nicole: i am nicolle wallace. and i'm john heilemann. with all due respect to those peddling the latest scandal, if you want people to notice, you need a clever name. something like water-g -- we will come back to it later. ♪ of wadr've got plenty on the show tonight, sports fans . as hillary clinton takes a second day off the campaign trail to recoup from her bout of pneumonia, she was able to call in two decent subs to fill in her shoes. in philadelphia, president obama

was on fire as he showed off his stump speech showmanship and issued a warning about the dangers he says would come with a donald trump presidency. pres. obama: this is the guy you want to be championing working people? this guy, who spent 70 years on this earth showing no concern for working people? this guy is suddenly going to be your champion? crowd: no! pres. obama: he spent most of his time trying to stay away from working people as he could. now he is going to be the champion of working people. huh? i mean, he wasn't going to let you on his golf course. john: out here where i am, bill clinton is taking his wife's place at a pair of fundraisers. for an interview on

"charlie rose." we will hear some of that sound in a moment. in a meantime, nicole wallace, there are not many days were -- remaining between now and november 8. it looks like hillary clinton will not be back on the trail again until friday. at the same time, with surrogates like these, barack obama, bill clinton, how bad is it really? it bye: i would answer asking you how bad was her convention, where every night was filled by a super surrogate . she came out of that week in the strongest position of her campaign so far. it is not bad. if you see her come down with another cold, you might think she didn't think so either. these are great messengers for her. the president is an impassioned surrogate. i liked his performance today better than the one where she set him up and spoke as well. john: hillary clinton has admitted she is not a natural campaigner. this is no denigration of her to

these two, when they are on their game, president clinton and president obama, they are better than she is. barack obama was fantastic as an advocate for her. she has a challenge right now as we see the polls tightening. we know that the problem for her is not just republicans are coming home for donald trump, but that she has an enthusiasm problem with african-american voters, young voters, and with hispanic voters. she is getting a big percentage, but there is an enthusiasm gap. if anybody can do something about that, barack obama can. it is good to have him out there in full throat. nicolle: there was always strategy to this. there is strategy in holding back and not pushing bernie off the stage, to be able to do this. they were aware of her deficiencies with the obama coalition. their plan was always to come in in the final months and bolster

her support and numbers with the peaceful coalition she would need in these days. john: as i said, we are going to listen to some of this will clinton sounded in a couple of minutes, but bill clinton is not of a performer as barack obama, but this morning on "charlie rose," when he took on trump and was trying to explain what was going on in the electorate, it was like the old bill clinton from 2012, when he was a fantastic surrogate. that president clinton was on display, arguing for his wife. if she has those two firing on all cylinders, she is in a good place. she could not have better people in her stand while she is resting up. nicolle: we will come back to her health in a minute, and the way her campaign handled her illness this week, because it is one of the two big stories. the other one is the way she lumped half of donald trump

's supporters in a shrink-wrapped basket of deplorables. on both fronts, the clinton campaign is tired of being on defense, and now they are trying their best to get themselves on offense. sure, weer attack is, have made our mistakes, but trump is even worse than we are. the trumphours after campaign tried to bask on this, clinton released some things -- some unflattering things trump has said in public. watch this. mr. trump: you cannot lead this nation if you have a low opinion for its citizens. how stupid are the people of the country? we are building a wall. he's a mexican. you have to see this guy -- i don't know what i said. i don't remember. you are living in poverty, you have no jobs. what the hell do you have to lose? campaign is clinton

also jumping all over the latest controversy surrounding mike pence, who refused to call white supremacist david duke deplorable during a cnn interview yesterday. on capitol hill this morning, donald trump would not go there, but he reiterated neither he nor trump wants to support. still, trump is trying to keep the focus on clinton's comments. ideas, noers no solutions, and only hatred and derision. i'm running to be a president ,or all americans, democrat republican, independent, everyone. whether you vote for me -- [applause] mr. trump: whether you vote for me or whether you vote for someone else, i will be still your greatest champion. while my opponent slanders you as deplorable and irredeemable, i call you hard-working american

patriots who love your country and want a better future for all of our people. nicolle: there are some people who say hillary clinton would rather be talking about this than her e-mails or her health. can she manage to turn the deplorable's gap to her advantage? john: i think she can, and she is, to some extent. we have had a couple of days of debates where we have people arguing about, is 50% the right number or not? let's look at the polling. let's see the percentage of trump supporters who are voters -- who are birther's. let's see how many would like to ban homosexuals from the united states. let's look at the numbers. that is not a great debate for donald trump. the other thing, as byron york pointed out this morning, this is a diabolical trap, every time some outrageous trump supporter

says something or does something outrageous, people in donald trump's campaign are going to be asked, is that person deplorable or not? is david duke deplorable? when they say no, because they don't want to use the clinton language, they will get hit with headlines as pence has been, of refusing to call david duke deplorable. that is a good thing for the clinton campaign. off-topic, deplorables is a great name for a band. there is literally one answer. is david duke deplorable? yes. yes. leep yes. but this is mind-boggling to me. taking on trump supporters is a mistake. the people who agree with her are already voting for her. the people she needs to convert are the ones who share concerns about her as well.

she needs to bring around moderate voters who are not on the clinton and wagon. the people in the bandwagon --ieve clinton's base trump's base contains plenty of deplorables, but people she needs to convert, they are not warming up to her when they hear her maligned. john: she needs to fire up her own base. clinton may be taking time off the campaign trail and letting super surrogates pick up the slack for her, but she did have time to call in to cnn last night. she answered two questions about her opponent's lack of transparency. ms. clinton: compare everything you know about me with my opponent. i think it's time he met the same level of disclosure that i have for years. you've got a medical report on me that meets the same standard

as mitt romney and barack obama. donald trump's dr. said he would be the healthiest president and that is not even serious. i have released nearly 40 years of tax returns, he has not released one. john: sounds familiar, doesn't it, bill? clinton: a martian came down and watched america unfold, it would be hard to see these pleas for disclosure, which are one-sided. charlie: people are demanding donald trump release his income tax returns all the time. president clinton: it would be refreshing if there were one thing in life where he disclosed more than she has. but i don't think there is so far, not even one. john: donald trump is planning to reveal more about his health this week. he continues to be pressed about when and if he is going to ever release his income tax returns. -- "thewashington ports

washington post," a reporter keeps raising questions about his charitable foundation and whether donald trump has given much, if any of his personal wealth in recent years. hillary clinton now admits that her team was not as forthcoming as it should have in this weekend, and she is now planning to release more information about her health in the days ahead. but my question is, how successful do you think her efforts to jujitsu this broader be?rt of transparency might nicolle: it is always a strategic and structural misjudgment -- there is fairness and there is parity. on the question of transparency, the clinton team finds it unfair, but there is the pursuit of parity that will not come to fruition. she is expected to and will benefit from moving towards more transparency. that is her single greatest political liability. his greatest liability is something different entirely. it's this notion that his depth of knowledge is one millimeter

deep and he is volatile. they are both trying to solve -- butnt problems and the media aside, because the media should expect the same of both of them. the truth is voters are holding them to different standards. he still maintains an advantage on this question of honesty and trustworthiness. even though as bill clinton accurately points out, over the years there has been a lot more information about her released to the public. john: she is held to a different standard. whether it is fair or unfair, i say it is unfair over for career, but it is the case that it is a smart move for the clinton campaign to focus on his lack of transparency, which is epic, and the fact that reporters have not done a great job of drilling down on him. david is an exception. this is a guy who is putting himself in contention for a pulitzer by looking at the trump foundation, finding out it is

unusual in a variety of ways. that donald trump money is not much of the truck bank foundation, that it takes -- the trump dubnation, that it takes other people's money and spends it, calling hundreds of charities that have not received donations, tracing phantom contributions that the trump foundation claims it has given to charities and has no record of. the tax law violations. clintonart for hillary to push all of our colleagues and us to do more on this. nicolle: the only thing i would add is that trump is running as a scoundrel. he is running as a guy who has worked over a rigged system. part of the reason these stories don't stick to him is that he is openly running as a guy who has gained the system. when you are running against a rigged system, you get away with more than she does. voterset's make sure know exactly how big a scoundrel he is. nicolle: that sounds like a good

plan. when we come back, we will look at the coverage of hillary clinton's health situation and if there is any gender bias involved, right after this. ♪

say more, bute to i think there is an element of sexism on how this is being covered at this point, and i am worried that i feel guilty of the same thing, but i think the weak is awoman as sexist stereotype. john: that was former "new york jill" executive editor

abramson on bbc radio, critiquing how the media has been covering hillary's health scare. jill is not alone. others have claimed the sexism, gender bias, misogyny when it comes to how this is handled. my question for you, as the woman in this conversation, are they right? nicolle: yes and no. i don't think hillary clinton is in trouble because she got pneumonia. i think voters are forgiving. the campaign is grueling. the reporters know how grueling it is. hillary clinton is in this predicament because she did not tell people she had pneumonia. sarah palin, the degree, the specificity with which she was forced to address very personal details about her pregnancy and recovery, and when exactly she

was in labor and what she did, were like nothing i have ever seen working for george w. bush and dick cheney, a vice president with a health condition, and john mccain, a candidate who was a skin cancer survivor. john: i think there are two things you can say that are unequivocally true. one, any presidential nominee, male or female, if they were caught collapsing at a public event, it would get a lot of attention. the second thing is, there is no doubt this has been amplified is because others around donald trump has been spreading conspiracy theories, and donald trump has talked about her in a misogynistic way, talking about how frail she is and whether she is durable enough to be president. that has amplified it. a little bit of an element of gender bias has crept in. mark: for the last laugh -- nicolle: women will get the last laugh. women are the deciders. this is a losing strategy on that. john: you are getting the last word on this for sure.

up next, we will check in with our reporters about the state of the race after these words from our sponsors. ♪

nicolle: we are 56 days away from election day. we are joined by two people who have been following both candidates virtually every step of the way. kevin cirilli, who follows donald trump and jennifer epstein, who covers hillary clinton. when you go through something like this, a communications crisis at best, a health crisis with troubling video at worst,

how is the campaign recalibrated and reset from an internal dynamic? jennifer: they go back to what they often do, to not reveal a lot of information. they said they regret how they handled the situation and should have been more forthcoming on some day, if not on friday or saturday about her pneumonia. she did think she could work through it and nobody would notice. nicolle: should she keep her cool closer by? -- pool closer by? jennifer: no, we have been talking about that. we have been pushing them on it. but what happened on sunday shows that there is something different between having a close protectivefully pool. i could not get in the motorcade because the secret service wanted to get her out as soon as

possible. that press than would have caught up on the way and would have gone to chelsea's appointment -- chelsea's apartment two minutes after as opposed to two hours. pool supporters at all. nicolle: let me ask you to explain the eighth wonder of the world, how donald trump has managed to stay restrained after letting his surrogates cross a lot of lines in terms of insinuations about hillary clinton's health. how, as she nearly collapsed into a van, have they managed to keep a lid on hyperbole about her health? kevin: as this was developing, trump was notified during the actual service as it was reverberating across social media. he made a key decision not to campaign on this issue at all out of respect for 9/11. but behind the scenes, his aides

were meeting and plotting away capitalize only this rough point for the clinton campaign, and they made a decision to focus on basket of deplorables. monday morning, they came out with the attack ad hitting clinton on that comment. later that evening, they brought up member after member of donald trump supporters, letting them speak for themselves. they feel the basket of deplorables is the way to attack clinton without having to attack her on the health and overplay their hand. john: kevin, let me ask you this question about donald trump and his health. he is going to tape dr. oz tomorrow, airing on we do not thursday. know who the doctor is who performed the physical on him that he says he has had. do you know about the details of what we should expect for that health care information they're going to put out?

kevin: the bottom line is no, they have not put out details about surrounding the doctor or the physical that took place last week. we have asked them about this. there are similarities between the clinton campaign and the donald trump campaign on the issue not only of their health record, but also with their relationship with the media in terms of a protective pool. both candidates, this is another reason trump campaign aides are not attacking hillary through trump on this issue, i think they recognize that he himself has also not been as forthcoming as previous candidates in regards to his health return records. john: right. jennifer, i think we now believe that hillary clinton will not be on the campaign trail on friday. -- until friday. how worried is the clinton campaign about her absence? we have missed four days, that's a lot. jennifer: i don't know if it is definitive that she will not be out until friday, but it is not

what the campaign has been hoping for. they were planning on doing an economic speech in california that had to be postponed. that was an effort to do policy speeches that go into what motivates her as a candidate and as a public servant to serve. they saw it as a way to kind of course correct from a very heavy anti-trump team and to instead coherent argument. the whole calendar has become more compressed. to some extent, they have a detailed schedule for the whole way through. you have to think about rescheduling california fundraisers and other things. it gets difficult. nicolle: kevin, really quickly,

are you hearing anything that could be any sort of surprise in donald trump's medical history? anything unflattering or embarrassing? kevin: they are keeping the medical records close, so no, we are not. of course, everyone is early awaiting. -- eagerly awaiting. donald trump is never one to not have a surprise. we will have to wait and see what dr. oz will find out. nicolle: never been so excited to see dr. roz. -- dr. oz. thank you. when we come back, we are bringing in a strategist to talk deplorables, health, and the coveted obama coalition after this. ♪

john: welcome back. it is time to talk strategy. we're going to be joined in a minute by democratic strategist bill burton. he's going to be with us

momentarily from santa barbara, but first, from washington, d.c., republican strategist and columnist for the "washington post," ed rogers. ed, just to clarify, you are never trump, or you are not trump right now but maybe trump by election day, which one? >> i call myself a nonsupporter. i'm not never trump. i've been waiting on trump. the clock is ticking, but i'm a firm nonsupporter. john: at the moment, ok. so as a non-trump supporter, but you're also doggedly not a supporter of hillary clinton, you're sort of neutral. how much do you think that the basket of deplorables plays to donald trump's advantage? ed: it's been a real gift for him, the degree to which he needs something to talk about and to the degree to which he needs a gift from hillary from

time to time, this was a good one. it serves at a focal point for people who don't like hillary anyway. it's hard to quantify in terms of what it means for him. that said, the race has bogged down into deplorables, and pneumonia, and disclosures of this and that. it's not about the economy, not about what's going to drive votes, and that's probably better for hillary clinton than it is for trump. nicolle: riddle me this. why is it hard to answer this question? is david duke deplorable? ed: good question. nicolle: [laughs] >> the press wants you to give him the word. give him the word in his case. that said -- nicolle: isn't he in a category of his own? why is this so hard? ed: he is in the category of a creature of the national media. he's never had a toehold. yet the media fixates on him. i am sure that governor pence did not want to go there or give

them what they want, but in this case, give them what they want and move on. ignore david duke all you can , and this was the opposite of ignoring it. go ahead and say it, yes, deplorable. that's deplorable. my people aren't, this guy is. let's let them have that. they're thinking too much. john: let me ask you about something i'm sure you find deplorable, knowing you the way i do. donald trump's embrace of vladimir putin, the man crush. ed: yeah, what's that about? john: what is that about, and do you think it is electorally consequential? will voters care about the fact that trump has cozied up to putin for this entire campaign? ed: it's clumsy, and some day i'm sure it will be revealed what on earth it was all about, but the notion of having some sort of a diplomatic approach with russia could be the policy of a serious speech, it can be a subject of

some component of a stump speech, but this sort of personal admiration and borderline fawning is weird. is there a business connection, something down the road for some sort of selfish benefit? i don't know, but it's weird and it's unprecedented. i can't think of anything close to this. i can't think of what good has come from it. it's bizarre, among other things that are bizarre with the trump movement. john: there's no doubt about that. let's bring in bill burton up in santa barbara. great to have you with us. your old boss out on the campaign trail today. we've been looking at the polling for the last week or so and thinking about why this race is tightening. one of the reasons that the number crunchers have come up with is the notion that a lot of the obama coalition is not totally jazzed up for hillary clinton. do you think your boss, even without his name on the ballot, can help her with those groups? >> absolutely. as an incumbent president who

had such high numbers, his usefulness crosses geographies and demographics. i think he will be very helpful in a bunch of places. but like you mentioned, it's the obama coalition that needs to be brought on board in a serious way, and not a lot of people can do that like the president. she's lucky to have a surrogate like that. donald trump doesn't have anything that even approaches that. john: as you pointed out, barack obama's approval ratings super high. he is still beloved by his voters, and yet there are not many people in the coalition who don't know barack obama supports hillary clinton, but she's not seen the enthusiasm. he's going to be on the campaign trail, but what more can he do? >> i've worked for four different presidential candidates and one president. i've seen a lot of presidential campaigns. i'm not as old as you, but i have seen a lot. john: thanks, bill.

bill: when i learned the most was john kerry's campaign, when i was just a regional press secretary. we would put different surrogates in different media markets. what we saw was, depending on the strength of your surrogate, if you put somebody in milwaukee or des moines or minneapolis, you could see a bump in the numbers after they came. hillary clinton has a stable of awesome surrogates led by president obama who can go into a market, specifically target at geography, and get people jazzed up. people may know that president obama supports hillary clinton, but that's different from him coming to down, doing an event, getting people fired up, leading the local newscast, and actually getting that appreciable bounce in the polls target by target. nicolle: bill, you're speaking my language. you and i were both on that campaign of 2004. if all those things are true -- that's how we used to do things in the republican party, target by county where you had to pick up your support to make the state turn in your favor.

your bus and mine used to cross each other on the highways in wisconsin and ohio. trump is not playing that game, and are you completely confident that hillary clinton has adopted -- adapted to his asymmetrical warfare? it doesn't seem like the polls reflect that obvious advantage in strategy and infrastructure. bill: one of my favorite memories on the campaign trail was when bush and kerry were in iowa and there were six big robberies in the metro -- nicolle: and we all got bumped off the news because of it. i do remember that. bill: yeah, exactly right. no, she's not adapt tock his asymmetrical warfare. because the media is covering this in a different way to voters consume it and voters participate, i don't know that she has to, even though it might look clunky against the warfare that donald trump is employing. the fact that she is using data,

working county by county, that's the path to winning. it's not donald trump leading the press around by the nose with his twitter feed with something more and more outlandish every day. it's, how do you get in there, talk to voters, be in the place -- the places that matter, and moving swing states into your column? nicolle: ed, i think i'm in your basket of republican angst. what do you feel more stressed about? waking up and having hillary clinton having won, or waking up and having donald trump having won? and: i wake up having republicans having lost the senate. that's my number one stress level. i am more anxious about that than anything else. i don't see a downdraft building. hillary is not building a wave campaign that's going to sweep out a bunch of republicans. it doesn't look like the floor is falling out from under donald trump. so i'm sort of dodging your question. but that's how i feel. [laughter] right, ed rogers,

question-dodging ed rogers. young bill burton. younger than me, apparently, according to bill. unfortunately, it's true. thank you both. bill, you're never coming back on the show again. coming up, the math to figure out how to win the states after this. ♪

♪ nicolle: if donald trump has any path to the white house, it probably runs through the rust belt states like ohio and pennsylvania, where manufacturing decline could make voters rife for his message.

but when it comes to winning these states, the clinton and trump campaigns are using the same basic voter formula. >> campaign strategists divide voters into three main groups. the base, party loyalists who will turn out on november 8 no matter what. then there are way campaigns like to call geo tv -- gotv targets, get out the vote, people who will probably back you but are unreliable voters and need extra encouragement to get to the polls. in pennsylvania, democrats have such an advantage that clinton can technically win the state without a single vote from independents, but in ohio, where both trump and clinton start with similarly sized bases, it's all about persuadables and the undecided voters who both campaigns are trying to woo through tv ads, campaign events. from there, the math is simple. if your base, gotv's, and share of persuadables add up to the estimated win number, you win.

nick: joining us are two guys who will be crunching those numbers. they started in the rust belt with pennsylvania, ohio, and michigan, and what would it take for trump to cross the line in each state. such eisenberg is a bloomberg politics contributor and one of john and mark's brilliant producers. let's start with you. you're the first one who gets me through these hours. i'm totally lost without you. now it's clear why. you're the star of the show. that was amazing. in 2000 and 2004 it was florida, florida. clearly now it's ohio, ohio. why? >> and there's a reason. a lot of people think they're going to be close, but they don't know why. like weon is because, showed you, hillary clinton and donald trump start with very similar bases. them very similar gotv, get out the vote targets that they're trying to get to the polls, and

the group of persuadables is pretty large. about 500,000 persuadeable voters, and whoever gets the larger share of those wins. obama lost the independent votes in the state by a huge 10 points. he got creamed by romney, yet he still won because he was able to turn out more of his gotv. hillary clinton doesn't have that advantage this year. if she lost by the same margin that obama did in 2012, she would have to run the ground game of a lifetime. nicolle: the reality is that life for people in ohio is this roche of messages to do just this. most of the ads in ohio are targeted to that group. >> that's why the clinton campaign is spending $13.9 million. behind florida, it is second state they're spending the most ads in. it is ohio, if ohio, ohio, my question for republicans is, what are you doing in pennsylvania? it's a giant head fake for republicans. what are we doing in pennsylvania as republicans?

is there something different happening very active -- happening there? >> >> what we tried to do was look at the part of that democratic coalition that in those states where trump would have to eat into the democratic base, where should he look for defections? we mapped in white men without college educations who are historically democratic, are likely to be voting, and live in communities directly affected by factory or plant closings. in those three states, we found that pennsylvania has by far the most, a little over 300,000 of them. a little over 200,000 in ohio. a little under that in michigan. so hillary clinton -- sorry, donald trump, has to eat into hillary clinton's base, but that's where he would go to do it. those non-college white men. you can see where they are. they are clustered around the pittsburgh market, to a smaller degree around erie and scranton. nicolle: i cut you off. >> it's a totally different situation than ohio. hillary clinton's base, you add those up, she could win without

winning any persuadable voters, and the persuadable universe in pennsylvania is so much smaller than it is in neighboring ohio. it's about three times larger in ohio. trump could do everything he can to turn out his base and it wouldn't be enough for him. and this is why people say pennsylvania is such an uphill climb for him. it's still a really important state for him to win. he has to peel off those democrats, and these are the democrats we think are the most vulnerable for him to convert. john: talk to me about michigan. if pennsylvania is a reach for donald trump, michigan must be well out of his reach. >> yeah, we see similar economic dynamics across these states, but the mix of the electorate is really difficult for him there. there are about 189,000 of these working class, white democrat men who live in communities hit by localized plant closures. 70% of them are in the detroit

media market. that may be one reason why trump is spending money in michigan. i think it is the seventh highest state by his ad spending even though clinton and her super pacs aren't there at all. when you look at the other states on the electoral college map, places like colorado and virginia, where he has a difficult challenge that he thinks that's the place where he can maybe pick them off. sha, real fast, you are like a data guru, and we're going to be doing this series with you and steve all the way through the election. why is the voter file better than polling? >> this is what campaigns do. they count up individual voters instead of trying to divide the electorate by percentages. one big reason is a large part of the campaign is not about changing people's opinions, but about getting your own coalition out to vote. it's a much better way to look at who the voters are and where they are by going straight to the voter files than just relying on polls.

thank you both. up next, we're going to be talking about a political revolution. and no, we are not talking about bernie sanders. find out who we are talking about, after this. ♪

john: with us now is larry kudlow, economic advisor to donald trump's campaign and co-haw author of the new book "j.f.k. and the reagan revolution." larry, thank you for being here. i wish i was here with you, because you are always a delight. my question for you is this. you basically argue that john f. kennedy, who we know was a tax cutter and a supply sider. please explain?

>> during the eisenhower years the economy didn't hardly grow. notions of prosperity under ike is not true. three recessions. kennedy ran a 5% growth, but he didn't tell you how. he ran it in the campaign, beat nixon. he believed, as president, if he didn't get 5% growth he wouldn't be re-elected. initially they tried old-fashioned government spending. it did not work, and the government got worse. -- and the economy got worse. and a republican in his cabinet named douglas dylan was treasury secretary, and dylan basically talked him into lowering marginal tax rates across the board. high end, low end, corporations, you name it. what they got was they went from 91%, which was outrageous, to 70% and guess what, it worked. it worked very well. to connect the dots, john, 20 years later as a young deputy in o.m.b., ronald reagan followed the same policies as john f. kennedy. john: here's my question about that. he certainly cut taxes across

the board, but did reagan look to kennedy for inspiration, or is it just that they implemented the same kind of tax-cutting policies? >> he looked to kennedy for inspiration. jack kemp was kind of the go-between, the late jack kemp, my mentor. they said we need something to get us out of the 1970's mass. -- mess. jack said let's use the tax cuts. 30% across the board, and kemp sold it to president reagan and by the way, from day one, reagan gave j.f.k. credit. constantly had him in speeches, major addresses. when he sold it to the nation in early 1981, you have to remember my dates, he mentioned kennedy and quoted kennedy, a rising tide lifts all bolts. yeah, kennedy was kind of the pioneer and president reagan was a follower, what kemp called a duplicate. he was a duplicate. john: larry, take off your

author's hat and put on your advisor to donald trump hat. yesterday the republican nominee was on cnbc and advanced a conspiracy theory where he said that janet yellen is keeping interest rates low in order to help hillaryd clinton did -- get elected. he previously had said he liked janet yellen. this argumentes have when it comes to political motivation? >> as an old fat guy, that's how i started my career. presidents don't dictate to fed chair men. they may discuss, they may talk, but fed people are very consistent they have -- are very independent, and they have disagreements among themselves. they're having one right now within the reserve as to whether or not to raise rates or not. no, i don't see a conspiracy. i think yellen is doing what she thinks is best.

brandon, whatever her name is at the treasury, now at the fed, she said no, let's not raise rates. they're having a debate inside. i don't think president obama has a thing to do with it. trumpso why is donald indulging in this conspiracy theory? is there anything that can be done to make him stop? >> i think that the fed should be criticized. i think the fed needs a lot of reform and restructuring from top on down in a whole bunch of areas, so i don't have any problem with criticizing the fed per se, and i don't think this q.e. business has worked very well, if at all. in recent years, i think it has done more harm than good. that's my personal view. however, again, the fed is an independent central bank, and you talk to the president, i was in meetings like that years ago, but the president does not dictate monetary policy, and that's a good thing. nicolle: so donald trump is your pupil.

you're advising him on monetary policy. let me ask you what he said about real unemployment. he said the real rate of unemployment is 42%. instead of 4.9%. when you hear something like that, do you speed dial him and go, donald, donald, what are you thinking? tell me how that goes down. >> please don't ask me things like that. nicolle: well, you're his advisor. he is being advised by you and says that real unemployment is 42%. >> along with many others. it is the truth, not false humility. however, there will be discussions and there have been ongoing discussions about this i -- about this, and i honestly don't know where that number comes from. nicolle: do you call him and say what are you talking about? >> i did not. as i said, there are ongoing discussions. he's speaking to the new york economics club on thursday. it's a very important speech, and what i can assure you of, these things notwithstanding, it's going to be a powerful economic growth speech, as trump

has a terrific tax cut plan which is very much like j.f.k.'s and reagan's, and he has a good plan to roll back regulations, including obamacare and the country needs growth. that's the key point. the country needs economic growth, and you'll hear that from mr. trump. john: we have to go, and i know there's no way you think the real unemployment rate is 42%. anyway, thank you for coming on the show. we'll be right back. ♪

john: thank you for watching and until tomorrow -- mark: sayonara.

>> it wednesday, september 14. this is trending business. youe going to be live from -- for you in tokyo, singapore, and melbourne. samsung trying to manage the note seven battery crisis, limiting the battery charge to avoid overheating and fire. the yen weakened sharply after slipping through one of two overnights.