but it s been a very violent day. much more violent, much more furious than the protests yesterday. we have a final death toll we believe of six dead and 30 wounded. perhaps six different protests across the country. so it seems to have escalated significantly today. and president karzai actually put out a statement, right? what did he say? reporter: yeah, he put out a statement this afternoon. a lot of people are waiting to see what he ll say. he said he condemned the burning and he ordered an investigation into what had happened and he appointed committee of senior clerics to find out what was going on. i think the key thing was that he condemned the burning. that s actually our ben farmer in kabul there. we apologize. it s not always easy to link up technically, but we will stay with ben on this story. ben, i apologize. we lost your audio. an american woman who reported on the violence in syria has now become a victim of it. marie colvin worked for the sunday times o
with a double-digit lead over newt gingrich. part of his advantage comes from early voter who is went his way more than 50% of the time. here s a reaction from gingrich, just a short time ago. mr. speaker, do you still see a path to the nomination? of course. how? unify the conservatives, you win the delegates, and then you have the nomination. freshman florida senator marco rubio is a very popular man these days. he s been mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice for whomever comes out on top. but he says, no way. my answer hasn t changed on that. i ve answered it repeatedly. the fact is, i m focused on my job here in the senate. i ll do anything the nominee wants me to do in terms of getting elected. i don t think that s going to be vice president. i don t think i m going to be the vice presidential nominee. rubio, who was speaking with our soledad o brien, also talked about why he hasn t endorsed everyone. i have relationships with two of the four c
toast, bacon, ham, sausage, chicken sausage, wheat or rye toast, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, no substitutions. rollout out. take you out to your car and put you on a treadmill. this morning i m going to stick with the tater tots because they re easy to eat to anchor a show. hello, everybody. cnn s political analyst roland martin is with us this morning. it s a bad start if i can t get through roland s name. david frum is back with us. nice to have you in person. chatting by satellite. and also this morning, norquist is joining us, president of americans for tax reform. you re going to be our tax expert this morning as we sort through mitt romney s taxes. it s nice to have you. thanks for being with us. mitt romney we know now officially released his tax returns. we re expecting that in about 90 minutes. but there is a preview. the preview is roughly 550 pages long. romney made $21.6 million in 2010. paid over $3 million in taxes. and tesktive tax rate as we mentioned is 1
shot rick santorum leap frogs into fourth. his support has tripled since the beginning of the month and closing in on mitt romney and ron paul who are locked in the statistical ties within the margin of error. joe johns is in des moines to break it down. of course, the question is, did the gingrich camp see this coming? yeah, i think to some degree they saw this coming. hammering ron paul, for example. also, mitt romney. it s pretty clear that gingrich saw he had some problems because he was just getting hammered on tv ads day after day from these guys. a lot of people attacking his baggage, attacking his alleged flip-flops. questioning his conservative credentials, questioning what he did when he was speaker of the house and his relationship with nancy pelosi. all of these things play into the mix here in iowa because there are a lot of voters who are very conservative. they want to see the most electable conservative going up against barack obama in november, hala. well
so, we had newt gingrich and mitt romney. both on the offensive over the last 24 hours. they know that six days is a short time and that s when the caucuses are. what have we been hearing from both of the candidates, mark? well, hala, you re absolutely right. so much on the line, so much at stake here. six days until january 3rd when iowa republicans will caucus and will really kick off what has been already a very long presidential season. well, newt gingrich had pledged not to go negative in this campaign. he had said that he would only go positive and talk about his plan to try to turn the american economy around. well, the gloves have come off and, in fact, he is going negative. yesterday on the situation room with wolf blitzer, he went right after mitt romney. in fact, let s listen to what newt gingrich had to say. all i say mitt is, if you want to run a negative campaign and you want to attack people, at least be man enough to own it. that s your staff and that s