something in the long-term and deal with the vasts s aspiratio of the people. roger, thank you very much for joining us from cairo. up next, what s next with our relationship with egypt. president obama promises to be a friend and partner, but what will the egyptians want for us and what will democracy in egypt look like? this is hardball only on msnbc.
correct? it means we re happy. reporter: they re happy, happy. i guess v means happy in arab arabic. let s go to roger cohen in cairo. roger, it seems like your newspaper is optimistic about the turn of events here the last several days and weeks. yeah, hi chris. well, definitely. how can you not be? there s a fantastic mood in cairo right now. kids dancing on tanks, women dancing on cars. this has been a very repressive system for a long time. a leaderless group of young egyptians rose up and overthrew a despot. so i think that s a moment of hope for the arab world. it s been a kind of jurassic
the protestors and said he was staying, president hosni mubarak announced, through his vice president, that he was giving it all up. the peaceful revolutionaries had one in the capital of the arab world. last night s speech was the tipping point apparently. nbc s richard engel reports that the military told mubarak they would no longer stand behind him. the result was a bloodless coup d etat. how do you take the ousting of a dictator and turn it into a democracy? who is in charge now? what role will the military play? and will these events inspire similar movements? let s start with correspondent ron allen in cairo. ron, i don t know how you stay awake. maybe it s adrenaline, sir. but congratulations. i watched you last night. you have established a rapport with the people you re covering. what is it that you can t that we can t capture? i always ask this question when
these political discussions going on. a session attended by the muslim brotherhood, a group that s been banned since the 1960s. but the laundry list of concessions as they re being called that are being laid out are being categorically rejected by most of the participants who are attending these meetings, they basically want to see tangible things happen, not promises from the government. they want to see for example political prisoners released. they want to see the parliament resolved perhaps. right now there are promises and nothing to really show for it. so the protests continue, although they do feel that the government every day is retreating and retreating. andrea? ron allen in cairo on extraordinary photo-op that was with the muslim brotherhood. you never would have imagined seeing something like that after they had been banned. and also, ron, the cancellation of the 1981 law which forbids
brushed off whether or not mubarak should step down but he did define america s role. the united states can t absolutely dictate what happens you know, what we can do, bill, is we can say that the time is now for you to start making a change in that country. but now, 14 days into the protests in cairo, the white house is drawing criticism from the right. sarah palin, for example, railing against the president s response to the unrest. this is that 3:00 a.m. white house phone call and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the white house, it it seems that that call went right to the answering machine. i m joined now by the company, republican strategist, miami herald political commune cyst jo ann reed and political reporter casey hunt. joy ann what did you think about sarah palin there? well, you know, i think that sarah palin has now sort of