dark about who is bank rolling the candidates, we have answers. you know the super pacs are groups that can raise unlimited money and they re major players, but get ready for this, infederal election commission tells us out front that this might cost $11 billion. twice as much as 2008. and that jump, thanks in no small part to super pacs. there are more than 300 of them already. so today we pored through hundreds of pages of super pac tument, and that was only for a few super pacs and the pro romney super pac called restore our future raised nearly $30 million last year. there were a group of donors who gave $1 million each, and one is jewel whereulian robertson. he s been a fan since the last election and he told me that mitt is quote the smartest guy and extremely decent. marc andreessen was also on the donor list. he told me today, quote, i think he gets it with respect to the economy in a way that the others don t. the super pac for newt gingrich, winning our future, rake
but they dominated christine o donnell and the rest is history and coons is sworn in as senator next week. shannon: loser? khodorkovsky who was sentenced to maximum. 6-1/2 years in russia. former tycoon who challenged putin. it marks a complete decade of putinism, his control of russia, hollowing out of a democracy that he was given at the beginning of this decade. he hollowed it out and turned it too dictatorship with him as the undisputed leader. quite a land mark. shannon: did you original that? there is also a cleptocrocy. it s one or the other. in this case, it s both. he s an extremely rich man, putin. shannon: thank you for look at 2010. we have to take a break but when we return we look ahead to 2011 with a new year s version of the friday lightning round.
and constitutional rot is slower. it s the hollowing out without overtly destroying the forms of constitution government, the kind of making them not work right. think of a floorboard that is rotting away, but can still sort of hold you up until the day it can t. you note we might overuse the definition of constitutional crisis. you beg the question in this piece, at what point does a bad president doing bad things become a problem of constitutional magnitude, let alone a crisis of constitutional magnitude. are we at the problem stage yet? where do you situate us as all this unfolds? so look, i think the question one of the things about the term constitutional crisis is it really doesn t have a fixed meaning which is part of the point of the piece, that we all feel like we are in a really dark and dangerous time, and yet
that donald trump is the one we should expect to see on the campaign trails in midterm elections near. the associated press reporting his staff hollowing out, his agenda languishing, president trump is increasingly flying solo. but someone must feel that the twin threats of a porn star in the midst of a sustained legal and media campaign just to tell her story and the special counsel probe into team trump s ties to russia may be more than the current stable of top people could handle. that could explain why former clinton impeachment lawyer found himself with the president. the new york times reporting, president trump is in discussion with a veteran washington lawyer who represented bill clinton during the impeachment process about joining the white house to help deal with the special counsel inquiry, according to four people familiar with the matter. joining us now, one of the authors of that piece which inspired a twitter tirade from the president, the new york times reporter