♪ john: happy national waffle day, sports fans. the washington post reports that vice president biden is inviting major democratic fundraisers to his home after labor day to talk about the big 2016 question. he also met with elizabeth warren over the weekend.

he has moved his deadline to decide until a month later than he originally planned to decide. trying topeople are decide if they can put a campaign together at this late date. is that really what he is looking at? for 20 oddve known years that joe biden desperately wants to be president. he has tried again and again. ?s clinton too powerful a force the longer he waits, the harder it gets. amidst all of these biden balloons, we have a lot of people saying they hope he doesn't do it because he will embarrass himself. i think ultimately, clinton tossed strength will dissuade him from running. i think that a huge factor right now is that the people around biden who do want him to run, there are others no doubt

who are wary that he would get slaughtered. but among those who want to enable him to get in, they are telling him and that includes some people very close to him, look, this thing is moving in your direction. she is having problems. the us tablet getting close to panic mode. if this e-mail thing gets worse, you could see her candidacy on the brink of unraveling by the end of september. so don't go out there and push it, wait back, see what's going on. that's what the delay of this month is, to see how bad off she is. michael: i don't disagree with that -- josh: i don't disagree with that. going back to my ritual point, it is all dependent on hillary. if she bottoms out, he will not be dissuaded from running because he can't get campaign manager x or y. the apparatus would take

care of itself in the event of a clinton collapse. it is all eyes on hillary. they recognize she is more vulnerable now that she has been in a long time and as more people start to call him and encourage him to run, he just wants to see if he would -- if she reaches a tipping point. josh: i think the key block of bedwetters are these fundraisers who he will have to his house. let's go to the primary that is wildly interesting -- the primary of trump. the republican race is so good that it has literally come to insults. this is what donald trump without today on instagram for jeb bush to see. >> would you like to see him run? >> no. >> i think it is a great country, there are a lot of great families. there are other people out there that are very qualified and we have had enough bush. john: that was donald trump

trolling jeb bush with his own mother. texasfternoon, bush in fired back. take a look. >> the simple fact is that his proposal is unrealistic. it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. it will violate people's civil liberties. it would create friction with our third-largest trading partner and i think he is wrong about this. this'll republican race right now, everything has fallen away. it is all about jed and donald. you, does jeb have a strategy now to deal with donald trump? what is it? josh: if not clear to me that he does. until a week ago, the -- the strategy was ignore him. a few days ago, it all changed.

now he is attacking trump and you have his funders wanting him to attack trump. chiefurphy, his super pac saying we will not spend money on that. it seems like chaos and the fact that he went down to texas to the border and wrapped his arm around the immigration debate says to me that he is really worried about donald trump and the momentum he has gotten on this issue. john: they claim this event has been scheduled for weeks. but i think there is a very clear strategy. they want to attack trump as a liberal, as a closet democrat. they want to show jeb bush is feisty and willing to fight back. they want to take on the bully. is key little thing that going on here under the radar is the notion that they believe marco rubio supporters, john kasich supporters, are starting to get restive over the fact that they are not seeing their andidates taking on trump they think this can peel away some of the other voters if jeb acts tough publicly.

jeb: the trump attack on that he is a low-energy guy is fundamentally accurate. he's the low t candidate. josh: there are pills for that but jeb is not taking them. [laughter] a poll has trump at 32%, exactly twice as much as jeb. everyone else is in single digits. cruz, huckabee, and jeb bush. forhe summer of trump worse grassroots republicans or establishment republicans? which person is getting the worst of it? trump is a big tent.

he is across the ideological spectrum. i think the conventional of them lutes --that the grass the candidates and the grassroots lane are not being able to get air. now we see that from voters are all over the map. rubio, ther, marco two guys who used to be top-tier candidate, now they are no longer. the fundraising seems to be suffering. you hear a lot of donors in new york city who were interested in those guys who have seen the ways they crumbled in the face of trump and said they will not write a check anymore. josh: i think the big loser here is chris christie. he was already losing, but all of the oxygen and the whole character type of the bombastic, telling it like it is, bigger than life republican, not politically correct has been completely subsumed by donald

trump. he is a forgotten guy. the other guy does hurt is jeb bush. , buthe is the counterpoint his whole strategy as the republican nominee was to be the grownup who would modernize the party. broaden the appeal of latinos and young people. no matter what happens, that has been shot to pieces. if he does win the republican nomination, he is still going to have more trouble than he would have thanks to donald trump. john: i think those guys are pretty happy with a one-on-one trump-bush debate down the line. they are pretty confident bush has the resources to be a will to win that battle. another person not in the establishment who i think has been hurt, not so much some of the others, i think ted cruz -- his strategy right now which seems to be hey, i am going to save money and not say anything about donald trump. i will sit back and when trump crumbled, those voters will come to me.

that is a brilliant strategy on paper, it just does not work if trump doesn't crumble for a long time. josh: maybe. john: coming up, michael mckee z -- macasey. ♪

john: our guest tonight is former george w. bush attorney general and current jeb bush advisor, michael mukasey. you wrote an op-ed piece in the washington journal. you have come under some criticism from defenders of secretary clinton in recent days who are upset about the notion that no one is pointing out that you have not identified yourself as an advisor to jeb bush. i want to get that out of the way. i want you to answer the

question of the extent that how that affects the situation. michael: i have not spent a lot of time with governor bush. i got an e-mail from an editor at the wall street journal asking me if i had been following the story and whether i was interested in writing anything and i did. i didn't check with anybody on the bush campaign. i haven't spoken with anybody there in months. two-parter.-ed is a through in a went relatively careful way and talked about the various areas where secretary lee -- clinton might be in some legal jeopardy. area,ings in the legal one related to keeping classified material in an unclassified rotation -- location. another is to the espionage act.

the destruction of any record, document, or tangible object to -- abstractstract -- obstruct an investigation. -- inis she and greatest greatest jeopardy? michael: i think the misdemeanor, with the same position as general address. -- general petraeus. the one that presents an odd risk for her is the one involving destruction of government documents like some but he was their custodian. carries afelony and two-year penalty but it also carries a permanent disqualification for holding any further office. that is kind of odd.

the running always for another office, that would present a problem. john: that relates to the destruction of any government record. michael: yes. theoretically, you face prosecution. john: the only way in which she would be in trouble for that is if among the thousands of e-mails she destroyed, there were some government documents in their which we do not at this point no. michael: the clinton campaign has indicated that there were a few among those. the clinton campaign has offered a couple of explanations. the claim that she did not send classified information.

if it was received, it was not marked classified. michael: the restrictions relayed -- relate to the information. if you are the secretary of state, what you get is the most sensitive, confidential stuff. otherwise, it does not make its way to you. she is joined to make a distinction. she is trying to say the things that were sent to me, i had no reason to think it were classified and i am not responsible for what comes into my inbox. michael:: powell -- colin powell used a private e-mail service. this happened a couple of times. we are not talking upon -- about reliance entirely upon a private server.

it depends -- if you get a piece of classified e-mail on your private server, your first obligation is to take it and stick it in a secure location, tell your id to permit, and possibly wipe it off your unclassified server. there is no indication she did that. another rebuttal has been that she only delete it e-mails and have the right to do so. michael: no doubt she had that right. whether all she deleted were personal e-mails is obviously open to question. i think she deleted a total of involvedmails which chelsea's wedding and yoga. josh: there is no prohibition against having a personal e-mail address. john: this brings us to the

common sense question. when you first arrived in office as attorney general, you were briefed about the various security standards. you made the point about the degree of reflexive caution that most have been it secretaries undertake. talk about that and why you think what she did from the very outset was problematic. michael: you are briefed on the need to keep documents confidential, the need to keep classified information in its proper location and under proper conditions. for example, you don't take papers with you unless you are curing them in a locked envelope or in a vehicle that qualifies. i managed to make an arrangement with the fbi which had an apartment on the hall for mine that i could look at documents in my apartment because they had trained on the front door of my apartment. at the end of the night, i would have to go down the hall, give them the documents, and they

would hold on to them. based on what is now in the public domain, what we know, assuming we don't find out anything new about her, would you become trouble bringing charges either against lenten or some member of her staff just based on what we know today? michael: we can't based on what we know today because we don't know what documents were among the government documents on her private server. we also don't know precisely what she knew about those documents. no, based on what we have now, you couldn't justify bringing the case. on the other hand, no case is in blood. there has been no indication there is a criminal investigation going on today. was that meaningful in any way? michael: it's not meaningful, it's false. what do you think they are investigating? the fbi does not conduct civil

investigations and they don't investigate -- another trope is that they are investigating her e-mail system. they don't investigate machines, the investigate people. and one of the people they are investigating is the former secretary of state. they are also investigating other members of her staff because they were involved in transmitting documents. it is a criminal investigation. john: thank you. michael mukasey. weisenthalk joe about how politics will affect the world. ♪

>> as the chinese markets tend to have a correction, it will have an even greater threat because this president doesn't

know how to say no to spending. what you need to do in the oval office is rain this government in. >> i have been expecting a correction for some time. the market has been way too high given the fundamentals are our economy is not particularly strong. 2% growth is lackluster. china's economy have been slowing down for some time. europe's economy is in trouble. republicandful of 2016ers reacting to the china market. we have another reaction. of the greatl show, "what did you miss?" blames the chinese. carly fiorina blames the fed. chris christie blames barack obama. joe: people give all sorts of explanations.

it started with the chinese currency to valuation last week as if a 2% currency devaluation should cause what we saw. there are concerns about gross -- growth. there is the chinese stock market selloff which perhaps leads to other market selloff. things happen because people move in herds and then people panic and get greedy and get fearful. the idea of pointing to one thing that caused this is kind of silly. the one that amuse me the was that barack obama caused this. explanations,e the fact that it has anything to do with obama is the most far-fetched. especially because of all the criticisms of him you could have made at any time during his presidency and the start market has had one of the -- stock market has had one of the greatest runs in recent history. that maybe the idea that stock

markets got ahead of themselves because investors had gotten used to easy money, it's possible it had something to do with it. i think it's purely political that it's obama's fault. it strikes me as the least possible. i would definitely say i was dismayed and dismissed it. it's quite a read. --reach. john: consumer confidence matters. especially in terms of what happens to the president's approval rating and what that might mean for hillary clinton. i saw the story in the washington post that looks at the correlation between approval ratings and stock market crashes and corrections in the past. it shows this weird thing where approval ratings often go up after major corrections in the market. i did not realize that was true.

there were charts that suggested that. what would explain that? joe: i guess there is the phenomenon that people like presidents during chaos in general or turmoil and they rally around him or her. i guess that's possible. into 2016, the real economy is going to be a much bigger story than the stock market itself. that's one of the interesting things about this market. in the past, when we have had the selloff, they are usually accompanied by growth scares. the economy seems fine. housing is picking up, commodities are getting cheaper which will pass through in the form of lower gas prices. the labor market continues to get tighter. those trends are going in the right direction, that is far more important. if you are a republican presidential candidate, you are expected to come up with some sort oanswer or solution or policy that u.s. president could do to change the global

situation. is there anything a u.s. president could do to have a meaningful effect on the type of financial earthquake we saw today? world and in am world where the president and --gress could work together all the burden would not have been placed on the federal reserve to ease policy through qe. it would have been more a mix of monetary policy and fiscal spending. that world does not exist and probably won't for a long time. it certainly won't exist anytime in the future. that would be good, but other than that. john: i would like to spend some time wondering how it would be to live in joe weisenthal's dreamworld. ♪

john: congratulations to bernie

sanders and john kasich. those are two candidates who can deez nuts. until tomorrow, sayonara. ♪