i think anything is within the realm of possibility with this leader because of what we ve seen so far, and sure, it s entirely possible that he could do something like that. dennis comes back, bae gets releases and he could carry out a provation against south korea. this combination of things almost messing with the western world with all these tactical moves is something he seems to revel in doing. some optimists have suggested maybe this is like the battle days when the u.s. and china weren t talking in in the 50s and 60s. then there was a little ping-pong diplomacy that occurred eventually winding up in nixon s historic visit to china. is that something realistic, instead of ping-pong diplomacy, nba basketball diplomacy? it is an optimistic assessment. the case of ping-pong diplomacy in china was different. there were different undercurrents on the political side i think. but having said that, with rodman going there, we do learn things. before he went, we didn t have
any many pictures of kim jong-un. because of his trip, we did. we now know his ainge. he s going to turn three 1 next january. we didn t know he had a child till rod man said i held their child. so even though he goes there for his own reasons, we do learn something from these visits. propaganda benefits for the north koreans but might be important benefits for u.s. intelligence, for analyst who s study north korea? is that what you re saying? yeah, i this i publicly the government says we re not really interested in the visit, it s a private visit. i m sure they re interested in watching every element of it and i imagine they would talk to rodman when he came back. how good and you worked in the u.s. government is intelligence on what is going on? if the president were to say why did kim jong-un have his uncle assassinates, would u.s. analysts be able to tell the president why? they could offer theories. but couldn t tell him directly why. no. they won t have that kind o
tied for the lowest point in his presidency. we have the same basic number today, 41% approval. 56% disapprove of the job president obama is doing as president. here s something we don t go into a lot when we talk about these numbers, wolf. let s take a look at how people why they disapprove. you have the 41% approve. 40% disapprove because they think he s too liberal. 12% disapprove because they think he s not liberal enough. one in five who disapprove think that president obama is too conservative. it s interesting these numbers. you take a look at how the president s doing now, how is approval of the president s job as president now 41% as you point out, in november 41%. but in may, you know, he was at 53%. he s really gone down over the course of this year. when you pair him to other presidents, two-term presidents at i an similar moment in their presidency, how is he doing? he s exactly where george w.
be something where although it got stopped up after the senate passed it this year, there might be a way to add that to a legacy for president obama because the house speaker, john boehner, is pretty clear eager to move something. the president has put some olive branches out there about the way that they go about doing it, meaning you don t have to do one big bill, maybe baby steps would be something he would be willing to consider. that might be something they might be able to go forward on, but when it comes to other issues, they re still stopped up in the senate, for example, the nuclear option. this is maybe something that has come under the radar. but the nuclear option that senate democratic leader put in place to take away minority rights could make it more difficult for the president. it already has, to get his nominations through to get his key players in place. that possibly could continue into the next year. and when you say minority rights, you mean republicans, the mino
face the potential fight with congress over the raising of the nation s debt limit. we as a caucus along with our senate counterparts are going to meet and discuss what dollars we want to get out of the debt limit. we don t want nothing out of this debt limit. we re going to decide what it is we can accomplish out of this debt limit fight. the republican congressman paul ryan. the chairman of the house budget committee. let s bring back our correspondents to talk about this and more, brianna keilar, dana bash, jake tapper is here, as well. let s go to congress first, dana, how big of a fight do we anticipate over the raising of the debt limit? supposed to be done according to the treasury department by february, maybe march they can delay it. it s really unclear. i think the reason is because republicans haven t decided how much of a fight they re going to put up. certainly you heard paul ryan saying they re going to demand something extract something from democrats in order to a