Guests: Richard Wolffe, Howard Fineman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Melissa Harris-Perry, Daniel Sieberg
LAWRENCE O‘DONNELL, HOST: Governing is hard. Tweeting about governing—not so hard.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC)
DYLAN RATIGAN, MSNBC HOST: A bad mood.
NORAH O‘DONNELL, NBC NEWS: A number of Americans who think the economy is getting worse has jumped 13 points in a month.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC ANCHOR: Not great news for the president.
L. O‘DONNELL (voice-over): The president‘s not so casual Friday.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A new poll shows 57 percent of people now disapprove of the way Obama is handling the economy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let‘s get serious about jobs.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Frustration which many of us have. We don‘t see enough jobs being created for the chronically unemployed and for those who need our help.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thirty-nine percent see things getting worse.
One huge reason? The spike in gas prices.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Skyrocketing gas prices is on the minds of Americans right now.
ROBERT REICH, FORMER LABOR SECRETARY: If it looks like gas prices jeopardize politics, you can bet the president will do absolutely anything necessary.
L. O‘DONNELL: As the president announces to work on those gas prices
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The attorney general is putting together a team whose job it is to root out any cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets.
L. O‘DONNELL: Sarah Palin and Donald Trump revert to policy by bumper sticker. Her tweet on Libya, “Get in, hit hard, get out.”
His plan for gas prices --
DONALD TRUMP, CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Look, I‘m going to look them in the eye and say, fellas, you‘ve had your fun. Your fun is over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You wonder why Donald Trump is hitting a nerve, was when he comes out and says, wait a second, we are fighting a war in Iraq. Don‘t we get to take their oil?
L. O‘DONNELL: And as the president‘s numbers sink, Donald Trump‘s numbers continue to rise.
ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS: Do you think that Donald Trump is a credible candidate for president for the Republican Party?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What Donald Trump has done is to create some straight talk on business, on jobs, on taxes and on spending.
MITCHELL: He‘s got a lot of bankruptcy protections.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O‘DONNELL: Good evening from Los Angeles.
On Good Friday, as we enter the Easter weekend, the most hopeful and optimistic point on the Christian calendar, what is the state of the union tonight? Worried, pessimistic and concerned that we are not heading in the right direction.
The latest “New York Times”/CBS New poll shows the number of people who think the U.S. is on the wrong track is at 70 percent, the highest it has been since the final days of George W. Bush‘s presidency.
President Obama now gets low marks across the board -- 57 percent disapprove of how he‘s handling the economy, 59 percent disapprove of how he‘s handling the deficit, 45 percent disapprove of how he‘s handling the situation in Libya. His overall job approval is at 46 percent compared to 45 percent of those who disapprove.
The president thinks he knows what‘s moving his numbers, the price at the pump. Last night at a fundraiser, the president said, “I‘m confident because I travel around the country and my poll numbers go up and down, depending on the latest crisis. And right now, gas prices are weighing heavily on people. But when I talk to ordinary folks, they are not paying attention and we understand the world is complicated.”
If you don‘t understand the world is complicated and if you exaggerate wildly and if you‘re crazy, this is the way you talk about gas prices.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Look at what‘s going on with the gasoline prices. They‘re going to go to $5, $6, $7. And we don‘t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, fellas, it‘s time. It‘s over. You‘re not going to do it anymore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: If you don‘t understand the world is complicated, you don‘t know that you can create worldwide economic chaos by not raising the debt ceiling when necessary.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHELE BACHMANN ®, MINNESOTA: I say no to the debt ceiling.
No to raising our debt ceiling.
(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
BACHMANN: Now, some people will tell you, but, Michele, you don‘t want the government to shut down. The government won‘t shut down.
This is what will happen. Revenue will continue to come in to the United States Treasury. And we will, first, pay off our debts, our obligations and interest on the debt. That‘s the first thing we‘ll do so we don‘t violate our credit ratings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: If you don‘t understand the world is complicated, then 142 characters is more than enough to articulate all of your thinking about the United States‘ role in Libya. @SarahPalinUSA tweeted, “Get in, hit hard, get out. Need to send the world a message: we‘ll only intervene in anyone‘s business if we are dead serious.”
If you do understand the world is complicated, there is no one left in the Republican Party who speaks for you.
Joining me now is Howard Fineman, senior political editor for “The Huffington Post” and an MSNBC political analyst, and Richard Wolffe, MSNBC political analyst and author of “Renegade: The Making of a President.”
Thank you both for joining me tonight.
RICHARD WOLFFE, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: You bet.
HOWARD FINEMAN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Hi, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Richard, did these poll numbers hit the White House by surprise? Did they—did they understand there was a trend building with these kinds of negative numbers?
WOLFFE: No, they have known this is building for awhile. Gas prices haven‘t just suddenly spike. But they also know that in spite of all vulnerability they have on the economy, there‘s only one set of numbers that are actually worse than this, and that‘s what voters say they think about Republicans and specifically about the Republican plans on things like budget or on cutting taxes for the super wealthy.
So, you know, people talk about hope and change here—you know, yes, they are hoping gas prices come down and people feel better about the economy. But they also know the risk of change is what‘s going to drive people in this dynamic we‘re going to see over the next year or so.
O‘DONNELL: Howard, the president does have some high disapproval numbers in there for a president running for re-election. But the Congress has a disapproval number of 75 percent.
How do you think voters are balancing that out—heir disapproval of the Congress and the disapproval of the job done by the White House? Where does that leave them when it comes time to vote for president?
FINEMAN: Well, it leaves them at a quandary. And it leaves them very upset that the Washington hasn‘t changed. It is true that the gas price numbers are hurting the president right now. It‘s true that there‘s a lot of uneasiness still about the economy. As a matter of fact, it‘s growing again.
But I think it‘s also true that people are a little disappointed in the president because he hasn‘t been able to change the way Washington works at all. Indeed, Congress is even more poorly regarded. Everybody wanted a bigger deal than was done the last budget go around.
And so, in an odd way, the fact the Republicans and Congress are so poorly regarded, that the whole system is so poorly regarded drags everybody down, including the president.
So, on the one hand, it‘s true, the Republicans are in worse shape politically than the president. But on the other hand, it‘s true that every politician of any kind, including the president of the United States, is dragged down in this dismal mood that people have about the whole system.
O‘DONNELL: Richard, I don‘t think we‘ve seen a president who has faced a more simple minded, nonsensical opposition as voiced by the Donald Trumps, the Michele Bachmanns.
WOLFFE: Right.
O‘DONNELL: This notion that, oh, you know, you don‘t have to raise the debt ceiling, spoken by a congresswoman who I‘m not sure knew what the debt ceiling was when the year began.
WOLFFE: Right.
O‘DONNELL: The Trump idiocy that just continues, he continues to spew nonstop when he‘s not talking about the birth certificate.
When you look back at George W. Bush and the opposition he faced from the other side, it was issue-based opposition. It was the opposition to the wars of choice. It was opposition to specific things the presidency was under taking.
How much of this giant fog of nonsense is dragging down the president‘s numbers?
WOLFFE: Well, I think these two things are connected that we‘ve just been talking about. The dissatisfaction with politicians across the board, the president, the Congress, everyone, is leading some voters, a sizable group, to reach out for the untested, the crazy, the extreme populist figures. That‘s why you end up with a Trump and a Bachmann coming up through the system. It‘s not because we‘re fascinated with them in the media. It‘s because people are willing to try new things.
And there‘s also partly the fallacy of Obama here, which is that he made it look ace it. He made it looked like you can come out of nothing and just ease it. As Krauthammer argued it, he was just a giant fluke.
So, why not have two flukes, right? Except that, of course, he didn‘t just ace it and didn‘t come out of nowhere. He was tested for two years. So—and he was tested extremely thoroughly on policy. That‘s how he stood out from someone like Hillary Clinton.
So, these two trends are connected. But, you know, Democrats when faced with this choice in 2004 chose the responsible guy. He may have been dull and flawed in his own way, but John Kerry was the respectable guy. I‘m not sure Republicans are going to make the same choice this time around.
O‘DONNELL: Howard, the president makes the point—obvious point that the world is complicated. That really everything involved in governing is complicated and difficult. And it seems like these poll numbers and the rise of Trump in the polls and the success of simple minded messages that Republicans deliver, that seems to be being—that seems to be successful with people who simply don‘t want the world to be complicated. They want to get that complicated toothpaste back in the tube and live in some previously nonexistent simple world that never existed.
FINEMAN: Well, a couple things, Lawrence. One of them is that I know the president is frustrated about this. He believes that he is taken a thoughtful nuance approach to things. You would think of health care that way. He would think of his work on the stimulus in that way.
He‘s a guy who appreciates complexity, thinks he can describe it. But he‘s frustrated personally, testy sometimes, about the failure of the media to understand it clearly in his view and voters to understand it clearly in his view.
So, that‘s one of the things that the president is dealing with right now and you see it popped out occasionally.
The other thing that struck me in the CBS/”New York Times” poll is that moderates are dropping. Self-described moderates are dropping. This is related to the other things that we were just talking about with Richard.
There are more self-described liberals than there‘d been before, and overall, and more self-described conservatives. The moderates in the middle are shrinking as people look for absolutist answers to things—simple answers, ideological answers. People are clinging to the verities they think they know because the world is almost too complicated for them to deal with, especially when it‘s not producing jobs and it‘s producing $4.50 gasoline.
O‘DONNELL: Richard, on jobs in “The New York Times”/CBS poll, two interesting findings. One is that the number one issue that the respondents want the president to concentrate on is jobs, 21 percent say it should be jobs. The third one is the deficit. The third one, deficit.
WOLFFE: Yes.
O‘DONNELL: Only—another item, only 29 percent say the deficit reduction would create jobs.
So, the Republican argument that it would create jobs is only believed by 29 percent.
WOLFFE: Which is their core, right.
O‘DONNELL: Yes. And the deficit itself, as an issue for the president, comes in third. Has the White House made a mistake in adopting the Republican frame that the deficit is our number one issue?
WOLFFE: Well, there are two things there. First of all, the longer they spend talking debts and deficits, the more they are off topic just as Republicans are. So, yes, that‘s why people are saying you‘re not dealing with the economy, you‘re not changing it.
You‘re not talking about things that we care about. And it‘s not like this is the first few months they have been talking about jobs. This has been a constant for the last couple of years.
So, people need to talk about jobs even as they deal with that deficit. But it‘s not Republican territory the way the deficit debate has been framed up, because as long as it‘s about raising taxes on people making $250,000 or more, that‘s great territory for Democrats because more than 70 percent of voters agree with the Democratic position as long as it‘s about changing Medicare in any kind of radical way, it‘s Democratic territory.
So, the deficit debate as it‘s played out has been good for Democrats, but deficits are still off the topic.
O‘DONNELL: Howard Fineman of “The Huffington” and Richard Wolffe—thank you both for joining me tonight.
FINEMAN: Thank you, Lawrence.
WOLFFE: Thanks, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: Donald Trump is leading a new poll of Republican candidates for president and more people are convinced he‘s going to run. Of course, you and I know better.
And later, the big lie about Republicans trying to save Medicare.
That‘s in “The Rewrite.”
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O‘DONNELL: Donald Trump failed the Republican abortion litmus test when NBC‘s Savannah Guthrie asked him a question about Roe versus Wade. But that didn‘t stop Christian evangelist Franklin Graham from telling a reporter that Trump could be his candidate for president.
And in “The Spotlight,” how Trump is fooling social conservatives.
And coming up next, Republicans gloated as Democrats faced angry town halls during the health care debate. Now, it‘s their turn. That‘s next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Make the tax cuts that were given to the wealthy 2 percent and put it into Medicare.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I agree with here. And you know what?
(INAUDIBLE) She‘s an American citizen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sit down.
(CROSSTALK)
(END VDIEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: The town hall backlash has already started from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin. Republican Congressman Paul Ryan faced a tough crowd back home when he defended his deficit reduction plan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to lower spending, but if it‘s a matter of there‘s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.
REP. PAUL RYAN ®, WISCONSIN: We do tax the top.
(BOOS)
RYAN: Let‘s remember—let‘s remember, most of our jobs come from the success of small businesses. Two thirds of our job growth. You‘ve got to remember that these businesses pay taxes as individuals. So, when you raise their tax rate to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree, that‘s going to hurt job creation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Is this the beginning of another round of angry town halls like the ones that dominated the health care debate in the summer of 2009 in support of government-provided health insurance?
Even Newt Gingrich sounds a little worried. He recently backed away from Congressman Ryan‘s plan and endorsed an approach closer to Clinton White House Budget Director Alice Rivlin‘s plan, that preserves the current form of Medicare but give seniors the option, just the option, to choose a private plan if they so wish.
Joining me now is Congressman Jerry Nadler, democrat from New York.
Thanks for joining me tonight, Congressman.
REP. JERROLD NADLER (D), NEW YORK: It‘s a pleasure.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman, I don‘t think anyone in politics can be surprised that the vast, overwhelming majority of the public is opposed to the Republican Medicare plan when it is described to them. Where do you see that plan going from here? The Senate, obviously, will not be passing anything like it. But it is the official position of the House, as passed at this point.
How do—how do you bring some kind of agreement between the House and the Senate on this?
NADLER: Well, there is—it‘s not the official position of the House, but every single Republican, with four exceptions, voted for it and also voted, for practical purposes, to eliminate Medicaid. They are not going to escape from that. They‘ve shown what they really want to do.
The Ryan budget, which all the Republicans except four voted for, it‘s not a budget reduction plan. It‘s a plan to eliminate most government services that the Republicans have hated for years, Medicare and Medicaid, all kinds of social services, housing, education, aid, you name it. And that‘s the real plan.
And, by the way, it‘s not even a deficit reduction plan because what Ryan would do, what this plan that they have all voted for would do is to reduce expenditures by $4.3 trillion and reduce taxes on the rich, on millionaires and billionaires by $4.2 trillion.
So, what it really does is takes $4.2 trillion from middle and low income people and gives it to the rich people. And that‘s the whole point of the budget.
O‘DONNELL: Now, and this is the same group—the same side of the aisle that is saying we‘re not going to raise the debt ceiling, we don‘t want to do it, when within the Ryan plan, it actually specifically calls for increases in the debt ceiling as it moves forward.
NADLER: Well, it does and it mandates it. And, in fact, what nobody remembers is that during the Bush administration, we raised the debt ceiling seven times.
But the debt ceiling debate, I strongly feel is a silly debate because voting to raise the debt ceiling does not vote—is not a vote to increase debt or to spend more money. It‘s a vote to recognize the consequences of decisions taken by Congress and the president a year and two and three and four years ago.
If you want to cut down future debt, then vote for higher taxes or vote for lower expenditures and next year‘s budget. But you can‘t simply say I want to stop the world and get off, I don‘t want to recognize the consequences of what was already done a couple of years ago, which is what voting against the debt ceiling increase would do.
O‘DONNELL: Is Medicare going to be the central issue going into the next election?
NADLER: I think Medicare is going—and Medicaid by the away—because eliminating Medicaid the way they want to do -- 60 percent of Medicaid pays for long term for middle income who get older. But eliminating Medicare and Medicare will be one of two central issues.
And the other thing, which is causing the president‘s drop in popularity, is still the fact that we‘re having a very anemic recovery. We still don‘t have nearly enough jobs.
And I strongly believe that we should not be talking deficit reduction. The president makes a terrible mistake when he agrees with the Republicans that that‘s or seems to agree that that‘s the number one issue. We should be talking about how to create more jobs, even if the quest of a bigger deficit, the deficit is a long term problem. But we could have more spending for a year or two to get the economy up. If we have a 5 percent unemployment rate, that would by itself eliminate two-thirds of the deficit going forward.
O‘DONNELL: Well, Congressman, your position seems supported in today‘s “New York Times” poll, which indicates that deficit reduction is the third, only the third priority of most voters. Whereas jobs is the number one priority. Also in that same poll, only 29 percent indicate that they believe—and that would be virtually pure Republican, 29 percent—believe the Republican deficit reduction plan will create jobs. That poll seems to be a road map to Democrats about how to argue the case and move past the deficit reduction.
NADLER: Well, it certainly should be. And I certainly hope the president adopts it.
We‘ve been playing within our 30-yard line because the Republicans come along and say the country is broke, we got to reduce spending and the president sort of agrees with them. He says we got to reduce spending, but more intelligently, we still got to invest. But when we reduce spending, we‘re cutting jobs.
And I hope we‘ll get back—we‘ll get our eyes back on the ball, which we were all talking act last year, which is jobs, jobs, jobs. And we know how to create those jobs.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman, the Democrats compromised and the president compromised on the top tax bracket back in December. Now, you have very, very powerful polling results showing that the position of raising the top tax bracket has overwhelming support. It even has a majority of support of the Republicans—I point we made on this program the other night.
Can you imagine any scenario in which the Democrats would once again and the president would once again be forced into a compromise that would keep the top tax bracket low?
NADLER: Well, I certainly hope not because if we want to get to any kind of fiscal sanity, that‘s the beginning of it, is to increase the tax on millionaires and the billionaires. You can quibble, there should be $250,000 or $500,000. And, by the way, we could have heavier tax brackets after $10 million and after $20 million and $100 million. There‘s no reason to tax the $251,000 dollar no more and no less, that same as the $250 million.
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And if we want to get the budget back to into kind of a semblance of balance, we‘re going to have to do that. Now, a number of us introduced legislation recently to increase tax brackets so that people making $1 billion, you would pay 47 percent. Under Ronald Reagan, it was 77 percent. I don‘t know why we are satisfied in the 30‘s.
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O‘DONNELL: Congressman, I couldn‘t be happier to hear you talk about these higher brackets. I‘ve been advocating them for years, above $1 million, $10 million, $100 million, and to have a $1 billion bracket, even if only symbolic. And it is not only symbolic, we have many billionaires in this country.
But to not have them, to not have those higher brackets on those astronomical incomes seems to me to be a statement to people with real working incomes that we just completely ignore what‘s happening at the top of the income—
(CROSSTALK)
NADLER: Absolutely. Over the last 30 years, the productivity in this country, the amount of goods and services we can producer per person per hour has better than doubled. But essentially, 95 percent of benefit of that is going to the top 1 percent in this country. The median wage hardly increased at all, adjusted for inflation. And that‘s why you‘re squeezing the middle class, you‘re hurting the low income.
And the really rich, people making $1 million a year, $10 million a year, are making out like bandits and we‘re not taxing them. We‘re not taxing nearly adequately. And that‘s the only way to maintain the services that people want.
The Republican budget, for instance, would have nondefense discretionary spending go down from 12 percent of the economy to 2.6 percent where it hasn‘t been since the Coolidge administration. No way to pay for Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security and housing and enabling kids to go to college. We could do that kind of thing.
O‘DONNELL: Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York—thank you very much for joining us tonight, Congressman.
NADLER: You are quite welcome.
O‘DONNELL: Senator Al Franken has some questions from Apple CEO about the privacy of iPhone users. And now, there‘s word another popular smartphone could be logging your personal information. An invasion of your rights or just the reality of living in a digital age?
And there‘s barely three weeks left in Donald Trump‘s fake presidential campaign. Three more weeks to make fools out of Republicans who are picking them as their top candidate. We look at where Trump stands in a new Gallup poll and what that tells us about Republican voters.
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(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: That‘s one of the most famous scenes in TV comedy history from “I Love Lucy.” Lucille Ball wasn‘t the only female pioneer on that program. Madelyn Pugh Davis co-wrote every episode of the iconic series that ran for six years, 179 episodes, and has lived on for more than half-a-century in reruns airing to this day. Davis began her career here in Los Angeles in the glory days of network radio, only they weren‘t so glorious for women, as she noted in her memoir. “No one actually wanted to hire women in 1944.”
For women in comedy, the battle didn‘t always get easier through the years. Only a decade ago, Jerry Lewis actually told an audience at a comedy festival, quote, “I don‘t like any female comedians.” Madelyn Pugh Davis, who would again work with Lucille Ball several times over the decades, died this week at the age of 90. She lived long enough not only to see her own lasting legacy in comedy, but the emergence of women as a true force in comedy, on stage, behind the scenes, and sometimes juggling both. Case in point, Tina Fey, whose new book is now number one on the New York Times best-seller list, and whose NBC series, “30 Rock,” celebrated its 100th episode last night, a show that has taken on sexism in the comedy business with humor.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TINA FEY, ACTRESS: I support women. I‘m like a human bra, which is why I want to hire a young comic named Abby Flynn to come on as a guest writer.
ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: No, you are not budgeted. She‘s got good energy: Hire her immediately.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Donald Trump‘s fake presidential campaign presents a basic intelligence test that many Republicans are failing. That‘s next.
And in the Rewrite tonight, the big lie Republicans have to tell about what they really want to do to Medicare.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who do you like for the presidential primary here in South Carolina?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Donald Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He sounds good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who‘s that?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where do you get most of your news?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can‘t get it in the media because they are part of the problem.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So where do you get it?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: From my neighbor. He gets it off the computer.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Donald Trump continues to dupe people into thinking he‘s running for president. Last night on Fox News, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer was the latest to fall for Trump‘s act.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, CONSERVATIVE COLUMNIST: He called me and. You know, I was prepared for a gale of abuse, because I have been really tough on him. He would have been within his rights to do it.
Actually, he was rather gracious and courteous. And he wanted to talk about his candidacy. He wanted to make me see, in his view, how he was a serious candidate, a serious man.
So I give him credit for graciousness and strength. But he convinced me that he‘s running and this is not just a faint.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Geez, I wonder why I haven‘t gotten a call from the vulgarian in chief, trying to convince me he‘s running? Here is what Charles Krauthammer does not understand about Donald Trump: Trump cannot afford to run for president.
And there are three important and independent ways in which Trump cannot afford to run for president. First, he simply doesn‘t have enough money for a presidential campaign. It would cost Trump a few hundred million dollars to run a viable campaign. He doesn‘t have that kind of money. And he has never, ever, ever had that kind of money.
Second, he cannot afford to lose his paycheck as a paid cast member in an NBC entertainment show. Now, if you think Trump is a billionaire and doesn‘t need the few million he makes from his TV show, ask yourself why no other billionaire is in the cast of an NBC TV show, or in the cast of any TV show anywhere.
Third, Trump‘s fragile ego cannot afford to lose a presidential campaign. I would love to see him actually become a candidate for president because he would quickly become the campaign‘s biggest loser. But he doesn‘t have the courage to take that risk, because it isn‘t really a risk.
It‘s a definite outcome. He would be the campaign‘s biggest loser. So, he will deny me the pleasure of watching him get humiliated on a campaign debate stage and trounced at the ballot box.
But Trump actually tied for first place in yet another poll out today. When Gallup pollsters asked Republicans and leading independents who they would support for the 2012 nomination, 16 percent of them failed the intelligence test and said Donald Trump. Another 16 percent said Huckabee, 13 percent Romney, 10 percent Sarah Palin, and Tim Pawlenty, the dark horse who will surge once it is clear Trump, Huckabee and Palin are not in the race, polled at three percent.
Joining me now, MSNBC contributor Melissa Harris-Perry, an associate professor of politics at Princeton. Thanks for joining us tonight, Melissa.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY: Absolutely. Although we need something different to talk about, Lawrence.
O‘DONNELL: We have plenty to talk about. We are going to take this a little bit broader this time. On ABC actually, this week—their weekend program just released a clip of the Evangelical leader Franklin Graham—
Reverend Franklin Graham giving his thoughts about Trump. Let‘s listen to that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REV. FRANKLIN GRAHAM, EVANGELICAL LEADER: Donald Trump, when I first saw that he was getting in, I thought this has got to be a joke. The more you listen to him, the more you say to yourself, you know, maybe the guy‘s right.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He might be your candidate of choice?
GRAHAM: Sure. Yeah, sure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: Melissa, my theory about how he‘s pulling off that trick and pulling in social conservatives is his lies about the president‘s birth certificate. He knows he‘s got a problem with abortion. He used to be for it before he‘s now against it, changed his mind very recently. He knows he has a problem on that side of the polls.
So once he goes very strong in his attack on the birth certificate, he thinks that‘s going to take care of all the issues that those people care about. It does seem to have helped him with those people.
HARRIS-PERRY: Absolutely. I think we take a deep breath first of all, first of all, right? The polls are distressing, that we see Donald Trump in that position, first or second place position with GOP likely voters.
Let‘s remember that at this point, that‘s really just name recognition. Right? When he wasn‘t in the list being read to people, fewer than one percent of those same kind of voters offered Donald Trump‘s name as a possibility.
It‘s not until they hear his name that they say oh, well, maybe. Although you and I and your viewers spend a lot of time thinking of politics, the fact is ordinary Americans, at this point in the presidential cycle, aren‘t thinking that much about it.
But I think your point here, that even folks who are the intermediaries, the ones who are now going to signal who are the real candidates, so that Americans can start paying attention to the right folks, to the extent that they start picking up Trump as a possible candidate, as a likely candidate, as a real candidate, that‘s when we to start getting worried about how he‘s using this clearly race-based language around the birth certificate to build this very odd coalition.
O‘DONNELL: Does the polling results indicate to you that there is something there in the Republican respondents? There is a longing for some kind of message, including a message of hate about the president of the United States? The Trump message that I‘m hearing is one of pure hatred of the president.
HARRIS-PERRY: Maybe. Right, so I‘m an optimist. Here is the other thing I see in those polling results: 15 percent of these, you know, same persons who were polled say they have no opinion at all on any of these folks. And Trump is coming in highest among the moderates, right?
So when I see Trump coming in highest among the moderates and the kind of Democrats—excuse me, medium Republicans, that says to me that what they are actually looking for is somebody who is not quite as far right as the GOP has been offering themselves.
Right now, Trump is just a name. He‘s just sort of a possibility out there. And there‘s 15 percent who are still saying there‘s nobody on this list that seems to make sense to us. If you are a good, smart, middle of the road Republican, this is your moment to jump in the race. Your big challenger at this moment is Donald Trump.
O‘DONNELL: And is Trump, in effect, shielding the Pawlentys and the Romneys from what would be the media scrutiny that they might start to get at this time? Is it actually helpful to them, because it lets them operate quietly in the fund raising front, and get their campaigns in gear quietly?
HARRIS-PERRY: It does. I think also we have to be careful not to forget to talk about the real candidates. I think we shouldn‘t be writing Huckabee off yet. I think Huckabee is a very dangerous challenger to the Obama presidency in a lot of ways.
So if you are in the DNC and you‘re thinking who you might be facing, look, you would, in certain ways, rather face a Mitt Romney, whose own record supports a health care plan very similar to the president‘s national health care reform push.
Then you want to face somebody like Huckabee, who is personable and southern and has a whole way of sounding terribly reasonable even when he‘s saying things that are not terribly reasonable. So we as media should also be really careful not to miss the potentially more dangerous real candidates.
O‘DONNELL: MSNBC contributor and associate professor of politics at Princeton, Melissa Harris-Perry, thanks for joining us tonight.
HARRIS-PERRY: Thanks.
O‘DONNELL: This week, two researchers discovered that the Apple iPhone tracks and stores the whereabouts of its owner. Minnesota Senator Al Franken thinks it‘s a violation of privacy and wants answers from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. That‘s coming up.
In the Rewrite, the Medicare fight; progressive groups insist the Republican budget will kill Medicare, while conservatives laud the House Republican plan for saving Medicare. I wonder who is telling the truth.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: Time for tonight‘s Rewrite. With Medicare at the center of the budget fight in Washington, groups on both sides are taking to the airwaves to convince voters that they are trying to save Medicare. The latest entry in the ad war is from the 60 Plus Association, which bills itself as, quote, the conservative alternative to the liberal AARP, end quote.
The group is spending 800,000 dollars to run radio ads in 39 different congressional districts.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Something unusual happened last week in Washington, D.C., of all places. Elected officials actually did what they said they would. The House passed a budget that protects and preserves Medicare for years to come.
Our national debt is 14 trillion dollars. America is literally spending money we don‘t have and future generations won‘t be able to afford. With 10,000 Baby Boomers reaching retirement age every day, important programs like Medicare are being crushed and could collapse if we don‘t act to strengthen and improve them.
No changes for seniors on Medicare now or those who will soon go on it. Control cost by targeting waste, fraud and abuse, so current and future seniors receive the quality care they have earned.
Paid for by the 60 Plus Association.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: So, the House passed a budget that protects and preserves Medicare for years to come. I did not know that, because that‘s not exactly what the Republican budget does to Medicare.
The Republican budget repeals Medicare. Then, after repealing Medicare, the republican budget creates a new, untested, unexamined program, built on wishful thinking and lies, that does not work anything like Medicare and would not provide the medical care that Medicare provides.
It‘s as if I took away your car, then gave you a bicycle, and told you it‘s a car. Not all health care financing ideas for people over 65 are the same. Not all of them have the right to the same name.
Republicans want to abolish Medicare and replace it with a program that should be called something like Medi-Spending. In Medicare, the emphasis is on care—actual health care, the delivery of the health care that you need.
In the Paul Ryan Medi-Spending plan, the emphasis is on government spending, not providing health care. In order to cut government spending on health care, the Ryan plan simply provides people over 65 some limited financial assistance in paying for health insurance they would obtain in the private market, which does not currently exist in the private market.
There is, in the Ryan plan, no guarantee of actually obtaining health care for people over 65. None, no guarantee. The only guarantee in the Ryan plan is the guarantee the government will limit its spending on your health care, no matter what you may require.
Needless to say, people over 65 require more health care than any of the rest of us and require more complex and expensive health care than any of the rest of us. The Ryan plan is specifically planned to deny people over 65 expensive health care.
That is how it saves the government money. And that is the only way it saves the government money. Anyone who uses the word Medicare to describe the Ryan voucher plan has no comprehension at all of what Medicare actually is or how it actually works.
Here is the best question anyone has asked a Republican about the Ryan plan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL MAHER, “REALTIME WITH BILL MAHER”: What happens to a person if this plan is enacted, who uses the 15,000 -- which, by the way, if they are in an assisted living facility, they will go through it in three months. What happens to them—what do they do when they use it the 15,000 by this time of the year?
What happens? I‘m just asking.
MICHAEL STEELE, FORMER RNC CHAIRMAN: We don‘t know yet—
MAHER: That‘s right. We don‘t know.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O‘DONNELL: But we do know what happens to people who need medical care under Medicare. They get that medical care. That is the guarantee of the medicare program. The Medicare program delivers medical care more efficiently than any other health insurance or health care delivery program in this country.
It is heartening to see through the polls that an overwhelming number of Americans understand the truth about Medicare and how effectively and fairly it works, and how quickly and smoothly it actually delivers health care—not vouchers, care, health care.
Those polls have made it clear to Republicans that the only way they can win in the 2012 election is to continue to tell the lie that their plan protects and preserves Medicare.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
O‘DONNELL: “The Wall Street Journal” reports today that according to new research, the Google Android phone collects data on its users‘ location, along with unique phone identifier information, and sends it to Google, at least several times an hour. That news intensifies privacy concerns raised earlier this week when two researchers, one a former Apple employee, discovered the Apple iPhone and the iPad 3G devices frequently log its user location with time stamps in a hidden, unencrypted file.
The researchers created a free application called iPhone tracker that generates a map using the location data stored on your phone. Here is what it looks like for someone who frequently travels between Washington and Manhattan.
The researchers did not find evidence that the devices transmit the data to Apple or third parties. But that hasn‘t appeased lawmakers concerned about how Apple might use the data in the future.
Democratic Senator Al Franken sent a letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, reading, in part, “there are numerous ways in which this information could be abused by criminals and bad actors.”
Franken also requested answers to several questions, including to whom, if anyone, including Apple, has this data been disclosed. When and why were these disclosures made.
Joining me now, the author of “The Digital Diet, The Four Step Diet to Break Your Tech Addiction and Regain Balance in Your Life,” available in bookstores May 3rd, technology expert Daniel Sieberg.
Thanks for joining me tonight, Daniel.
DANIEL SIEBERG, AUTHOR, “THE DIGITAL DIET”: Good evening, Lawrence.
Good to be here.
O‘DONNELL: Daniel, I‘m not worried. I have taken in this information, and for some reason, it doesn‘t scare me that they might know where I am by checking my cell phone records. Should I be worried about this?
SIEBERG: Sure. Some people aren‘t worried at all. It would be interesting to know about the people who hear about this story—the ones who are, A, upset about it, B, are upset about it, and change their location settings—because you can do that in your smart phone—and the folks who hear about it and just don‘t care.
These days, we have become willing to trade privacy for convenience. The only thing we carry around more than this or our wallet or purse is our Smartphone. We have it with us all the time. And it does make life easier.
But there are trade offs here. All of the companies know that. They sometimes need to collect this data on us. It‘s the new currency. If you don‘t think that that‘s happening, you need to wake up and smell the 21st century.
O‘DONNELL: What might the companies want to do with this information?
SIEBERG: In this particular case, we are talking about this location data. These days, we are used to having our phone tell us where the nearest restaurant is or where we can get some coffee or go to a movie.
What the companies are saying is this is making it easier, that by storing it on your phone, it‘s able to send it out and makes it quicker and more efficient. Other data that could be shared could more concerning if it‘s personal information.
Now location based data could be personal to somebody. If your phone falls into the wrong hands, and somebody can get access to it—it‘s not that easy to find. You have to hunt around to find this file.
But let‘s just say a concerned or a jealous spouse was able to track somebody. This can be concerning for some people.
Harder to do remotely for hackers, to try to break into this file, but still alarming for some folks. Again, though, I wonder who really is doing something about it. I feel like we have become a little too complicit in what these companies want from us.
O‘DONNELL: I have nothing to hide. I‘m still not worried. Daniel Sieberg, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
SIEBERG: All right.
O‘DONNELL: “THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW” is up next. Good evening, Rachel.
RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC ANCHOR: Good evening, Lawrence. Thank you.
Have a great weekend.
O‘DONNELL: Thank you.
END
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