was her first trip to iowa since a disappointing 2008 finish but former secretary of state hillary clinton seemed to relish a return on sunday. she loved it. had a good time at the steak fry. only problem is people kept asking if she s running. she already is. she s running. she s in iowa. is it like a little game that goes on forever that both know is already played? here s nbc s andrea mitchell. hello, iowa! i m back! reporter: returning to the state that many say dashed her white house hopes in 2008 hillary clinton came back for an iowa tradition, the harkin steak fry adding fuel to the speculation she will run again. it is true, i am thinking about it. but for today that is not why i m here. i m here for the steak. reporter: last time clinton was trounced bay freshman senator named barack obama. let me tell you, he sure loves iowa. reporter: but she didn t say she loves iowa. describing her third place finish in the state s caucuses as excruciating in her new book. clinton needs to prove she can run a different kind of campaign, say former obama supporters. it needs be more ground up. reporter: this time clinton organizers say they learned their lesson. bussing in volunteers from all over the country. where are you from? california. austin, texas. washington, d.c. reporter: clinton knows coming here will be hard to turn back. it s a great day. reporter: her husband is still not making predictions. if she wants to can she do it this time? i have nothing to say. it s not my decision. i think i know what you want to say. no, you don t. all right. man, hillary is running. joining us now she s in iowa the editor-in-chief of roll call. good to have you with us. you put together a great list for us. let s get to hillary. this reminds me when there s an encore of a concert. you want to be asked to run. you get everybody cheering. you say i m not talking about it yet. like building up that good feeling inside. everybody knows she s running. exactly. is this a good thing? is this an encore you didn t want? for me it s a great story. fun to cover. i covered 2007, 2008. aren t you getting tired of this? we re often wrong which is kind of nice. there s some surprise. you re holding on to hope you re wrong maybe it s a big story that she s not running. or necessarily it s more of a contest or more in, the republican contest is more interesting. oh, my lord. you have more interesting to me roll calls list of richest members of congress. who is number one. darrell issa. he s worth $357 million. at least. so they have to give ranges. you could have a trust. you know these forms. so the forms allow to you say between 50 million and 100 million or unending range so that s why number two mike mccall is the richest member of congress but because he lists all of his assets in spouse s name you have the minimum level. richest guy in congress. used to be. he transferred his aseptembers to his spouse and the ranges are different. you get this minimum range. so, i say he made those the viper. step away. awesome. so this guy, how did he make his money? through his spouse. she s an owner in clear channel communications. i always tell joe you can make more money in ten minutes than working your whole life. i hope they listen to me. you re seeing fewer and fewer people that inherited their money like the trust fund members of congress. jarrett polis is investing in tech companies. i would have liked to be a trust fund baby. that s nice. instead of waking up at 4:00 a.m. every morning. who is next? i need to borrow some money. here we go. john delaney of maryland. we only had two republicans in the top ten. the rest are all democrats. you got rockefeller, mark warner, democrats actually are the minority on this list. there s 20 of them and 30 republicans, all white. everybody tonalist. rockefeller number four. he inherited his money. he s got 108 million. mark warner 95 million at least. where did mark warner make his money cell phones. whenever he gives campaign speeches still a cell phone goes off he says you hear annoying ring i hear cha-ching. he made his money on his own. yes. other names tonalist, joe kennedy iii, worth 20 million. kay haggen worth 9 million. how did she make her money? i have to look at the list. they all have to list lots of different things. they say bank robbery. stop, joe. i m joking. their own investments, family trusts. lot of these members of congress have very few liabilities. maybe they list a mortgage and all the rest of it is held in giant mutual funds. they own traditional blue chip companies. thank you so much. fascinating list. we know who to borrow money from. a lot of rich people. up next, congress has been turning up the heat on the nfl but does the league have a plan that will keep lawmakers at bay. plus kanye west steps in it again. the awkward moment from his concert over the weekend. h has the rapper looking heartless. we ll be right back. how much money do you have in your pocket right now? i have $40, $21. could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don t think so. well if you start putting that towards your retirement every week and let it grow over time, for twenty to thirty years, that retirement challenge might not seem so big after all. no question about that. but your erectile dysfunction - that could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment s right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. yes. that s one good looking rascal. look at this. a controversial moment captured from the fans here for kanye west. at his concert in australia. he ordered the crowd to stand and then stopped the show when not everybody complied. little did he know the fans he just shamed were disabled. stand up. stan up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up, stand up. there s two people left. two people that won t stand up. [ audience booing ] it s unbelievable. [ bleep ] he s in a wheelchair then that s fine. he in a wheelchair there? [ laughter ] is he in a wheelchair. he s in a wheelchair. okay. the concert gets going but the daily mail in australia post ad picture of a fan raising their pros at the thick leg to prove that they couldn t stand. people reports cania sent over his body guard to make sure the one fan in a wheelchair was actually disabled and needed to stay in it. what s wrong with him? i think he was trying to get the crowd up on its feet. it was an awkward moment that didn t go so well. awkward moments follow that guy around. that guy has kanye problems. yeah. he s got some serious i m with you. serious, serious problems. i m cringing. no. his life is just one big cringe worthy moment. let s turn back to something, away from kanye. any comments. no. let s leave it. i m going back to the nfl because alan from the new york times doesn t think i ve taken enough of a stand. so let me just say why doesn t the new york times stop putting the scores in there. let s not beat up on the new york times. jeremy, the new york times opinion section was amazing yesterday. it was great. fascinating piece on the guy whose written a book now houston to actually enlist yourself to be able to have self-control. yes. i m going to read that book. and the other study about marriage, the decline of marriage, amazing. the kids just aren t getting married. do you believe that? the kids aren t getting married any more. yeah. we ll do a segment on that. can we just say we have commented over the past year or so, that sometimes the sunday new york times, we ve commented among ourselves, that sometimes the sunday new york times has not been what it has been in the past. it totally is now. i got to say yesterday, especially the week before. it s really starting to i enjoyed reading it. i couldn t decide where to go. anyhow they should take a stronger stand against the nfl. there s growing criticism on capitol hill the league has handled ray rice case. politico has learned exclusively that the league has a plan to appease congress. with us now mike allen. what it? reporter: they know they haven t led on domestic violence. they know they need to. they need reassure capitol hill and their fans. we re told very quickly they are going to announce the hiring of consultants and experts on domestic violence very much the way they brought in a lot of talent on player health and safety issues including concussions. second, they are also going to increase their inhouse staff on training and compliance, and third, they are going to add domestic violence awareness and prevention to the programs that they do down at the high school and college levels and maybe the biggest thing they have been looking for a new head for their washington office and we re told one of the leading candidates is someone who has been a leader on this issue, former counsel to vice president biden and was the senate staff, the director of the judiciary committee at the time of violence against women was passed 20 years ago. so someone who knows that issue and capitol hill knows. jeremy, what do you think about this? mike, i wonder if you re sensing any self-awareness building at the nfl that maybe it s slightly tone deaf to be paying lobbyists to talk to members of capitol hill about how nfl really isn t so bad right now at a time when they are under siege for this horrific domestic violence crisis. reporter: well, jeremy that s a great point. what they will tell you they do need to do things and not talk. that s why they are doing these awareness issues with the teams, with young people, saying we have a problem, admitting we have not led on this issue in the past but we need to. it s like with concussions they have a long way to go there too but they say we re not just going to be out talking about it, we re also going to be we re going to be working on it. politico s mike allen. thank you very much. up next, if it s monday it s time for the international super soccer star joins us next on morning joe . before using her new bank of america credit card, which rewards her for responsibly managing her card balance. before receiving $25 toward her balance each quarter for making more than her minimum payment on time each month. tracy got the bankamericard better balance rewards credit card, which fits nicely with everything else in life she has to balance. that s the benefit of responsibility. apply online or visit a bank of america near you. a woman who loves to share her passions. grandma! mary has atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat not caused by a heart valve problem. that puts her at a greater risk of stroke. rome? sure! before xarelto®, mary took warfarin, which required monthly trips to get her blood tested. but that s history. back to the museum? not this time! now that her doctor switched her to once-a-day xarelto®, mary can leave those monthly trips behind. domestic flight? not today! like warfarin, xarelto® is proven effective to reduce afib-related stroke risk. but xarelto® is the first and only once-a-day prescription blood thinner for patients with afib not caused by a heart valve problem that doesn t require regular blood monitoring. so mary is free of that monitoring routine. for patients currently well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® and warfarin compare in reducing the risk of stroke. xarelto® is just one pill a day taken with the evening meal. spinach? grazie! plus, with no known dietary restrictions, mary can eat the healthy foods she likes. don t stop taking xarelto®, rivaroxaban, unless your doctor tells you to. while taking xarelto®, you may bruise more easily and it may take longer for bleeding to stop. xarelto® may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. xarelto® can cause serious bleeding, and in rare cases, may be fatal. get help right away if you develop unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising, or tingling. if you have had spinal anesthesia while on xarelto®, watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle related signs or symptoms. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. before starting xarelto®, tell your doctor about any conditions, such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. switching to xarelto® was the right move for mary. ask your doctor about once-a-day xarelto®. no regular blood monitoring; no known dietary restrictions. for information and savings options download the xarelto® patient center app, call 1-888-xarelto, or visit goxarelto.com there s no love without pain. city tied it up late. probably feels like a win for arsenal. let s move on to samford bridge. swansea started off 1-0. i actually e-mailed joey scarborough and said, even though you re down 1-0, this is the best chelsea side i ve seen in four or five years. the man would changed everything is this. he looks a little bit like the villain in kindergarten cop. he has had seven goals in four games. the first man to score in his first four premier league games i think since 1863. and they are look like a complete team. they ve got a perfect record. next week, they play manchester city, in a battle which is looking a bit like rocky balboa. let s talk about my team. i hold up a cup of bitter, bitter ale. when they found saddam hussein, they found him in his little rat hole and he had a romance novel and a liverpool mug down there. that s terrible. things were looking good after totenham a couple weeks ago. miserable showing yesterday. champions league football starts this weekend. they re trying to deepen their squad. they lost louie suarez, the man who bites people. it s a little like losing david caruso, nypd blue carried on just fine without him. they are second. can you believe that? i find it very, very hard come on, mika okay, how s liverpool going to end up? i think they ll be fine. top four? comfortable midtable. midtable. the big question is what you and i were i always set the date, i always go, and you always stand me up. are you going this year? big season, mika has liverpool as one of her top must-see cities. and who wouldn t? all right, weekly show, men in blazers airing next week on the nbc sports network. it will change your life. i love america. it s amazing. i love you too, scotland. coming up, globe columnist bob ryan. his take on nfl s domestic violence scandal and what many are saying is the worst week ever for the league. plus, the plan to defeat isis. top diplomats including john kerry meeting in paris for a strategy session. can the u.s. rely on the international community to your back? when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! a selling machine! ready for you alert, only at lq.com. fancy feast broths. they re irresistabowl. completely unbelievabowl. totally delectabowl. real silky smooth or creamy broths. everything she s been waiting for. carefully crafted with real seafood, real veggies, and never any by-products or fillers. wow! being a cat just got more enjoyabowl. fancy feast broths. wow served daily. it s monday. a brand new start. your chance to rise and shine. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner, you can do just that. with our visionary cloud infrastructure, global broadband network and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable - secure - agile. and with responsive, dedicated support, we help you shine every day of the week. centurylink your link to what s next. keeps them awake at night.roblem and columbia forest products had a tough one. they make plywood. and the panels look perfect when they leave the factory. but a company they sell to is demanding refunds. refunds for defects that only appear when the finish is applied. it s hurting their profits, so i offered to help. at ge capital, we do a whole lot more than just the financing. we bring expertise from across ge. so i call in our access ge engineers, and together with columbia, we work backwards. from the cabinet factory, to the finishing plant, to the place they peel the logs. and sure enough, we find the source and help replace the machine. problem solved. defects go away, and everybody sleeps better. if you just need a loan, just call a bank. but at ge capital, we re builders. what we know, can help you grow. when laquinta.com sends him a ready for you alert the second his room is ready, ya know what salesman alan ames becomes? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! a selling machine! ready for you alert, only at lq.com. i spent this week answering seemingly impossible questions about the league s biggest stars. mom, why did he do that? why isn t he in jail? why didn t he get fired? and yesterday, why don t they even have control of their own players? and the nfl apparently seeing is believing. the ravens had to see that video to be moved to significant action, shouldn t those who support the league demand the same, to see action, to see the change? as we all wait on the answer to the central question. what exactly does the nfl stand for? boy, that was a great i don t know would could have put it better actually than hannah storm there asking that question as a mother. what do they stand for, mika? got the same questions from my daughter othver the weekend. we both sat there trying to figure out why there wasn t an arrest, why law enforcement didn t do their job, why the nfl repeatedly hid behind their, i guess, profits, to not do their job. can i ask also what do you think about women that wear the jerseys of men who have abused other women and children? do you want me to really say what i think? that s why i asked. i think they re stupid. i m sorry. i think they re clearly shallow and not tuned in to the danger of promoting someone who has clearly assaulted another woman and caused a national conversation about domestic violence and shown an entire football league to be, quite frankly, at the very least, tone deaf, if not promulgating the problem by not doing anything about it. totally complicit. if you put on a ray rice jersey and jump around and think that s funny, i don t have a lot of other words, i m sorry. i m embarrassed when i see that, really embarrassed. to the news on this now. multiple sources tell nbc sports that ray rice will appeal his indefinite suspension for lying about what occurred in a casino elevator with his then fiance. rice is expected to say he told officials the truth. what did the nfl know or not know about the altercation is leading to growing calls for commissioner roger goodell to resign. a woman s advocacy group flew this banner that red #goodellmustgo over three nfl games on sunday. goodell still appears to have support from the league. dallas cowboys owner jerry jones says 100% of the owners are in goodell s corner. with us now from the boston globe, he is a legend, bob ryan. the author of the upcoming book scribe, my life in sports. bob, it s all right if we call you a legend? very flattering, thank you. come on, can t even take that at face value, think he s being sarcastic. so, bob, we re talking about shaughnessy was on earlier and said this was easily worst week in the history of the nfl, would you agree? yes, in a pr sense, and yet life went on as usual yesterday as i thought it would in terms of competition. let s just back all the way up here. before we start analyzing roger goodell and his future and that is this. this is america s sport of choice. this is the sport that is the single biggest unifying thread, you could argue, in american culture. the sunday afternoon ritual has become a part of life. if monday morning water cooler talk has become a part of life. and until people abandon this ritual by not attending games, by not watching games, by boycotting sponsors, this is all a lot of interesting idle conversation as far as i m concerned. you don t see that happening, do you? you don t see any sponsors backing away, even a sponsor like cover girl? no, not yet, i don t see it. i think it s a very troubling league. i think if they can do the right things, if they follow through with all the, so far, empty rhetoric, about, oh, we re so concerned about concussionings. we re so concerned about domestic violence. we re so concerned with duis. and follow through with really harsh, draconian punishment. bob, while we have you here, the general manager of the minnesota vikings say quote, all options are on the table for adrian peterson, the star run back was booked and released after being indicted for al allegedly abusing his 4-year-old son. on espn, hall of famer cris carter gave an extremely emotional and personal statement to condemn child abuse. my mom was wrong. she did the best she could, but she was wrong about some of that stuff she taught me. and i promised my kids, i won t teach that mess to them. you can t beat a kid to make them do what you want them to do. that is correct, thank you. thousands of things we have learned since then. now we re to the point, the only thing i m proud about is the team that i played for. they did the right thing. take him off the field. i don t care we in a climate right now, i don t care what it is, take him off the dog gone field because as a man that s the only thing we really respect. former nba star charles barkley was outspoken as he tried to defend peterson against those child abuse allegations. i m from the south. whipping, we do that all the time. every black parent in the south is going to be in jail under those circumstances. i think we have to be careful letting people how they dictate how they treat their chi children doesn t matter where you from, right is right, wrong is wrong listen, we spank kids in the south. the question about, did he go overboard. listen, we all grow up in different environments. listen, eithvery black parent iy neighborhood in the south would be in trouble under those circumstances did you see the pictures? i mean, no, every child in the south doesn t do that. peterson could face up to two years behind bars if convicted. bob we start the week with ray rice. then of course the attention turns to greg hardy who has already been convicted of abuse, abusing a woman. then ray mcdonald of course. people start focusing on him. and then friday afternoon, as if roger goodell s nightmare couldn t get worse, child abuse charges coming out of texas. i mean, when it rains, it pours. should we expect more stories like this as more and more people start coming out? if people do an investigation, they might uncover unearth a lot of things about people. i believe there was something like 40 documented instances of domestic abuse that are circulating among the nba population i thought it was 56, let me check thank you, that s a frightingly large percentage. a violent game played by violent people in a culture that rewards their behavior. i mean, that s a fact. this is the talent pool, unfortunately. and once again, we go back to what we were talking about at the outset here. does the american sporting public, the football-loving, gambling, football-loving, fantasy league-loving population, do they ultimately get so horrified by this that they stop participating. we re not even close to that. you were a sports writer for over four decades. you obviously have a better grasp on this than anybody sitting around this table. we ve been talking about the culture in the nfl. you remember probably about a decade ago, maybe it was less than that, espn was going to have an original series about the lifestyles of nfl players. didn t paint a flattering picture. espn of course nfl killed it. part of it had to do with the misogyny in the nfl. every league has different cultures. is there a culture of abuse in the nfl towards women or misogyny towards women, based on your over four decades of experience? i think there s a cavalier attitude towards women in their lives. that they re sex objects, number one. for far too many i m not saying the majority, but for far too many, women exist solely to satisfy their carnal desire and no conversation needed afterward. the nfl out there is taking the heat because it s the season. there s another league out there who have players involved in these very things, the national basketball association. will undergo scrutiny, i can promise you that. it s one of the mika, you brought it up earlier actually, that you have an owner in the nba say some absolutely hateful racist thing, but says hateful racist things that a girlfriend taped. that a girlfriend taped, and the entire nba just stopped, stopped on a dime. players were playing with their jerseys inside out. sponsors said they were going to leave, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and the nfl, you have these men would and he no longer owns the team twice as large as the women they beat up and abuse. and in san francisco, you actually had a player who was arrested for beating up his pregnant fiance, who had bruises all othver her, and life goes o it does, although that very specious just completely laughable last-second decision by the panthers not to play greg hardee yesterday after they finally responded to the outrage and the roar of the crowd and the american public. they finally decided for reasons it would be best for them not to play him. talk about an 11th hour and 59th minute decision that was finally the right thing to do. they re coming slowly to grips with their reality in american society and how people but i still come back to this. when you see those people wearing those jerseys that woman in minnesota who was not only wearing an adrian peterson jersey but was carrying a switch and was so happy to have her picture taken wow. the rest of us are sitting here with our mouths open. who are these people? who are these people? it s sick. it leads to the question. look at this panel right here. two women on it. are we led to believe by the conversation we ve heard all morning that nothing s really going to happen? caddie. i mean, mika, exactly my question. we heard mike allen talking about what the nfl s lobbyists are doing with congress at the moment and the proposals in terms of education, that kind of thing. you know, i get back to that point, when is zero tolerance going to be the nfl s position? i don t know. it seems to me we re a very long way from that. this is decades. can the nfl get to the position where there is zero tolerance and it starts to lead in society by example on any kind of violence against women? i don t think we should be calling this domestic violence. i think it gives the nfl, legal authorities in our country some kind of an excuse to hide behind some idea that this is in a marriage and therefore it s not our business. this is violence. this is violence against women. well put, ccatty, thank you very much. we want to get to some other news. a vote expected on a u.s. plan to arm and train syrian rebels in the fight against isis. several arab powers say they ll help strike militant targets from the air. but putting together a combat force on the ground, far more challenging. so far, commitments from overseas are vague, with concerns the military campaign could end up helping the syrian government and, in turn, its supporters in iran. secretary of state john kerry is in paris looking for efforts to build the coalition to fight in syria. the murder of a british citizen other t over the weekend could drive the uk. germany has been insistent it will arm kurdish fighters but not take part in air strikes. so far, australia has agreed to send 600 troops to the region. france, meanwhile, is vowing to conduct air strikes. as reuters report, saudi arabia, turkey, jordan, egypt, are unlikely to take the lead in military operations. while a majority of americans back the administration s push for action, nearly 70% lack confidence the u.s. will accomplish its goals. fewer than 4 in 10 approve of the president s foreign policy. by the way, catty kay, i think we will accomplish our short-term goal of destroying isis. we met him earlier from the foreign affairs committee. and i think he put it great. we ve either got to decide or we ve got isis in syria. a lot of people want to say, no, wait, maybe we can thread the needle no, it s assad or isis. we may not like that result at the end of the day, but that s the result that we re thing we re stuck with, unfortunately. i think to u.s. international security interests right now, isis presents the bigger threat and the american public has picked up on that but, you know, i think this idea that you can go and do air strikes and rapidly defeat the islamic state is erroneous. this is a very long-term game plan that the united states has to commit itself to. i understand why opinion polls have changed because of the beheading of two americans and now a brit as well. if we act out of just a sense of short-term vengeance or short-term anger, we re not going to i think we re actually this is not going to be done by just a and think the short-term expression of anger is exactly what terrorists want, because they want to breed more hatred. they want to say, see, see, and they ll get that example. wa what s the talk on capitol hill? this is congress, right, it always defies easy prediction. when we talked to matt salmon earlier, he hinted at something that s going to be a real wild card this week. there are a number of republicans, hawkish republicans, who want to see a vote for a broader use of force authorization. they don t think the resolution from 2003 is good enough. they want to see something a new vote on that. and that is going to complicate will that give the president more authority? but it s unclear to me whether or not that could pass both houses of congress. because you ll have a lot of democrats who won t go there. wouldn t that be fascinating if you had the republicans wanting to give the president of the united states more authority and you have democrats standing in the way of that? well, it would be. that s why i think, as i said, congress always defies prediction. i think going into this week, there s a lot of uncertainty about what kind of support congress gives the president and whether or not the vote to authorize what the president has asked for, which is a much more limited, kind of half step measure, is in jeopardy, and i think it could be. and the killing of that british citizen follows the murders. and sotloff family spokesman says the reporter s parents felt threatened by a top u.s. official would said they could be prosecuted if they tried to ransom to free their son. james foley mother recalled a similar incident who said she was, quote, horrified about the government warning. white house chief of staff mcdonough was asked about it. i can only imagine the difficult circumstances the families are going through. my heart goes out to them and my prayers are with then obviously. in terms of what was communicated to the families in the midst of many, many meetings over the course of this very difficult circumstance, we obviously made clear what the law is. we didn t threaten anybody but we made clear what the law is. that s our responsibility, to make sure we explain the law and uphold the law. boy. you you can t threaten a family. no. with prosecution well if they re trying to free their son, can you? no, but i think there s also a very firm argument about ransoms, but one that would fall completely flat on a set of parents whose child was in the middle of that. so it sounds like an impossible conversation. sounds like an impossible conversation. i don t think you threaten families. of course not. i don t think you threaten families that are trying to save their son. no, and if someone said, i m going to prosecute you i d say, i dare you. if you choose to save your son s live by paying a ransom, you know, seriously it s not the united states government that s that s dealing with terrorists, that s an individual who s dealing with terrorists. i just don t think you shouldn t say that he understands what they re going through because he doesn t understand what they re going through. i don t think any of us can. that s what struck me. we ll follow this more. comie ing up on morning jo hbo takes a page from netflix. why the entertainment giant is looking to cut the koord when it comes to cable. plus, is iowa ready for hillary? we re going to go live to des moines where we ll talk to casie hunt. she has to report on hillary clinton s appearance at the event without mentioning hillary clinton s name. good luck. it s not rocket science, right? turns out, it might be. the space-age gladdet ettgadget save thousands. first, big karens with the first cast. about one hour away from the sun up in cabo san lucas where we ll find what the effects were of a category 3 hurricane when the eye went right over the resort city overnight. we re hearing reports it is devastating. a lot of hotels, portions of them have reported collapsed, glass all over, a lot of problems. these were the pictures right before the storm moved in, before sunset last night. again it made landfall at about 10:45 local time there in cabo san lucas. everyone was forced to stay in the ballrooms, like you re seeing there, as the storm went through. you had 125-mile-per-hour winds when it went through. it still has winds around 110 to 115. it will weak be over the baja peninsula. then some of that rain will move over to arizona and new mexico. remember, we just had flooding from hurricane norbert recently. it feels like winter in new england. should be a nice afternoon though. when we get those pictures in though from cabo and the devastation, we ll be sure to bring those to you. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. you can eat that on weight watchers? looks amazing. looks like my next dinner party. that s only 4 points? with weight watchers you can enjoy the food you really want. dine out on favorites. or cook up something new. i can do this every day. join for free and start losing weight now. learn how to eat healthier, while enjoying the foods you love. get inspired at meetings, online, or both. weight watchers because it works. to roll out a perfectly flaky crust that s made from scratch. or mix vegetables with all white meat chicken and homemade gravy. but marie callender s does. just sit down and savor. marie callender s. it s time to savor. time now to take a look at the morning paper. we ll start with the omaha world-herald. doctors treating the ebola patient says ben & jerry s chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. he d been struggling with eating at least 1,000 calories a day but with the help of ben & jerry s, he seems to have gotten his appetite back, even exceeding the calorie requirement. officials say his condition continues to improve. i wish someone would tell me to do that. why don t you do that? i used to, believe me, like a gallon. guardian, hbo is considering a streaming service without a cable subscription. looking to allow internet users to buy a subscription to the popular hbo go, which is similar to other services like netflix or amazon. this news comes asp experts predict the future of cable tv is dependent on how these companies learn to use the internet. apparently a lot of people who have hbo, like kid, use their parents hbo go information really? yeah. i know some people on our staff that do that. really. usa today, a new tool might help motivate people who have a hard time working out, jo. yeah, it s me. the jobra allows users to have a personal trainer. it tests your heart rate and offers multiple modes the trainer can coach you through. the headphones go on sale next month. people, could you just go outside and run? just run? all these contraption. i need more voices in my head. whatever. thomas what you got? the anchorage daily news, a source close to the palin family is speaking out with an account of the drunken brawl that broke out at the party the weekend before last. this good stuff. police in alaska confirm sarah palin and family were present at the event. but a source says they didn t start it. huh-uh, they started it, not us. the palin family says the fight began when track palin was confronted by his sister willow s ex-boyfriend. this is such a reality show. love it. the source adds that todd palin came to the aid of his son. track apparently surred four cracked ribs, which is hard for me to say, during that fight. police say the fight involved about 20 people and they are still reviewing the case. my goodness. a couple of things on the front page of the new york times, very fascinating. one is a conservative revolt in kansas. a state that doesn t have a single democrat elected statewide. right now, sam brownback, a guy woz be who s been a friend of mine, in big trouble. tax cuts being blamed for a massive deficit out there. and then also florida state students are facing hurdles. and it appears that now florida state is coming under the microscope. remember, last year the heisman trophy winner was accused of sexually assaulting a student and it got sort of brushed to the side by the d.a. s office and right before the national championship game, they said, don t worry about it, nothing to see here. the new york times has dug in and florida student assaults, there s an added burd en on accusers. it s a really good story. one other story. so hillary clinton is running for president. she made that more clear by stopping by the iowa steak fry no, no, no, she didn t. no, she did. but she says she s she doesn t know if she s going to. we re not going to be one of those shows that plays that game. how do we know? she s running. she s gone to iowa. she s written a book. she does events. let s just stop with this. hillary clinton is running for president. they grilled em, i thought they fried just grilled. only grilled. she s getting a second chance to ben & jerry s eye creice cre. nbc s kasie hunt is covering it all. reporter: in 2008, hillary clinton left iowa in defeat. it took her seven years to come back. say hello to everybody in dubuque for me. reporter: on sunday, she sounded ready for another round. well, it is true, i am thinking about it. but for today, that is not why i m here. i m here for the steak. reporter: she and president clinton were attending senator harken s final steak fry, officially to help iowa democrats in the midterms but it feels like a presidential campaign. hillary clinton and president clinton are now the comeback couple in america. reporter: it would be quite a comeback. tomorrow night, future of the free world is riding on your shoulders. don t feel any pressure. reporter: in 2008, she lost to president obama and john edwards. she called the experience excruciating. you have done what the sin i ices cynic, sas said we couldn . reporter: there are still questions. will clinton be a better candidate. has the democratic party moved too far to her left. i think she s going to have to come and tell us what her message is and give iowaens a chance to determine that. hillary clinton is too closely aligned with the banking industry and i think she s not inspiring enough. reporter: in all, more than 5,000 people came to say farewell to harkins steak fry and to catch a glimpse of what could be a new beginning for hillary clinton in iowa. it s really great to be back. let s not let another seven years go by. okay. i mean, i ve already said what i ve said. let s not let another seven years go by. the people of iowa would not allow her to actually come, they wouldn t give her wait a second, she decided to stay away for seven years. what s your big takeaway from the steak fry? as you were saying, it s pretty clear she s putting herself on the path to running. i also think that it s a question how she would be ske h received in iowa. there was a lot of excitement in the crowd about her. she polls overwhelmingly favorably here. that said, she still has some questions to answer, especially in a state where voters really demand a lot of careful time and attention from their candidates. and she would have to be back here. there s a question about whether or not she would even compete here. this is not a place that was very kind to her last time. she didn t really enjoy getting into the nitty-gritty here. they turned out more voters to support her, then, you know, it would have won almost any other caucus. but up against obama, they couldn t get over the hump. kasey hunt, thank you very much. does this guy look presidential or what? oh, look at him, chiseled thank god lewis didn t go in there. senator john thune joins us. it s monday, a brand new start. with centurylink visionary cloud infrastructure, and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable, secure, and agile. we ve always been] at the forefrontumman, of advanced electronics. providing technology to get more detail. detect hidden threats. see the whole picture. process critical information, and put it in the hands of our defenders. reaching constantly evolving threats before they reach us. that s the value of performance. northrop grumman. he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. when sales rep steve hatfield books at laquinta.com, so he knows exactly when he can prep for his presentation. and when steve is perfectly prepped, ya know what he brings? and that s how you ll increase market share. any questions? can i get an a , steve? yes! three a s! amazing sales! he brings his a-game! la quinta inns and suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only at laquinta.com! la quinta! with centurylink visionary cloud a brinfrastructure, and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable, secure, and agile. iwith something terrible to admit. i treated thousands of patients, risked their lives, while high on prescription drugs. i was an addict. i m recovered now, but an estimated 500,000 medical professionals are still out there, abusing drugs or alcohol. police, airline pilots, bus drivers. they re randomly tested for drugs and alcohol. but not us doctors. you can change that: vote yes on proposition 46. your lives are in our hands. live look at capitol hill. republican senator from south dakota, our friend, senator john thune. good to have you on the set with us. nice to have you in town. yeah. kind of want your take on the nfl hunt, then we ll get to isis. the nfl stands by its leader. if you want to understand why goodell s job is almost certainly safe, this is why. the only people wouho can fire m are the 32 nfl owners. they have zero interest in letting him go. he makes them money. currently, the nfl takes in about $10 billion overall. goodell has told them he wants to make it $25 billion business by the year 2027. you can practically see their mouths watering at the prospect. is that what it comes down to? what s your gut on what you think should happen here? what should congress do? we understand the nfl from politico is hiring the lobbyists. telling you guys, hey, everything s okay, nothing to see here. does congress need to look into this? we ll see. i think right now they re launching their own investigation. which i credit them for doing. probably should have been done a long time ago. they ve got to fix it, you know, these are people who young kids in this country look up to. these are these are individuals who are paid enormously well for what they do. i think the nfl has got to deal with this and confront it in a more direct way than they have so far. or they re going to lose the confidence of the american people, no matter how popular the game is. and a lot of young kids who look up to these guys. what s their plan,er er ine forget this is a two-front war. isis is the external enemy and sectarianism is the story. we keep making this story about us, about obama, about what we do. it is not about us. it is about them and who they want to be. it s about a pluralistic region that lacks pluralism and needs to learn how to coexist. it s the 21st century. it s about time. how do we do that? can t teach them to go over and hug each other. are you going to give the president the authority matt was on earlier talking about the need, on the house, to expand the authority from 2003. what do you think the senate should do? there s some republicans in the house and senate, but also some democrat, wouho want to ha that broader debate about the authorization, the use of a military force beyond the training of the syrian rebels. the answer is yes. i think the president will get what he wants. he ll have a lot of support from republicans. but by and large i think you re going to have a big bipartisan vote in both the house and senate in support of the authorization, which, as i said, is limited to the training of the rebels at this point. do you think the president is going to get what he wants in terms of what we ve seen so far? i hope so, mika. i m interested to hear, like you are, we re hearing a lot of ambiguous commitments. partnerships i think it s important. i think it need to be a coalition. otherwise, it s going to be awfully hard to sell this there and at home. jeremy. my sense from talking to republicans on capitol hill is there s been this deep mistrust of the president throughout his term, right, but what you have here is an issue on foreign affairs. an issue that highlights his deep mistrust of world view. what percentage of conservatives in the house and senate are going to say no to the president? well, i think there will be there will be some, jeremy, for the reasons you just mentioned. like the american people. even though they support action, which the polls out this morning demonstrate. there s still a lack of confidence that it will succeed. i think part of that has to do with people aren t confident in the president s leadership on these important issues. i think by and large, you ll see a big vote in the congress for this, because i think both sides recognize something has to be done. we ve got to rally the world behind us. we reap what we sow. the president inherited a situation from president bush. whether the next president will inherit the situation from president obama. how do we plant the positive seeds of what we need to see with generations to come with the current situation in isis? if we just drop bombs on them and try to stomp them out, we know other terrorist organizations just like them are going to rise up. i think that s why it s so important this be led or at least partnered with folks from the region. you ve got to have the saudis, the jordanian, the turks and others involved in this effort. if it becomes a u.s. effort, you ve sold some really bad seeds for the future. and i think not only the near term but in the long term. we may stamp this out in the near term, but we ve got all kinds of problems in the long term, unless people on the ground are willing to take the initiative for themselves and win this for themselves. very powerful. look how good looking these people are. robert, thune and peters. like models. a law firm. a law firm made up of all really hot male models. and thune, i m a slob, thune can just break chairs in half. i ve seen that. that happened right in front of me. i don t know what was going on. that was all done for your benefit. oh, my god, good stuff. senator john thune, thank you so much. still ahead think of it as kind of a digital seat belt. the gadget that could save thousands and thousands of lives joins us next. we asked people a question, how much money do you think you ll need when you retire? 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the issue, in order for there to be a solution with automakers, it needs everybody involved. it needs the automakers. it needs technology. so it s not as simple as putting an app on the phone. it s a more wholistic solution. i can understand why a lot of automakers wouldn t do it unless everybody was in there. we ve had these discussions, every decade, a lot of people pushed back on seat belts. we got seat belts in. millions saved. the same thing with air bags. 1 in 4 accidents are caused by texting, your cell phones. it seems like a pretty easy regulation to deal with, right? you would think. it does take all these technologies coming together. they re understanding when people are driving and sending the signal to the carriers so they can lessen distractions. so we re getting there. it isn t something that happens in months. it s something that takes years to knit that altogether. the idea came up when scott was going to a meeting and one of the engineers didn t show up because he was hit by a driver who was texting. so the concept comes out of a real experience. i hope it flies. i really do. i hope to have one in my car. scott tibets, thank you so much. to learn more about scott s invention, visit indygogo.com. visit afternoon mojoe.com for that. i won t go into too many details, i actually drive longer, take a longer route home, because i want a road that s wider, that s straight, that doesn t wind through where a teenager on a cell phone or anybody on a cell phone, could be turning around the corner and i get hit. i mean that is something that we all have to be worried about. countless data on this. it seems obvious. we ll be right back. a hero homebound for a new opportunity. a kitchen that kick starts careers wells fargo invests in our communities a little differently. small measures that add up to make our whole even greater. little by little we can do a lot. because. small is huge. visit www.wellsfargo.com to see how big small can be. machines will be sprayed to be made. and making something stronger. will mean making it lighter. one day, factories will work with the cloud. one day. is today. whenwork with equity experts who work with regional experts that s when expertise happens. mfs. because there is no expertise without collaboration. into one you ll never forget. earn points for every flight and every hotel. expedia plus rewards. you can eat that on weight watchers? looks amazing. dine out on favorites or cook up something new. with weight watchers you can enjoy the food you really want. join for free and start losing weight now. learn how to eat healthier, while enjoying the foods you love. hey, it s time for my favorite part of the show. why did mika leave? because it s this part of the show. boy, i really love this. i wait all morning. louis, you got to do the turn. ladies and gentlemen. here s louis burgdorf. jay z possibly hinted that beyonce is pregnant with their second child. this happened during a performance in paris. jay z s song, the beach is better. repeatedly changed the lyric to pregnant with another one. we ll have to wait and see what happens with this one. you have any stories about paris hilton? i do. so mika s off the set. she can t tear anything up. let s do a story on paris hilton. the paris hilton front. the socialite has a new puppy. tmz reporting that hilton spent $13,000 of her hard earned dollars on allegedly the world s smallest pomeranian. stands 2 1/2 inches tall. just arrived in los angeles from calgary to meet his new owner. i bet he flew first class. that is the cutest little dog. paris hilton amazing. yes, mr. amazing. coming up next, what, if anything, did we learn. when salesman alan ames books his room at laquinta.com, he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. so he knows exactly when he can check in and power up before his big meeting. and when alan gets all powered up, ya know what happens? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! he s a selling machine! put it there. and there, and there, and there. la quinta inns & suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only a laquinta.com! la quinta! wouldn t it be great if hiring plumbers, carpenters shopping online is as easy as it gets. and even piano tuners were just as simple? thanks to angie s list, now it is. we ve made hiring anyone from a handyman to a dog walker as simple as a few clicks. buy their services directly at angieslist.com no more calling around. no more hassles. start shopping from a list of top-rated providers today. angie s list is revolutionizing local service again. visit angieslist.com today. it s monday. a brand new start. your chance to rise and shine. with centurylink as your trusted technology partner, you can do just that. with our visionary cloud infrastructure, global broadband network and custom communications solutions, your business is more reliable - secure - agile. and with responsive, dedicated support, we help you shine every day of the week. centurylink your link to what s next. you owned your car for four you named it brad. you loved brad. and then you totaled him. you two had been through everything together. two boyfriends. three jobs. you re like nothing can replace brad! then liberty mutual calls. and you break into your happy dance. if you sign up for better car replacement, we ll pay for a car that s a model year newer with 15,000 fewer miles than your old one. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. fancy feast broths. they re irresistabowl. completely unbelievabowl. totally delectabowl. real silky smooth or creamy broths. everything she s been waiting for. carefully crafted with real seafood, real veggies, and never any by-products or fillers. wow! being a cat just got more enjoyabowl. fancy feast broths. wow served daily. i know what my money is doing. i rebalanced my portfolio on my phone. you know what else i can do on my phone? place trades, get free real time quotes and teleport myself to aruba. i wish. hello, iowa! i m back! all righty. time now to talk about what we learned. i mean, i learned there s only one thing, i mean, it s in my brain. what s that? paris hilton has a new puppy dog, a pomeranian. where is he? what s wrong with you? mr. amazing. what did you learn? this is a lesson that repeats itself throughout my career. there is nothing for which the new york times will not be blamed. oh. and domestic violence. what have you learned? hillary clinton has a new stamp on her passport to iowa, fresh. hey, let her in. seven years. i m not good enough, just go. i learned that apparently i have to go quit to make the nfl do something on domestic violence. that was really weird. it was weird. a weird thing. kind of weird. thank you. what s that guy s name again? i don t remember. alan. no, he should come back. i don t get it. if it s way too early, what time is it? it s time for morning joe. but stick around, daily rundown is next.
report, fair beings balanced and unafraid. greta goes on the record right now and special report starts in five seconds. i m greta van susteren, and, yes, this is on the record. and up first the smoking gun. a declassified email exposing a direct link between the white house and the controversial benghazi talking points. and now other news organizations joining fox and demanding answers. it just seems that there is a political calculation that was being made in these emails. tried very hard this morning to distance the white house from the ambassador s remarks on the sunday shows. is there a suggestion she got confused. you knew full well that these sunday show appearances were going to be dominated by the attack on benghazi. relied on points about the benghazi attack that were produced by the cia. it did not come from the cia. now we see a document that comes from the white house not the cia attributing the protest to the video. the fact that there were protests around the region, threatening our embassies, it was entirely appropriate to have question and answer document prepared for the video it was based on what we knew at the time. why were you holding back this information? why was the email not turned over to the congress? why was it not released when you released all the other emalsz? this is directly relevant? why did you hold it back? this document was not about benghazi. it was a prep for sunday shows. it wasn t her only prep, john. you said at the podium last year that the white house and the state department only changed one word. we now know, obviously we know for some time that is not true. can you correct the record on that. when it comes to correcting records, you know, we can get into that. i am happy to recite and for as long as you like. okay. we just saw it but what was it like inside that very tense briefing room today. fox senior white house correspondent wendell goler joins us. wendell, it seems very tense on the outside. what was it like inside that room? well, greta, not very tense for me because by the time jay carney called on me, all the questions about pñ benghazi had been asked though i m not really sure how many of them were answered. carney says the email that judicial watch pried out of the white house showed then u.s. ambassador susan rice being briefed by deputy national security advisor about u.s. protests and a u.s. protest in cairo, cartoom and elsewhere in the world based on anti-islam movie made in this country. heated exchanges between john carney and jim accosta when carney was asked why rice responded to questions about the attack on the u.s. consulate in b9&ctkzi with talking points aimed at the broader arab region as she did when she attended all the sunday news shows. carney said rice didn t mix up her talking points though. the director of the cia at the time has said that their initial analysis of the attack on the consulate had nothing to do with the anti-islam movie and simplest explanation for what carney had to say is that he may have been trying to protect then ambassador rice. though administration critics say that rice was trying to protect the president s claim that al guide was on the run. remember, all this happened about two months before the presidential election, greta. in fact, wendell, the reporters when they walked away from today s briefing, did they sense that they got answers out of the administration or did they feel like carney was basically doing some sort of two step and not answering? as i said, i m not sure how many of these questions were answered. i m sure that these questions will be asked again. it is somewhat gratifying that it s not just fox asking these questions. all the networks are asking them now. but i m not sure jay carney has answered them to the satisfaction of the reporters, all the reporters in the room, greta. wendell, thank you. and, at best, the white house is handling benghazi has been a huge disaster. at worse? a coverup. as bad as it is did press secretary jay carney today just make it worse. co-host of the five and former press secretary for president george w. bush, she joins us. good evening, deign. that hi. thanks for having me. dana, how did jay carney handle this today? how do you look at this? well, here s one of the ways that i look at going into the briefing room is that if you re walking down the ramp and into the briefing room and think i have got this handled. you maybe should turn around and go back in the office and get yourself together again. because there is always just one more thing that is going to be asked about. and condescending tones, i think, back fire in the briefing room. i think today what they were looking for in the white house press corps was asking for some candidness, something that would be sincere and refreshing. i don t think that they got that. i have always approached the communications world and especially the amazing role of press secretary as one of just tremendous, enormous responsibility. and 50% of what you do as press secretary is defend and advocate for the president. but there is another part of the job, that s the other auto% which is to protect the role of the press to make sure that they are getting the answers that they are asking for. let me ask you, this ben rhodes email that is dated friday september 14th which people are now talking about and, you know, in which it says things that well, it says that what the purpose of the whole briefing for ambassador rice is supposed to be. tell me this. does this likely and i realize you weren t there does this email likely go above ben rhodes? i cannot imagine a scenario where you would have a deputy communications director of a white house of the national security council give a cabinet level officer administration official susan rice information to use on a sunday show not just one sunday show but five of them that would not have gone further. and, in fact, greta, we know that it went further. how do we know that? because the email is copied to all of the higher ups. ben rhodes was doing his job. i don t for one second think he dreamed this out of the air. there was either specific policy or political direction that said we wanted to make sure that the goal is that we focus onen this being an internet video causing the protest and that it s not a problem of broader foreign policy. i do not believe. which i should add in direct contradiction to what mike more morell, acting director of the cia said a month ago in a hearing which we are now hearing about 19 months later after there have been many opportunities for the white house to release this information and to provide these emails. it took a lawsuit. i think that the american people would have understood if the white house had said yes, of course, we were trying to protect the president. even if they had just said, this you know, after the election said well, maybe we shouldn t have tried to do that we were trying to help the president. i actually think that people probably would have forgiven them. they insisted that they had nothing to do pushing the video from the white house. we now know that is not true. i do not think it will wash for jay carney to try to suggest that the email labeled benghazi was not about benghazi when he they were prepping her for questions about benghazi. if they believe that, then the white house press corps has lost all credibility. but they haven t. i mean, you saw that briefing today. they haven t focused on this solely, but when you have something like this come forward, after it was redacted, remember, this goes to the white house council s office. it s a document email. white house council approves redacting. that basically means blacking it out so you can t read it they give that. defense lawyers say hiding. they were hiding it they give that to the committee on capitol hill. they ridicule and make found of the committee for months saying ha ha you can t find anything that links us to the video. why couldn t we? because somebody thought it was a good idea to he redact that i think unacceptable. who in the white house council s office approves that. to use my word hiding it. i think a lot of things are classified to hide things. anyway, that s just me. bye-bye. okay. let s go off-the-record and good for abc s jonathan karl. he was so aggressively questioning jay carney today about benghazi. why were you holding back this information? why was this email not turned over to the congress? why was it not release when you hady-:í released all the other emails? this is directly relevant? why did you hold it back? no matter how much president obama and his staff insists benghazi is a phony scandal, we want and deserve all the answers. for starters, who made up that silly video story calls for benghazi and why? until right now, most of the media have been giving the white house a pass, even the a.p. who is supposed to be the gold standard in journalism. here is the example. a.p. report matt lee sent an email two days after benghazi to then state department spokesperson that read in part: the utter b.s. being spread around on fox is really unbelievable. i think you know or should know i m not a fan of any particular administration or policy and i m not shy about calling out inconsistencies but this is shocking. our aggressive reporting may shock lee. what shocks me the people had bed with the white house. not just the white house playing hide-and-seek or many in the media cozying up to them. it s also capitol hill. where is the aggressive investigation there? there appears to be more to washington than whether president obama wears mom jeans than the death of four americans at benghazi. that s my off-the-record comments tonight. if you have a story you think i should off-the-record go to gretawire.com. joining us now is the panel. rick, first to you, your colleague secured the press skewered press secretary jay cancery. he pointed out t. out. the appearance is going to be about benghazi. to suggest the talking points were about something broad or something different and the strong suggestion that i think you can t come away from the emails without coming to the conclusion that the white house had an incentive, white house aides had an incentive and an interest in pushing an idea that this was not a policy failure, that this was a spontaneous protest, that s the key. you know what s so tragic about that? we re not talking about property damage. while they are playing politics, this is not property damage. this is actually four dead americans. this email really stands out. the first and most explicit mention of not a reflection of policy or failure. looking back on, this we now know they were turning it down request for security. catherine herridge classified cable she reported classified cable dated august 16th which when they were warned about al qaeda in benghazi. that s what catherine herridge reported. then we have the question of what happened that night and why. all these forces we have. in between though september ath or 6th. president obama is at the convention saying that al qaeda is on the run. now we get to september 11th. okay. so it occurs we have the events of that night for which all of our forces in nato and all of our forces in europe nobody could get fast enough to launch a rescue mission for guys that were there. i understand that one. but go ahead. the explanation. on this channel, being systematically mislead. we understand there is confusion and changing situation. but as we look at that email progress. the explanation gets less and less accurate which is a really bizarre thing. actually though they start trying to step all over anyone who is trying to investigate. they excluded fox news to the state department briefing from the media and the cia because we kept pushing it, bob. it s not a phony scandal it s dangerous for the administration to do that four americans dead. one brought to justice. the real problem too is getting the information. transparency has been an issue we talked about on the show with the administration. why does it have to take judicial watch to file a lawsuit on this one. the white house knows many media companies can t afford the lawsuit that judicial watch and got this memo from. it s terrible to think that all the efforts to short of shut this down. i know capitol hill they could have been a lot more aggressive on this had a select committee. capitol hill is perfectly able to speaker boehner select committee and do something. four dead americans. this is not just a couple billions. definitely jurisdictional issues. committee chairman wanted to protect their turf. how? yeah. boehner could have fixed that one. speaker boehner could have. one committee select with a lot he could still do it now. there has been a lot of theories in republican circles how far to push the politics. politics, four dead people that s the problem in the city. 100%. the other point that has to be made here why did it take so long to get this email? they were hiding it. i don t think there is another conclusion to come to. at the same time, they say this wasn t a benghazi talking point but also to produce it. that is patently ridiculous jay carney said. rally around the president and protect him. folks in the press but clearly the democrats on capitol hill. you would think that as much as they may personally like susan rice or may personally like hillary clinton. they may like the president of the united states, ultimately accountability, what happened four dead people. forget the fancy words accountability. four dead americans. ultimately get answers to that and all this other stuff goes by the wayside. old news, get over it waste of time. well, if we are still learning new things it s not a waste of time now is it. no it isn t. panel, thank you. this is a fox news alert. gusty winds dangerously fanning the flames of a waging wildfire in southern california. more than 1,000 homes and several hundred schools evacuated in an area east of losr the latest we go live to phil showman. what s going on there? well, still no containment on this wildfire. record high temperatures and very dry conditions have led to high fire danger throughout southern california for the the past here in the community of rancho kook among go. cucamonga. a number of schools evacuated. all this happened when school was just beginning this morning. fortunately there was a massive response on the ground and so far no structures have been burned. no injuries that we know of. we re told that one house, a garage of one hours just got slightly singed by some flames but because of those winds, the helicopters and the fixed wing aircraft that usually deploy against these brush fires, these wildfires were not able to it fly. so that made the efforts on the ground all the more urgent and so far the winds seem to have been dying down over the past couple of hours in the immediate sense of danger has passed. still no containment on this fire. reporting live in rancho cucamonga i m phil schuman, greta? before you go, strong winds, that could pick up real fast? yeah. that s the problem. the worse of the winds seems to have been behind us. however, the temperatures are still going to be high over the next couple of days approaching 100 degrees so it doesn t take much to set up one of these brush fires we have set it up over and over again. phil, thank you. up next, former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld goes on the record. also fireballs and thick black smoke and now people running for their lives. we will show you what is causing this terrifying scene coming up. 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that corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. and yet, there s someone around the office who hasn t had a performance review in a while. someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. i m looking at you phone company dsl. check your speed. see how fast your internet can be. switch now and add voice and tv for $34.90. comcast business built for business. republican lawmakers saying president obama is not doing enough to stop russian president putin. senators taking on not only president obama but president putin. they introduced new measures, toughen saxes and increase u.s. support for the armed forces of our allies on rush slps border. donald rumsfeld joins us. good evening, sir. good evening, greta. how serious is what is going on in crimea, ukraine, russia? it s very serious because it is a pattern, this is russia is an authoritarian state. putin is going to push as far as he can until he sees that the cost is too high and the resistance too great and there is too much to lose. and to the extent that we continue a pattern of words incrementalism as opposed to stiffer sanctions and in my view lethal and nonlethal assistance to countries that he is pushing against. i suspect what we will see is not just ukraine but down the road you can see him doing similar things as he did in the republic of georgia. he can be doing it in other central asian countries. should the sanctions that have been imposed. should they be imposed on putin. the saxes are imposed around him not on him personally. he is a very wealthy man, right? i assume that he has never shown me his bank book. he hasn t shown me either. have you ever met him? oh sure, my goodness, yes. what s he like? you get in a meeting with putin, and he is kind of a throw back to the old soviet bureau. he talks for 30 or 40 minutes without stopping. and his guests sit there and listen. it s a were pa. i have seen it back in the soviet days and he it s ofb!ofñ kind, a meeting with him do you trust him at all? he breaks his treaties, he is doing things he says he wouldn t do. no. this is a state that he wants to expand. is he difficult for his neighbors. is he difficult in terms it of abiding by his treaties. you know, russia is not a great super power. nuclear weapons, yes. missiles, yes. but, i mean, they have trouble with health. they have trouble with with pollution. they have trouble with a large prison population. their adult males are declining in expected life expectancy. and except for energy, they are not a great super power. they have a lot of energy, germany, angela merkel one of her big problems is that her country really likes the energy coming out of russia. that s true. it s up to the united states and the west. we have plenty of energy resources. all we have to do is start using them intelligently. and reduce the dependency of western europe on russian gas. see, i see it as even a larger issue in that, you know, while all the focus is on ukraine and what he is doing there is that last year when president obama drew the red line with syria and that back fired and he sort of outsourced and ling the chemical weapons in syria to putin, putin then was supposedly going to help us. now we hear that there is chlorine gas used about a month ago against civilians. it sounds like either we are foolish or there has been some double dealing or whatever. i see that sort of inroads in syria and a bigger problem for israel and sort of expanding in the region. that s what i see is even a larger issue. it s even bigger thansrki that in my view. the problem is you you know you can if you go back through franklin roosevelt and harry truman and hour and kennedy and johnson and president after president. the united states has tended, not perfectly, but tended to be a good friend to our friends and allies and reliable. we have tended to be a caution for our enemies and opponents who are working against our values. we have lost that. this administration is a has broken from a long tradition of administrations of both political parties. and the weakness that s being manifested. the fact that our credit has been downgrade, the fact that we can t manage our economic affairs and we are modeling the u.s. economy on europe is sending a signal out to the world that the united states is not going to be there in the a, 10 years ahead. and the behavior of this administration, in my view, is creating a vacuum that s being filled by people who don t have our values. you you know, i think it s hard to have much diplomatic muscle with a country like china when we own is so much money, they have got their foot on our neck. you don t think so? no. i think we have to be realistic about china. china has a terrible disparity of economic circumstance from the coast inland. they still have a lot. i hate being in debt with them. i think that weakens us. well, that s our behavior. we are acting like juveniles. we are modeling ourself after europe, which is a failed model. i mean, the idea that we can t manage our economic affairs responsibly is inexcusable. what do you make of secretary kerry who want do over on apartheid comment. he wants a do over and the president said wrong. i feel bad for him. he shouldn t have said something he shouldn t have said and he has retracted it. he shouldn t have said. the problem is it comes on top of an administration s relationship with israel that is there have been a series of potholes in the relationship and difficulties. and we have not recognized that that country is a democracy in that part of the world. that it is a country surrounded by countries that don t wish it well. and that we need to have a strong, healthy trusted relationship with them. but, i felt badly for the secretary. mr. secretary, it s always nice to see you, sir. thank you very much. you have to hear this to believe it charles rangle saying the tea party does not believe the union won the civil war. hear what else he said. and then hear from what allen west has to stay. a safe terrifying explosion caught on camera. latest is coming up. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment s right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approvedo treat ed and symptoms obph, like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess with cialis. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long-term injury, se immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than 4 hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or iyou have any allergic reactions such as rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a 30-tablet free trial. [ chainsaw buzzing ] humans. sometimes, life trips us up. sometimes, we trip ourselves up. and although the mistakes may seem to just keep coming at you, so do the solutions. like multi-policy discounts from liberty mutual insurance. save up to 10% just for combining your auto and home insurance. call liberty mutual insurance at. to speak with an insurance expert and ask about all the personalized savings available for when you get married, move into a new house, or add a car to your policy. personalized coverage and savings all the things humans need to make our world a little less imperfect. call. and ask about all the ways you could save. liberty mutual insurance responsibility. what s your policy? democratic representative charles rangle saying the tea party does not believe the union won the civil war. some parts of the united states of america, they don t believe that the union won. as they never saw that many union uniforms, i have never seen so many confederate flags that represent groups that are proud of the fact that they call themselves the tea party. they are from that part of the country that the state own slaves. former congressman allen west joins us. good evening, sir. good evening, greta, how are you? good. do you interpret what the congressman rangle said is that it is all tea party members or just a few sort of stray members or maybe rogue members? how do you interpret what he said? first of all his comments reflect a gentleman stuck on stupid. i was recently out in colorado. i posted a picture on my facebook page of the rockie mountain black tea party. that should totally discredit any of the comments that charlie rangel has made. then you also have a representative benny thompson who was on the new nation of islam radio show and he called supreme court justice clarence thomas an uncle tom. what you have, greta, are these members of the congressional black caucus who have to create this strawman or this deception because they are really not dealing with the interests and the issues that are facing their constituencies. when you think about charlie rangel, he should be speaking out about mayor bill de blasio who is trying to dismantle it the charter school program in new york city. the academy right there in harlem. not talking about the 12% unemployment rate. not talking about the g.d.p. growth which obviously means that there is definitely not economic growth within our inner city and urban environments. this is politics as usual. why do they do that? because everybody goes into politics whether you agree with a person. i realize some politics an awful long time and lose that thought, but, i mean, why are they doing that? it s it s very simple. because you have a constituency that is trapped on a liberal/progressive plantation of the 21 st century. they want to make sure that they continuee they want to to demonize and castigate constitutional. irrespective of color or race or gender or any of those divisive factors that the liberals like to use because they are afraid of losing control and losing power. you know, every single group i have ever seen, both sides of the political spectrum in the middle and even nonpolitical groups, there is always a few rogue people. they always, you know, a few for lack of a better word to not destroy it for everybody else, what i find troubling is sort of when you sort of seize upon the rogue person, the nut, the one who is trying to destroy and try to tarnish an entire group that might have a completely different thought or perspective or goal. that s what bothers me. and it should bother us all. i have spoken at countless amount of conservative grass roots events, tea party events and i have never seen a confederate flag there what i believe is that do you have people come and they infiltrate so that they can can create that one single moment that optic that people like a charlie rangel or others on the left can use to say that these people are racist or what you have when that s not the case. all about issues and better opportunities and the promise and restoration of the measure dream. and i forgot, that is one other category besize sort of the rogue person, you have those who deliberately come in to infiltrate and create an impression about a whole group, you know, obviously, you know, trying to do some shenanigans to hurt people. anyway, congressman, nice to talk to you. thank you, sir. always a pleasure. thank you, greta. an attack coming from the right and the left. the target president obama s leadership and our political panel is back next, plus caught on camera, sinkhole swallows cars. stay tuned to find out where the earth just opened up. the ue release smartcontrol technology that helps prevent the urge to smoke all day long. help prevent your cravings with nicoderm cq. that helps prevent the urge to smoke all day long. what swithout the thinking capitathat makes it real? 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maureen dowd written obama does i will say it it crudely. manhood problem. manhood is getting out of hand. manhood, mom jeans and the way he gets off of airplanes. maureen, you are two years too late. this is the stuff you should have ferreted out in 2007 and 2008. it s no big deal to figure this out six years in to this mess. not only on the right but the left too. rick klein, jim garety and bob cusack. rick, i think the manhood stuff, i think that s mean, it s critical. i don t like that one. it s too much. can you climb into someone s head around that and say what it means on the world stapling. do i think there is a broader issue. you mentioned president s supporters new poll out by harvard university just this week looks at millennials people in their 20 s. broad disillusionment with broad some measures more disillusionment since any time since 2011. obama era. real phenomena we see inside of the party. inside places that would be the president s base and frustrations coming forward. all male panel to assess the manhood issue of the administration. you hear what we women say in the green room but guys. someone doesn t like the manliness use effectiveness. does that mean women aren t effective. if i want something done right, i call a woman. if there is no sign that the administration policy is deterring putin. syria remains a mess. this administration is haunted by syria. with the bold red line pledge and then nothing really happening. the economy stinks. we saw the .01 g.d.p. growth number. look at president obama s poll numbers. dragging him down lately. new perform about pessimism about the economy. new rollout from the house committee that says only a 7% of the people who bought through the federal exchange have paid their premiums april 15th. not due until may but tick tock. that is the house republican committee. messes on every single front. bob? there is a question of whether he is tough enough. and certainly i think since the bin laden raid, certainly was a huge victory for this white house, there has been those questions. he hasn t been able to get his way with congress. there is multiple reasons for that has he been effective? and jim i think raises a good point. if you are not effective, there is a reason why he is the low 40s approval ratings both domestic and foreign policy. how does he get his groove back? you respect the right and republicans to do it. the the washington post editorial board which leans left just skewed him calling obama half measures give putin little to fear slow and excruciating. sanctions fall short. telling mr. putin as well as other potential aggressors little to fear from the united states. they are skewering him. there has been a the lo of unrest with the president whether it s nsa on the left. even some of the irs stuff. just a big government stuff on the right doesn t work. but this stooping hurts him with the left. that s why his numbers are there and also, his relationship with democrats in congress cannot good at all. and now he is on his way out, basically. you know, we are going to hear a lame duck especially if they lose control of the senate. all right, pal. we have another issue. last week as republican congressman vance mcallister playing kissy faces a a staff caught on his own camera. other side of the aisle, divorce dealings getting pretty narsy. allen grayson now seeking annulment because he says his wife is a big biggest. claiming his wife already had a husband when he married her. aleta grayson of defamation. wrongly accused him of battering her at their home last month. rick? well, well, well. that s the washington post. divorce is an ugly one. congressman grayson is a guy with sharp ends and rubbed a lot of folks from washington the wrong way. this is particularly ugly divorce. there is nothing good about. this. well, pushing match a month ago, right? yes. calling the police. little domestic violence episode. this is a strange set of circumstances to find out about a previous marriage after you were already married for i think 2 a years. how does he not know about it. if you think you are having trouble with your spouse, at least your spouse hasn t dropped this bomb on you, by the way i was married a little bit earlier. allen may grayson is a puppet for the liberals. most repulsive person on capitol hill and this story makes me feel bad for him. till of a hun. i don t feel sorry for any of these guys. get elected. this is what they do? well, mcallister, too where for a while he thought he could survive. radel also thought that now we have the michael grimm situation and headache for republican leaders. just story after story makes congress look really bad. a little self-respect. walk down the hall. he says he walks down the hall everyone snickers and grayson walks down the hall there is the one. like 70 grade. leadership approaches this in ways. less patience for standing by your guys thee days. not quite vicious cutting people off think are liabilities. they have gotten better i think in the sense of accountability in saying this is not someone we want to associate ourselves and our caucus. stand by grim? not entirely. i think they should take him and throw him off that. the republican campaign committee has indicated they are not going to support him. they are trying to distance themselves to some degree because he can t get off the ballot. of course you have got grayson divorce and mcallister kissing the staff. grimm has indictment and presumed innocent. it may be worse but añ%ñd least you know for some reason at least not caught on camera, right? he is not calling the police on his wife, right? at least there is stuff against those guys. remember, speaker boehner says congress is indicative of the country there are some dumb people at least he didn t say the media anyway, panel, thank you. and president obama issuing a threat to republicans. senator marco rubio is here to respond next.
true business-grade internet comes with secure wifi for your business. it also comes with public wifi for your customers. not so with internet from the phone company. i would email the phone company to inquire as to why they have shortchanged these customers. but that would require wifi. switch to comcast business internet and get two wifi networks included. comcast business built for business. president obama issuing a threat to republicans. change is happening, whether republicans in congress like it or not. do you remember a congress doesn t support raising the minimum wage. you have got to let them know they are out of step and that if they keep putting politics ahead of working americans, you will put them out of office. republican senator marco rubio joins us. good evening, sir. good evening, greta. well, that s not all the president said about republicans. he blasted you for spending all your time repealing the affordable care act. obamacare, and he also says he spending time seeking cuts for the wealthy. what do you say? i think he is right about one thing. that is we should be on the side of people that are struggling to make a living. the problem is while his idea my poll well initially, it doesn t actually help people who are trying to get ahead. here is the fundamental fact in the real world. if you own a business that can t really raise prices and you have workers and now you have to pay them more federally mandated you have to find that money somewhere. for some people that means they will lose their job or hours at work. that s just a fact. not me saying it, the congressional budget office has told us that i can t support anything that would actually cost people jobs. especially given this economy. i do believe workers need to make more money. i don t think the way do you that is through the minimum wage. but 10.10 be a hour is not something we should aspire to for people. we should aspire to 200, $30 an hour. the way to do that is to create the changes to our laws make america a more afrackive place continue to vest and innovate. and also helping people to acquire the skills they need for the better paying jobs of a new economy. goes a little deeper though. he says you are spending all your time repealing obamacare and that focusing on cuts for the wealthy. he doesn t talk but trying to help out those who are struggling. he talks about you trying to help the wealthy. again, this goes back to the same rhetoric of class warfare that they always rely on. the truth is he has been president for six years. the very people he claiming wanting it to help are worse off than they have ever been. record numbers of people on food stamps. record numbers of people dependent on government. those are the facts. so now, desperate to try to create a counter narrative. their argument is that the only way some people can be better off is if we make other people worse off. the good news is that in america we have free enterprise and free enterprise means everyone can be better off without making anyone worse off. that s what has made us different from the rest of the world. i wish we had a president that actually believed that. you have a new bill introduce having to do with stepping up the pressure on russia. are you dissatisfied with what the president is doing? yeah, i am. here is why. vladimir putin has made a decision. he want to restore russia and what he thinks would be a great power. and the way to do that is to be able to invade and intimidate their neighbors and their immediate abroad. he has calculated that the benefits of doing what he is doing now first with crimea and now in eastern ukraine that the benefits outweigh the costs. we have to change that calculation. and that s what these sanctions are all about. is imposing costs-to-defectors to the russian economy and individuals russian economy including vladimir putin so they can finally determine that the price they re pay something too high. all right. if it doesn t go your way, with the increased sanctions but if we stay with what the president has done, what do you expect will happen? i think what i expect to happen is what s already happening. russia is using agents in eastern ukraine to destabilize the government there to take over government buildings and entire cities. all in anticipation of what s going to be a fraudulent vote that potentially could ask as well to be separate from ukraine and become part of russia. this is the direction they re headed. same strategy used in crimea. that s what they re employing now because they calculated the costs are not high enough to stop doing it. how is that a security issue for us? it s actually an economic issue for us. we cannot allow any country in the world to be afraid tone gauge us commercially as ukraine tried to do in engaging the west. they are afraid of a more powerful neighbor. the 21st century we have to be able to sell our products and services to any market in the world without being intimidated by a powerful neighbor. if we allow this to stand undeterred it will set an example not just for russia but for china, for iran, for north carolina north korea other countries intimidate neighbors tell them if you closer, it s a direct threat to our economy. senator, nice to see you. thank you, sir. thank you, greta. okay, everyone, here is what is being being hash reasonable doubt out right now. 20 years after rocker bain s death. kurt cobain s scores handwritten note by police. police releasing the note found in cobain s wallet after the suicide. in that note he writes do you kurt cobain take courtney michelle love to be your lawful shredded wife and t. gets worse but can t say it on tv. house majority leader eric cantor getting in on the action. he tweeted today is national honesty day. #benghazi. ouch. everyone wants to buy the l.a. clippers. that story is trending right now. oprah winfrey the next owner of the nba team. oprah in talks with media executive larry ellison to make a bid for the clippers. that is in embattled clippers owner donald sterling puts the team up for sale and not the only one rumored to buy the team. p. diddy tweeting i knicks fan. bunny ranch owner benny hough tweeting is he considering buying the clippers. now it is your turn to hash it out with us. use #greta on all your tweets and posts. and fireballs thick smoke shooting high in the air. train derails right in the middle of a townget the latest is next. also, don t forget. hannity tonight 10 p.m. eastern. stephen smith joins sean to talk about the donald sterling controversy. tonight, 10:00 p.m. on hannity. don t forget. get all your favorites all day, every day. olive garden s signature favorites, just $10 all week long! including everyone s favorite fettuccine alfredo, and our classic lasagna. with sauces made from scratch in our kitchens every morning. all served with unlimited homemade soup or fresh garden salad. and your all-time favorite, warm breadsticks. signature favorites now just $10. all day, every day. at olive garden, we re all family here. discover 70 lunch combinations including our chicken parmigiana sandwich starting at $6.99. 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[ female announcer ] some questions take more than a bank. they take a banker. make a my financial priorities appointment today. because when people talk, great things happen. why let erectile dysfunction get in your way? talk to your doctor about viagra. ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain. it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and call your doctor right away if you experience a sudden decrease or loss in vision or hearing. this is the age of taking action. viagra. talk to your doctor. if your doctor decides viagra is right for you, you can fill your prescription at your pharmacy. or, check out viagra home delivery, a convenient place to fill your prescription online and have it shipped at no additional cost straight to your door. viagra home delivery. get started at viagra.com. bill o reilly is next. first get ready to speed read your way through the news. train derailment spends thick black smoke into the virginia. tanker cars carrying crude oil jumping the tracks. happened in downtown lynchburg, several buildings were evacuated. no reports of any injuries now to the heavy rain and dangerous flooding up and down the east coast. florida s gulf coast getting slammed. governor rick scott declaring a state of emergency for panhandle counties. 20 inches of rain drenching parts of pensacola rescuing people from cars and rooftops. after two days of really heavy rain in baltimore. a sinkhole opening up and swallowing parked cars luckily no one has hurt. new york high school student accepted to all 8 ivy league school announcing his big decision. the stupidity says he will go, to ready for a drum roll? yale. joining the class 2018. always leading toward cale the clincher was a campus visit. that s tonight s speed read. thank you for being with us, see you all again tomorrow right here at 7 p.m. eastern with all your friends. get all your friends and you can dvr it too. go to gretawire.com and answer this question. is the white house delegate all about benghazi or is the white house hiding something? up next, the o reilly factor but go to gretawire and vote in our poll. see you tomorrow night. 7 p.m. the o reilly factor is on. tonight. this is a classic coverup of a coverup. and that is a serious offense. why isn t the national media covering the explosive benghazi memo release yesterday? we ll tell you what the memo says and why the press fears it. the creepy part is that, yeah, when you get taped in your own house, and then that goes out to the world. the creepy part is when you demean the entire black race. but some people still don t get that tonight, we ll talk it over with kareem abdul jabbar. also coming up, miller on basketball racism and watters goes to harlem to find out what the fo
snack? no. did the sponsor consider as the potential state snack, raisins. did the sponsor consider perhaps pres els as the official state snack? never. never! i never did and i never shall! what if the pretzel was dipped in yogurt, would that been could we consider that would be two in one. oh, my god. this guy is batman. what say you, senator hasselhoff? yogurt would be the state snack. the pretzel would not. the pretzel if so dipped would be the yogurt delivery method for which designation i refer you to the subcommittee on snack transportation. good morning. it is friday. can you finally believe it? it s the day before mother s day weekend, you guys. just remember. friday, may 9th. on set donnie deutsch, mark heilemann, mike barnicle, and npr senior analyst coky roberts. and the former director of the cia, retired general michael hayden. so joe, a great group this morning. and you have a great weekend mother s day for you. your mother s coming up to spend time with you. i know you re excited. worried. a little scared, but excited. actually we have a piece on her galore of the forest. does she bring the chain saw everywhere she goes? you will see her with it. it s scary. we have an incredible panel to talk about this. ukraine is voicing concern this morning one day after pro-russian militants defied a crest by vladimir putin. the anniversary today nazi germany s surrender to russia. they intend in crimea a victory lap. he was out in moscow s parade this morning. crimean flags were on display. final preps are underway in eastern ukraine for this weekend s vote on independence. despite putin s calls for dialogue between the countries, there are still strong signs they have a long way to go. oversaw a series of exercises including rocket launches, military vehicles. pro-russian militants are continuing to take over buildings. hundreds of separatists took over government buildings after ukrainian soldiers fled. they re taking over tv stations. joe, it continues. it does continue. coky, roberts, obviously it continued irritant for the president of the united states and our allies that care in europe. so what does it mean for the president? what does it mean for this crisis if vladimir putin does take a victory lap and go to a victory parade in crimea? an area that russia basically just annexed. it s a continuing problem for the president. and the sense that there s just total weakness here is pervasive now. that we re not doing anything that s making any difference. that putin is saying don t have this referendum, please. he knows perfectly well they re going to do it and they re going to vote to separate. it s going to be a continuing irritant unless the united states and nato really do get their act together. general hayden, i m getting tired of people saying there s little the president can do. i think there s lots the president can do short of firing a shot. we could actually make our strategic alliance with the poles much tougher, much stronger, and actually send a stronger message by putting more american forces in a place where they want us to be. no, i think you re right, joe. we had an understanding with the russians we would not deploy in the new states of nato in eastern europe, poland, and the baltic states. frankly what russia has done in crimea and the threat in ukraine, i think that agreement is null and void. we should just put nato forces where they should be to be responsive to current threats. we need to teach putin that actions have consequences. you re right. we put 150 paratroopers in each of the baltic states. i think the commitment that we re willing to get serious there would be an important message to putin. we took three divisions out of germany over the past five years. it wouldn t be bad for mr. putin to believe that we might put one of those divisions back in poland. and the defense, the missile defense system that we walked away from and insulted our polish allies, maybe we need to talk about putting that back in there if we re told this is putin flexing his muscles to try to impress the russian people. the consequences of having a lot of american troops, a lot of nato troops in poland will actually undercut it and send a strong message that perhaps this wasn t the best play for him. that actions do have consequences. right now they have no consequences for putin. i think you re right, joe. there are things we can do in the whole russian reset. we did an awful lot of things to accommodate russian interest and russian concerns. my personal view, this is hard stuff. my personal view is we overachieved. we don t need to overachieve any longer. our friends in eastern europe wonder where we have gone. now we have an opportunity to go back. and joe, let me give you one other concrete recommendation. we don t have to send american troops to ukraine. lord knows we re not going to do that. what about advisers? look. the ukrainians, the new government in kiev lacks the ability to govern, to mount military or even police activity. i don t think we should be reluctant to send people there who can revise them on how to handle the current situation. we ll touch back in on this. obviously a huge developing story. turning to some politics now. governor chris christie s problems in new jersey are more about budgets than bridges these days. as politico notes today, the republicans latest challenge centers on the state s economic struggles. that was made clear on sunday with a giant front page headline in the star-ledger. right now the garden state s unemployment is well above the national average. the real estate market is also in tough shape. the administration is facing a $1 billion budget gap. and the state s credit rating has been downgraded. the numbers threaten to undercut the governor s national message of an economic miracle in new jersey. john heilemann, might this be the bigger story if he jumps into the fray? it s always been a big issue. that the economy in new jersey was not that strong and it would be hard to sell. it was the one thing people looked at beyond the personal issues, behind temperament issues. the one substantive thing people pointed to back then, it s going tor hard to sell a new jersey miracle. there are things they ve gotten done over time, that s why governors have a good chance. but if you don t have a record like that, everything else has to be working. if you don t have the economy and your personal image is dented, it s a difficult sell. everyone is trying to figure where this is going to go. that s one of the problems with being governor. you re there every day. and affects real people in a state. coky roberts. we remember the massachusetts miracle when he ran for president and it disassembled because of dukakis campaign was flawed. it was not exactly what he was selling to the country. this, too, in new jersey it looks like. it s not miraculous. new jersey has had a lot of trouble recovering from hurricane sandy and that is legit. but chris christie, really, there s no there there. the only thing he s got going for him is he won a lot of voters that most republicans don t win in his re-election bid at a time he was riding high in response to his response to the hurricane. and no hurricane, no economy, bridgegate, and republicans who don t like northeastern moderates in their view anyway. i don t see anything going for christie. donnie, branding chris christie, where is he now? his whole talk about getting them done. all of a sudden he s not getting it done. when you put that combination as far as john said with bridgegate and this, it s damaged. there s the obamacare issue for the midterms that can be a difficult subject for senate democrats locked in tight re-election battles. perhaps no one faces a tougher challenge than that of kay hagan of north carolina. these are the headlines this morning online. huffington post, endangered dem comes out swinging at obamacare. and the washington post, vulnerable dem offers a strong case for obamacare. yesterday during the hearing for kathleen sebelius, she offered her support of the affordable care act. last year our governor decided against expanding the state s medicaid program. and as a result, about 500,000 people who would have qualified for coverage through medicaid are now not able to do so. speaking of the charlotte news and observer, hagan goes further. in the interview she bites off republican interests by asking about the benefits. she explains i voted for it. i think there are common sense fixes that must be made to this bill. but i also talked to people in north carolina who have seen the difference it has made in their lives. joe, we talked about this and whether or not democrats should equivocate or even push away anything to do with obamacare. she s doubling down. it was one of the things we thought they should do. no doubt about it. we ve been saying it over the past month, been saying if you voted for obamacare you need to campaign on obamacare. because you re not going to be able to run away from it. donnie deutsche as i saw all the time in politics, nobody stops you if you re going 90 miles an hour forward. you do that plus hammer on the component we ve been talking about here that democrats should use against republicans if they voted for the bill and they re stuck in this corner. talk about the medicaid expansion. a lot of americans don t understand why people in their state wouldn t support medicaid expansion that other states are getting. and it seems to me you look at the polling, this is one part of obamacare along with the pre-existing conditions issue, along with more portability, along with allowing your children to stay on until they re 26 that actually do connect with individual voters. absolutely. you know, it s very interesting. all of a sudden republicans have shifted the megaphone from kill obamacare to benghazi. now they double down. exactly what she did. you have the proof this is working. and to me i don t think you can go at it strong enough. like i said, very quiet on the right. hey, donnie. don t you agree with me, donnie? you have to personalize it. if you can get jane johnson in raleigh, her younger son had been bumped off of insurance. he needed this treatment. he didn t have it. they d been kicked off insurance rolls. but after president obama blah blah blah. and then you tell the story, show the personal story. then suddenly it s not about barack obama. it s not about nancy pelosi saying all the things she said about the bill. it s not all the ugly way the lobbyist got their fingers in the pie. it s about this person in raleigh, north carolina, everybody can urns. suddenly you take it out of washington and bring it to north carolina. it s personalized. that may be more of a winning position. voters vote for me. and i m also going to contrast it back to the benghazi thing which is not me. you may agree, disagree, it may infuriate you. this whether i can pay for my frosted flakes, these are the things that affect me. i think kay hagan is setting the playbook right. the fallout is growing in the scandal surrounding the department of veterans affairs. subpoenas have been handed to executives including secretary shinseki. so far shinseki has resisted called by top veterans groups to set aside the department s response has angered congress and family members of the dead. sally says when her father went to the hospital for urgent care, the staff refused to treat him. and told him to see his primary va doctor instead. here s nbc s jim miklaszewski. reporter: sally lost her father-in-law to cancer last november. and she blames his death on the va hospital in phoenix. i m sorry i m shake, but they were dwik to dismiss my pop. reporter: she says when they went to the hospital for urgent care, the staff refused to treat him and told him to see his primary doctor. he waited months but died before he could get an appointment. all the people that are a part of this, they should be held accountable. because it s a crime. you know, delayed care is denied care. secretary shinseki will testify on capitol hill next week. joe? you know, general hayden, when people came up to me and asked me about my time in congress, they talk about irs must have been horrible to deal with, you know, social security administration would be horrible to deal with. i said no, ironically, despite the fact i had more veterans in my distract than anybody else, i could call the irs and get things done. the va, they didn t care who i was, where i was from. it was the worst bureaucracy and it was always the slow roll. it was bad then. my god. the stories coming out now, absolutely horrific. why can t we take better care of the men and women who take care of us? joe, i know eric shinseki a bit. a good and honorable man. he s got to be appalled by the information that s now coming out. but with regard to the veterans administration, you re right. it s a paper-based bureaucracy. and what eric was trying to do was to move it into the digital age which is a good thing. but at the same time, he had this entire new generation of veterans coming out of iraq and afghanistan that were swelling their rolls. look, if he were ever to turn to me for advice on this crisis, based on my time at cia, get the facts, get them quickly, and get them out. that would be my counsel to him right now. cokie roberts, this is that s awfully good advice for pretty much everything. exactly. everything. particularly anything that seems to be under investigation. get the facts, get them quickly, and get them out. and with any luck bury your opponents with them. but the va has a legitimate problem which is it s ununderfunded agency with so many veterans coming in. and still veterans from past wars very much to be supported. so we still have, thankfully, world war ii veterans around and their widows and children. and you go on from war after war after that. korea, vietnam, iraq, afghanistan. and a lot of veterans in this country. obviously we have a huge debt to them. but we re not paying it as a country. it s not just the va not doing it. it s the u.s. that s not doing it. cokie, you have lived the largest part of your life in washington, d.c. your family is in washington. your father, your mom. you yourself. it strikes me is there is no other issue so fraught with hypocrisy than what is happening now with the va. it s been going on for decades. it s not just now. it s not just general shinseki and yet the members of congress stand up and applaud the troops, they have their bumper stickers, support the troops. and yet they do very little to straighten out the va in at least a three to four to five-decade long issue. it is. and one of the reasons for it, mike, you talk about the number of years i ve been here. when i was growing up almost every member of congress was a veteran. they came in after world war ii in two huge classes of 46 and 48 and they had tremendous understanding of what veterans lives were like. now hardly anybody in congress has served in the military. and of course we ve lost in the last year the world war ii vets are gone. and so it s a completely different attitude. and so as you say, a lot of lip service, but not a lot of cash. no, not at all. mika, just reading a tweet here from @jaycaruso and this is a peek into why we re scared of obamacare. there is a real fear when you have the federal government taking over health care and don t think for a second when people see this happening with our most important men and women who defended us, that they re not afraid it could happen to them. it could happen to their family members. this va scandal exposes a decades of inefficiencies that need to be vixed up. i couldn t agree with the general more. there s no question the va needs to be cleaned up. general hayden, thank you much for being on at this early hour. still ahead, mitt romney joins us for an exclusive interview. at 8:00, katie couric is here with her latest on the food industry s secret. and how to find success. bishop t.d. jakes is here. ahead in this hour, first round of the nfl draft. all-time great deion sanders will be here in just a bit. and this weekend, joe and i are going to be participating in a special event with my mother emily brzezinski the sculptor. we will be talking about art and politics and balancing both in the white house years. let s go now, though, to bill kairns for a check on the forecast. bill? mother s day. mother s day forecast coming up. you may get a good crowd there on saturday especially if it rains. we are watching rain move through new york city. some heavy down pours. even some lightning with this. as we go throughout the middle of the peak of our rush hour. that s going to cause some delays obviously. and a wider view shows more showers behind it. they re not alone. wet weather there in the middle of the country. as we go throughout the afternoon, look at d.c. it s almost like summertime. much cooler. boston only at 58. big changes as you re traveling through the northeast with temperature and rain. middle of the country, lots of rain today. back up towards chicago through mech memphis. as we go through the afternoon, this is where we focus the severe weather. we didn t have fatalities or injuries from tornadoes yesterday. watch out from indianapolis, st. louis, memphis, little rock to dallas to houston. here s your forecast as we take you through your weekend. we re watching those storms today. southeast all the way up through chicago and around new york city this morning. on saturday, quick-moving down pours possible for many of us. but look how warm it is. it s almost summerlike conditions out there across the nation. and finally for mom, your mother s day forecast, it s not going to rain out all day in the midwest. but we will see a storm bringing rain in the afternoon and evening hours. the northeast, mid-atlantic, ohio valley clears out nicely for your mother s day. but this morning a lot of travel delays expected around new york city. thunderstorms about to move through. it starts with little things. tiny changes in the brain. little things, anyone can do. it steals your memories. your independence. insures support. a breakthrough. and sooner than you d like. .sooner than you think. .you die from alzheimer s disease. .we cure alzheimer s disease. every little click, call, or donation adds up to something big. alzheimer s association. the brains behind saving yours. aflac, aflac, aflac! 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all right. let s take a look at the morning papers. the miami herald. 243 people are in custody in venezuela after authorities raided protest camps overnight in the capital of caracas. cleared out four opposition camps. they confiscated drugs, weapons, and explosives. more than 40 people have died since anti-government protests began in february with calls for president nicolas madiero s resignation. the new york times. south korea ferry ceo arrested. 273 people were killed in the accident. 31 still missing. apple is reportedly in talks to purchase beats clinics for $3.2 billion. the company is known for its popular line of headphones, beats by dre. that s the doctor. dr. dre. this is the largest acquisition in apple s history. a deal could be announced as early as next week. that s interesting. the seattle time and snapchat. settling with ftc over concerns. that supposedly disappear in seconds. they don t, donnie. i know that. the ftc accused the company of misrepresenting its service stating that anything sent could be saved. snapchat ought to stop. you can take a picture of snapchat. you can take a picture of a snapchat and aif it forever. i do know that. then you can post it on facebook. you know what? once it s 8:00 at night, i step away from my device. he says he doesn t drunk text. he means when he s hammered. this whole thing is for those with those over 40. with us now the chief white house correspondent mike allen is here with the playbook. the rnc is planning a big shakeup when it comes to presidential debates. first thing s first, happy friday. mother s day weekend. so this is going to be a huge change. there were 20 republican debates last time, and the party really felt they were out of control. the rnc chairman, reince priebus. when he says this time we re going to vom control over the moderators and the panelists, he says it s one of his biggest applause lines. he says people go wild. they thought there were too many got ya questions. they re going to make this official today. they re going to make a change for the republican national committee to control the media partners for the debates and how many there are. we figure that means will be half as many debates this time. maybe 10 instead of 20. the way they ll enforce this, if there s any candidates that aren t part of the rnc system, they won t be able to participate in the official ones. so who will this help? this will help the establishment candidates, the people who are already well known. your equivalent to mitt romney. and it will help the broadcast na networks. it will hurt underdogs, your newt gingrich, your rick santorum. the ones who need the oxygen of 20 debates. and hurt the cable networks. mike, what do you think of the contrary point of view put forward by in a store by ron clain that in fact the republicans would end up regretting this. because at lot of debates with unruly process helped mitt romney to rise above less electable candidates. and even though it s a pain in the butt, it helps elect the most stable candidate emerge many the pack. there s no question about that. and the thing is people paid attention to these debates. they want to add conservative commentators to the panels. politico is saying the consequence of this is to be easier questions. easier questions is going to be less coverage, less attention. the reason to have 20 debates, to have media partners is they were covered everywhere. it was great for the party. i think there s a real chance republicans will look at the end of this and go this is a really good idea that didn t serve our process that well. mike allen, happy friday. thank you so much. and happy mother s day weekend, mika. thank you. still ahead, nothing can keep these apart. after a turn to the worst. how are they fighting over the desk? what are we doing with this table? let s put it over here. that s coming up in news you can t use. coming up, primetime comes to morning joe. that s primetime right there. deion sanders. here to help break down the 2014 nfl draft class right here in the studio. we ll be right back. [male announcer] ortho crime files. gross misconduct. .disturbing the pantry. a house, under siege. homeowner calls in the big guns. say helto home defense max. with the one-touch continuous-spray wand. kills bugs inside. .and prevents new ones for up to a year. guaranteed. nothing to see here people. ortho home defense max. get order. get ortho®. hashtag love dad when you think aarp, then you don t know aarp . our aarp tek program helps people find better ways to better connect with each other. find more real possibilities at aarp.org/possibilities with the draft happening across the streets, the sidewalks were packed with football fans. we sent our writer arthur to get opinions on the draft down there. the only thing was they had to dance the whole time. take a look. what is your team strategy going into the draft? so the packers always pick the best player available. so this year they ll probably pick defense. we need someone like, like ebron if we want to trade up. i think really you should draft offensive line. and if that doesn t work i think this year they were comfortable with 12 picks. if they getted a skilled position player, maybe a quarterback. we haven t drafted one in the first round since like 1985. that s adorable. i said it. this is not the time to say that kind of stuff. no, it s not. but would you dance like that. not like that. i wouldn t dance like that. you don t watch games. definitely not. i m sorry. that was pathetic. joining us on set, football hall of famer deion sanders. good to have you here. good to be here. class act. walks in on the set and everyone starts to behave. joe? it s unbelievable. hey, deion. it s great to have you here. been a big fan for a long time. you know, there just aren t enough players who come into a playoff game in a helicopter, baby. it was a necessity. i remember. that was a highlight. so we had jon gruden on yesterday talking about the possibility of manziel going second, third, fourth. that didn t happen. why down to 22? people are afraid of the total package, what he brings on the field as well as the baggage off the field. i don t think consider it baggage. i think manziel is a once in a lifetime player. he s electric and good. it s ironic two other plays that played with him we want in the first round consecutively. you know, deion, you were flamboyant, but everybody knew when you played for the braves you were the first one out, last one to leave. same thing with football. aurp hard worker. there s a question about this kid, a question about his character. not that he s done anything terrible, but he may not be the best teammate in the world, may not be a team player and work as hard as you did. i don t think that s an accurate assessment of this kid. he is a winner. i think the people assessing him that way are insecure people. this kid is a tremendously confident player. and i love him. i love all his attributes and i think he makes everyone else better around him. it s a quarterback league, isn t it? yeah. if you don t have a franchise quarterback, you re in the middle forever. when you have a franchise quarterback, ironically you find yourselves in the playoffs. those not in the playoffs don t have a quarterback. the problem with johnny manziel, the reason people criticize because top quarterbacks don t have his personality. he s not a peyton manning. he s not a tom brady. he s much more exciting than that. not one run back in the first round. this is a very different nfl than i grew up with where if this is a league, literally not one running back. most high schools as well as colleges run in the spread offense. there s not a lot of emphasis on the running back. you feel you can get that guy in the second or third round or catch him on sale in the free agency. deion, you were an awesome football play and baseball player. thank you. wait, wait. he was an amazing football player and pretty good baseball player. let s not get crazy. that s a great assessment, donny. i d like to see you play as well as him. it always strikes me the baseball draft, you know it happens, it s important. but it s nothing like the show that the football one is. it s boring. why is that? why is football an event, an extravaganza, and baseball nothing? same reason why football game is an extravaganza and baseball game is an eye catcher. they play 162 of them. how can it be a commodity when it s 162 of them? but there s only one baseball draft. there s no college baseball stars, we don t follow them like we do college football stars. is the nfl just better as marketing? they ve turned this into a show that attracts a lot of attention for itself. the nfl is the flee sexiest initials in the world. when you say nfl, you ve made a statement. i think about it now. major league baseball is associated with mike barnicle and god knows there s nothing sexy about had him. he s very cute. i think mike s very handsome. the difference between the two drafts is simple. the nfl owns tv. they own tv. baseball doesn t. baseball is a series of regional sports networks. it s a show. but ironically playerwise, baseball is the most attractive. they pay players the most. it s the most lucrative and it s guaranteed money. yeah. ultimate metaphor for the draft was there s a red carpet. i mean, that says it a all. so this week we ve been talking about one athlete who recognized his mother on the stage. and we had wanda pratt on yesterday. we saw an incredible show of emotion from kevin durant in that moment. you had a similar one when you were inducted into the hall of fame. let s take a look. there s something inside, momma, that i never told you, that i never could admit. and i m going to share it with all of you because now we re family. i played for a team called the ft. myers rebels. everybody on that team their family was the chief of police or doctors. me and one of my friends was the only african-american kids that was on that team. and it was a very affluent team and i was ashamed. of my momma. because my momma worked in the hospital. she cleaned up the hospital. she pushed a cart. and i was ashamed. that s hard to watch. that s hard to watch. because it was so true. and you never know what s behind a man and what pushes a man to progress through life, through all the challenges. my whole career people never knew that i was working and playing for my momma. that was it. and it s a message that really can resonate with a lot of young people today who want to be just like you. do you take it with you? well, the thing about it, your drive has to be bigger than you. if it s all about you, there s something wrong with your dream. your dream has to be bigger than you because we have the propensity to quit on ourselves under severe pressure. it has to be something out there that s bigger than you that keeps you driven. i want to know what else drives you and i believe it is a school. that you ve started. a charm school. i have a charm school. and i m an advocate for american federation of school children as well as school choice. i truly believe you should have your choice in what school you deserve to go to. it would be like choosing the beauty salons in your area. or only buy suits that s in your area. but that s what we have when we re talking about schools. and often times in the inner city, schools are failing. we should have the opportunity to choose which school to go to as parents. it s really wonderful to have you on right before mother s day after talking about that. thank you so much. thank you. appreciate your being on the show this morning. thank you. everybody, deion sanders. deion will be with us this afternoon on mojoe for more on the work he s doing all the field. visit afternoonmojoe.msnbc.com. and coming up, how would things be different if mitt romney was in the white house right now? the answer will come right from mitt romney himself at the top of the hour when the former republican nominee for president joins us. don t go away. we ll be back with much more morning joe. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. for $175 dollars a month? so our business can be on at&t s network yup. all five of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there s unlimited talk and text. we re working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line anytime for 15 bucks a month. low dues. great terms. let s close. new at&t mobile share value plans. our best value plans ever for business. i m on expert on softball. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. time now for the must read opinion pages. with us now the founder of the women of the world summit, tina brown. hi, mika. you have a doozy today in the daily beast. touching on a conversation we had earlier this week. i m going to go right into it. monica lewinsky by tina brown. monica lewinsky is right about the lack of empathy shown by the feminist lobby who joined the hyena pack casting judgment on her youthful conduct. other women can often be the worst at cutting any lack towards the love interest in a sex scandal. but she is short of empathy towards the woman whose husband she was romping with. she uses the word troubling as hillary said she blamed herself somewhat for bill s straying. now everyone is leaking and tweeting and posting on everyone else is the acknowledged way to get ahead in the 21st century. the digital age has no idea what has been lost to the freedom of intimacy that has no fear of being recorded. monica s new musings just remind us of how the death of privacy started. and it really did start with that. it exploded across the world. it did. the things that shocked us at the time, the absolute violations of privacy, the wholesale dissemination of embarrassing sexual revelations, the no holds barred cast who just leaked and just put it all out there, that s what we live with every day now. as i looked at the horrific cast of the time. all of these grotesques is the truth. we have another one every day whether it s v. stiviano or sidney leathers. these are now the extreme of garbage that flows through our heads. having said that, there s two players in this scandal. both have had very different futures after the moment that this broke. cokie roberts, what do you make of all this? well, obviously she s coming back into the news wanting to have some sort of limelight again. and i don t she says she wants her life back, but i don t think this is exactly the way to do it. you know, you wonder how much of this is aimed at hillary clinton. and what that s all about. i mean, with any luck it s out of the way. cokie, you don t buy that she sort of in a way was touching on what tina s talking about, the end of privacy and how many people including the young man who was caught on a web cam in his college dorm and it spread all over the campus and he ended up committing suicide and she remembered what it felt like to be the butt of a national joke. and that her mother stood by her for weeks and weeks and weeks worried about her equilibrium because of what she was going through. that doesn t at all be a way why she wants to speak out? if you want your privacy, why do you go to vanity fair magazine? if you want privacy, you re private. this is the opposite. the problem with that cokie is this happened 18 years ago. bill clinton has become more revered by the day and monica lewinsky has been basically the butt of jokes. she s been a punch line her entire life has been reduced to this miserable existence. if she stays in an apartment in l.a. and doesn t say anything, doesn t come back out and try to define, sort of retake control of her name, of her reputation, then this is how she dies 40 years from now, as a joke. as a punch line. i just when she was being attacked by these so-called feminists not only during the scandal but over the past week or two, i just sat there wondering how she stayed quiet as long as she did. well, look. i think the vilifying of her was horrendous. and the truth is she was a kid in the white house and regardless of any consensual sex and all of the stuff she s talking about, her boss who was a much more powerful person than anybody but certainly than she took advantage of her in a way that was something that in any workplace in america would get somebody fired. so i think that all of the vilification of her was awful. but i also do think that coming back out into the public is just asking to rehash the whole thing again. and that doesn t get you anywhere. i m not sure what other choice she has. really quick. the problem is there s no hiding place now. your reputation. in london when the whole perfumer scandal happened. john perfumer disappeared. you can t do that. because google brings it to everyone s faces every second of the day. tina brown, great piece. thank you so much. see you tonight. looking forward to entertaining you mum. it s going to be incredible. coming up, a new film uncovers the deepest secret of the obesity epidemic. katie couric is here with her new project fed up. but first news you can t use. we ll be right back. 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[ speaking in foreign language ] okay. we ll see if things come to blows in our round table. donny, you take the table. you look big and strong. i like when you talk that way, mika. oh, god. i m a cynic. i feel like he s upstaged. senat mitt romney standing by. all that and more when morning joe returns. make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily. there was a boy who traveled to a faraway place where villages floated on water and castles were houses dragons lurked giants stood tall and the good queen showed the boy it could all be real avo: whatever you can imagine, all in one place expedia, find yours (woman) this place has got really good chocolate shakes. (growls) (man) that s a good look for you. (woman) that was fun. (man) yeah. (man) let me help you out with the.. (woman).oh no, i got it. (man) you sure? (woman) just pop the trunk. 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[ woman ] got me to 70 years old. i m going to have to rethink this thing. it s hard to imagine how much we ll need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. so maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. welcome back to morning joe. it is nice to see you all at the top of the hour. a nice shot of the white house on this beautiful morning. joe, i think it s fair to say we have a very special guest this hour. kind of an exclusive going on here. a very special guest. of course we re talking about governor mitt romney, former governor of massachusetts. and of course in 2012 he was a republican nominee for president. still, governor romney, we showed a picture of mika holding up a mitt sign, mitt 2012. and i m still trying to figure out what went wrong. well, actually, maybe that s what went wrong. but how are you doing? what are you doing in washington, d.c.? and how s the family? the family is great. we re doing well. and i m in d.c. part for politics and part for media. i m back in business trying to do our best to help our economy. good. how s our economy doing? you know, it just continues to bump along. i saw a statistic that came out of brookings last week which was for the first time in history, more businesses closed their door last year than actually opened doors. and that s a very frightening thing. we re an entrepreneurial nation. growth is all dependent on innovation and entrepreneurship. entrepreneurs decided this a bad time to open a business. and that s a problem. jeff knows a thing or two about business and economies. jeff likes to say if the economy s growing at 4%, everything s going to take care of itself. and we can have all the debates we want to have, but the economy will be fine. if we re only growing, stumbling along at 2%, 2.5%, there s nothing we can do. there s nothing we can cut. there s no government program we can enact that s going to make a big difference in the life of americans. how do we get that 4% growth every year? well, what causes growth is innovation. innovation drives higher wages for our workers. productivity is all driven by what happens in the innovation room, if you will. and unfortunately, over the last several years, we made it less and less attractive for people to innovate to begin brand new businesses, to open doors. and our growth has been slow. you ask yourself has anything been done in the last five years that s made it more likely for an entrepreneur to want to start a business? and the answer is no. when the person who leads papa john s pizza said if he was starting today, he wouldn t open doors because of the tax and burdens placed upon starting a new business. governor, i want to look at some of the issues of the day here. democrats, of course, discussing whether or not to participate in another investigation in benghazi. i have no problem with questions being asked and i believe there are some. but i d like to ask you if you could go on the record because some of your republican counterparts seem uncomfortable with answering the question as to whether or not republicans should be making money, should be fund raising for their political campaigns off the benghazi investigation and disaster in itself. do you think it s wrong to be fund raising off that issue? i think what the republicans have every right to say and is appropriate to say is is that if republicans were were not in the congress, there would not be an investigation into benghazi. and i think there are questions that have to be answered that have not yet been answered. the white house has apparently withheld information so congress is going to look into it. there would not be an investigation of benghazi. there would not be an investigation into the irs. were there not a republican house. and so to say, look, elect republicans so we can have these kind of investigations is appropriate. governor romney, it s john heilemann here. i m going to stick with foreign policy for a second. there s a story a couple days ago of boko haram, the militant group responsible for abducting 200 girls in nigeria. secretary clinton branded that an act of terror this week. the story in the daily beast pointed out when she was secretary of state, she had refused to label that group officially a terrorist organization even though the fbi, justice department, cia wanted to have it happen. i want to ask you a two-part question about that. first to address that specific story. and secondly to ask you a broader question whether you think secretary clinton s time as secretary of state would be an asset or liability for her if she runs for president. first of all, we d like to hear whether she believes the failure to label boko haram as a terrorist organization was a mistake on her agency s part or it was not and what s the logic for not identifying this group as a terrorist organization. she hasn t done so yet. i think people would like to hear her answer to that. with regards to her career as secretary of state, i think that s going to be an enormous liability for her. because this is, after all, the if you will, the essence of her leadership capacity and the four years she served as secretary of state were not good years for the united states of america abroad. she worked hard and she shook a lot of hands and people said, boy, she s been on the airplane a lot. that s a good thing. but if you look around the world, whether in asia, latin-america, the middle east, north africa, this was not a good time for america. as a matter of fact, it s hard to think of a nation that over the past four, five, six years thinks more of america, respects america more today than when the president and secretary clinton took office. so i think her record there is a very substantial liability for her campaign in 2016. and i think it s going to raise a lot of questions about her capacity to actually accomplish things of significance. particularly on foreign soil. governor, i m not going to ask you to mess up your hair, but i am asking to put an a consultant s cap here. your party seems to have an issue with the changing demographics of this country. and given the changing demographics of this country and your ambitions or past ambitions for the white house, how do you cope with the changing demographics of the country when you have an increasingly conservative bend with regard to issues like immigration, marriage equality, and minimum wage? well, different members of my party have different views on those different issues. and for instance as you know a company with many of the conservatives in my party on the issue of minimum wage. i think we ought to raise it. quite frankly our party is all about more jobs and better pay. and i think communicating that is important to us. i also believe the key for our party is to be able to convince the people who were in the working population particularly in the hispanic community that our party will help them get better jobs and wages. that s what our party s beliefs do. the democratic party has shown that over the past five years of their leadership, income inequality has become worse. and the policies over the past five years have not worked for hispanic families or african-american families. minority families have been the most hard hit during these past five years. so we ve got to make sure people hear our message. we want to go from domestic policy to foreign policy. i want to put you in a time machine and take you back 19 or 20 months. take a look at this clip. governor romney, i m glad that you recognize that al qaeda is a threat. because a few months ago when you were asked what s the biggest threat facing america you said russia. not al qaeda. you said russia. and the 1980s are calling for their policy back. the cold war s been over for 20 years. but governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the policies of the 1980s just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s. and governor romney, here we are almost 20 months later, vladimir putin about to take a victory lap in crimea. questions on whether he s going to continue pushing westward toward kiev. 150,000 dead in syria in large part because of vladimir putin. the refugee crisis across the middle east as spilling out from syria in large part because vladimir putin continues to hold that regime up. iran moves closer and closer to a nuclear weapon in large part because of vladimir putin. it all leads to one question 20 months after the president mocked you. is the world less stable today because president obama miscalculated on putin and russ russia? no question on that. how does that make you feel looking at that clip seeing that you actually have been proven correct by history and yet you were mocked and ridiculed by the president of the united states on what many say is the biggest issue overseas. i don t look back to the debates. i instead look at what s happening in the country and what we need to do to make sure that our interests are promoted around the world. what we ve seen over the past five years has been retreat of our interest globally. fewer and fewer nations respect us and bow, if you will, to the demands of their people. and there s no question that vladimir putin and russia in particular are our geopolitical adversary. doesn t mean they re our enemy and i never called them our threat. the greatest threat is a nuclear iran. but i did say they were a geopolitical foe. and frankly you ve seen russia consistently over the past several years line up with the world s worst actors. whether it s with assad or kim jong-un or around the world. this is a nation intent on pushing back against the united states in the interest of freedom. governor romney, what is your concern if this continues indefinitely with putin s behavior toward ukraine and the oppression there. and what do you suggest happens right now that you think isn t happening? well, the key to leadership is identifying the tomb when you can take action that will make a difference. and the key with ukraine, for instance, was to identify at the time there was the revolution in the streets and people jumping up and down with demonstrating in various ways to recognize that russia might take an interest in crimea. that was the time for the president of the united states to make sure we and our friends around the world communicated to russia the sanctions that would follow in response. and the president didn t do that. he sat and watched. in syria, for instance, we don t have good options right now because the president sat and watched at the very beginning of the most critical time in syria. you have to take action when action has the potential to really change events. and the president has not done so. and leading from behind, sitting back and observing affairs in the world is not a way for america s foreign policy interests to be carried out. governor, i m coming back to 2016 because i am who i am. obsessive-compulsive. correct. your party right now is in an unusual situation in the sense there is no clear front runner for your party s nomination. usually you know by this point in the cycle, the party knows who the front runner is and usually becomes the nominee. i ll ask you to be sure and ask about it here, is there are you ready to say for sure that you will not get into the race in 2016 and that we don t have that to look forward to at least as a possibility. i m not running for president in 2016. i m going to be supporting someone who represents the practical conservatives that i think we need. you know some of my favorites. paul ryan, of course. i love paul. we were a great team together. but chris christie and jeb bush and rob portman. the list is long. scott walker. there are a lot of fellows and hopefully some women as well that are looking at this race and we ll get a chance to see someone new. i think our best prospects of getting back the white house are with someone who has not run twice before as i have. so i m going to be a supporting our nominee and looking forward to seeing the race come to fruition. i bet your wife feels good about that. that s right. what women are you looking at in the republican party you think could stand out? well, susana martinez, governor of new mexico, obviously has great potential and leadership. and i m sure there are many that we could think of, mika. i m not going to go through a full list here. but you ve seen a number of women take on increasingly responsible positions in the republican party. frankly our party has women, has minority leaders that i think ought to be looking at the national stage. so let s move on and get back to the economy. i want to talk about keystone. yesterday we had the ambassador of the united states from canada to come on. and it sounded like he was reading off republican talking points when he talked about 44,000 new jobs that would be created. talking about how it was more environmentally safe to have a pipeline than have this oil shipped in other ways. and then at the end, he held up a document and said all he was doing was quoting a state department report talking about why the keystone pipeline made so much sense. how important is it for us to go ahead and move forward with the keystone pipeline? and why is the president of the united states having such a hard time doing that despite what his own administration reports are showing? well, the president is, of course, playing to the base. the extreme wing of the democratic party. there are some, if you will, aggressive environmentalists who were not tied into what s right for the environment or the country in my view. but instead what s right for their fund raising efforts. they re jumping up and down. they d like to see oil not being used as an energy source in this country. frankly that s not realistic. and as a result the president is doing their bidding. i think it s an enormous mistake. it s a small item compared to the overall economy issues. but frankly it typifies the fact that the president plays politics as opposed to what s doing right for the economy and the american job market certainly having additional energy in this country and holding down energy prices is good for the consumers of america. for people of all classes and it s good for job creators. this is a no brainer. but the president s not willing to do it. because of those extreme groups that are raising money off of stopping the pipeline. okay. mitt romney, thank you so much for being on with us this morning. what are your plans for mother s day? well, you know, i always get lilacs for my wife on mother s day. i find some place in the neighborhood where i can cut some lilacs. so i m going to be looking or going to the grocery store and finding some. boy, your neighbors must love you. it s mother s day again, romney s in the back yard. call the cops. i just found three things in this interview we have in common. number one, we re both in business with marriott. we re in business together. you must be excited about that. more jobs, better pay. minimum wage. and like you, my father goes into the neighbor s house and cuts down their trees to make his view better in maine. so perfect. thank you very much. thanks, mika, joe. great to have you on the show. thank you so much, governor. really appreciate it. good to be with you. it s being billed as the movie food industry doesn t want you to see. how sugar is ruining the lives of an entire generation of children. katie couric is here with her latest project. up next, senator pat toomey, chuck todd, david gregory and howard dean. and this weekend joe and i will be in a special event with my mom emily brzezinski to discuss art, politics, and balancing both in the white house years. that s saturday in connecticut. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. to truck guys, the truck is everything. and when you put them in charge of making an unbeatable truck. . good things happen. this is the ram 1500. the 2014 motor trend truck of the year and first ever back-to-back champion. guts. glory. ram. i don t want to ever hear about that again, barnicle. joining us now, senator pat toomey. and in washington chief white house correspondent and political director and host of daily rundown, chuck todd. and the moderator of meet the press, david gregory. and here on set, former governor of vermont and former chairman of the democratic national committee, howard dean. and joe, thank god you are on location. because, well, he could flip the table. oh, i know. we could be a table flipping round table. it s happened before, mika. i suspect it s going to happen again. let s go to pat toomey. senator, we just had mitt romney on. and the governor and former republican candidate for president said he supported raising the minimum wage because republicans are about good jobs and good wages. this past week rick santorum s come on, former pennsylvania senator, he supports raising the minimum wage. former minnesota governor tim pawlenty also supports raising the minimum wage. where do you stand on those issues? i disagree with those folks. agree with a large majority of republicans. joe, i think you understand. we want higher wages. we want better jobs, but we also want more jobs. if the government comes along and issues a fiat and picks an arbitrary number and says you have to pay at least that amount, there s some people at the low end of the skill spectrum, maybe it s a teenager that needs the first opportunity. they won t get the job. this isn t just my theory. the cbo said if we went ahead with the democrat proposed increase, the best estimate is we d lose half a million jobs in that. david gregory? senator, i guess a follow-up to that, understanding that you and others may think, look, let s improve our jobs picture before we take a look at the minimum wage. what about the argument that for a lot of the working poor who want to work, who want to provide for their families they re simply not able to make it. if you have real challenges with regard to transportation or for housing that you certainly can t make it on a wage at this particular time. as a conservative do you worry that lower income workers are then draining the resources of government even further because they re frankly not earning what a lot of people would call a livable wage? there s no question, david. we have many very extensive programs to help people cope when their income is, you know, at low levels. and if their income were higher, then they d spend less in these areas. i don t think they get there by issuing an edict from washington. you just price people out of the workforce. that s much worse for those people and for the federal budget. i think the way you do it is you have a vibrant economy that is demanding ever more workers and putting upward pressure on raises. that s the answer. chuck todd, i think it s interesting that we have seen governor romney, rick santorum, also tim pau pawlenty and other republicans starting to come out in support of the minimum wage raise. do you think we may end up at $59 an hour minimum wage increase? you and i talked about this all week. i ve been surprised that isn t there. i find it intriguing that the three most prominent republicans supporting the raise of the minimum wage are three guys who sent a lot of time on the campaign trail, thee guys having to campaign in blue states and purple states on that front. senator toomey, let me ask you this. it doesn t sound like you re for a minimum wage, a national mandated minimum wage. would you if there hasn t been one i mean, where are you on this? the question before us is do we increase from the current level? obviously if you don t increase the minimum wage over long periods of time since we generally have inflation and not deflation, then it becomes irrelevant and it s not something that matters. we haven t increased it in years. longest period without an increase. that s right. and if we do, we re going to put some people out of work. so i guess the question is who are we to make the decision that we re going to give a raise to some people at the expense of destroying the jobs of other people? i don t think that s a good call for government to make. i think instead we ought to be creating more demand for workers, more jobs. and as i said before the upward pressure on wages. so you would get rid of the minimum wage? you wouldn t have that s an irrelevant discussion. the question before us is do we raise the minimum wage and i think that would do harm. so i m not going to support that. senator toomey, on another issue, we had governor mitt romney on last block and he very carefully and articulately made the case for fund raising off of the benghazi issue. and he said if republicans had questions about this and they want to get elected so they can continue to raise issues, then it is okay. do you think it is okay to raise money off the benghazi probe and the questions surrounding what happened there? i don t know, mika. my fund raising, i don t make any reference to benghazi in that. i think we ve got to be really careful that that doesn t get politicized. i think the response of the administration was a political response. and that s a real problem. we still haven t gotten to the bottom of what s happened. that s why i think the house s action this week is constructive. i d be very careful myself, in fact, not sure it s a good idea to fund raise on the basis of those mistakes of the administration. okay. and of course trey gowdy agrees with you and he came out forcefully and said it yesterday. he was undercut by the nrcc. i suspect that probably is not going to happen again. let me ask you again about obviously keystone is a critical issue right now. the debate continues to rage. we had canada s ambassador of the united states yesterday talking about all the jobs we d create in the united states. i want to bring it closer to home though. because you can look at what s happened in pennsylvania over the past several years and look what s not happened in new york state over the last couple years because andrew cuomo refuses to allow innovation in energy in new york state. people aren t getting jobs because of it. talk about how fracking in pennsylvania makes a difference to working class people there. you re absolutely right. there s a fascinating map that s come out by the census bureau and it shows every county in america that s had an increase in median wages every single county fits into one of two counties. it s either washington, d.c. or an energy-producing county. in pennsylvania, natural gas is changing our economy. it s the direct benefits in the areas and they re localized, but those areas in which the drilling is occurring. but it s the availability of incredibly affordable, low cost, clean natural gas. i ve been at ground-breaking ceremonies with manufacturers that are bringing work back from china to pennsylvania in part because the advantage we have with low cost natural gas is just transformative. quite frankly, it s working for us in pennsylvania. howard dean, i want to talk to you about this energy issue on a larger scale. democrats obviously have to be very careful. they certainly are concerned about the environment. their base more concerned about the environment than, let s say, the middle of america if you just look at polls. how did democrats balance this moving forward where they want to be part of the energy revolution, they want to help the working class. may be helped like some people in pennsylvania. but also they have to worry about the environment. it seems like actually a pretty fine line they have to tread. one of the fastest growing energy installers is solar. i ve got an interesting question for senator toomey. you don t want washington interfering in setting a minimum wage, but the republicans in washington don t seem to have any problem giving tax breaks to which is our money tax breaks to oil companies, tax breaks to wall street. how do you rationalize government intervention to help the largest corporations in the country and the world at our expense but you won t let people making $8.25 to support their family with a little raise in the minimum wage? i m not sure there s anybody in washington that s been more outspoken than i ve been about having a tax code that stops picking winners and losers. we ve got a tax code that s a total disaster. some of the worst and most egregious offenses are in the area you just mentioned. huge subsidies for solar energy, wind energy. you wouldn t have windmills if it weren t for taxpayer subsidies. in committee i sit on the finance committee over the tax code, i offered an amendment to wipe out those subsidies. it s not good for our economy. i don t support it. governor dean, i was watching you during the intense questioning of senator toomey. i felt badly for you because your head seemed to about explode. but you sat there quietly. i did. you referenced the tax code and minimum wage. the pipeline has been discussed. i would like to ask you about financing, potentially financing one of what i think is the greatest issues confronting this country. the rebuilding of america. we just had a rainstorm last week and roads collapsed. this is actually something senator toomey and i may have agreement on. i think most of the infrastructure in this country will be there are ways to do this. you can build railroads with public financing if you use real estate to do it. i think you ve got to be a lot more imaginative. there are ideas on the left and right that could migrate towards the center. if the sponsors would be willing to give on a few things. senator toomey, jump in here. can you agree with him on anything here? we might find some agreement here. i ve got to be careful. i promise not to endorse you, senator. thank you, thank you. i would just add one thing. with road construction in particular, it s one example that seems obvious to me. when we create new capacity, it needs to be told. why would you build a new road and not put a toll on it? this is a user fee, a toll is. if it s new capacity that didn t exist before, give people a choice. if they want to ride on that, let them pay a small amount to cover the construction. the technology makes it easier than ever. i think there are ways to be innovative and get the funding we need. i want to bring up our political experts now. if we could get john heilemann and chuck todd and david gregory up on the screen. i want to ask them a question. i think it was absolutely fascinating the interview with mitt romney. john heilemann, what i heard mitt romney say in response to your question is not what i ve been hearing in new hampshire, not what i ve been hearing in south carolina, not what i ve been hearing across america. there are people that believe mitt romney is going to run in 2016. i would have to say one of the top republican strategists over the past 20 years told me yesterday he thinks romney s in. what are you hearing, john? well, i think the likelihood mitt romney will run is very, very low. although i joked the ann romney thing with him, i don t think she has the stomach for it. there s no doubt there s a group of supporters of mitt romney who are talking it up in a lot of places. because there s such a vacuum right now in terms of there not really being a front runner in the party that usually has one by now, that talk gets more traction than it would ordinarily. chuck, let me follow on from that. let me ask you a question about the same issue. governor romney mentioned a bunch of names of people he liked. and in order i think he mentioned jeb bush paul ryan, chris christie, jeb bush, and rob portman. none of those four people all four of those people may not run for president. what does it say about the state of the republican party that the last nominee s top four picks are all people who night not get into the race. that is exactly the point i was going to make, john. i assume romney s not going to do this. everything you hear about his family and from what i ve understood in talking to people indicates what you indicate. there s just not the he just doesn t have the family support to do this again. but you look at who he mentioned and walker s the only guy he mentioned that may end up running in this list. the other four you could easily picture scenarios where none of the other four end up running. portman is someone who hasn t been making many moves at all. i think it s interesting he inserted him into the list. don t forget mitt romney s description of what he s looking for. right? the practical conservative. an interesting adjective to put in front of conservative there. i have a feeling that romney is going to be this shadow, sort of the way gore and hillary hovered over the 04 field for awhile. romney may hover over that field for awhile particularly if there isn t a big establishment name sucking up all the oxygen early that you will have these constant rumors. the same way christie sort of hovered over the field for awhile when romney struggled. if jeb bush isn t in the race and chris christie isn t in the race, i m hearing people talk about the fact that romney may be a lot closer. what are you hearing? i agree he has the prospect to hover over the race. by staying relevant, by staying critical of the administration. beyond his personal walls he has the ability to raise money. he s got the name recognition. i think the biggest reason against it is not just his family but he s proven to be flawed as a candidate. not once but twice. i don t think you reinvent yourself politically in a way the party rallies around you or the country rallies around you. i think that s a big problem. i also think the party right now is still hanging back. there are some of these key figures, jeb bush principle among them not feeling any need to commit too early to jumping into the fray with all of that entails. so i think there s a number of figures who want to see how things play out. then they re going to then they ll move up. but there s no question about this k this, joe. and you ve talked about it a lot. there s a certain amount of waiting for superman, waiting for jeb bush. does he have the stomach for it? that practical conservative idea, the one who can bring it together, right now it feels like jeb bush is the one wearing that hat. people worry whether he really wants it. all right. our thanks to senator pat toomey. thanks for being on the show this morning. chuck todd, we ll watch you on the daily rundown by the way, breaking news here. i think howard dean is planning to go to pennsylvania to endorse pat toomey. come on. come to philadelphia, howard. let s do it. just tried to flip the table, but it s nailed into the ground. so we re good. team toomey 2016. chuck, we ll see you at 9:00 a.m. david gregory, howard dean, thank you so much. donny, thanks to you, too, i guess. an exclusive coming up. how swing voters feel about their jobs, families, and the changing american dream. we re moving our company to new york state. the numbers are impressive. over 400,000 new private sector jobs. making new york state number two in the nation in new private sector job creation. with 10 regional development strategies to fit your business needs. and now it s even better because they ve introduced startup new york. with the state creating dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. become the next business to discover the new new york. 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[ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before. the ongoing fight over the proposed keystone pipeline could have a big impact on the 2014 midterm elections. derek hits has more in the mojoe polling place. what are you doing? it s no secret republicans and democrats don t agree on many issues and you might think the keystone pipeline would be no exception. or is it? in key battle ground states like arkansas, arkansas, alaska, and louisiana some are breaking with their party and openly supporting the project. in fact, keystone support is not limbed to democratic incumbents alone. in kentucky, challenger allison lundergan grimes is going against mitch mcconnell. but not every democrat up for re-election is quick to embrace the pipeline. mark udall signed a letter calling on president obama to approve the project. the american petroleum institute wants voters to take notice. but one jobs plan brings both sides together. it makes so much sense, even a divided congress approved it. tell senators udall and bennett, approve keystone xl. keystone could prove to be a deciding issue in colorado. with a recent gallup poll showing half of the economy is the problem, keystone is bound to be a slippery issue come september. back to you. thank you. coming up in the 8:00 hour just get the shot off, barnicle. katie couric joins us on set then bishop t.d. jakes. but first facing tough choices. balance the budgets or face financial ruin. one city may have cracked the code though. we ll tell you which one next on morning joe. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. woman: everyone in the nicu all the nurses wanted to watch him when he was there 118 days. everything that you thought was important to you changes in light of having a child that needs you every moment. i wouldn t trade him for the world. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. if you re caring for a child with special needs, our innovative special care program offers strategies that can help. (agent) i ll walk you guys through every step. there are a lot of buyers for a house like yours. (husband) that s good to know. all right. here with us now, his wife beautiful. democratic mayor of cincinnati, mayor john cranley. mother s day this weekend? we ve got big plans. are you sure? yeah. my 5-year-old and i will be making breakfast in the bed. dozen roses. you need any other help? you don t want to lose her. she s adorable. so we want to talk about cracking the code, balancing budgets and trying to break through what all these cities are grappling with. you have some answers? what s worked for cincinnati? well, in cincinnati we have, first of all it s great to be here. i love the show. oh, thank you. what s your favorite thing about the show? yeah. well, donny no, no, no. don t do that. don t suck up to donny. do you want your wife to talk to you again? i saw wh where you brought her a pair of shoes. that lives on. it s amazing. donny, i m due. you are. buy the shoes in cincinnati because it s the number two city in the country in. reporter: let s get back to business. for people that haven t been to cincinnati in a long time, we are in the middle of a major urban renaissance. the public and private sector spent $2.5 billion revitalizing our river front park, fountain square, new restaurants, new night life. ge just announced they re bringing 1400 new jobs. fantastic. yeah. and unemployment is only at 5.8%. so that s really interesting. that s a hot city. do you think there s anything you have done differently compared to different politicians in your position around the country? is there a different approach. first of all we re leading in a bipartisan effort to focus on the operations of a city police, fire, public services. we re cutting out a lot of promises that were made that we couldn t afford. we re making the tough decisions of balancing our budget. we re going to deliver the first structurally balanced budget in years. but at the same time we re seeing this huge re-urbanism, excitement, vibrancy of our downtown. and cincinnati is on the beginning of a huge wave. and it s really the place p&g, may scy macy s, kroger. if you have the chance to bring your product in investing during the great recession. one of the things i find interesting about you is your background. that you go to harvard law school. but harvard divinity school. how do you apply a graduate from harvard divinity school to the day-to-day work of being the mayor of a major city. i wanted to ask for forgiveness in advance is my joke. that s a good one. 99% of all jokes are true. i certainly believe to whom much is given, much is expected. certainly my faith plays a role in my effort to reduce poverty in the city. while the city is growing bigtime, we have disparities between black and white and white and hispanic. we need to make a difference there. that s been a focus of my administration. what sent you to what within you sent you to divinity school. you know, i blame the jesuits. real quick, what d you think of the bengals pick last night? i m excited. i really am. this is a political show, right? don t we talk about politics on this show? really quick. you ve got a governors race coming up. just like the overall national that s not real quick. who wins this race against john kasich? the police and firefighters are still upset about kasich s efforts to undo their collective bargaining. in addition, he cut local government fund which hurt dramatically. the income tax was originally promised for local government, but he cut the local government money but didn t lower the income tax. so we re still paying the tax. so we re still paying the same money to columbus but we re not getting the return. the cutest thing i ve ever seen, your wife is still taking pictures. sheep has not stopped. she s the cutest thing ever. you re now on television. thank you so much. thank you. adorable wife. coming up, emily brzezinski can wield an ax and a chain saw like no other mother. that s my mother. don t mess with her. how my mom balanced being an artist and mother of three, a white house wife all at the same time. her story and her incredible body of work coming up in our 8:00 hour. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. customizable charts, powerful screening tools, and guaranteed one-second trades. and at the center of it all is a surprisingly low price just $7.95. in fact, fidelity gives you lower trade commissions than schwab, td ameritrade, and e-trade. i m monica santiago of fidelity investments, and low fees and commissions are another reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today. i got more advice than i knew what to do with. what i needed was information i could trust on how to take care of me and my baby. luckily, unitedhealthcare has a simple program that helps moms stay on track with their doctors and get the right care and guidance-before and after the baby is born. simple is good right now. 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[ speaking french ] for you cat lovers out there, in case you missed it, here s another look and make sure you listen to the sound on impact. let s be clear. the cat was not hurt. ouch. you don t know that. i have people over there. first of all oh, poor kitty. is it a cat or is it a squirrel? is there a difference? i m kidding. i love cats, i love cats. the best bakery in france. coming up top of the hour. we love katie couric. we love her. she ll talk about her new documentary. do not go anywhere. alright. let s share the news tomorrow. today we failrly busy. tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. i want one of these opened up. because tomorow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. when csx trains move forward, so does the rest of the economy. csx. how tomorrow moves. transit fares! as in the 37 billion transit fares we help collect each year. no? oh, right. you re thinking of the 1.6 million daily customer care interactions xerox handles. or the 900 million health insurance claims we process. so, it s no surprise to you that companies depend on today s xerox for services that simplify how work gets done. which is.pretty much what we ve always stood for. with xerox, you re ready for real business. you always get the lowest price which is.pretty much what we ve always stood for. book any flight or hotel and if you find it for less we ll match it and give you fifty dollars back that s the expedia guarantee i m on expert on softball. and tea parties. i ll have more awkward conversations than i m equipped for, because i m raising two girls on my own. i ll worry about the economy more than a few times before they re grown. but it s for them, so i ve found a way. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. ready to plan for your future? we ll help you get there. honestly, the off-season isn t i ve got a lot to do. that s why i got my surface. it s great for watching game film and drawing up plays. it s got onenote, so i can stay on top of my to-do list, which has been absolutely absurd since the big game. with skype, it s just really easy to stay in touch with the kids i work with. alright, russell you are good to go! alright, fellas. alright, russ. back to work! welcome back to morning joe. it s the top of the hour. 8:00 eastern time. joining us on set, host of the daytime talk show katie and also, i am not done, boys. you never are, are you? i know. you getting tired of me, donnie? i love katie. i m so glad she s here. try and focus. she s the producer of a new documentary fed up. we were talking about it at thrive. you had a great panel on it. first a look at some of the big headlines today. ukraine is bracing for more potential violence today as russia marks a national holiday celebrating victory in world war ii. meanwhile, vladimir putin is visiting the contested region of crimea, a day after overseeing massive military exercises. secretary eric shinseki will testify on capitol hill about the growing issues of veterans affairs. and mitt mutt addressed republican attempts to raise money off the attacks of benghazi. i think what the republicans have every right to say is if republicans were not in the congress, if republicans did not have a majority in the congress, there would not be an investigation into benghazi, and i think there are questions that have to be answered that have not yet been answered. the white house has apparently withheld certain information and so congress is going to look into it, as i think they should. there would not be an investigation into benghazi, there would not be an investigation into the i.r.s. were there not an elect house. to say elect republicans so we can have these kind of investigations is appropriate. he s the first republican i ve seen say it makes sense. and yet trey gowdy has said it s not a good idea to fund raise off of benghazi off of the death of four americans. just take a position. i suspect you ll see more deference given to trey gowdy than anybody else. he s going to make sure there isn t a question of impropriety. it s going to be absolutely critical that it doesn t look like there s even a whiff of partisanship. well, i m just fed up, actually you seem fed up, mika. you re angry. i m angry. the movie, katie couric, we re talking about called fed up, i take it there was even a controversy over the letters at one point. lori and i were talking online. apparently they were doing advertising and everybody has been jumping and seizing about fu. oh, the posters, yeah. i think that was a very savvy advertising ploy. it was. anything we can do to get people talk about this movie and talking about this issue is fine with us. because i think it s related to the obesity epidemic, how it started, how we got here and all the different factors that have intersected to make statistics like this is the first generation of children expected to live shorter life spans than their parents. 1980, zero cases of type two diabetes, 20105, 58,000 cases. in two decades, 95% of americans will be overweight or obese. it s clearly such a critical issue that we have take action and take action pretty soon. what you re trying to do with the help of laurie david is look at the diet that our children are eating. it becomes the way they re eating for the rest of their lives because these substances are addictive. they ve shown sugar is incredibly addictive. the fact that there are 600,000 products in the grocery store, 80% of them have added sugar and often times we don t even know it, simple things like spaghetti sauce. what happens when you extract the fact it takes, like robert lester said, card board. so they started pumping in the sugar. the safe threshold of sugar is 6 to 9 teaspoons a day and the average american tax in 22 a day. and these products advertised to children have less scrutiny than to adults. that s true. advertising and online advertising of junk food to kids increased by 60%. they re inundated. they did a study and showed kids exposed to junk food ads in the course of watching television were given a bowl of goldfish crackers. the ones who watched the food commercials ate 45% more goldfish. all these things are working against us to trigger neuropathways in our brains to make us crave certain foods and it s adding up to this horrible epidemic. what do you do about the fact that the cults aadults are doin shopping? well, think, mike, they re trying to do the right thing. all these mixed messages they re getting, my profound hope is that families and adults will be armed with the right information they need so they can make educated choices when they re shopping at the grocery store. i used to get low fat everything. yeah. of course i m going to get low-fat mayonaiss. but all these things are pumped with so much sugar and ingredients we can t even pronounce. the federal government subsidizes the corn industry. all that stuff gets pumped into the food. michelle obama has done a lot of great stuff on eating better and let s move and all that stuff, but the policies haven t changed. we still prop up the corn industry. don t we have to get to the root of this and stop subsidizing the industry that makes us sick? i think we take a close look at the usda. i think they have a real conflict of interest. they re charged with promoting agriculture. we talk about the advent of skim milk and all this fat is taken away from the milk and the dairy farmers are like what do we do with all this fat? and everybody says cheese, let s make more cheese. remember that commercial cheese, glorious cheese and they were starting to get people to eat more cheese. which is more fat and more calories. so they re promoting agriculture and also establishing dietary guidelines. so they re telling people to eat less cheese but we ll spend more money telling you to eat more cheese. the number of kids, especially at bus stops and in cities eating ring dings at the bus stop. the number of children that go without breakfast that are at the bus stops in the morning. there s also real food. we had dr. oz on the show. he says why are you drinking skim milk? your fi your milk needs to be healthy milk. i used to put tons of sauce on my pasta. i m like why do you like this sauce so much? my husband is like sugar. you re eating sugar. the point of this is to know what you re eating and then you ll be able to make better choices for yourself and your family. and understand the role of the government has been complacent if not complicit with the food industry. we re talking about huge money with these food lobbies. every time they try to do something on capitol hill, then all the money from the food lobby comes in and voila, minds are changed all of a sudden. i think we have to get smart and get real about food. so you talked to bill clinton about food for the movie? yes. let s look. do you think the government is behind when it comes to helping americans reduce the sugar intake? yes, i do. why aren t they doing more? i can t answer that, particularly since corn has been turned into fructose and used for a sweetener, which i don t think is a good use for corn. i think america is still insufficiently alert about the damage we are doing to our long-term health due to sugar intake. hand he would know. he s become a veganvegan. he s probably more healthy than he s ever been but after doing damage to his body. he s done incredible work, really trying to focus on getting junk feood out of schools. 50% of school districts in the country by 2012 were serving fast food. i talked to a lovely woman working saying we offer healthy options but out of 300 kids, 25 of them choose healthy food. it affects them academically, it affects their quality of life, if they re destined to a life of obesity and disease. and so many schools now have no physical education. right, that s true. we do dismantle this mantra of ex exercise, calories in, calories out. we can t exercise out of the epidemic. a medium bag of french fries, you have to swim for an hour and 12 minutes. a 20 ounce soda would mean cycling for 20 minutes. and i ll go a step further but there is no place for some of these foods at all. they re addictive, the smell of them. you re going to get the 350 kids eating the french fries because they are drawn to them because of the substances in them that are addictive. they smell so good. you just got to start with the parents. and you don t need soda. it s interesting. my kids have never seen a juice box and they don t want a juice box. they re called convenience food for a reason. and i guess, you know, we all think we have to realign our priorities, right? some things are worth taking a little extra time to do. there s also the socioeconomic component. we couldn t deal with everything in a 90-minute documentary. but i feel like, you know, we all have to make a commitment to say we re going to spend a little more time or a little more thought or focus a little more because we have to do it. it s part of the responsibility of being a parent. we re going to die, die younger every generation if we don t. the government and food industry needs to be more honest and make what s healthy. fed up is in theaters today. go see it. katie couric, great work once again as always. thank you, mika. coming up, t.j. jakes, coming um on how to unleash your inborn drive. and later we ll look at the career of a remarkable woman. yes, that woman, emily brzezinski, my mother and her chain saw. how she thrived as a white house wife and raising three children. she s really good with the chain saw. now we get it! that was literally coming out of my mouth, i get it now. does it make sense now? ? i i m stuttering right now. how she balanced her life as an artist and being a white house wife. how are your chain saw skills? she says there s no good chain saw that is blunt. verbal chain saw. exactly. what s the weather? let s talk about this wet forecast that continues. areas in new york city, as expected, as soon as it rains the airport delays, laguardia an hour and a half, 30 minutes in philadelphia. that should improve over the next couple hours. also, expect delays in the chicago area. light rain continuing over the region. further to the south the rain goes all the way down into areas of luouisiana. bottom line is we re kind of in a summertime weather pattern now, getting the daily storms. st. louis, little rock, memphis, dallas to houston. i don t think tornadoes will be a problem. how does the weekend forecast shape up? as i mentioned today, numerous downpours out there, a few severe. into saturday, i don t think too many people will get their day washed out but even up the eastern seaboard to new england. finally, your mother s day forecast, apologies to the colorado and denver area, you have a snowstorm coming on sunday. can you believe it, snow in the middle of may. sorry, mom. in dnc.c. it looks like this, kd of foggy this morning. you re watching morning joe. we re moving our company to new york state. the numbers are impressive. over 400,000 new private sector jobs. making new york state number two in the nation in new private sector job creation. with 10 regional development strategies to fit your business needs. and now it s even better because they ve introduced startup new york. with the state creating dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. become the next business to discover the new new york. [ male announcer ] see if your business qualifies. i got this. [thinking] is it that time? the son picks up the check? [thinking] i m still working. he s retired. i hope he s saving. i hope he saved enough. who matters most to you says the most about you. at massmutual we re owned by our policyowners, and they matter most to us. whether you re just starting your 401(k) or you are ready for retirement, we ll help you get there. female narrator: the mattress price wars are on the mattress price wars are on at sleep train. we challenged the manufacturers to offer even lower prices. now it s posturepedic versus beautyrest with big savings of up to $400 off. serta icomfort and tempur-pedic go head-to-head with three years interest-free financing. plus, free same-day delivery, set-up, and removal of your old set. when brands compete, you save. mattress price wars are on now at sleep train. your ticket to a better night s sleep my instincts are calling me to what is organic and natural for me, but my experiences have not prepared me for the opportunity that stands in front of me and so i stand here caught in betwixt and between two opinions. something in me is telling me to go ahead and something in me is telling me to stay back, something in me telling me can i do it, something in me says i better be careful and something in me says break out in the wild and figure it out as you go, something about me says if you break out of the cage, you re going to die, this is all you know, this is where you came from, this is all you know and i m stuck between tonight and abuse. oh, yeah. that s good. here with us now for our faith on fridays, found are and senior pastor of the potter house, t.d. jakes, the author of instinct. you write our instincts are the treasure map for our soul s satisfaction. following our instincts can make the crucial distinction between what we are good at and what we are good for, the fulfillment of our purposeful potential. that about says it all. sometimes we get those things mixed up, don t we? we do. we become so engrossed in what we re doing, we forget who we are. we haven t organically produced who we are authentically from the center being of your core. but don t we get it mixed up also in the day-to-day actions of our lives and what we re doing, to make money, to attain material satisfaction. you get caught up in the moment to moment. how do you separate that? so many of us are fliensed by what we need to do, we ve never gotten what we re designed to do. reacting, mothers, fathers, sons, i need you to be there, jobs, i need you to be there. the most successful people are those who focus and finalize who they are and do what they were created to do and let everyone else adjust to that. so instinct. we think about what instinct is, what our gut tell us to do. you think about that as the opposite of rationality. you think is through and analyze it. do you think that dichotomy exists or is there someplace where instinct and rationality come together? after a lot of research, i ve come to the conclusion that intelligence loads the gun and instinct pulls the trigger. we want to couple them together. we want the information, the data, the validation of our past temperature are education. ultimately if you are true to your core and instinctive, if you flow in that and invest in that and harness that. fi for instance, with children, we need to put them in an environment of who they are instinctively. what do you do with children when growing up that your instinct is somehow thwarted by danger. for instance, deion sanders was in here earlier. i asked him how old he was, what age he was when he first got used to the sound of gunshots. he said he was 8 years of age. his instinct was to stay away from the people he knew sold drugs or what not and yet there was a danger in staying away from them because they want you, they want to co opt you. what do you tell younger people how to combat those two things. you follow your instinct but there s going to be danger here but you got to learn how to get around it? the whole center of my book was centered around the safari that i went on in south africa and what you re talking about is surviving in a jungle. when you look at deion sanders, he used to tell me a story about how he used to run because he was afraid of the cemetery and when he got to the cemetery, he would start running and that s where his career began. instinctively he was a runner before we even knew who he was. and that same degree of athleticism has brought him before us to recognition. so many people are trying to produce in life what they are not organically and intrinsically endowed with. we re imitators, we re spectators, we re copies. but when you do what is intensely within you, you re profitable. one of the things we must teach our children is to be honest at your core to be who you are, not necessarily to seek the money but seek fulfillment. if you seek fulfilfulfillment, will be successful in life. i have two teen-age daughters. it s very hard. i don t deny struggling teaching my daughters everything they need to know and finding their own way sometimes. i want to ask about yours. she became a mother at a very young age. absolutely. and sheep has her own book now. she s had certain detours in life. she doing well today. absolutely. i don t know how i handled it, i survived it. what you implanted in the early years, it disappears in the teen-age years. it does, it does. but because it is in there, it comes back to them. i thought, oh, my god, is this ever going to happen? i thought i can t take it anymore. a lot of parents are feeling that way, too. trust what you put in them. even though they deviate from it, they come back to it. i need to hear that. can you say that again? it will come back? i ve raised five children, they re all grown, my wife and i survived, we re all happy. the bible says something funny, raise up a child in the way that he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it. didn t say anything about the middle. trust their instincts, put values in them and watch them. we as parents want to control everything. observe. they call me a control freak. they do. what did you say, accurate? your children are good journalists. the book is good instincts, the power to unleash your inner drive. thank you. keep it right here on morning joe. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. when salesman alan ames books his room at laquinta.com, he gets a ready for you alert the second his room is ready. so he knows exactly when he can check in and power up before his big meeting. and when alan gets all powered up, ya know what happens? i think the numbers speak for themselves. i m sold! he s a selling machine! put it there. and there, and there, and there. la quinta inns & suites is ready for you, so you ll be ready for business. the ready for you alert, only a laquinta.com! la quinta! make every day, her day with a full menu of appetizers and entrées crafted with care and designed to delight. fancy feast. love served daily. man: we know when parents and teachers work together. woman: our schools get stronger. man: as superintendent of public education, that s been tom torlakson s approach. woman: torlakson has supported legislation to guarantee spending decisions about our education tax dollars are made by parents, teachers and the local community. and not by sacramento politicians. and we need to keep that legislation on track. man: so tell tom torlakson to keep fighting for local control of school funding decisions. joining us now, editor and chief of parade, maggie murphy. it s their mothers issue of course. and they re revealing a new poll here exclusively on morning joe, mother knows best. tell us about the poll. the poll is walmart mom s research project. republican and democrats. taking the swing voter that john will know well and trying to figure out walmart mom, children under the age of 18 at home and basically shopped at walmart once a month, what are they thinking, how are they doing. right now they re saying 58% still feeling the effects of the recession. and they are the ones who spend the money. 35% say not having enough money, making sure their kids get what they need is the top stressor as a parent. and 58% say they re living on the financial edge or making it but worried what the next day will bring. that s our country. and here s the thing. the poll itself is a thousand women. we interviewed over 35, we focused on six in the issue. terrific women, great spirit, great can-do attitude but they are still in the midst of this. they have this country on their backs. something a mother is supposed to be is optimistic and they are, for the most part. you have 60% feel somewhat very optimistic about their family s personal economy. 65% feel they are likely to achieve the american dream. i like that number. that s in direct contradiction to the last poll we had where 63% believed the country was on the wrong track. and 65% of the moms polled feel they re very likely to achieve the american dream. i think they re personally optimistic because when you re down this low, there s nowhere to go but up. that s their sort of bedrock foundation. you hear their stories but these numbers and questions are good. moms with close-knit families. go ahead, read it. go in order. 19% live with grown children, 22 live with parents, inlaws or another relative, 78% eat dinner together with their kids most nights. 38% consider themselves to be better moms than their on mothers. i m in the remaining. do you think that s a high number or a low number? i think that s that was an interesting number. i really i don t know. i think a lot of them feel their moms made some mistakes and they re trying to correct those mistakes and i think there may be some tension. but 80% think it s harder to me a mom today than it was then. i think that s a really convoluted issue. i think mothers and daughters and their relationships are so dynamic and intermixed with different, strong feelings. don t leave out the sons there, mika. it s very hard to judge yourself. and women are hard on themselves. but we re hard on our mothers. we re hard on our mothers. i think the interesting this evening about the entire group, in some ways to mika s points, they understand their value in their family and they understand their need to keep a sun is shining view, even if the world around them is basically giving them every message the other way. yeah, you re going to make it. you have to do that. okay, regrets. that s my favorite. 33% wish they chose a different spouse. 49% wish they listened more to their parents and 61% i think women should listen to this one wish they had gotten a higher education degree. i d be interested to know the first question, if thwished the chosen a different spouse, i wonder if you add the word occasionally. and amy burke talks about having not made some great decisions but she s moving forward and she s going back to school and she s really amazing and she s going to need to learn how to ask for a raise. we put a blurb, the know your value conference on may 16th. we re going to have such a great group there, gayle king is the keynote. someone is going to win 10 grand right then and there. but not you and i. not i. the mother s day issue of parade is out. up next, speaking of mothers, i want to share the story of mine, emily brzezinski, daughter, wife, mother, sculptor. all next on morning joe. you re out of luck and the reason that you had to care can you start tomorrow? yes sir. alright. let s share the news tomorrow. today we failrly busy. tomorrow we re booked solid. we close on the house tomorrow. i want one of these opened up. because tomorow we go live. it s a day full of promise. and often, that day arrives by train. big day today? even bigger one tomorrow. when csx trains move forward, so does the rest of the economy. csx. how tomorrow moves. what are you waiting for? 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(gnome) go and smell the roses. welcome back to morning joe. emily brzezinski, my mother, is an accomplished artist known for her monumental wood sculptures. she has searched the globe for failed trees and breathe news lives into their hollowed knots and cracks. and at 83 years old, she still use as chain saw, an ax and chisel to create her master pieces. emily brzezinski was certainly not like any of the other moms i knew, not even close. do you remember us being very embarrassed by you? all the time you were embarrassed by me. i think it s very difficult for children to grow up with an artist mother. they really did for instance, mark really wanted me in high heels, otherwise i m not a mother. how do you differentiate between playing the role of a wife and a mother and an artist and is there a difference or a priority when it comes to the identity of you as a person? well, for me i do what s in front of me, what is most important. i prioritize and usually everything works out just fine. really? really? did we ever compete with your desire to do your art? no. really? somehow things don t get into each other s way. what about dad? that s a different problem. that problem was managing the role of a white house wife since my father sfrd as national security visor under president carter. while he didn t always make it easy, he knew he had married an artist, who had then become an artist and mother and she would never leave who are trees behind. she always had other things to do. she persisted and she s been very creative. he helps, too. for me he s the common man. i ask him what is coming across in this vision? he tells me. sometimes i don t like it but i appreciate it. my mom may be her toughest critic. i can t say i m proud of my work. i like some of it mother than the others. i like this lazarus. for me this is an appealing figure. she s so passionate about her work she spends most of her time across that kitchen from her home in mclean, virginia into that studio for 40 years. i was working in large size and it was too awkward for me to work on these big pieces. what drives you to work in that studio? first of all what drives me is an idea, a dream. and i just love to be in the studio. i law the sawdust and the smells that come from the wood. it s something which is really very pleasurable. this is a very instinctive process. i don t think too much when i m cutting. i just go at it. and whatever shape presents itself, i just do what is needed. not much rational thought goes into it. it s exhilarating. yes. actually, when i get going on the work and the work is going well, i do get exhilarated and i enjoy it and it leaves me feeling i guess the word would be a little high. while she may consider herself a wife and a mother, it is the artist that brings her to life. all the lines and all the striations and the deep cuts were done at the last minute in a very kind of emotional effort. i m very happy with this sculpture. her newest piece entitled lament debuted at the huffington conference. it s a very powerful statement. i think you like standing under the arches and it frames you. that s my ego. my mother s sculptures line the landscapes of cities around the world. i have to tell you that all my life i can t say in the beginning i got this. i can t say when she was like climbing trees on my school property i fully understood the scope of this, but as i ve become a wife and a mother myself and i saw how she defied, quite frankly, she defied gravity to bible to find her way to thrive, i can t be more impressed with any other person on the face of this earth than my mother, emily brzezinski. thank you. with what are you trying to do to me? my mother s book the lure of the forest is out this month and it s beautiful. it s absolutely stunning. this weekend my mother will be involved in a an event discussing art and politics. we ll have more information on those events as they get closer. again the lure of the forest and alice and skutro, thank you so much. the week in review. we ll be right back. the numbers are impressive. over 400,000 new private sector jobs. making new york state number two in the nation in new private sector job creation. with 10 regional development strategies to fit your business needs. and now it s even better because they ve introduced startup new york. with the state creating dozens of tax-free zones where businesses pay no taxes for ten years. become the next business to discover the new new york. [ male announcer ] see if your business qualifies. you really love, what would you do? [ woman ] i d be a writer. [ man ] i d be a baker. [ woman ] i wanna be a pie maker. [ man ] i wanna be a pilot. [ woman ] i d be an architect. what if i told you someone could pay you and what if that person were you? when you think about it, isn t that what retirement should be, paying ourselves to do what we love? all right. you want to do it? yeah. what s the time for now? you know what time it is? what team? it s time for our favorite thing, the week in review. we ve been taking all the money we make here, right, and the coupons that fel griffin gives us you know i m not done introducing people. i know. i get little cesar coupons but i m investing now in tech stocks. no, no. i love america, too, willie. that s why we have those behind us just in case be in doesn t know. did you get a tat, chuck? you ll have to wait to find out. i may have started the process. coming up, fedex answers the age old question really? does size matter? okay. the answer is yes. you said you re going to be in the white house in 2017. why doesn t we do a freaky friday switch. he wants it to be morning he s a former attorney general, she s a former whatever. everyone at the table has a contributor title. i d like one. can i work something out? ironically you do contribute. she poured her heart into this, blood, sweat and tears and talked about her struggle with food. come on! the freaking title! they had these out and i was tempted to bite into one but i don t want to have to run off in the middle of a segment. michelle obama is rolling over in her bed right now. how dare you eat that. it s our 36th anniversary today! and they called it puppy love doesn t he look presidential? i can t tell if that s like the open of an hbo show he can break one of those columns with his bare hands. he s so strong and manly. john, i m not running for president in 2016. i m going to be supporting a nominee. i bet your wife feels good about that. i would have never stumbled on to a back road and gone to a cock fighting rally. i m going to check that. can you put your arms toward the camera for a virtual hug? thank you! i want another hug. yes! up next, what, if anything, did we learn today? a lot. all right. how can we leave you to saturday night on sunday morning ime with priority mail flat rate shipping. our priority has always been saving the day. because our priority. amazing! .is you! the amazing spider-man 2 delivered by the united states postal service. there was a boy who traveled to a faraway place where villages floated on water and castles were houses dragons lurked giants stood tall and the good queen showed the boy it could all be real avo: whatever you can imagine, all in one place expedia, find yours as the company that s all about printing. but did you know we also support hospitals using electronic health records for more than 30 million patients? or that our software helps over 20 million smartphone users remotely configure e-mail every month? or how about processing nearly $5 billion in electronic toll payments a year? in fact, today s xerox is working in surprising ways to help companies simplify the way work gets done and life gets lived. with xerox, you re ready for real business. afghanistan, in 2009. orbiting the moon in 1971. 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[ alert rings ] right across the streets, the sidewalks were packed with football fans with the draft across the street. we sent our writer out to get information about the draft. the only thing is they had to dance the entire they answered. we call it questions & danswers. i think really we should draft offensive line. and if offensive line doesn t work, we should go middle linebacker. i think this year they ll be comfortable with 12 picks. maybe we could get a quarterback. we haven t drafted one in the first round since like 1985. time now to talk about what we learned today. john? i learned that deion sanders is even more charismatic and compelling in person than he is on tv. maggie murphy? now i take chain saw lessons from your mother. can you make that happen? i suggest you don t do that. mike? i learned deion sanders is more charismatic. and i learned 78% of the moms polled had dinner with their children and family nearly of night. i was stunned. that s great. we just have to work on what they re serving. that s it for us. have a great weekend, everyone. i never mess with a woman with a chain saw. i learned that when i was think 8. we ll see you all in new canaan. join us at 4:00 to me my mom if you have the guts. look, i m stuttering, i m stuttering. if it s way too early, what time is it? ordinarily it s time for morning joe but right now it s time for the daily rundown with chuck todd. take it away. the mayhem has only just become. north carolina is off and running, arkansas, kentucky and georgia are about to put their primaries in the past. but which current colleagues are causing the most concern for the majority leader? we have more from my harry reid interview. and as the outcry over the v.a. hospital horror stories continue and the alleged coverups grow louder on capitol hill, an unusual move to acquire e-mails from a cabinet secretary before he testifies. plus, ahead of mother s day, we have a fun new poll question for you. about the feelings on the self-proclaimed mom in chiefs and her immediate predecessors. it might surprise you who the country most admires and where in the country lives depends on who you admire.