and mark murray is standing by. peter, are you there? reporter: i am. this is the first remarks following vladimir putin s comments this morning. the president saying there is still an opportunity to stabilize the situation but as our own andrea mitchell noted in her question to secretary of state john kerry, putin is not even prepared to admit that russian troops are in crimea despite the video and overwhelming proof that that is the case. reporter: we heard back to back messages from american leaders for secretary of state john kerry and then president obama himself. i think you could say that secretary of state kerry basically gave a point by point rebuttal of exactly what we heard earlier today from vladimir putin. there had been basically radio silence from administration officials over the course of this day since putin himself spoke. this is probably why. the white house administration was waiting for the message to
comments, it s really a point by point rebuttal of the facts on the ground as viewed by president putin and other russian officials. kerry said, listen, there s no evidence that ethnic russians are under threat. but still they re offering these things as an opportunity to de-escalate and i m told that the next 24 to 48 hours are key. they re going to be watching for signs that russians are willing to take that off-ramp. p.j., you know the world of diplomacy better than anyone. i m curious to have your take on what you heard from vladimir putin today in that press conference. is there any chance putin has got himself out on a limb and maybe wants a way out? well, i think vladimir putin has achieved one thing he probably set out to do, which is to re-establish some leverage on a revolution that was spinning beyond russia s control and beyond russia s comfort level. i think the danger for putin is that in fact what s happening
i think she s an american hero. i m a bigger fan of her wife, chris martin. so, dana, she has this website where she talks about the higher life and living the high life and expensive food. who cares? i m going to defend gwyneth here. i don t see what s so terrible about gwyneth. she seems okay for me. for in, i don t care about her necessarily, but when vanity fair decides to come after you, better be ready, because look at what they did to bill clinton just a couple of years ago i think it was. and the clinton staff actually put out a point by point rebuttal that was five times longer than the article. vanity fair knows how to get under people s skin. now we re talking about it. they re going to sell more magazine. i don t agree with how gwyneth people magazine called her one of the most beautiful one of the reasons they say she is trying to get this story not printed is because they could be
obama campaign are bracing for that onslaught. there will be some of that money coming from the democratic side as well but i don t think nearly as much. so they re still working hard, and they realize that this race is such because we re talking about such small margins that it can turn really quickly because of external events or something happens. so i would not look to these guys in chicago, akel rod and others to get it all flabby in the next two months. right. finally, speaking of republican panic, we re looking at a live shot in miami where bill clinton is about to speak on behalf of the president. krystal, he s given the gop plenty of reasons to be nervous over the years. certainly. he s given us a few reasons to be nervous, too, but he s been a fantastic spokesman for the president and the speech he gave at the dnc, what was incredible is how it was a point by point rebuttal of the lies and arguments that have been made against president obama. really quite incredible. d
and are they getting their respective bases out if that s the case. certainly those trend lines have to favor president obama. ken, i want to go back to the polling memo from romney campaign pollster neil newhouse, which i found really unusual and found it remarkable. it was a point by point rebuttal of the piece over the weekend. they talked about the fact that this is still a tight race. that the battleground has expanded for romney, which the opposite case was made over the weekend in politico. the romney/ryan campaign is targeted. the other thing that struck me here is you see pollsters frengtly issuing polling member based on the data to spin a happy base for the campaign. this seemed like something different. it was talking points and it was making the argument without backing it up by numbers. how unusual is that, and how much does it spell out exactly how concerned the romney campaign really is? certainly the polling memos