carnage at, yet another u.n. schoolhousing refugees in gaza. the third time they have bombed the u.n.-run school. the state department was appalled by the disgraceful shelling outside the school. there can be no question of the state identity? no, absolutely, no. there was encouraging news about an american doctor infected with ebola. i can t think of a better place in the world, other than emory university hospital, to care for this patient. the plane has picked up the second ebola patient to go to georgia. congress has left the building. leading the president promising to go solo on the humanitarian crisis at the border. so that s not disagreement between me and the house of republicans. that is a green light between the republicans and the house of republicans. what are you going to do about it? i think congress has to sit down and have a serious look at this constitutional and that includes that i word we don t want to say. i think it would be foolish to discount the possibility. mitch mcconnell and his allison lundergan crimes. if mitch mcconnell were a tv show. he would be mad men. he is stuck in 1968 and ending this season! it s monday, august 4th. lewis on set. on set nicole wallace and managing editor of news website bobby ghosh and columnist for the new york times david ignatius. what are you a columnist of? the news keeps getting worse and worse and worse. you have netanyahu saying to us, mind your own business. he tells kerry that. and then the news that happens after that. my god. shows we can t mind our own business. you have two sides clearly we will talk about, obviously, most in the morning, but two sides and neither side has someone with the courage to stand up say let s figure out how to end this. seven-hour truce is under way in the gaza strip. israeli is pulling back on its ground operations while leaving the door open to further strikes against the militants. on sunday an israeli missile strike killed ten people at a u.n. school, where thousands of civilians were taking cover from the fighting of the attack which was apparently aimed aat a passing motorcycle who left dozens of palestinians injured. it also sparked intense criticism from the international community, including the state department, that s something that doesn t usually happen towards israeli, which said the united states is, quote this is very strong language coming out of the united states state department appalled by the disgraceful shelling. the u.n. went further calling the israeli action, quote, a moral outrage and a criminal act. israeli s continued air campaign fell over last week s broken cease-fire and after that truce collapsed, prime minister benjamin netanyahu reportedly sold senior america officials, quote, not to ever second-guess me again. meanwhile, germany s leading newspaper says israeli intelligence agencies eavesdropped on secretary of state john kerry and his phone conversations during last year s peace negotiations. over the weekend, an israeli soldier initially thought to be captured was confirmed killed. one of 64 troops and three civilians to die in the four weeks of war. so, mike, it s very difficult very difficult for the united states to just sit back and even for strong supporters of israeli to just say, here s your blank check. go off and do whatever you want to do. which is what basically they are asking us to do and the most extreme members of the pro israeli crowd are asking us to do that we can never ask a question and when you have what happened again with the attack, you have the continued images of young children being pulled out of rubble dead. i m sorry. we have to ask that question. you not only have to ask that question, but you also have to wonder about the extent of where we are going when you have the prime minister of israeli basically telling the united states, secretary of state as well as the president of the united states and congress of the united states, don t ever second-guess me again. leave us alone. yeah. i don t think it s that simple. bobby? it s not just us. other countries are doing the same thing. just before i came on, the chinese foreign minister is in cairo and he has gone even further than any american politician to say israeli must lift the blockade. when china speaks, countries these days take that seriously. let s find out what going up to the moment by bringing in nbc foreign correspondent richard engel who is live in gaza. richard, can you give us than up to the moment update right now? use good morning to all of you. right now, there is this partial truce in place. it seems that israeli agreed to this under pressure, after all of the criticism, particularly the united states, israeli most powerful ally, this is a chance for palestinians, in large parts of the gaza strip, to go fishing, go to the market, check on their homes, a lot of their homes are destroyed. but it doesn t apply to all of the gaza strip in the southern region, particularly around rafa there is still an ongoing battle and israeli troops deep into territory and this truce is only supposed to last for another couple of hours. after that, there is questions about a diplomatic solution. will there be a way out of this diplomatically? there is an egyptian delegation in cairo working with them and they are waiting to see if israeli will send its own delegation. the palestinian demand, as bobby was just talking about, is to lift the siege of the gaza strip and that would be something that both israeli and egypt would have to agree to and exchange or wants or guarantees that it won t see more rocket fire, that hamas won t arm, that it won t use supplies coming into the gaza strip to reinstruct those tunnels that israeli spent the last month destroying. let me ask you a question. i saw yesterday something on my twitter feed al jazeera editorial and just an absolutely blistering attack of israeli s neighbors for continuing to stand strongly, side-by-side with israeli. this is, of course, something that we just haven t seen since 1948 where you have literally all of hamas neighbors from egypt, obviously, for good reason right now with egypt, but egypt, saudi arabia, united arab emirates and go around to jordan. all standing side-by-side with israeli and all against hamas. what type of impact does that have on how much leeway israeli thinks they have right now? reporter: well, i think that is probably the biggest difference in this war than? the other two wars we have seen here in the last several years. a couple of years ago, hamas was in a very different position. the muslim brotherhood and hamas is an offshoot of the muslim brotherhood, was on the rise across the arab world. it was in power in egypt and things were looking very good for hamas. it had a lot of friends and it had a lot of support. the islamic movements have taken a beating and no longer popular with large in the arab world. groups like isis and syria have given the islamic movements a very bad name. the military ruler in charge of egypt is even a bigger brotherhood than perhaps israeli is. i think that is one of the reasons israeli felt so confident that now was the time to go after these tunnels, to launch a long campaign, and we re seeing, right now, as you were suggesting, the western allies, united states, europe, even china, not a western ally, but a major power, that are coming out and criticizing israeli even before the arab states are coming out and criticizing. richard engel, thank you very much. david ignatius, how strange is it that the united states and america s european allies are now the ones being critical of these strikes that appear to be to the, you know, just say the observer on tv looking at one u.n. school after another being bombed, to be indiscriminate, while you actually have israeli s arab neighbors standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them even through the worse of the attacks. why? well, hamas, which has been the dominant power in gaza among the palestinians, is, in fact, very unpopular in the arab world. and that is one reason that israeli felt that it wanted and needed free rein to go after hamas missile placements and other weapons in gaza. the u.s., when it moved toward a quick cease-fire, secretary of state kerry turned to hamas only two friend in the region, turkey and qatar, to try to negotiate that. that is what infuriated israeli a week ago. and led kerry down a path that was just exposed into a lot of criticism. more recently, he has been doing something i think your viewers should think about. he is trying to figure out a way to help prime minister netanyahu find a way out of this conflict by empowering, not hamas, but the moderate palestinians under president mahmoud abbas, by bringing the palestinian authority into gaza as the governing authority, which could be a very different situation, would offer the promise, over time, of some demilitarization of hamas and where is the action is now and where the peace conference is about now. keep your eye on that. bobby, what i have seen as the greatest strategy over the past several weeks and had some morons attacking me and i can call them that, morons attacking me online saying i m not pro israeli, i ve been pro israeli since a lot of these blowingers were getting their you know what wiped by their mothers wiped. just how isolated and on the run hamas was before all of this began where you did have all of the arabian states against them. you also had the palestinian authority against them. you had them running to the palestinian authorities to make a deal of convenience just to stay alive as a political force and now this has happened. as david just said, other than turkey and qatar, they have no friends in the region and nobody they can talk to. also, as you pointed out, nobody else that can help strike a deal. that s the problem. in the past, when you had conflicts like this, it would rage for a few days and then egypt would go in, not just the muslim brotherhood. even before that when mubarak was running egypt he had leverage over hamas and go in there and knock heads together bring peace even if it was temporary. no longer that way. sicily is very anti-hamas and all of israeli neighbors are anti-hamas. qatar and turkey are sort of speaking for hamas but they are new to this and not their traditional role. they are distant and ideological nowhere close to hamas. it s clear, as we saw last week when the cease-fire broke down, hamas doesn t listen to turkey and to qatar. i have to jump in. we have sat here i think seven minutes speaking as hamas as a nation. they are a terrorist organization. our government has designated hamas as a terrorist organization. we spent eight minutes talking about what they do and israeli does as though they are two armies sponsored by a nation who should be treated equally. they are not. hamas is a terrorist organization so the tragic and heart breaking deaths of civilians is on the hands of hamas who embeds their weaponry in schools. hamas put the weapons in schools. when we sit here and talk about these actions we can t ignore hamas actions and hamas are not a nation! first of all, two points. hamas was actually elected by gaza to run gaza. they are a political party but they are a designated terrorist group. i agree with you and you know i know they are a terrorist group and i have said unambiguously they are a terrorist group and said that israeli uses mills to protect people and hamas uses people their missiles. that said, if somebody is holding a gun to the head of a 5-year-old which nobody has done. no. hamas is doing it. right. right now. they are using little children as human shields. do um shoot through the 5-year-old to get hamas when there is not even a great chance it will get hamas. hamas is not going to be destroyed by what is going on who is being destroyed, 5-year-old and 6-year-old and 7-year-old children. of course. that is always of course, i know congress can t have this happen without let me ask you. would the united states of america be firing into places where day after day after day after day after day 5 and 6 and 7-year-old babies were being pulled out of rubble? would they? we don t but after 9/11 when we were attacked by a terrorist organization we went into afghanistan and targeted the terrorist group, the taliban. yes, we did. we know and on this show a lot of attention gets paid to inadvertent and tragic death of civilians. inadvertent and tragic, but when it s happening every day, it s not as inadvertent and tragic as it is when the united states has done it. the reason the arab nations are silent, they understand better than i think we do in this country, the tactics of ma hamas. the biggest reason, the arab nations, i would think a shared enemy. is they are afraid they will end up in cairo. hamas is aligned with the people who took out kurdish towns in iraq. they don t share the same values but a lot of these arab states don t share our values either so let s be careful about that. yes, it s clear hamas is a terrorist group. they have been for a long time. but every time there has been this conflict between israeli and hamas, it has only ended one way with peace negotiations. the question now is who is going to make those negotiations happen? john kerry has been trying for a couple of weeks, no success. qatar and turkey have been trying, no success. who is going to bring them to the table? nicole, my only point a month ago hamas was dying on the vine. they were isolated and dying on the vine. exactly. the israelis have played into their hands and every time a 5-year-old girl, 6-year-old girl, every time a grandmother is blown up in a public market, every time they blow up a u.n. school when the u.n. says 17 times this is a u.n. school. i agree with you. who does that help? who does that help? that terrorist group you re talking about, the terrorist group we all hate. that s my only point. let s go to al hunt. poor john kerry. he gets kicked around, you know? even netanyahu now is saying leave us alone. i don t think that is going to happen any time soon, do you? no, i don t. i want to go back to david s point, because i think that is relevant here, which is that if this very, very difficult dicey situation could be improved by the palestinian authority taking over gaza, netanyahu has got to deliver something to the palestinian authority. in the past, he really hasn t been willing to do that and i d love to get david s view on this. is he willing to give up something? because i don t think he can just say, why don t you good guys or better guys rather go and run gaza now. he has got to give them something on the west bank and go much further than he is wanting to do before. david, wasn t there an opportunity for him just to pay the salaries of civil servants that hamas could no longer pay, that could have averted a lot of this disaster and they fused to even do that? joe, the question of how mahmoud abbas and palestinian authority would play more role in running gaza i think is the big issue that is now before prime minister netanyahu and kerry is trying to put it there. netanyahu has to decide after these weeks of war, the images that have been so disturbing to people, how does this thing end in a way that leaves israeli more secure that doesn t just mean you ll have to go back and fight another war two years from now? secretary kerry is saying if you can figure out a structure where the palestinian authority replaces hamas as the governing authority in gaza, you will leave israeli and the palestinians safer and more secure over the long run. and i think kerry is going to push netanyahu don t second-guess me and don t tell me what to do, but the truth is the u.s. can be helpful to israeli now in trying to figure out a way to move from this awful status quo into something new. how much do we give israeli every year? 2.7, 2.5 billion. it s close to 3 billion dollars. what is your point? my point is i mean, it s an interesting idea. get the palestinian authority more or fatah more power in gaza. do we think hamas is going to roll over and let that happen now that they have essentially been i mean, empowered in some ways. do we think they will simply just let that happen? traditionally they have taken a very dim view. they have taken a dim view. they have just proved to be the most disastrous leaders. they have done for their own good what the muslim brotherhood did in egypt, where they did more damage to their own cause trying to run a country than we could have ever done. look at the numbers up on the screen. you know what? i voted for support for israeli every year. and i would continue to vote for support for israeli every year. but we pay $3.1 billion a year in foreign aid to israeli. we pay $504 million for the iron dome. $121 billion since world war ii. and, of course we are their biggest supporter. i will tell you we need to be, with the anti-semitism sweeping across europe right now, which is absolutely revolting, even coming out of germany, of all countries. france. out of france. it is disgusting. it is revolting. the anti-semitism is sickening and we are going to talk about that later on. i m glad the united states of america is there to be israeli s staunchest defender but, hey, we should be able to have a dialogue with a country we pay over $3 billion a year to every year. don t tell us not to give our opinion. that s something we like to do on morning joe. coming up, other people who will be giving their opinion, mike murphy and campbell brown is going to be here. my twitter feed, which i rarely read, but this weekend, i was on talking about music. holy cow! everybody is going against campbell brown, just attacking her, savaging her for this school reform bit. she is going to be there with her voice. and look at this, like we are going back to the cavern or the beatles. this is awesome! pat buchanan will be with us throughout today s show and tell us about a historic book he has on richard nixon and teacher tenure law and the likelihood mitt romney is running for president again and the ebola patient that is already in the u.s. with another one on its way. how prepared is the u.s. for an outbreak of a major deadly virus? then are video games actually good for your kids? a new study explains why that may be the case. my kids are mind draft freaks. oh, my god, they are mind craft freaks and there are parents at home that know what i am talking about. they are just obsessed with it. unbelievable. coming up, we will talk to benjamin netanyahu former senior policy adviser. that should be fun. you re watching morning joe. we will be right back. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. honey, look i got one to land. uh-huh. (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. it s time to take a look at the morning papers. from our parade of papers, residents in ohio s fourth largest city are beginning their third day without water. a few hours ago, toledo mayor announced new results that show toxins are still in that drinking water. the initial warning went out saturday when the governor of ohio issued a state of emergency deeming the water supply off limits after tests reveals the preserve of toxin related to and thissy on lake erie that sent 400,000 residents in parts of ohio and michigan scrambling to stock up on drinking, cooking, and paging water. the telegraph. a new study suggests playing video game may be good for children. i don t believe that. according to a research out of oxford university, kids who play electronic games up to one hour daily on more sociable. they say is provides children with more cognitive challenges giving them more value than watching tv but that study was prepared by people who don t have children. where do they find kids that do not do play games? do such people exit? run outside. i think that might be a little better for them. no kidding. from the independent. a fisherman in china caught a 16-foot long whale shark weighing more than two tons. the fisherman who appeared to be unaware that the shark was endangered said it died after getting caught in a fishing net and the unbelievable photo. the man can be seen transporting the enormous fish on a tractor to a market to be sold. sharks are the largest living fish and can live up to 100 years old. nobody will notice this if i drive through town. the loip los angeles times. the disney marvel blockbuster raked in $94 million as the biggest opening weekend ever for any film in the month of august. globally it was even bigger. galaxy took in 160 million worldwide. it s a coore toon. who is going to see this movie around this table? no one. bobby, are you? i am. anything sci-fi, i ll see it. you ll see is three times, thus the big box office. transformer age of distinction. that has now surpassed a $1 billion mark. the first movie to reach that point in 2014. bobby, are you going to watch that? i did. worst of the transformer movies and still made a billion dollars. we need you on as our movie critic. the personality of the u.s. has changed drastically the past two decades. the journal partly sunny out in 1990 manufacturing was dominant as the country s biggest developer. the map shows where the industries were the highest states were. manufacturing in yellow. see that? now look at last year. you know what the blue prepar ? represents? where health care is the top industry. let s flip back to that other map. you want to see a dying economy? there you go. manufacturing. what was orange? yellow. retail. these are the biggest employers. in the yellow you had states that were actually making things and selling things across the world in 1990. now let s go to blue and these health care, which we all know, that money comes from the federal government, for medicare and medicaid and those are the top employers. the disappearance of those states marked in yellow in 1990 also represent demographic dynamite, people 45 to 60 years of age working in factories and plants making things in the 1990s, gone! jobs gone. plants are gone overseas. demographic dynamite. not good news. turning now to the middle east. the palestinian deputy prime minister says reconstruction of gaza is going to cost at least $6 billion. israeli s military operations there have displaced 500,000 as they force to eliminate weapons and stockpiles. the tunnel network used by hamas militants also trying to be destroyed. with us now is dr. gold a senior foreign policy adviser to prime minister benjamin netanyahu. doctor, thank you for being with us. let s begin what happened over the weekend. obviously, there was an attack on that u.n. facility that has got condemnation worldwide. the united nations and even the united states speaking out against these attacks. what is your response to those attacks? well, let s be very clear. israeli does not target u.n. facilities and israeli does not target civilians. back in 2009, the united nations human rights council alleged that israeli was deliberating striking at civilians. a commission called the gold stone commission was put together. it reflected that view as well. finally, gold stone in the washington post in 2011 wrote israeli does not do that. it doesn t target civilians. we are seeing a loss of life. we have to figure out why that s occurring and we have to figure out where the blame lies. but it is not with the israeli defense forces. david? dr. gold, when the unity agreement between mahmoud abbas fatah movement and hamas was announced last april, prime minister netanyahu denounced it. even though language submerged from that that would install the palestinian authority under abbas as the new governing authority in gaza, and i m wondering, you think prime minister netanyahu might change his position enough to allow that p.a. governing authority to have some clout? well, david, here is the dilemma and the hope. excuse me? go ahead. [ speaking in foreign language ] okay. did we lose him? communications difficulty with dr. gold in israeli? all right. thanks, t.j. we had a big international that was going make some news and he pressed the chopper 4 button. we really appreciate that. do we have him back yet? t.j.? way to go, t.j. i swear to god. we have got to find him. seriously? joe, i want an answer to that question. i know. i want an answer to that question too. it was coming, i think. t.j. pressed the wrong button. it s like when i said a word on the air accidentally. did he get it in time? here it is. show me the seven-second delay. do you have it there, t.j.? yeah, we have it. make sure you get that right and also if you can get the dori gold button right. i swear to god, how do we do the show with him? we want an answer to that question. we deserve an answer to that question. we bring in ignatius for a reason. i ll answer it and then we can send it to dore. you want to answer the question you asked? be like hardball. not now. oh, no. somebody forgot your button. he got my button. i love chris matthews. a great show. do we have the doctor back? i m back. we thought there was either some malfeasance on the part of hamas or our director who is really not a really good director. so do you need david to ask you the question again, or can you answer it? david, give them the refresher on the question. it s about the reconciliation agreement? yes. dore, the simple question is moving forward now, would prime minister netanyahu be prepared to let the palestinian authority into gaza as the governing authority to empower it and its moderate members as a way of replacing hamas, even though that would mean accepting the hamas/fatah unity agreement? that s an excellent question. let me show you what the dilemma and opportunity is. the dilemma is this has happened when abbas made his deal with hamas. we wanted to know whether that would lead to hamas becoming more moderate, willing to go along with diplomatic option and what, of course, happened is right afterwards, we had the attack on those three israeli teenagers who were killed by hamas and then the escalation of rocket fire. so it didn t seem that the agreement was moving hamas in a better direction. we have also seen, as i m sure you re aware, iran has improved its relaegs with hamas. if you look at the recent communications between the two, it seems they are moving back in the direction of hamas. so the question is can the palestinian authority play a more positive role? one of the things that everybody is looking at is the whole area of the rafah crossing. the egyptians will not open it up for trade if hamas is controlling the crossing. they are hoping that, of course, the palestinian authority will come in. mike barnicle? dr. gold, over the weekend, prime minister netanyahu was quoted as saying about the united states, don t ever second-guess me again. was that quote accurate and, if so, what does he mean? what is he referring to? you know, i saw that quote and it s a popular sport today in journalism to speculate about private phone calls and private conversations about the u.s. and israeli. i cannot verify that quote. it doesn t seem to make sense to me. all right. thank you so much, doctor. we greatly appreciate it. sorry for the transmission problems. hope to get you back soon. coming up next, rory mcilroy is back at it again with the world s top golf ranking at stake. we will show you how things played out this weekend at the world championship of golf. did he walk off the course this time? see? back problem. oh, back problems. this is horrible. an absolute i can t watch it again. i can t watch this. an absolutely gruesome basketball injury this weekend. we will update you on paul george s condition in morning joe sports. joe theismann has nothing on him. i make a lot of purchases for my business. and i get a lot 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. i m spending too much timer our calhiringer. and not enough time in my kitchen. need to hire fast? go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web s leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. you put up one post and the next day you have all these candidates. makes my job a lot easier. over 100,000 businesses have already used zip recruiter and now you can use zip recruiter for free at a special site for tv viewers; go to ziprecruiter.com/offer99. dad: he s our broker. he helps looks after all our money. kid: do you pay him? dad: of course. kid: how much? dad: i don t know exactly. kid: what if you re not happy? does he have to pay you back? dad: nope. kid: why not? dad: it doesn t work that way. kid: why not? vo: are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed? wealth management at charles schwab time to go to the toy department. sports. giants/bills. can i ask a question? why are we doing this to anybody today? i heard people tweeting about this last night and i m like, are you kidding me? it s a game that doesn t matter. eli is going to fumble. the other team is going to pick it up. i mean, seriously? see, i could do that. who cares about this? you got your fix of football right there. are you done? okay. let s move on. i m serious. who cares about football on august the 1st? nobody cares. it doesn t matter! it s t.j. and tower in there. way to go, t.j.! let s talk about the world golf championship. oh, my back. two weeks after wire-to-wire open championship victory, rory mcilroy finished on top again. he didn t walk off the course or pout or anything like that? tiger? no, rory. he is the best golfer in the world right now and he is going to remain the best golfer in the world right now because of tiger woods and what happened. playing in next weekend s pga championship, woods reaggravated the back injury that sidelined him for 11 weeks. you notice everything is falling apart on tiger? i mean, it just is. you know who else has things falling apart on them? who? people who are juiced up and then get off the juice. we are not necessarily saying i m not necessarily saying that tiger was juiced up even though he is really, really big and when he came back from his, quote, injury, he was like two club lengths down and now everything is falling a part on him. i would never, ever suggest that tiger woods was juiced. i just wouldn t do that. he has a bad back. he just has a bad back. look the way he is walking there. he is older and everything is just falling apart on him. i think that just naturally happens when you swing a golf club. he is not playing golf for a while. no, he s not. old people golf. but if you are juiced. it hurts? and you get off the juice, you fall apart. of course, i m not talking about tiger woods. why would anybody suspect that tiger woods was ever juiced? right. it s just like lance armstrong. we saw what happened i never saw that coming. really good? no. what are we doing here? sergio garcia? no one cares about golf. i m not saying that tiger was juiced. that physique he had looking like hulk hogan? don t show that. you ll get sick. i ll spit it out and it will be good tv. paul george begins his recovery today after suffering an injury on friday in las vegas. he immediately went successful injury but the injury will likely cost the pacers star their all-star forward the entirety of next season and no doubt respark debate over whether nba players should participate in international competition. we are not going to show it. there is a lot of baseball but we have these fools in the control room who think the preseason football is more important than baseball. do we not have baseball? the yankees, red sox? how could we not have traded clay buchholz? this is why you re so grumpy today? that is one of the reasons. mike, we trade everybody. why were we trading everybody? we traded everybody to build immediately for the future. are we going to get lester back next year? i d say it s 50/50 red sox re-sign him. i think i m pulling for the a s now. you have to pull for oakland. i ve been there. i like the a s. they are nice. you smoked a lot of dope when you went to berkeley, didn t you? oh, my god. what would that ever have to do with the a s? you just talked. let s get it out on the table now. i am a mother now! how much dope did you smoke when you went to berkeley? let me say uc-berkeley, it s easier to get pot than alcohol and it s really easy to get alcohol. yeah. is that your way of saying i smoked a lot of pot? no, i m not. i m just describing the climate wh where i went to college. would you say this time if you ever got back into government, yes, i smoked massive quantities of pot? it s not true. i did not. you didn t smoke pot? i did end up a republican at the end of college, though. did you smoke spot when you were at berkeley? coming up next, the must read opinion pages. she s in the south france. we are getting it over the teletype. these are good ones. don t go away. ucation. al: conservation. chris: uniting the nation. jim: with a bit of imagination. the more you know. what if it were more than something to share? what if a photo could build that shelf you ve always wanted? or fix a leaky faucet? or even give you your saturday back? the new snapfix app revolutionizes local service. just snap a photo and angie s list coordinates a top-rated provider to do the work on your schedule. the app makes it easy. the power of angie s list makes it work. download snapfix for free. today, more and more people with type 2 diabetes are learning about long-acting levemir®, an injectable insulin that can give you blood sugar control for up to 24 hours. and levemir® helps lower your a1c. levemir® is now available in flextouch® - the only prefilled insulin pen with no push-button extension. levemir® lasts 42 days without refrigeration. that s 50% longer than lantus®, which lasts 28 days. today, i m asking about levemir® flextouch. 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(male announcer) today s the day to ask your doctor about levemir® flextouch. covered by nearly all health insurance and medicare plans. this is the first power plant in the country to combine solar and natural gas at the same location. . during the day, we generate as much electricity as we can using solar. at night and when it s cloudy, we use more natural gas. this ensures we can produce clean electricity whenever our customers need it. op-eds. princeton university law professor writes on al jazeera. while israeli talks about rockets and tunnels, its massive military operation is being increasing interpreted as punitive and directed not only at hamas but at palestinians generally. second punitive motivation and more explicitly endorsed is a punishment directed to palestinians in general. for daring to form a unity government back in early june and crushing hamas is seen as a way to make palestinians submit to the permanence of occupation. the abysmal failure of the kerry induced talks shows that israeli has lost all interest to promise the palestinians a sovereign state at the end of the road. bobby ghosh, you re shaking your head. yeah. listen. the so-called unity government was really never going to unite it very long. hamas was weakened, greatly weakened but the differences between hamas and fatah is so great and the animosity between them is so great. not that long ago, hamas was off the roof of buildings and hamas to fall and die on the street below. so, i mean, this unity government, you know, i wouldn t trust it as far as i could thit it was hamas that came crawling to the palestinian authority. they needed some cover. they were so unpopular. 80% of the people in gaza were against them. yes. david ignatius, they were failing and they were collapsing. they were failing. i would just note for your viewers that dori gold said something very interesting from israeli from the interview that was interrupted. remember when you talked about control of the rafah crossing, which is the crossing from egypt into gaza, and that controlled, he implied being given over to the palestinian authority and mahmoud abbas people, as opposed to hamas. it s my understanding that is precisely the proposal that secretary kerry is working hardest on now and it would be a significant change because it would give the kind of financial leverage in that key passage to the p.a., not to hamas, so keep your eyes on that. bobby, i know the reasons to be suspicious of this, but if this piece of it came through, it would actually move the ball a little bit. it s true. david, the polls in israeli show 86% support for prime minister netanyahu, basically, saying go get hamas, kill them, we don t care what happens. what kind of a factor is that in delaying, delaying, delaying any sort of accord here? netanyahu has to decide how is this going to end? he is quite popular now. so he has the ability to do what you can do. at war s end, which is to be a little bit creative. he has got the country behind him. let s see if he does something to move beyond the status quo. coming up next, a construction worker makes an unlikely friend. news you can t use. this is one that will change the world. 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 re changing the way we do business, with startup ny. we ve created tax free zones throughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it s not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov fancy feast broths. they re irresistabowl. completely unbelievabowl. totally delectabowl. real silky smooth or creamy broths. everything she s been waiting for. carefully crafted with real seafood, real veggies, and never any by-products or fillers. wow! being a cat just got more enjoyabowl. fancy feast broths. wow served daily. 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[cheering] the fastest in-home wifi for your entire family. the x-1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. here is a question. people get asked this question multiple times. the president will be asked this question. first question in the press conference, how hard is it to complete a rubik s cube? anthony brooks, a guy with a lot of time on his hand apparently, accomplished that. set a new guinness book world record. he only started the rubik s cube in one day. he needs to get a job. it apps a fawn got pretty attached. we are moving it out of the way so it doesn t get smashed by a tree. we started rubbing its belly and when we put it down, it freaks out until we start rubbing his belly again. [ screaming ] that be good. i got to sit you down. it does not want to go. do it again. [ screaming ] we have spoiled a wild deer. are you serious? i just wonder if he is going to be able to do his job with lyme s disease. beyond baseball. he is going to have lyme s disease. i want to send that guy a kitty or a puppy, right? way to go, t.j. we cut him off for that. all right, listen, i swear it will get better. coming up at the top of the hour, the house is in recess. we are no closer to a deal on immigration or anything. will this force the president s hand to take executive action again? even though the republicans ask him to take executive action on immigration reform, will they then try to impeach him for doing what they asked him to do? plus, how does this impact the presidential hopefuls in the republican party? this mitt romney thing keeps going. did you see this? like everybody is saying, mitt needs to run. mike murphy joins the conversation next. thank god. the most dangerous political prognosticator in all of america. he s here and he is on morning joe. if energy could come from anything?. or if power could go anywhere? or if light could seek out the dark? what would happen if that happens? anything. just past away carnage at yet another u.n. school housing refugees in gaza. the third time they have bombed the u.n.-run school. the u.n. state department was appalled by the disgraceful shelling outside the school. there can be no question of the state identity? no, absolutely, no. there was encouraging news today about the condition of an american doctor infected with ebola. i can t think of a better place in the world, other than emory university hospital, to care for this patient. the specially equipped plane to pick up the second ebola patient has just left to go to georgia. congress has left the building. leading the president promising to go solo on the humanitarian crisis at the border. so that s not disagreement between me and the house of republicans. that is disagreement between the republicans and the house of republicans. what are you going to do about it? i think congress has to sit down and have a serious look at this constitutional and that includes that i word we don t want to say. you don t think an impeachment is possible? i think it would be foolish to discount the possibility. mitch mcconnell and his opponent alison lundergan grimes. if mitchell mcconnell were a tv show, he would be mad men. he is stuck in 1968 and ending this season! goodness gracious. i think i m just going to listen to the police for a little bit and let that sink in. my message in a bottle there you go. not getting much better. welcome back to morning joe. mike barnicle and nicole wallace still with us and al hunt. with us at the table while the republicans should move quickly for impeachment proceedings against president obama, columnist for time magazine, mike murphy. also in washington nbc news white house chief correspondent and host of the daily rundown, chuck todd. mike murphy, why can t they just say no way? when the question of impeachment is brought up. it s a little bit like the kid and the light socket. can we waterboard them? is it okay? it s not torture. it s not. they will be the first to say it s not torture. now that nobody has a swing district any more, the whole game is the primary. right. everywhere. so that is the frequency everybody is tuned into. impeachment, impeachment, impeachment. it feels like winning. that is the problem. they get together and there is free coffee, you know? the problem is strategically if we are ever going to get outside the minority in a presidential race, we have to change some stuff and the incentives kid in a light socket, don t put your finger in the light socket. zap. there it is. whoever runs for president down the road, damaged by it. mike, what do we have? we have the big immigration hot button, putting your finger in a socket. president obama will take several more weeks before taking executive actions. house republicans to limit the president s power to delay deportation. the bill doesn t have much support in the action. the lack of action has some republicans floating impeachment, a welcome topic for democrats, welcome to drive the president s supporters to the polls. i think congress has to sit down and have a serious look at the rest of this constitution and that includes that i word we don t want to say and i say that only on this program because i want to encourage the president, please don t put america into a constitutional crisis. you don t really think impeachment is possible? when the house takes an unprecedented step to sue the president of the united states for and even though he is issuing executive orders more than a hundred years, i think it s foolish to discount the possibility. brand-new nbc polls say americans are not happy with congress job performance. wow that is news. 74% say congress has not been able to get anything done and 1 in 5 say congress is somewhat productive. we want to know who the 1 is. a fraction think they are productive. a clear divide which americans would like to see in control after the midterms. by a slim margin registered voters would like to see republicans regain control of the senate from democrats and stay in power in the house. mike murphy, it s a race to the bottom. the president has low approval ratings. you look in those states where he has low approval ratings in the red states and republicans have even lower approval ratings. it s 1916. when do we run out of bullets and grind the thing down in a sea of blood? it s horrible. it is the nature of our politics because everything is based politics. the problem for the party i think far more likely to win the senate but what happens if we do and get the big microphone set up for the 16 where everything is at stake including the senate again. i ask you as a republican consultant, what are the republicans and the house stand for? what have they done other than investigate and say no? what have they done? that what is their pro active piece of legislation to get america back to work? oo they would say they pass good budget stuff but if you would fundamentally, here is what we are against. it s resentment. yeah. that is the question of 16. do we run the resentment campaign or how do we fix america? if we run the resentment campaign in 2016, we lose 6 out of 7. which would beat the washington generals because their losing streak was 24. we tie them. we, right now, on the national scale, chuck todd, the republicans are kind like the washington generals and reminds me of clancy, the clown, how could you bet against the harlem globetrotters? i thought the generals were due. the republicans are due but they are not going to get anything done as long as this continues. i mean, talking about impeachment? i mean, nobody is seriously talking about impeachment in the republican party, but these yahoos go on sunday shows and they get attention. by the way, so the white house is in cahoots with roger and chris wallace to get steve king on fox. you couldn t have played into the white house s hands more. i think the white house would love if everybody booked steve king 24 hours a day, because he is one of those guys, but it s in a fringe part of the house republican conference that is talking about it. but there he is going out there bringing it up and making dan pfeiffer say, see, i told you. and then be able to say, hey, john boehner, he can t control his own conference, so he may be taking it off the table, but, you know, his own members won t take it off the table. so we do, you know, you may think we are just being chicken little about this but, hey, see, there is that guy two weeks in a row now, fox has put somebody on that won t take it off the table, but it does feel like a total base feeding frenzy here. you know, again, it s something i said on friday. as mike said, democrats have handed the senate potentially to the republicans on a silver platter. steve king and those guys are just knocking it over. al hunt, you and i collectively have been covering politics since the cleveland administration. i was there in harrison, mike. yeah. can you recall, remember, think about a more dysfunctional political time in the last 30, 40, or 50 years than what we have right now, what we are enduring right now as the american public? no, i can t, mike. a simple answer. and i agree with what mike murphy said. i think this should be a republican year. they may be able to somehow just snatch it away. i ll go a step further than chuck todd. if i were the dnc or dnscc, i would pay for steve king to go all over america. i would put him in every single district. get him a plane, right? and denigrate him is just the fringe. he is the guy, along with ted cruz, who forced boehner to change on immigration. he s a guy that really resulted in the house making a fool of itself. he s not an insignificant figure in that caucus. what do republicans do, nicole? we got chloroform, right? i think we have a back room meeting, steve, we want you to attend. i think you hope that maybe we don t go over the finish line. we don t take the senate, so that we can spend a couple of more years gathering ourselves around someone who hasn t had to make all of these compromises. i think you hope for a governor to carry dr. you re saying for us to win, we have to lose? i m not able to trot out in these fancy campaigns like mike murphy is. i would go out and throw the senate. in 16, it s bad for us. we have a lot to defend in a bad year in 16. give us the big microphone. if we continue this stuff and the country takes a look at this and say who are these people and take it down again. the question for anybody around the table is this. what do the republicans in washington, d.c. stand for? exactly. name the big thing they stand for, other than investigating the irs, which they should do, investigating the nsa, which they should do, investigating benghazi, do all of the investigations, that s fine, but you got to have two tracks! you got to have the people investigating but then you need legislation that will get america back to work! what is it? good day, they are not bad on fiscal stuff but they only have about two good days a week. because of paul ryan. al hunt? i think there are a number of republican ideas floating out there. paul ryan and marco rubio and rand paul but it gets overshadowed by the steve king s and all of that fringe element. and look at the primaries this year. in mississippi and in georgia and in virginia, it was that immigration bashing that really, really took hold and helped some of those insurgent candidates and i think that may be good short-term politics for them but it s lousy long-term politics. what was your reaction, joe, when you saw the story over the weekend about senator ted cruz having 20 to 30 house republicans over to the senate side to his office to talk about immigration and basically to goat them or urge them to obstruct any further immigration legislation? i think that is ted cruz s right. i think the guys that have the voting cards or the women who have the voting cards have ultimate responsibility to do what they need to do. they don t need to hide behind ted cruz. you know, if they are not man enough or woman enough to go over and vote their conscience and do what they think is best for themselves and best for their party and best for their country, then they are too weak to be in congress. everybody is trying to blame ted cruz right now. he s not the public master. they are looking for an excuse to be cowards and to go back to their district and not do anything. say, oh, we are standing up to barack obama and we re going to impeach him or we are investigating the irs and we are investigating benghazi. benefit ghazi, benghazi, benghazi. like you said they are not in swing districts and nobody saying my family has been out of work for eight month. my husband has a college degree and i have two kids that need to get into college. we don t have the money to do that. in fact, we have to put our house up for for sale. there is nobody has that to go there and talk about what middle class americans are suffering through right now. i will guarantee you that somebody whose father was out of work for two years in the early 1970s, these people don t give a damn about benghazi right now. they care about getting back to work and getting food on their table, and getting their kids into college and hoping that their children will have a better life than they. what drives me crazy is the constant hammering of the face courage. how courageous is it to go home and tell only in your party base exactly what they want to hear? if i hear ted cruz talk about how courageous he is in washington. i don t blame him for going and playing politics in washington. that is part of equation and he is running for president. pretty simple. he will try to own these issues and now he might have to try to get through rick perry which will be tremendously fun to watch and off he goes. as far as getting anything done, we are not getting anything done. mike, such a great point. i was thinking about this weekend. all of these guys stand up and talk about the great courage they are showing. they are not showing korcourage. they are playing to 90% of what their people want them to do. they are going home and basically saying, look, here is the plan. we are not going to govern. they are cowards. courage would be actually would actually be taking a chance on something that is not popular. a year ago i was always calling on ted cruz to resign in texas and move to michigan where we had an open seat in the swing state and run there and show how it s done. take his message to a swing state, put it all on the line. and never got a reply on that. let s talk about another state. congress kicks off its five-week vacation, folks. five weeks they are taking off. all eyes on the political world this weekend turned to the crucial senate race in kentucky. republican senator mitch mcconnell and democrat allison lundergan grimes met at the political fair in a rural town of fancy farm. candidates shared the stage in front of a record crowd and supporters from both sides looking on, red shirts for mcconnell and blue for grimes, the 35-year-old democrat made her case against the 30-year veteran. what a huge crowd for senator mcconnell s retirement party! if mitch mcconnell were a tv show, he would be mad men, treating women unfairly, stuck in 1968, and ending this season! when it comes to our students being able to afford college, mitchell mcconnell, well, he doesn t care! when it comes to being a woman and being treated qael equally here in the commonwealth of kentucky, well, mitchell mcconnell doesn t care! senator, you seem to think that the president is on the ballot this year. he s not. this race is between me and you and the people of kentucky while we attend to hold you accountable for your 30 years of failed leadership. was that the real mitchell mcconnell they are showing there? it s time for the steel cage. i m telling you. i would love to go to that event! he is going to beat her. i ll bet money. he was next. mcconnell was next on the stage and his speech linking grimes to one of the most unpopular figures in the democratic party. by any standard, barack obama has been a disaster for our country! that s what you get for electing someone with no experience. he was only he was only two years into his first job when he started campaigning for the next one. sound familiar? there was so much turmoil around the world, we can t afford a leader who thinks the west bank is a hollywood fund-raiser. there is only one way to begin to go in a different direction. that is to change the senate and make me the leader of a new majority to take america a different direction! senator mcconnell got a ten in the mellow meter. that is so incredibly lame. kentucky senator rand paul was also at the event. earlier in the day hold on. before you hand out ten s on the lameo meter, okay? it s all you know, you got to see what rand paul said first. i think you ll bump mitch down to a 9 or an 8. really? because rand may have nailed that. i thought her mad men, get it? that was a good one. no, i don t think so. that s what i mean on the lameo meter. but for lameo meters. rank them. we have time, right? here is rand paul. let s hear rand paul. there once was a woman from kentucky who thought in politics she would be lucky, so they flew to l.a. for a hollywood bash. she came home in a flash with bucket of cash. to liberals, she whispers coal makes you sick. in kentucky, she claims coal makes us tick. one thing that we know is true, one thing we know is guaranteed, she would cast her first vote for harry reid! ladies and gentlemen, i think we have a winner. ew. it s rand paul. what do you think? i want to hear from i was waiting for green eggs and ham is probably the big closer. yeah. there s a thing in hollywood as a hollywood conservative that conservatives use is five more minutes. give it five more minutes. try a little harder. i wish i was there, though. that is quite a race going on down there, chuck todd. they might have as well as just done your mamma jokes. it might have been funnier and they could have gone back and forth. you read these speeches as they prepared them. you wince just reading them and then listening to them, you re like, they are really delivering this on camera? really? they are going to be quoted saying these things? but, look. this is the you know, all of the other races, there s a bang shot here and constituency group there and a wedge issue here. not in this one, man. this one is so clear, it s sort of you know exactly we can explain exactly how each candidate wins if they win. if grimes win, that mcconnell experience business was too much. 30 years is too much, he can t do it. if he wins, coal was just too much for her to take. there wasn t enough democratic votes for her. there is no easier race in the country to handicap and we know exactly what by the way, the thing hasn t moved. this thing has been a one or two point race for six months and be that until election race. a great race. you think mcconnell is going to win? yeah. i don t bet against mitch in fights in kentucky. election day it will come down to one thing. do they want to punish obama or mitch? they got to pick one and i think they are going to punish obama. all right. all right. . thank you so much, chuck todd. we will watch you at 9:00 eastern on the daily rundown. al hunt, thank you for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. those lines make you miss the late, great genuinely funny is rare but it works. otherwise it s the lead and written stuff. ahead on morning joe, second ebola patient set to return to the u.s. this week, we take a look at what the deadly virus could do if there is an outbreak in our country. how richard nixon was able to create the so-called new majority. douglas brinkley and pat buchanan with his new book on nixon, joins us at 8:00. a big name joins the fight against teacher tenure law. that morning joe exclusive is straight ahead. honey, look i got one to land. uh-huh. 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i would. switch to comcast business internet and get the fastest wifi included. comcast business. built for business. nearly 730 people are dead in what is being called the worst outbreak in ebola history. the virus continues to impact liberia, new beginy and nigeria and a doctor contracted the disease while doing missionary work in nigeria is back in atlanta where he is being treated at emeory university hospital in atlanta. kate, a lot of questions and a lot of concerns. get us up-to-date. what is going on? reporter: good morning, joe. the family of dr. brantly says he is doing well, he is in good spirits here. they learned yesterday that he received some kind of experimental medicine back in liberia before he came here and that could be helpful. they are saying that he is getting the best quality care here but, in the meantime, people are a little nervous about his arrival. content brantley shocked a lot of people when he walked into the hospital with just a little support from a paramedic. ebola on meet the press the head of the krs for decease control defended the decision to bring him stateside for treatment. he is an american citizen and what our role in public health is make sure if an american is coming home with an infectious disease, we protect others so they don t spread it. they are very professional and know what they are doing but one mistake it s and all over. reporter: a sentiment popped up all over social media this weekend am i the only person who thinks it was a horrible idea? i ve seen this movie. you were in the car behind the ambulance? dr. alex isikoff was in that suv behind the ambulance. he says there is no risk to the public. if i had ebola and i was touching your hand, maybe you would be at risk for contracting it. if i coughed and sneezed in your face, you would be at risk for contracting it, but that s how it s transmitting. not from standing a room away from someone? absolutely. not from being in an ajissent room and not from casual communication. reporter: brantly s family has been talking to him through a partition. where the brantly s first met, a friend road their words. we are amazed and humble by the worldwide response in prayer by this crisis. we cannot share any news of kent s condition but please know we believe kent will be healed and that healing will come from the hand of god. the other american missionary who has ebola nancy writebol, is expected here possibly by tomorrow for treatment. while peace corps volunteers are being evacuated out of west africa, interesting to note many african leaders have landed in washington and here for a summit with president obama. thank you, kate. appreciate it. with more on the ebola crisis, let s bring in dr. toby cosgrove. the president and ceo of the cleveland clinic. mike barnicle wants to know if he is going to get the ebola virus and be quarantined for six months. the question is we re reading a lot of story, a lot of hyperventilating and a lot of concerns about this coming to the united states. isn t it easier to catch the flu than the ebola virus? absolutely. everybody is concerned about the ebola virus particularly because it s very lethal but it s not highly contagious. the influenza virus is much more contagious than ebola so i think we are at very little risk. you have to understand now that we are now in a global world and transportation has made a disease that happens in one part of the world part of the world s problems. we have seen that with sars and multiple other diseases. right. i think it s important that we are prepared through the cdc and other organizations in the united states to look after these sort of situations. so what do we do if we fly back from a country, people flying back from a country, a lot of people watch this show that travel internationally and have business on every continent. what do we do? wear 12 masks or something or not worry about that? what do we do? i don t think you have to worry on airplanes. what we are seeing people coming from south africa being scanned for temperatures when they come into the united states by the cdc. if that is the case they get quarantin quarantined. the period of incubation for ebola is somewhere between six and 21 days. some people are coming back already and taking their temperature on a regular basis and if, in fact, they have a problem, they are going to be notified. going to notify authorities. so i think we have done a great job of the cdc in beginning to isolate this particular disease and quarantine really is the major therapy for this sort of an epidemic. in fact, there have been ten of these epidemics in africa since 1976, they have been quarantined in relatively rural areas and burned themselves out over time. the problem now that it s in the cities where there is little ability to qaruarantine an enti city. i know the peace corps is being arrived in evacuating peace corps workers around the world. i have a family member who lives and works abroad. what do you do if you have family members or friends living and working abroad and you re not sure that they have access to the kind of health care that we have here? people like you, people that understand and now how these diseases spread. what are their best resources for working abroad? i think the main issue is right now in west africa and the three countries you talked about previously. it does not seem to be located outside of that particular area. unless you are in one of those three countries, i don t think you have a concern. mike barnicle? toby, are you at all concerned about the potential for hysteria and misinformation on social media? in kate snow s piece about people tweeting about these things with very little knowledge about what is going on and where it s going on. i think it is a concern, mike. we need to get the true information out about the issue. look at how well-prepared the cdc is, and understand about how this disease spreads, and make people understand that the risk of this particular disease is very low, particularly the way it s being handled currently in the united states. toby, let me ask you a quick question about a the new york times article i saw yesterday in the magazine. some children are cured from autism. autism affects our family. got a child that has got asperberger s but i ve noticed him improving over the years and i ve been shocked by a lot of the improvements. i m sure you read the article and i m sure you know about the research. what is behind that, about some children actually being moved out almost off the autism spectrum? well, we have a school at the cleveland clinic of about a hundred students and we have been using this behavioral therapy now for 15 years. we see about 5% of the children who completely have their autism symptomatology go away. about 25% of the students are able to be mainstreamed starting early on, say, at about age 2 by the time they get to kindergarten or first grade they are able to be mainstreamed into the schools with little or very little support. so, you know, there is this is now an accepted form of therapy. so what is the common denominator for the kids that beat autism? is it that you guys work extraordinarily hard and others work to mainstream them to impact their behavior to try to get them as much as in their own world and in social settings? how do you do it? a couple of things. the diagnosis needs to be made early and need to get to people early. secondly there appears to be a correlation between i.q. and your ability to recover and higher i.q.s do better at recovering than do other children. it s very intensify therapy and 35 hours one-on-one a week with a child. it s very expensive. but it is the best hope that we have currently. all right. very good. thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it, dr. cosgrove and hope to see you again soon. my pleasure. coming up, campbell brown s fight against a teacher tenure gets a major boost. she is here to explain when morning joe returns. we will ask err about those nasty tweets too. in new york state, 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 a good night s sleep. and aveeno®. 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[cheering] the fastest in-home wifi for your entire family. the x-1 entertainment operating system. only from xfinity. west coast update. states are being hit hard by drought and fires this summer. now california has joined washington and oregon in declaring a state of emergency in hopes of bringing more resources and money to help battle the blazes. one of several california fires destroyed eight homes this weekend and caused one local hospital to evacuate. that is unbelievable. the drought out there, mike murphy, is just deplorable. we on the east coast have no idea how bad it is out west. the resource in california is only water and it s only going to get bigger and bigger and this is a super drought so we will have these fires. norm jerry brown would declare a state of grooves so it s a serious time in california. another leadened joke. up next taking on the third rail of democratic politics. how teacher tenure is hurting the u.s. education system and why it s time for a change. now a big name is joining the fight for reform and that is next on morning joe. we will be right back. when folks think about what they get from alaska, they think salmon and energy. but the energy bp produces up here creates something else as well: jobs all over america. engineering and innovation jobs. advanced safety systems & technology. shipping and manufacturing. across the united states, bp supports more than a quarter million jobs. when we set up operation in one part of the country, people in other parts go to work. that s not a coincidence. it s one more part of our commitment to america. wouldn t it be great if hiring plumbers, shopping online is as easy as it gets. carpenters and even piano tuners were just as simple? thanks to angie s list, now it is. start shopping online from a list of top-rated providers. visit angieslist.com today. surrender to the power of accomodation grooveland booking.com booking.yeah! if you look at the outcome, student outcomes in new york, okay? so 91% of teachers around the state of new york are rated either effective or highly effective and, yet, 31%, 31% of our kids are reading, writing, and doing math at grade level. how does that compute? how can you argue the status quo is okay with numbers like that. i went to school in south carolina and 31% sounds like a majority to me. why are we blaming the teachers? maybe it s the dumb kid. ever thought about that? kids are rated effective, maybe cut the kids lose and put them back in the bobbin factories. isn t it about that? with us the founder of the partnership for educational justice, campbell brown. last week she appeared on the steps of new york s city hall to voice her support for a lawsuit that seeks to overturn new york state s archaic and teacher and tenure laws. mike barnicle, look. this is big. we need him at some point. i already do and talk to you afterwards. star trial lawyer david boies who will be the new chairman of the partnership for educational justice. the new york times reports about david in lining himself with a cause bitterly opposed to by teachers union he is emblem mattic between the democrats and teachers union. he viewed the cause of tenure overhaul as, quote, pro-teacher. randy wine gartgardner told me will be on the show or at some point. her low point was turning on the show and seeing a bunch of liberals around me and all of them attacking what she is doing at the teachers unions. this is no longer a republican/democrat/conservative /liberal issue. a lot of democrats are concerned about what is going on. why did you decide to get involved in this hot button issue? i think education may be the most important issue we have in this country. i think it s a basic civil right. we started desegregating our schools based on race and now segregating our schools based on economics. we don t have effect education in this country and we need it. don t you consider this to be, like, one of the civil rights issues? making sure that an african-american kid or in the bronx or harlem has a shot at education as saying my kid or kids in scarsdale, new york. absolutely. if they don t get an education, they are lost to this country and they are lost to their families. and if we are not able to fix our educational system, we can t compete globally. david, you say this as the son of two public school teachers and as a lifelong liberal. i got to tell you, it is hard talking it s hard to find liberals who aren t directly involved in, let s say, teachers union or have some stake in it that aren t exactly where you are, which is we have got to do what we have to do to help the truly disadvantage get a break. i think that s exactly right, because liberals have always wanted equal opportunity. and the thing that prevents equal opportunity today, more than anything else, is access to education. we need education. look at the technology the people have to master. you can t do that if you don t have effective teachers. teachers are the most important, in my view, most important profession we have in this country. if you don t have good teachers, you don t have good doctors, you don t have good business people. you don t have any society unless you can educate your youth. and it s totally unfair the people don t get in quality education. mike, as campbell said before, i mean, there are a lot of great, great public school teachers out there. there are some that aren t great and they shouldn t be protected. the children should be protected. well, i think that is part of the confusion about this issue. like you, david, i mean, my mother was a school teacher. she taught for 35 years. yet there seems to be, within this issue, this cloud of misinformation that this is aimed at teachers. it s not really aimed at teachers. it s aimed at reforming a system that has been set in place for you tell me what it s about. i think it s about us beginning to treat teachers like professionals. right. and to me that means also paying teachers more. here in new york, a starting teacher salary is barely above $3,000 a year which is hard to even live on $30,000 a year. we by no mean tackling these laws is a silver bullet and solve all of the problems. but it is acknowledging that teachers aren t interchangeable and that they are individuals and they should be evaluated and rewarded for performance as any individual would in any other profession. you get municipality cutbacks with shrinking budgets and what happens in school departments is the best teachers are often, quite often, some of the younger teachers and they go first. that s right. you look at program like teach for america. every summer, we have the teach for america volunteers up at our house to a picnic and they are just great. they are enthusiastic. and, yet, some people want to keep teach for america out of new york city schools. it doesn t make any sense if what you re primarily concerned about why do they want to keep them out? because they view them at competition for people who are already teaching there. i think they listen. maybe they are disruptive in the sense they have new ideas and enthusiasm. that is what teaching is about! exactly! my parents were teachers. i grew up with teachers. i mean, teachers are the best people in the world. they love kids. and they are out there, the best teachers, and i think most most teachers feel this way. it s this is not anti-teacher. this is pro-education and pro-child and ultimately it s pro-teacher because that is the way you make them professionals. randy says tenured laws and other laws are against cronyism and patriotism and hiring based on what who you know and not what you know. we haven t been doing that in our educational system for years. not the way to get a job in new york city. people get jobs based on merit. we need to keep that merit system going while they progress. what is next? we brought this case in new york inspired by one in california where the judge ruled in their favor. around the country and you re going to see additional lawsuits being brought in other states too because parents are seeing this as an opportunity to express themselves, to voice their frustration with the system they think is failing them, and with legislatures that haven t moved to address these problems for years. it s a way of them saying we re fed up and if you re not going to deal with the problem, we re going off the courts. you don t want to read twitter these days. haters gonna hate, right? but outside of twitter, this is an idea whose time has come. i think randi weingar ten will be on. pat pbuchanan is standing b talking about his book on richard nixon on, my gosh, what is this, the 40th anniversary of nixon s resignation? yeah. 40th anniversary day, and our friend, pat, is here to talk about his new book on richard nixon. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. in new york state, 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 weit s not justt we d be fabuilding jobs here,. it s helping our community. siemens location here has just received a major order of wind turbines. it puts a huge smile on my face. cause i m like, this is what we do. the fact that iowa is leading the way in wind energy, i m so proud, like, it s just amazing. yeah, i m going to do it, i m here, why? you want to flip for it? we can flip for it, but you know what, though. i m sitting here thinking hey, at the top of the hour, the allegation of spying and a stern warning from israel s prime minister suggests the relationship between the united states and israel is in serious need of repair. plus our politics is local and there s never more true than at fancy farm this week. boy, that was ugly. that was a pig fight. you ve just got to see what happened down there, man. unbelievable. and by the way, you know what, elvis, he goes to vegas in 68, shocks the world. that s his great comeback. yeah. what s happening here today? bigger than elvis going back to vegas in 68. the return of elvis? no. we ve got the return suspicious minds. suspicious minds, that was a great one. but now we ve got the return of patrick j. buchanan on the 40th nixon of richard nixon s resignation. stick around, it will change your life. this is going to be big. what if there was a credit card where the reward was that new car smell 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 carnage at yet another u.n. school housing refugees in gaza. this is the third time israel has bombed the u.n.-run school. the u.s. state department said it was appalled by today s disgraceful shelling outside the school. there can be no question of mistaken identity. absolutely none. there was encouraging news today about the condition of an american doctor infected with ebola. i can t think of a better place in the world other than emory university hospital to care for this patient. the specially equipped plane has just departed from georgia. i m confident that our fears are not going to overwhelm our compassion. congress has left the building, leaving the president promising to go solo on the humanitarian crisis on the border. so that s not a disagreement between me and the house republicans, that s a disagreement between the house republicans and the house republicans. what are you going to do about it? i think the congress has to have a serious look at the constitution. you don t really think impeachment is possible? i i think it would be foolish to discount the possibility. mitch mcconnell and his competitor threw down. we can t afford a leader who thinks the west bank is a hollywood fund-raiser. if mitch mcconnell were a tv show, he d be mad men, he s stuck in 1968 and ending this season. my goodness, that just makes me tired. i don t know about you, barnicle, but i m tired. seriously? can they not hire professional joke writers, right? you still have to tell them. that s a good use for super pacs, right? let s say super pac money should go to pay for hollywood speech writers and make all of our lives better. welcome back to morning joe. mike barnicle is with us. also nicolle wallace still here. with us on set new york times reporter tripp gabriel. he was paid extra to go listen to those jokes in kentucky. we re going to talk kentucky politics with tripp in just a minute but first let s go to israel with a seven-hour truce is under way in the gaza strip right now. if israel pulls back on its ground operations while leaving the door open to future strikes against hamas. on sunday an israeli missile killed ten people at a u.n. school where thousands of civilians were taking cover from the fighting. the attack, which was apparently aimed at a passing motorcycle, left dozens of palestinians injured. it also sparked intense criticism from the international community, including from our united states state department that said the u.s. is, quote, appalled by the disgraceful shelling. the u.n. went even further calling the israeli action, quote, a moral outrage and a criminal act. israel s continued air campaign followed last week s broken cease-fire. after that collapsed benjamin netanyahu told senior american officials, quote, not to ever second-guess me again. perhaps the united states may never again want to give him $3 billion a year. meanwhile germany s leading newspaper says israeli intelligence news agencies eaves dropped on secretary of state john kerry s phone conversations during last year s peace negotiations and then used that information against him in those peace negotiations. let s bring in right now from charleston, south carolina, op-ed columnist, roger cohen. roger, i read your op-ed this weekend and just absolutely loved it. i want to read a little bit of it for our viewers and then get you to respond. by the way, i just want to say for the record it is not fair that you get to be in charleston, south carolina, and the rest of us have to be here. so this is why americans see israel the way they do. to cross the atlantic to america as i did recently from london is a move from one moral universe to its opposite in relation to israel s war with hamas and gaza. fury over palestinian civilian casualties has risen to a fevered pitch in europe and the u.s., by contrast, support for israel remains strong. the israel saga, of courage and will,icies in american mythology far beyond religious identification and it goes on and on and on. you set up, though, roger, this parallel universe that i noticed in 2006 when i went from the u.s. to london and just watched bbc reporting and was stunned. it was like i had been transported into another world. you talk about how anti-semitism is sweeping across europe at an alarming rate. at the same time in america, we unquestionably support israel where even images of dead children or women in these mortar attacks would be seen as almost unpatriotic. talk about that divide. well, good morning, joe. i think it s an unhelpful divide in many ways because it prevents either side, whether the united states or europe, from seeing the whole picture. in the u.s. palestinian suffering remains a taboo subject in congress, can t talk about it. in a quasipacifist europe where the slaughter of jews took place, it s impossible to see israel responding to rocket attack from an organization that is bent on its destruction. what state, after all, would not respond in such circumstances. and i think it s important to see the grievous errors mad by both sides rather than just seeing one side of the picture. in the u.s., it s support for israel. and in europe, it s sympathy, understandable sympathy, for the huge number of palestinian victims and growing anger at what is seen as indiscriminate israeli attacks on this small area called gaza. growing anger in europe. you talked about anti-semitism in europe. you also mentioned germany specifically, a country who s been israel s closest ally other than the u.s., certainly since the horrors of the holocaust. but you say there even cracks in that facade now. explain. well, i lived in germany, joe, as correspondent for the new york times about a dozen years ago. at that time what s been happening now would have been unthinkable. germans felt they had to show allegiance to israel because nazis had slaughtered jews. now with the passing of time this time around, you ve seen violence, including an attempt to set a synagogue in one german town on fire. awful slogans, anti-semitic slogans being chanted at demonstrations. a very ugly atmosphere. and i think germans with the passing of time look, this is the work of a rabid fringe. it doesn t represent the mainstream in any way. but still, for this to happen in germany is very troubling. you re seeing similar incidents in france and elsewhere to the point that you have the foreign ministers of france, germany and italy making a statement saying anti-semitism has no place in our societies. the distinction between anti-zionism and anti-semitism has in my view always been a much more flimsy one than those claiming that just anti-zionists say. nevertheless, the way this has spilled over in parts of europe into open anti-semitism is very troubling. roger, i was with senator george mitchell on saturday. during the day on saturday, he did a half dozen interviews. he was telling me four of them were from overseas outlets, the bbc, other european outlets, two of them were here in the united states. he was saying that it was like a parallel universe, the questions that he was getting from european outlets as opposed to the questions that he was getting from united states outfits. so my question to you has to do with the coverage. we see the coverage here obviously in the united states. how different is the coverage of what is going on in gaza within europe as opposed to here? i think it s different in significant degrees. of course the bbc just like the new york times would say that it s trying to be balanced and objective. everybody in this conflict, as you know, has extremely strongly held views, so they perceive bias, even if that bias doesn t necessarily exist. but all media organizations in europe are working against a backdrop of extreme anger at this point at israeli bombardment of gaza. that is the backdrop in which they re working, the atmosphere. similarly in the united states, you re working in an atmosphere where jon stewart, just because he reports on palestinian suffering, is said to reveal this to americans. any criticism of israel is seized upon and said to be some kind of betrayal of a very important american ally. so that s the cultural environment, if you like, in which this is happening. i think it makes the reporting on both sides of the atlantic either side of the atlantic different. okay, roger, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate it and we hope you don t have to move to an island somewhere between the united states and europe as you wrote about in your piece to be able to find a more balanced nuanced view of this extraordinarily important issue. roger, thanks for being with us. thank you very much. we hope to get back sometime soon. it is interesting, roger was also talking about how, you know, if you even show images of palestinian suffering, of palestinian children in the united states, that s almost considered taboo. well, i don t think that the media has been intimidated by any of that. i see those images every night. i think that the media actually deserves some credit for not only showing a pretty rounded picture. i feel like i ve seen lots of those horrific images, but also of listening to i think there was someone at cnn that was accused of being impartial and in this rapid media climate people get right on the air and address the criticism. i think journalalists have been confrontational trying to address that. mike, let s move to kentucky. another conflict in kentucky. has congress kicks off its five-week vacation. boy, that must be nice. all eyes in the political world turned to the crucial race in kentucky. mitch mcconnell and allison lundgren grimes met in the rural town of fancy farm. the candidates shared the stage in front of a record crowd with supporters from both sides looking on. red shirts for mcconnell, blue for grimes. the 35-year-old democrat made her case against the 30-year veteran. what a huge crowd for senator mcconnell s retirement party. if mitch mcconnell were a tv show, he d be mad men, treating women unfairly, stuck in 1968 and ending this season. and when it comes to our students being able to afford college, mitch mcconnell, well, he doesn t care. when it comes to being a woman and being treated equally here in the commonwealth of kentucky, well, mitch mcconnell doesn t care. senator, you seem to think that the president is on the ballot this year. he s not. this race is between me and you and the people of kentucky. we intend to hold you accountable for your 30 years of failed leadership. by any standard barack obama has been a disaster for our country. that s what you get for electing someone with no experience. he was only he was only two years into his first job when he started campaigning for the next one. sound familiar? with so much turmoil around the world, we can t afford a leader who thinks the west bank is a hollywood fund-raiser. there s only one way to begin to go in a different direction. that s to change the senate and make be the leader of the new majority to take america in a different direction. all right, tripp, we ve already talked about if this was a comedy special, it would have been cancelled five minutes in. but it seemed like a pretty raucous crowd there. they were getting into it. give us a color, like were there wild borars running around chewing at your ankles? it seemed crazy. fancy farm is one of the unique events in american politics. it s one of the great datelines in american politics in far west kentucky. but it s very rare to go to a political rally where you have both democrats and republicans on the stage at the same time and a mixed audience of supporters of both. so while a candidate is speaking, half the crowd is cheering and half the crowd is shouting and trying to heckle and distract and cause them to lose their cool. so what did you pick up down there, just confidence in the mcconnell crowd, the grimes crowd, what do you pick up? both sides are very confident. it s a close race, statistically a tie in all the polls that have shown up. closer than it ought to be. mitch mcconnell is running for a sixth term. he won easily the last two times. this race is close. why is it so close, especially with her the mcconnell people say her anti-coal position, barack obama s unpopularity in the state. does this seek to mcconnell s built-in weaknesses in kentucky? it does. she had a joke that her approval ratings were about her age, which is 35. he s got a lot of power in washington, minority leader. he s never been hugely popular in question. look at that, by the way, 36% are favorable. 43% unfavorable. i m not really good at politics, i don t know much, but if you ve been around for that much and your favorable ratings are 36%. that s pretty crazy. you know, we watched those two clips that we just saw. it s, as you said, great dateline, fancy farm, kentucky. the mixed crowd, republicans, democrats. was there any joy in the crowd or was it combative? it s both. i think people love to go there because you get a chance to shout at the other guy. they re having fun, right? they re having fun. there s barbecue, they cook ten tons of barbecue out there. ten tons? that s a lot of meat. a lot of barbecue. it s like a kentucky-louisville game. listen, at the risk of hurting your sides from laughing, do you want to see one more? are you ready for rand paul? yeah, i was going to ask about the rand paul impact. i m excited to see this. senator rand paul. there once was a woman from kentucky who thought in politics she d be lucky. so she flew to l.a. for a hollywood bash, she came home in a flash with buckets of cash. to liberals she whispers, coal makes you sick. in kentucky she claims coal makes us tick. one thing that we know is true, one thing we know is guaranteed, she cast her first vote for harry reid. i wanted to ask you about the rand paul part because he s patched together a pretty smart, strong coalition of supporters for himself but he s not really world s most charismatic stump speecher. what is his impact? what effect did that have? what s interesting about rand on saturday was that he completely put aside all of the issues he s been talking about to pull together this national campaign. he didn t talk about enlarging the republican party. he didn t talk about speaking more to minority groups in this country. he was a completely it was a perfect surrogate for senator mcconnell and everything he did was on the talking points of the mcconnell campaign. i m not sure who wrote his limericks. i was going to say, if he was a perfect surrogate, he would have left his little limerick at home. didn t he remind you a little of henny youngman? tripp, thank you for being with us, we appreciate it. still ahead, is mitt romney going to be the republican candidate by default in 2016? why the third time just may be the charm for the former governor of massachusetts. and a lot of talk. he s going around campaigning across the country, all the candidates on the republican side want him out there more than the democrats want president obama. plus the greatest comeback, how richard nixon was able to come back from political death to become the 37th president of the united states. the man who helped put him there returns! patrick buchanan back in the house with his latest book. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. in the nation, the safest feature in your car is you. add vanishing deductible from nationwide insurance and get $100 off for every year of safe driving. which for you, shouldn t be a problem. just another way we put members first, because we don t have shareholders. join the nation. nationwide is on your side. 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 welcome back what a song. with us our dear friend pat buchanan. he s the author of the greatest comeback. also with us we ve got senior contributor of the daily caller and columnist for the week, matt lewis. we re going to get to pat s book in just a few minutes but first let s talk about mitt romney and this mitt romney revival. i was seeing matt lewis talked about you before. yeah, we had a good conversation just about a week ago. it s crazy, everybody is starting to turn back to mitt romney. he s going out, he s campaigning for them. what s going on here? i think the establishment of the republican party is seeing that chris christie may not be able to do it and that jeb bush does not look like he s in fit running condition. and i think they re looking to romney because they re looking for a candidate they think can move outside the red state base and win blue states possibly. the polls are showing romney running ten points or so ahead of obama. but he s running behind he s running behind hillary. my view, though, is that romney is sort of the nixon in the sense that he s a candidate who s lost two times or three times, whatever. and he s considered a loser. however, he s considered presidential material. i think a lot of people are looking at him because they think that maybe he s the only guy that can really go the distance. a lot of people are going back looking at the things he said with russia and other things. mitt was right, barack obama was wrong. maybe we should give this didn t i another look. i think so. and also there s a lot of folks that say if one of the tea party folks win or libertarians win, we re not going to win the election, he s one of the few guys that can do it. matt lewis, you wrote this on a romney comeback. ironically romney is tailor made to benefit from having lost before. it actually transforms romney into a more compelling candidate. having struggled and stumbled is, for romney at least, a feature, not a bug. explain that. that s right. look, for other candidates losing, it s a deal breaker, they re losers forever. but the knock on mitt romney has never been that he s a loser, it s always been that he s this kid in the front of the class with his hand up. kind of the goody goody who s lived a charmed life, he s got a beautiful wife, he s made a lot of money and i think we resent that honestly. i think the public doesn t like that about him. there s a movie why like the rocky movies are about people that make a comeback. i think it s possible that romney could benefit from having gone through this experience, having lost and then showing us that he s resilient and that he can make a comeback, like pat was talking about nixon. sometimes it could actually work in your favor. pat, you know, nixon ran at a different time, in a different field of candidates. how much of this romney resurrection talk that s going on do you think emanates from seeing people like rand paul on tv or the bleeding arrogance of a ted cruz? i mean delegates and republican leaders see that and think, geez, mitt romney is looking better and better. i want to associate myself with all your comments about cruz and rand, but there s no doubt about it. in the mainstream of the republican party, a lot of folks are behind rand, he s a libertarian, but they don t think he can win it. they think cruz may do extremely well in the primaries but they don t think he can win. but i also agree about the fact matt mentioned the fact that he lost. nixon told me back in 1966-67, you know, i m eight years younger than i was in 1960 and so on who was on his staff was eight years older. he had gone through a tremendous maturing process. he was less angry, less youthful, less in your face. and i think a man benefits from getting beat. i think romney has clearly benefited as that and he s someone who s much more acceptable to the broad middle of america which is nonideological and nonpolitical. nixon is less angry? 1967, 68, he was very mature, very mature. my wife worked with him in 1960 and he was angry and he didn t put on makeup when he went to the debate. he d get requests to do an interview and he d brush them off. by 68, he listened. he had a young staff. none of us had been in 1960 at all. and he just he was a mature guy moving right through that incredible year 68 of assassination, of war and riots in the city and urban disorder, republican party split with goldwater wing and the nixon wing and rockefeller wing. so democrats get beaten up in 1960 and then humiliated in 1962 in his race for governor made him a better candidate in 68. and after that 62 defeat he said you won t have nixon to kick around anymore. quits politics. comes to new york. then goes out and campaigns for goldwater and then he sees, and i think i saw it when i went to see him in 65, you can see that path down the sideline opening up. and nixon said to himself i m not going to kick this away, i m not going to blow it. i m going to do everything right. we probably won t be able to make it, but it was clearly there and he could see it. and he did everything right between 65 and 68. it was one of the most flawless campaigns i think that has gone on in the 20th century to take a noncharismatic figure, who had really, as you said, been humiliated and defeated, and have him get up off his butt and campaign for everyone in 1966, get into a head to head with lindyndon johnson then make a really smart decision stepping out of politics. he said i m taking a moratorium for six months, he took it for a year. as he told me about mitt romney s father, he said let them chew on him for a little while. and then nixon returned for a section round. and that s exactly what romney is letting the press chew on, you know, whether it s rand paul or whether you name it. they re all chewing on them. he s just kind of sitting back waiting and seeing. it could be it could be an opportunity for him. absolutely. look, i think this is brilliant on nixon s behalf. i think that sort of laying low is an underrated political strategy these days. everybody has this sense that you have to be out there, you have to be generating buzz. but it takes a toll on people over the course of years. and i think it may be that a year from now or year and a half from now, we re sick of ted cruz and rand paul and even, you know, talk about jeb bush and then you turn to mitt romney, who would be fresh and he would be a compromise candidate who could come in fresh. he could instantly turn on the money machine. the other obvious analogy, though, he s doing what nixon did. he s going to be out campaigning this year for republicans all across the country. if republicans have a good midterm election, it s the nixon playbook strategy. just like republicans did in 1966 before the 68 comeback. matt, thank you so much. we greatly appreciate you being with us. pat, stay with us because coming up next, more on your book on how richard nixon was able to push beyond the warring factions in the gop and have one of the most incredible comebacks in american history. that s straight ahead when morning joe returns. 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 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bank. at ge capital, we re builders. and what we know, can help you grow. with us now, former senior adviser to president nixon, pat buchanan. he s the author of the greatest comeback, how richard nixon rose from defeat to create the new majority also with his professor of university at rice university, the co-editor of the new book the nixon tapes. president richard nixon, uncensored, unfiltered and in his own words. if pat buchanan had his way, you never would have had the opportunity to write that book. and from london we have jon meacham who regularly burns tapes. i love this quote, pat, from the greatest comeback. dwight chappin said starting in 66 there was a recurring refrain you would hear around the nixon office. accrued through the campaign and even greater through the years of the administration and continued to the post presidency. it was what does buchanan think? what does buchanan say? pat, you have a thousand memos that you sent to nixon and his responses that make up this book. extraordinary. tell everybody again the story of how you met nixon and how you got involved early in his comeback. well, i first met nixon when i was on the caddie log at burning tree country club in 1954 and 55. they put out the vice president s golf bag. the assistant pro looked over at the rookie caddie, and i went around 18 holes with richard nixon. then i m a young editorial writer and he s coming over to bellville, illinois, to speak. i got invited, went up and met him in the kitchen and said if you re going to run in 68, i d like to get aboard early. two weeks later i was in his office in new york and i was hired december, 1965. and there are only three people in the office. rosemary woods, pat buchanan and a lady named pat ryan who was answering the phones. patricia ryan nixon. we had a couple guys travel with us in 66. he went out to 35 states, 80 congressional districts and it was a phenomenal republican comeback, 47 house seats. suddenly he was in the hunt again. so how did this happen, pat? we have to put this in proper perspective. nixon lost in 60. he ran for governor in 62, he lost to pat brown. he said you won t have nixon to kick around anymore. howard k. case brought on a soviet spy and the program was called the obituary of richard milhouse nixon. three years later you believe he s going to win. the most brilliant thing and the right thing he did, both right and wise, was in 1964 when that tremendous convention when they re cursing nelson rockefeller, you know, he s demanding extremism be denounced, nixon introduces goldwater and then he goes out and campaigns for goldwater harder than goldwater did himself. at the end of that goldwater says, you know, i know you didn t do it for yourself, you did it for me. if you ever have selfish motives, i m with you. that meant that goldwater, who was the martyr of our conservative movement and the leader of the conservative movement politically, i saw if we could weld goldwater s movement to nixon s center of the republican party, there is no way nelson rockefeller or romney, who had both taken a hike on goldwater, could get the nomination. as soon as i got with richard nixon, i said the first thing we ve got to do is we have to go capture the entire conservative movement, move them into our camp before this guy, reagan, in california wins the governorship. jon meacham in london. pat, i m curious. after 68, nixon is in the house. he says watch what we do and not what we see say and a lot of people see the nixon administration as a bigger government philosophy and practice than people would have expected in 68. take us inside the white house in 69, 70, 71 with the development of a really aggressive domestic policy. well, nixon was not a goldwater conservative , he gre up in the depression, admired woodrow wilson. he had no problem with new ideas and fresh ideas. that statement by john mitchell, that was about segregation. he was telling the civil rights leaders and the others, watch what we do, not what we say. we were raising the devil with some of these court decisions on court-ordered bussing. but if you take what nixon did, he came in with 10% of the southern states desegregated. when he was out, it was 70% of them. now, it was a bloody mess all through that process, but nixon was pro civil rights, he was anti-forced racial balance and that s what he did. and it was a success. but look what else he did. he ended the draft as he promised to do. he put in the 18-year-old vote. he created the environmental protection agency. all of these things, domestic policies were dramatic and foreign policies, who can rival the opening to china. he ended the war in vietnam. all the troops came home as he promised, the p.o.w.s came home. he saved israel in the yawar. enormous achievements. if he had quit after his first term, he would have been regarded as one of the near great presidents. in 1972 he had the biggest landslide. in december of 72 nixon is leaning back, taking a moment to celebrate and said somebody write a book about 1972, one of the west years in political history. we did so much. and as pat suggested, in many ways he was domestically a continuation of a new deal liberal. built a great society. family assistance, clean air and water. he created the dea. he was believing in big government still. that was one of the things we worked in 72. here was a guy completely dead isn t 65. by 1972 he s created this new political majority, which succeeds the roosevelt coalition and dominates presidential politics all the way up until 1992. a 49-state victory for a guy who ten years earlier said good-bye and good luck, i m done with politics. what about internally, though, pat, within the white house during that period of time. especially the first term. you were just talking about the first term. nixon is not alone in this, but if you listen to some of the tapes and read the transcripts of the tapes, he and kissinger had an opportunity, several opportunities to end the war in vietnam long well before it was ended. right. well, my feeling on that is well, nixon told me after i left office i should have done in 1969 what i did in 72. in other words, bombing hanoi. i think the north vietnamese jerked him around again and again. he desperately wanted to end that war but he wanted to end it in a way in which the whole thing did not come crashing down. that s one of the real what happened in vietnam, what happened in cambodia, you have the holocaust there. but he wanted to make sure that all these sacrifices, death and suffering of these 58,000 americans was not poured down a sewer, was not done in vain, and my 73 he seems to have succeeded. but then he s broken. congress cuts off all aid to the south vietnamese. north vietnamese wait for nixon to get out of office for eight months and then they go. jon meacham back in london. pat, talk about, if you would, the republican party s evolution because you have in the primary campaign in 76 of reagan, the 80 campaign. you have a kind of reaction, right, to the nixon, both with the soviets and the larger government role we were just talking about. talk about the party s evolution. all right. in 1972 people forget, you mentioned bill buckley i know on the show often. 1972 bill buckley broke with nixon and supported the manhattan 12. they put john ashbrook in the primary against us, a mistake, bill. but that showed you the dissent, its dissent in the conservative movement over what you re talking about, nixon s building of the great society. and then ford continued detente. my 1976 i remember a story henry kissinger and i were at the 76 convention and henry was nervous. he was going to the convention and he said i m heading off to the convention hall, pat. i said i ll be right behind you, henry, i m leading the demonstration against you. and so but that was detente was the thing that drove foreign policy. anti-communism always drove the conservative movement. that s what drove goldwater. by 1980, that movement that had taken over the nomination was now capable not only of getting the nomination but of winning a presidential election. but even reagan wasn t as conservative as is believed by everyone now. right. he told me once in the white house, reagan, he called me up and said, pat, pat, some of my friends want me to go over the cliff with flags flying. and then he walked away. and i said, yeah, and i m one of them, you know. no, but he knew we were pushing him and pushing him and that s the nature of the movement. and i think by 1992, jon, there s no doubt about it that clinton understood that we ve got to get the south and we cannot keep writing these folks off with these liberal candidates. we ve got to get some of them and of course george h.w. bush had moved away again and somebody was challenging him in the primaries. boom. there you go, baby. pat buchanan, thank you so much. the book is the greatest comeback, richard nixon rose from defeat to create the new majority. i can t wait to tear through this book and want to interview you some more. maybe we ll do a package on this. plus i m reading another great book on rakivic. there was an amazing scene about how reagan was going from the summit to the base and you were completely in the dark and said that you were scribbling down all the notes i was rewriting his speech because the whole thing had blown up there. i have never seen reagan, ronald reagan as angry as i saw him there when he came out of that room. you know, i remember a guy we were standing up looking down, he and gorbachev came out and a buddy of mine with us said i don t like the body language. all right. pat, thank you. we will see you again soon. doug brinkley, thank you so much. it s great to see you. jon meacham, back in your hometown in london. we ll see you in a little bit. 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 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(vo) introducing the all-new subaru legacy. it s not just a sedan. it s a subaru. rejoice for you have entered the promised land of accomodation booking.com booking.yeah! 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. the films that they want to make now, they re films that i don t want to make. and the films i do want to make, they don t want to make. with the war going on, the timing worked. the picture was such a hit, it was phenomenal. what i m doing is simply reflecting what i see and feel. if it s ugly, that s what i see. hollywood has always maintained its objectivity, which is greed and trying to get rid of all the artists. that was a look at the upcoming epix documentary and legendary filmmaker on robert altman. joining us is his widow. it s genius, the list of movies that bob altman directed, just incredible. what was it like? what was it like living with a genius? well, that s a very good question and it s hard to answer because i never really that wasn t that wasn t established. we were married 47 years, so i didn t he didn t really seem like a genius to you. no, not the first 40. exactly. but there was obviously an extraordinary body of work that continues even to this day. true. and tell us what we re going to see in this documentary. this documentary, i think, is a terrific piece and i really think it covers his entire life in such a good way. i was naturally a little nervous about it, and i m completely convinced that it s the best coverage i could possibly imagine. why were you nervous? well, it was a vast and varied life. we got the right person came to me, the young filmmaker from canada, ron mann, who had done a lot of documentaries. i had not seen any of them at the time. and he s very unconventional. this is not your run-of-the-mill documentary because he wasn t a run-of-the-mill man. he wasn t a middle of the roader and neither is this. bob, you ve got lyle lovett, who was in four films, including the player, a classic, the same with bruce willis, robin williams and so many others. talk about your involvement. well, i met robert altman when i was about 22 years old. you didn t know that, i don t think. i had forgotten that. i ve known him ever since that. he s a god for actors, robert. when we set out to make gosford park it started as a vague idea and i ran to robert and said would it interest you to do a murder mystery in england. i thought it might because he never wanted to do the same thing twice and he always wanted a different city and different groups of people and yet there were similarities to his movies. so much to my surprise we got to make gosford park because robert sent up his tent in london, got a nice hotel room. we had a wonderful script, no money and no actors. as soon as people heard that robert was in london, every actor in london basically called and said, please, can i come in and be in the movie. does it strike the both of you now, we had a news item about the top-grossing movie over the weekend is a science fiction movie, it s machines. these were stories, these were movies with beginning, middle and end. does it strike you now the huge difference between altman s film-making prowess and what s going on today in the business? i think it was always different. robert always ran counter to what was happening, not necessarily because he wanted to be counter but he wanted to be who he was. he didn t change. there s something called altmanesque, what does it mean to be altmanesque. well, ougaltmanesque to robert meant never having to say you re sorry. he never apologized because he did what he loved doing and he was always counter. absolutely. do you have a favorite? no, i don t have a favorite. i kind of find myself saying the same thing that he would say when asked that question so many times. he would always say my films are like my children, and i m the most concerned with the one that s the most needy at the time. it sounds all right, thank you guys so much. 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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. welcome back. it s time to talk about what did we learn today. what did you learn? the greatest comeback. the return of patrick j. buchanan and richard nixon. patrick j. buchanan on morning joe. this was old school, old fun. if it s way too early, it s morning joe. chuck todd straight ahead. see you tomorrow. 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. ahhh! what is it? there are no marshmallows in this box of lucky charms! huh. weird. seriously? what? they re magically delicious this week offers an unusual three-day primary combo. kansas on tuesday, tennessee thursday, hawaii saturday. three senate races that still make some folks nervous. a sitting governor could go down, multiple house guys. it s a busy week. then there s the kentucky clash, mitch mcconnell and alison grimes faced off to kick off a ton of august action on the campaign trail. much more on what a little church picnic has turnent
[announcer] healthful. flavorful. beneful. from purina. when you re up on the stage so unbelievable oh, unforgettable i don t think we are going to solve this problem in weeks if that is what you mean. i think this is going to take some time. the iraqi security forces, in order to mount an offensive and be able to operate effectively with the support of populations in sunni areas are going to have to revamp, get resupplied, have a clear strategy. but this is going to be a long-term project. good morning. welcome to morning joe. take a live look at times square. boy, does it need another reminder six years into into the presidency, barack obama is learning again this weekend and getting a view of just how lonely it is at the top. especially when you re running the military of the last remaining benevolent super power in the world. with europe still seemingingly to be sleep, barack obama just became the fourng straight u.s. president to launch a war in iraq. america has ordered hostile military operations in that country. i read in this a maureen dowd piece, 17 of the last 24 years. it came from both sides this weekend. democratic critics seem oblivious through the growing threat, while republicans who attack president obama for doing nothing or now attacking him for wait, willie? wait? for doing something. this isn t iraq we are talking about. every day that goes by, isis build this calaphate. they are more powerful than al qaeda was on 9/11. i m predicting if we pull everybody out of afghanistan not based on conditions, you ll see that same movie again in afghanistan. this commander in chief has no strategy. he has no vision. they are coming here. this is just not about baghdad. this is just not about syria. it is about our home land and if we get attacked because he has no strategy to protect us, then he will have committed a blunder for the ages. some republicans are even saying, willie, it s worse that he has done something. but this time, the commander in chief made his military move because he had few other options. you saw in the maureen dowd column this weekend, i m sure. maureen said this is a barbaric forces pillaging so swiftly across the middle east it seems like from a sci-fi film. becoming stronger and more dangerous by the day and making president obama s genocide case for him. religious cleansing against christians and shiites and sunnis and a group of people battling againing genocide. it occupies now a land mass larger than jordan. good morning. it s monday, august 11th. willie, we ve got a lot of people talking about this. a story that is developing and breaking news. i guess we are arming the kurds directly? update this this morning arming the kurds directly as they fight isis. joining us this morning is senior political editor and white house correspondent for the huffing post, sam stein. a former director of the national terrorism center, michael leiter. carol lee. editorial director of the national journal, ron fournier. and bobby ghosh. welcome to you all. this morning, more evidence that the president has finally seen enough. u.s. officials say the obama administration is now directly arming kurdish fighters in iraq. american aircraft, meanwhile, continue to pound targets there, but a struggle over control of the iraqi government is threatening to complicate the crisis now. a fourth round of air strikes has been carried out against the group known as the islam state or isis and u.s. troops have made at least four air-drops of aid to displaced iraqis. president obama over the weekend say the campaign strike may last for months while once again ruling out ground troops there. joe, this is, obviously, a limited action by the president of the united states to stop isis in this one spot, in this moment, in this case. right. but this is a bigger problem as you pointed out in your introduction. it s in syria and iraq. it s not going away. it s a massive problem. for people looking at this and saying the same thing about isis they don t want to knock down buildings in new york or washington, isis wants to knock down buildings in new york and washington. this is, again, this weekend, another the new york times column i read said that actually religious genocide is the end. it s not a cool of terror. it s a means to an end. bobby ghosh, explain what we are seeing in isis, what their objectives are and what they are hoping to achieve. as joe said, they are far more ambitious than any other terrorist group that has come before. they want to hold territory. they want to create a state for themselves. they are calling themselves the islamic state. then they want to kill almost anybody that comes in the way. fellow muslims, most of all. whether shiites or fellow sunnis that don t happen to believe that the islam that these people have. do they want to attack the united states? absolutely. they want to take attack. the west, the united states specifically. it doesn t have to be in the homeland. the united states can be attacked all over the world. we have interests we have people in harm who could potentially be in harm s way anywhere in the world and these guys want to do harm. there is absolutely no question. no question about it. michael leiter, though, it is pretty encouraging what has happened in the past two days. the president s decision to start bombing isis shows that they aren t the third rike. they have spread like poison gas because western countries and countries across the middle east have allowed them to do that, but it looks like we are already making some pretty quick gains here. i don t think this is a particularly difficult target for the u.s. military. the question is how far we want to go with that. as you noted, joe, they are strong and they are certainly the strongest terrorist organization and army we have faced over the past ten years, but they are far from far from this that can t be defeated. i think folks at the pentagon believe within one to three months, isis could really be rolled back with u.s. air power if there is also an iraqi ground force that fights side-by-side. the real challenge is you can control them out of iraq with some air power, but how far are you willing to do? because without considering syria in the same breath, we can t really attack this at its same root. ron, the president took decisive action here and we have seen isis rolled back to the point where the kurds have been able to repel them, at least in this one region. but as this does metastasize and see more attempts of genocide around the world and region there, what does the president do next? he s in a tough spot. we are all in a tough spot. the country doesn t want to go back to war. we really you know, our forces are depleted and worn out,this a serious issue. we are now, you know, almost exactly 13 years after president bush got a memo in crawford, texas, saying osama bin laden wants to attack the united states. we are getting that memo now. what we are seeing on tv now is a warning that, you know, with every day after 9/11 the odds of us getting hit haincreased. as you were just told, this isn t just a matter of rolling out of iraq and i wonder if we are overestimating our ability to do so. we tend to do that. are we going to follow them into syria and are we capable of keeping them out of the united states? we have already had remnants of isis in the united states. we had a young man come down to florida and visit his family and go back to syria and blew himself up. it s a scary time. this is a tough nut for the president to crack and he has been underestimating a lot of things on the world stage the last few months. he can t under estimate this threat. no. this appears to be the threat that is is not capable or should never be underestimated because it s danger. i don t think can be overestimated because of its goals. we heard michael leiter ask the question how far does this go. do we have to go to syria because this is the root of the problem? that was part of a fascinating debate. team of rivals this weekend just became rival. yeah. hillary clinton amazing in this interview with the atlantic magazine looking to distance herself perhaps from the foreign policy of the administration she once served. in an interview she praised the president but said great nations need organizing principles and don t do stupid stuff is not organizing principle. stunning. a reference to the president. a cleaned up reference to the slogan reportedly used at the white house on how to approach foreign policy. clinton touched on the factor to leading to widespread violence in syria saying the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who are the originators of the protest against assad left a big vacuum which the jihadists have now filled. in an early interview president obama rejected the idea of changing rebels could have changed the course of what happened there. with respect to syria, it s always been a fantasy, this idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms what was made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth and they were able to battle, not only a well-armed state, but also well-armed state backed by russia, backed by iran, a battle hardened hezbollah. that was never in the cards. sam stein, there is nothing that makes me sadder democratic on democratic violence. this is hurtful. it is pretty stunning in the middle of the military operation to be reading headlines like this where you have his last secretary of state calling him a failure and you have the president call his last secretary of state and possibly next democratic nominee for president living in a fantasy world. failure versus fantasy. but i think probably, the most stunning part of that a lot of ways hillary clinton could have done that, but as we say in the south, she was just sticking a sharp stick in his eye when she brought up that really embarrassing quote about don t do stupid stuff. that was a blind side right there. i don t know if she called him a failure per se but she did stick it in the side. his policy in syria was failure i. this is what everybody has been waiting for on what plank would clinton try to distance herself from obama and it makes sense that it s foreign policy at this juncture because of what is happening across the globe. obviously, the headlines are terrible for the president and the administration and it makes sense. also it sort of goes by her history. she has always been perceived as probably is much more militant and willing to use force, i should say, in foreign crises than the president and she runs risks doing this. you can hear the groans from members of the democratic party after this interview wpublished withever go evejeffrey goldberg. with respect to the president now it makes sense to break with him because of all that is happening across the globe. carol, you ve covered the white house and learned a lot probably about the relationship between the president and the former secretary of state hillary clinton. how long has this been bubbling beneath the surface? how long have they served parted ways on these certain matters of foreign policy? well, i think if you look at when she was secretary of state during her tenure, she differed with the president on a number of things. sam is absolutely right. she was seen as much more hawkish on nearly every foreign policy debate they had in the white house. and particularly on syria, you know, some of us have been watching this, been waiting for this moment when she would do this because this was the biggest split that they had where she, three years ago, was really pushing for arming the rebels and the white house was pushing back and saying, you know, we don t know who these guys are and they are not even capable of using the weapons if we were to give them to them. they really wanted to step back. that was at odds with some of president obama s senior staff. so, i mean, what is really interesting about this is that it s hard to prove the negative. it s easy for her to say this now, and easy for the president to stick to his line outbut it was inevitable she was going to do this. bobby, when i read this, i thought hillary clinton understands what other foreign policy leaders have been saying for the past months or two. yes, the plane crash over ukraine was horrific. and that all diverted our eyes. and what happened in the middle east, absolutely terrible. you could do nothing in july, but look at the horrible images coming out of the middle east and coming out of gaza. all along, foreign policy experts had said watch isis, watch iraq, watch the meltdown in the middle east because this is what is, as ron said, this is what makes us less safe every day. it s almost as if hillary clinton understands this is all going to circle back to syria and so the blame game has already begun for a crisis that is sure to come. well, it s a terrible thing to say about a situation that has taken nearly 2,000 lives. what happened in gaza was the past reasserting itself. what you re seeing in ukraine, again, is old russia trying to reassert itself. isis represents a threat of today and tomorrow. this is something existential not only for those tiny communities that are exposed on that mountain in iraq but a poison gas and virus and use any number of expressions, this will be for us a long time to come. the longer we ignore it, the worst it has become. yes, these are no the nazis that they eventually became but the reason the nazis became the supreme evil was because for a long time the world did nothing. czechoslovakia, we did nothing. he took a little bit of this and that. we did nothing. we are at a risk of doing the same thing with isis until literally last week. michael leiter, final thoughts. i think the president has to make a case more strongly that we have to be in this for the long haul. we have long-term interests in iraq. we have long-term interests in the region and we have long-term interests of not being a defensive crouch on counterterrorism and that is going to require the u.s. and our allies to be deeply involved in iraq and syria, despite the fact that it may be deeply unpopular. all right. michael leiter, thanks so much and sam, ron, carol, bobby, stick around with us. still ahead on morning joe, thomas friedman is here fresh off his exclusive interview with the president. you just saw a portion of that. the former u.s. ambassador to iraq under president obama. ambassador james jeffrey asking what he thinks is to blame for the situation there. nascar star tony stewart hits and kills another driver on the track. my gosh. we will break it down for you. what exactly what happened? and what happens next. rory mcilroy cannot be stopped. highlights. his dramatic come from behind victory to beat phil mickelson and rickie fowler. first, bill karins is back from his long vacation. hey, bill. one holes and week straight in the casinos, willie. good morning, everyone. i hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. summer still going well on the eastern seaboard. had a lot of storms to deal with down along the gulf. as we head through this week, this is the same weather pattern all summer long. another shot of cool air heading for the great lakes and out ahead of that a good chunk of rain. if you re driving this morning, milwaukee to chicago heading over through southern michigan up to grand rapids you re in the rain this morning. maybe even a few thunderstorms. eventually this will sweep to the east coast. as far as the northeast goes today, another beautiful day. summer-like. low humidity. enjoy it. temperatures in the mid-80s because it gets cooler after this. looks like storms arrive tuesday afternoon. airport plans could be delayed from new york city to d.c. tuesday afternoon. the rest of the southeast today, you re looking for isolated storms. still very hot and dry in many areas of the west. the good news, the best of all! we are heading into the peak of the hurricane season and there is nothing brewing at all! that is fantastic. we leave you with a shot oh, what a gorgeous sunrise. did you see that super moon last night? that was pretty cool too. you re watching morning joe. we will be right back. did you hear the news came across the air today funtil to keep growing, theys hneeded a new factory,, but where? fortunately, they get financing from ge capital. we re part of ge, a company that s built hundreds of factories. so we can bring in experts to help them evaluate costs, incentives, and zoning to make a decision that would 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. it s time to bring it out in the open. it s time to drop your pants for underwareness, a cause to support the over 65 million people who may need depend underwear. show them they re not alone and show off a pair of depend. because wearing a different kind of underwear, is no big deal. join us. support the cause and get a free sample of depend at underwareness.com welcome back to morning joe. a probe is under way after a dramatic crash involving nascar driver tony stewart left another driver dead. on saturday during a sprint car race in upstate, new york, kevin ward jr., spun out racing side-by-side with stewart. you see it there. ward gets out of his car apparently angry gesturing toward stewart and seemingly looking for a confrontation. another car swerved to avoid him but as stewart came around, his car struck ward killing him. sparing you from seeing it there. st stewart s spokesman said he would be racing on sunday but a few hours later, stuaewart saide would sit out of the race, sailing the following. police have questioned stewart. they say the three-time champion is being cooperative. they have not, though, ruled out criminal charges. they also said they have no reason to suspect criminal intent there. joining us now is cnbc brian sullivan and morning joe derrick kitz who has followed racing and been in his family many years. you guys have both raced and this is what your dad drives. yeah. let s start with a couple of things first of all. brian washings was tony stewart, nascar star, we see him on sundays, why was he racing on this dirt track in upstate new york? this is what he does. a year ago he was racing these cars and flipped his car and compound fracture of his leg and sat out the rest of the nascar season. people said please keep racing these kind of cars. he said i m a racer and this is what i do. he took his race team and did this saturday night feature and it ended in tragedy. i was asking derrick a lot of questions, what was it? on friday? yes. thursday and friday. we were talking about danica patrick. they say tony stewart does everything because what he does. he is a great driver and can do it all. let s set a couple of things up. first of all, ward, this poor man who died the other night. he came on the road pointing and yelling and it looks bizarre to us. and, yet, tony stewart has done that himself. you sit there going, don t they tell them to stay in the cars? at every race, they start with a pit meeting and drivers meeting. everybody gathers and the pit boss goes over the routine saying if you re in a wreck or spin out or you re injured stay in the car. it s the safest place on the track. it s standard operating procedure, stay in your car is the safest place. especially in the night and the track wasn t very well lit. they say tony stewart probably didn t see him because so much mud up on the windshield which makes it even more dangerous to run out into the middle of the track. so two things at play there. one, the helmets these guys wear have what is called a tearoff. they have about 8 to 10 then plastic sheets and a button that will tear off because their visibility gets so impaired and they can t see. that is standard. they have to preserve these throughout the race. who knows at what point in time tony stewart was on his tearoffs. he could have had a perfectly clean one or impaired tearoff. you don t know. so many factors. especially when you re at the apex of one of that turn which is one of the most dangerous spots. willie, also looking at tony stewart, you have to look at tony stewart. this is a guy known for road rage and known for running out in the middle of the track throwing his helmet at other people. he has got a long history of this. he has been on the other end and we have to be careful between making a leap him going after another ki and targeting this guy. right. let s look at a little history of road rage in nascar. tony not very happy. we know what tony thinks. we were mad after that restart. checked up twice to not run over him and i learned my lesson there. i will run over him every chance i got. you get your helmet back. your aim was precise. i don t give a crap. tony, your respect of what happened. the kid is an idiot. he wins one cup race and he took us down to talladega twice. i m curious what that idiot is thinking down there. i don t think he knows what he is thinking. after tony went over to question and did more than that. got a swing in there. let s see what steve burns came up with. tony, what angered you at the end of the race? what the hell do you think i was mad about? he bulb he drives like a little bulb i m going to bust his ass. thank you, tony. a lot of threats there. there is that clip that made us all flinch when he said i m going to run over him every chance i get. he is an angry man. listen, i think that is a little racing talk there. i don t think he is implying he is going to run over him physically. but tony stewart has always been a hot-head. no question. he is not the only one. yeah. so what is his future, brian sullivan? so much of this depends on your sponsorships. yeah. gasoline powers the engine and money powers nascar. the question is going to be no matter what the outcome of this by the way, i ve been racing for 30 years. this is the worst thing i ve ever seen. whether or not mobile one, bass pro shops, go daddy, whether they come back to him. stewart is unique. he is the only major driver that owns his team. no charges have been filed but whether or not you pay your money to put your name on his hood. was there anything exceptional either of you saw in the wreck? no, he drifted up. he s on dirt. in fact, i was talking to you earlier. i said it looked like a clean pass. it looked like a clean pass. which means tony stewart goes past him fair and square. if you look at the video, i m not even convinced he necessarily made contact. brian, when stewart is making a clean pass like that, that is where you slow down, let the other guy go past you and you re going to get him at the next turn. especially in open-wheel racing where it s so dangerous as you can see. on that sharp turn. listen. some people over the weekend brought up some great point and a lot of awful speculation out there too. was there any history between these guys? like, i don t know. was there? did tony stewart have a go popr? what is getting the attention is, i can t hear if you have the audio up or not, you can audible hear the engine rev. is there a chance he is checking stuff. looks up. there is the guy. the guy is coming out pointing for at least four or five seconds. here is the other thing. there s been speculation about the cars made revving their engines. the fact is the cars have to rev their engines during the caution flag because if they don t the tires fill up with mud and no traction and the tires cool down and it s standard operating procedure and you ll see it all the time. we don t have time, but, my gosh, rory, that guy is on fire. my gosh. did you watch late last night? they didn t finish until almost 9:00, the pga championship. rory mcilroy wins third turned in a row and fourth career major. two in a row. this is the scene on the 18th hole last night as he putted in to win there. a one-stroke victory. a great sunday. phil mickelson was there all day and finished a stroke back. rickie fowler incredible season of his own finishing in the top five in all four majors. a great sunday. now you can say rory mcilroy the last couple of years and had some struggles and i think the next tiger thing probably got to him. he is there now. he joined jack and tiger as the three youngest since 1934 to reach four career majors. so he s on that trajectory now. how many strokes would you give mcilroy? scarborough, mcilroy, head-to-head, 18 holes. it depends what year. course of your choice. where would i go? willie, i won the masters in 87 the year after mickelson. who could forget? . because mickelson wins in 86 the shadow of jack nicklaus. guys, thank you for coming. coming up next on morning joe, authorities nap a 20-foot python in a florida neighborhood. we will explain the strange capture next. outrage in st. louis while the death of mike brown is compared to the trayvon martin tragedy. more morning joe straight ahead. 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amazing. they gave them umbrellas to shade them through the sun as they were going through all of that. wild one. 75 feet in the air. the breakfast story you must see. capturing a 12-foot long python accused of eating neighborhood cats. it took several police officers to remove the 120-pound snake from the pushes! there is currently an infestation of pythons in florida in the everglades these snakes can lay up to about 80 eggs each spring! wow. they really are great for breakfast. hide the colonel. also from florida, the orlando sentinel. a 9-year-old boy is lucky to be alive after surviving an attack from a nine-foot long, 85-pound alligator. this is our florida block. my lord! the boy says he was swimming in a lake when he felt something latch on to his leg. he was able to hit the gator and causing it to let go and allowed him to swim to shore. doctors treated him for three different bites. 30 teeth marks. scratches as well and removed a gator tooth from one of the wounds. left a tooth in the boy! wow. the 9-year-old is expected to make a full recovery. you re supposed to punch it in the snout. i think he did. the kit jacked him in the snout and saved his own life. shark week started last night. i don t know if that is big around your house. oh, yeah. but at my house, it s huge. it keeps getting better. kate and jack, jack is a little scared by it all at 6. but he s hanging in there. but it s shark week. i tell you what, my kids start talking about shark week four months ahead of time. it s unbelievable! like christmas. it is! it will be like may and they go, daddy, shark week is soon. next week? no, august 10th. it s on calendar in our house! another thing taken over by hollywood. the casting has gotten better and better on the sharks and finding better ones. they are looking for neg negladawn? i won t tell my kids that. maybe they will find him this year at the end of shark week. coming up, what does president obama think is the biggest difference between democrats and republicans? overall, if you look at the democratic consensus, it s a pretty common sense mainstream consensus. it s not a lot of wacky ideological nonsense and fact based on reason based. that s the president of the united states? oh, lord! we are reasonable and rational. them, you know he? it s witchcraft. holey cow. i can t wait to ask thomas friedman who is coming on to talk about that interview. up next, from the south of france. have you got your teletype? is it coming in? ding! mika s must read opinion pages coming up and straight off the cable from the south of france. we will be right back. being the new kid on the block can be intimidating. take your kids on a walk through the online neighborhood. show them sites you feel are acceptable. teach them how to deal with cyber bullies and encourage them to navigate safely. the more you know. in the nation, the safest feature in your car is you. add vanishing deductible from nationwide insurance and get $100 off for every year of safe driving. which for you, shouldn t be a problem. just another way we put members first, because we don t have shareholders. join the nation. nationwide is on your side. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use 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. willie, fresh off the teletype. i hand to you from it smells like the south of france. from the casino royale. off the teletype from mika. she is reading the new york times. writing about back to iraq. from the sunday times, maureen writes it felt bracing to see american pilots trying to save innocence in a country we messed up so badly that it s not even a country my nor, some critics warn it was not a military strategy and almost worse than nothing as john mccain put it. the latest turn of the screw in iraq also underscored how we keep getting pulled back godfather style without even understanding the kuverculture. it creates even more monsters. the united states has taken military action in iraq during at least 17 of the last 24 years. the ultimate mission creep in a country smaller than texas on the other side of the world. what better symbol of the middle east quicksand than the fact that navy planes took off for their rescue mission two years after president obama declared in war in iraq over from the george h.w. bush aircraft. high ironic the president who got elected finding the only guy out there against the last war in iraq is back now in iraq which should show us just how badly the situation has deteriorated. yeah. it s probably the biggest disappointment to him. i mean, it s a personal disappointment of his presidency. and this is something that he never wanted to do and, as you mentioned, he campaigned on 2012. i traveled with him extensively during that time. the draw down in iraq was a number one pause line for him and they really touted it. i remember traveling with vice president joe biden in 2011 when he did the trip to end the war. he said we have turned lemons into lemonade. this is a place they never thought they would be. if you look at what the president said when he first spoke on this, he practically apologized for taking military action. as you saw on saturday he is back saying, well, this could be a lot longer. i think he has got some explaining to do on this part. it s accelerating, too, willie. by the way, i support the president. we go in and we do the bombings to save a lot of people from grisly death, but this morning, we wake up to the breaking news that he is now arming the kurds directly. so looks like he is moving towards being all in. said i guess this weekend said we could be there months. he said this is going to take a long time. ron, recent history said you can t dip your toes into the waters of war. if you re in for a dime, you re in for many in case. we had to face the fact we were not honest as a country as we got into iraq and we weren t very smart how we got out. we can t do anything about the former so we have to deal with the latter. the problem the president has it was just a few months ago where he called this threat j.v. was only a couple of years ago when he said we re pulling the troops out because iraq is stable and safe and sovereign. he just admitted he blew the call on libya that he underestimated what happened after we got rid with gadhafi and he underestimated putin and what happened after mubarak was chased out. as i said earlier, he can t underestimate the threat now. but it s not an easy call for him to make. no. but i tell you what, i think the fact that the president has said what he said about isis and other groups and the fact he is going in now, should show the american people just how serious this threat is and just how serious this president has to take it. no politician likes admitting they were wrong and what the president is doing here. but, again, shows how serious things are and how much things have deinvolvvolved in the midd east. another unarmed black teen is gunned down and a community is demanding answers as overnight protests become violent. we will have the latest on the shooting death that is causing outrage and unrest in st. louis. don t go away. we will be right back. 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i got three subscriptions. a hundred bucks a year you can watch the former alaska governor go rogue. in this clip she hass on massachusetts senator elizabeth warren. we believe that fast food workers deserve a livable wage and that means when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them. we believe wait. i thought fast food joints? don t you guys think they are of the devil or something? liberals, you want to send those evil employee who work at a fast food joint, send them to purgatory or something so they go all vegan and wages in picket lines aren t often discussed in purgatory, are they? why are you worried about fast food wages? well, we believe in america, where minimum wage jobs, they are not lifetime gigs. they are stepping stones! that one-year subscription, by the way, comes with a two week free trial period where you can get your money back. what did i just see? reason for a refund. truth to what? speaking what? you don t talk about wages and purgatory. i m trying to figure out what that means. my teeth are hurting. big mac and number one and super sizesed with purgatory. we will try to figure that out. while the animation sweeps and the next hour of morning joe starts. i don t think we are going to solve this problem in weeks if that is what you mean. i think this is going to take some time. the iraqy security forces to mount an offensive and mount the effective in sunni areas are going to have to revamp and get resupplied and have a clear strategy. but this is going to be a long-term project. that s the president talking about a lot going on right now in iraq. u.s. officials say the obama administration is directly arming kurdish fighters in iraq and news broke overnight. american aircraft pound targets there and struggle over the control of the iraqi government about complicating the crises whatever is easy in iraq? a fourth round of air strikes carried out against the group known as the islamic state. four air-drops to 4,000 displaced iraqis. the president said over the weekend the air strike campaign may last for months. once again ruling out ground troops, the president did, he is now dealing with this internal problem. iraq s prime minister is accusing the country s new president of staging a coup. al maliki is face ago third term but facing calls to resign. he gave a televised speech last night saying he is not going anywhere. yes, you are. special forces to support al maliki were sent to key areas around baghdad. u.s. officials support iraq s new president and are alarmed by the tone of al maliki s speech. joining us now is nbc news white house chief foreign correspondent, andrea mitchell. a lot of concern. yeah. one second, andrea. senior fellow for national security studies max boot. author of invisible armies. associate professor dominique tierney. and with time magazine, michael crowley and sam stein is still with us from washington. thank god. a full house. andrea, let me get back to you. set the stage a little bit for people just kind of waking up on a monday morning, what happened over the weekend in iraq? well, what happened was really last night. maliki is threatening to stay and has ordered his loyal army, even if it s around baghdad, there is real concern there could be political violence today. not from isis, but from maliki s forces. so how can they fight isis with maliki supposedly in the last week letting iraqi forces work the u.s. in a coordinated fashion to save the peshmerga and the kurds. maliki can t stay. none of this works with maliki stays. this, obviously, is surprising to a lot of people the thought that one foot was already out the door. is maliki suggesting something more troubling. yes. what is maliki suggesting? he was suggesting by saying that the army, well, to him, supports the constitution. he was suggesting just as the shiite coalition was getting together to choose a prime minister and finally complete this governing process without maliki having a third term. maliki was suggesting basically a coup and that is what caused enormous alarm last night among top u.s. officials reaching out. they are the intel people were working, you know, very, very early this morning to see exactly what his intentions are. maybe we should just let the egyptians annex iraq. max boot, it s never easy in iraq. the president of the united states did what he felt like he had to do. talk, if you will, how bad had the situation come until the bombing began and what progress were we making? i think the situation, joe, is about as bad as you can imagine, because here you had this fundamentalist islamist state before 2001 they had taken control of a substantial portion of syria, as well as iraq. we show this map, max. they actually control an area larger than the entire nation of jordan. exactly. larger than new england. it s a pretty horrifying scenario. they were starting to carry out genocide against the christians and threatening erbil. they were marching on baghdad. my question is do we have a strategy driving owner intervention and i would point you to the words of napoleon who said if you start to take vie a vienna, take vienna. in other words, when fer going to fight these guys, let s do it for real and a way to have a strategy to destroy isis. willie, we always say that. if you re going to take vienna, take vienna. that is a pretty good quote. i think i m going to use that. michael crowley, let s talk about the strategy going forward here. this appears to, the air strikes appear for the time being to give kurds time and space to repel isis. but what next? because isis is not going away. maybe they have pulled back from this region but they will pop up in other places and they exist obviously in many other places throughout the region. what is the over arcing strategy for the white house here? oftentimes if you re in once, you re in for a lot more. yeah. i think the overarching strategy is for us to not get too deeply involved, at least militarily. a big part of it is to use proxies. in other words, get the kurdish fighting forces, called the peshmerga and that translates those who face death and have a record as fierce fighters try to supply them. they were outgunned by i shortstop and can we let them take the lead in the night up in the north. the u.s. is working to restart that anbar awakening that was so pist pivotal in turning around the iraq war and in many cases, you know, we basically bribed them to do that. those tribes are very frustrated and disillusioned with maliki right now and have made common cause again with al qaeda style groups but we are trying to reverse that and replay that. finally to get some kind of political reconciliation in baghdad which is probably the hardest component of all as we have seen in the previous conversation about this move maliki is pulling and still a work in progress. we have syria in play here. when we talk about what is taking place with bashar al a assad. what isis means specifically in syria and how that is overlapping in the border regions there so explain that dynamic and what takes place as we, back here at home, watch washington, d.c. president bush said they were not into nation building but that is what we have come now. a country trying to oversee nation building everywhere. right. here in the cradle of civilization, we have seen a decent and it has created a tremendous challenge for the obama administration. assad in syria has, in many ways, cultivated the rise of isis as a deliberate strategy to radicalize the opposition and actually help themselves stay in rule. now isis has swept into iraq. it s a huge challenge. the obama administration has responded with a policy basically of containment. the idea is not to try to destroy isis but stop them from expand beyond the kurdish region and is there a long-term strategy? i think the destruction of isis will not come from the united states but come more from internal dynamics within the jihadist and sunni communities. we talked about this last hour, andrea mitchell. a lot what is going on right now with hillary clinton. obviously, fascinating articles where she is distancing herself from barack obama, especially on the issue of syria. right. but in this interview with jeffrey goldberg of the atlanta she praises the president but says great nations need organizing principle and don t do stupid stuff is not an organizing principle. i thought that cleaned up reference to a slogan the president used. it s pretty stunning. it s almost like hillary understands, like most foreign policy experts we have talked to over the past month understand, that isis is the beginning of a great unraveling of the middle east. they understands it and understood it then. this is a little politically thought. the president is doing exactly what americans want him to do according to every poll. he is not getting engaged. he did not get in engaged in syria a year ago where he said he would get if the red line were crossed by assad and when the chemical weapons were used. i think what is really hurting him people want him to stay out of these foreign entanglements but they want him to be a leader. what hillary clinton is trying to do here is show the distinction she had the vision, if you will, that syria was the heart of it and if they did not arm the so-called rebels fublet th if you believe that they were he said it was a fantasy. one other thought here, joe, and all of the gang, there is no way that, aside from containment and this will be a long-term project if this is supposedly containment of isis but if they want to get to isis they have to go through syria. that is where the foreign fighters are coming to join and they know that. they have to go to syria and, obviously, hillary clinton talking about this and talking about syria and talking about all of this foreign policy actually shows that she understands part of the great unraveling. a lot of fingers are going to be pointing and she you know, it certainly is clear that she is seriously contemplating a run for president of the united states or else she wouldn t distance herself in such a striking way. willie? sam, so much of the president s legacy, he hopes, i think will be on getting the united states out of the war in afghanistan and iraq. he called iraq war a dumb war if you go back to 2006 and 2007. something he has always been against. does he run the risk of getting america reengaged in iraq? we are on a limited basis right now, but could it grow from here? well, if you take him at his word, there is going to be no ground forces sent to iraq so there are limits i guess what the policy will bring us. you re absolutely right and andrea is absolutely right. the popular thing is what the president s policy was which is get out of iraq and leave afghanistan. there s, obviously, debate over whether or not he should have fought harder for a forces status agreement to leave the troops there and what good that would have gone. but if you talk to the white house and if you talk to the administration officials today, they say, you know, these decisions aren t done in vacuums. for instance, arming the syrian rebels. they point out that they armed the iraqi military. they trained the iraqi military and gave them sophisticated weaponry and what good did it do when they had to go up against isis? they ran and went away. i thought the most important thing that the president told tom friedman was his biggest regret is what happened in libya which is they got rid of gadhafi did you didn t envision what happens tomorrow. how do you reconcile the turmoil in iraq with the objectives of pushing back isis in the northern provinces. isn t it something as we move forwards another democratic fight for the presidency, willie, that hillary clinton, if there is somebody that rises up to run against her from the left, is once again, going to be painted as the hawk, at the neocon? the very thing that gotter be h beaten in 2008 she is not running away from. she is racing to. remember a race between her and rand paul. i said sometimes she is a neocne neocon neocon. it s hard to find a conflict or a debate in the white house where hillary clinton didn t support some sort of military convention or at least the strongest, toughest stand. as carol lee pointed out the last hour there were conflicts when she was secretary of state disagreeing with the president on many of these issues and now coming out into the public eye. we have nbc news correspondent keir simmons live in erbil. what is happening on the ground there right now? set the stage for us, keir. reporter: good morning. thanks. what is happening here is the fighting continues about 20 miles from this city of erbil and we are hearing the u.s. has now decided to deliver arms to the kurdish peshmerga forces who are fighting isis in this area and that will be hugely welcome and through the weekend they will be pleased with that. through the weekend, they do appear to have made some gains working on the back of those u.s. air strikes, they managed to regain control of a number of key towns on the roads out of erbil here. perhaps that is a tipping point. isis thrives on fear. that is one of its weapons, as well as its armor and its guns. practic perhaps the u.s. air strikes are building the confidence here and allowing them to push isis back. at the same time, i circumstances is sophisticated. they are strategic and they will be thinking about when their next move is. there is a lot of heads that will be considering what next move to make. isis issue will be effectively what president obama has indicated any time they move armory on the roads, the u.s. will move to attack those positions. so isis needs to rethink what you can expect they will reattack somewhere in iraq at some point. obviously, those air strikes helped pushing isis back there. what are the people on the street hope for from the united states going forward as isis moves in around them? can i just comment looking at keir s shot, i never expected it to like it does. this city, you could be in the middle of europe right now. it seems to be insulated from the hell going on all around it. set the stage there. reporter: yeah. i mean, you know, people are going about their normal business. they are frightened. they were terrified. you re right. this is a city of 1.5 million people and it is increasingly westernized. the u.s. consulate is here and the reason president obama i think felt had he to act. i think people are more confident as a result of that air strikes and the news that the u.s. will deliver weapons to the kurdish fighters and give them confidence. iraq is now a divided country. if you move over towards baghdad where nuri al maliki, the prime minister, is refusing to resign, there is a much more greater sense of fear. i was there just weeks ago. it is a different atmosphere there. even compared with here in erbil now, and the question about those divisions in iraq, it is within that divided country, the isis was able to thrive. that is still a glaring issue, even despite this u.s. intervention. keir, thank you so much. great deal appreciate it and be safe. bring in chris jansing who is live from martha s vineyard in another world. president obama is spending quite a distance from elbil but, obviously, the president, the white house sent out some fascinating information several hours ago. the united states is going to directly arm the kurds. what are you examine pg to hear from the president today? well, we don t know if we will hear from the president himself today. they have been setting up and sort of giving us a little indication that we might hear from some of his national security team. maybe his deputy national security adviser ben rhodes. i had a long conversation with him last night and to pick up on what keir was just saying. this is critical the whole nuri al maliki piece of this. they believe in order to create a situation where the u.s. doesn t have to be involved militarily and the president has already said this is an open-ended mission they have to get a new prime minister in there and they have to get somebody who at least that a chance of bringing the different factions together. right now nuri al maliki is not that person. i won t say they are surprised. they knew and he had continued to show signs he was going to fight to stay prime minister, but that is what they really are focusing very closely on right now. that, in addition,, obviously, to what we are seeing in the air both the air drops and the air strikes that military mission. joe? willie? andrea, if you re still here, it s interesting. we bring you into the mix with chris here. hearing the president and others talking about all we need in iraq is a unity government. that s not so easy. we have been trying to do that for a very long time. al maliki wasn t willing to do it. what are the prospects for that if that is the solution in iraq, what are the prospects? it s really tough. they have just announced that the deputy speaker of the parliament has been chosen to replace maliki. they were working on this last night. we were on the phone with officials as they were tracking it. now, it s very unclear whether maliki will let this new coalition survive, whether he will cling to power and whether this will, in effect, be with a coup. clearly we not only backed the wrong guy in iraq but then supported him and turned a blind eye to the fact he was excludeing sunnys. year one he was throwing them out and stopping their payments to the tribal leaders that petraeus and u.s. embassy had carefully cultivated during the sunni arising. that was the key to the american withdrawal. all of those sunni tribal leaders were completely excluded by maliki and many joined isis and provided the critical strategic help that isis needed in its initial march toward baghdad. max, let me ask you quickly. what does the next move need to be from the white house? well, i think we need a concerted strategy for breaking the grip that isis has on a significant portion of iraq and syria. and talking about containment i don t think is good enough. what are you saying with containment? we are content to have this exist as long as it doesn t take erbil? i think we need to work with the pressure ma peshmerga and bolstering our military footprint on the ground and having a real counter attack has a military as well as a political component that will break the hold of isis. i mean, the bottom line is the situation is pretty serious right now. but it is still recoverable. it is still possible to swing the momentum against them as we did, in fact, in 2006 and 2007 during the serge. we have to do it without all of the u.s. troops on the ground but i think it s still possible to do it but we need a strategy and we need the resources necessary to do that instead of just saying we are going to limit ourselves to containing them. i don t think that is good enough. as willie and i like to talk about if you re going take vienna, take vienna. exactly! thank you to all of you. still head a deadly crash involving a nascar driver has the questions being asked was it a an accident or a homicide? plus a preview of the hard-foued mhar hard-fought races up north. a race that is going down to the wire and may determine who runs the united states senate. you re watching morning joe. we will be right back. 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[ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. my mom works at ge. that s why i always choose the fastest intern.r slow. my mom works at ge. the fastest printer. the fastest lunch. turkey club. the fastest pencil sharpener. the fastest elevator. the fastest speed dial. the fastest office plant. so why wouldn t i choose the fastest wifi? i would. switch to comcast business internet and get the fastest wifi included. comcast business. built for business. welcome back. a probe is under way after a very dramatic crash involving nascar driver tony stewart left another driver dead. that is tragic. it really is. we have a lot to talk about on the back side of this. it s hard to tell what is going on in that video. it s hard to tell but it s interesting because it s not uncommon to see drivers get out of their vehicles and other examples of this but kristen dahlgren is standing by live. reporter: the in its investigation no evidence of any criminal intent but you can imagine just how traumatic this was for anyone who is watching the race here on saturday. you mentioned that video. it s so disturbing that we won t show you the whole thing. but as you guys were talking about this morning, there are a lot of people asking a lot of questions about safety. reporter: it was a packed house saturday night. the hum of sprint cars racing around the track. then video posted on youtube shows two cars colliding. one spins out, while the other, driven by nascar legend tony stewart keeps going. the driver of the sideline carp gets out and in the dark appears to point to stewart and walks on the strak toward tony steward. 20-year-old kevin ward junior is hit by stewart s back wheel. he was later pronounced dead at the hospital. stewart is one of the nascar s most popular drivers with a reputation for colorful language and frequent outbursts. he once threw his helmet at another driver after colliding. tony stewart can be a hot-head. he gets into arguments with other drivers at times but, you know, typically, it s not really aggressive driving. reporter: authorities are examining video of the crash but say it appears it may just be a tragic accident. an investigation is ongoing to try and identify all of the potential factors for this on track crash and subsequent death. reporter: stewart pulled out of sunday s nascar race saying, quote, there aren t words to describe the sadness. ward s family is asking for privacy. the young driver started racing go carts at age 4. but most recently took to racing high-powered sprint cars equipped with wings that increase traction on the short dirt tracks. fans of the sport say accidents and drama are a part of racing, but not like this. now, authorities say that stewart is cooperating with their investigation. there s no word yet on when he might race again. guys, as for nascar, it says it will respect the process of local authorities. kristen, joe scarborough here. any talk already about safety changes? reporter: yeah. a lot of people talking about it. there has been no official word. you know, we have talked about how common it is to see drivers get out of the car. so a lot of people saying there should be some type of rule that keeps drivers in the car after a crash or when they are upset about something. i ve heard this called a watershed moment. even if there aren t official changes, i think it s safe to say drivers will be thinking about this the next time they think about getting out of their cars. thank you, kristen. what a tragedy. brian, first of all, you guys look. we are bringing in jeff burton an nbc sports analyst covering nascar and also a long time driver on the sprint circuit. thank you for being with us. brian sullivan is here and derrick kitz who are associated with cnbc who grew up racing. jeff let s first go to. the first question people watching asking is what the hell are these drivers doing getting out of their cars which derrick explained to us last hour, one of the first things your pit crews tell you, if there is a wreck, stay in the car, the safest place to be. why do guys get out an run in the middle of the track and point fingers? it all starts with the emotion of the sport. you put so much effort and energy into preparing your car, running the race and all of the things it takes to be a successful driver and when somebody takes something away from you, the chance to win the race or you feel like wrecks your car, it s a very emotional thing. unlike a football player or basketball player where you get up off the floor or the field and approach a guy urchs t, you the only way to show your displeasure is approach the guy in a race car but he s in a moving vehicle. i ve done it before. approached a guy under caution and wasn t the smartest thing in the world. jeff, i m sure you looked at this video like the rev of us a lot. i m not a big big fan of nascar racing but you look at it and there is even the question of whether the two actually hit each other or not, whether jeff, whether they did anything wrong, whether anything was wrong here. well, to kevin ward, he felt like tony had done something wrong. again, that goes back to what i said earlier. it s an emotional sport. people care about the results. you put that much effort and energy into something, doesn t go your way, it s very emotional. so tony did crowd him but it s racing. those things happen in racing. you know? it s part of the sport. so, you know, you can five people could watch that wreck and five people come up with different ideas. the fact of the matter is you have those things in racing. you do today and you will tomorrow as far as track incidents. the post-wreck incident is the big issue here. what happened on the racetrack in my eyes is just a racing incident. what do you think happened after the accident? what did you see in that video? well, i see a young man that is very upset. he is going to express his displeasure. then the video kind of goes away to be honest with you you can t see what happens before kevin gets hit. i ve known tony for a long, long time. no way in the world do i believe that tony stewart hit kevin on purpose. i don t believe that. any piece of my body, don t believe that. i just believe you see a tragic accident and i see a lot of emotion taking over and a tragic accident and everybody has to deal with the end result. jeff burton, thank you so much. you were talking about how he should have just let him pass. that nothing really was done. tony did nothing terrible in going past it. it looked like a clean pass. in fact, you re looking at the video again. you are wondering whether he actually even hit him or not. i think in viewing the video, you know, it s a classic slide pass. tony got underneath him and slid up. it looked like a clean pass. if it were a clean pass and the young man hit the wall, no reason tony stewart would even know that it was kevin ward that had spun out or that had wrecked when he came back around. if, in fact, there was no contact made. tony would have no reason to understand yeah. he was passing him. he was passed. it looked like a clean pass. derek said something last hour about the strips. tearoffs. the visibility. it s dark. it s night. he is wearing a dark fire suit. think about also, too, with race car the thing called after dale earnhardt was killed it limits you to make sure you don t break your neck as easily. you brought up something off the air. what people don t realize the track is banked and it s made of dirt and clay mixed. you wonder in the video you see kevin ward look like he is trying to turn. you can see a situation and i m not trying to steal your point here but he is running down to confront stewart and can t go back up. because it s slippery and steep racing shoes are like slippers. like wrestling shoes. very lightweight and thin and made of fire retardant material and only designed for the gas and the brake and no traction on them. if you re running down a bank clay oval like that, to try to stop, oops, i went too far and back pedal could be virtually impossible. looks like the last second he tries to turn. you guys are saying you look at that video. you just you re going fast. and you just don t have that much control. that s right. a real tragedy. thank you, guys, for being with us. coming up next, control of the senate is going to hang in the balance, obviously, this year. what happens in the 49th state is going to determine who runs the senate next year. morning joe heads to alaska to cover tough re-election fights going on up there. especially for democrat mark begich. we will be right back with more morning joe. 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. i make a lot of purchases foand i get ass. lot 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. we ll start looking for an suv. fire by firenze sir? 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actually, that was a beautiful shot. here is the capitol. the shot before it was northeast harvard maine. mika summers there. goes between there and the south of france. isn t that lovely? it is beautiful. it is lovely. you know what? it sort of reminds me of alaska. i m wondering, thomas, because they get all of these cruises, right? i think this is a great idea. we are going up to alaska. we are talking about alaska here. i think we need a morning joe cruise. i love it. you know? i think it would be great. you could have steve rattner giving power presentations and have him do some light comedy because i think he is funny when he is off camera. dr. brzezinski talking about geo situations in the hot buffet line. i m there. i m there. shrimp as big as your head! it would be great. i would lead the morning crunches. let s talk about what is going on in alaska. it is one of the key senate races where we have the incumbent mark begich with his hands full. he votes with republican senator lisa murkowski and he mentions it in his newest ad. lisa murkowski and mark begich vote 80% of the time. i don t think we should break up that team. i ve been a elizabeth lifelong republican. i voted for ted stevens and lisa murkowski and now i m voting for mark begich. senator murkowski is giving him the heisman and wants him to stop and asking him to cease and desist running that ad. his office said he used her likeness without her permission and featuring an alaska voter who is not actually a republican. kasie hunt caught up with him in anchorage. alaskans like what they are working together on. that is factual and talks about 80% of the time we vote together and that is laying out what we have been saying and what alaskans are telling me they love and that is the delegation working together. she said that the photo of the two of you together in that ad constitutes a violation of senate rules and federal law. is that the case? no, it s incorrect. under the rules you can utilize that photo purchased by the you don t plan to take the ad down? no. i think it s very factual. 80% of the time we vote together and proven today with the f-35 announcement the delegation working together an incredible announcement we made up a couple of days with opening up an incredible bridge. according to roll call, mark begich is the fourth most vulnerable incumbent senator in the mid terms. more on the interview coming up tomorrow. i heard they had an excellent time up there and a lot of reporter stelg. kasie does an amazing job. mark only got elect because of some very questionable investigations against who he beat so we will see what happens. i m focused more on the cruise. murkowski was tough on her. we all recall the tough time she went through. she had to run as an independent. it s fascinating to think she is coming back to say don t conclude me. stay away. yes, stay away. you re breaking federal i wish i could say you re breaking federal law by using my photo. i bought that fair and clear. exactly. still ahead, the real death valley. the major reason undocumented immigrants crossing the border don t make it out lialive. that story is next. 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graechlt. yeah. mass graves in texas where these people die and get lumped together and thrown into the ground? unbelievable. it is unbelievable. in the united states we do have real mass graves in this part of texas. there was a period of time where the body were being processed by private mortuaries and they didn t know what to do with them. if the individual was unidentified or they were skeletal remains, in some cases put them in a trash bag. they get across the border and die of dehdehydration? they are already the border and this is not at the border. this is 70 miles north. there is a checkpoint. they get out of the car. they have to walk around the checkpoint to avoid this last sort of area of defense from the border patrol. they walk for about two or three days and the conditions are so harsh that many of them do lose their lives. what do they die of? dehydration, heat. they get lost. they may be injured and they are in the middle of nowhere and it s hard to find them and hard to find help. why did you see this documentary and what john is reporting is showing, improving the hard conditions, personal stories, why did you think that fit with your brand? sure. about two years ago, they created a digital documentary unit called weather film where we explore investigative journalism topics that intersect. fundamentally what is killing these people out there is tough weather. there has been near constant drought in brooks county in south texas where this is happening the last five years. the last year, we have had 31 days over a 171 days over 90. so the heat, the temperature is a major factor and people dying in south texas. meanwhile, with the heat in washington, d.c. over the conversation about immigration reform, did you realize how political this was going to be for you and worth.com getting involved in picking a digital documentary like john s? yes. yes. yeah. it was part of the it s a politically charged topic. classically we don t do political topics on the weather channel. although people are passionate on both sides of it, there is not that much politics in the piece. we don t interview politicians and nothing democratic or republican about it. it s simply we think a tragedy at the border that very few people know about. you re talking about hundreds of migrants that die each year. if we told you a hundred bodies showed up in a texas ranch land of american citizens you would hear an outrage. and buried in a mass grave. any religious organizations out there to help these people? there are. how do you get access to the private land to put out water? these individuals are in a thousand square mile area the size of manhattan. so to find them, to find out where to put water or where to provide humanitarian assistance to find a road to access it is pretty difficult. as neil is saying, you re going to find a couple of hundred bodies on a regular basis. hundreds of bodies and mass graves, it s a real tragedy. absolutely fascinating documentary. i m glad you guys are bringing it to life. thank you. appreciate it. the real death valley debuts this morning on weather.com. john and neil, thank you so much. still ahead, is the past prologue? eight years ago republicans under george w. bush suffered what then the president called a thumpin . that was during the midterm elections. were president obama s approval ratings lower than his predecessor? the morning joe polling place is coming up next. i m spending too much timer our calhiringer. and not enough time in my kitchen. need to hire fast? 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the moms? or the dads? with guaranteed low prices on flash drives, it s definitely the dads. staples. make more happen for less. so we re talking about nicki minaj. so what? what? i don t know. you ve got to see the movie the other woman. is that what you and patrick did this weekend? that was our lively weekend. pretty exciting. pretty exciting. cameron diaz, hot ticket. was it a good show? a few good laughs. you got to see nicki minaj. you hated it, didn t you? i can t get that two hours back. you said kate upton was in there? she was great. i like her. was she pretty good? like katherine hepburn? they share the same first name. president obama has spent plenty of time on the road this year, raising a lot of money for his party, but he s largely been absent from the campaign trail. derrick kitts draws on recent history to see why democrats are avoiding their own commander in chief. if the recent poll is any indication, democrats in congress should be wary of relying on president obama to provide any transaction support. the president sits at 40% approval. if president bush s poll numbers at the same point of any indication, these midterms could be trouble for the democrats. bush s approval was two points higher and americans had a better attitude about the direction of the country with only 54% believing the country was on the wrong track. most surprisingly, considering the wars in iraq and afghanistan, voters approved of bush s handling of foreign policy more than than they do of president obama. the midterms saw president bush and the republicans lose 31 house seats and 6 senate seats. if that is any indication, president obama and the democrats have a right to be worried. sam stein, let s go to you. we signed of go around believing that george bush was at 21%, 22%, harry truman type numbers. even in september before the election george w. bush was a point or two ahead in this poll, a pointing or two behind in other polls, margin of error basically in the same place. i guess the only question is, is the republican standing so bad this year they won t get the lift that democrats got in 06? can i digress for one second? i want to talk about the other woman. i ve heard that is literally the worst movie ever created. i m surprised that thomas roberts was as kind as he was to it. also derrick, derrick is all over this show today. you know, this is the derrick hour. it is the derrick kitts variety hour, i know. he raced forever and now he was derrick derrick has strong points. and in politics, derrick was like i think he was majority whip in the legislature. i just want to say that the other woman was on sale on demand for $4.99. you would have to pay me to watch it. i would not watch that movie, it looked terrible. and you ll never get the two hours back, thomas. i won t. i thought you lived an exciting lifestyle. we don t. you don t? boring married people, joe. now see, i don t understand why you fight for the right to be married. that s where you end up. buying the other woman movie. you fight for the right to be married so you can be bored on weekends watching the worst movie ever made? what have i done? and fight to like fight in wars? god, i m so disappointed. sam, thank you for the analysis, sam. did you have anything to say about this? listen, obama is in a terrible position. it s just as bad as george w. bush. democrats have terrible seats. but republicans aren t sitting up pretty either pollwise. 19%. you just made me understand why inequality rules. thank you, joe. thank you. well listen, i d be glad to switch and straight people to not have the right to be married. okay. deal? you ve already got it. they do. i want everybody to have it, though. i mean come on, seriously. it s our new motto. straight people don t get married. i ve been saying for that years. we have a packed hour ahead with new developments in america s mission against islamists. we ll talk to ambassador james jeffrey. also nbc s jim miklaszewski and dan senor who advised american officials during the american occupation. plus we ll check in the president s vacation at mar that s vineyard as he squeezes in some golf while dealing with a long, long list of cry kries seize. s time to bring it out in the open. it s time to drop your pants for underwareness, a cause to support the over 65 million people who may need depend underwear. show them they re not alone and show off a pair of depend. because wearing a different kind of underwear, is no big deal. join us. support the cause and get a free sample of depend at underwareness.com 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. call 1-800-dentist today. hey pal? 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(singing) snack time and lunch. gogurt because lunch needs some fun. tony stewart just hit that guy! a young driver dead and another engulfed in tragedy and controversy. there are no facts in hand that would substantiate a criminal charge or indicate criminal intent. what do you want? on the streets of ferguson, missouri, outrage and anger, after the shooting death of an 18-year-old unarmed black man by a police officer. two very different stories coming from other side. hands in the air, he s shot and dies. fire and the fury of an unfinished war raged in gaza today. israel, determined to strike hamas right up to the start of an agreed truce. fierce fighting on the ground throughout northern iraq. american jets and drones took out enemy targets. this is going to be a long-term project. barack obama is learning again this weekend just how lonely it is at the top. there is no policy, there for there s no strategy, therefore, things are going very, very badly. we can t wait for the iraqi maliki government to fight isis. my constituents don t want to see another couple hundred people killed by isis. we should do whatever we have to do. as you just saw in that clip, i said a couple of hours earlier, that this president, as if he needed any reminding, six years in, got a look this weekend of just how lonely it is at the top, especially when you re running the military of the last remaining benevolent superpower in the world. with europe still sleeping through a quarter century history vacation, this president just became, get this, the fourth united states president in a row to launch a war in iraq. america has now ordered hostile military operations in that country in 17 of the last 24 years. and this weekend, the harping came from both sides. the president s critics seem oblivious to the growing threat that is posed not even to the middle east but all of the world by isis. republicans who attacked president obama for nothing are now attacking him for doing something. but this time the commander in chief has made his military move because he had no other options. as maureen dowd wrote this weekend in the new york times, a barbaric force is pillaging so swiftly and brutally across the middle east that it seems like some mutated virus from a sci-fi film. isis is spreading like poison gas across the middle east, becoming stronger and more dangerous by the day and making president obama s genocide case for him. isis is practicing religious cleansing against christians, against shiites, against unobservant sunnis and against other groups that are now battling genocide for the 73rd time. for isis, religious genocide is not a tool of terror, it is the reason this terrorist war machine exists. as you look at this map, isis now controls a land mass larger than the entire state of jordan. a lot to talk about this morning. with us now, former foreign policy adviser to the bush administration, dan senor, white house correspondent for the wall street journal carol lee, james jeffrey and from the pentagon, nbc news chief pentagon correspondent jim miklaszewski. jim, let me begin with you. some surprising news breaking overnight that we re now arming the kurds directly. what else are you hearing inside the pentagon? joe, the u.s. had been providing the kurds with ammunition through the baghdad government as per u.s. law and agreements with the iraqi military, but now u.s. officials tell us that the cia is directly providing in some weapons, we don t know, we presume they re small arms, even perhaps as high as shoulder-fired weapons of some kind, directly to the kurds bypassing baghdad. but even at that, the kurds are woefully outgunned by those isis forces, you know, who are just a few clicks away from erbil with artillery, armored personnel, tanks, shoulder-fired, gun mounted rockets. there s no way that the kurds can stand up to the isis rebels over any kind of length of time and they have asked for some of these weaponry. but that doesn t appear to be in the works at all. we have to remember what the president laid out in terms of his current strategy. limited air strikes, which will continue around the erbil area. they have had a little bit of effect. you know, the rebels haven t fled, but they have taken the black flags off their vehicle because they realized it made them easy targets, but that s pretty much the reaction from those rebels so far, joe. it s limited, bobby ghosh, but the president started last week by saying i m going to take care of these people trapped on the mountainside. a lot of people said that s not enough, that s too limited. and i think a lot of us on set were saying last week, well, that s just the first step. the next step we saw was the president bombing isis. people said that s too limited. then we find out overnight the president is now arming the kurds. the president has stepped in and as a guest said last hour, quoting napoleon, if you re going to take vienna, take vienna. this president, i think, is done with halfway measures when dealing with isis, don t you think? i certainly hope so. by saying this is going to take months, he s preparing all of us for this. i mean that goes against all the polls that show this country doesn t want that, but perhaps doing this slowly and gradually is the only political way that he can sell this to an american audience and to congress. and ambassador jeffrey, maliki just remains a colossal thorn in america s side. here we go into iraq trying to do what we can to stop this virus from spreading across iraq and the entire middle east and maliki decides to pick this time to say i m staying no matter what. seems to be suggesting even the possibility of a military coup. the news overnight is not very promising, joe. but on the other hand what s happening is the president has to pick a party and a leader of that party to form the new government after the elections. and that would normally go to maliki s state of law. but what you re seeing is a revolt among his fellow shia members of parliament who know he can t get a majority of votes, particularly from the sunni arabs and the kurds in the parliament but also from many of the shia. this is still a constitutional process. another shia politician and the deputy speaker of parliament is one of the candidates that people are looking at right now, so in the hours ahead, we ll see what president masun does because he has a deadline of today to take a decision on who will form the government. i hope it is not maliki. let s bring in right now nbc news senior white house correspondent chris jansing. she s live from martha s vineyard. chris, a lot moving very quickly. what have you heard up in martha s vineyard. well, they are focusing very quickly on what s happening in the decision about what to do about maliki. the president has more people here than he originally planned on this national security team. he has susan rice, who is staying with him, in addition to other national security officials. they re briefing him at least three times a day but obviously this is an ongoing situation. in long conversations that i ve had over the last 12 hours or so with administration officials, they say there is nothing that can be done until al maliki is done. until they make a decision that they can bring someone in who they think can bring some level of stability. we all know how fraught that is and difficult it s going to be, but that s the immediate crisis in the next 24 to 48 hours is seeing what happens there and who becomes the new prime minister or if maliki somehow still seems somehow to cling to journal. let s bring in carol lee. carol, you followed this president during 2012. you are obviously at the white house every day with this president and listen to what he and his advisers say all the time. a lot of inconsistencies. this is a president who in 2012 said he wasn t going to be going into iraq, he s getting troops out. he said that s one of the biggest applause lines. his critics are loving his line to repeat that isis is from the jv team. this had to be a really difficult decision for a president that doesn t like to be cornered, doesn t like to be pushed into anything, but it appears that it wasn t his political rivals pushing but history itself. did the president just get to a point where he understood he had no other choice but get engaged? yeah, basically he did. you know, the turning point was there was this moment on last wednesday when the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff joined the president in his limo ride from the state department to the white house. they had a five-minute conversation where he just said, look, this is really bad. and that continued into the night on wednesday and by thursday morning his aides were using the word genocide to characterize what could possibly be happening in iraq and the president decided he was going in. but you re right, i mean you followed him too. this is a president who is so reluctant to use force. he s a commander in chief of the largest, most powerful army in the world and he s defined by his reluctance to use it. and that s you know, you see that in the way that he initially when he talked to the american public on thursday night saying this is going to be limited, we re not going in with boots on the ground, very cautious, very pinprick and he didn t even say that he was absolutely going to order these strikes, just that he had authorized them. then you see him on saturday and he s saying dig in, we re getting in this for the long haul, this could be long term, we need to find passage for these people to get off of the mountain. and so he went in reluctantly, he presented it in a very limited way and now it s looking like he ll be in there much longer. and we heard this weekend we may be in no months. let s bring in san sedan senor. we ve said time and time again, we don t want to be involved in iraq. we don t want to be involved in afghanistan. they have been a lot closer to my position on these matters than yours. we ve had these debates long and hard. but at this point i can even say we need to be involved. will you do what a lot of republicans didn t do this weekend and salute the president for being involved? i m so sick and tired of the same people bitching and moaning about not doing things and when the president does things, instead of supporting things, when we re at a critical moment, they have got to go on the sunday shows and bitch and moan about a president doing what we all know, what realists, what neocon alike understanding, we have to confront isis. will you salute the president for taking these steps? i have. i ve said several times over the last couple of days that we should applaud the president for taking the action that he s taken. we have to ask the question, joe, while these steps are important, obviously heading off trying to head off the genocide of the yezidis, heading off the march up to erbil and the kurdish areas and obviously protecting american personnel, all of those objectives are critical and the president deserves credit for working to end them. when you take a step back strategically we should also ask the president what is the game plan for that huge swath of territory south of the kurdish area. what about all those people living in a part of iraq that can t rurkurds or yezidi. if isis weren t on the march up to northern iraq, would we be content in letting isis governing this ungovernable space on that side of iraq s border. a strategic case for the long haul we haven t heard for the president. he began to lay the groundwork in talking about this is going to be a long haul as we discussed earlier and the steps he s taken so far are important. but i think what the american public needs to hear, we are a war-weary public. look at every military action, just about every military action that the u.s. government has taken since world war ii, the american public has always been against it. this is no exception. the president will have to make the bigger strategic case about what the threat of isis means not just in iraq but what it means throughout the region. chris jansing, let me go to you. obviously you had joe biden, a very long time ago talking about breaking iraq into three parts. it certainly seems over the past three or four days the president has decided not to really go all in with all of iraq but at least go all in with the kurds. yeah, and to the point that you were just talking about, as i ve been talking about senior administration officials they think he s the best person to make that case. when you talk about he needs to explain this, he needs to tell his long-term strategy to the american people, there are definitely people within this administration who are pushing him to do that. they liked what he had to say when he was walking across the lawn and heading here on saturday morning. they think that the american people understand what he s differentiating. they know that they re war weary but they also believe that they understand there is genocide that is threatened there. they also know that our strategic interests are at stake and that the president is the best person to make that case. so i don t think we would necessarily be surprised if we heard from the president over the course of the next couple of weeks more than we have in previous vacations. he s getting a lot of push to do just that. you know, bobby, i want you go to the ambassador with a question but first you look at that map. we can t control all of iraq. it has just been an absolute disaster. but you look at the northern section where the sunni kurds are. you look where the kurds are and that does seem manageable. and i just wonder whether we whether we solidify things up north or help the kurds solidify things up north and move towards joe biden s vision of iraq. i don t know about splitting iraq up. i think that westerners shouldn t be drawing lines in maps in the middle east. that s why we re in this mess. that s why we re in this mess. but you make a good point. we ve had a long history of protecting get kurds. instead of drawing lines, what i m actually talking about more is controlling the spread of isis. you cut them off at the knees if you make the northern part of iraq a place that at least is a bit more stable. we have a long history of protecting that part of iraq. we did it after the kuwait war. we allowed it to become much more autonomous. it worked for the kurds. it didn t work for the rest of the region. but the crucial thing and this is what i wanted to ask the ambassador. what is the role of the iraqi army? what are they loyal to? are they loyal to maliki? he s brought out the tanks in the streets of baghdad to try and protect, to sort of prolong his prime ministership or this is the army we trained and spent a lot of money on. do you think, ambassador, that this is an army that can be relied upon to take the fight to isis, or are we just expecting the peshmerga, the kurdish fighters, to do that. that s a good question. i think it s a qualified yes. the president does have a strategy that he kind of outlined on thursday and then again on saturday. one is counterterror. he s going to make sure isis cannot strike at america or some other interests in the region. secondly and what we re seeing all the action in is he s using various justifications, our embassy in baghdad, our consulate in erbil and the personnel there. he mentioned infrastructure, critical infrastructure on saturday, he mentioned genocide and groups of people who will be slaughtered or ethnically cleansed by isis. what he s saying is if they come out of the sunni areas that they have occupied and start attacking other areas, they ll have to do this by classic military mobile infantry columns, he s going to strike them with local forces. the iraqi army can be supported and we are supporting them with logistics. eventually if they re in trouble, we might support them with strikes. but to actually take the offensive in these sunni arab areas, he stressed again and again, you need an inclusive government that can reach out to these people. we do not have that now, we will not have that with maliki. that s why all of the attention is on politics. if there s a new prime minister, the army will go with that prime minister. half of the units are judged by our experts to be relatively combat effective. so there is a base to move forward on the offensive with our air and logistics and their ground forces if we have the political calculus right now. let s go back to the pentagon. hey, mik, the cartoon image of generals and admirals in the pentagon are that they re running around power hungry and mad to go back to war. the truth is, of course, the exact opposite. they re the last ones that want to go to war. what is the appetite inside the pentagon right now for going into iraq for, what, the 14th time in like 24 years? right now everybody s attention and all the planning going on just a few floors right below me here, all the planning is for these two limited missions. one, to secure that kurdish area and stop the advance by the isis rebels. the other is to protect those yezidi worshippers that are trapped aboard the mountain. we re told there is very active planning under way as we speak to provide that safe corridor that the president talked about on saturday to help them escape their predicament. right now it looks like it s going to require some help from the british and the french, who the president talked to over the weekend. but in the long term, and, you know, there s always somebody in the building looking at the long term and it does not look very good to u.s. military officials i m talking to. even if we resolve those two situations and even if isis were somehow contained in iraq, people here are now looking at this as being a 10 to 20-year challenge, joe. oh, dear god. thank you, mik. thanks to everybody. coming up on morning joe, failure versus fantasy. those are the sharply different terms being used by hillary clinton and president obama to describe their views of what went on in syria. hillary says we should have armed the rebels and takes a direct swipe at the president. the president says she s living in a fantasy world. we re going to be talking to new york times columnist thomas friedman who sat down with the president for a revealing interview next. first, here s bill karins with a check on the forecast. as we look towards the west the fire season continues in full swing. we now have 37 large active fires on the ground. last week we had about 27 or so, so we re starting to hit the peak of the fire season out west. this one fire outside of san francisco, not in san francisco of course but about an hour s drive outside of san francisco, only about 35% contained. there is a lot of active flames. the temperatures lately are not helping, and especially in the pacific northwest. today will be a very dangerous day, especially up there in oregon. look how hot it s going to be. the one section of the country, really the only section of the country that s had a hot summer has been the northwest. 99 in portland today, boise at 98. we haven t even come close to those temperatures in even washington, d.c., this summer. as far as the rest of the country, another shot of cool air coming down from the north. it s not cold but it s definitely not summer-like either. especially at night you feel it. i know we ve all saved a lot of money in the east on our ac bills but maybe a couple more beach days would be nice. today in chicago the rain is ending, temperatures will be cooler for you and a lot of rain heading for toledo, also detroit and portions of the ohio valley will get soaked. if you have any travel plans late in the afternoon, those thunderstorms could cause delays in the southeast and also in sections of kentucky. here s a look at chicago. there is beautiful weather on your way, but that s fall, isn t it? 78 and sunny and at night in the 50s. what a crazy summer it s been there in the great lakes after your horrible, horrible winter. we leave you with a shot of washington, d.c. low humidity continues but of course it doesn t have any effect on that miserable traffic. you re watching morning joe. we ll be right back. 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because i feel and i look at washington from abroad. it feels like we kick around this country like it s a football, and it s not a football. it s actually a faberge egg. we can drop it, we can break it. enough dysfunction on all these core issues that you talked about and that s what i worry about. i feel like we re saying to the world do as we say, not as we do, not like we used to. i would distinguish between american society and american politics. the truth is that countries should continue to do as we do. we still set a pretty darn good example. that was part of thomas friedman s interview with president barack obama, the new york times columnist joins us now from pebble beach. you re at pebble beach. i just have to ask a question, thomas. you are getting out golfing at pebble beach, are you not? you better believe it, joe. it s vacation time. the president can deny it, you will not. it is even no nongolfers, you are in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. so let s talk about your interview with president obama. absolutely fascinating, especially if you team it up with jeffrey goldberg s interview with hillary clinton. there s a lot of back and forth going on here where hillary is attacking the president for not doing enough in syria. tell us what the president told you about hillary s view that if we had gotten into syria earlier, then things would have been better. what did he call that? well, he made a couple of points. he wasn t specifically responding to her. but that, number one, that it was a fantasy to believe that the kind of barely organized opposition there, which was largely professional, secular, middle class people, at the end of the day armed or not would have stood up against an assad regime backed by russia, backed by iran and supported by hezbollah. backed by iran that s had 20 years of building networks of support for the regime there and iran that does not have to worry about congressional oversight. he just believes that in the end they would have eaten them alive and we just would have ended up getting a lot more people killed or being drawn in ourselves. so bobby ghosh is with us and has a quick question for you just to follow up on that. bobby. tom, if it was a fantasy then, why is his administration now talking about training and arming the free syrian army? what has changed the calculus? surely the situation has become even more complicated than it was three years ago? well, it mas of their program. so ask yourself this. how is it that 16,000 muslims have marched to syria from all over the muslim world to fight for jihadism and how many have marched there to fight for pluralism. i think i could count them on one. and right. tom, obviously the situation now, as bobby just said, a lot more difficult than it was a ye year, year and a half ago. would it have been a less difficult task, a less difficult lift if the president had gone in earlier? i m not making hillary s point, i m not arguing, i m asking you as a man who s been studying this region longer than most of us, a lot longer than most of us, was there an opportunity missed by the united states of america before 150,000 people were killed? let me answer that sort of in a broadway, joe. actually if you look at it, we tried three different options. we tried going in and taking over an entire country, iraq. doing far more than arming the opposition, we took it over with armed military and spent six, seven years, billions of dollars trying to train them. that didn t work. it didn t work because the politics wasn t there. then in libya we said we re not going to do that, we re just going to decapitate the regime and not go in at all. that didn t work because the underlying politics wasn t there. now people are saying that had we just armed the opposition that would have worked. and i just don t believe it. so, tom what, do we do? what is the thomas friedman doctrine moving forward? we were just talking about the hillary doctrine. we decide the hillary doctrine is just to get elected president. right now everything seems to be ad hoc. so what is the tom friedman doctrine? so here s the two conclusions i ve drawn from the last decade in iraq. one is, joe, sometimes the necessary is impossible, or it s impossible at any cost that we are willing to pay. that s number one because basically you are having you re seeing states fall apart and i think the only way to really rebuild them is an international force to come in and stay for 20, 30 years, okay. so sometimes the necessary is impossible. and the other point you have to take note of is, number two, is that the two most successful arab spring nations are the two countries we ve had nothing to do with. tunisia and kurdistan. we helped the kurds early on but the people there came together in a no vanquish formula and they built the politics that could support a state which we can then come in and support. tom, let s talk about another ugly reality we ve all had to face over the past decade. i was extraordinarily concerned about like i m sure you were what had been going on for egypt for 20, 30 years. they are our closest ally but there are a lot of things that made us extraordinarily uncomfortable during mubarak s reign. we have the arab spring and now what we ve realized is that sometimes if you want order, sometimes the alternatives aren t really that good. a pluralistic democracy sometimes leads to absolute chaos in some of these middle eastern countries. that s something that i think we re all having to grapple with. let me ask you about the international force. can i say something about that? sure. because it s a very important point you re making and i m as guilty of this as anyone. we thought starting with egypt that the alternative to atalk kraes was democracy. and it s turned out the alternative has been disorder. chaos, absolute chaos. unless you have some internal force or external force that can manage that disorder and basically build a bridge to a different order, which is very expensive, takes a long period of time and also takes people who know what they re doing, what the players are. if there s anything we should have learned from iraq, people are saying we should have done this in syria, it is that we don t know what the hell we re doing. what we have had to say right now in august of 2014 is that the question is the world better off, is iraq better off with saddam hussein dead and in a grave instead of running iraq. that question is even up in the air right now, which is something i thought i would never say. and i know it s something you thought you would never say. i want to get to this international force really quickly, though. europe has been on a vacation from history since 1991. they do absolutely nothing. and as bobby ghosh pointed out during the break, it is the europeans who face the gravest threat from isis. not us. what is it, by a factor of ten, there are ten times as many europeans that are have joined up isis to create havoc in their homeland, and yet the europeans seem willing to do doing. to do nothing on ukraine, to do nothing on putin, to do nothing on iraq, to do nothing on syria, to do nothing. it might just be all of these things that you re bringing up, might be just a little more manageable if the europeans would actually be interested in more than just the bottom line. and if the united states would do more of what the president is saying an basically tell them to go straight to hell, build your own militaries. you know what, it s not 1945 anymore. well, you know, joe, the burden-sharing here or the lack of it at the scale we need is obviously a huge problem. but i want to go back to something we talked about earlier, and this is really what i founding is underlying the president s thinking and it certainly has affected mine. the middle east only puts a smile on your face when it starts with them. the anbar uprising started with them. the camp david peace process started with them. and without a group of iraqis who are ready to come together and build a political platform of sharing power, any force we put on that yes, we can kill bad things and suppress different things for a while but without that underlying political consensus, nothing good will happen. that s why none of these others, searia, libya, by saying if we d only armed the rebels, this isn t about who you give guns and training to, it s about the will of the people to live together. as jim miklaszewski and dan senor and bobby gosh just agreed, this may be a 20-year project in iraq. and who has an appetite for that, especially if, as you re saying, tom, the iraqis don t even have an appetite for pluralistic society. tom, stay with us, we ll be playing more of your fascinating interview with president obama and why he says democrats are reason based and republicans are mired in, quote, wacky ideological nonsense. the president s words, not mine. keep it right here on morning joe. savings accounts? that s right. it s just that i m worried about you know hidden things. ok, why s that? no hidden fees, from the bank where no branches equals great rates. moderate to severe is tough, but i ve managed. i got to be pretty good at managing my symptoms, except that managing my symptoms was all i was doing. when i finally told my doctor, he said my crohn s was not under control. he said humira is for adults like me who have tried other medications but still experience the symptoms of moderate to severe crohn s disease. and that in clinical studies, the majority of patients on humira saw significant symptom relief. and many achieved remission. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. if you re still just managing your symptoms, ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. and i have to say here, you know, i ve been speaking in generalities and trying not to be too political. but that extremism position is much more prominent in the republican party than the democrats. democrats have problems, but overall if you look at the democrat consensus, it s a pretty common sense mainstream consensus. it s not a lot of wacky ideological nonsense. and by the way, it generally is fact based and reason based. we re not denying science, we re not denying climate change. we re not pretending that somehow having a whole bunch of uninsured people is the american way. we re doing things that are pretty sensible. let s bring thomas friedman back in. a fascinating enter view. i don t even know where to begin with that answer. as you were listening to that answer, is this a president gearing up for a very important midterm election in 2014 or did you sense that s the president we re going to have through the end of 2016? this interview was almost entirely focused on foreign policy. that was the only real comment about domestic politics. so i think it speaks for itself, i think. it s out of my lane, but i ll let you handle that lane. i m hoping that he was just being partisan, but unfortunately i think he really believes that. let s talk about israel. the president also said israelis have a right to defend themselves, but also to live side by side with the palestinians. let me play a clip of what the president had to say. because israel is so capable militarily, i don t worry about israel s survival. others can cause israel pain. it s a really bad neighborhood. israel is going to survive, that s not the issue. i think the question really is how does israel survive. and, you know, how can you create a state of israel that maintains its democratic and civic traditions. how can you preserve a jewish state that ialso reflective of the best values of those who founded israel. dan senor has a question. hey, tom, the president said in you re interview that prime minister netanyahu is so strong. is he so strong politically that that creates an obstacle with the palestinians. one of the reasons that he is so strong right now is he not only has the support of the right in israel but actually he has the support of the center left after this gaza operation. you have the justice minister who s very liberal, so isn t there something to the fact that he s built some kind of consensus and it s not just a strong right wing political prime minister? dan, it s a good question. as you know, though, this consensus is very much a product of this specific context of israel facing rocket attacks from hamas. and there you have a wall-to-wall nearly wall-to-wall support for the president. i think you ll see that consensus break down almost immediately once there s a cease-fire and diplomatic negotiations begin over how do we actually resolve the gaza situation so we don t return to more missiles. the consensus will fraction in two ways. his right wing critics, because he s very much in the center, if not the left, will say he failed. he didn t finish hamas off in gaza. and his center and left wing critics will say you really don t have a solution for gaza unless you can bring the west bank palestinian authority back into gaza to control the borders, to manage some level of demilitarization and that won t happen unless you resume the peace process. so bb has a lot of support today in terms of responding to hamas rockets but that is going to quickly fracture as soon as we enter the negotiations. thomas, we have to go but i have to ask real quickly, you ve been following this so long. do you think the tragedies that we saw unfold in july in gaza give us an opening to peace with a weakened hamas, strengthened netanyahu. is there an opening to peace? you know, joe, i really think there is because people have got a glimpse of the next war and the next war and the next war. we ve had a lot of leaders that have been dog paddling in the rubicon. they say, joe, i m coming, i see you there, but they re actually dog pamgddling and that s got t stop. thomas friedman, an absolutely fascinating interview of the president. thanks for bringing that to us. hope your golfing goes well. do you have a favorite course out there? all of them. all of them. all right, all right. take a picture for us on those last few holes of cypress and send them back to us. coming up, what s running today s markets. business before the bell coming up. morning joe back in a minute. 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. 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 some really shocking news here and i mean that. shocking news coming out of texas, coming out of exxon. we ve got brian sullivan joining us for business before the bell. brian, you just told me, it s just breaking, that exxon has brokered a deal with putin s russia. a multi-billion dollar deal. that vladimir putin is hailing exxon, this texas-based company, as a model of cooperation. i thought we had sanctions. here i m criticizing the europeans and we ve got a texas corporation that s in bed with vladimir putin taking care of his problems. let s be clear, the deal had been set way before this. they began drilling in the arctic as they re partnered with the state-owned oil company. i m sorry, weren t there sanctions weren t there sanctions against yes, there are western sanctions but this is because it s a partnership with the russian state-owned oil company, i guess they re allowed to get around the sanctions. the drills went in the ground on the arctic on saturday. so exxon is taking care of putin s problem for him? one wonders if this could help the situation. they always say you don t go to war with countries that have a mcdonald s. perhaps that s a load of crap. that s what they said in june of 1914. and world war i began. yeah. go exxon. all right. coming up next, what did we learn. yes! get in there! go, go, go, go, yes! let s go, drew. the not-so-good more would be them always watching you. go for it, paul! get open! come on, paul! let s go! hustle! what is that, chamomile tea?! uh, lattes. you wanna take a nap?! get the good more with nfl mobile, free with the more everything plan. exclusively from verizon. now get 50% off all new smartphones. 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. and cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment is right. cialis is also the only daily ed tablet approved to treat symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. side effects may include headache, upset stomach, delayed backache or muscle ache. to avoid long term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours. if you have any sudden decrease or loss in hearing or vision, or any allergic reactions like rash, hives, swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. welcome back to morning joe. dan senor is here. his by, campbell brown, is launching a choice campaign for education. this is bizarre, in the new york post your wife was attacked on twitter by angry porn stars. what s going on there? it looks like to the groups affiliated with the teachers unions are hiring porn stars to retweet their attacks on campbell. they truly lost their minds. including a young lady called@cynthia nipps. bobby, what did i learn? if you re going to take vienna, take vienna. what did you learn? tot number one in the premier league this year. i m still stunned by the new york post. what i have not learned whether my two nominees have accepted, gavin newsom, rachel way and manny machado. from the orioles. you guys had a rough night yesterday. you feeling good about tonight? feeling good about the orioles taking on the yankees down at camden yards. i don t understand what that accent is. if it s way too early, it s morning joe. stick around, though, luke russert is next with the daily rundown. in new york state, 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 ganncr: we took care of your back pain. you make him the mvp. tylenol is clinically proven to provide strong, fast pain relief. but for everything we do, we know you do so much more. tylenol that, my friends, is everything. and with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase. not just everything at the hardware store. not everything, until you hit your cash back limit. quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. say it with me everything. one more time, everything! and with that in mind. what s in your wallet? 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this is the fox report. i am molly line, in for harris faulkner. the crisis in the middle east reaches the three week mark with no sign of end to the violence. hopes for a long time ceasefire in gaza dashed. israel and hamas resuming full scale attacks that reportedly left more than 1,000 dead. ban ki-moon is urging the rivals to accept a 24 hour truce. it appears both sides are holding out. hamas has broken five ceasefires. they rejected all of them, violate all of them, including two humanitarian ceasefires in the last 24 hours. the ceasefire is something we wanted, we have a government of national accord. we asked for ceasefires. we need a ceasefire that will bring out also end to the conditions that are creating and generating all this violence. meantime, president obama and prime minister netanyahu spoke by phone today. the president once again condemned attacks by hamas and reiterated israel s right to defend itself. he also expressed growing concern about loss of life on both sides. steve centanni has more. reporter: with terms of ceasefire being disputed, it triggered a war of words on the sunday talk shows today. on the israeli side, prime minister netanyahu accused palestinians of violating their own ceasefire and he acknowledged that international public opinion may be turning against israel because so many palestinian civilians have been killed, but for this, netanyahu blames the palestinians themselves. any of these regrettable tragic civilian casualties should be placed at the responsibility of hamas. hamas is a terrorist organization, ruthless terrorist organization that not only wants to kill our people, it wants to sacrifice its own people. it uses them as human shields. netanyahu says the israelis have done all they can to avoid casualties. u.s. secretary of state john kerry returned home after getting a long term ceasefire. but diplomatic efforts continue. the palestinians claim the first step is for israel to end the siege of gaza. the violence is generated by a very abnormal condition called israeli military occupation. they value our lives and rights, they persist on bombing and shelling people, civilians, and then blame the victims. palestinians also say they re surprised to hear netanyahu talk about protecting civilians when more than 1,000 have been killed in gaza in the past three weeks, most of them civilians. molly? steve, thank you very much. more than three years after the down fall of moammar gadhafi, libya is having one of the worst bouts of violence and lawlessness. death and destruction as they battle for control of the country s eastern regions. today alone, more than 40 report killed, including civilians. many more wounded from rockets crashing into homes. the fiercest around tripoli airport and benghazi. foreigners and locals now fleeing their homes as the situation becomes increasingly dangerous. earlier, the british embassy and convoy was attacked, wounded no one. the growing threat prompted us to shut down the u.s. embassy. they were evacuated to tunesia under tight military guard. secretary of state john kerry says the embassy isn t being shut down permanently, but diplomatic activities are suspended for now. tourists are also advised to steer clear of libya. turning to the growing crisis in ukraine, government forces launching a major campaign against pro-russian militants, troops close in on a key rebel strong hold, in hopes of gaining control of an area where malaysia airlines flight 17 was shot down, killing all 298 on board. increasing fighting forces dutch and australian police to search the crash site, which investigators complain has already been compromised. steve harrigan, live from ukraine. what progress did investigators make today? reporter: it was the first day for 30 dutch unarmed police to reach the scene and hopefully begin to provide some security for the international investigators. instead, on route to the scene because of heavy fighting, they had to turn around. more than 220 bodies from the crash site have been taken out of eastern ukraine to the netherlands where identification process has begun. for the few experts that have reached the site and done some research, they say there are more remains and body parts to be found. still has a long way to go and no progress today because of fighting, molly. steve, what s the latest on what u.s. officials are doing about russia s involvement in the fighting? reporter: a phone call today from u.s. secretary of state john kerry to sergei lavrov. he asked the russians to stop sending heavy military equipment, tanks and carriers over the border to russian back rebels. he urged the russian toss stop. mr. lavrov denied that was taking place, mr. kerry didn t accept that denial. diplomatic pressure to stop the russians. the state department releasing satellite images of what it says is evidence of russian military forces firing on ukrainian positions from within russian territory. russian officials deny they re doing so. they say the pictures and attempt is a smear campaign against russia by the west. molly, back to you. thank you, steve, from the ukraine. appreciate you keeping us up on the conflict and diplomatic efforts as well. the first relatives to visit the crash site are coming from australia. this couple placing a wreath of flowers for their 25-year-old daughter who was on board and whose remains weren t yet recovered. we cried a lot. that s why we promised her the first thing when we heard this, we said how could she survive this. we promised our daughter we will come here. actually as soon as possible, there was a time factor, yeah. we should have come here the minute it happened. the next day. those parents also went to the netherlands, providing dna samples for those investigating the remains. the immigration crisis continues on the southern border as washington is divided on how to solve this complex problem. democrats and republicans say something must be done soon, but when it comes to strategy and how much money to spend, our nation s leaders cannot find common ground, this as congress s summer recess looms. leland vitter has more from washington. reporter: it seems the only thing republicans and democrats agree on is that this is a problem. what needs to be done, much less how to do it or how to pay for it is a continuing battle. there has been much discussion about president obama s handling things with an executive order or drastically changing policy unilaterally when it comes to immigration. republicans of congress don t like that idea in the least. even in congress. there are competing bills about various solution. the democrats are willing to give him most of what he wants. house republicans say they can solve the problem of thousands of minors coming across the border for much less. not writing a blank check but solve the problem. the american public wants us to have an orderly border. right now they see chaos at the border, number one. number two, keep in mind that president obama on june 30th sent a letter asking for money and a policy change. while the debate makes for fodder on sunday shows, there s been precious little progress toward the deal, much less the grand bargain on immigration reform that president obama wants. house recesses summer vacation later this week. now it is crunch time, for there to be progress rather than motion. only time will tell if that happens. molly? right now, firefighters are battling raging wildfires that are destroying homes, forcing hundreds of evacuations. the latest on fires burning in several states. is the crisis on the border growing bigger as congress is about to go on a five week break, even though there seems to be no solution in sight. fox news political insiders are here and we want to hear from you. should congress stay in session until they hammer out some sort of deal? post responses by tweeting @mollylinefnc. yobut you may notds. know we re a family. 12 brands. more 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citi.com/thankyoucards. fox extreme weather alert. tornado warnings in several states. meteorologist janice dean is live in the fox extreme weather center with the latest on this. molly, a dangerous situation for folks across the ohio river vall valley, tennessee river valley. conditions are favorable for tornadoes, 8:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., 1:00 a.m. storms are going to continue to fire well into the overnight. i want to insist if you have noaa radios, put them on. you might be asleep and need to be woken up if there s a tornado warning. we have several tornado warnings in the state of tennessee, heading towards knoxville, tennessee. all the areas you see here shaded in pink, those are tornado warnings. we are seeing strong rotation. all these cells not only in portions of central tennessee but towards virginia and the border of north carolina. so very dangerous situation. several tornadic super cells are moving into some big cities. in the great lakes, we have several severe thunderstorm warnings as the front continues to press eastward, a very strong cold front interacting with warm, unstable air, and that s giving us the threat for severe weather. for all of the big cities into the overnight tonight, including d.c., up to new york and boston, hail, damagingwinds, and yes, tornadoes. really, the state of tennessee needs to be on alert for the next several hours. then as we go into monday, the threat diminishes. but overnight tonight, if you live in those areas shaded in yellow, as i pointed out, across the ohio river valley, tennessee river valley, pay very close attention to your weather authorities. your current temperatures, extremely warm across the southern and central u.s. 103 in phoenix as well. you can see where cooler, dryer air is interacting with that. potential super cells for the evening. ahead of the front, memphis is 104. behind that, cool, dry air. that s one of the ingredients needed for severe weather. through the evening, ohio river valley, tennessee river valley, the state of tennessee now into portions of virginia and north carolina on alert for tornadoes. back to you. thank you, important warnings. this just in in california. they tell us eight people have been struck by lightning on a popular venice boardwalk on santa monica bay. at the same time, we get a report a ninth person was hit by lightning on catalina island, 22 miles off the l.a. coast. the conditions of people hurt in venice we don t yet know. the victim on catalina, a 57-year-old man is said to be in stable condition. the lightning strikes happened during a series of thunderstorms. rare for southern california this time of year. and this is also a fox news alert. out of control wildfires, burning out west, forcing people from homes and scorching several states. dominic de-natale has more. reporter: hey there. been quite a weekend for wildfires. let s show you a map of where the main concern is in california. the sierra, nevada hills. we have the sand fire. it consumed ten homes, six square miles of land consumed by the flames so far. that doesn t sound large, but this is a tough one. it is also effecting california s wine growing region. canyons of eldorado burning since friday. an area hit in 2009. people panic how it could effect california s precious wine industry. listen. vineyards are going to be lost, and that s devastating to a.m. door and eldorado county. we can t afford it, nobody can. we are challenged by mother nature every day. 35% of the sand fire contained so far. they expected it to grow in size today. we will have data on that shortly. we have triple digit heat. this has been so far one of the hottest years on record for california. mother nature, firefighters saying, is not to be on california s side. this is going to be happening all over. i don t think it is specific to the area, this is what we are going to see across northern california until we get significant rain. reporter: and one of the other fires going on at the moment is 400 firefighters battling a 2100 acre fire in yosemite national park. the second time in a year yosemite was hit by flames. 45 homes under evacuation. most of those housing for workers in the park itself. good news in washington state, the carlton complex fire. two-thirds of that now contained. and should be wet weather and cooler temperatures helping fan the flames there, that s the only bit of good news we re having as we gear up for the main firefighter season this fall. back to you. thank you for keeping us up to date on the fires. we are getting reports that two americans, one a doctor, have been infected with one of the world s deadliest diseases. plus, two years after a disaster at sea, the costa concordia making its final journey. what can your fidelity greenline do for you? just take a closer look. it works how you want to work. with a fidelity investment professional. or managing your investments on your own. helping you find new ways to plan for retirement. and 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business. two american health workers in liberia are reportedly being treated for one of the world s deadliest diseases, ebola. you can see him on the right. he was treating victims of the largest ebola outbreak on record, responsible for nearly 700 deaths in west africa. health workers face enormous risk of contracting the virus. yesterday it killed one of the country s most high profile doctors and a doctor from uganda died earlier this month. the ill fated costa concordia struck a reef in 2012, capsized, killing 32 people. today after a slow five day voyage, they pulled the massive vessel into port. that s where it first set sail in 2007 and where it will eventually be scrapped. it ends a grueling salvage operation that involved pulling it upright without hurting the environment. the ship s captain, blamed for sailing too close to shore, is now being tried for manslaughter. he is also accused of abandoning his ship while hundreds of passengers fought for their lives. and now a bitter family feud is spoiling business at a popular super market chain in the northeast. began decades ago. two cousins whose family owns the market basket. the dispute spilled into stores with employees and delivery workers calling for a boycott. now once loyal customers are listening, they re taking their business elsewhere. brian yennis is here with the latest on this. very unusual. they have been battling over control of the market basket chain for nearly 30 years. last month, long time ceo arthur t was fired. a decision supported by his rival cousin and opposing family members. well, that ousting led to protests and boycotts at many of the 71 stores over the last week. hundreds, even thousands of loyal customers and employees demanding he be reinstated as ceo. store shelves empty, drivers refusing to deliver groceries. loyal customers taking their business elsewhere, taping receipts from competitors to market basket windows. the super market is reportedly losing millions of dollars in sales. we re going to keep protesting until we have artie t back. whenever he comes back we start working again. he is credited for keeping prices low, creating a family atmosphere, and paying employees well above the industry standard. other than my father, i have no more respect for a man that walks on this earth than arthur for how he has treated me and all of you. he offered to buy it from arthur s. the board will seriously consider his proposal, and the company is asking employees to come back friday, please end the strike. there will be no penalty or discipline for any associate who joins in what will be a significant effort to return to the unpar elderly level of performance and customer service that have been hallmarks of the brand. employees say they won t stand down until arthur t is reinstated, saying quote, we will work for no other ceo. i tell you, i live in massachusetts. fly back and forth here to new york. pictures of this have been incredible, aerial shots, the amount of people involved in this. it galvanized people. a lot of them worked for decades, have been brought into the family feud. they believe if the company is given to arthur s, he will sell to outside suitors and it will no longer be the family member they had for decades, part of who they are. it is personal for hundreds of thousands in the communities. thank you for the inside look. a massachusetts town is flooding with mail to wish a sick boy a happy 6th birthday. he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. he asked for cards because he loves to get mail. boy did his wish come true. how many people across the world can come together and care about one child. with all the sadness we have in our lives now, it is amazing to see him so happy. danny wasted no time, dug right in. some 100,000 cards and packages from all around the globe. after a break for cake, he got right back to work. he even received a special birthday message from marines in afghanistan. well, israel and hamas are resuming their fighting, as hopes for a ceasefire are shattered once again. we have a live report from gaza on the latest developments. that s one of the foreign crises facing the obama administration. the white house also trying to deal with russian president vladimir putin and the conflict in ukraine. the fox news political insiders are here to weigh in. join the conversation by tweeting me @mollylinefnc, #frw. here on will be compared to. so get out there, and get the best price guaranteed. find it for less and we ll match it and give you $50 toward your next trip. expedia. find yours. 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. honey, look i got one to land. uh-huh 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. now get 50% off all new smartphones. while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, this can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain, and improve daily physical function so moving is easier. because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief for many with arthritis pain. and it s not a narcotic. you and your doctor should balance the benefits with the risks. all prescription nsaids, like celebrex, ibuprofen, naproxen and meloxicam have the same cardiovascular warning. they all may increase the chance of heart attack or stroke, which can lead to death. this chance increases if you have heart disease or risk factors such as high blood pressure or when nsaids are taken for long periods. nsaids, like celebrex, increase the chance of serious skin or allergic reactions, or stomach and intestine problems, such as bleeding and ulcers, which can occur without warning and may cause death. patients also taking aspirin and the elderly are at increased risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers. don t take celebrex if you have bleeding in the stomach or intestine, or had an asthma attack, hives, other allergies to aspirin, nsaids or sulfonamides. get help right away if you have swelling of the face or throat, or trouble breathing. tell your doctor your medical history and ask your doctor about celebrex. for a body in motion. i am molly line, in for harris faulkner. this is the fox report. it is bottom of the hour, in case you re joining us. hopes for a temporary truce between israel and hamas shattered. israel responds with attacks in the air and on the ground. each blaming the other. palestinian officials say more than a thousand have been killed in the conflict, mostly civilians. 46 have been killed in israel, mostly soldiers. conner powell, live from gaza city, what will it take to get to a ceasefire? reporter: we spent the last 24 hours or so trying to see if the humanitarian ceasefire that lasted 12 hours yesterday could be extended. israel offered ex-tentension of that, hamas said no. we saw heavy fighting today but not like the past four, five days. we saw about a dozen or so hamas rockets fired from gaza to israel. we also heard and saw israeli artill parts here. for the last sort of two or three hours, it has been very quiet here now. of course, israel is expanding military operations, focusing mainly on tunnels and launch sites in areas where they already are in gaza now. they have not expanded to gaza city or some other areas. israel is continuing to conduct military operations here, focusing on tunnels. hamas said we would reject a ceasefire where the israelis are allowed to continue to operate here. looks like both sides settled into a semi permanent ceasefire. the question is will it hold until tomorrow. both sides are under a lot of pressure to approve some long term ceasefire, and there seems to be support for it now in gaza. i was going to ask, you have been there on the ground, had a chance to talk with people. how much support is there for possible ceasefire? is it moving that direction? that s what s not really clear. there are a lot of people we have spoken to today, during the week, particularly during heavy fighting, when they were saying doesn t matter how bad fighting gets, they supported hamas, they feel the blockade around gaza was so intolerable, they wanted the fighting continued, wanted the blockade lifted. there were many people here saying that. whether or not they re saying that now that they had a chance to see damage, had a chance to breathe, it is not clear. there s still a lot of support for hamas and any efforts to stop the blockade. whether they want to see the fighting as the holy month of ramadan is coming to an end, it is supposed to be celebration. a lot of people are buying supplies for the holidays and celebration. whether or not there s after this quiet period support for fighting is not clear. israel says they want fighting and rockets to stop. they re going to continue military operations to remove tunnels, want sustainable quiet. both hold to the ceasefire, is in question. we will continue to watch it. thank you for that insight. we appreciate it. the fighting in the middle east, one of the crises facing the obama administration. washington is at odds about how to address all of them. as some analysts say u.s. is losing standing in the political community. tweet us. joining me, former republican congressman, pat goodell, and doug shown, fox news contributor as well. thank you for being here to talk about this. there s a tremendous amount going on. we begin with the on-going conflict in israel and gaza. the israeli prime minister netanyahu blaming hamas for breaking ceasefire agreements and saying he will do whatever is necessary to achieve the goal of sustainable quiet, security. dozens of soldiers killed, more than a thousand reportedly killed in gaza, and international opposition is growing. as we move forward, are we doing enough in the u.s.? clearly we are not, molly. if you go around the world, in israel clearly we have not succeeded in doing anything but getting the most temporary of ceasefires, certainly no long term resolution. ukraine and russia, again, fighting is getting worse. we are tentatively talking about maybe providing technical assistance to the ukrainians to monitor russian advance weapon systems. libya blew up over the weekend. afghanistan, the taliban is making gains, the vote counting is now in question. and iraq is devolving into sectarian strife. president obama is not leading. we are a country that s weaker, less involved, less potent, and the american people are angry. do you think we are being too tentative? i think the american government is not leading, not just the president but the republicans that control the house of representatives, the republican party itself is equally vak u us. there s nothing coming forward from them, other than their knee jerk reaction to bomb and invade people. why is a positive agenda? for instance on the gaza a thing, we have the iranians supporting hamas, giving them the rockets, encouraging this thing. why isn t the united states going to the arab states like saudi arabia and the uae and saying you guys have to come in here with your money and pay for the palestinians to disarm, to get modern, to give up this ridiculous notion of wiping out israel. why aren t we leading stuff like that instead of criticizing israel. there are so many players, the u.s., iran, qatar. so many involved. you look at the map of the middle east, of the mediterranean, the area, europe, it looks like a map of world war i. you know, tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of beginning of world war i. a disaster brought on by miscalculation, lack of leadership from world leaders, particularly super powers, britain and it was a war of unnecessary disaster. millions and millions died. this is after 100 years of peace in europe. what do we have? we have a president today as doug said, yesterday we evacuated the embassy in libya, the country we quote, say, got rid of gadhafi, and the president was on the golf course playing golf with cnn anchors. this imagery of our leadership, of a president that doesn t lead and a world exploding, this kind of stuff has consequences. world war i is an example of those consequences and we are playing with fire right now. interesting you bring up such historical context, there s always historical context when we talk about russia. there s so much going on with president vladimir putin there, the he escalating situation betn russia and ukraine. president obama is criticized as being awal, for lack of strength. two polls show an interesting juxtaposition. the first poll regarding the situation in ukraine, and who has the upper hand? a big, big majority believed vladimir putin has the upper hand. 75%. then another poll. should the u.s. be more involved in ukraine. when that poll comes up, americans say no. we should not be more involved, at least 61%. it is really tough. where do you go from there, when people believe that putin has the upper hand, but the u.s. should not draw deeper into this. first thing to say, molly, despite the tragic downing of the malaysian jet, there s still a consensus by 60 points or more that putin has the upper hand. to that end, he is doubling down now. there s no suing for peace from vladimir putin. he upped the delivery of weapons systems to the separatists. he massed 15,000 or more troops on the ukrainian border, and is now firing with impunity into ukraine. the trend saying to be involved is up seven or eight points. to be sure, many don t want us to. but you can help, provide technical assistance, financial assistance. arms. give arms to the ukrainian military. meals. gave them old meals. but you can also do, if you were leading, if you weren t leading from behind, the european community, world outrage, what was lost the last ten days by obama and leadership, this vacuum, we will pay a price for this vacuum in any one of these hot spots, iran with a bomb, isis, starting to kill christians if they don t convert perhaps. tremendous amount of things going on around the world and here. why doesn t the president go to europe and get all of the western leaders together in a room and lead. because he doesn t care enough about it, all right? he doesn t care about his job. some interesting things to talk about when it comes to congress, how much congress cares about things. they don t care about their jobs either. you guys are ready. we are going to get to it in a moment. we are seeing these crises overseas, but we re also dealing at home with illegal immigrants streaming into the u.s. on the southern border, and lawmakers are trying to come to a deal. are they trying? they re also preparing for a five week break. what do you think. should congress postpone that summer recess if a solution isn t reached by the end of this week? tweet us @mollylinefnc. fox report weekend. movie night. i get 2x the points on streaming movies and takeout from restaurants with my citi thankyou card. everyone wins. you mean you win. yes i do. the citi thankyou preferred card earn two times the thankyou points with no annual fee. to apply, go to citi.com/thankyoucards. celebrate your love of crab with gthis year s largest variety!. cause it s crabfest at red lobster! dig into a succulent selection of crab entrées. like new crab lover s trio! with sweet snow crab legs, split king crab, and jumbo lump crab over savory shrimp. crab three ways! all on one plate. or try new jumbo lump crab over wood-grilled salmon. experience crabfest at red lobster today. only for a limited time. come in and sea food differently! he s excited for saving at staples for back to school. they re excited. these guys are super excited. because when you get notebooks for less. index cards for less. and tablets for less, all at guaranteed low prices, you can t help but show it. in a big way! staples. make more happen for less. our nations leaders at odds over the southern border. there s talk of an executive order to move forward on immigration reform as congress is set to take a five week vacation in days. our political insiders are back. thanks for being here. let s get to it. we are talking about immigration. this has been on everyone s mind. can t get away from it. today chris wallace spent a lot of time on this on fox news sunday trying to get an answer from the house majority whip elect as to whether the gop will stay around to resolve to do something on this pressing issue of immigration. chris asked a question. basically trying to get to the bottom of this. will they stick around. take a listen. we re not even on recess, chris, we are here and ready to work. we re going to do our job this week. if the president wants to sit back, continue to point fingers at other people, he s the president of the united states. he could solve this problem today. i doesn t want to solve this problem but we do. we re going to stay and work and get our job done. do you think they ll stay? do you think it is important that they do? what bothers me about that answer is rather than the process question of staying or not, why doesn t he use this time on national tv to spell out what our republican plan is to fix the immigration and border security problem. i didn t hear a word about the substance of the issue, which is number one, people are still streaming in down there, nothing is being done to stop it. border guards are 40 miles inland from the border. and john, the president announced a plan to begin a pilot program to take people from honduras to bring them in without them even having to get to the border. fly them in. we are divided. there is no consensus. i think it is a pretty obvious answer, congress should stay in session, period, no ifs, ands, or buts. the president is saying he will take action, the president and congress are being criticized. neither plan, the democrats, the president, the democrats, the house, care about getting a deal. if they did, they would be in a room getting one. this isn t that hard to solve. they re into the politics of it. president obama has changed his position about changing the 2008 law, which was a mistake. and encouraging people to come. you know, he changed his mind because he s under pressure from voting groups he cares about, immigration supporters, the republicans are talking about deporting, the only thing they seem to be able to speak about. meanwhile, all they want to do is spend money. nothing is going to happen this week. nothing is going to happen. there s frustration. we are getting tweets, equal opportunity barbers, this one from rose bud. this congress is the greatest disgrace, no congress working, are you kidding. let me answer that by asking a question. what do sarah palin, ted cruz, nancy pelosi and barack obama have in common? they re talking not about this, they re talking about impeaching the president. this is the answer to serious problems. let s impeach obama, all doing it to raise money. great bridge to talking about impeachment, a tweet from josh earnest that tweeted house gop s wrong priorities. new whip scalise won t rule in border vote this week, won t rule out impeachment. in the last 72 hours, i have 13 messages pushing impeachment and send money which is so much more than i ever received, even during the shut down. on the republican side, we have the same. people that make money on this, get people to read their blogs, extremists. this is insane. the democrats think this is august, excuse me, christmas in august. this is their greatest dream is to have this happen because in 98 they know majorities of americans who thought the president had done wrong on managing in terms of how he has tried to rule in a one-man show. yet the republicans go immediately into can we go off the cliff? the elections of 98 didn t turn out particularly well. exactly. our slogan in the clinton white how was progress not partisanship. and we talked about fixing social security and keeping the economy going. john was alluding to it, has a positive agenda to deal with the economy, the border crisis to, the issue with taxation, moving overseas. no one is dealing with it. it is a crisis of confidence, a crisis of democracy. where is the republican alternative to obamacare? we were told it was coming and it never happened. they don t want to say you were mad about obama, you want to impeach him. it s not going to listen to whau elect us. that s the program. and they won t do it. the american people largely or the majority vast majority this is as i said, this is we have to go to break, guys. a lot of things coming up. more with the political insiders coming up next. you pay your auto insurance premium every month on the dot. you re like the poster child for paying on time. and then one day you tap the bumper of a station wagon. no big deal. until your insurance company jacks up your rates. you freak out. what good is having insurance if you get punished for using it? hey insurance companies, news flash. nobody s perfect. for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won t raise your rates due to your first accident. see car insurance in a whole new light. liberty mutual insurance. 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. our political insiders are back. thanks for sticking with us. you were just about to make a point. mid terms are moving. it s all about politics. everything is about politics for these people. either the republicans are compared now to try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. they have an election. now they ll introduce what the democrats are praying for. these people are not serious. and the country will pay the price. we have the president who has been criticized heavily for sticking to campaigning schedulschedule s and going to fund-raisers. your thoughts? that is a legitimate criticism as is suing to have the courts a s adjudicate as to whether the executor, obama, has gone too far. that s legit stuff. that s not crazy to do, all right? but speaking as a political person, we re three months from an election. republicans should win the senate this year. the thing that s lacking is they have yet to put forth their prescription for health care. what doug said, pro-growth program. they re afraid to say to the country, elect us. all they want to do is say obama is terrible. the democrats are which they are. both sides want to win senate seats. this comes down to the issues, winning the issues when it comes down to foreign policy, immigration, health care and everything else. what you re saying is the way ordinary american voters think. tell me what you re going to do about the issues i care about. as pat and john are saying, very clearly, neither party is willing to do that. both parties play politics, attack, go to fund-raisers, send out incendiary e-mails. neither side governs from the perspective of getting results. we have a chance this week in the congress to get results on the va, immigration. we re not going to get it. we all lose as a result. super quick last word from pat? all i have to ask the american people is if you have no interest about what this is about. this is all about them. they don t care. the entire country the world is on fire. in a flame. and we are doing nothing at home or abroad to do what people want. it s all about us, the political class, and the corrupt media. and people are watching. that is for certain. we will see what happens in these elections that are looming 100 days from now. thank you so much, our political insiders. it s been a real pleasure. that is how fox reports this sunday, july 27th, 2014. thank you for watching. have a great week. huckabee is next. nexium®,is now available, without a prescription for frequent heartburn. get complete protection. because the best moments in life aren t experienced from the sidelines. now there s nothing holding you back. this is nexium level protection™. the #1 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to use the military, but we must always be fast if we even think genocide is a possibility. we should be fast with prudence. thanks for watching tonight. i m al sharpton. hardball starts right now. genocide. this is hardball. good evening. i m chris matthews in washington. genocide. if there is one word in the language that should cut off partisan dribble this should be it. once you see a religious or other group of human beings is in the process of being exterminated we need the to stop it. is there another view of this, a moral opposition, a case for not acting when you hear an or pi of ze lots is marching in and crucifyinger or beheading people because they don t like their religion? let me hear it loud and clear that you are willing to let people be exterminated for being who they are. this is how i m looking at the decision to strike at the isis militants marauding through iraq, killing all in their way. what disappoints me now is the incapability of the speaker of the house and others like john mccain to get behind the president and say we americans will not stand by in the face of genocide. why does petty politics and potshots and the rest of the cheap stuff have to invade every conversation? why can t we get together for a day or two to do what we agree is right, the morally necessary thing the do. now to the question of what s to come. tonight we ll look at where this is heading. the president has authorized limited bombing of isis to keep the militants from the consulate in erbil and from religious minorities trapped in northern iraq. how long lit continue? will it eliminate isis as a military threat and who will pick up the fight against isis once we stop. in other words, how do we avoid getting sucked into iraq for the long haul? andrea mitchell is chief foreign affairs correspondent for nbc news and host of the andrea mitchell report on msnbc. michael leiter is a terrorist expert for nbc news. eugene robinson is a columnist for the washington post. the u.s. military started dropping bombs on isis today at 6:45 a.m., washington time. there were two separate rounds according to the pentagon. the first targeted a mobile artillery piece being used to shell kurdish forces. a few hours later drones and u.s. jets struck a mortar position outside erbil. andrea, this seems like we ve got a good bead on targets. we are not shooting at areas, groups or whatever. we have one vehicle at a time. this is precision bombing which raises the question. we have to go in low. then the question is how vulnerable is american forces in this limited humanitarian effort. what some suggested is it s too precise, too targeted, too simple. it s a piece offer artillery here. a convoy here. that you re really not getting at the heart of isil. not even at the isil terrorists surrounding the mountain top. can you break their assault with these pinprick attacks? will they stop marching on and killing? you can slow them. through other support of the kurds you can provide kurds the ability to push back. no matter how much you do around erbil you can t roll isis back without a much larger campaign. that s the big strategic question for the president going forward. gene? that s the question. is the idea to contain isis and stop them right there so i they don t take erbil or oh go further, which i think these attacks could do. or is it to destroy this genocidal group that s taken over a huge swath of territory and provides a huge threat. ultimately for the united states. who are we talking to with these attacks. we are not trying to eliminate the enemy. we are trying to talk to them. stop. we are shooting at them like a shot across the bow. stop or we ll keep shooting. that s the signal. at the same time we are told the iraqi air force has been operational today. we have long what do you think of the air force? not much. in fact, weeks ago when we first started talking about isis s advance into iraq they said, we can t get involved. giving them hellfire missiles won t work. they can t run the planes. they could barely run a cessna. we are told the iraqi air force is there. what does that amount to? that s number one. number two, what s turkey doing? getting humanitarian supplies. where is everybody else? david cameron said we ll do humanitarian efforts but the brits aren t going to get back involved in military action in iraq. same for france. where is the rest of the world? the points from josh ernest. we are in there to protect u.s. personnel. especially in erbil. there are a couple hundred people there. why didn t they evacuate? they started to downsize them today, by the way. we don t want to. the kufrds are our closest friends in iraq. they have backed us up for 20 years. that s about the most secure place we have. an honest statement would have been we are not there to defend our personnel, we are there to defend the kurds with our personnel. absolutely. we are not pulling out of kurdistan. this is not just humanitarian or purely defensive. exactly. this is to sort of build a wall in front of the kurdish area. back to my question. certainly go no further. we were talking to kruschev. who will say, you know, this u.s. super power is to be dealt with. we are going to pull back. is there such a person? i don t know if there is any such person to talk to. i don t think there is. one interesting question about our military personnel in erbil, are they providing spotting help to the air strikes because these were very, very precise strikes. that s harder to do just from the air than it is when you have somebody on the ground pointing the laser. in truth, this goes back to my years as a naval aviator. these aren t especially hard targets. they are largely in the open. you can do it from 25,000, 30,000 feet. they are guided bombs. the risk to american airmen is slim. you can always have accidents. what we have to do is increase the relationship with the with kurds. we have held back supporting with other weapons, spell jens because we want add unified iraq. we are blowing up carriers with those 500 ton bombs? isn t that a. that s what you use. the attacks have been small and pinprick. i think isis will take it. they still feel they are winning. i think they want to take casualties. that s been part of the appeal. they are not afraid to die. the travel warning that went out warned americans in iraq about the potential for kidnapping. also the terrorizing of the civilian populations. they are beginning to take americans out of erbil. they are still worried enough that they are downsizing. i m worried about the pilots. maybe i m a parent about this. pilots? you don t want to get captured by this crowd. today, secretary of state john kerry cited fear of genocide, as i said, as the reason for the action. isil s campaign against the innocent including the yazidi and the grotesque targeted acts of violence show all the warning signs of genocide. for anyone who needed a wake-up call this is it. well, last night the president talked about the fear of genocide. let s listen. we face a situation like we do on that mountain with innocent people facing the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. when we have a mandate to help in this case a request from the iraqi government. when we have the unique capabilities to help avert a massacre, i believe the united states of america cannot turn a blind eye. we can act, carefully and responsibly to prevent a potential act of genocide. that s what we are doing on the mountain. this week, one iraqi in the area cried to the world there is no one coming to help. well, today, america is coming to help. someone said the president is a realist with a conscience. he likes to stay out of the countries. he s not a neocon with a grand agenda for u.s. forces. he can t resist this. is this an echo of rwanda where bill clinton said i should have done this or kosovo or the holocaust? bill clinton told you and me after he left office my big p mistake was not responding to rwanda. you have samantha power and susan rice who were involved and care passionately about that issue in the white house and the u.n. the u.n. has not said a word about this today. u.n. security council not meeting, not talking about this, to my knowledge. they have talked about ukraine. they have other cry sis, gaza. this president said only on friday we can t be everywhere in the world. saturday they saw what was happening on the ground. i interviewed brent mcguirk on iraq. he said saturday we saw isil moving with incredible proficiency, moving with command and control. routing the peshmikas. they went into another gear. there is no joy in the white house i can perceive. they are hating it. what kind of debate was there, gene, do you know? i m not sure. it s basically do we do something or not. if we do, what is it? i m not under the impression that everyone is agreed on what it is we are doing. they shot down not doing anything. save the yazidis. save the yazidis. everyone agrees we want to prevent genocide. i don t have the sense there is a full-throated agreement or even a full-throated sense really of how far beyond that we go in terms of combatting. how many days ahead have they planned for, gene, do you know? . i don t know. this goes beyond the yazidis and genocide. with all due respect to the yazidis and stopping genocide, we have lost 150,000 people already in the syrian civil war. and done nothing. people have been slaughtered in syria. isis slaughtered tsunami slaugh came in. they realize they can t stand back any longer. this is the heartland of what could be kurdistan collapsing. if that happens, iraq breaks apart, jordan goes, lebanon goes. you see isis spreading like a cancer throughout the whole region. i think this was the president having to make a decision he didn t want to make. we saw an animated conversation yesterday right before the decision was announced between the president and dennis mcdonough as he left for the bill signing. i wouldn t be surprised that there was some disagreement about the pitfalls here. that s what a chief of staff does. warn him. no, no. thank you. who could warn president obama? president obama circa five years ago. he can go back to his speeches and get the warning of what bad things can happen. and could still happen. i think he reached a point where he felt bad things happen when you don t intervene as well. that s what they are facing now. it s not making the region better. or invasion may have caused the instability that led to this. we could go back and blame somebody. i want to focus on ironically, i don t want to talk politics right now. thank you, andrea mitchell, gene robinson and michael leiter, for coming. coming up here, we want to take ary newed look at the involvement in iraq from all the angles. what are the u.s. military options now? who are the enemies? isis members who are bent onslaughtering in their path. president obama was elected in large part, as he says, because of opposition to the war in iraq. he s the fourth straight american people to order military action in that country. what s been the congressional reaction? most of it is small minded and deeply politicized. let me finish with what we are headed into in iraq. the urgent question of how we get out. this is hardball, the place for politics. 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. dad: he s our broker. he helps looks after all our money. kid: do you pay him? 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i would. switch to comcast business internet and get the fastest wifi included. comcast business. built for business. welcome back to hardball. we ll take a look at america s military options in the battle against isis. let s start by reviewing what action the u.s. has taken so far today. this morning two u.s. navy 18s took off from an aircraft carrier in the persian gulf. at 6:45 eastern time they struck isis military artillery positions near erbil. with 500-pound laser guided bombs. a few hours later, shortly after 10:00 a.m. eastern time a drone struck a mortar position killing isis fighters. four f-18 fighterers also from the u.s.s. george h.w. bush struck a convoy of seven vehicles and a position near erbil. they made two passes dropping eight laser guided bombs. the target is an insurgent group straight from hell that s amassing frightening amounts of power in a vacuum that the united states helped create. for how long can we continue the strikes? what are young pilots facing on the missions and what happens next? retired army general barry mccalfry commanded the 24th infantry division and wes moore is a retired captain and combat veteran. thank you for this. general, how did you begin to see the mission from the beginning, what the limits are, what it can get done in a cowle of days. no question. there is a huge tragedy unfolding. a couple hundred thousand refugees in the last few weeks. families isolated on a mountain top without nutrition or access to war. it s a tragedy. a shock to everybody to see the kurdish forces evaporate. we ve got a problem. we have to support are the kurds. i argued strongly we should have been providing them significant military equipment a year, two years ago. we are trying to artificially hold together an iraqi state that s already come apart. my concern is except for navy air, thank god for navy carrier battle groups. we have very few forces in the region. you can t protect 1.5 million refugees or supply them a humanitarian aid from the air. these are political gestures, not serious military operations. what happens when they are on the ground and you re isis and you have committed to your goal of killing everybody else. why would a few pinprick attacks on some of your vehicles stop your advance. stay with that question. would they stop the advance? of course not. right next door in syria where isis has its preponderance of forces, 180,000 dead mostly perpetrated by shiite, christian and other minorities against a sunni majority. all throughout this area, particularly syria, iraq, and parts of lebanon, this is now coming apart. it s a giant civil war, ethnic and religious minorities struggling. it will be solved through violence. it s hard to imagine modest uses of military power making much different. captain, your view. can a pinprick attack stop an army of zealots that doesn t duck. they re there for god and aren t worried about getting killed. i wonder about a strike against people with unlimited ze lalotr. your thoughts? we can t understand this in isolation. it is not just about northern iraq. not even just about iraq. this is about things happening throughout the entire region. one thing we were told during captain s training is one of the greatest oxymorons in the world is limited military operations. inherently they can t be limited. you re always stepping on the doorstep of something that could be much larger. i think what we have seen particularly in the past week has uncovered two things. one is the lack of stability. this idea that there is no military solution that will be able to fix what s happening in iraq. we have had the past four presidents that had military involvement in iraq. the second thing and this could be the most dangerous. there is no iraqi national military. the iraqi military is very regional. you saw the way isil was able to cut through western iraq, cut through mosul like a hot knife through butter. the idea of a national military iraqi response doesn t make sense. well, that s point. i want to go back to your point about arming the kurds. we have an iraqi army against 7,000 isis forces. yet they are running from them. what would stop them? what sort of mechanized force, military armor, what can we give them what weapon would make them stand and fight? it s a group that s widely hated. when isis moved like a juggernaut, most of it was nonsense. there are a few thousand fighters. sunni tribesmen rose up against a hated, shia dominated army and police force. the kurds, the president said an iraqi called who s going to help us. that was a kurd. they won t let the iraqi army back in kurdistan for the next hundred years. so the kurds are worthy of being supported. we need to give them the technology to defend themselves. possibly we d support them with air power. basically again a giant civil war, ten years of violence. i don t think the american people have political will to turn this around. let s start with the pinprick, the purpose. one goal is to defend our facility in erbil. can we do it with naval air alone, general? then captain . it s nonsense. it s a giant city, the capital of kurdistan. if they won t defend their own capitol, all is lost. i think they will. it sounded like the turner joy in vietnam or something. we are conducting carrier air strikes to protect the 200 people we just put in to a giant city? it s nonsense. captain if you want them to protect themselves give them the tools to do it. will the united states dr or is our statement that we ll use military face and naval air to defend erbil and our facility there something that will work? it seems that s one thing that will work here in coordination with the kurds. think about it. when you talk about the application of military force, you think about how is the application of military force going to deter the enemy. how will it defer what you actually have to face? isis isn t making pinprick military attacks on civilians. they are not making strategic attacks on specific villages. i m not sure how to understand that strategic pinprick military reaction to that is then going to counter what they are going to do in order to make a military action effective, you have to first understand your enemy and see how it s going to impact their actions. hear, hear. isis isn t into nuanced signalling. they are crucifying people, beheading them, trying to terrorize them. that s what i think. i agree. they are killers, not thinkers. thank you so much for coming on the program on friday night. up next, more on isis, the violent extremist group running through iraq. you will hear the horror stories. hold your ears. this is a frightening group of people. who are they? can they be stopped by u.s. airstrikes or do they want to die for god? that s ahead. this is hardball, the place for politics. [ kevin ] this is connolly, cameron, zach, and clementine. we have a serious hairball issue. we clean it up, turn around, and there it is again. it s scary. little bit in my eye. [ michelle ] underneath the kitchen table, underneath my work desk, we ve got enough to knit a sweater. [ doorbell rings ] zach, what is that? the swiffer sweeper. the swiffer dusters. it s some sort of magic cloth that sucks in all the dog hair. it s quick and easy. pretty amazing that it picked it all up. i would totally take on another dog. [ kevin ] really? [ kevin ] really? 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 welcome back to hardball . what and who exactly are we fighting in iraq? as bobby gosh said they are a nightmarish vision from hell. he described who we are up against. they enjoy the act of slaughter. these are not religious people. these are are people who are insane. they have oil in their territory. they have seized weapons. some of them weapons we left for the iraqis. they have seized weapon prs the iraqis, syrians, the lebanese. these are nightmarish vision from hell of the likes we have not seen. that s not even the scariest part. this might give you a sense of how the radical insurgent group known as isis operates. they catalog atrocities. as the financial times reported the military success and brutality of isis was recorded with the level of precision often reserved for company accounts. 10,000 operations in iraq. 1,000 assassinations. 4,000 hundreds of radical prisoners freed. this is a group al qaeda disavowed. they were a liability to the al qaeda brand they were so bad. the iraqi military forces and capturing critically important targets like the country s mosul dam. that s under their control now. this doesn t include the acts of horror that drove 40,000 christians, kurds and yazidis up to mount sinjar where they are surrounded by a group, ell bent on converting or killing them. is this group over taking one of the last functions areas of iraq that we are now fighting from the group. brian cotolus is from the american center for progress. and one of their reporters with vice news has been embedded with isis. brian, how many are in the field now fighting for control of iraq and what do they want? if you add them up, iraq and syria, there is no border between iraq and syria. you have 10 to 15,000 estimates. a couple hundred from the united states and europe. those people from the united states, muslims come from that part of the world. there is a mix. people have converted. european backgrounds. yeah. how many of them are there? that actually joined this. a couple does frn the u.s. are most estimates. from middle eastern background? it s a mix. some are americans that aren t middle eastern background. how many people joined the islamic cause not born muslim. we don t have precise figures. five, ten? a couple of dozen. it s a prost proselytizing organization. it s grounded in religion, but a distorted 15,000 in the field in iraq. what do they want in iraq? what are they doing in northern iraq? tapping into the grievance sunnis had against the shiite-led government in iraq. yes, they are the vanguard. there are ex-baathists. they don t crucify and behead people. they are part of the group. why do reasonable political people who are ethnically united against the new government over there supporting this barbarism. ner not supporting it. they are living with it. but not fighting it because the group is so vicious and brutal. they actually strike fears in the hearts of many people in iraq and syria. sounds like the nazis. let s look at this. vice has no affiliation with us and nbc news. it has not verified the interview in this documentary. this interview is said to be with an isis fighter should give you a portrait of the mindset we are fighting. what do you know about this humiliated us in iraq. i don t remember that. is that part of the propaganda? that they have already beaten the united states in the field? i think they feel they did that in iraq. their world view is an expansionist, fundamentalist world view is what they are high on. we spent three weeks in syria and iraq. in the emerging caliphate, as they call it, trying to understand what motivates them, why they are doing it, how powerful they are. i think more interesting, what s it like to live under their control? we got a portrait that s chilling, terrifying and scary. when did they humiliate the united states? i don t know what they are talking about. they are referencing afghanistan, iraq. it s their narrative they are creating. we left iraq in shiite hands, in malakis hands and walked out in the hands of a government adversarial to them. how do they see it as humiliating us? they have their own propaganda, view of the world they are telling everyone, their supporters. it chimes. they are viciously anti-american. it chimes. doesn t mathter whether it s correct. it s taken hold and it s spreading. it finds support in many parts of the region. earlier on people talked about it being a regional crisis. there is a real crisis now. this entity is spreading outwards to the turkish border, syria, jordan, lebanon. this is a real problem. let me ask you what you have learned. what we learned was we were in the base. we saw the weaponry looted from iraq. american weaponry paraded in the streets. we saw indocket tri nation of children, boys as young as 9 by older men. one father asked his child if he would like to be a jihadist or a suicide bomber. the child said jihadist. they talk about the caliphate, the islamic state. we went in the prisons where people have been arrested for o possessing alcohol, waiting to be with whipped. it s a chilling portrait of what a society will look like run by hard line armed islamic militants. was your embed present during the crucifixions or beheadings? no. the film maker was escorted around by armed men. he went into the edge of iraq. he wasn t present at any of the brutality. as was mentioned before they publish it themselves. it s a very sophisticated operation. it s horrible beyond belief. we won t show it, but it s out there. thank you, kevin. this situation. my complaint against the bush policy has been the idea that you can eliminate your enemy by killing them all. it shows us killing arabs and islamic people on international television. to me it breeds more. that s right. this is a catch 22. you kill them and they are replaced by more. if you don t, they kill your allies. there are no easy solutions. a key part is to get actor this is the region like jordan. last september. za are rkawi in 2006, the head of al qaeda. the jordan yans helped us get him. saudis and gulf states including kuwait. we saved kuwait. they have private financiers supporting groups like isis. working to cut off the funding and deal with the cancer. that s what it is. deal wit. cut it off. where was the u.n.? awol. i don t know what it s doing. where is turkey? turkey is wringing its hands. they claim to be offering humanitarian assistance. it s unclear. that s what president obama is trying to do. get this region. once again we are the gurka army. we go in to run around and march for somebody else. we do it. thank you. up next, when he was running for president barack obama campaigned on getting the united states out of iraq. now he finds himself sucked back in. i wonder what he has to do now. you re watching hardball, the place for politics. r defending our country. thank you for your 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. peoi go to angie s listt for all kinds of reasons. to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie s list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you ll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we re expecting, i like the fact i can go onto angie s list and look for pediatricians. the service providers that i ve found on angie s list actually have blown me away. find out why more than two million members count on angie s list. angie s list reviews you can trust. life with crohn s disease ois 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. i ran for office in part to end our war in iraq and welcome our troops home. that s what we have done. i will not allow the united states to be dragged into fighting another war in iraq. as we support iraqis as they take the fight to these terrorists, american combat troops will not be returning to fight in raurk. iraq. welcome back to hardball. as i have said it s much easier to get involved in a war than to get out of one. something president obama is keenly aware of. he s gone to great length s to end the war in iraq. there was no small amount of pain when he announced new involvement militarily in iraq. he emphasized he hopes in this case u.s. involvement in iraq will be of a limited nature. still, as peter baker of the new york times wrote, in sending war planes back into the skies of iraq thursday night president obama found himself exactly where he didn t want to be hoping to end the war in iraq he became the fourth president in a row to order military action in that graveyard of american ambition. kristen welker is at the white house now. first to you, kristen. if you could give us a sense of how this went tick-tock to a decision basically to get into it again. as we have done today militarily in iraq. chris, we are just getting our first sense of that tick-tock. i m told by a senior administration official that on wednesday, after president obama wrapped up his news conference at the africa summit he was told by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general martin dempsey the crisis in iraq had reached a critical juncture, that isis was making gains, moving toward erbil. that s when the discussions began about how to respond. there was a high level meeting that night which included president obama. then that situation room meeting on thursday which occurred first thing thursday morning. president obama meeting with his national security team. i m told in those meetings there was broad agreement that something needed to be done. the united states needed to take action. the question was what would that action look like? one of the key concerns was about flying f-18 fighter jets. the reason is they fly low. they fly quickly. there were concerns though that flying those f-18 fighter jets would be putting u.s. military personnel at risk. ultimately though the decision was made that the need to take action outweighed the risks because of the humanitarian crisis and u.s. interests were threatened. also because of the strategic reasons you have been talking about, chris. the fact that erbil is a kurdish strong hold and losing it would be a disaster from the perspective of u.s. policy there. chris? tell me if i m wrong. i looked for little things in the news. one was the release of the photo from the situation room. i wonder if they do it in order to show, a, the deliberate nature of the decision, how difficult it was, that it was a share ed decision with the military man dempsey there. i think that s him in the foreground and tony blake and the national security aid aide in the back and susan rice there, the national security director. is that to show the gravity of the situation, the fact they released the photo. reminded me of the photo when we killed bin laden. right. optics are always important, chris. in these types of situations, even more so. i think you re right to under score that point. there was a desire to show that the president that his national security team were on top of the crisis. they were dealing with the crisis earlier today. we got video of president obama speaking to jordan s king abdullah. i m told he ll make more phone calls to u.s. allies in the coming days to try to shore up support, not necessarily for the military mission, but to get more aid in terms of the humanitarian mission. in addition to all of those christian minorities stranded on the mountain, there are thousands who have been displaced by the crisis. he s going to be reaching out to u.s. allies to get their support in terms of dealing with that. optics are always important, chris. i think that situation room picture we got, the video we got earlier today certainly is part of the white house s desire to show that the president is on top of of this. thanks, kristen. now to ron reagan. you know, grenada was a bite-sized war. how do you have a bite-sized war of a bigger war? you don t take one bite and pull back. that war is still going on testimony yeah, that s right. kristen pointed out a lot of risks here. it s one thing to say we ll have limited strikes, protect the humanitarian mission. that can go wrong in many ways. think about an f-18 going down, a pilot being captured. if those things happen we are in a different ball game. we don t want to be sucked into a war with isis in the middle east. that s for the iraqis, the peshmerga of kurdistan. do they want to say let s watch the fight? i hope the peshmerga at least, they have been regarded as one of the best fighting forces in the region. i understood from the uh news report before i came in, you may know more that they may have actually freed 11,000 of those people driven from their villages now and overrun some of the isis positions. i don t know if that s legit or not. it would be a good sign if it were true. the kurdish army has been respected for a long time like the turkish army. any news that there was a successful military operation near erbil. in fact, in freeing people, allowing them to break out from captivity on the hill in sinjar. the white house hasn t given an update on the ground at this hour, chris. i checked in moments ago. i can tell you their broader strategy in addition to firing the air strikes to increasing military support to the fighters. right. as ron pointed out, they are among the strongest fighters there in that territory. there was a fair amount of surprise by the fact that they were treated so quickly. and the hope is that those air strikes will give them time to basically reconvene, get stronger and rearm, chris? thank you for coming in on a friday night during a war, it looks like. ron reagan, i want to hear more next time. a little short tonight. up next, the reaction from congress to the air strikes in iraq. two coming here, one democrat, one republican. so we re all set? yyyup. with xfinity internet your family can use all their devices at once. works anywhere in the house. even in the garage. max what s going on? we re doing a tech startup. we re streamlining an algorithm. we re going public! 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well, obviously the president is to be commended for sending humanitarian support. the food, the water, to prevent people from starving or dying of thirst. and also, commendable to prevent them from being annihilated by people who are armed and they are unarmed people. but let s take a look, and a limited sense that he knows he has to use some american military support, but that should be very limited, and les remember that this crisis has been brought on because this president has not had a coherent policy in that part of the world. we end up not supplying our friends. we have withheld support from the kurds for a long time, just like this administration is withholding aid from sissi in egypt that the egyptian government this crisis has been brought on by this administration. i accept that assessment. your assessment. what has been the rationale from the white house for not aiding the kurds sufficiently? do they want them to be part of the united government in baghdad? is that s what their argument was? you could hear it in the president s speech last night. his idea of how he s going to solve this is get everybody in the same room and agree to a government they can all agree on. that type of policy does not work. we should be supporting those elements that are pro-american, and if we would have supported the kurds, let them become a national entity, you would have had the sunnis and the shiites creating their national entity and that would have created stability. so, coincidentally, not bipartisan observation, but coincidentally, you re where biden is, let him split up, let him be three different countries. that s correct. it s unfortunate this president has this idea that we re going to get everybody in a room and sing kumbaya and hold hands. fair enough. and that s going to create some kind of peace in that area. that s a good argument. they re suffering because we have not had a coherent policy of supporting those elements that are pro-american in that part of the world. john garamendi, your view of the whole thing in terms of trying to focus it on the situation, the humanitarian aid, you know, dana rohrabacher said we have to do something right now. it s the larger questions that haven t been figured out here. well, certainly true, but we have an immediate humanitarian crisis, potential for genocide, and the president is doing exactly what he should do and what i believe americans want him to do. that is to provide the humanitarian support in every way possible, and to prohibit or prevent any genocide that might be in the future. that s the appropriate way to go. can we do it with the pinprick attacks, knocking out a couple personnel carriers? we re dealing with zealots willing to die for god, determined to kill or be killed. stop when we stop them with the sniper attack basically on them. it s not an all-out assault on them at all. well, the other option, put another 150,000 troops back into iraq, no way, no how. this is going to have to be worked out in that area by the people in that area. ster certainly the kurds have a great interest in seeing isis prevented from getting any closer, and involvement in their area. shiites likewise. the sir rounding countrying, jordan and the rest of them. all of them have a very severe threat, and, yes, we ought to get all of them in a room. kumbaya is not the right song. we better come together, together with those that have an interest in that area, and get to work on trying to prevent this radical group from taking over. that s what we have i was not talking about i was not talking about getting all of those other powers in the room. that, i agree with 16 100%. i m talking about getting everybody in iraq in one room and suddenly then they re going to find a consensus. congressman rohrabacher, do you think that the kurds will defend their city, defend irbil? will they fight for it in the next couple days? sure, they will. we need to make sure they have the ammunition which we have denied them. we have supported a pro-mull la regime in kabul, in baghdad. people hear your argument. i think people figure the argument out. i think we have to help the kurds. thank you, congressman john guer garamendi. and congressman dana ror bara r rohrabacher. a great speechwriter for ronald reagan. we ll be right back after this. from the pros. find more real possibilities at aarp.org/possibilities. 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. crestor lowered bad cholesterol in it s a fact. high-risk patients more than lipitor. bad cholesterol. you re going down! yeah! lowering cholesterol is a big deal, especially if you have high cholesterol plus any of these risk factors, because you could be at increased risk for plaque buildup in your arteries over time. so, when diet and exercise aren t enough to lower cholesterol, adding crestor can help. i m down with crestor! crestor is not right for everyone, like people with liver disease or women who are nursing, pregnant, or may become pregnant. tell your doctor about other medicines you re taking. call your doctor right away if you have muscle pain or weakness, feel unusually tired; have loss of appetite, upper belly pain, dark urine or yellowing of skin or eyes. these could be signs of rare but serious side effects. are you down with crestor!? 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you know what? i have been known to wear a tan suit myself. don t forget, a politics nation baseball cap is always in style. thanks for watching. i m al sharpton. hardball starts right now. a dove named paul? a hawk named hillary? let s play hardball. good evening. i m chris matthews in washington. let me start with the president s decision today to hold off on air strikes in syria. i don t want to put the cart before the horse. we don t have a strategy yet. i think what i have seen in some of the yous reports suggests folks are getting further ahead of where we re at than we currently are. that s not just my assessment but the assessment of the military as well. we need clear plans that we are developing them. i will consult with congress. and make sure their voices are heard. there is no point asking until we know what it will take to get the job done. that was a surprise. the big debate is do we go the direction of george bush again back to pursuing grand goals of ideology? the freedom agenda or do we stick to the dovish stance of president obama trying hard the to wind down the military intervention in the islamic world? here come it is big irony. could the voters be asked to choose from are a dovish republican in rand paul versus a relatively hawkish hillary clinton? listening to what they are saying it s hard to see anything else. in a wall street journal op-ed today senator paul had strong words for people who pushed for stronger action in syria. he wrote, shooting first and asking questions later has never been a good foreign policy. the past year has been a perfect example. our middle east policies unhinged flailing about to see who to act against next with little thought to the consequences. this is not a foreign policy. he pointed out if the hawks got their way and we brought down the government of al assad, it would have been strengthened. the administration s goal has been to degrade assad s power, forcing him to negotiate with the rebels, but degrading assad s military capacity also degrades his ability to fend off isis. joining us are howard fineman and ron reagan. we were talking before the show. very much like the way he s been. dovish. stay out of this stuff. it s as though he read rand paul s op-ed piece. my head is spinning. you have rand paul writing an op-ed piece that could have been written a generation ago by george mcgovern, and the national committee came out with a statement attacking rand paul from the right. basically from the hawkish perspective that sounded like something that could have been produced by dick cheney or john mccain or rudy giuliani a few years ago. this is who he is. he ll go so far as to say, hey, i don t have a plan. i have no strategy as a way the to buy time, rather than shoot first and ask questions later. ron reagan, i have been looking at this for weeks nowment i saw it coming. rand paul is an isolationist, a dove. in many ways he conforms to what i think, probably for different reasons. i think the united states has gone way overboard in involvement in the world. too many fights, too many enemies looking for trouble. an itchy trigger finger. hillary clinton seems to want to be at least two notches to the right if not one notch to the right of the president. much tougher on russia, ukraine, the middle east, china, everywhere. she s much more ornery and wanting to fight. what s your thinking? what s going on with american foreign policy in the debate? the rand paul brand looks better on a bumper sticker than when you flesh it out. howard fineman is a fine editor. if rand paul were one of his columnists and turned this in as a think piece howard would send it back in no uncertain terms saying you need to put thought into it. what was he saying exactly? that we should learn from mistakes in the middle east especially and not repeat them. well, thank you very much, senator paul. next column maybe you can do something on the importance of washing your hands after using the restroom. what did this piece say? nothing. it said let s not be stupid in foreign policy. there is no prescription there from paul. the political point that up is down and black is white with hillary. what i remember about eisenhower is he didn t take us to vietnam. that was a good thing he didn t do. when it comes to foreign policy i believe some of the best stuff you do is what you don t do. lyndon johnson did a lot in foreign policy, right? yeah. a lot of foreign policy. as howard said rand paul s essay is like barack obama s don t do stupid stuff. they are a mirror immanual of one another. hillary clinton says not doing stupid stuff isn t enough. you have to do other things. what are those? that s what we ll see in the depate if she runs. if i had been editing rand paul s piece and i ll ask him to submit the next one to me, ron. you should. first of all, he should have said what he would do. ron s right. he didn t say, okay, you re cautious, you re smart. leave syria alonement stay out of it. that s true. what s wrong with saying we don t have to mess in everybody s rhubarb. why are we building syria, iraq, egypt, the emirates? we are largely leaving syria alone. we have not gone into syria. you want to ask rand paul, what happens when isis beheads other americans? what if they attack oil fields vital to the national interest, an ally we have a defense treaty with. what then? well, hands off? it s more complicated than rand paul s imagining would have it. here comes senator paul again. he called out hillary clinton by name for her hawkish views on syria. wrote, to interventionists like former secretary of state hillary clinton we would caution that arming the islamic rebels in syria created a haven for the islamic state. we are lucky mrs. clinton didn t get her way and the obama administration didn t bring about regime change in syria. that new regime might have been isis. on meet the press sunday the senator called hillary clinton a war hawk. listen. in a general election, were i to run there will be independent and democrats who say, we are tired of war. we are worried hillary clinton will get us involved in a middle eastern war. if you want to see a transformational election in the country let the democrats put forward a war hawk like hillary clinton and see a transformation like you have never seen. amazing stuff that this campaign has begun in 2014. two years from thousand. to look at history, a generation ago all the fights about intervention, isolation and so on were within the democratic party starting with johnson and kennedy, through mcgovern and so forth. now it looks like, if rand paul is to be taken seriously, that the fight will be within the republican party. i would have said, who are the unnamed republicans you are also putting in hillary clinton s camp? if you re going to get to hillary clinton you re doing one of these. come at me. where is that from? pittsburgh? you want to go directly to hillary clinton and set up the general election. who are the republicans you will take on here? it s great. isn t it good? yes. isn t it good we are debating instead of just doing it? we never had a debate about going into iraq, as i recall. a few of us opposed the war. john kerry, biden. who didn t support the war? hill ry. hillary. i don t want to get caught on the wrong side of this baby. i don t want to look weak. i have to look at strong as republicans. that kind of chicken is where the democratic party didn t show its finest colors when they said we don t want to be caught off base. i think you are right, howard. the great debate might be in the debates which by the way, the media won t be involved in the debates next year. we re not involved. i think if paul starts the serious argument within the republican party it could spread to the democrats as well. hillary clinton better watch out. who s going to carry the banner i don t know. for the dovish side. i don t know. who would be the dove against hillary if she runs? she sounds like it. a couple notches from the president. one would be appropriate. if she s two notches from russia, china, the middle east, somebody will commit against her on the left, i think. do you agree? boy, i don t know. i can t see anybody actually challenging her now are from either side from the democratic party. interestingly enough for rand paul he s got the opposite problem hand paul has decided to go into the republican primary running to the left of hillary clinton. that s a novel strategy for a republican. i have to say. i love it. some of the primaries and caucuses you can register on the day, go in and participate where the action is. i think that s one thing rand paul is looking at is a strategy. independents and dems to vote for him. if he s the only anti-war, let s be careful, let s get involved, get in other people s rhubarb to use your are phrase. that s from batman. i grew up with people like mark hatfield, john sherman cooper. these were the people opposed to the vietnam war, republicans out front. it s not the craziest thing for a republican to be dove issue. great to see you. coming up, karl rove s group crossroads gps commissioned a record looking at the republican party standing with women. the blunt finding of the group, female voters think the republican party is intolerant, lacking in compassion, stuck in the past. that s the republican view of their own party. also, what do you think when you mix a private donor s conference sponsored by the koch brothers, an unguarded politician and an audio recording. the latest behind closed doors look at what they really think. this time it s mitch mcconnell explaining what the republican agenda will be if he gets to be majority leader. yesterday, we saw the tragic consequence of what happens when a 9-year-old girl is allowed to shoot an automatic weapon, an uzi. for some gun people i can call them gun nuts, like the nra people, it s the tip of the iceberg. they want virtually no restrictions on guns. wait until you see laws pushed across the country. they are on a slippery slope on the far right. finally, people who speak with a forked tongue like mitch mcconnell and mitt romney. this is hardball, the place for politics. we re less than 70 days from midterm elections now. the senate race in iowa can t get any closer. let s check the hardball scoreboard. the latest poll has democratic congressman bruce braley and republican jo any ernst even at 40%. we have new numbers for the governor s race in the hawkeye state. terry branstad is up by 12 over jack hatch. that s 47-35. things are happening in iowa. we ll be right back. choose nexium twenty-foureople hour for frequent heartburn. i was worried about orange juice, coffee. everything. not anymore. get nexium level protection ™ and for a limited time save six dollars at nexium24hr.com for over 19 million people. 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[ female announcer ] everyone has a moment when tomorrow becomes real. transamerica. transform tomorrow. transamerica. 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. welcome back to hardball. when president obama won 55% of the women s vote to romney s 44% republicans could no longer deny they had a problem. it was acknowledged in the 2013 rnc autopsy report. now a new report commissioned by two major republican organizations including one founded by karl rove. it has bleak news for the grand old party among women. it concludes female voters view the party as intolerant, lacking in compassion, stuck in the past. if hillary clinton is their democratic nominee for president in 2016 the republican party s un popularity with women voters could grow exponentially. joining us is kelly ann conway, a great pollster with the republicans generally and michelle bernard, president of the bernard center for women, politics and public policy who i can never figure out politically. kelly, you know karl rove and we all know him in different ways. what do you make of the republicans doing their own polling and coming out with words that suggest a real problem? i thought this polling was the opposite of breaking news. it s what we saw when developing the contract with america. it shows the caricature of the republicans takes hold. i can tell you what the party is doing. the party is doing its own polling. i have been involved in focus groups and we find there are certainly some of the stereotypes that persist. there are a number of policies that when explained matter. if you have a happy optimistic message that connects with people, remember the famous washington post poll after the 2012 election? mitt romney beat barack obama and who has a vision, he lost 81-18 on which one cares about people like you. even a majority of republicans agreed. there is no question you have to here s the question. why are women more susceptible to buying the caricature. are men buying the caricature of what the party is? sometimes. does it work both ways? sometimes that s true, chris. the genderer gap works both ways. president obama, president clinton, it is difficult for democratic candidates to win men much the way it is difficult for republican candidates to win women. in the case of clinton, she may be the democrats mitt romney in 2016. what evidence is it that she connects with all women? i don t know how good a candidate she ll be. it s one answer we have to wait for. how good a candidate will hillary clinton be? she has the name i.d., credentials f. she s great she walks away. if she s okay, it s close. it s a terrible summer of unforced errors for her in the book tour. terrible. okay. that was a late hit. to this one. 15 yards. 49-39 among women. my question is do you know why it s important? here s the answer before kellyanne gets back. there are more women than men so the gender gap on the women s side is lethal. not only that there are more women than men but women go out and vote. women go to the poll and vote on the issues that matter. what i like and find interesting. i know what people think about karl rove. i m a fan. we have talked about it before. i think he s a brilliant strategist. i watched him work. i personally witnessed him go out with george bush and work hard for the african-american vote. regardless of people say the increase bush got was negligible a 3% increase in the african-american vote is a big deal. i like the poll did you vote for bush? i think he got he once, not twice. first or second? when everyone was worried about the vote for the first or second time. i don t remember. would you vote for him again? when i was worried about terrorism, i saw the massacre in russia. i saw those children could have been mine. george bush was my man. the hanl out of the poll is that the republican party keep s doing autopsies on lots of things. how do we get white women to vote for us. how does the republican party get anyone that s not a white man to vote for them. in 2014 we have a poll that shows among women voters, republicans favored to run the congress, 37% want the congress in republican hands and 51% of women, a real majority want the democrats. explain that. is that caricature. not at all. they are probably going to vote for their incumbents. particularly in the house if they are republicans chances are that individual s connection with that woman and his or her performance on the job will trump party i.d. on the senate side it s fascinating. 2014 is incredible. you have female republics ded republicans . i bet you that mary landrieu, kay hagan and michelle nunn, three female democrats in the south are not going to run on the war on women, anti-woman republican meme. how can they do that? georgia, louisiana and north carolina. they re not talking not that it s the only issue. they don t talk about abortion rights down south. right? right. let me ask you this profound thing. you are fighting a number. 51-37. that s a huge change. it seems women i look at people like joanie ernst. i bet she ll do better among men. that s odd. people vote ideology not gender. correct. you have an african-american senator from south carolina who s a republican. yes. people you have our friend michael steele running in maryland. in our state, yes. he got blown away by the african-americans. they killed him because he s a republican. one of the things we have to look at and kellyanne is my favorite pollster, we have used her. we have to look at the browning of the country. if you look at how voters, the democrats of the republican woman who votes republican. most are married. most are white. most live in upper middle class families. the country is browning. you are seeing fewer white women just like you are anywhere else. and not getting married. they are not getting married. economic issues, the democratic party looks friendlier. i agree. people that go to church a lot, married tend to be republican. those who aren t married, don t go to church a lot tend to be democratic. kellyanne, please come back. we have so much to talk about. great conversation. i almost got a word in there. up next, a word to the wise for rick perry. if you have been indicted on criminal charges you should probably know what the charges arement another oops from the man from texas. this is hardball, the place for politics. one day, 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. tigers, both of you. tigers? 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[ applause ] more news after this. next up, speculation this week that the u.s. led fight against isis in iraq could expand into syria led many to point out a move could put us on the same side as bashar al assad blurring the lines of which side we are on. here is jon stewart reacting to that. could you see as crazy as it might sound some sort of covert cooperation between the u.s. and the syrian regime of al assad in damascus? you know, it is [ bleep ] like this that makes you almost regret us destabilizing the region in the first place. i get it now. now we find ourselves trapped between iraq and assad place. are [ cheers and applause ] finally, if there is one thing we learned about former presidential candidate rick perry during the 2012 campaign it was that he doesn t have the best memory. who can forget the oops heard around the world. the third agency of government, i would do away with education, the um commerce. commerce. and let s see. oh, my. i can t. the third one i can t. i m sorry. oops. that was a small oops. anyway, it seems the recently indicted governor of texas has forgotten which criminal charges have been filed against him. according to abc news he told a group of business leaders in new hampshire over the weekend that, quote, i have been indict bid the same body now for, i think, two counts. one on bribery, which i m not a lawyer so i don t really understand the details here. well, in fact, the charges do not include bribery at all. perry has been indicted for, quote, abuse of official capacity and coercion. you ought to know what you are being charged with. if you are talking about taking down the president make sure nobody is recording you. senator mcconnell caught on tape. that s next. you re watching hardball, the place for politics. thank you daddy for defending our country. thank you for your 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. let that phrase sit with you for a second. unlimited. as in, no limits on your hard-earned cash back. as in no more dealing with those rotating categories. the quicksilver card from capital one. unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase, every day. don t settle for anything less. i ll keep asking. what s in your wallet? 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here it is again. same problem. 47% of the people who vote for the president, agree with him. 47% are dpen dend upon government who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe they are entitled to health care, food, housing, you name it. it s entitlement. that the government should give it to them. they will vote for this president no matter what. the negative messages the candidates are sending behind closed doors that get caught never play well when they are made public. jonathan ways man is is with the new york times and perry bacon is a political news reporter. the rule was don t say anything in politics unless you are ready to see it on the front page of the newspaper. right. that s a caution a lot of them can t abide by when they get in front of fat cats they are trying to kiss. exactly. it usually requires an exclusive cute deal that i will do something for you that will offend other people. let me whisper it when nobody is listening. your thoughts. this is a bipartisan problem. these are the donors backing you up. backing up the party. you feel you need to give them something. the mcconnell campaign said this is something he says all the time. this is not his stump speech. this is what he was telling a group of donors that s not just bank rolling mitch mcconnell but all the candidates that would make him the senate majority leader next year. this was the koch brothers? right. not just americans for prosperity. this was a koch brothers conclave for the whole afp, just universe of koch brothers people that wanted their money s worth. the audio always sucks because it means somebody snuck a cell phone in or a bartender. let s look at the bartender. we showed that one already. this is one from catching the democrats. this is the president of the united states in 2008 talking to a bunch of liberals in san francisco telling them we don t have to worry about lower level people who need guns and bibles. people have been beaten down so long that they feel so betrayed by government. let s pardon them that they get bitter and cling to guns, religion or antipathy toward people who aren t like them. as a way to explain their frustrations. the president lost the pennsylvania primary by nine points. in 1984 colorado senator gary hart was in a tight nomination fight with former vice president walter mondale over california and new jersey when he stepped into it, too, in front of a private audience in california. he described what it was like campaigning apart from his wife. the deal is we campaign separately. the good news is she campaigns in california and i campaign in new jersey. i got to hold a koala bear. mrs. hart said i won t tell you what i got to hold samples from a toxic waste dump. hart lost new jersey by over 15 points. they don t like to be called the solid waste types. it must have worked with the community in california. you never want to say something you would not say in public. obama would never talk about religious people like that in public. romney would never say that. i think mcconnell got away here because he said he ll block things obama is doing. that s not news. it was a total destruction. he said something similar to politico, laying out the idea for attaching anti-obama stuff to spending bills. he talked about it already in some ways. i wasn t shocked. let me go back. do you know what i think the news is? when talking to the koch brothers they are not interested in a mix of progressive here, but mostly conservative here. they want an end to government because they are in the oil and gas business. all they want is no more taxes and certainly no more environmental regulation. they want no more government. that s what the koch brothers want. i think go ahead. i think what s most significa significant, believe me is the optics of it. what you will do is see these audiotapes super imposed over a picture of mitch mcconnell looking mean. you will see them in october in the run-up. it feels like he didn t say anything particularly outlandish. it s not going to look good on an advertisement. how would you find a picture of mitch mcconnell looking mean? i have no idea. you re playing down your own scoop. good work here. perry, thank you. a programming note. allison lundergan grimes will talk to lawrence o donnell tonight on the last word. her first national interview. don t miss it tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern. we ll be right back. age? 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[ male announcer ] it s one of the most amazing things we build and it doesn t even fly. we build it in classrooms and exhibit halls, mentoring tomorrow s innovators. we build it raising roofs, preserving habitats and serving america s veterans. every day, thousands of boeing volunteers help make their communities the best they can be. building something better for all of us. we re back with a gun range story. it confirmed the death was caused by a single shot to the head. the instructor at the bullets and burgers gun range was shot when the girl lost control of an uzi. it ignited new debate over gun safety. the fact that the recall is too strong for a child of that age seems a matter of common sense. it was reminiscent of a 2008 incident in which an 8-year-old boy in massachusetts fired the very same weapon with disastrous results. the gun tilted up, killing him in the process. unfortunately these tragedies are part of a bigger problem in the country which has seen an erosion of gun restrictions over the past 30 years. unsurprisingly the national rifle association has been con speck lousily silent since that event. for years the nra raised money on the notion that any restrictions on guns will lead to their confiscation which they call a slip vi slope. but there is a slippery slope on the other side toward complete unrestricted access to firearms. guns are ubiquitous thanks to advocacy of the nra. joining me is jim cavanaugh, retired atf special agent in charge and chief johnson of the national law enforcement partnership to prevent gun violence and police chief of baltimore county, maryland. thank you. i want to speak to mr. cavanaugh first. what is it about the nra s current position that seems to the allow them or force them to say nothing this these days since the tragedy where the young 9-year-old girl was shooting an automatic weapon. chris, i would say that lobby groups like the nra don t feel they have to say anything. today tuck in, get advice from the public affairs specialist to just stay out of the fray. you know they are very adept at maneuvering the trenches on the hill up there as you are know. they will probably stay out of the fray. if they say anything they something. i think they ll let it play out for the operators and ranges around the country. you know, there s associations for them. and they re going to be more the outfront speakers on the issue. does silence mean consent? well it often does in law. well, i think it does as far as they don t want to go any way against guns at all, no matter what. and that s what you described in your opening there. it s sort of a fanaticism and doesn t go to any moderation in anything. you know, it has to be one way or the highway and that s the way the lobby groups see it. they see it as just an idealism fanaticism with no compromise at all. what do you make of the no comment, mr. johnson, not even the words, no comment, nothing, just nothing. i mean, this involves guns. you know, uzi, a pretty dangerous weapon, is an automatic weapon. it s light. it s a submachine gun basically. and everybody with it can do a lot of damage. we saw what happened here. a lot of damage, unintended. totally unintended. it was the gun that killed people here. not just the person. certainly it s irresponsible on the part of organizations like nra not to speak out. it s, frankly, irresponsible to put an uzi of that capability in the hands of a 9-year-old. for groups like the nra who have been founded upon, you know, gun safety and range and the sport, itself, you know, putting a ruger .22 in the hands, for example, of someone to train them is totally different than putting a gun of that capability in a 9-year-old s hands. totally irresponsible. let me ask you, mr. cavanaugh, what would be a restriction that would make sense here? i know everything they see sounds like confiscation to them, the slippery slope. here we are at the other end has become a slippery slope. anything goes. from what you said, it sounds like they don t want to hear that you can have an age requirement, say 18, something reasonable about being able to handle an automatic weapon. that would be pretty liberal. they don t even want to see that at these gun ranges. right. i don t think you re going to see any lobby groups get in the press for any change here. they re going to stay out of the fray. it would generally be up to the sta states, chris, if there were any laws that talked about ages a gun ranges, and likely states that would pass the law don t need the law. and the states that need the law won t pass the law. and it s unlikely that we re going to have any change on the hill, and probably federal law wouldn t be the right place to address ages on guns anyway. so i d say we re not going to have any legislative change, although it would probably be good if little children were, couldn t do that, but the children need protection immediately. that s where common sense comes in. that s where range operators have to say we re not going to do this anymore. we ve had two deaths, they shouldn t be shooting these kinds of guns. they re submachine guns for the military, for the police, for trained people that collect them, certainly we understand that. in the citizens hands that have a permit for it. but not for children. it s not disneyland. you don t need to go out there shooting those kinds of weapons. chief johnson, seems to me even a fire hose had a kick to it. you need a couple serious firefighters to know how to handle one. an automatic weapon like this, what kind of kick does it have? what kind of sense would anybody have i don t want to speak over the dead. this guy s dead. the idea of putting something like that in the hands of a skinny little girl. a 9-year-old girl. doesn t make any sense at all to anybody, right wing, left wing, down the middle. i don t get it. well, certainly common sense should have been applied here, and the muscular development of a child of that age certainly is not to the point to handle that weapon. look, as a nation, we implement all sorts of different rules, policies, and laws in some cases to safeguard children and others. have to be a certain height to ride an amusement ride park. require bike helmets. but yet we won t tackle an issue like this. certainly here i think common sense should have prevailed. you know, we pass common sense laws in this nation. we re seeking common sense gun laws like a national background check. but in this case, you know, i don t care what type of rule, policies you may have put in place, or the way the range instructor hovered over the child. there s very little you can do with, you have a kid with that kind of weapon in their hands. that thing s going everywhere. here s a crazy law in vermont, which i thought was a pretty liberal state. apparently you can get a gun at 16, you can buy a handgun or a shotgun at 16 but have to be 17 to see an r rated movie. interesting how we make these judgments. thank you, jim cavanaugh, thank you jim johnson for joining us. another tragedy. and we ll be right back after this. e freedom of the open road? 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someone in the room is going to have a cell phone or some other piece of electronics and get you on the record and send it out even if, especially if, that s the last thing you want done. how do we know that barack obama talked to the liberals of san francisco about the people who, quote, cling to their guns or religion? because someone had a cell phone and put it out. and we know what he said. how do we know that mitt romney was talking down to the 47% he said lived off the rest of the country? because a bartender record it. don t you love this stuff, when a politician gets caught pandering to one group while putting down the other to have the other group learn what he was saying behind closed doors. it shouldn t surprise us, none of this. why do you think the press out of political fund-raisers? they don t want us or the public to hear what it is they re throwing out when they re throwing out the raw meat.