We stand as a party and where we need to go as a nation. And this is what i believe. I believe that president obama has led this nation from crisis recovery and we are now on the , cusp of resurgence. I am proud to have played a part in that. This party, our nation, will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the obama legacy. Charlie the news ends speculation about his president ial run. It would have been his third attempt at the nations highest office. Joining me from washington is al hunt. In new york, Mark Halperin and john heilemann. sey are host of bloomberg with all due respect. I am pleased to have all of them. Mark, tell me why he did this and what factors contributed to the decision. Mark you had Hillary Clinton building up fundraising, joe biden torn about whether he wanted to run for president anyway, and the death of his son beau a few months ago. The filing deadline is coming up. The Vice President has been dealing with his personal grief and family. All of that caused him to delay his decision until now. Had to be decision time for anybody. The clock ran out on him and he , said today what our sources are saying, the family was prepared to say, we are Strong Enough to do this but he did not , accept his advisors critique that there was time to mount a credible, Serious Campaign while being Vice President , taking care of his family, raising money, campaigning. Charlie should he have accepted that critique . Or should he have said that they are doing it for their own reasons . Mark i think that he made the right decision politically. Personally, that has to be up to him. The people i talked to who would dealing with him said, he was himself stronger than he had been since his sons death. Strength had returned to him. I think politically, Hillary Clinton and bernie sanders, they have tens of millions of people around the country excited about the prospect of being president. For all of joe bidens strengths, i dont think there are tens of millions of about a bidented candidacy. Charlie john you would add . , john i think there was momentum for a while. Especially after the appearance on stephen colbert. John you have a unique situation for biden. He has been running for something since 1972. Whether sentence for the senate or president , it is all he knows how to do. Confronting a future in which he is no longer doing what is his natural mode of being was difficult for him. Around the colbert thing, people were calling him saying, you should run. Donors, strategists, voters, others around the country. I dont think joe biden had had that happen before. It is easy for politicians when they get all of that in coming to think, this is my moment. The country is calling out for me to do this. The truth is, mark and i did focus groups for our show, we talked to democrats, the voters looked at him and said, that guy doesnt seem emotionally ready to be running for president. He still seems to torn up about what happened to his son. I am sure that information reached joe biden. More generally, he came to his senses that this was not a national calling for him to get into the race. At the same time, they were people around him, including members of his family who at , that moment when all of that was happening, hillarys trajectory seemed to be getting worse and worse. The email stories seem to be getting more and more damaging. Her poll numbers were sinking and people were saying, this is coming to you. Just keep waiting. In the last few weeks, that changed with Kevin Mccarthys comment and the benghazi hearings looking more favorable, her performance, other things in the atmosphere, the moment when he starts to doubt that the country is calling for him and the political dynamics no longer seemed favorable and then he , goes back to his heart and he was never fully there. That all leads up to his decision. Charlie is it possible still that if something happens to secretary clintons campaign, whether it is an email that gets out that nobody knows about now that implodes her candidacy, that he would get back in . Al it would have to happen very soon. It is possible, but very unlikely. Voters who elect delegates i think all of this backandforth and this ticktock occurred, there was a genuine discussion, even with top advisers late yesterday afternoon who were pretty convinced he was not going to run. It was not final until he talked with his family. I think that the overarching question here was something that biden didnte fully know all along which was , you cannot run for president as a catharsis, to somehow shed your grief. It is a very hard, difficult, trying painful thing to go through. It is not fun. People think it is fun. It is not. For joe biden to have done that almost from the beginning was not going to happen. I dont think he fully realized that for a while. It just wasnt meant to be. I think that is more important than the polls for the fundraising or the other stuff. Charlie he very much wanted to be president. Mark he thinks he would be a better candidate for the Democratic Party than Hillary Clinton, better president than Hillary Clinton thinks that his , partnership with obama has made him more ready then he felt he was before when he had been chairman of Foreign Relations and chairman of judiciary. I think part of what he said today was to try to put a coda on saying, here is my vision. Here is what i think america should be. Here is what i think the democratic nominee should be like. He very much wants the highest office he is likely to achieve now is Vice President of the United States. He is trying to find a way to make peace with that and put his imprint on the next year of the administration. Charlie lets imagine that he had run, what would be the differences with Hillary Clinton . John this is always a big question. On some areas of foreign policy, he was more doveish, on economics and most domestic policy, they are not very far apart and that was one of the , problems in trying to think of what the path would be. There is not an ideological or large numbers of policy differences that are very dramatic unlike clinton and bernie sanders, where the differences are much more stark. It would have been a Campaign Based more on, i am a more authentic voice for the middle class. That it would have been a stylistic and temperamental contrast rather than a contrast based on issues. Part of the argument on the argument all along was that we are in this moment right now, and you can see it on the republican side, a mirror image with the interest in donald trump and ben carson, this moment where authenticity is prized. That is the argument that biden would have been implicitly making. I am the authentic one, and she is the phony one. Charlie issues that he believes in about the middle class mark from scranton and the guy who rides the amtrak train and has the common touch and the ability to speak for workingclass voters in a way that few politicians do today he , would have that would have been the pitch. Much more of a temperamental thing. Charlie what did barack obama want . Al i think he probably would have voted for joe biden if he had voted in a contest but i , think he is probably not displeased with the outcome. He is a realist. He knew it would be difficult for joe biden to win. It might make it harder for Hillary Clinton to succeed him. My guess is that he is pleased with this, charlie. I dont think joe is all past attends. I think he will be in demand the next year. Russ feingold in wisconsin will want joe in there. Hillary clinton will be , campaigning with joe biden and i think the Vice President worries about what life will be like outside of politics which , he has been in for 43 years. I think he will be i dont think revered is too strong of a term but certainly a highly , respected figure, there will be a role for him to play. Charlie turning to Hillary Clinton, the testimony is tomorrow. Is that now less of an issue . Because of what the republicans have done in shooting themselves in the foot . Mark substantially less. You really need the goods, you need to have the country Pay Attention to what you want to say. It is not clear to me that the seven republicans who question her will be her match on any level and i think they have set , the table in a way not just because of the comments of kevin donthy, but because they seem to have a good sense of the stagecraft ricard required. I thought they were in a good place a few months ago. John, and others suggested that they were not. It is clear to me now that they are going to have to struggle to make this an effective hearing, either as a matter of oversight or politics. Charlie my theory is that the emails might unload something else. John the benghazi investigation, as you know, charlie there have been multiple , investigations elsewhere, it has been investigated pretty carefully over the course of many years. There was some new information that trey gowdy has and new emails from the ambassador, some new things to dig into, but largely the matter has been litigated. The new thing and potentially damaging thing as a relates to the emails, and we do have some accounts that the committee took a sharp turn when the email theyer erected, and suddenly seized on that and a pretty overtly political way. When she gave a good debate performance in las vegas, people pointed out that part of the reason she did well is that she has done this a lot of times before. She had been and 25 debates or forms with barack obama in 2008. And experience helps on the stage. It is the same thing for this committee hearing. This woman has been in front of a lot of congressional committees. She has been interrogated before many times. She not only has prepared a lot, but she has the background of having done this against the very able republican opponents. I think she walks into this, almost inevitably she is going to be better than the Republican House members who were against her because she has been dealing with this issue in a sustained way for a very long time. She knows what she knows and she knows how to make the arguments. Charlie is there any talk as to what might be on the emails that were deleted and then not necessarily all found to have been deleted . Al there is a lot of talk, charlie. Whether it goes beyond that is another matter. Look i cannot help but contrast , this to the hearings held 42 years ago by your fellow north carolinian, sam ervin. What a contrast. That was a much tougher time. That was much more perilous. It was bipartisan from the very beginning with these two men. Trey gowdy was never the right person to do this but it never , should have been done. A congressional hearing on libya would be very legitimate but a , hearing on the tragedy of four americans being killed was bound to be partisan from the beginning. Charlie, in 1983, 241 marines were blown out of the barracks in beirut. There were not hearings up in congress three years later. This never should have taken place. Charlie has the notion has set in that donald trump could win you are looking at me like that is the dumbest thing i have ever said john no, no, no mark first of all, yes, broadly speaking after a summer in which , the establishing media was in denial about him being the nominee, now he is widely accepted not universally that he is leading every national poll, that he is a viable candidate and at this moment, the most likely republican nominee. Charlie and build an organization. Mark he is building an organization, he has the money, all of those things. He is a real candidate. I dont think anybody thinks he is better than a 5050 shot that nobody has a better shot than him but to go back to your earlier question. Ben carson is in iowa a more natural fit for the iowa is,torate than donald trump partly because his evangelical credentials are legitimate. There are questions about trump. You can imagine the scenario where ben carson beats donald trump and i would. Maybe this poll is the beginning of a trend in that direction. Then the question becomes new hampshire, is there an establishment candidate that can be donald trump . If donald trump were to win iowa, new hampshire, south carolina, he might be unstoppable. If you lose the first two contests, does he go on after that . I dont know the answer to that question. I think that many people have some doubt about if he starts losing, whether he has staying power. Charlie thank you albert, john, mark. We will be right back. Stay with us. Charlie seth meyers ended his run as head writer and weekend update anchor on saturday night live after 13 years on that program. He took over as host of late night in february 2014. He is the fourth person to helm the show following letterman, obrien, and fallon. Hulus animated series the awesomes, which he cocreated, is airing its third season. Im pleased to have set meyers at table. Welcome, sir. Lets talk about the animated series first. Do you get some satisfaction out of being a creator . Seth i get a great amount of satisfaction from being a creator, especially for things i am passionate about. From a young age, i like superheroes, cartoons, comics. We always wanted to do Something Like that. We were lucky to find a place like hulu that wanted to do the show. Being able to voice a superhero was a nice bucket list thing for me. Charlie its nice that today there are so many places you can do programming. Seth he has been huge beneficiaries with the things we want to do. I very lucky to have a show on a network where you can reach out into more homes but in this day and age, you can do the ship in the bottle programming. You almost feel like a hobbyist. Charlie is there something to note about what is happening in the sense of taking serious interviews at 11 30 p. M. , whether it is joe biden or other people like that . Seth one of the ways you bring your dna as a host is who you want to book. That is something that joe we were very lucky to have him on our first show. For us, in the same way that it appeals to stephen, not just politicians, but i have enjoyed having fiction authors on. I found authors to be really interesting storytellers. Charlie people who have picked up on that. They have said where are the , shows that care about books . You have gotten on that list. Seth it is nice to use the platform to have people who would not be guests anywhere else. Charlie how has it changed since you began . Seth we made a choice to start the show behind the desk. That was one of the bigger changes we made. Charlie was that your instinct . Was that your producers instinct . Seth i learned a lot of skills at snl. We were just talking about ways even though these are yearround shows you think of fall as the new season. We were wondering if there is any way to shake up the way we present ourselves. One thing i had always felt was that when i was doing a monologue, i was the warmup comedian for my own show another and now the show starts when it starts. Charlie do you see the audience before the show . Seth i do. More than anything else, to make them feel more comfortable, that is when i get a sense of what the house is like. It varies from night tonight. If it is a brutally cold day in august, people are in a bad mood. Its funny. Because we dont have any windows, i dont know the weather is until i go outside. Charlie he always have one or two people who might not expect if they are loud or enthusiastic, the crowd will be more enthusiastic than normal. Seth an enthusiastic crowd gives you a little bit more license to have fun in those moments between the jokes. If you have a longtail of laughter, that is when you can go off script. If they are laughing and cutting it off cold charlie any other changes . Seth mostly just getting better. A lot of the staff we hired, it was their first job in television. We liked that idea. That is something again that i learned from Lorne Michaels at in sl. At snl. It is nice to hire people that dont know how to do these things and you can teach them the way you want to teach them. They have all just, everybody has gotten better. The luxury of these shows is that you do one every night, so your learning curve is a lot faster. It is the best. Charlie i cant imagine people who do Something Like once or twice year. If it goes wrong, your year is wasted. If it is not quite perfect for me today, there is tomorrow. Seth you can be less precious about it. When people are watching you at 12 30 a. M. At night, they want to see somebody who is comfortable when jokes are going well and badly. One of the things i had to hammer out of myself was just not to sweat a bad joke, not to sweat a bad piece of comedy. Charlie you knew that though, didnt you . Seth you know as much as you know and then doing it, it is so funny how you theorize about what it is like to do a latenight show but until you actually get out there, you dont realize how it actually is processed. Charlie do you watch other shows . Seth only stuff they gets picked of virally the next day with. When new people start i am , always curious about their shows. I was excited for stephen and trevor. I really enjoyed watching how they do it. The reality sets in and we are actually put together a show, you have a ton of time. Charlie did you have any regret about leaving snl . Seth no. Charlie even though it was an institution and you followed a rather Remarkable Group of people. Seth the nice thing was, doing weekend update, i followed remarkable people. I at least knew that it was possible and one of the ways it , was possible as you try to think too hard about the footsteps you are following. I was really sad to leave snl, but i was also reaching the point where i was the oldest guy i was writing for staff and cast. I dont think you can do both. It is fulltime. If anything, i wish i had more time to work on my show. Charlie what would you do with more time . I wish i could get in at 5 00 in the morning. We started 9 00, because that is the minimum amount of sleep you need to function. You always want two or three more hours. Whether it is a story that is breaking that day, just the logistics of pulling together the clips or graphics packages. Charlie do you spend more time thing about the monologue or the interviews . Seth i spend the most amount of time thinking of the written comedy in the first act of the show and that being the stuff , that is dayof.