white house correspondent for the huffington post, sam stein. joining the conversation former white house press secretary for president george w. bush, ari fleischer. and msnbc political analyst, steve schmidt. good to have you all on board. joe, a good gripe this hour and a lot to talk about. what a group. ari, i think what we need to do is i need to get alex corson to get a clip of george w. bush in the second in the first debate in 2004 asking for extra time and just stopping and going, it s hard. it s hard. that s what i was quoting before! because donald trump thought this was going to be so easy. there he is seeing chuck schumer calling it trumpcare. there he is seeing republicans from the right calling it obamacare lite. you wade into health care, you are wading into a legislative the likes of which donald trump
mike allen sitting patiently, chief white house correspondent. by the way, it s alex corson s anniversary today. happy anniversary, alex. i did it so i could remember the date. he finds the button now. i ve got the button. remember when chris licht came out wearing a bow on his birthday? these two guys are so different. corson, licht. mike, good morning. i m sorry about all this. 89 years to 01-01-01. yes! that s number four on our list. 89 years till we have this again. 01-01-01. 89 years. you re right. only mike. thank you, mike. i ve got to think through this. let s get to the politico playbook. defense cuts have been a bit of a sticking point. we don t talk about them much. it s been all about taxes. you say some republicans now open to looking at trimming the defense budget. well, they are. and this is another part of this republican reboot we re seeing just in the last week.
0 [ male announcer ] a european-inspired suspension, but it s not from germany. a powerful, fuel-efficient engine, but it s not from japan. it s a car like no other. from a place like no other. introducing the all-new 2013 chevrolet malibu, our greatest malibu ever. producer john tower, we have our replacements for fiscal cliff. please only read the clean ones. jason writes, money boo boo. calvin, pricey precipice. i like this one. allen, monetary manhole. monetary manhole. we re getting stripper names and other categories we don t want to get into. great show, everyone. morning joe starts right now. > and i m free free falling you know, it s a special time of the year. we ve been looking forward to it for months now. and everywhere you go, you can see the twinkle in little children s eyes because they know that in just a few short weeks, the fiscal cliff is coming to town merry cliffmas. and with a dramatic name like fiscal cliff, it s got to be exciting. jim?
do it. alex corson said? stephanie cutter. stephanie cutter. you have quite an insight about whether you would ever have your mustache slashed. never trust a black man unless he s born in hawaii without a mustache. gene robinson, do you concur? is any mustache safe in the world these days? i m scared. i m scared. i don t think it is. well, congressman, how are we doing in this effort to avoid the fiscal cliff? do you think it may we re encouraged around here at least that the president and john boehner are going to be talking face to face. are we naive? a little bit. sad without a second s hesitation. wow! look, it s a simple deal, but the circumstances are not simple. and i think we re going to get a
serious proposal. so right now we re almost nowhere. mike viqueira joins us live from the white house. where is almost nowhere? it s inside the beltway and it s business as usual. it s also december 1st, alex, and we have exactly one month now to avert the fiscal cliff and avert what everybody agrees would be economic catastrophe. of course that combination of $500 billion, a half a trillion dollars in extra taxes for americans, about $2200 just next year alone for the average family. $100 billion in spending cuts, automatic spending cuts, part of that sequester, from the deal that we went through last year that we took right up to the last minute. so, there are two things that are clear here after the president s proffer, one the president and the white house feel as though they have the upper hand here, there s no question about it. number two, they re playing hardball. number three, i ll add a third one, we are in the preliminary stages, believe it or not, as we enter this fin