0 analyst mike halperin. cute little sweater you have there. zip it a little more. little less shirt. senior political editor and white house correspondent for the "huffington post" sam stein. and msnbc political analyst and visiting professor at nyu, former democratic congressman harold ford jr. >> i'm rochablely overdressed. >> in washington, white house correspondent for the associated press, julie page joins us. good to have you all on board this morning. we have a lot to get to. a couple of things. hillary clinton is back in the news. she got some good news but got heckled at an event. we'll show you how she handled it. how the former secretary of state was hammered on benghazi but she handled it pretty well. i think. you decide. also made accommodate in america, why are you all looking at me. medicaid in america. >> i'm confident they told us they can fix it. >> reporter: while fred upton says they must get more answers. >> have you learned yet who is responsible? >> it seems like there was a fingerprinting and all of it was going to the administration. >> kelly o'donnell on story. one of the more heated moments came between a republican and a democrat over matters of privacy. >> you sign up for this or attempt to you have no reasonable expect jays of privacy. that is a direct contradiction to hippa and you know it. >> i started out in my opening statement saying there was no legitimacy to this hearing and the last line of the questioning confirms that. hippa only applies when there's health information being provided. that's not in play here today. no health information is required in the application process and why is that? because pre-existing conditions don't matter. so once again here we have my republican colleagues trying to scare everybody. >> will the gentleman lead? >> no i will not yield this monkey court. >> this is not a monkey court. >> i'm not yielding. >> sam stein. >> it's not a monkey court. >> it is not a monkey court. it's not a monkey court. full disclosure my wife works for the administration. it's funny -- it's funny how everyone in congress became an i.t. expert. >> i don't think you can compare the affordable care act to flowers.com. >> the focus was misplaced. they looked at this anonymous shopping. they looked at hippa. the most important thing is what happens to information on the back end. when you tell where you live, if you're a smoker that should go out to insurers. the problem is they are not getting the right information. until you fix that nothing else matters. they can have as many sign up as possible. if the data they are producing is bad that's not good. >> let's see if this argument works. a lot of the obama care website is not the first time a major program had problems being implemented. for example, medicare part d. right? while republicans today are hammering the affordable care act some were far more forgiving of president bush's law back in 2006. >> any time something is new, there's going to be some glitches. all of us when our children were new, we knew as parents we didn't know everything we were doing and had a foul up or two but persevered and our children turned out well. even no matter what one does in life when it's something new and learning the roechs it it will take a little adjustment. but as we were signing up 27 million seniors at a rate sometimes approaching 400,000 people a week, the system wasn't always perfectly ready for them and there were a few glitches. but the point is, hhs or medicare responded. put extra people on board. worked out some of the glitches. >> kind of a stretch? >> like tmz meets c-span. big smoking gun. that program had some problems. this is a bigger deal. the whole country's health care system being redone and there's other problems with the program. the president said that. they will have to get this fixed. not optional. >> has anyone argued, jewely pace has anyone argued this can't be fixed? >> it depends on who you talk to. when you talk to people in the administration they say this is definitely going to be fixed. it's going to be fixed quickly. when you talk to some of these software developers, when you talk to people who have experience building complex systems some of these folks say this is not a week's long endeavor this could be a months long endeavor. if they can fix this quickly this could blow over. >> one of the difficulties we're having the administration not being forthcoming what the problem is. you have a lot of people who are involved who are sort of guessing in many respects as to what's under the hood. they are trying to assume what's wrong and saying this could take weeks, it could take months. there's not an infinite amount of time to fix this thing, you have to do it quickly. >> they have to regroup. mark halperin shaking his head. we have a lot to get to this morning. new documents from edward snowden published in the guardian suggests the nsa monitored the calls of 35 world leaders, and their contact information came from another u.s. government official. president obama assured angela merkel early this week, ironically over the phone that the u.s. was not currently monitoring her calls. merkel said soothing words would not be enough that true change was necessary. this is unbelievable. u.s. officials are alerting other countries and intelligence services details of their secret cooperation with the u.s. have been obtained by snowden. meanwhile a former nsa head found himself being monitored on the phone in public. michael hayden was loudly bashing the obama administration in an interview on background while on the acela. has that ever happened to you? tom massy tweeted much of what hayden was saying including he asked to be referred to as a former senior administration official and bragged about rendition and black sites and gave disparaging quotes about the bristol-myers administration. remember just as a former senior administration. he speculated he might be caught for tweeting but all ended well. the two posed for a picture. this gets worse and worse. even chatted. he called hayden a gentleman. >> it's hilarious. >> he should have gone to the m cafe where the sound of people munching hot dogs and drinking heineken drowns out conversation. >> julie, harold, is this concerning? the snowden part. >> the fact that all of this has come out -- i was a believer early on that i wished this guy was caught. i wished this information was not released. the more it comes out and the more details come out about the extent about this program, it was already challenging for this white house and for this team not only to develop a public relations and optics answer but this has become a substantive challenge. put aside what may be happening with every day americans and the kind of surveillance and monitoring occurring and i can accept a lot of that for my security. >> it's chilling. >> there's going to have to be further elaboration from the white house. >> let's ask julie pace. the angela merkel, the response from german officials was pretty gruff. they are very angry and rightfully so. >> absolutely. i think the administration's position will become a bit unsustainable when you have these revelations come up. they say we won't comment on each revelations because there's some. but we're talking about angela merkel who is really sort of the senior statesman at all of these summits that the president goes to. she's one of the leaders that the president has a strong relationship with happen he truchts her. he talks frequently how well they work together. when you talk about listening in on her phone calls this is something that's not going to go away. angela merkel won't say okay, barack and i talked. >> we have a similar challenge with france. again they have to answer more than they've answered up to this point. >> i'm not surprised we spy on foreign leaders. i'm sure there's historical precedent. >> you're not surprised we're spying on angela merkel? >> but it appears there was at some point listening of her phone calls. >> i'm not saying there's a lengthy historical precedence -- i'm not as shocked as you are. however there was a time when everyone was assuming the notice den revelations were basically old hat, he wasn't going to be producing any news. he has produce ad treasure trove of information that is disturbing in many respects and yes i agree with julie i think the administration at some point step back and say -- they keep pointing to this one speech that the president gave as enough. >> let me get to two more stories as democrats begin to look towards the 2016 presidential election vice president joe biden appears to still be keenly interested in the state of iowa. biden called newly elected representative brian meyer to congratulate him on tuesdaying night's victory. when asked why do you think the president called? well it's iowa. also attended senator harkin's steak fry. speculation over hillary clinton's second run for president continues to grow. but at an event in buffalo clinton faced an issue that could resurface should she decide to enter the race. >> buffalo is a good model for the rest of the country because we can't move from crisis to crisis, we have to be willing to come together as citizens to focus on the kind of future we want which doesn't include yelling it includes sitting down and talking to one another. >> it's hard to hear but according to local reporters a heckler interrupted clinton shouting benghazi, benghazi you let them die. meanwhile george soros says he'll back an effort to convince clinton to run. he'll support the ready for hilary super p.a.c. so she's going to run, right harold? >> it's hard to imagine she doesn't. if she does not run there will be a great surprise. i would be very surprised. there was a time honored tradition the secretary will have to expect a little of that. but she's so seasoned and so professional. >> awesome in handling hecklers. >> oh, my god only in some ways have the reverse effect. a story we talked about first yesterday about the maryland attorney general, doug gansler. a month into his run for governor he apologized for not stopping underage drinking r he was spotted. he wasn't at the party himself. the "baltimore sun" published this picture that included teenagers and alcohol. in a half hour press conference yesterday gansler admits he made a mistake by doing nothing. >> this was a dance party with loud music and there may have been some college students or others who were drinking beer. i just don't know. what i could have done is investigate whether there was drinking going on and then taken action on that and for that i probably should have done that. do i understand that at beach week where there's hundreds and hundreds of children or teenagers, what have you some kids will drink and some won't? that happens. what i understand now certainly there was some drinking. if you look at the picture, not where i was, but some kids, one or two kids holding red cups and generally from could be kool aid in the red cups or beer in the red cups. >> i know doug gansler. i can't imagine he would have intentionally not -- i'm sure a lot of things racing through his head. i don't have kids. >> do i and they are teenagers. i will just say it is not as easy as it looks. there's the right thing to do and the right thing to do is to call the police and call the parents. i've been in that position. it's not worked for me. >> you've never been the senior law enforcement officer of a state or a gubernatorial candidate. but the instincts he's showing and how he's handling this are not good. not a good sign for him to be a good candidate or governor. >> in the two clips we saw back-to-back the hilary clips and the clips of gansler you see a pro at politics and somebody who needs more work. >> yeah. i think i would have just said i'm a parent and if any of you have teens i'm sure you can imagine the situation i was in because none of it is black and whi white. i'll tell you sometimes it's impossible. and it's not the kids. the party was chaperoned. two older men can be seen in the corner of the photo. gansler showed up at the house to briefly talk to his house. the lease of the house was not under gansler's name but he helped to pay for the rent. coming up on "morning joe" the moderator of "meet the press" david gregory and nbc news political director chuck todd. we'll talk to the republican candidate in the race for new york city mayor joe lhota. and later venus williams will be here on the set plus the fda looks to rein in the use of prescription pills. and the white house talks about a misconnection with senator dick durbin after he said a republican congressman insulted the president to his face. mike allen has the update to the story in the political playbook. first, bill karins, we insult him to his face all the time. >> it would be if i listened. >> you love it. >> i rewatch it when i go home. good morning, everyone. as far as the fog is gone in seattle this has been one of the longest and gloomiest stretches you've had. look at the time lapse video. there's the space needle. you can see the clouds. they've been there for six straight days. today will make seven straight days. let me take new to the weekend forecast. the pattern is set. what you see today is what you'll deal with over the weekend. that cold blast of air is over the great lakes and heading all the way down into the southeast. whole western half of the country will be gorgeous. but we're looking at temperatures this morning. it's cold. national is down to 31 degrees. we'll see a hard freeze tonight into tomorrow morning. all the way down to atlanta. kind of an early end to the growing season. weekend forecast 50s and 40s. great lakes and the northeast. not a lot of warm up. cold nights and pretty nice afternoons. one spot wetter is texas. from dallas to houston to san antonio. new york city, cold morning. this afternoon high around 52. same forecast all weekend. you're watching "morning joe". ♪ as your life changes, fidelity is there for your personal economy, helping you readjust along the way, refocus as careers change and kids head off to college, and revisit your investments as retirement gets closer. wherever you are today, fidelity's guidance can help you fine-tune your personal economy. start today with a free one-on-one review of your retirement plan.