good evening, everyone. i'm erin burnett. "outfront" tonight, is mitt romney richard gere? i had a flashback to "singing women" when he takes julia roberts to dinner with the ceo of a company he's planning to buy out. >> if you were to get control, and i don't think you will, but if you did, what do you plan to do with the company? >> break it up and sell off the pieces. >> i'm sure you'll understand i'm not thrilled at the idea of your turning 40 years of my work into your garage sale. >> at the price i'm paying for this stock, mr. morris, you are going to be a very rich man. >> i'm rich enough. i just want to have my shipyard. >> julia roberts then says slippery little suckers. the image is the one president obama though is hoping sticks about mitt romney. here are clips from two ads supporting the president running right now. >> having a good paying job that you can support and raise a family on is hugely important. >> that stopped with the sale of the plant to bain capital. >> i thought that i was going to retire from there. i had about 2 1/2 years to go. i was suddenly 60 years old. i had no health care. >> those stories are wrenching, and they call into question mitt romney's claim that he created 100,000 jobs. >> in the business i had we invested in over 100 different businesses, and net net taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added, those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs. i have a record of learning how to create jobs. >> is the number real? okay. when pressed on whether that 100,000 job number included the number of jobs lost during his tenure, now, he said net net, okay? but here is how he responded. >> it includes the net of both. i'm a good enough numbers guy to make sure i got both sides of that. >> okay. but bain's own numbers don't actually seem to support it. we got the numbers from bain, and they say that mitt romney created a net, i actually did the math here, 120,336 jobs at 24 companies. now, bain actually lays out every company and every number. they pull it from press reports. you have to give them credit, 40 jobs here, 294 jobs, very specific. the problem is that bain invested, as mitt romney said, in 100 companies while romney was the boss, and we don't know what happened at the other 76. so i went somewhere else. we looked at studies of private equity firms' impact on jobs. there have been several. evaluating 3,200 buyouts found companies bout out lose about 1% of their workforce. that seems to support the more positive view of private equity which is that firms like bain take over weak or faltering companies where everyone might lose their jobs, build a stronger company where the remaining jobs are more stable. maybe that's what cory booker, the unfairly maligned mayor of newark, was saying when he appeared on "meet the press" sunday. >> i have to just say from a very personal level, i'm not about to sit here and indict private equity. to me we're getting to a ridiculous point in america. >> personal. maybe because booker was referring to newark-based thibault. it's america's oldest continually operating wallpaper company. riverside baud ought it in 2006 which saved the company from liquidation and he says created jobs. that's the image mitt romney wants voters to have. romney wants voters to see him as this richard gere, the one who builds companies. thanks to julia roberts' influence. >> mr. lewis and i are going to build ships together, great big ships. >> so which is the truth? ed conner is former manager director of bain capital and author of "unintended consequences" and john avlon joins me as well. i really love the richard gere thing. >> always a win. >> ed, let me start with you. you spent a long time at bain. you are an unapologetic defender of free market capitalism. obviously your book takes aim at that, but can you just answer the fundamental question here. mitt romney is trying to say he created jobs, but let's be clear here, his number one goal had nothing to do with creating jobs, right? >> i think that's a cartoonish portrayal of business. people want to pretend the only thing business is doing is working for investors but what's left out of that, the half truth is businesses are working for customers. customers decide what businesses are going to be successful, whether businesses grow or don't grow. in the end if you satisfy the customer, you will end up satisfying the investor. but you can't jump straight to the investor without first working for the customer. >> okay. all of that is true, but still the way you do that is try to come up with something people want. that's your goal. >> absolutely. >> as a private he can quit investor your goal is to do that and make money doing that. >> sure. jobs theoretically flow out of that but it's not definitional and it's not part of the evaluation process. >> i think they flow out of the success of that, let's put it that way. >> so overall though, 1% less -- the study we looked at which is not the only one out there, but shows they do net net slightly fewer jobs. >> if you look at the big picture, don't forget in the 1800s the ludites were breaking down the machines because they thought productivity was going to slow down employment. productivity gains have increased employment. if you compare the united states to europe and japan, we have added 40 million employees on a base of 100 million employees in the 1980s. europe and japan grew combined 20%, half the rate of the u.s. why is that? u.s. productivity has been higher and our employment growth has been faster. we put 20 million immigrants, the families, we gave them homes, gave their families jobs. we educated their children -- >> you're saying that's because we allow people to fire people, turnover quickly. it's free market capital irism >> it's because we make businesses stronger and can grow them faster. none of us investors are being successful if we don't make the businesses successful. >> john avlon, the problem in all of this for mitt romney is, and it seems to me why aren't they coming out with thibault. why did i find it? i can see why corey book mother is an ardent democrat and believed in president obama also has positive things to say about private equity. the two things are not mutually exclusive, right? >> they're not at all. especially if you're trying to turn around a city or state and you need investors in companies that are in danger of going bankrupt, especially if they have been struggling in your city for a long time. the point of this line of argument, the president is drawing a clear line in the sand saying this is what the election is going to be about. it isn't simply about trashing private equity, it's about appealing to middle class voters who have been feeling squeezed for decades. squeezed by big government and they see high finance coming in and possibly presep tating a massive economic downturn. it's about whether or not mitt romney as a former head of bain capital can connect with those folks who have been struggling since way before this recession began. >> whether he can become that second richard gere. >> they want to make it an argument about employers versus employees. and they think that's a winning strategy, but the truth is these commercials vilify all of business because there's not really a difference between what private equity is doing and what business is doing generally. they have to deliver more and more value to customers and they do have to do it at lower and lower costs and 24e6 to do it more successfully than competitors. are there tough decision that is have to be made along the way? there are tough decisions that have to be made. >> but, look, when mitt romney says he's not running on his record as governor of massachusetts, he's running on his record at bain. therefore, the obama campaign accepting that term of the debate and saying let's take a closer look. saying it's tantamount to a general attack on free markets doesn't hold up. it just doesn't hold up because all free market -- free enterprise doesn't amount to private equity they're different sides of the equation. there's manufacturing, there's the fact that when private equity comes in, they try to take care of debt and take care of efficiencies. in the short run it may cost a few jobs. >> if you step back and look at the big picture, bain invested in 350 companies. a small minority of those companies were unsuccessful. the rest of them through two and a half times faster than the s&p 500. created close to $100 billion of increased revenues in the companies. so are they cherry picking off examples of difficult situations where we weren't successful? yeah, they're picking off examples where businesses aren't successful as if businesses could be successful without also having some failures along the way. it's a cartoonish portrayal of business. it's actually very anti-business. it goes way beyond lbos. what they're doing right now is test marketing commercials for later in the campaign season to see what's effective. >> it seems to me from a political point of view the romney campaign should fight back by finding other examples because it is on the table and did he make it the center so he has to defend the roshd and make the case. >> that's right. the strongest argument he can make is, look, i'm a problem solver, i'm a turn around expert. i take companies and turn them into competitors again like i will for the american economy. that's the best argument he can make. >> are you going to vote for mitt romney? >> i think everybody knows i'm a major contributor to mitt so yes. >> sometimes people make an argument but their heart is in a different place. thanks very much to both of you. appreciate it. ahead, new warning signs for president obama. we have a brand new poll. and then this, so you text a friend who's driving. your friend gets into an accident, and you could get sued. this could be a major turning point. there's a case going on right now. and a new and alarming warning about what could happen to the economy if the do-nothing congress continues to do nothing. where's i.t. mom? 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[ male announcer ] aggressive styling. a more fuel-efficient turbocharged engine. and a completely redesigned interior. ♪ the 2012 c-class with over 2,000 refinements. it's amazing...inside and out. see your authorized mercedes-benz dealer for exceptional offers through mercedes-benz financial services. for a hot dog cart. my mother said, "well, maybe we ought to buy this hot dog cart and set it up someplace." so my parents went to bank of america. they met with the branch manager and they said, "look, we've got this little hot dog cart, and it's on a really good corner. let's see if we can buy the property." and the branch manager said, "all right, i will take a chance with the two of you." and we've been loyal to bank of america for the last 71 years. our second stoush "outfront." two major polls showing a tight race for the white house. nbc/"wall street journal" has the president up by one point outside the margin of error, but the true story lies under the surface where we find warning signs for both candidates. oh, and we did find them. ryan joins me here and jamal simmons joins me from washington. i wanted to lay out for each of you, first, the warning signs for president obama. talk about those, and then we'll get to mitt. warning sign number one, 30% of people polled say they are not as well off as when the president took office. that is on par with bush 41 at 42%. the gender gap is narrowing. president obama is now up 7% among women compared to last month when he was up 19% and in 2008 he won them by 13%. and the third problem, it's a statistical tie on who handles the economy better. 46% obama, 47% romney. jamal, let me start there. considering mitt romney is trying to run as a business guy it would seem this is a good y thing for the president but you're not so sure? >> i don't think so. i think the president has been more ahead of mitt romney on this question. ultimately it's going to be an election on the economy and which one they trust most to handle the economy and all the issues they face, so that 46/47 number is a little troubling. the one piece of good news here is it's may and not october, and so he's got a lot of time to fix that and get that number up a little bit. >> ryan, i want to ask you about the gender gap narrowing. now, the president gave a commencement address at barnard, a women's college. he did the abc show "the view" with all women. he was sitting sandwiched between the lovely ladies. his proxies including nancy pelosi have been talking for months about a republican war on women. if all of that was working, you would think this gap would be getting wider, not narrower. >> i think that's absolutely right, and i also think republicans just have a structural advantage among men that democrats have to overcome by having a fairly wide gender gap with women and that's just not happening now so that really is a concern. another concern in that "washington post"/abc poll is that that poll sampled democrats way more heavily than republicans in a way that might not pan out come election day and let's not forget, it's a poll of registered voters rather than likely voters. republicans tend to be older, more reliable voters when crunch time comes. that's another thing that might be a liability. some of those older married women, might wind out turning up for mitt romney where as younger single women if they're disappointed by the economy, they might not turn out. >> i think ryan is right that he has to be a little nervous about how the poll is conducted, but also remember it's not just younger single women. it's also older divorced women who are part of that democratic coalition. >> let me get to the warning signs for mitt romney. number one, among people who say the economy is not so good, they vote for president obama 58% over romney 36%. obviously not a good thing for mitt romney. enthusiasm gap, a quarter of romney voters are not enthusiastic. only 9% of obama voters say the same thing. and when asked the question, who better understands economic problems people are having? 48% to the president, 40% to mitt romney. enthusiasm gap, this is obviously hugely significant for mitt romney. a quarter of the people who say they'll vote for him aren't enthusiastic. they might not even turn out. >> absolutely. i think that's a huge issue. i would actually throw out that the number about who understands your economic problems ask a really, really big one. mccain got blown away on that number in 2008. if you don't believe a candidate understands where you're coming from economically, you're not going to support that candidate. >> jamal, there's some good news in the economy here though for president obama. >> absolutely. and i think ryan is right about that number. this goes back to that issue of trust. the president has been to be able to convince people, mitt romney may have done some things on business but can you count on him to understand you and who you are and what you need? if he can get people to buy that he's the one to trust, they will be okay. >> thanks to both of you. "outfront" next, texting a friend who is driving to meet you. well, you could get sued. and an american bound flight diverted. fighter jets scrambled for a us airways plane. a passenger comes "outfront" ahead. the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news. is now providing answers families need. siemens. answers. diarrhea, gas or bloating? get ahead of it! one phillips' colon health probiotic cap a day helps defend against digestive issues with three strains of good bacteria. hit me! [ female announcer ] live the regular life. phillips'. 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>> in part it is an issue of money, unspecified damages. the bigger issue is they say the woman who texted knew that the guy was in the car, and by doing so she willingly was a participant to the distraction. i think it's really to send a message to teens and to people texting out there that if you know you are sending a text to somebody who is driving, there are consequences, and that is fundamentally what is the heart of their message. >> our paul callahan was saying this is something that there could be a precedent for this sort of thing in terms of if you sell alcohol to a minor and they then drive and someone is hurt or killed, you can be sued as the person who sold the alcohol or a parent who a party is in your home, you can be sued. dwr >> think about how many accidents there are every year because people are texting. if you're going to send one, you will maybe think twice. that's part of the psychology behind that. >> i think people who text while driving should go to jail, ten years minimum and i'm only partially kidding. still "outfront," the do-nothing congress a frightening warning about what could happen to the u.s. economy if congress files to act. and george zimmerman, will he even go to trial for the killing of trayvon martin? one expert says zimmerman won't go to trial, will go completely free. 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[ male announcer ] it's a network of possibilities -- helping you do what you do... even better. ♪ how did i get here? dumb luck? or good decisions? ones i've made. ones we've all made. about marriage. children. money. about tomorrow. here's to good decisions. who matters most to you says the most about you. massmutual is owned by our policyholders so they matter most to us. massmutual. we'll help you get there. all right. welcome back to the second half of "outfront." we start the second half of our show with stories we care about where we focus on our own reporting from the front lines. the head of the iaea says he's reached a tentative agreement with iranian leaders to give access to sites where there could be nuclear testing. if it does, that would be a break through. iranian state media reports scientists have inserted a nuclear fuel rod into a reactor. we also have new satellite pictures from north korea's nuclear test site. i'll show them to you. according to defense publication ihs james, the activity is a sign that the country is preparing for a test. the images from april show mining equipment removing earth and debris from a tunnel. more recent tunnels this month show new road networks. yesterday glynn daveys told reporters it would be a serious miscalculation if north korea work toward a nuclear test. john morgan's $3 billion trading loss front and center in washington. there was a senate banking committee meeting. mary schapiro appeared and chairman gary gensler. you saw him right there. both told the panel they're investigating the loss. also on capitol hill, three senators announce their plan to introduce legislation that would remove bankers from fed boards. of course, that came up in this whole situation because jamie dimon is on the new york federal reserve board of directors. the senators say it poses a conflict of interests. sales of existing homes rose in april. 3% to 4% higher. the median home price, $177,400. that's up 10% from a year ago. so where are they going up the fastest? according to data compiled for cnn, here is where you should be looking. they're all in the western part of the country. madera, california, number one. oregon has three cities in the top five. it has been 292 days since we lost our credit rating. we ask every night what are we doing to get it back? i'll tell you this, if housing gets better, that will do it. it's the single biggest reason this country fell into what could have been a great depression. if housing prices go up, it will mean a miracle. which brings us to our fourth story "outfront." members of congress, consider yourselves warned again. the congressional budget office announcing about an hour ago that unless you take action to prevent the bush tax cuts from expiring at the end of the year, we'll likely be in a recession early next year. now, the end of the year is also when automatic spending cuts start to take affect. that's the whole super committee super fail that we're a little obsessed with. beginning of the year $109 billion of those will hit. in other words, the fiscal cliff that we americans are rushing towards. we've been passionately warning about it for ages, so have many economists. so a washington heed the warning now that the cbo has finally stated the obvious? senate majority leader harry reid responded to it immediately saying we could avoid the so-called fiscal cliff tomorrow if republicans would agree to extend the middle class tax cuts. okay. what we need from our leaders is leadership. that statement tells me we're going to be seeing more gridlock ahead. doug holt seeken, robert reich, author of the new e book beyond outrage. that's how i feel when we start talking about congress and how it deals with some of our problems these days. okay. so is congress finally going to wake up because of this, bob? everybody has been saying it for months, years. is this going to do it for congress? >> hi, erin. officially, i don't think there's going to be any wake-up. i think one has to be beyond optimistic to think in an election year congress is going to actually compromise on anything. now, the hope is that with this warning shot by the cbo, at least behind the scenes staffers and maybe some moderate republicans to the extent there are any left and maybe some moderate democrats will get together and begin planning some way of avoiding this fiscal cliff. >> doug, do you think this will be a wake-up call? because i see that statement from harry reid and want to throw my hands up in the air. obviously, he wants to get rid of the tax cuts for middle class americans and raise them for everybody else. that's his point of view, but it would seem when the cbo comes out with something like this, the first thing that you want out of your leader isn't just to go out with the line in the sand that you've drawn that hasn't worked so far. >> it is disappointing. i think there are really three things to take away from this. first, it's a very big deal. i cannot remember the last time the congressional budget office predicted a recession. for them to do so is really quite an extraordinary moment. the second thing is that they said two things. they said it would be a good idea to avoid the fiscal cliff and a recession but they also said it would be good to avoid the cliff and take care of our long-term debt problems. that leaves us with number three which is the state of play and the house has, in fact, passed legislation to substitute the sequester and they will pass an extension of the bush tax cuts and they've passed a budget which takes care of the debt, but on the democratic side in the senate, there's zip, zero, nada, and so far the president has been silent as well. from where i sit, we really need presidential leadership on this, and the truth is all hands may get forced because if investors start looking and seeing their tax rates go from 15% to 44% on dividends, they're not going to wait for january to declare a problem. we're going it start to see it in the economy quickly, and that's bad for all incumbents, house, senate, and presidents. >> bob reich, i was talking to john boehner last week and he said to me -- he had come out with sort of a similar thing to harry reid but it was on the debt ceiling. i'm not going to raise it if you don't give me a cut for every dollar i raise it, the republican line in the sand that they draw, but he was right when he said one thing, which is i don't see why we should wait until the election. and he got me thinking about something because you're going to have november is the election an then this all happens by the end of december and all of a sudden we're going to get a grand bargain that solves -- >> no. >> yeah. >> it's a lame duck congress after the election, and lame duck congresses are not known historically to do very magnificent things. it's pretty clear john boehner and harry reid are drawing lines in the sand mainly for bargaining advantage. the hope is that with regard to taxes and letting the bush tax cuts maybe go on a little bit longer, particularly for the middle class and that's what the president has wanted and he's stated very specifically, but also avoiding that sequestration, avoiding the major cuts that even the congressional budget office says are very dangerous when the economy is still in the gravitational pull of the great recession. in order to do that, we've got to make sure that at least some people in congress, some members of congress and their staff, are working behind the scenes so that after election day there can be a bipartisan proposal. i know it seems very unlikely, but otherwise we're going to be in a recession. >> erin, ji i just want to poin out we may not until after the election. for the sequestration agencies are going to start right now to put aside funds so they can meet those cuts and the economy is going to start to suffer from the prospect of those tax increases. so it would be wise, as the speaker said, to move in advance of the election if only to cement in place for a short time current policy so that the victors could sort out how they want to lead the nation afterwards. >> thanks very much for both of you. we're cheering for people like tom coburn, mark warner, those are the guys right now working across the aisle to get something done, reasonable people, and we hope that they succeed. there was a scare over the atlantic today. a woman claiming she had a device surgically implanted inside her forced a u.s. bound fight a us airways flight, to make an emergency landing. flight 787 was headed from paris to charlotte this morning. it didn't get there. it diverted to bangor, maine. federal law enforcement officials say a woman on board gave the flight crew a note saying she had a device implanted inside her. fighter jets were scrambled. doctors were on board that flight. they examined the woman. she's from cameroon. they were able to determine she did not have a bomb because she didn't seem to have any scars. if it were implanted they would have seen that. she is being held by federal authorities tonight and they don't believe at this time it's terror related. passengers were loaded onto another flight, just got into charlotte a little bit ago, but "outfront" tonight one of those passengers, andrew. thanks very much for taking the time to be with us. tell me what happened and what you saw? how did this go down? >> well, initially they made a call to see if there was a doctor on the plane. i was asleep at that time, but shortly -- i mean i want to say maybe five or six hours into the flight they made an announcement that there were unprecedented head winds and they would have to make an unscheduled fuel stop in -- they didn't say where, just an undisclosed place and that they would be landing shortly. and within ten minutes of the announcement they had landed and as soon as we landed customs and border parole came on board and handcuffed a woman and led her off the back of the plane. >> wow. it's interesting from what you said, just a couple things as someone bo who flies. they didn't tell you what it was. you didn't know it was a security incident. that sounds like a really quick landing. was it that you noticed that, a sharp descent? ten minutes is fast. >> yeah. it was a little strange. nobody either the crew or any of the passengers seemed to be kind of unduly worried about it. i think everybody was like, oh, this is a strange thing, my girlfriend turned to me and said should we be worried they didn't put enough fuel in the plane? but nobody seemed too concerned about it outside of it being just kind of minimally a strange thing to have half. >> when the woman was escorted off, did you -- i'm not sure how close were you sitting and were you able to -- did you observe her at all during the flight? notice anything about her? how was she acting? >> she was probably about six rows behind me. i noticed -- i had gone to the restroom earlier in the flight and i noticed that she had been sitting alone in the back of the plane and seemed kind of sweaty and nervous, seemed on edge, but no more so than anybody who is nervous about flying. i saw her -- when they led her off the plane, i saw her, she seemed to be a woman in her mid-20s, mid-30s. there wasn't any sort of scuffle when they led her off the plane or anything. it was all done very quickly and very quietly. >> interesting, she was young. andrew, thank you very much. what an experience. thanks for taking the time to share it with us. we'll keep following that. still "outfront," one criminal expert says george zimmerman will not even go to trial. and meet the congressional candidate who believes posing topless will win the election. we'll keep following that. ♪ ♪ why do you whisper, green grass? 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[ male announcer ] solutionism. the new optimism. and now to tonight's outer circle where we reach out to our sources around the world. we begin in egypt where people go to the polls tomorrow to vote for president. it's the first democratic presidential election in history today. voting will last two days with a runoff in mid-june if no candidate gets more than 50%. ben wedeman is in cairo and i asked him what voters have been telling him have been driving them. >> reporter: the polls have been all over the place. this is the first time in egypt's more than 5,000-year history that egyptians have had the opportunity to choose their head of state, so let's keep those polls aside. what are people worried about? the economy, stability, security, all of which have taken a hit since the revolution almost a year and a half ago. but this election is critical. many egyptians feel the country will decide whether it should go to a new islamic order or stay closer to the status quo and bring life a bit back to normal. erin? >> all right, thanks to ben. now to mexico where natalia juarez, a congressional candidate, has breathed new life into her campaign with a revealing new strategy. juarez posed topless with six other party supporters for a campaign poster. she says it's a wake-up call to energize voters. rafael romo is covering the story and i asked him whether the new campaign is playing well with voters. >> erin, we're still 40 days from the actual election. the 34-year-old philosophy professor has become the best-known candidate for congress in mexico. when juarez noticed her bid for congress was off to a sloe start, she decided she would be more transparent with voters in a way they wouldn't expect. she has been targeted on social media. who needs brangs when you have these. she dismisses those comments saying she's a radical comment with radical ideas for a better mexico. she says this is nothing compared to the publicity she will unveil in the next weeks. anderson what's coming up? >> preaching the gospel of hate. this is pastor charles whirly who's laid out a plan to round up gays and lesbians and surround them with an electrified fence until they die. that's his plan he talked about at the pulpit. you will also hear members of the congregation say amen. it's not the first time this pastor preached this kind of message. how is his church responding? they are holding a special prayer service to decide how to handle this. a story we've been following for weeks, donations made to charities. money that people think is going to help disabled veterans when, in fact, not one dime has gone directly to them. tonight more details on the murky world of these veterans charities or so-called veterans charities and the one company that we found is at the center of all this fund-raising. one source called the company the financial equivalent of heroin addiction for charities. all that plus tonight's ridiculous, the latest on politics. a lot more at the top of the hour. >> anderson, see you in a few minutes. the case against george zimmerman, is it in jeopardy? according to defense attorney david do you, the florida neighborhood watchman will never be convicted of murdering 17-year-old trayvon martin. zimmerman, of course, shot and killed the florida teen on february 26th in a gated community in sanford, florida. he says it was self-defense. he's kargeed though with second-degree murder. after ruling newly released evidence including photos, witness statements, and audio tapes, university of houston law professor david do you says it's unlikely the case will go to trial and if it does it will be an acquittal. david do you is the founder of the texas innocence network. he's "outfront" with former new york city homicide prosecutor paul callen. david, i want to start with you and understand exactly what the argument you're trying to make. i know you have looked through the evidence and we've got about half of it now has been provided through the discovery. you say the charges against george zimmerman were brought because of public pressure. that's the only reason? you think that the evidence so far does not back up a charge? >> i think that the evidence could back up the charge. i just don't think there's any more evidence -- i don't think there was any more evidence in the middle of april than there was in the middle of march. and in the middle of march, prosecutors decided not to deci charge mr. zimmerman. in april they decided to go forward and charge mr. zimmerman. it's true they had more evidence, but i don't think the evidence they gathered in that month fundamentally changed any of the important aspects of the case. so i think the most likely explanation rather than they got more evidence was that they needed to placate the public which was demanding some sort of action. i don't necessarily think it was bad to indict mr. zimmerman, i'm simply saying that the evidence that existed that supported the decision to indict him existed in early march. >> some people might say they completely messed up then. even though it took them longer than it should have. but you think the case won't even go to trial. why's that? >> i wouldn't disagree with that, by the way. i don't necessarily think it's a bad thing for prosecutors to pay attention to what the public thinks but i think it's unlikely it will go to trial. florida has a stand your ground law. and mr. zimmerman will have to persuade the judge beyond -- by simply a preponderance of the evidence. and if he can persuade the judge by that very low standard of proof that he was entitled to exercise self-defense under this statute, then the judge will dismiss the charges against him. now, the prosecutors will have an opportunity to appeal that dismissal, but i think it's quite likely that the judge will dismiss the charges at the early stage of this. >> if it does go to trial, you say he will be aconvicted. paul, what do you think about his thought it won't go to trial? >> i have to disagree. i think the evidence has been coming in george zimmerman's favor. i think it's a hard case to win at trial. but i don't see a judge throwing this out. the reason is george zimmerman would have to testify at this hearing and assert his self-defense claim. we saw him testify for just a bit at the public apology and he blew it. he ended up saying something that cricketed his 9 -- contradicted his 911 call. about how old the kid was. that was just a 30 second clip. now imagine a prosecutor coming at him saying did you really have to shoot a 17-year-old kid who's unarmed? i say he's going to fall apart at a hearing and a jury is going to resolve this some day. >> david, don't agree on that. but why are you so sure he will be acquitted? and every time this comes up, i have to throw out there. he had a gun, the other guy didn't. that always seems to be one of the basic problems here. >> first of all, let me say i think paul could be right. it's possible zimmerman would do a terrible job behalf of himself at the stand your ground hearing. i think we just don't know how that'll play out. i think if the case goes to a jury, the burden is on the state beyond a reasonable doubt he committed a crime. i think there's too many conflicting witness statements. that suggests that mr. zimmerman was involved in an altercation that it will be somewhere between difficult and impossible for a jury to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. >> angela cory is confident she has a case. what could be the strategy here in terms of the way it's dribbling out for lack of a better word. you say most of the evidence is in zimmerman's favor. are they saving what they think is the best for last? >> i think they are saving what they have, whatever they have that's strong to the end. that would be common strategy. the other thing with prosecutors, there are rules of ethics that prevent prosecutors from aggressively commenting about a case while it's pending. you can't make the same accusations against defense lawyers. her hands are tied compared to the defense attorneys. >> thank you very much. as always we know a lot of you feel strongly on this case. let us know on twitter. next facebook. people saying terrible things about facebook. we like to go for the underdog. we found a group that thinks facebook is great. we showcase them outfront next. last season was the gulf's best tourism season in years. in florida we had more suntans... in alabama we had more beautiful blooms... in mississippi we had more good times... in louisiana we had more fun on the water. last season we broke all kinds of records on the gulf. this year we are out to do even better... and now is a great time to start. our beatches are even more relaxing... the fishing's great. so pick your favorite spot on the gulf... and come on down. brought to you by bp and all of us who call the gulf home. i'm here to unleash my inner cowboy. instead i got heartburn. 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[ rodger riney ] at scottrade, we give you commission-free etfs, no-fee iras and more. come see why more investors are saying... i'm with scottrade. so it's been a tough few days for facebook. the sec said today it will examine issues surrounding facebook's ipo in an effort to insure confidence. the company's stock was priced at $38 a share. it opened at $42. today it closed above $31. that is a grim thing. the media has called the failure a flop and face flop, all sorts of things. easy names to do. all is not lost because facebook still has a lot of fans. an international group from singapore, italy, australia, the uk, and right here at home the u.s. has taken to facebook to show their appreciation for facebook by holding up thank you signs and recording a music video titled "thank you facebook." ♪ thank you thank you thank you thank you ♪ ♪ thank you thank you thank you thank you ♪ ♪ facebook is free and will always be ♪ ♪ connect with friends faster wherever they may be ♪ ♪ facebook for all the things yo