today, the beaches and gulf are open, and many areas are reporting their best tourism seasons in years. and bp s also committed to america. we support nearly 250,000 jobs and invest more here than anywhere else. we re working to fuel america for generations to come. our commitment has never been stronger. new demonstrations in cairo supporting egypt s morsi. counter the anti-morsi protests. at issue, granting himself wide-ranging presidential powers. bring in an egyptian-american journalist who has worked extensively in the middle east and currently based here in new york. good afternoon to you. first of all, let s start what part or parts of the president decree are egyptians most concerned with?
at the white house s holding fast and refusing so far to make any concessions. but they don t have a lot of choices here. and i think you re starting to see them peel off one by one. molly ball, lynn sweet, we ll see you a little bit later in the hour, ladies. thank you so much, appreciate your time. thank you. overseas new demonstrations in egypt as hardline islamists rallied in support of mohamed mor morsi. today s rallies meant to counterprotest protests in the past week. morsi has been facing wide-spread unrest over that decree that expands his presidential powers. nbc jim maceda is in cairo for us on this saturday. jim, these morsi reforms were to be a test of his strength of the muslim brotherhood strength. how did they do? well, you re right. this was a crucial day for president morsi and his muslim brotherhood supporters. they needed a massive turnout
to raise their voices and express their feelings and attitudes. but it s my responsibility, i see things more than they do. what does that even mean? so heavily invested in this revolution and loves this revolution, i find his words incredibly insulting to the revolution and its spirit of removing, basically, his daddy figure. morsi is basically saying i m your daddy and what egypt has been saying since we started this election, we don t need a daddy, we need a president. how do you think this will play out in your country? i m incredibly optimistic, craig. someone has compared the revolution to teaching someone who has not learned how to read or write. egypt will be free whether it s a muslim brotherhood president or christian president. regardless of who is our president, we will be free because this is what our revolution is about. i commented on your hair and i said, wow, i love the fact that your hair matches your top and you dropped a bombshell on
egyptians are most concerned with the fact that president morsi removed most checks and powers against him that could stand up against him and he basically dissolved the judiciary and basically gave himself more powers than jose mubarak had during his 30 years in power. based on what we knew about mohamed morsi, how much of a surprise was this? well, you know the concern all along was that the muslim brotherhood were in this to grab power. basically mohammed morsi has lived down to the worst of the expectations. at the end of the day, as you said in your run up to this. this is about egypt and freedom. we have a revolution that continues for freedom and dignity. we did not have this revolution so that we could create a new dictator and this is why people are opposing what morsi did. morsi gave an interview to time magazine this week. an exclusive interview and this is just an excerpt from it. what i can see now is the egyptians are free. it s their right to express and
today at that rally kind of to stem the momentum of the opposition, which, as we have reported, has seen hundreds of thousands of secular, moderate egyptians, leftists, christians all turning out in that iconic tahrir square on at least two occasions this past week alone. and which tonight, by the way, is continuing its ten-city occupation of the square. but today really did belong to morsi supporters. their show of support was very big in the tens of thousands, perhaps 100,000 or more outside cairo university and had the feeling of a political rally. waving flags, carrying banners and chanting slogans and some clashes between pro and anti-morsi groups, but up in alexa alexandria, not in cairo. overall, very peaceful. the muslim brotherhood much more focused on politics than on protests, craig. it wants to see that ratification of the new draft constitution, which the opposition says is invalid and was rushed through that all