stake is the first amendment. liberals used to love that line. now you have administration officials writing to liberal legal scholars making the point it s okay to do that because this journalist was essentially a co-conspirator. the act of performing journalism in his view amounts to a form of espionage. when you have an administration that can t tell the difference, that is beyond nixonian. what do you think you are being listened in to and watched. do you assume that when conducting daily business? prior to six months ago when we learned the chinese government was hacking everything, i really didn t. to be honest, now i do. it s somewhat depressing. governments all over the world are doing this. united states should be the last government doing it. now that we discovered they engaged against this against fox is disspiriting.
between out there. they just roll the dice. roll the dice. they just roll the dice. so obviously, i tried to nail down with him exactly what he needs. it appears they don t want to get in front of the white house. they work for the administration. they told me, you know, we work for the administration. we can t lobby congress on this, but people want answers. and these are the guys federally on the street in charge of this. two fascinating interviews. congratulations on that and keep going with it. i found them both incredibly disspiriting. i think the trafficker is right. you can now add guns to women, drugs, alcohol, as a war that america is simply losing. but he did say life sentences. he thinks life sentences for trafficking would make a huge difference. tomorrow, congress will start debating a trafficking law. s so we will possibly see a big change to that. they could have 25 years for trafficking one gun. that s what we could see. pop a, thank you very much. when we
underdog. this is one of the biggest contrasts, and again one of the biggest challenges facing the obama reelect is this idea he was hope and change in 2008. by all accounts there is virtually nobody who would suggest that the obama campaign isn t running one of the most negative president he reelects in recent memory. everybody understands that. there is obvious contrast between what we saw in 2008, what the obama campaign presented their candidate as in 2008 and what we are seeing in 2012, and that has been disspiriting for the hard-core more idealistic young obama supporters back in 2008, to reconcile the fact that this guy was in theory going to elevate political discourse in america has in fact taken it down in some respwebgts to new lows. martha: always good to talk to you. see you in tampa. thanks, martha. martha: thanks a lot, steve.
need to be specific, but not so specific that it s politically suicidal. he s going to have to talk conceptually about what he wants to do. he s going to have to talk about how to make the country competitive. he s going to have to talk honestly about the looming debt crisis that we face. he s going to have to talk directly about the consequences of the $5 trillion in debt that s been added. and i think that by the time we get to mitt romney s convention speech in the end of it, we re going to have a really good sense of how he s going to run for president in the fall and i think it s going to be fundamentally different than how he s been running for president over the course of the summer which is, obviously, been disspiriting for a lot of republicans across the country. okay. steve schmidt, if i could ask one quick question. sure. for especially given your experience what are the risks with paul ryan? well, paul ryan is 42 years old. he has a national profile amongst the nati
once we re through the primary, things will be different. he will be talking about barack obama. this is typical of a primary. republicans have formed the circular firing squad and firing at each other right now. pretty soon when super tuesday is over, i think we ll see more and more people jumping on board the romney campaign, as we saw yesterday with eric cantor. you ll see more focus on not just the obama record, but also our positive agenda going forward. let me show you some numbers here that must be disspiriting to a guy like yourself. look at how your candidate is doing. the latest nbc wall street journal poll shows president obama leads among women by 18 points. that s a heck of a gender gap for a guy in a country where most of the voters are women. again, it s very early. a lot of what voters are hearing is negative.