good morning it's 9:00 a.m. in salt lake city utah and 11:00 a.m. on wall street and squawk alley is live. ♪ welcome to squawk alley for our thursday. kayla is back from london. good to have you back. along with henry, the founder and ceo at business insider.

muted action and stocks are on track for the third positive week. first time since the fall. first up this morning in about half an hour, former gop presidential nominee mitt romney will give a speech urging voters to reject donald trump. excerpts are leaking and he says trump is a phony, a fraud, he's playing the american public for suckers. he gets a free ride to the white house and all we get is a lousy hat. you were early and going to iowa and reminding people that he had staying power. this was awhile ago. >> very compelling. >> that's been proven true. >> does this matter? >> this whole thing matters. if this didn't have such an impact on the future of the country and the world it would be the most entertaining reality show in history. it's unbelievable what's happening to the r republican party. they have only themselves to blame by saying no to everything for years. we live in democracy you don't get everything you want and if

you say no to everything you don't get anything you want so people are really frustrated but this is a really serious thing and the thing about trump is he is incredibly compelling. love his perceived strength. nobody has any idea what he would do and i think what he is doing now is selling to win and if he wins the nomination he will start selling to a new constitue constituentcy but we don't know what he would do. >> what do you make by the 11th hour response by the establishment. on one hand you have chris christie thinking i should probably back the inevitable and bring some reality to the party now it's time. >> the republican party like all political pundints and others are slow to recognize the actual real threat that trump would run away with the nomination and everybody thought he was a joke in the beginning and now the establishment completely realized it and it's going to be incredibly interesting to see

what happens but right now he is in command on his way to the nomination and it's going to be late to actually slow things down. >> i just wonder if you are a republican primary voter in middle america, are you right now thinking well, wait a minute, what's the problem? isn't trump basically in bolder terms the things that he has been whistling about for the last several years. he's talking about issues with immigration. concerns with illegal immigration specifically. he's talking about america winning again. yes he's brash. yes he's krass but a lot of people in the country are. what's the problem? it seems to me to be awfully desperate looking for romney to come out and do this now and trump's understated tweet about it was pitch perfect. i mean, this is -- i can't remember ever seeing something like this. the last nominee for a major party coming out -- he's not coming out to endorse somebody.

he's coming out trying to kneecap donald trump. >> the last major nominee of the party having gotten the endorsement from the person he is coming out against four years ago. >> it's extraordinary to watch but potentially has a huge impact on this country and the world so it can't just be entertaining. it's real. he had a lot of positions that the democrats can say that's great. he wants to rebuild infrastructure. so a lot of things will appeal to people that just say look we just want a pragmatist. we're sick of this politics and that's very appealing to people. >> funny you mention that. he's on the cover of time and in that piece he talks about winning new york. he talks about winning virginia, michigan, that reagan democrats, socially liberal, physically conservative will come to him.

knowing what you know, do you believe that's true. >> hillary clinton is going to rollover him. it will be quick. get donald trump the nomination and we win. the moment he gets the nomination he will start selling to a totally new constituentcy. he is a very compelling sales person. and as we saw about the secret tapes that the new york times has in person. when you meet with him he's much more reasonable and practical. he's still donald trump, 100% but you get the sense he will cut deals, he's a pragmatist. that is appealing to people so i think that people are underestimating his appeal in the general when we get in there. >> there's a reason that he took power. people, when you reach a certain point with frustration, with a political class and professional politicians he doesn't want to bring in somebody that is going to shake up everything. >> he did. >> you don't exactly know what the shake up is going to be. >> right.

>> obviously it's going to be an interesting hour as we wait for romney to take the mike. speaking of donald trump, his stop supporter, governor chris christie getting slammed by meg whitman. she is calling for his supporters to reject the republican front runner. whitman will join us for a interview. disney holding the annual shareholder meeting today. they upgrade the stock and point to the value of the upcoming films over the next five years. they believe worries over espn will start to fade and a large part of that argument is that the fees will outpace the sub losses and people's worries will fade. >> and people's worries may fade but the idea that don't worry you're losing customers but they're going to jack up prices on the rest of the customers that stay more and more and more so you're fine, the problem with that is it does last for a

little while and then you lit a cliff and it collapses to long-term there's still serious issues here but break down of tv is going to take a long time so worries may ease. >> it strikes me, though, if you look at the big picture media landscape, some big media company is likely to win. think about the threats that we have seen over the past several years. blogs were going to come in and destroy the establishment. now they have done quite well and then you have user generated content. youtube not so much powered by user generated content. piracy has not up ended the movie industry and the tv industry the way it did music. the right media company positioned the right way probably stands to make quite a bit of money. >> absolutely. great content will be forever in demand. if that's what you're making you're in great shape.

most of tv business is about distribution and that's the model coming under attack. tv networks are distributors. they own a channel 24 hours a day and put their content on it and that's the model starting to break down. it's not compelling business television analysis. you're in great shape forever. >> i wouldn't bank on that. >> if you're a disney shareholder what do you want to hear from the company when they have their meeting taking place in chicago. obviously the directors are going to come up for re-election. it's pretty boilerplate stuff they'll be voting on but what do you need to hear from the company? >> if the big concern is espn you need to hear the company say we're not stupid. we know this is a few that you are that is going to look differ than current distribution. we think that future is going to be better than the current future because we think that we're going to get all the affiliate fees from all the cable networks and standard tv distributors and from netflix and the big over the top

distributors and so forth. so there's an argument that the future is going to be better. >> the overhang on the stock is going to be the espn issue. >> i wonder when it comes to the content creators versus distributors, comcast has held in there. >> people are going to need the wire no matter what. >> people need access no matter what and that is a great business and if you look at cable company financials it's now access is more important to the bottom line than the regular video business but owning both sides is great and tv is not going to die. there's no way it is just going to simply lose influence relative to some of the others and there's massive consolidation. 189 television networks.

let's smoosh some of them together and create netflixs with 25 of them bundled together. all the stuff whenever you want it. that's a compelling thing. but tv guide is doing great. in the future they'll be in great shape. >> especially in this political cycle. good to see you. see you next time. >> meanwhile the markets are off their lows but still posting modest losses after two days of gains. the dow is down by 24 points. s&p by two points. nasdaq down by 10 points. ism services was a touch below expectations. factory orders did post the best in 7 months so that is helping sentiment although we're still tracking oil pretty much in the markets. and however same store sales did rise for the first time and even so the stock is down by about 2% at this hour. a rough at a for kroger. shares falling after the grocery company predicted slower growth this year hurt by pressure from

lower prices. that stock down 8%. >> when we come back we'll talk to a stop vc that invested in a ton of big name companies including uber and airbnb. he's going to join us in an exclusive plus the fourth season of house of cards hits netflix tonight and we'll see if it's any good and in 20 minutes mitt romney will make a plea to voters to reject donald trump. we'll get you there live as soon as he begins speaking. dow is down 19. we're back in a moemtd. we're back in a moment. ♪ you should hire stacy drew. ♪ ♪ she wants to change the world with you. ♪ ♪ she can program jet engines to talk and such. ♪ ♪ her biggest weakness is she cares too much. ♪ thank you. my friend really wants a job at ge. mine too. ♪ i'm a wise elf from a far off shire. ♪ and sanjay patel is who you should hire. ♪ thank you. seriously though, stacy went to a great school and she's really loyal. you should give her a shot. sanjay's a team player and uh...

live shot of salt lake city where mitt romney is expected to make a speech in a few moments asking supporters of the republican party not to support the front runner. difficult political calculus and we'll obviously take it live. >> yes, indeed. meanwhile not a single tech company has gone public so far this year so when should investors start worrying? he's a prominent venture capitalist investing in uber and airbnb among others and also a graduate in silver springs maryland where i also attended a couple of years younger than him howev however. he joins us along with josh. >> thank you for joining us. >> of course. go blazers. >> so you heard john mention, listen, very few tech ipos last

year, an ipo window frozen shut this year. what does that mean for vc's like yourself and your colleagues on sand hill road because at some point you guys need to start seeing the actual cash returns, right? >> yeah, there's no tech ipos for seen in the next quarter for sure and there is that, you know, reality of companies going public and it's going to take a lot more discipline. the companies have to be financially disciplined and many of the private companies are adjusting to that new reality. the later stage and cross over investors that were investing a lot of the unicorn companies are at higher valuations on that kind of alphabet soup of series a to z. those are now -- those are now investing in public companies

which have pretty depressed valuations. so innovation is alive and we invest at the earlier stage at that cycle. the as and bs and so on. so that is a much longer cycle. this is a classic boom bust cycle. these happen all the time and, you know, we were pretty patient building companies for the long road with great founders. >> it's a range of start ups. when you look at that portfolio are you seeing slower than expected growth rates? has the business environment changed at all the last six or nine months? >> there's been a massive shift in consumer behaviors. if you look at the growth on this wave of smartphone apps

with transactional functions, especially in the on the demand world you look at the behaviors that uber has created in terms of pushing a button, instant gratification, paying for something, those are all new and these companies are scaling to the billions in revenue within four years of being founded and uber, travis, the ceo talked about that in the u.s. uber is now profitable which is really good news. everybody focused on the china equation of putting a billion dollars into the china operations and missed the fact that it's profitable in the u. s. which is a massive milestone. so now they can be reinvested around the world as they expand. same thing for a company which is on demand food. all centralized in one kitchen and then delivered to customers. it's highly disruptive. they're doing half the size of chipotle in the bay area with one kitchen versus 40 locations

for chipotle. one of our other companies grew by 50%. they're growing incredibly fast in the pharmacy space. delivering that to all 50 states. >> great to have you on. you said shortly before the facebook ipo that you believed facebook was going to be a $200 billion company. a lot of people snickered at that. you are absolutely right. now you said that uber is going to be a $200 billion company within five years. that same time frame that you put on book and i want to ask how exactly does uber get there given how much they're spending in china right now, there's the chance, always the chance that china could become uber's waterloo. do they have to win there and in southeast asia versus grab in order to get to that 200 billion number that you predict?

>> the book projection, thank you for reminding me of that. i said 200 billion back then within five years. it happened within three years. it's also a good reminder of what we were talking about in the ipo markets. open table went public at $20. went to 90 and sold at 100 in an environment where a lot of ipos were also shutdown. so great companies when you do the analysis over the arc of what their growth is going to be and the facebook example it's very clear that mobile was going to be extremely important for them and that, you know, with instagram's acquisition and later what's app they'll be able to be in a massive position of strength which is where they are today. the prediction of 30 billion and they broke that. on the uber side it is, uber is just unstoppable. i've never seen anything like

it. of course i lead the series b and we have invested massively in it since. and one of the things that we have seen with it is that it becomes a way of life so the scale of it is so massive. it would shock people to see how much it scaled. the projections we have seen early on when it's 9,000 customers back in 2011, travis says something that is really important. he says this is not about taxis. this is about replacing car ownership. that was the mistake that a lot of investors made. they thought this was a taxi market company and not a replace car ownership company and all the other things that it's expanded into.

the projections that we did in terms of going out into 2018 and beyond, just our own projections, you're talking about 10s of billions in gross revenue and now profitable u. s. operations. >> do they have to win in china in order to get there? >> i think they with be a parity. china is a universe in and of itself and being in a position to share that market with a company of the scale is a win in my own opinion. >> and on the other side, correct me if i'm wrong, you were in paris when some of the confrontations between taxi drivers and uber. so you saw some of the anger firsthand. as an early investor and uber believer does that concern you when you see that as uber takes the model overseas? >> i was in paris with my father

and there were stones being thrown and cars being overturned and cars being burned and it was the first moment that my daughter looked at me and said i finally understand what you do. she is 15. but she understood what i have always talked about in terms of when you talk about disruption and suddenly you're seeing it in terms of what is happening to old models, corrupt models. you talk about the taxi systems and corrupt taxi systems within cities around the world where nobody was happy. nobody was happy with the product and the service. there was no accountability for that and there was a lot of corruption within city councils and mayors and look at just new york, the number of taxi medallions in new york was the same number in the 1930s. they were con rolling the market

and uber provided a better service an it's changed the transportation services around the world and raised the bar for it. the other part of this is transportation itself as a thesis is really interesting and we view transportation as a form of broadband. the faster we can move people around and the faster we can move things around the faster the world economy will work. the better our quality of lives. the more time we can spend with our loved ones and that's part of why hyperloop has been created as well. >> you are actually co-founder and executive chairman. >> right and it was elon musk's idea and i co-founded the company. david sacks and a bunch of others joined the company and we're going to hit 400 miles per hour by april and we're just raising a $90 million ground and we broke ground in nevada.

>> thank you for your time today. we appreciate it, sir. we'll send it back to you guys in new york. >> not enough time. thanks so much. great stuff josh. we have been telling you about mitt romney's upcoming speech in which he will criticize donald trump. speech has obviously yet to happen but we're now getting word that trump is already planning a response. he'll speak at a campaign rally at 1:30 eastern. >> the back and forth continues. in the meantime as we're waiting for the comments from former massachusetts governor mitt romney, we'll take you there as soon as he starts speaking. so don't go away. what are you working on? let me show you. okay. our thinkorswim trading platform aggregates all the options data you need in one place and lets you visualize that information for any options series. okay, cool. hang on a second. you can even see the anticipated range of a stock expecting earnings. impressive... what's up, tim.

td ameritrade.

as we wait for mitt romney's speech europe is is going to close in a few minutes. so let's get it a touch early. >> retail sales figures were good today. but the composite pmi and services and manufacturing coming up for the market.

still they're saying the euro zone is facing a broad based slow down because the figures are lower than last year and the figures are deteriorating in france indicating that it's going back into contraction. one week from today the ecb will be meeting and we'll have the policy decision by then. the banks had good follow through today after yesterday it was an indication that the ecb was aware of the concerns about further negative rates. today the ceo of jp morgan said that he wasn't a big fan of negative rates. he didn't think we'd have them here in the united states and he didn't think that they work well elsewhere, ie in europe because of unintended consequences that we don't yet understand. take a listen. >> if i was in the central bank i would be working with the policy makers on the physical side saying we need joint coordinated intelligence policy. not the central bank trying to make up for everything. >> which is actually what mario draghi says every single time

but he just doesn't say it as clearly as that. you the mining stocks higher. bhp was downgraded two notches to moody's today. meantime, as you can continue to have this conversation about britain possibly exiting the european union it should have been a great day for french relations, hollande holding a summit in northern france however in advance of that his economy minister made an astounding interview with the financial times if which he said if the u.k. does exist the eu that france is ready to roll out the red carpet for bankers to paris and they might no longer hold immigrants trying to get to the u.k. as far as they were concerned it would be free game to let them roam into the united kingdom if that fails. back to you. >> thank you very much. simon hobbs. any moment now former gop presidential nominee mitt romney

will make a major speech. expected to call on voters to reject donald trump. we're joined on the phone this morning by vin weber. it's good to have you back. good morning to you. >> good morning. great to be with you. >> you have seen cycles come and go. how would you handicap romney's chances of being effective in what he wants to do today? >> a there's a concerted effort that's going to go forward and mitt romney is kicking it off today. i saw 50 or so republican foreign policy experts issued a letter saying they could not support donald trump. we saw the senator from nebraska

become the first member of the senate to actual hi say he could not support senator trump and a couple of former gop chairmen. but ultimately the voters have to respect the decision. we'll have to see if they respect the point of sue from leaders. >> a lot of voters argue that your republican leader is their failed nominee. why does romney have any currency right now? >> well, you know, that's not the way we have treated defeated leaders before. in order to become the leader in the republican party you had to win the nomination over some fairly serious competitor.

he did fail to defeat an incumbent president running for president. mitt romney is a respected guy. he cares about the country. he has a lot to say about what the party's direction is is and we'll just see if people want to listen. >> a wrinkle in this though is that donald trump endorsed mitt romney in 2012 when he was running for president and trump has taken to twitter saying that romney begged for his endorsement back then. how much do you think that could potentially discredit romney? >> before you start here is governor romney coming to the microphone. >> thank you. thank you jason and thank you to the hinckley institute. it's good to be with you today.

thank you. all right. now i'm not here to announce my candidacy for office and i'm not going to endorse a candidate today. instead i would like to offer my perspective on the nominating process of my party. back in 1964 just days before the presidential election which we lost, ronald reagan went on national television and challenged america saying that it was a time for choosing. he saw two paths for america. one that embraced conservative principals dedicated to lifting people out of poverty and helping to create opportunity for all and the other an oppressive government that would lead america down a darker less free path. i'm no ronald reagan and this is a different moment in time but i believe with all my heart and soul that we face another time

for choosing. one that will have profound consequences for the republican party and more importantly for our country. i say this in part because of my conviction hah america is poised to lead the world for another century. our technology engines, our innovation dynamic, the ambition and skill of our people are going to propel our economy and raise the standard of living of americans. and he is 100% right that the babies being born in america today are the luckiest crop in history. now that doesn't mean that we don't have real problems and serious challenges. we do. at home poverty persists and wages are stagnant. the horrific massacres of paris and san bernardino. the nuclear ambitions and the

aggressions of putin. the growing assertiveness of china and the nuclear tests of north korea confirm that we lived in troubled and dangerous times but if we make the right choices, america's future will be even better than our past and better than our present. on the other hand, if we make choices the bright horizon i have described will not materialize. and let me put it very plainly. if we republicans choose donald trump as our nominee the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished. let me explain why i say that. first on the economy. if donald trump's plans were ever implemented. the country would sink into prolonged recessions. his proposed 35% tariff like penalties would instigate a

trade war and that would raise prices for consumers and kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs of all type to flee america. this tax plan in combination with refusal to reform intitlements would balloon the deficit and the national debt. so even though donald trump offered very few specific economic plans what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for american workers and american families. but you say wait, wait, wait, isn't he a huge business success? doesn't he know what he's talking about? no, he isn't, and no, he doesn't. [ applause ] his bankruptcies crushed small business and the men and women

that work for them. whatever happened to trump airlines? how about trump university? and trump magazine and trump vodka and trump stakes and trump mortgage. a business genius, he is not. now not every policy that donald trump has floated is bad of course. he wants to repeal and replace obamacare. he wants to bring jobs home from china and japan but his prescriptions to do those things are flimsy at best. at the last debate all he could remember about his health care plan was to remove insurance boundaries between states. successfully bringing jobs home needs serious policies and reform to make america places they want to plant and grow. you can't punish business into doing what you want. frankly the only serious policy proposals that deal with a broad range of national challenges that we confront today come from ted cruz, marco rubio, and john

kasich. one of these men should be our nominee. now i know that some people want this race to be over. they look at history and say a trend like mr. trumps isn't going to be stopped. perhaps. but the rules of political history have pretty much all been shredded during this campaign. if the other candidates can find some common ground, i believe we can nominate a person that can win the general election and will represent the values and policies of conservatism. given the current delegate selection process that means i vote for marco rubio in florida and john kasich in ohio and ted cruz or which can ever one of the other contenders has the best chance of beating donald trump in any given state. let me turn to national security and the safety of our homes and loved ones. he's already alarming our

alabaallies and fuelling our enemies. insulting all muslims will keep them from engaging in us on their urgent fight against isis. muslim terrorists only try to lie to enter the country. what he said on 60 minutes, it was about syria and isis and it has to go down as the most ridiculous and dangerous idea of the entire campaign season. let isis take out assad, he said, and then we can pick up the remnants. now think about that. let the most dangerous terror organization the world has ever known take over an entire country? this recklessness is recklessness in the extreme. now donald trump tells us that he is very, very smart. i'm afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very

not smart. [ applause ] >> after all this is an individual who mocked a disabled reporter. who attributed a reporter's question to her menstrual cycle. who mocked a brilliant rival who happened to be a woman due to her appearance and bragged about his marital affairs an laces his public speeches with vulgarity. he admires vladimir putin at the same time he calls george w. bush a liar. that is a twisted example of evil trump and good. there's a dark irony in his

boast of his sexual exploits during the vietnam war while at the same time john mccain who he has mocked was imprisoned and tortured. dishonesty is his hall mark. he claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into iraq. wrong. he spoke in favor of invading the iraq. he said he saw thousands of muslims in new jersey celebrating 9/11. wrong. he saw no such thing. he imagined it. he is not of the temperament of the kind of thoughtful person he needs as leader. his imagination must not be married to real power. the president of the united states has long been the leader of the free world. the president and yes, even the nominees of the country's great parties helped define america to billions of people around the world. all of them bear the responsibility of being an example for our children and our

grand children. think of donald trump's personal qualities. the bullying. the greed. the showing off. the absurd 3rd grade theatrics. we long referred to him as the donald. he's the only person in the entire country to whom we have added an article before his name and it wasn't because he had attributes that we admired. now imagine your children and your grandchildren acting the way he does. would you welcome that? haven't we seen before what happens when people in prominent positions fail the basic responsibility of honorable conduct? we have. and it always injuries our families and our country. watch by the way how he responds to my speech today.

will he talk about our policy differences or will he attack me with every imaginable low road insult. this may tell you what you need to know about his temperament, his ability and his suitability to be president. mr. trump relishes any poll that reflects what he thinks of himself. but polls are also saying that he will lose to hillary clinton. think about that. on hillary clinton's watch the state department, when she was guiding it and part of the obama administration, that state department watched as america's interests were diminished in every corner of the world. she compromised our national secrets. she dissemiabled to the families of the slain. and she had her most profound

believes to gain presidential power. they lived at the intersection of money and politics. trading their political influence to enrich their personal finances. they are the term crony capitalism. it disgusts the american people and causes them to lose faith in our politics. a person as untrustworthy and dishonest as hillary clinton must not become president. [ applause ] the audio and video of the infamous exchange will play a

hundred thousand times on cable and who knows how many million times on social media. there are a number of people who claim that mr. trump is a con man. a fake. thank you. let me say that again. there's plenty of evidence that mr. trump is a con man, a fake. mr. trump has changed his positions, not just over the years but over the course of the campaign and on the klan for three days in a row. we'll only know if he's a real deal if he releases his tax returns and his tape of the interview with the new york times. predict there's much bombshells. i predict he doesn't give much of anything to the disabled and

our veterans. i predict that he told the new york times that his immigration talk is just that. talk and i predict that despite his promise to do so first made over a year ago that he will never ever release his tax returns, never. not the return under audit. not even the returns no longer being audited. he has too much to hide. nor will he authorize the release of the tapes that he made with the new york times. if i'm right, you'll have all the proof you need to know that donald trump is, indeed, a phony. attacking me as he surely will won't prove him any less of a phony. it's entirely in his hands to prove me wrong. all he has to do is release his back taxes like he promised he would and let us hear what he said behind closed doors to the new york times. you know, ronald reagan used to quote a scottish philosopher

that predicted it wouldn't last longer than a couple of hundred years and john adams wrote this. remember democracy never lasts long. it soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. there never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. that's john adams. i believe that america has proven these predictions wrong for two reasons. first, we have been blessed with great presidents. with giants among us. men of character, integrity and selflessness have lead our nation from the very beginning. none were perfect. each surely made mistakes. but in every case they acted out of the entire to do what was right for america and for the cause of freedom. the second reason is because we're blessed with a great

people. people who at every critical of moment of choosing put the interests of the country above their own. these two things are related. our presidents time and again have called on us to rise to the occasion. john f. kennedy asked us to consider what we could do for our country. lincoln drew upon the better angels of our nature to save the union. i understand the anger americans feel today. in the past our presidents have channelled that anger and forged it into resolve. into endurance and high purpose and into the will to defeat the enemies of freedom. our anger was transformed into energy directed for good. mr. trump is directing our anger for less than noble purposes. he creates scapegoats of muslims and mexican immigrants. he calls for the use of torture.

he calls for killing the innocent children and family members of terrorists. he cheers assaults on protestors. he applauds the prospect of twisting the constitution to limit first amendment freedom of the press. this is the very brand of anger that has lead other nations into the abyss. here's what i know. donald trump is a phony, a fraud. his promises are as worthless as a degree from trump university. [ applause ] he is playing the members of the american public for suckers. he gets a free ride to the white house and all we get is a lousy hat. his domestic policies would lead to recession. his foreign policies would make america and the world less safe.

he has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that america would cease to be a shining city on a hill. i'm convinced america has greatness ahead. and this is a time for choosing. god bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality. thank you and god bless you all. [ applause ] >> mitt romney in utah with essentially a three tiered critique of donald trump. part of it economic saying that his election would push the u.s. into what he called a prolonged recession and make it less safe on national security and then on going criticism of trump's personal qualities. john harwood has been watching this in washington d.c.

how does it play? >> boy, i don't know. that was every conceivable piece of ammunition fired by mitt romney against donald trump. it was on trump's morality, his competence, his policy positions, his character. it underscores how if trump is actually able to win this nomination how difficult it is going to be to pull the party together and present a united front in november and it underscores the calls that some have made on the conservative party for a third party if trump is the nominee. i question if this is likely to retrieve the results that trump is seeing. to have an establishment figure say this guy that you're voting for is really bad, like bad on a scale that we haven't seen before in politics. how are they going to react to that? we'll get a little hint on the debate stage of how the

candidates think he's going to react. donald trump has a lead heading into michigan but this attack is the product of a sense of panic and desperation that republican elites have with just two weeks, less than two weeks really to try to stop donald trump before these primaries get to winner take all delegate selection when he can pull off an insurmountable lead. mitt romney's speech is part of it but that is the republican franchise going all at donald trump today. >> it struck me that probably 80% of that was sound bites that could be used by a democratic challenger against donald trump in a general. >> no question about that. >> it also seems, aside from that segway about hillary clinton but it also seems to me i don't recall mitt romney ever taking digs that deep and that personal against anyone in an election cycle or speech.

am i imagining that or is that mitt romney speaking with more conviction negatively about someone than we heard before. >> forget mitt romney. i don't know when i heard any major american politician, past nominee of a major political party go at someone within his own party with that kind of force and conviction. that was exceptionally strong and i'm sure that mitt romney believes it. he certainly has been on the receiving end from donald trump of a lot of digs for quite sometime. failed candidate. loser. trump has gone at romney in very personal terms. romney is responding and doing what he thinks might be able to help stem some of the momentum that donald trump has accumulated. we'll see if it works. >> one man that knows a lot about disruption is rick santelli who is also listening to this. rick, i'd love to get your

thoughts. >> well, i'll tell you what, i agree with john. i haven't seen this mitt romney, as a matter of fact, the only word i could think of is irony and i'll tell you where my mind is going. you recall that on september 11th, 2012 our consolite in benghazi was attacked. there was a debate and she inserted herself to stand up for the president and how he labeled what happened that night. and mitt romney did not show this kind of courage because if he would have walked off the stage, like a donald trump would have done, he would probably be president today. so i guess i'm a little lost that all of a sudden he has the courage that he didn't display at a time where the vice president biden and the current president barrack obama partially were elected because of the following statement.

gm is alive and bin laden is dead. it was all about terrorism and mitt romney if you'd have had that courage that day would have most likely won. >> rick. it's harwood. i just want to know what you think of the substance of what romney had to say. do you agree with his critique or do you think it's wrong? >> a lot of the things were grounded in truth. in his argument against trump and the positives of other republicans my comment would be what have they done that should make voters think that mr. trump in all his verbiage is going to not do something when they have been in power, okay? he brought up john mccain. did he win? did he win? okay? i think that he is missing this. it's not necessarily what trump says. it's what people think he's

going to do after he gets elected and that is things that are actionable. now we could debate what that is and i'm not going to tell you if i'm in favor or against. i'm just saying that the political landscape that mitt romney is painting is in a strange surreal sort of way exactly why he was rejected and moderates have been rejected. because they talk a good game with high character and high morals but they deliver zero. isn't that the whole point? >> john, one last question. it sort of got buried in romney's remarks but he did make reference to the other candidates finding common ground. is he suggesting that a vp pairing or something happen sooner rather than later? >> a lot of people are suggesting that on the conservative side. there's a georgetown law professor that wrote in national review today that cruz and rubio

should join together as a ticket to try to stop trump. again that's something that we haven't really seen happen before. i'm not sure that it would be effective and i think that the republican elites need to take notice of the message that rick just gave. the feeling of trump supporters that the political system simply hasn't delivered for them. that's what is fuelling trump and that's why when they hear somebody like mitt romney say he's a person of bad character, he's immorale, his policies are bad, they might say hey, what have you done for us. >> john, rick, thank you very much. john and kayla back here at post 9. tomorrow we'll continue this discussion with meg whitman. we're back after a break.

welcome to the halftime report. top trade the banks and a big warning from a well-known investor to avoid the stock all together. with us is joe, steve, and john and pete. bond legend bill gross making that call today. banks were the worst performing