be here in person. we will be talking about the people who live and work here. elected officials on capitol hill. the journalists who cover them. chris matthews chuck todd they re going to be stopping by. also the comedians who make fun of them. tonight, is the white house correspondents dinner with saturday night live cecily strong. we will be talking yes that is ted cruz getting a trim. it is a busy weekend of news. there is a powerful earthquake striking nepal overnight. we ll have full details on that ahead. just about every one of the men and women running for the republican presidential nomination will be in iowa this weekend to court the social conservative vote. full reporting on the ground from iowa about all of that. we will be heading out to las vegas to find out about the effort there to win the support of a billionaire casino owner who likes to donate to republican presidential candidates. here in washington, fallout continues in the wake of that drone stri
good morning. i m melissa harris-perry. last month we were cheering president obama for his defiance in the face of the republicans shutdown and their threat to breach the debt ceiling. the republicans wanted to gut the affordable care act. the president was having none of it. as long as i am president, i will not give in to reckless demands by some in the republican party to deny affordable health insurance to millions of hardworking americans. i will not negotiate over congress responsibility to pay bills it s already racked up. nobody gets to hurt our economy and millions of hardworking families over law you don t like. he dug in his heels for weeks. he refused to budge on the aca. instead, he demanded that republicans vote to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling. and it worked. on october 16th, congress struck a deal to do both. good job, mr. president. who says democrats always cave? well, this week that guy, the defiance guy, he was nowhere to be found
appearance friday and talk about the timing as well. what s behind that? well, alex to put it into a broader context, african-american leaders have been calling to the president to speak out about the george zimmerman verdict. behind the scenes, white house officials said the president had really been monitoring the reaction to the zimmerman verdict since it was handed down in the african-american community and also all across the nation. he spoke with how he should respond. on thursday he talked to senior advisers and told them he wanted to address the nation. it was really an extraordinary day at the white house because his remarks came as such a surprise. i have been covering this two years now, alex. every time the president comes into the briefing room, the reporters get some type of a heads-up. the the president wanted this to be a surprise. he didn t want reporters sitting around thinking about what he was going to talk about.
joining me now nbc royal contributor robert jobson. that was not nice, that fake will and kate, come on. just a publicity stunt for a national newspaper, alex. they re all going quietly crazy at down there at the moment. i was down there and the reporters had quite enough of it. going on for a fourth night now. maybe some did jump the gun. going on for too long for some of them. why did they jump the gun. was it the palace being very generic on when she was due and do we have any further details on when she might actually be due? they didn t actually ever give a due date because they said this was personal. i think it would have been better saying that the due date was a little bit later on. i did hear it was a little bit later on just kate said on an engagement it was mid-july and
they wanted the speech to be straight up. and that s really what it was. his most extensive comments on race since 2008. back in 2008, of course, he was a candidate. now he s a second-term president. you could really hear that in terms of how deeply personal he spoke about the george zimmerman verdict. part of his goal was to put heated reactions to the verdict in a broader context. he got personal. african-american men in this country who haven t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. that includes me. there are, frankly, very few african-american men who haven t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. that happens to me. at least before i was a senator. as you can imagine, alex, the reaction has been mixed even within the african-american