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homes. there should be no intervention whatsoever. there shouldn't be any adjustments on those mortgages. just let them go. really marie antoinette attitude toward it. >> and it's also a call to destroy the united states of america. just think if they had been president instead of franklin roosevelt during the great depression. do nothing! >> we'd still be in it. >> not only would we still be in it, but would we have handled world war ii? >> well, surrender would be one option, just not entering it at all, i guess, would be the other. let canada go do it, i guess, right? >> yeah. i think the american people get this. obama, i don't think he has much to worry about. >> i think he's winning every one of these debates. these guys keep staking out these right-wing positions, repeatedly. they basically keep loading up the obama campaign with video of romney, who's going to be the nominee, staking out these wildly right-wing positions. >> right. no. can i say one positive thing
to be rebuilt, no doubt about that. >> but you can't name the third one? >> the third agency of government? i would do away with education, the -- >> commerce. >> commerce. and let's see -- i can't. the third one i can't. sorry. oops. >> i said at the end of rick perry's first debate that he had destroyed his candidacy by attacking social security. he could not possibly beat president obama by attacking social security if he ever got to be the nominee and he probably couldn't win the republican nomination with that attack on social security. tonight, he just lost all hope of even being considered for the vice presidential nomination. the party cannot afford to send that man into a debate with joe biden. joining me now is msnbc analyst steve schmidt. he is the former senior adviser to the mccain/palin campaign, and a senior strategist in the
occurred after the first incident. and joe paterno, a person who so many of us admired in this country, goes out tonight in disgrace, because his actions were disgraceful. and no one should have sympathy for him because of that. >> steve, you've seen this kind of crisis management before, not exactly this model, obviously, but how do you -- how would you advise the university to handle this, from this point forward? obviously conceding they've made a lot of mistakes up to now. >> i think that they need to bring in independent investigators, people of unimpeachable integrity who will top to bottom review what happened. what were the systems failures that took place here? why did this happen? why was it covered up? who was involved? and they need to issue a report
today. >> the -- there are a bunch of e-mails that are -- some of them are not included in this book, that you were questioned about at different times, including in a senate hearing where a senator ben nighthorse campbell was questioning you. he said he referred to one of your e-mails, and it's about your representation of indian tribes, and he said, you sent an e-mail to mr. scanlon, which referred to some of your clients. let me read it to you. i'll illuminate the profanities to avoid those, but you can fill in the blanks. "are you f'ing kidding me? i hate those f-boy scouts. what a bunch of a-holes." we can fill in the blanks. but to which indians were you referring? why did you refer to them in such despicable terms, you took the fifth amendment. can you respond to that now? >> well, i sent over the course of my career some very stupid e-mails. that was one of them, obviously. i was a very passionate and emotional player in what i was doing. and sometimes our emotions spilled over into jocular, and
not the first person to write dumb things in e-mails, but i'm the poster child to have the guy, when they say, don't write something in an e-mail you don't want to see on the front page of "the washington post," that's my picture that comes up. >> i want you to hear what representative frank wolf has said just recently about you. >> my conscious has required me to come to the floor to express concerns i have with grover norquist has on the political process in washington. one of mr. norquist's relationship with jack abramoff, mr. abramoff essentially laundered money through atr and mr. norquist knew it. i believe mr. norquist is connected with or has profited from a number of unsavory people and groups out of the mainstream. >> is he right? i think frank wolf has an agenda. obviously, he's upset with grover over whatever, i don't know. i'm not really close to grover
joining me now is msnbc analyst steve schmidt. he is the former senior adviser to the mccain/palin campaign, and a senior strategist in the bush/cheney '04 campaign. and msnbc political analyst and future msnbc host, alex wagner. thank you both for joining me tonight. steve, you've seen a lot of these debates. i -- there's never been a moment in my lifetime, in the history of televised presidential debates, as what we just saw happen with rick perry. he's got these three agencies of government he absolutely wants to close down when he becomes president. just can't remember that third one. >> yeah. i think it's over for him. i think his campaign effectively ended tonight. just an extraordinary moment, the likes of which we have never seen before in a presidential debate. he had fallen off the radar screen. he's fallen to michele bachmann levels in the race, but i think it's over tonight with that.
frankly, stupid, e-mails. that's one i regret. i've apologized for it. i apologize tonight for it. it was just a stupid move. >> one of your rackets was indian tribes, representing indian tribes and playing the casino game on one side or the other, trying to help some of them get permission to run casinos, trying to prevent other tribes getting permission to run casinos, because that would compete with your tribe, casino. and in one of those non-compete games, you ended up in a situation with ralph reed, and they asked you under oath in the senate committee, kent conrad asked you, he said, "i would like to ask, did you, mr. abramoff, you and your partner, your colleague, mr. scanlon, give $4 million to ralph reed?" and you pled the fifth amendment on that and didn't answer that. did you give $4 million to ralph reed? >> yeah, we provided -- ralph reed was a very important vendor in terms of our effort to slow down competition for our tribes.
absolutely. i don't know the exact number. >> and you -- and that $4 million was delivered to ralph reed to get him to mobilize christian conservative opposition to a casino that some indian tribe you weren't representing was trying to -- >> well, either indian or non-indian casinos. >> any casino -- >> we hired our clients, as often others are, to prevent them from losing their market. and we were very creative and used every method we could to do that. and one of them was to mobilize people who hated casino gambling for the short-term strange bedfellows partnership of working together to stop a new casino. >> one of the tribes, thetiguas that you represented, eventually they ran out of money in their ability to pay you. how much did they pay you over time? >> i think it was a couple million dollars. >> and eventually they ran out. >> right. >> so you came up with another idea. "in 2003, abramoff approached the tigua tribal council with a novel proposition.
>> it was one of those white-knuckled moments where you could almost hear him saying, line, line. it was painful to watch. but once you have the pity of the american public, you've also lost their vote. >> and steve, this is one of those debates everybody was watching just to see, how is herman cain going to handle it? and also, not just how is he going to handle it, but how is it going to come up? it wasn't clear to me in a cnbc economics debate, how you could bring this up. but let's see exactly how it did come up in the debate. >> here we're focusing on character and on judgment. you've been a ceo. >> yes. >> you know that shareholders are reluctant to hire a ceo where there are character issues. why should the american people hire a president if they feel there are character issues? >> the american people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations. that's what that's about. and i value my character and my
what we have in washington today is a president and an administration that doesn't like business. the senate somehow thinks they like jobs, but they don't like businesses. >> michael, the republican candidates went into your home state, michigan, tonight, to debate. not one of them, not one of them supported the out bailout that president obama did that effectively saved the american automobile industry. >> not only that, there was no discussion of jobs, real jobs, in a state where there are hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs. we've at a high rate of unemployment for the last five years. and also, no apology on their part as a party for giving this disastrous economy to the new president, having destroyed it in the previous president's term. nobody seems to want to take any credit for that. but i was just wondering, the people in the audience there, what they were feeling and thinking, when there was actually no discussion about real jobs or how to put people