i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. we welcome our viewers in the united states and around the world. president trump's first big foreign policy move, a missile attack on syria. worthy payback for poisoning children and civilians, or an unauthorized act of war? senator rand paul is here. and the strikes occurred the same day that he met with chinese president xi after campaigning bigly against china. did the timing of the syrian strike send a message about north korea? plus to override a filibuster and confirm neil gorsuch to the supreme court, the gop changed the rules. did the democrats lose a much

bigger fight? i'll ask former senator allen simpson. and after reports that fox paid out at least $13 million to female employees accusing bill o'reilly of harassment, advertisers are fleeing the show. is this justice or censorship? first, the president is mostly receiving praise from both sides of the ail for the tomahawk missile strike on syria in response to bashar al assad's sarin gas attack on children. i'm not against it. it's harder for me to say that i'm for it. how could you be against the idea of seeking retribution after seeing those horrific pictures of kids who were gassed to death? i just want to make sure that we're really going after the evil doers this time, that we really have the goods, that it was al assad who initiated this, and that the base we hit was in fact the point of origin for the sarin gas. so far, that all seems to check out. with my cynicism about government at an all-time high

just because i'm told it's the case, i don't necessarily buy into it. that blind faith ended with reports of iraq's weapons of mass destruction. and my second concern is that i hope this isn't the beginning of a larger scale commitment that culminates with american boots on the ground in yet another middle eastern country with no exit plan. to his credit, president trump campaigned against such incursions and that pleased my next guest. like his father, former congressman ron paul, senator rand paul has earned a reputation for noninterventionalist thought. during the campaign he was on the receiving end of many of candidate trump's mocking salvos. recently he's emerged as one of the president's newfound friends. the two golfed together last weekend. then came the syrian strike, and putting friendship aside, senator paul has returned to his roots and i caught up with him earlier after a classified senate briefing on the retaliatory attack. senator, i know on friday there

was a khaleed-door meeting for members of the senate regarding the syrian situation. is there any reason to believe that the russians may have played a role in that chemical attack that killed children? >> you know, i can't go into the details of anything from the intelligence briefing, but what i can say is that our government, our intelligence communities, our military is convinced that the syrian government was involved with the chemical attack. >> are you convinced that the target that we struck indeed is where that attack originated? >> you know, i guess what i've been more concerned is not the military aspects of the mission or even whether or not it will have any significance. my concern has been mostly that this is an inappropriate way to begin a war, that the constitution says war begins with a vote in congress, and that even george bush who was often treated mercilessly by the media as being so far out there,

he came to congress and asked to go to war against the taliban and those who attacked us on 9/11. he also did the same in iraq. and so i think this is a wrong-headed notion that we just skip the most important step and that is whether or not we should go to war. >> do you think that president trump was wrong to be emotionally swayed by the photographs of those dead kids? >> i think you would almost not be human to be emotionally swayed by it, but in an era of television, we see horrific images almost every day. we see the swollen distended babies who are swollen from malnutrition, from maybe their leaders stealing the food that comes in as aid and reselling it on the black market. we see people burned and beheaded throughout the world.

so there are atrocities throughout the world. we just have to decide when we are going to intervene as a country, when we're going to put our young men and women, put their lives on the line and we don't, frankly, do it for every atrocity in the world. it doesn't mean we don't have great sympathy but we have to debate when and where to go to war. that's what our founding fathers asked us to do. >> in trying to determine whether it's appropriate to be a strike, there's a historical parallel that occurs to me. would senator rand paul have opposed the bombing of the tracks going into auschwitz? >> i haven't contemplated going back to world war ii but i can tell you a more similar analogy would be saddam hussein gassed the kurds and we chose to intervene. we everthrew a despot, but we wound up with something else, an emboldened and empowered iran. there can be an endless supply of enemies and you have to ask yourself who takes over next, are they better than the current

occupant. are the radical islamic rebels in syria better than assad? there are also 2 million christians in syria being protected by assad and they fear the islamic rebels taking over. so there's a complicated decision-making process as to who are the good guys in the war. if you talk about auschwitz, it's pretty clear there was one bad guy and many innocent slaughtered, so i don't think that that's a necessarily correct analogy. >> but let's just pursue that one step further, right? if the argument is that it would be right to take out the tracks go into auschwitz because there was a greater good, we could avert catastrophe in terms of human loss -- >> the reason why it's not a great analogy is because we were at war and absolutely you do all of that when you're at war. and we had made a decision to be at war so it wouldn't have been a big deal or a big decision. the actual more important historical question, if you want to talk about history, is why didn't we, why didn't we show

more concern for those in these concentration camps because there's some historical evidence that we could have done much more. but i don't think that's really a question for me. it's a question historically for those who at the time didn't act and do more. >> has the president himself reversed course because in august of 2013 he tweeted, the president, in this case referring to president obama, must get congressional approval before attacking syria. big mistake if he does not. >> i can't answer for the president, and he hasn't asked me to be his spokesman yet. he hasn't even asked me to reveal his golf score. buzz what i would say is, my hope is that this does not reflect a profound change in his attitude towards foreign policy. he clearly ran on the iraq war was a mistake, regime change hasn't worked and involving ourselves in civil wars throughout the world is really not the job of america's foreign policy. some will say maybe this is an exception to the rule, and i hope, frankly, that this is an exception, that he won't believe that we can actually solve the

syrian war militarily. i hope he doesn't believe that we can get involved in yemen's war frankly, but there's been some evidence that in both syria and yemen he's had more of a propensity to get involved than i would have hoped for. >> i completely understand that your position, senator rand paul's position, is that congress needs to be a part of this equation. what of the argument that says that the 2001 authorization gives him grounds to do that which he has done, the president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force, those who aided terrorist attacks, those who harbored organizations, you know the language of the 2001 authorization. is that enough for him? >> people who make that argument are not intellectually serious people. in fact, i think they're dishonest people. that resolution specifically says september 11th. it was 9/11. it was the people who perpetrated, helped organized that. if someone is going to come on television or in any public forum and say assad had

something to do with 9/11, they're frankly just a dishonest person. no, we cannot let one generation bind another generation. we are now having a new generation of soldiers that might not even have been born or have been barely born at the time of 9/11. we have new legislature which turns over periodically and a representative democracy like we have, you should vote. i mean, the generation of 9/11 certainly shouldn't bind us to a forever war in the middle east. i think that's absurd, it's wrong-headed and frankly intellectually dishonest. >> was there a vital u.s. interest at stake in our retaliation? you know that president trump has said that the potential for the spread of chemical weapons was that vital u.s. interest. do you agree with the president? >> no. i think as horrific as the attacks were and as heart rending as the pictures were,

i don't believe there was a national interest of the united states. that's why you have the debate. too often -- everyone knows the buzz words, the catch words. it was in our vital interest. well, that's the conclusion. so we get 100 senators together and we have a debate and 435 members of congress who have a debate. everybody's going to assert from their position that it either does or does not have a vital national security interest, but that's sort of like weighing the facts in a jury and you can come to different conclusions. i think it's hard pressed to believe that -- i'm not saying it's a good thing that syrians would have chemical weapons but it's a hard press to believe that they have the ability to either launch them in any military way to attack us at home or bring them here somehow. it's not a good thing and i think it's good for us as part of the civilized world to unite and say we shouldn't have these things. in some ways we should lead by example and it was always troubling to me that we were the

biggest stockpiler of nerve gas. who were the people who thought it was a good idea for the u.s. to have the biggest stockpile of nerve gas? fortunately we never used it, but you don't stockpile that stuff unless you have the intentions some day of using it. >> on friday nikki haley said this might be the beginning, there could be more action that we would take. how concerned is senator rand paul that the net-net of all this might be ground troops, american ground troops in syria? >> i asked nikki haley very clearly during her confirmation whether or not she would advocate for war not authorized by congress, and in her testimony to me she said she wouldn't and so i take her at her word. she may not quite be understanding 59 cruise missiles as war, but i certainly hope that she and others will understand that increasing and escalating ground troops in syria is obviously war. the great irony is, look, we

just appointed justice neil gorsuch because all the conservatives said he's an originalist and he's going to obey the interpretation as the founding fathers believed it. guess what, the founding fathers also believed you should declare a war. so couldn't we have a few republicans who are consistent enough to believe in the original interpretation with regard to war? >> final question, are we being hypocrite cal insofar as we acted in the name of those dead children but still refused to take on additional syrian refugees, many of whom are kids? >> i think when you look at what creates mass migration, what creates refugees and what creates the death that has happened in syria, it's war. people ask me that and they say, well, aren't we going to help them. well, if war created it, more war may well create more refugees and more death. i don't understand how more war is going to lead to less refugees. i do think though that there is

an opening and one of the tragedies of all this russia craziness right now is it probably does prevent us from having any kind of meaningful dialogue because anybody who wants to talk to putin about a political settlement and helping assad go away, anybody who wants to talk about that, myself included, will be called by the mccains of this world a friend of vladimir putin. so as long as we have that kind of stupidity involved in the debate makes it very hard to get to what president obama said and many other thinking people said, that the answer in syria is ultimately a political solution. >> senator rand paul, thank you so much. >> thank you. i think he took a shot at senator mccain at the end of the interview. what are your thoughts. tweet me or go to my facebook page and i will read responses throughout the course of the program. here's something that just got put up on facebook, let's see. wag the dog much? jerome, i'm just saying i'm not buying into it only because the government is saying it to me. i did say on sirius xm radio

program last week it's times like these when the president's numbers are in a tail spin that some of them get trigger happy. make up your own mind. still to come, after it was revealed there have been millions of dollars paid in sexual harassment settlements for bill o'reilly, advertisers are fleeing his fox news program, but is it an advertisers responsible to police the air waves, or should it be up to the viewing audience? and just before ordering the strike on syria, president trump was meeting with china's president xi. what message did he convey, meaning president trump, regarding north korea? told me . ...a mouthwash. so i tried crest. it does so much more than give me fresh breath. crest pro-health mouthwash provides all... ...of these benefits to help you get better dental check-ups. go pro with crest mouthwash. checkup? nailed it briathe customer app willw if be live monday. can we at least analyze customer traffic?

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primp's trump bombing of syria occurred when he was hosting president xi at mar-a-lago. trump took a tough stance and even fliched with taiwan. those positions havityually

vaned, what kind of message did trump's military actions send to president xi with his relationships with china, north korea and beyond? my next guest, author of "what the u.s. can learn from china" ann lee joins me. she's also adjunct professor at new york university. here's what occurs to me. they're having dover sole at mar-a-lago. on thursday night as this attack commences. presumably the attack didn't have to take place then. do you think that president trump was intending to send a message to president xi at that moment about north korea? >> absolutely. we know that trump ordered these attacks before his meeting with xi, and we know that these attacks take months of preparation to put together, so all intelligence -- all the legal arguments for this had already long been assembled and

i think it was opportunistically timed to coincide with the xi meeting as a way to send a strong message to the chinese that the trump administration means business when it comes to the issues of north korea and the south china seas. i would say that he was very effective because all the comments coming out of the meeting was that the meetings were very frank and candid. these are statements by tillerson. and trump saying that we're going to be cooperating means that he probably got assurance from xi jinping that the chinese will agree to demands by the u.s. because it's clear that the chinese do not want to engage in military confrontation and would seek a diplomatic solution to anything. >> secretary tillerson said that

we were prepared -- i think his word choice was, to chart our own course. do you interpret that to mean that it's an acknowledgment that president xi and the chinese are not about to rein in pyongyang? >> according to chinese media they basically sort of preannounced before this meeting with trump that if the u.s. were to go ahead and perform a surgical strike against the north korean leader, china would not be in a position to stop it because the chinese would not know when the strike would occur and they wouldn't know how it would occur. they did say that if u.s. troops were to cross the 38th parallel, then they would jump into action. and so, that is almost a tacit agreement to the u.s. saying that you have our permission in

some respects, if you're going to go forward with something similar to the syrian attack, but they're going to say if you dare send troops over then that's really where we draw the line. so i think the u.s. needs to think about is this something they're willing to take on because north korea has striking capability against seoul and japan, seoul being very close to the border, and there have been estimates that if north korea was to retaliate, they could strike seoul and kill a million citizens and that would be a conservative estimate. >> finally, from a chinese perspective, the concern is twofold, right, about the u.s. taking military action in north korea. they don't want a u.s. military installation on their border, nor do they want a refugee

crisis that's propelled by a military strike that then fled -- causes people to flee into china. >> absolutely. this is why the chinese say that this would be where they draw the line, and of course if the u.s. chooses to strike the north koreans and the north koreans strike back at seoul, then that would give pretext for the u.s. to invade north korea and that would pull china into a slippery slope of going to war against the u.s. this could be the scenario for the beginning of world war iii if we pursue this route. so this is a very high stakes game, and so i would say that this is something -- i agree with rand paul that needs to be discussed and debated throughout congress and perhaps the nation because we have some very high stakes here.

and yes, this would be sending a strong signal to china and china certainly, i think, will want to avoid such a scenario and will be more accommodating to president trump. but this could also have major stakes for president xi as well back at home. i think it's no surprise that the chinese media is trying to paint this as a very positive outcome because if xi jinping has to make concessions to the u.s. it would be spun as something that he's being a statesman about this in order to avoid military confrontation, but it's going to make him quite unpopular back at home. so that could also cause a lot of uncertainties to unfold from the chinese side. >> understood. professor, thank you so much for your expertise. we appreciate it. >> thank you for having me. still to come, there was a

nuclear event this week inside the senate chamber. the gop changed the voting rules to detonate the democratic filibuster against neil gorsuch. i will tell you why the democrats overplayed their hand. and what bob dole just tweeted could have me returning to the gop. plus, a media watch dog group successfully campaigned to scare advertisers away from glenn beck and rush limbaugh. now they've targeted bill o'reilly on fox news for his sexual harassment settlements, but is that their job or the job of the public?

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okay, prediction, the democrats will regret their filibuster of the supreme court nomination of neil gorsuch.

charlie savage had the right in the "times" earlier this week and here's why. first of all, the conservative gorsuch now replaces the conservative scalia, so the balance of power on the court is not going to shift. it will still be 4-4 with justice anthony kennedy casting the deciding vote. as the rules stood, supporters of a supreme court nominee needed 60 votes to confirm a nominee by first shutting down the filibuster. this filibuster, it really wasn't about judge gorsuch but about president obama's nominee merrick garland and the way he was treated by the republicans who wouldn't give him a hearing much less a vote. i get that a president with less than a year left in office cannot nominate a supreme court justice? that's unprecedented and obstructionist. but democrats fired and wasted the last weapon in their arsenal and here's why. because where this time the republicans didn't have the 60 votes they needed to shut down the filibuster, they changed the rules, as mitch mcconnell said

that they would. the so-called nuclear option was invoked and the filibuster and thus the nomination only required a simple majority. but looking forward, remember this. justice ruth bader ginsburg is 84 years old. justice breyer is 78. justice kennedy is 80 and i hope they each live to 150. but should any of their seats require filling on the watch of president trump, he'll get to replace a liberal or a moderate with a conservative, and that's when the balance of power in the supreme court is really going to shift. if the democrats had ended the gorsuch filibuster without forcing the nuclear option, that issue would be preserved for the next vacancy when it really might matter, and there would have been much more public interest and outcry when the outcome of cases like roe versus wade could hang in the balance. my point is i think it was far easier for the republicans to change the rules when it's just judge gorsuch replacing scalia than it would be in the future when the balance of power is up for grabs.

president trump might have chosen a more moderate justice just to get that person through the approval process. the democrats made their point about merrick garland, then they overplayed a losing hand that could last until they regain control of the senate, whenever that might be. here to discuss former three-term republican senator from the great state of wyoming, allen simpson who served on the judiciary committee during his 18 years in the senate. senator, what do you make of my thesis that the ds overplayed their hand? >> i think i give you an a, no question, as an old professor. let me tell you, you described it well but let me tell you it really isn't a nuclear option, it's a spiral bellsh option clarence thomas was confirmed by 52-48. we never heard of a filibuster. i, in my 18 years, put 7 of the 9 men and women on the court.

i didn't care what party they were in or their idealogical efforts. it was, are they good lawyers, do they have a judicial temperament, are they smart, and i voted for 7 of the 9 before i left the shop down there. this is madness. and guess what? talk about what's that wonderful phrase, poised on his own patard, and that's schumer. he's a good egg. he's a good legislator. he legislatures well. i've worked with him. i like him. when he got into the leadership he somehow got twisted up with the elizabeth warren wing and you don't want to get over there too far and he's being pushed, pushed, pushed. he's not good at this. and guess what, when he came to the senate he had the brilliant idea to say, look, let's start filibustering lower court judges. he tried that and he failed and now he must have been sitting there like he had swallowed a

hockey puck watching this thing happen to him, and it will happen again. you have described it so well. it isn't just this one. he made the effort, he said let's take him out of there and get another one here, we'll all work together. i thought, oh, that's rich. they wouldn't have taken anyone. the gut hard stuff is they refused the one. >> senator, i remember when you were able to work, even though idealogically you were at polar opposites, i remember when you were able to work with senator ted kennedy. here's my question, a two-parter -- when did it all go to hell in a handbasket? and how do we get back civility? >> it went to hell in a hand basket when the people who had been in the house, legislators in the house, had been under control of one party for 40 years. in that situation even the

slaves get tired of the masters and the masters get tired of beating the slaves and it was a terrible situation. republicans were always viciously opposing whoever was in the leadership of the house. so they said i'm going to get the hell out of here, i'm going to go to the senate. and they brought the venom to the senate. i could name both party people, parties who came to the senate and said, now we're over here where we can take on the republicans or the democrats, and it began to deassemble. the coin of the realm there is trust. trust not just with the opposition party, but within your own party. that coin is severely tarnished. now there's no trust. there's no trust within parties. there's no trust across the aisle. ted kennedy was a great guy in my mind. i didn't judge his lifestyle. i don't give a damn about that. i'm not into that game. there's a bigger judge in that in the cosmos. all i cared about was when he shook my hand and said i'm with

you or against you, and he never broke his word once with me. to me, it didn't matter. all the rest of it meant nothing to me. keep your word, and he did. we had a lot of fun together too. >> i want to show you something before you go. i want to share with you, senator simpson, a tweet from your fellow retired senator, 93-year-old robert dole. i don't know if you're into quitter. let me read to the senator. he says it's official. ray chavez has agreed to be my 2024 running mate, the u.s. hero is the oldest surviving vet of pearl harbor and 105 years young. i can get behind that republican ticket, dole/chavez in 2024. how about you? >> let me tell you, i was bob dole's assistant for ten years. i said you don't have to worry about any footprints coming up behind you, you're the captain,

i'm the lieutenant. i had been in the service too, in the infantry. it was the most glorious time of my life, serving ten years as his assistant. maybe i could be a supreme court appointment under that new administration. of course, we do have our age challenges. that's wonderful. >> thank you, senator simpson. it's a privilege to have you back on the program. >> it's nice to hear you. you bet. >> thank you, sir. by the way, did anybody else notice that the tweet from dole said 2024? it didn't say 2020. ever the republican, i guess it's -- yeah, put it back up, katherine. check that out. so what's he really saying? i think he's saying that president trump gets re-elected in 2020, so it will be until 2024 that bob dole will run with ray chavez and with alan simpson as their supreme court pick. anyway, keep tweeting me

me @smerconish. still to come, after fox news settled five lawsuits against bill o'reilly, a new campaign is scaring off advertisers, but is it fixing a problem or setting a bad precedent about controversial content?

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the allegations of sexual harassment at fox news that took down chief roger ailes are now threatening the tenure of the network's star anchor, bill o'reilly, but could that outcome also prove troubling? this week came reports that suits about o'reilly's behavior have been settled for a total of at least $13 million. media matters, an organization that previously worked on successful attack campaigns

against radio hosts glenn beck and rush limbaugh helped launch a hashtag stop o'reilly campaign. that sent advertisers by the dozens scurrying to pull their ads from "the o'reilly factor." there they all are. the show normally takes in a reported $100 million for the network. it usually has 30 nationally known blue chip brands in a typical hour. on last night's o'reilly factor, there were only ten national ads, all for obscure brands, things like catheters. among the few who hadn't fled until last night, the local business referral service, angie's list, a previous statement from the company read in part, we place ads across a wide spectrum of venues, intending to reach as many as possible without taking viewpoints on the venues themselves. just as we trust members to make their own hiring decisions, we trust them to make their own media consumption decisions. but now angie's list too has joined the exodus. weren't they right the first time? isn't there a bad precedent here if a particular show can be drummed off the air by fearful advertisers? joining me now, the president of media matters, angelo carasone.

angelo, glad to have you here. with angie's list and did you personally play a role with angie's list and communicate with them? >> i did. a lot of stop o'reilly participants and sleeping giants which represents consumers. i spoke to angie's list yesterday and they confirmed that they're no longer advertising on bill o'reilo'reis program. they came to recognize that it's not about what bill o'reilly is saying or the content of his program but it's actually about what bill o'reilly did and whether or not they want to continue to associate their business with that kind of conduct. it's very different than the content of what he's actually saying and i think that's an important distinction to draw right at the top. >> but doesn't it represent a form of censorship, if this really were of such import that it drove away the audience, the audience would flee o'reilly but instead you don't lean on the audience, instead you lean on the advertisers. >> i don't see this as a censorship issue. it's not about the content of his program. in fact, it really is a personnel issue. any other employer would have

held an employee accountable for the things that bill o'reilly is doing but there's clearly a culture and epidemic of sexual harassment at fox news and worse, and they've also tried to cover it up and sweep it under the rug they would have held the employee accountable. they didn't do it with bill o'reilly so you're seeing the business associates hold it accountable. that's not my opinion. that's reflected in the statements that the advertisers are giving because they're not just saying, you know, we don't want to advertise anymore, avoid controversy, they're taking strong stances about their position on sexual harassment because when they're out there speaking, they're speaking as much to their current and prospective customers as they are to their own employees. they have to make it clear that they will not tolerate this kind of conduct. >> what does it say to you that the audience that he attracts is not abandoning him and in fact to the contrary, they appear to be rallying his defense? the "new york times" has just

debuted his brand new book, ironically titled "old school" in the number one position and the recent ratings for "the o'reilly factor" are extremely strong. so isn't it fair to say you can't reach the people who are buying that book and tuning into that show, therefore you go the route of the advertisers? >> i just completely disagree with that. first of all, in terms of the ratings, if you have ratings and you can't commercialize your ratings, that means that your ratings mean absolutely nothing and that's reflected even at the top of this segment when you sort of laid out not just the reduction in the number of paid ads on his program but also in the quality of the advertising that's on his show. i did some back of the napkin math and bill o'reilly's show will lose somewhere between $20 million to $25 million this year alone in lost revenue as a result of this advertiser exodus. in terms of his audience, again, i don't think it's about trying to persuade people. i don't see his audience out there defending him. i've done similar tieser education before, i saw blowback and pushback from glenn beck's supporters and rush

limbaugh supporters. there are not bill o'reilly supporters screaming in the streets, you know, saying, hey, you should not be doing this to bill o'reilly. fine, they might be still buying his books but he doesn't have anyone actually defending what he's saying or did except for the co-presidents of fox news, but his people are not defending what he did. >> right, but they're still, as you point out, buying books and tuning into the program. >> true. >> let me put something on the screen from jack shaffer who writes about media matters, not your media matters but for politico. he said media matters president, angelo carusone, that would be you, has called for the organization to be fired but would bill o'reilly be sacked if he were as chaste and pure as mother superior? isn't that a fair point? you've been waiting for your opportunity to take him down. >> fine, i've been looking for an opportunity to hold him

accountable, but i think jack is missing the point. should we really let bill o'reilly engage in sexual harassment and say that fox news says it's okay? for the news had a decision, and they continued to sweep it under the rug, but now that we all know about it and business associates know about it, should we say it's okay and bill o'reilly should continue this, that fox news should continue to be treating employees and its women like this? is that what we should be saying, because i personally don't like what bill o'reilly says. >> i just want to make clear and i think jack was making clear that you do have a political perspective and it is a perspective at odds with o'reilly's. along comes this story, a serious and significant story, and you have immediately, you know, rushed to try and use it as a wedge to take him down. one last observation and you can respond to this. it's another one from jack shaffer. i thought he wrote effectively on this. the o'reilly boycott is a bad idea. even if you hate the guy, it may end up energizing calls for

advertising boycotts against the on-air talent you like, inspiring timidity among ad buyers who are already too timid. do you worry that there could be similar reactions to those on the left who politically you welcome their statements and remarks? >> if an on-air personality regardless of their ideology or what they're say, engages in serial sexual harassment, the network should take care of it and if they don't, it means it's bad business to tolerate this stuff, and that's reflected here right now. i don't think this is about ideology and i think trying to collapse it down there is insufficient and doesn't grasp the whole thing. i'm not out there persuading people to suddenly care about this but i think that the role we're playing, an important role, is giving the context to show it's not a few isolated incidents but part of a deeper pattern. when you make that point, that's why the businesses see this as a business decision. they recognize that they cannot not only not tolerate this but that as a result of the manage

management there's likely more to come so they're making a business decision and i respect those decisions. >> angelo, final quick question, because i'm over. if there were a personality on the left caught up in bad behavior, would you lead a boycott of their advertisers? >> yes. >> okay. >> don't sexually harass people. >> appreciate your being here very much. i like consistency. that's a good thing. thank you. >> thank you. up next, the best from tweets and facebook. catherine, hit me with another one. what have we got? not sure how advertisers fleeing o'reilly is censorship. companies can choose to put their money wherever they want and viewers can choose to watch and listen to whatever they want. i just find it curious that they have to go after the you'd thin that the people would say i've had enough. that hasn't happened thus far. back in a moment. me to try...

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like @pigskinsusan15, who writes, "now my boyfriend wants to talk on sundays. just so many words." your boyfriend's got it bad. maybe think about being single until the start of the season.

. so please follow me on facebook and twitter. smerconish, not sensorship. ask jell-o how they feel about cosby. touche. there hasn't been any final word on that. why not reach the audience instead of the advertisers. hit me with another one. >> exactly, peter! that's what i've been saying. instead of saying, oh, angie's list i'm not going to hire a repairman because you're advertising on o'reilly. another one. quickly if you can. clair clair clair #

. >> i agree with you. i'm going to have to go back and watch that tape, rob, dawg. thank you so much. see you next week. [waitress] more coffee? [student] yeah, thanks. [student] oh yeah for sure... [waitress] yeah ok [student] i can just quit school and get a job. [ex student] its okay daddy's here. [wife] daddy [wife] hi [dad] hey buddy [son] hey dad [wife] i think we can do this. [dad] really?

[chancellor] adam baily. [chancellor] adam baily.

. we're live in the cnn newsroom. i'm ana cabrera in new york. up first, the syrian air base pounded by dozens of u.s. tomahawk missiles is back in business tonight. you're looking at new video. jets moving less than 24 hours after president trump's strike. they are easy and inexpensive to fix, donald trump tweeted. and the aftermath of new bombings na happened north of that airfield. the same town where 89 people died this