to start talking about these issues. and there s been no response from the government. because the when you say the envoy, the u.s. does have a diplomatic interest section in havana, so there are u.s. officials there who are working on behalf of your husband. they re not considered envoys, though. what we re talking about is somebody who can really go in and start negotiations with the cubans. well, i remember it wasn t that long ago, bill richardson, former u.s. ambassador to the u.n., he went to cuba hoping to bring alan gross out of cuba with him. they wouldn t even let him see alan gross. that s right. that s right. and he they got very upset with some of the words he used when he spoke. and so that was an excuse for him not to visit alan. so let s be precise. what would you like president obama to do? i think you d have to ask him what it takes. i want obama to take alan seriously. to take the situation seriously. he s the leader of the nation.
plus, disturbing video of a deadly police beating. the victim, a meanta willy ill homeless man who can be heard calling out to his father they re killing me. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com while we begin this hour with the romney campaign, having some trouble staying on message. let s go straight to our national political correspondent jim acosta. he s on the campaign trail with the presumptive republican nominee. you re in lansing, michigan, right now. tell us what s going on, jim. reporter: wolf, earlier today mitt romney accused president obama of governing to the left of bill clinton and bringing big government back with a vengeance. it is a new message for a campaign that is sometimes straight off script in recent days. in michigan, mitt romney tried to steer his campaign back on message. america is going in the wrong direction. not forward, but sideways, or worse. reporter: he not only hit the president s
about his advice for perry and the state of the race right now. also, we re learning the back story behind ron paul s drama. he s getting flak for an answer to a health care question. turns out the scenario is similar to a real life death in his political family. and president obama s attempt to promote green jobs turns into a bigger embarrassment. first, the company he visited went bankrupt, now, it s been raided by the fbi and u.s. taxpayers may be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. captions by vitac www.vitac.com right now, republican, rick perry, is trying to cover a lot of bases and burr niche his status as the front-runner. he s been reaching out to voters in a battleground state. a sign of confidence that his rivals are trying hard to tear down. jim acosta is covering perry s campaign in depth. he s joining us from richmond, virginia with the latest. wolf, the texas governor is not just running as
brooke, thanks very much. happening now, riveting new details, the rough draft about president obama s jobs speech. what we re learning about the plan he unveiled tomorrow night and whether he has new ideas that will sound either bold or timid. also, rick perry s first test on the presidential debate stage. he got a late ride into this race, but he s moving very quickly right now at the start of his presidential campaign. tonight, he has something, of course, to prove. plus, one of america s biggest malls prepares to be the target potentially of a terror attack. it s a valuable lesson in being ready for the worst ten years after 9/11. and get this, it costs next to nothing. i m wolf blitzer, you re in the situation room. this is cnn breaking news. we ll get to that in a moment. but we re just learning here at cnn that the former united states ambassador to the united nations bill richardson was scheduled to land just a little while ago in havana, cuba on a very
humanitarian basis let alan gross out, then the u.s. was able to make this swap of three cuban spies, as you say, let out of american prison and then there was an intelligence asset to the u.s. government, we believe a cuban man, who was helping the u.s. from cuba thrown he was caught by the cuban authorities at some point and thrown in prison, been there for some 20 years. so that was the swap. look, that might be a distinction without a difference. all of this was happening around the same time. it was a deal between the president of the united states, the dictator from cuba. i think the big question moving forward, you ve got democrats, not just republicans but democrats like bob menendez saying they think it was a direct swap and how that might matter moving forward. will someone like bob menendez go along with formally lifting the embargo with cuba. he s saying no. while there are republicans not normally aligned with the