whose benefits were cut off in december. is that what this report says, jon? well, you know, you could take this argument about extending unemployment benefits in either direction. on the one hand, you could say, well, you re helping millions of people, and that s important. and you could also say as some people have that if you provide income to these households and they can keep spending and help the economy, on the other hand, you could say that these unemployment benefits are actually undermining the recovery because when you pay someone to not work, to stay out of the work force, it gives them a disincentive to go out there and look for a new job and get hired. so i think it cuts, it cuts both ways. i think the bottom line is really a humanitarian argument for people who are long-term unemployed, you know, what are they going to do to sustain themselves. jenna: right. well, what gets them back into the work force. and you know this, jon, and it s mentioned every time we get a
the daily beast and also a fox news contributor. welcome to both of you. hello, jon. jon: so, judy, this has been consuming washington. in fact, we put a stop watch on the president s, not the president s news conference, his spokesman s news briefing yesterday and more than half of the time was occupied by discussion of what bob gates had to say in the book. does it deserve this kind of attention? well you know, it may eventually when the book is out and everyone has a chance to read it but what is astonishing, and actually a little disturbing that the media are involved in a full-fledged campaign to help bob gates sell his book. i mean knopf must be delighted by this. the advance orders must be incredible. look, lots of people are very upset, even by what they have seen so far including howard kurtz of this network, accusing gates of basically betraying the man he worked for by reporting
confidential conversations that obama had every right to believe would remain secret. and certainly while this president is still acting president in a war footing and i think those are the kind of legitimate issues that are being raised but once again, everybody has got to step back and say, we haven t seen this book. excerpts are designed to sell the book and we ve all got to reserve judgment until we see the whole thing. jon: retired army general barry mccaffrey, kirsten, says he, meaning gates, took an oath to defend the constitution and not the president. in that light is it appropriate? well i think that s true. look, i m always for more transparency and more information and this administration in particular has not been very transparent. so, you know, it is nice to learn the inner working of what is going on and i think that is a decision that gates had to make on his own, whether or not he felt it was so important that he speak about this, rather than
in the end senator reid is probably going to have to do a little bit more to say something that, to offer some sweetener that allows the republicans to at least have a say in the process. if not, with some roll call votes that would make things politically difficult for the other side, at least substantive, to offer the substantive change that would make the pay-for. jon: the argument going on this morning in terms of press releases, the white house council of economic advisors chairman jason furman out with this statement. here it is in part. one of our nation s most immediate pressing challenges is long-term unemployment, despite abundance of evidence indicating this challenge is far from solved, congress allowed extended insurance to lapse at end of 2013 cutting off critical lifeline who have lost a job threw no fault of their on and are still searching for work. today s disappointing jobs numbers show the president s policies are failing too many
but it was a smart strategy on the governor s part to exhaust the media, take all those questions. some people thought he made it a little too much about him, playing the victim, and not as much about the people of new jersey, but only chris christie could have pulled that off in the ip imitable fashion he did. jon: let me read you a tweet from ezra klein: chris christie s biggest rob is he s really, truly a bully. he denied that, stood there at the podium saying i m not a bully. klein just doesn t want to accept that as an answer, i guess. well, but when a politician has to say i am not a bully, or he s not in a great place. look, it s interesting to see the media narrative shift here because the press used to love chris christie. they loved his tough-talking, in your face, jersey shore persona, and we ve all seen those clips where he s popping off either to constituents or reporters, he loves to slap reporters around. but now in light of the bridge