mark: i am mark halperin. john: and i am john heilemann. we are having fun with donald trump. mr. trump: we just had a great weekend. mark: happy national smores days, friend. hillary clinton is kindling. she launched a fierce broadside at the republican candidates

about what they said of women's issues in the debate and in particular on marco rubio position on abortion. mrs. clinton: when one of their candidates, a much younger man, a senator from florida, says there should be no exceptions for rape and incensed, that is as offensive and as troubling a comment as you can hear from a major candidate running for the presidency. john: mark, we thought that marco rubio's no exception stance, which is shared by scott walker and mike huckabee -- we thought that was a deal when we first heard it, but how vulnerable do you think they are? mark: very vulnerable. george bush did not have this position. john mccain did not have it. mitt romney did not. it does not affect that many women in the country, but the polls are clear in this issue, and these guys taking this position, hillary clinton wants to be on offense, and there is a rumbling that she is not doing very well on some issues, and

this puts her back on offense and the person who agrees with her is jeb bush. his campaign thinks that this position would be lethal in a general election. john: the gender gap has been part of the reason they have lost five of the last six votes, and she will win the women's vote if she is the democratic nominee, but this is a huge goal of hers going forward and you are obviously right. the planned parenthood issue i think is on her side. this issue is 150% on her side. this is a crazy position to be in. mark: rubio in the debate was unclear and even in the meet the press interview he was unclear. yesterday where he said he did not support exceptions for women who have abortions who are victims of rape or insects, that that het, -- incest, went over the line enough for her to seize on it, and her

calling him a much younger man is filled with meaning, complicated meeting. john: and the rubio opinion is being characterized in many different ways, and what you're not hearing is the rubio campaign standing up and saying, "no, that is not our position." mark: and hillary clinton being on offense is better than defense. the official recent she was in new hampshire was to promote her new plan for making college more affordable, spending $350 billion over a decade, and it would encourage states to increase funding for public higher education and it would forgive students unpaid debt after 20 years and would do other thing to make college more affordable and would be paid for by limiting tax reductions for rich people which the campaign does not currently specify. almost all of this would need congressional approval. is this a good plan, after bernie sanders and martin o'malley have also done this? john: i think it is a good plan politically and a good plan substantial -- substantively,

because there is no issue that troubles middle-class households more than the explosive rise in tuition costs in america. there are many issues, but that one cut to the core. it is off the charts. inflation in college tuition. this plan is to say that you public universities, you have suffered from state budget cuts. we will give you money to help make up that shortfall if you reign in tuition costs. that is a bargain that a lot of people will take and a lot of people will like. mark: the nonsensical parts of it. proposing tax increases is not wise politically. republicans able to attack her, and i do not think it is good policy. if hillary clinton is president, john boehner will likely be speaker of the house, and to be paid for by unspecified taxes, i do not think it will give her a mandate. john: she seems to be suggesting it will be paid for by capping itemized deductions by rich people. mark: i will encourage you to specify the if you want to spend that much money. john: all right, on "morning

joe," donald trump again said he would not apologize for megyn kelly. he says everyone has this twisted around backwards. mr. trump: i do not understand it, myself. i have double-digit leads, and georgia just came out. i am at 34. a lot of good things are happening, so maybe i should leave it the way it is. the fact is, she asked me a really inappropriate question, and she really should be apologizing to me, if you want to know the truth. john: we are a few days past the debate. we get asked this question almost every day, but where is donald trump's political standing right now? mark: there is no live call bowl. poll.e call all of the polls that have been put out so far but different methodologies suggest that donald trump is doing just fine. he has not been hurt by this. the establishment thinks donald trump is dead, but i think if anything, if he turns back to policy, which is campaign says he is going to do in the coming

days, he turns back to talking about the economy, i do not think this will end his campaign or force him from the race or affect substantially where he is. john: i agree with most of that, except what has happened in the last days, it has increased the boldness of the republican establishment to do something about him. i have said many times that the republican establishment, like the democratic establishment, is atrophied, and something that was riling them up, it is donald trump. if they were afraid of him before they are less afraid of him now. mark: jeb bush is been more aggressive as of late, but they are still not finding a way to actually eliminate him from the race. he has yet to start spending money, yet to issue serious policy proposals and yet to find anybody who can stop him from dominating the news. john: i think there is a question, and we will see how he answers it, whether he will do any of those things and qualify as serious in terms of policies and other things, but there is no question it will take a while to drive him from the race.

the question is if all of this --piled up will matter. mark: if anyone gets better under the pile it is trump. republican nominee for president, you should play nice with fox news. since the debate, mr. trump has not followed that news, but today, he just tweeted this. his word is always a good exclamation point. the head of fox news seems to call trump and be on good terms. there are reports he will go on fox programs in a couple of days. does donald trump in order to be the republican nominee need to be on good terms with fox news? john: i think, yes. there are too many republican voters who watched fox news all of the time. the interesting piece of reporting gave sherman, who

fox and who about knows that company well, freaked out by the amount of pro-trump, anti-megyn kelly mail they have received. when trump did not go on any fox shows he relies he had to call. mark: if dave sherman's reporting is correct then trump's power is stronger than we thought. fox almost never blinks and almost never undermines megyn kelly. it will be interesting when he goes on fox what those are like. and they have not eliminated the situation about the comments about blood. john: coming up, greatest hits, with a special guest soloist after this word from our sponsor. ♪

mark: hillary clinton cooked up quite a storm today in new

hampshire. she was there to talk about college loans, and she made her comments about reproductive rights and donald trump, and let's go to the videotape. mrs. clinton: what donald trump said about megyn kelly is outrageous, but what the rest of republicans are saying about all women is also outrageous. a lot of men on that stage. said was offensive. and i want people to understand, if you just focus on maybe be biggest show man on the stage, you lose the thread here. i do not want people here to be confused about outrageous comments by one adjusts say we are focused on this, and we are going to let the fact that there should be no exceptions for rape or incest go unnoticed or unmentioned -- i am not going to let that happen. i know it makes great tv. i think the guy went way overboard, offensive, outrageous, pick your adjective, but what marco rubio said has much an impact in terms of where

the republican party is today and anyone else on that stage, and it is deeply troubling, and it should be to the press and not just those of us who have been doing this work so long. mark: fired up, and i would say authentic. and now dan is joining us from the newsroom and washington. dan, thanks for coming in. dan: thank you. mark: what do you think the motivation would have been? dan: the motivation is pretty clear. she wants to make this more than a campaign about donald trump, she wants to continue to make this a campaign against the republican party, and putting away from donald trump but also going after others, who she probably believes are more likely to be her opponent than donald trump.

john: something said to the effect that donald trump is not affecting the party. donald trump is just donald trump. and this seems to be an instance where this is different, that he is creating a springboard for a broader argument. dan: i think that is right, and the candidates have been tentative in going after donald trump. they make their statements after he said something like you did about megyn kelly, but then they back off and go there own way for a variety of reasons, and we can discuss that, but what hillary clinton is doing is trying to say that donald trump is not unrepresentative of the others in the race, that they are in one way or another saying things that are out of the

mainstream or beyond the pale, whatever rhetoric she might use, and we know she went specifically after marco rubio, and some see in marco rubio a chance to be a strong candidate, and i think the rubio people think regardless of what he set and how he said it about the rape and incest exceptions that he has left himself some wiggle room on that in the future, but she is wasting no time in trying to pin all of their ears back. mark: dan, none of us know what is going on with donald trump, and none of us know where it will end up, but what other campaigns feel, they are obviously sick. the candidates are sick of answering questions about it. is there a trump strategy, or are they doing other things and hoping that trump does not dominate? dan: i think they have to do the bare minimum, and he is quite outrageous in his comments, but i think most of them believe one way or another, he will sink

under his own weight, at he will be the engine of his own undoing and that they need not do anything in particular. they want to run their own race. they want to say things the way they say them. as you said, they are sick and tired of people asking them about donald trump, but we are all of a mind that we cannot predict how this trump presidency is going to go, whether it will go up or down or stay level, but as long as he is a factor, it has a potential to rub off on the whole party, and i think that is what they are trying to calibrate. john: there have been some surveys that say he is at least as good as he has been or better off. with this cause campaigns to rethink that strategy? he is acting under his own way

to now. what do you think would come along that would cause him to sink? dan: i don't know, john. i think it is essential about where we are in the campaign right now. and what he said about john mccain a few weeks ago, i thought that would cause him problems. they clearly did not. i think what he said about megyn kelly would cause him problems, and we do not know. the early indication is that it has not particularly hurt him, but we will have to see. where the air slowly comes out of his balloon or whether it stays afloat for a while, but i think the longer the poll

numbers show that he is holding up, that will in bold and donald trump to continue to do exactly as he has been doing, to run the campaign he has been running, to say the kinds of things he wants to say in any given moment, and it will force others to rethink what they want to do about it. mark: dan, thank you very much, and we will be right back with a play on words. ♪ john: the late david foster

wallace, the author of "infinite jest," a novel that i totally read, ok, none of it, but other people say it is brilliant, and everyone has a copy, and only the great of us can finish it, but recently, we spoke with someone so brave who not even read the book but who is playing a role in the movie about it, called "the end of the tour," and it is jason segel of "how i met your mother" and the serious part. we were eager to know how he prepared for such a serious part.

jason: there are a couple compilations, consider the lobster and are as funny nsa is you will ever read by anybody. when i got the script, i jumped into "infinite jest," which is a different beast. 1000 plus pages, and it is funny, but it is difficult, and it is intensely personal, and in answer to prep, that is how i got into david foster wallace, because i felt that the man had laid himself bare on the page. >> i heard you tell the story of when you went to buy the book. >> i went to my local bookstore, and i set down "infinite jest" on the table and there was a girl behind who literally rolls her eyes and me, and she says, "oh, god, "infinite jest." every guy i have ever dated has an unread copy on the bookshelf," and i think that is true. i think that is true. most everyone's experience with "infinite jest," and you try to

get through it, but it is a difficult book. there happened to be three guys, they had read it and they really took be through the book. we would read 100 pages a week and get together on sundays and talk about it, and it is one of the most beautiful, intimate experiences i have had, and the themes of the book, loneliness, and reaching this age, in your early or mid 30's, when you realize i have been working hard towards getting there, and then you find out the secret that there is no there, that the road just goes on forever, and you have to figure out how to be ok with what is ok. john: and the movie is also about journalism. it is about a guy named david lipsky who goes to interview david foster for "infinite jest," and they spend days together. you have done a lot of tours, and you have dealt with a lot of journalists in your life. what do you think the movie reveals about the nature of the writer/subject or the

writer/celebrity relationship? jason: this movie is doublely complicated, but at the same time, david had a book that came out the same year that did not do as well, so you meet a guy meeting and idol, a guy who idolizes me also wants to dethrone, and to go to that, you realize the person interviewing you might have interests that diverge from your own, that you are trying to communicate a message and get a point across, and seeing the person interviewing you might want to take your words and twist them and reveal something about you, and that is what comes into play in the movie, and david goes in with a bit of an agenda because there were addiction rumors swirling around david foster wallace and david wants to talk about the themes of his book and david lipsky wants to expose him.

mark: has that happened to you? jason: it really hasn't. i do not think these days you would agree to an interview that is four days long. mark: bloomberg asked me to gain 40 pounds, and i did it with martinis and steak. how did you gain the weight? jason: i put myself on a hot pocket diet to -- diet. mark: do you love the hot pockets, or is that just an efficient way to gain weight? jason: i had fond memories of hot pockets growing up. mark: and the vanilla milkshake. jason: it is fun for the first three days, and after that, you feel terrible. you just want to nap. you do not want to do anything, but it helps with the part, because there is something heavy literally and emotionally going on with david foster wallace. he is going through a tough moment where he has achieved everything that he dreamed of, and yet, he still feels the same. that is a terrible moment.

i have had it. john: what was it like playing -- working with jesse eisenberg who plays david lipsky in the movie? -- bestt was the most experience of my life. he is so talented. he is so profound and knowing why he is saying what he is doing or saying as a character. you: he did something for and your character. jason: it was before the shooting and before the first meet and greet and someone asked me how i started writing and i said it was by necessity, nobody was knocking down my door to play captain america and really quietly but just loud enough for him to hear, jesse said, no but you could probably when a captain of a weaker country. i knew that was what would go on for about a month and it was the best.

>> we talk about politics most of the time but we dabble in entertainment. i've heard that you want to make a movie opposite hillary clinton and you what to go on a man-date with barack obama. >> it wasn't that i wanted to play opposite hillary clinton when i was doing "how i met your it was mother." and the constant question was, who is the mother? who is the mother going to be? so i got tired of that question, and i was hoping for hillary clinton, and i got the most graceful and amazing letter from hillary clinton or her people that she is really flattered, but she was going to be too busy to be the mother, which i saved, and i was also lucky enough to meet a barack obama. they did a screening of "muppets" at the white house for children of veterans, and you are so nervous and you hear the

man approaching, and he walks in, and he looked at me, and he said, "hey, i love you, man." because i did a movie "i love you, man," and i was more -- was so nervous, >> he is a clever guy. jason: i was more clever. i responded nervously with, "i love you, too, mr. president." mark: that comes up a lot. jason: i never felt more awkward in my life, other than following more awkwardly by saying, "we were doing a free screening in georgetown. you should come. there will be free snacks." >> i'm sure you did not say all of that. you created that in your mind. jason that is real. : my life is a series of really uncomfortable moments. john: i assume he did not come. jason: no, he did not. he said -- that is not what i need. free snacks. john: we will be right back.

john: we are on twice a day, at 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. mark: until then, sayonara. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ get excited for the 1989 world tour

with exclusive behind the scenes footage, all of taylor swift's music videos, interviews, and more. xfinity is the destination for all things taylor swift. host: shares fall despite revenue doubling. why it is a long way off. ♪ emily: i am emily chang. this is bloomberg west. twitter's interim ceo jack dorsey buys shares of the company and tweets he is investing in "twitter's future." and, we hear about the hot main names you may not expect. a first for mankind. astronauts eat