yrlt i'm erin burnett. tonight, who let the attack dogs out? >> mitt romney, rick santorum and newt gingrich, these guys have a fundamentally different economic philosophy than we do. governor romney was more direct. let detroit go bankrupt. it's kind of amazing. gingrich and romney and santorum, they don't let the facts get in their way. >> that was the first time he mentioned them by name and as you can see, he did so with joy. vice president came out swinging in a trip to the all important swing state of ohio speaking to his party's base, the united autoworkers union. the industry's bailout is clearly a point of pride for the administration. it is a talking point you will hear a lot on the campaign trail for the rest of the year. just take a look at this clip from a 17-minute video the re-election campaign is debuting tonight. >> his advisers would ask where to begin, which urgent need would he put first. >> which is one, which is two, which is three, which is four, which is five? where do you start? >> if the auto industry goes down, what happens to america's manufacturing base? what happens to jobs in america? what happens to the whole midwest? >> did you hear the narrator there? tom hanks. and the flashy film is directed by david guggenheim, and yes, it is 17 minutes long, which is three minutes longer than the extended version of michael jackson's "thriller." ♪ those 17 minutes probably cost a pretty penny to the obama campaign. i wonder if it will add up to thriller. here's a stunning number. according to the federal election commission, the campaign reported two payments totaling about $345,000 for a guggenheim short film. that's about $20,300 a minute or $338 a second. wow. "thriller. kwaelts we spoke a short time ago to david axelrod, senior strategist for the president's re-election campaign and i started by asking him if the long form campaign ad was needed because the obama camp has lost some control of the narrative. >> well, there's no question that i've often said that when we arrived at the white house, we were an economic triage unit and you remember this. you were reporting on it every day. how sick the economy was at that time and every single day, we were having to make really consequenceal -- take really consequenceal actions. he was having to make conssequential actions. and so much of that kind of clouded the fundamental accomplishments that we're going on. and yes, i think that it's hard to get control of the message in that sort of an environment. >> there's lots of controversial things happen over the past few years. one of them, the auto bailout. you talk quite a bit about that in the video. here is a quick peek. >> there was a screen set up for slides, but we might as well been showing a horror movie because what was described in that meeting was an economic crisis beyond anything anybody had imagined. >> you had people telling you that the auto industry was literally days from collapsing. the financial sector the heart that pumps blood into the economy was frozen up in cardiac arrest. >> david, a lot of people agree. if we didn't do something for the auto industry, it would have been economic chaos in this country. but i guess the question i have for you tonight is if general motors never goes in the green to taxpayers and we are far from that right now, do you still think that the way that that was structured was a point of pride for this president? >> first of all, i think we will recover that money. over time, we've recovered a great deal of it. they've repaid their loans. we've got half the stake in general motors than we did at the beginning and we think we're going to work our way through that. but the larger question that you ask, the answer to that is yes. i mean, we were looking at a situation where if the president hadn't intervened, we'd lose a million jobs. not just in the auto industry but in related industries and the spin-offs from the auto industry. that would been a tremendous catastrophe for this country. we also would have lost an iconic american industry, the one that we invented and that would have a tremendous blow. >> just to make sure that i do completely understand what you're saying, when gm ipo, and a lot of debt it had turned into equity, $33 a share, we're at $26 now, the shares would need to trade as high as $60 apiece for taxpayers to be in the green. if we never get there, was it still worth it? >> i think we will recover the money that the obama administration invested in the auto industry and i think it was well worth it. i think it was well worth it. >> one important issue for the election and i know you're a prolific tweeter. i love looking at your tweets. you tweeted about mitt romney a bit. i wanted to reference him in the question, but first just to show you a poll about the president's handling of gas prices. it sort of has been stunning to me how people really have an opinion on the president related to gas prices. 65% of them disapprove of how he's handling gas prices. 26% of them approve. i know the president's point of view has been, well, look, there's not that much a president can do about gas prices, but i wanted to play you something that mitt romney said on tuesday in missouri about that issue. >> what could it be? what could it be? now, i have some suggestions for him. maybe it's related to the fact that you stopped drilling in the gulf. maybe it's related to the fact, mr. president, that you're not drilling in anwar. maybe it's related to the fact you said we couldn't get a pipeline in from canada known as keystone. those things affect gasoline prices long-term. >> what do you say to mitt romney? >> i would say he's got his facts wrong. we're drilling 20% more than. we're producing more oil domestically, 20% more than when the president arrived. the most since 2005. we vastly expanded the areas in which drilling can happen. we've accelerated permits since the gulf disaster, but doing it in a way that ensures safety. of those operations. we are all for domestic production of oil and gas the question is, is that enough, and certainly is it enough to make a difference right now? there's a fundamental dishonesty to what governor romney and some of the other republicans are suggesting and i don't think the american people buy the notion that they have some sort of secret formula that would lower gas pleases tomorrow, the next day, or anytime soon. but this just comes into the category of let me say whatever i can to try to get elected. i think the american people are more discerning than that. >> let me ask you one more question and this is important in light of the rush limbaugh controversy, sandra fluke, when he call her a slut. bill maher has used a c word to refer to sarah palin. he has used some other very unflattering words like bim bow to also refer to sarah palin and michele bachmann. he also gave a million dollars to the super pac, set up to re-elect barack obama. to be consistent, should that super pac give the money back? >> first of all, let me say i don't think -- there's been a corsoning of our political culture. i don't think that language is appropriate no matter who uses it and no matter who you are in politics, you ought to be able to say so. i was disappointed governor romney didn't stand up more forcefully when rush limbaugh said what he said, but understand these words that maher has used in his stand-up act are a little bit different than not excusable in any way, but different than a guy with 23 million radio users using his broadcast platform to malign a young woman for speaking her mind in the most inappropriate, grotesque, ways, and nor does bill maher play the role in the democratic party that rush limbaugh plays in the republican party where he's the de facto boss of the party. >> i see your point that sandra fluke is not a public figure and sarah palin is, if someone called me a c word -- >> erin, i do not excuse those kind of characterizations of women. i don't think those kind of gratuitous, nasty words about anyone is appropriate in the public. i'm not excusing anyone. i think what limbaugh did was particularly egregious. and it wasn't just once. he built on it and built on it to the point where he built into some sort of a perverse soliloquy at the end about whether she should post her relationships online. i mean, that was, there's no excuse for that. >> the bottom line, the priorities action u.s.a. should and would keep the bill maher million dollars? >> i don't speak for priorities u.s.a. if i did, i'd be violating the law. i haven't talked to anybody at that organization for probably a year or a more. i worked with bill briton in the past, but i haven't talked to any of those guys. they're going to have to make their own decision and i'm not going to comment on that. as a general rule, i don't think those words belong in the public space. i do think what limbaugh did was particularly egriejs. >> thank you very much. good to talk to you, sir. >> according the to the most recent federal filings, bill maher has donated a million dollars to the super pac supporting president obama. that's real money, because 50% of the money raised by that super pac in february 2012 and 15% of all of the money raised by the super pac since its inception in january of 2011. bill maher is the second biggest contributor behind hollywood mogul jeffrey katzenberg. john avlon is here with me now and it looked like david axelrod sort of took me out there by saying it's not my decision, it's someone else's decision as to whether or not to accept the money. >> that's the way the law works and of course, it's also a dodge. people are quick to excuse comments made by someone on their own side, but quick to condemn comments made by someone on the opposing team. he joined the conversation back to rush limbaugh. just folks on the right don't want to deal with his comment, they want to say look what bill maher said on the left in the past. everyone is pointing fingers. we can't get on the same page and apply equal standards. >> it does seem to be a problem and a lot of these dodges of well, this person's a spokesman and this person's isn't, to me, none of that matters if a public figure says something awful on any kind of woman on either political side, it's wrong. >> yeah, it should be wrong whether a democrat or republican said it. we need to start applying equal standards. that's been a huge part of the politics. it's part of the world the talk radio's created. thank you very much and john is going to be back with us. please let us know what you think about that issue. david axelrod with rush limbaugh and bill maher. is the gop about to lose a war for women? 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[ male announcer ] one pill a day. 24 hours. zero heartburn. before the break, we were talking to david axelrod about everything from gas prices to gm to rush limbaugh and bill maher, but before i let him go, i had to ask him his thoughts about the republican primary. >> i actually thought it would be over by now. i thought they would have this resolved, and each time you think they're going to have it resolved, there's another turn of the wheel. it's obvious they can't agree and this is going to go on for quite a while. this kind of continued lurch to the right we have seen is going to continue for governor romney trying to compete with the others. >> all right, john avlon is with us. of course, former speech writer for condoleezza rice also joins us. and dana lasch. great to see all of you with us. it is something everyone thought would be over by now. i mean and it was interesting, he was actually talking about newt gingrich, so i wouldn't want to presume to tell newt gingrich what to do, but i thought it would be over by now. it sort of seemed like it was saying maybe newt should get out even though he didn't directly say it. >> there are a lot of individuals wondering whether or not newt gingrich should get out of the race. i was having a conversation with a friend earlier, and we were discussing how the primary was a good racket because the longer you stay in, the longer you can push to get higher speaking fees and book deals, but at this time, the delegate mat, i dome know if he can make it when it comes to delegate math. the fat lady's warming up and everybody's been talking about this fat lady for a long time now. but it is different because the super tuesday this primary cycle, we had like ten contests, but in 2008, there were like 20, 21 contests, so it is scheduled a little differently and feels a lot longer. >> i think we have learned a lot of lessons. whatever your political party may be about how to not schedule a primary season. what about the video that the obama campaign's putting out. 17 minutes. tom hanks narrated. academy award winning producer. real image of a documentary. >> i think it's pretty striking that the message seems like it's going to be disaster averted. nothing really bad's happening in contrast in '08, where it was change you could believe in. this video, he paid $300,000 for it. i think back in '08, someone in hollywood would have done it for free. very different phase in terms of how his supporters are getting behind him. >> kony's video has 100 million plus views. president obama's get that many views? >> the bar has been set. i'm going to say no. this is a highly produced campaign video. she makes a good point. this is actually saying that wow, storm clouds were coming, we averted disaster. it's not a narrative of triumph. iit's a narrative of why it could have been much worse. >> all right. let's talk about this issue about women, and this is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. you've got the violence against women act, democrats want to put forth legislation from 1994. they say it's time. at the time, it was broadly bipartisan. now, there are republican parts of it including would be immigrants. if you're being abused, you can get a visa. republicans don't like that. >> antiwomen or anti-immigrant. their opposition is towards 5,000 visas given to the worst victims of domestic violence and that's how many visas were given last year, they're up to 10,000 that can be given a year. it's a very small percentage of the nearly 5,000 visas we give a year. they can say yes, it's about immigration, but really i think it's this backlash against women that we're hearing a rhetoric that isn't very helpful. >> how can justify voting against this bill? >> well -- >> i'm not saying you would. i'm asking your hypothetically. i'm sorry if it came out that way. >> i think it's very brilliant maneuver on the part of senators leahy and schumer because they realize this is where they need to take the conversation to appeal to their base. but the problem is that in the past, it had been unanimously approved. the reauthorization of this. back in like 2006. was the last reauthorization. but because of all of the provisions tacked on to it, and there are no safeguards thus time listed with this. definitely people don't like to see violence committed against women and they have a good law, but there were no safeguards and it's easy to commit fraud with this system. it's loose, broadly defined, so the amendment grassley put forward was to remedy this. >> john avlon, does it make sense to keep immigration in regardless of the issues? do you think it's outrageous someone would be offended by it or not? we should be able to pass the violence against women act without having it turn into a conversation about contraception, immigration, or whatever it is that may be your sticking point. >> this is a political maneuver by democrats, but a smart one. there is a bill that had broad bipartisan support in the past to some proposals that are now controversial. and the fact that is now includes same-sex couples is one of the things some find troubling and offensive. the question is whether republicans are going to let that agenda drive them into this trap in effect and let this narrative deepen. it's a part of a pattern. that's the point democrats are trying to serve up. from planned parenthood fights on down, this exists because it reflects a fault line within the republican party. >> it seems to show that the republican party, we talk about why the obama administration put out a 17-minute video, because they seemed to have lost control of their narrative, the republican party certainly seems to have lost control over the women's narrative. >> definitely. i think what rush did, his comments were so harmful to the entire health care debate to obamacare and by using that kind of vitriolic language, it made the whole argument against -- for having obamacare more attractive. >> thanks very much to all three. we appreciate it. >> you have heard the slogan, if you see something, say something. now, a few police departments across the country like in texas, are taking the campaign to a whole new level. take a look at this. >> hello. i'm eddie solomon, chief of police for grapevine, texas and i'd like to tell you about iwatch grapevine. >> kind of a scary little smile there, too. i watch you. i watch the new mobile app that allows ordinary citizens to report criminal or suspicious activity from their smart phone so any photos that are shared with local police and demanding on the situation, the department of homeland security. so, is this big brother at work or a useful tool that allows for village lanty justice is a tainted term. miguel has been tracking the story and is "outfront" tonight. how widespread is this technology? is this something that is going to become widely used? >> it is quite possible you're going to see it rolling out into your city very, very soon. there are currently six cities that have it. one form of it. it's going to roll out one company, ithink ware out of dallas. 68 cities in the next six months will have it. west virginia and kentucky have it now. we did do a little field trip today and went downstairs, across the street to central park to show you exactly how this technology works. so, here i am in central park and if you happen to see something you think is a crime, i want to show you how these applications work. you whip out your iphone or android and say i saw something under that bridge. you just take a photo and it uploads it into the application and then you can use that photo to add details about the suspected crime you're seeing. the location, what happened. you can report anything from a drug deal to a terrorist if you suspect it. then you can use this and report it anonymously. >> oh, anonymou