mark: i'm mark halperin. john: i'm john heilemann. with all due respect to everyone who thinks they're going to be a part of the bill simmons bidding war, you're too late. ♪ mark: love doing this show. happy national coconut cream pie day, sports fans. liberty, money and something keith olbermann would be proud of. first, getting pumped up for the poll metow state. the giant south carolina freedom summit is tomorrow. scott walker, marco rubio, ted cruz, rick perry donald trump and more. you will be there and we will be streaming all the action on

bloombergpolitics.com. john: my question, who among that cast of stars has the most on the line this weekend? mark: well, everybody does because south carolina is wide open. the guy i'm watch something marco rubio. his team in south carolina is underrated. it's one of the strongest political teams any candidate's put together in any state and rubio, my hunch is, my end up being a better cultural fit and a bigger political force in south carolina than he is in new hampshire and iowa. john: i would have said that marco rubio was going to be my call. but i always want to try to get in the disagreement zone with you. today i'll avert and choose scott walker. just because scott walker right now, if you had to pick a frontrunner in the race right now, just on the basis of polling, scott walker still at the head of the field right now. you can see marco rubio coming up fast. walker has not had a big moment in weeks. i think he's got to try to reseize the momentum or he's going to see himself ecliment -- eclimsed by rubio and there's always of course jeb bush hovering in the wings. mark: there's another guy who

won't be in south carolina which is john kasich. he's in columbus today. we're reporting on bloombergpolitics.com that he's having a big pow wow, one of many secret meetings he's had over the last several weeks. the former senator is there. other big figures in the party. and his local columbus team. and former congressman walker from pennsylvania. they are meeting to do more due diligence about whether kasich should run. he's skipping this event. but he's going to be at plenty of others. john: i have to stick with that. we both think john could be a big player in this race. we have an interview coming up with rick snyder. rick snyder deciding not to run. seems to open up the field a lot in terms of midwestern money and that kind of resume. i would think this would be a lot more tempting for kasich with rick snyder out than in. mark: no question. midwestern money and specifically in michigan where there's a lot of big donors. as we said, another name missing, probably the biggest one from the freedom summit, is john ellis bush bush. the former florida governor instead is going to be giving a commencement speech at liberty university in lynchburg,

virginia. the school famously founded by jerry falwell and also where ted cruz announced he was running for president a couple of weeks ago. the setting matters a lot and so do the words of bush's speech. he has rehearsed this speech, carefully written it. it's a big one. one of the exerts released this evening, advanced excerpts tell you how big a deal the bush people think this is. bush is going to say, quote, whatever the need, the action or the injustice, there's no more powerful or liberating influence on this earth than the christian conscience in action. why is this jeb bush speech so important to his candidacy? john: i want to ask bill what he thinks about this. crucial question, bill doesn't have a view. so i'm going take bill's proxy and say, we've seen in polling recently that bush has a problem with conservatives. we know that on a lot of fronts. we've seen it in recent polling. he's got to figure out a way to connect to the conservative base. he's not so far been able to do that. it's not just a question of common core or immigration,

it's something deeper. this is a way to potentially open up a kind of advice ral connection with the people that make up the core of the republican base. mark: the only way he erases in the voters' minds the dominant narrative about him now, which is son of a president, brother of a president, is with the compelling nartific that bill clinton had, that george bush -- george w. bush had, that barack obama had. his most compelling narrative is his faith and how that infuses all of his public policy ideas. this speech is going to be a lot about his christian faith and what role he thinks it place in the -- place in the world -- plays in the world. watch to see the level of performance. they want him to show his heart. let's see if he can do it tomorrow. john: let me read another excerpt for you. to show auto how he's going into cultural warrior mode. so many young christians today are showing the way.

not moved out by what is but by a vision what have can be. for all who would serve the poor and the homeless, you set the standard with your belief that everybody matters and everyone has the right to rise. you just mentioned, linking up his slogan to a deeply kind of christian conservative message. a lot of conservatives in the party don't think he's a conservative. he thank could be something mike huckabee could have in his speech. mark: in new hampshire these themes are not necessarily as big a deal, although they are for some voters. certainly in iowa and south carolina. jeb bush needs to show people, not just that he's conservative and not just that his views are informed by faith, but that he's got a personal narrative that they will find compelling. his conversion to catholicism, how faith has been a big part of his life, is something he's going to have to breakthrough on if he's going to overcome the narrative of being son of, brother of. john: totally agree. live coverage starts at 10:00 a.m. with jeb first delivering and then a full day of speeches in south carolina. all on bloombergpolitics.com.

speaking of jeb, whose superpac fundraising has been dwarfing that of his republican rivals, hillary clinton on the other side of the aisle got in on that act this week as she started shmoozing potential don'ters to her main superpac. the difference is that, as an announced candidate, hillary has to be more careful about asking for big checks. on other hand, the clintons have never had much problem being fully funded in races they've run. my question to you between jeb and hillary, who's better positioned to be the fundraising king or queen pin of 2016? mark: she's already raising hard dollars for her own campaign. jeb bush put that off so he can the superpac money. if you believe this is going to come down to clinton-bush, who is going to raise more in giant contributions for 2016, not 2015? jeb bush still has the advantage of republican billionaires and multimillionaires, they're more inclined to write these big checks than the democrats are. right now i think hillary clinton has got her work cut

out for her as she tries to help raise those big checks. even while she's running for candidate. john: i think it may be true that jeb does. obviously we know democrats are loath to give to superpacs or at least more queesy about it. in the end, i'm with david axel roll from -- axelrod from twelve threlve when mitt romney -- from 2012 when mitt romney raised all that money. spending the money effectively is all that really matters. as we saw there, what mattered was how the obama campaign spent its money, not who had the most. in the end, i think jeb bush and hillary clinton, if they are both the nominee, they'll have enough money, that money won't matter anymore. mark: i think it's possible that you can see the republican side really breaking out. let's say people start going negative on hillary clinton now. she's not going to be in a position to defend herself. she's -- people say she doesn't have the nomination fight and that's better for her. jeb's got to fight it out with a lot of other republicans. could be that there's a lot of koch money and other money spent against her now and she'll have to spend money that

she'd rather spend next year. john: she's going to take it from all sides. i think a lot of that, there's going to be -- i think in the end, i've never seen a situation, i know you haven't either, where the clintons have ended up on the short end of a money war. it's never happened before. it would be shocking if it happened this time. mark: wake up early on sunday this weekend for our bloomberg politics college poll of new hampshire voters. a lot of interesting stuff going to come out of that. but now our nod to keith olbermann. who in the world of sports today is the worst person in the world? john, your choice is a-rod. who passed willie mays on the home run tally. the espn president, who failed to renew bill simmons' contract, or whoever made this horrible video for the cleveland cavaliers. ♪ this could be love ♪ john: so much to choose from. mark: who is the worst person

in the world? john: you're giving me a choice between a cheater and a scum bag in alex rodriguez. a guy who obviously didn't have much patient for some of bill simmons' more floor i had moment. but also i think foolish man in john skipper's case, loseing my friend bill over here, who i'm sure has an opinion about this. he probably thinks skipper is the biggest fool. but the worst person in the world, those people of the cleveland cavaliers. if there's anything that professional sports teams and the league should be responsive to right now is questions about sensitivity toward domestic violence. that cleveland cavalier video horrible qualifies whoever was in charge in cleveland is the worst person in the world. mark: got to go with the video. you wonder in the world of sports, particularly professional sports, how it could be that something like that could get made at a time when quite rightfully we've had all that focus on domestic violence. it's insane. john: you've got budweiser putting things on their beer that indicate that -- or

incitements to date rape right now. the marketing department detchts of a lot of big companies all need to do a little bit of naval gazing and do some rigorous due diligence. mark: we don't really have bill simmons, despite the call to open. where do you think he's going to go? john: i want him here. i want him bad. i'm going up to see mike bloomberg after this show and tell him to write a really really really big check to get that man in this chair. not to displace you, mark, by the way. we'll add a third chair. i think it would be great for us all to be here to do the show. coming up, our semiquasi-every now and then weekend re-- week in review. first, a prominent governor and one tough nerd who has just decided he's not running for president. michigan's rick snyder is here next. ♪

mark: you're doing it. ring that bell. the governor of michigan dinged the sacred stock exchange into existence this morning on wall street. here are three things that we know about governor snyder. john: he loves to water ski and smoked meat and he's not running for president. he apparently decided he wouldn't do that after he failed to get a contentious tax measure passed in michigan. how close did governor snyder actually come to getting in the 2016 race? here to answer that question is an expert on the topic, michigan governor rick snyder. governor nice to see you. guest: it's great to be with you. i had to give you a third thing. you only had two. john: that's right. that's good. three is the magic number. let me ask you this. we'll start off with the most obvious question is, you zded not to run. a lot of people thought you were about to get in. why did you decide not to give it a go? guest: if you stop and look at it michigan's the comeback state. i'm really proud of that. we've done tremendously well. but i want to make sure the things we've done continue on. the other thing, is we still have major historic issues that need to be resolved.

and so the way i view it i was elected to be governor of michigan and i think it's important i do that job right. john: i'll get to this in a second. presumably while you were considering running for president, you were governor of michigan and that job was important. i want to get a little bit into the thinking that got you there. but let me just ask you about the tax measure, about proposition one. soundly defeated. a lot of people thought it would have trouble getting passed. you apparently thought it was going to pass. that it was going to be enacted. what happened there and how did that play in your thinking about the presidential run? guest: when you look at it it's like, i had proposed various plans to solve the problem. but i wasn't able to get legislative support. i would say i did this together with the legislature in a very positive way. from a policy perspective, there are a lot of good things to this plan. when you sign up to be a part of a team to do a plan, i went all out to make sure it happened and it didn't. john: 24 hours before vote, did you think it was going to get passed or did you realize it was going to fail? guest: i believe in releaptless

positive action. i'm always positive. that's the way you have to approach these things it. didn't pass, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be pursuing again a constructive solution. this isn't the first time i've had challenges in the office. this is part of the job. actually i told my team, when i was first running for office, if everything we worked on just worked, it meant we weren't doing our job. because you have to have the courage to say, if you really want to innovate and make great things happen, you can't just be safe. john: i'm going to ask you one more question and then bring in mark. let's talk about the linkage here. the history will show that this ballot initiative, constitutional amendment proposed went down and then you decided you weren't going to run. many people think there's some connection between those two things. just for the sake of the history, if you'd gotten into noo this race, you would have been a serious contender and your decision not to run matters. take us through that 4 hours, 72 hours in your thinking. guest: having the proposal fail wasn't part of that consideration. it was a question of making

sure i was looking at the issues we needed to work on. we need to solve the transportation issue. i'm very active on detroit public schools right now. i just did an energy message. we're doing some awesome things for energy and the environment. i'm doing a criminal justice message coming up. we still have many things to work on. most exciting thing for michigan's economic future is to bring back the skilled trades. this is a huge national problem. in terms of not having enough people with career tech education backgrounds and so that's a top priority i've had. i want to make sure that sticks because literally that can improve the quality of life for tens of thousands of michiganders their family, our whole state, and send a message to the nation, this is how you can deal with growing the pie, helping with income disparity, doing good things. i'm excited about being governor. hopefully you can feel that energy. john: i feel a lot of energy. mark: governor, we're excited about you being governor but we also like to do the first draft of history here. i want to pin you down a bit on your consideration for presidential run. from what we've heard, it was much more extensive and much

more significant and serious than you've let on in public. so i just want to run you through some of that. it's true that you had a pretty extensive series of meetings about what a presidential campaign would look like, correct? guest: what i'd say, let me just sort of encapsulate the whole thing. i did a fair amount of homework. i talked to a number of people who had been involved in previous campaigns i'd been a part of. i appreciate their thought process and such. but at the same time i always kept the eye on the ball to make sure we're doing good things in michigan. i am a good nerd. i tried to do my homework. mark: part of that homework involved figuring out how much money you'd need to raise. you had a pretty extensive rollout plan. even we heard you had a tentative date to announce a canadasy on july 7. is that true? guest: i view that as speculation at that appointment i never sat down and said this is the date i'm looking at. people talk about a lot of things in the process. there may have been people that are trying to give me advice coming up with dates but i

wasn't -- i hadn't picked any date for anything like that. i had to go through the exercise i just did. mark: you weren't planning a run in -- you said you were doing your homework research. but is it the case that until this week you were inclined to run for president and this week you decided not to or that's not the case? guest: this is the week i announced. i made a decision. again, it's one of those things that, in terms of people talking about the subject matter, it was a good way to highlight michigan it. really brought attention to the state of michigan when you're going through this exersiles. mark: sorry. with all due respect, this is the week you announced it. this is also the week your efforts to help find way to pay for roads in michigan, transportation in michigan went down. how should we see there's not some linkage there? up until this week you seemed to be moving ahead with fundraising plans, announcement plans, scheduling plans for a presidential campaign, there must be some linkage it would seem. guest: i wouldn't necessarily draw that conclusion.

what it means is i had a whole series of issues. i just covered with john. i thought they were important issues for michigan. added that list is one that might have been otherwise solved which is the transportation issue. but that's one of several issues that are really part of the consideration. mark: i'll just try one more time. why did you announce it this week then? guest: the speculation was actually becoming a distraction. for me doing the job as governor of michigan. one thing i don't want people to confuse, because i'd been quite clear, i want to tell the michigan story. i think it's a great story, of our comeback. i think it is a model for the country. i believe we need a problem solver in wab -- in washington. so i want to continue that dialogue but i think it has more credibility by just clarifying things to say i'm not running, but i still think there's an important message that went on in michigan, going on in michigan, and will continue to be important in i hope the national dialogue to see what a great place we are and how we can help solve national issues. john: michigan's going to be a big important state. now there's a big republican field. somebody troying to get to be

the nominee. when you look at the field, are you -- a, what do you think about that field that exists and who -- eventually someone's going to ask you for your support, probably a lot of people. do you have any ideas who you're leading to at this point? guest: that would be premature. i'm just getting over this phase of you guys asking me all that, the other questions. let's take a break from that. as a practical matter what i would say, is the main thing we need in mue my view is we need someone who's going to solve problems in our country. i have a philosophy, i call it relentless positive action. somebody else can call is something else. but don't we need leadership in our country that's about not blaming, not fighting, saying, here's the problem, here's commonsense solutions, and moving us forward? if you look at washington, nothing's gotten done hardly. here's the illustration i show people. this is the list of michigan and our first four years. ask yourself the question. what would the list look like for washington, d.c.? john: i know the answer to that question. it would be my empty palm look. guest: this is the kind of thing that happens when people

say, it's not about fighting and blame, it's about treating people as family. john: is it fair to say you'd be more incollide, you think that a governor and the set of skills a governor has would be better suited to running country than someone who has been from the legislative background? guest: i think that's clearly true. the executive experience. the ability to run something. too often candidates get picked because of personality, policy and actually running and being a good manager is critically important. mark: as someone who gave serious consideration to running for president, i just want to ask you this. you're not currently thinking about running in 2016. would you still like to be president of the united states someday? guest: that's out there a ways. what i would say is, i've got until 2018 being governor of michigan and after that i'll have to do some career analysis. [laughter] john: a very good, nerdy way to put it. governor snyder, thank you for coming on. thank you for everything. great to see you here on this very particular and important time in your life. since you won't be running for

president, we assume you'll have plenty of time to go with us on a water skiing vacation and do some smoking of some brisse kit. guest: i'm happy to do that with you guys. you're fun. john: fantastic. the best days of our lives. with all due reflect makes its triumphant return after the break. ♪

mark: i just wanted to say that i'm really sorry i can't be with you in new york today. john: that's all right. don't worry about it. it's been such a crazy week. we probably needed to spend some time apart anyway. mark: there was a time we gave carly fiorina a taste of her own medicine. john: and the time we wanted to cover ben carson. instead we went to a concert. speaking of concerts, that time we got tickets to huckaroo.

>> most ferocious licks. and the wildest ribbing. >> our farmers and ranchers provide food and fiber. mark: that time hillary barber got confused about presidential term limits. >> i don't think the american people want obama to have a third term. mark: and that time the registers nailed carly fiorina. >> how much did you make? >> i don't even remember. john: that time we couldn't pronounce the name of hillary's campaign manager. rookie looks. robbie mooks. mark: that time we fact checked hillary's fact checker. >> i guess he's hoping nobody has heard of senate.gov, the library of congress, project votesmart or google. mark: we've heard of google but we've also heard of tax record and that disclosure agreement. john: that time we explained

the british elections. >> who will be the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament to form a coalition government at the request of the queen to persuade one or more other parties to agree on a platform that can command a majority in the house of commons? mark: and that time we channeled orson wells in gray scale. >> with all due respect to chris christie this is the biggest showdown in your state. john: looks like you finally got your chance to be on the radio radio. we'll be right back. ♪

john: mark is anchoring jeb bush and the speeches from other republicans in south carolina tomorrow on bloombergpolitics.com. starting at 10:00 a.m. mark: a preview for you, on monday in the studio, in new york former republican strategist star of tv's "the view" and author of "madam president," the wonderful nicole wallace will join us.

john: up next "taking stock." ♪

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