one was the cartridge bombs that pete williams pointed out. the other, of course, was the underwear bomber in 2009. and then the successful attempt the attempted assassination that did blow up against this saudi official. one other thing, saudi official, saudi intelligence reportedly cooperated with the u.s., chris, in trying to find this suicide bomber and actually find the device. and it has been suggested to me, and we need more corroboration of this, that finding the suicide bomber and the device did lead to this sunday s attack in yemen on a leading al qaeda official, reportedly the man who replaced al awlaki as the leader of al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. so these may well be connected, that the intelligence developed with this thwarted plot did lead to a successful drone attack in yemen. we don t know we don t have a second source on that. i m just suggesting that it has been it has been told to me
chris with the washington post and david corn washington bureau chief and author of the book showdown. let me go to david corn on this, it seems to me that this is going to be a campaign that s going to be great to cover on shows like this, and all across msnbc, and our competitive stations, as well. this is going to be about ideology. this isn t going to be about what the unemployment rate happens to be this week. it s going to be about where we re headed. who are we as a country? what do we believe in? what philosophy should drive us? the president laid down that marker today. it s about what you believe we should be. it seems to me, over the weekend, he s made the point that he wants this campaign to be about ideas and purpose. you know, you re right about that, chris. and i hate to plug my own book, but he spent much of 2011 setting up the campaign exactly in this fashion. he wants it not to be a referendum on him and the economy for obvious reasons. he wants it to be a choic
have deep experience in the private sector as president, and in romney s assessment, that didn t work. what he s pitching himself as is a guy who has spent his life fixing the problem which is turning things around. you can agree or disagree with this concept, but turning things around. the salt lake city olympics, companies with bain he would put in there. he would put massachusetts in there. turning things around. that he is a fix-it artist chris, how is that different than gordon gekko in wall street, greed is good? he would say, and again i m not defending romney, but what romney, i think, would say is that, and he does say, things like bright horizon. staples, that they invested in lots of companies that did well and eventually helped the economy. that s the case he s making for us which is i have the right experience, the unique experience for this time and place, barack obama does not. the experience he is touting is very clearly kind of that business school private sect
is there a reason you didn t correct her? is there a reason you didn t correct her or say that you wouldn t? i answered the question. but you don t agree with her answer? i don t correct all the questions that get asked of me. i obviously don t agree he should get tried. david corn, that s kind of fassle to allow somebody to stand in front of you and accuse the president of treason and not say wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute here. let s keep this legitimate here. let s be americans. he s an american. i m an american. we re both within the law. let s stop this kind of talk. it would have been, yet again, a sister soldier moment, that s what we call when you stand up against your own crowd when they get out of line. we re still waiting to see any act or moment of courage from mitt romney on this whole campaign. we saw it briefly with john mccain back in 2004 when someone accused barack obama of being an arab and he said, no, he s a good american. we just happen to d
and david, i think, in this in this circumstance, and i m not saying this for every circumstance in which this comes up, but in this circumstance, when i watched it, it struck me more as mitt romney, a awkward candidate who is not good on his feet than mitt romney silently condoning views that are clearly outside of the mainstream of society and should be outside of the mainstream of society. he s not someone, even like mccain, who is a little bit more able to kind of take in things and spit them out in realtime. i think if he had his druthers, he would have rather said, you know what, there s no place for that, and then have the follow up on the rope line and then have this conversation that we re having. i attribute it more to his awkwardness than any sort of hidden agenda that he has in terms of condoning some of the views that are out there. okay. we ll you re right on that. chris and i agree. oh, all right. david and i agree oh, okay.