good evening, everyone. it is a very sad moment anywhere anyone has an imac, iphone or ipad. sad anyone anywhere remembers when they sue "toy story" or put beethoven's ninth symphony in their pocket. in short, it is a sad moment just about everywhere tonight. apple co-founder steve jobs has died. he was 56 years old. he had been in ill health for

quite some time, having battled can considerate ick cancer and the complications for years. earlier 0 tonight the family released a statement. from president obama tonight, the world has lost a visionary and there may be no greater tribute to steve's success that most of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. michelle and i send thoughts and prayers to his wife lauren, his family and all who loved him. from bill gates, the world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact steve has had. the effects of which will be felt for many generations to

come. for those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. i will miss steve immensely. the tributes are pouring in on twitter as well, so many the service has been jammed on and off throughout the evening. throughout the hour tonight we'll be talking to a lot of people who can fill in the picture of what steve jobs would likely have called an insanely great life. but we begin tonight with the one person who was there at the very beginning, steve jobs' partner in the creation of apple computer, steve wozniak. he joins us now by phone.

>> what went through your mind when you heard the news tonight? >> hi, anderson. thanks for your feelings. i'm a little bit like awestruck, just dumbfound. i can't put my mind into gear, i can't do things. it's kind of like when john lennon died or jfk. i don't think hardly anyone else, maybe martin luther king, it's sort of like, oh, you're like -- there's a big hole left in you. it's very hard to go back and touch on all the -- reflect on all the feelings, what it means. you know, you've already said what he did. everyone knows what he did. how much life he brought to the world. i think if he had a goal he certainly far, far overachieved any goals he had from the start of things. >> what do you think it was that drove him? >> you know what, i think steve jobs would have had hopes and visions for the future and he set up apple computer really to continue on in his dreams and i hope that apple always has great leaders like him. >> what do you think it was that drove him? because, you know, some people create things, but i mean time after time after time he changed the way we think about technology and the way we interact with it. he was constantly innovating. what was the drive? >> a lot of young people who

have big business successes have a lot of power to do things, and a lot of them just sort of keep going along with sort of the status quo and the way it is. steve really didn't. he always developed new things and to be ahead of the world and sort of be a number one in that way, just applied good thinking and the result of it is he made a lot of people happy. how many times can you remember products from a company that just made you happy every time you used them? when i grew up, maybe it was the television, nothing else. so, you know, i think that's why -- i mean, you say all the twitter and the feeds and the e-mails and everything is just pouring in. so many people are just so thankful for the life that steve jobs largely brought us, you know, in the way he conducted apple computer. >> can you tell us about those early days when you -- you first met when you were both working

at hewlett-packard, right? >> actually not -- steve had a summer job as an intern there. i was working there designing calculators. we were just -- you know, that's what i really need time to think about, though. such important times, you know, the concerts you went to together, the times you stayed up all night, the times you talked about a project, something you might build. and i was kind of the big designer/builder and steve would be off in college and he would come and see something i developed and he'd find out how to sell it. he was always looking for ways to turn things into business. and he knew how to spot the good from the bad. so all the things -- so many things he left with me, impressions, values, ways i try -- so many times i try to think the way steve jobs would think, right from back in those early days. and it's just so, so, so much. so much. i mean, i'm just feeling everyone's life in the world right now. just think of a lot of even political leaders, they don't have much positive effect on our

lives, not in my opinion. you know, economists and this and that. but here is a guy who created tools that every one in the world, billions of people, just love and feel happy about and good about. the only times we ever say, oh, my gosh, a president really made a big difference in my life, is because we're on their side politically and we can't even remember their name. >> what was it like -- you guys were literally from what i heard working in a garage building the first personal computer. >> it's a little different than that. we had a year in a garage where basically means working out of your home because we had no money. that's one of the things that makes steve very popular in a lot of people's eyes. people want to believe that dreams and good thinking can take you somewhere else. and he came from nothing being a youngster. look at these people like who started google and facebook.

same story. yeah, we had no money at all to put into our business. we would just go out there and soldering irons and hooking things up, steve would be on the phone buying parts, finding sales, talking to people, raising money eventually. all of those little things you do was just basically done out of our garage and homes and our cars and our pockets. we had nothing. >> did you know what it could become? did you know how important what you were doing was? or would be? >> we felt it was unbelievably important, but we never could have envisioned it would grow to what it is today, that it would be such an important part of everyone's life in so many ways. basically, the computer and all these follow-on products are ways of communication, enhancing communication between people. even when you start out with just being able to print a document on a real printer, that's communication. and what we never saw is everything in life you used to do a different way, now you would be sitting down at a computer keyboard or ipad today

or iphone and transacting your business of life. no, we couldn't even see that you'd ever be able to store a song in the amount of memory that would be in a computer. the early spark was, you just take the technology of today, kind of turn it into tomorrow's technology. that's where we were at, and steve was just always, always pushing for, can you do this, can you do that? beyond what the engineer was really capable of doing. but he could get the engineers to say, yes, i can, yes, i can, and eventually it would get done. >> so did you know, too, that he would be such a good businessman? did you know that he had -- it was beyond just being -- >> i don't think anyone that knew steve way back in the early days would have said that. you know, even when with he left apple, departed apple on sort of unfavorable terms for a while, i think when he came back he had really improved as far as a businessman, understanding importance of operations and not just spending money like it's incident but running a company

like it's a company and making the right decisions. you know, you can't sell something that doesn't do the right job so -- but, anyway, that's what he was. but everybody knows what his legacy is. will it get replaced or not? is there a hole that can't be replaced? you know, you sort of think of, like i mentioned, john lennon dying, oh, my gosh, what will we do now? where will we find another one? >> a lot of people tonight have been comparing him to basically sort of our-times thomas edison. would you agree with that? >> thomas edison was more the guy that was in the laboratory with the tools. so i think of other types of inventors in that category. steve would be more my idea of thinking and throwing out ideas and inspiring people and knowing what was possible and who was telling him stuff that was really doable and what wasn't. good engineers -- he was just a really good judge of people and humanity, the people using the products and the people building

them. so more almost on a psychological basis. and i don't think of edison that way. >> it's interesting because -- >> steve was kind of like a lot more than that. it's very important that the person at the top of a company making technology products understands the technology, understands what the different low-level devices and technologies and chemistry and physics and what companies are making the -- the owner should make your products out of. steve had a good understanding of the technology. people say, he wasn't a technologist, no he didn't sit down and write the programs himself, but he could sure as heck apply the great management techniques to get the best out of any programmer they had. and they were the best in the world. >> he had studied ka lig ra 50 for a time, and the beauty of the products that he created is just extraordinary. and that was really important to him, wasn't it?

>> well, the macintosh was the first time that instead of having every character had a predefined little shape out of a few dots, it could be created like a picture, painted, every single character of every word was painted. and that sort of fell in line a little bit along the line that's creativity was a good -- i'm sorry. caligraphy was a good background for him. also when he created the first ad for the apple 1 and 2. he would go down and work with the lady who could bring up four lines of text on a screen and choose a few fonts, this idea of font. and his idea was getting influenced by one of these things at some point in it your life and years later you turn them into something good and useful to people. so that kind of thinking kind of pervaded the company ever since. >> steve, again, i can't imagine what it's like for you tonight. i just wanted to thank you very

much for talking with us and sharing the steve you knew with the world tonight. thank you. >> well, i thank you, and i wish you a good night. i hope you sleep well. >> thanks. steve wozniak. when we come back, the creation of apple and all the high points since then, in pictures that are now part of history. i really want you to see this piece we've put together because it's extraordinary just to see all of the things that steve jobs has given to all of us. and you're going to hear steve jobs in his own words ahead, tonight. for their clients' futures. never taking a bailout. helping generations achieve dreams. buy homes. put their kids through college. retire how they want to. ameriprise. the strength of america's largest financial planning company. the heart of 10,000 advisors working with you, one-to-one. together, for your future. ♪

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breaking news tonight, apple's steve jobs has died he was just 56 years old. pancreatic cancer laid waste to his body. we're left with his incredible legacy and his words. take a few minutes and watch this.

>> today, for the first time ever, i'd like to let macintosh speak for itself. >> hello, i am macintosh. >> we think a lot of them are going to get into the home. but we like to say they're going to get there through the garage door. people will bring them home on the weekend to work on something. sunday morning they won't be able to get their kids away from them and someday they may even buy a second one to leave at home. the strangest thing about apple is it hasn't had a good consumer product. here's one of the best consumer brands in the world and they haven't had a compelling product under $2,000. and the one we introduced today,

imac is incredibly sweet. i think it will make a big difference. this $1,299 is faster than the fastest pentium 2 you can buy. this it thing smokes it. and so it's amazing, and the market has never had a consumer product this powerful and this cool looking. what is ipod? ipod is an mp3 music player, has cd-quality music, and it plays all of the popular open formats of digital music. but the biggest thing about ipod is it holds a thousand songs. now, this is a quantum leap because for most people it's their entire music library. this is huge. the coolest thing about ipod is that whole -- your entire music library fits in your pocket. i've got a pocket right here. now, this pocket's been the one that your ipod's gone in traditionally. the ipod and the ipod mini fit great in there. you ever wonder what this

pocket's for? i've always wondered that. well, now we know because this is the new ipod nano. today apple is going to reinvent the phone. an ipod, a phone, and an internet communicator. an ipod, a phone -- are you getting it? these are not three separate devices. this is one device. and we are calling it iphone.

the question has arisen lately, is there room for a third category of device in the middle? something that's between a laptop and a smartphone? and of course we've pondered this question for years as well. the bar is pretty high. in order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks. and we call it the ipad. and what this device does is extraordinary. you can browse the web with it. it is the best browsing experience you've ever had. it's phenomenal to see a whole web page right in front of you that you can manipulate with your fingers. it's unbelievably great, way

better than a laptop. way better than a smartphone. for 2010 we're going to take the biggest leap since the original iphone. and so today we're introducing iphone4, the fourth generation iphone. stop me if you've already seen this. believe me, you ain't seen it. you've got to see this thing in person. it is one of the most beautiful designs you've ever seen. hey, johnny! i grew up here in the u.s. with "the jetsons" and with "star trek" and "communicators"

and just dreaming about this, you know, dreaming about video calling, and it's real now. good morning! thanks for coming. thank you. thank you. we're going to introduce today ipad2, the second generation ipad. it is an all-new design. it is not a tweaked design. it's not got marginal improvements. it's a completely new design. and the first thing is, it's dramatically faster. one of the most startling things about the ipad2 is it is

dramatically thinner. not a little bit thinner. a third thinner. and that is ipad 2. as always, i'd also like to thank everyone's families because they support us and let us do what we love to do. so thank you very much to our extended families out there who make it possible for us to work our tails off making these great products for you. >> steve jobs. he has brought us all so much over the years. dan simon joins us along with 360 md sanjay gupta, andy serwer editor of fortune, on the phone ronald wayne apple's third and

sometimes forgotten co-founder. sanjay, i want to first talk to you about what steve jobs died of, pancreatic cancer? >> he had a sort of variant, a kind of cancer, a tumor specifically of some of the cells in the pancreas that make various hormones like insulin, for example. you know, you saw that speech he gave at stanford. he talked about when he was diagnosed they found a lesion in his pancreas. they thought it was an aggressive form of cancer. they did a biopsy and he describes the doctors literally crying when they got the results back because it wasn't the most aggressive form of pancreatic cancer but rather this neuroendocrine tumor. the numbers are still tough. even with this variant, with pancreatic cancer, one-year survival rate anderson is about twoi 20%, with this neuroendocrine tumor, five-year

survival rate around 50%. so the odds were sort of stacked against him. but eight years later now we're talking about and he was high functioning really the whole time. he really fought like crazy for eight years. >> yeah. the weight loss we saw, that was all part of this obviously. >> yeah, i think so. for couple of reasons. one is the cancer, two, the pancreas also controls your digestive enzymes, the hormones can also cause the weight loss. he talked about -- he was somewhat vague about exactly what he had, but he did talk about this hormonal imbalance at one point, which was really what he was describing. >> ronald, when is the first time you met steve jobs? >> at atari when we worked together. he was a consulting engineer for atari. i was the chief draftsman and technology engineer. >> i want to extend my condolences in the loss of your old friend. what are your thoughts tonight as you remember steve jobs? >> my memory of steve jobs was actually the roots of a man that we've all known from then to now, a person with a most

focused intent on whatever it was that he wanted to accomplish. he dealt with the world as a wonderful and enjoyable plaything and tool that he could work with. and, of course, he had the mental capacity to organize, to keep things together, to organize people. and it was a talent that showed up then and was magnified as he continued with the development of the apple corporation. >> what do you think it was -- i've asked this question to a lot of people tonight. i'm always fascinated by what drives people. ronald, what do you think really drove steve jobs to continue to innovate and innovate and innovate? >> excitement with the ideas that kept coming to him with his view of the world and how he thought it fit together and what could fit into it. >> andy, you met him on and off

over the years, had some encounters, some run-ins, some good times. your thoughts tonight? >> you know, this is a guy -- i mean, it's hard to overstate his importance to business, but not only business, anderson, but also to culture and society, to our country. i mean, i don't think that's overstating. is he one of the five most important people in america, one of the top ten? he's up there, just how he transformed, how we communicate, how we use technology, how we watch movies, how we shop, how we look at products. you know, when you start to add all of that up, it's the legacy of a pretty incredible and pretty important guy. and i think about, you know, how he's changed technology and the technology business and when he came back to apple famously in 2000, this was a company that was at death's door and it was just a little irritant to the other big technology companies. then all of a sudden it starts to gain momentum with the introduction of the imacs, then

the ipad, iphone, ipod. and it starts to dominate and take the lead on hp and dell and sony, which used to dominate the consumer electronics business. remember the walkman. they totally got blown out of the water. they dominated that business. apple took over the whole thing. >> dan simon, you've been covering this for a long time. your thoughts tonight. >> well, actually, i had a chance to meet steve jobs last summer after he unveiled the macbook air, the new macbook air. i learned at the time he was no longer shaking hands because i extended my hand and he just said, nice to meet you. i learned it was because he was taking antirejection drugs because he had a liver transplant in 2009. i guess the thing that stands out for me is this constant wave of innovation. you know, the personal computer, the apple 2, the iphone, ipad, ipod. 30 years of success. but i'll also tell you that i don't recall steve jobs actually

doing an interview in the last five years. he rarely talked to reporters, at least on television. but the press just followed apple, continues to follow apple, unlike any other company we've ever seen. when he would hold these massive press conferences at the mosconi center in san francisco, it took on the vibe of a rock concert. people would stand in line overnight to get a good seat. think of another ceo like that. i don't think you can. >> andy, obviously in talking to you as well, but there's also going to be a book that walter isaacson has done with his cooperation, right? >> that's correct. it's coming out in november, and we are anxiously awaiting it because he cooperated with walter. he wanted this to be a part of his legacy. and, you know, he told walter that walter could, you know, spend an amount of time, certain amount of time with him, complete access. and walter told steve that he would tell his story, warts and all, so it's going to be very

interesting to see. and i know that steve really wanted to see this book and it's very, very sad that he won't be able to see the finished product. and dan's right. i mean, his relationship with the press, of course, had its ups and downs. he had all kinds of complicated relationships. he'd call people up on the phone and yell at them, myself included. but it was all about exercising power and trying to accomplish, you know, his vision. trying to make sure that he succeeded because he believed so much in his vision of the world of technology. >> ronald, did he -- from the earliest days, was he convinced that his vision was the right one? >> i don't think he ever doubted it. everything seemed so crystal clear to him. it's almost as if he was out of place and time and could stand above the world and see what had been, what is, and what's coming. it was really quite amazing. >> what was -- i mean, did you

know way back when you first met at atari, did you know what he was capable of? did you know that he would be such an excellent businessman in addition to an innovator? >> well, his sense of drive was obvious, and he was going to get to whenever he wanted to go. that was paramount in his nature and character. but that was coupled with a monumental intelligence and, as i say, a huge foresight. so when wozniak built the first personal computer circuit which for wozniak was a fun thing to do just for the sake of doing it, jobs saw it immediately as the core product of an enterprise. and every effort that he could possibly make to make that happen he did. then, of course, that was just the beginning because his ideas were unlimited. every time he came to the solution of a problem, it was

faced with another problem he had to find a solution to, he came up with a new design. as soon as he was finished he knew another would follow. >> ronald, how does somebody like he innovate? if he's not a programmer, i mean, does he say, oh, i want a tablet? i mean, how does the process actually work? >> i think he was principally a person of organization. he knew that there were certain skills that he didn't have. he got wozniak to put the circuits together for the original computer. he recognized the skills in people and how to bring people together and to guide them in working together to achieve a common goal. that was a monumental skill not given to very many people. it was given to him. >> ronald wayne, again my condolences on the loss of your old friend. i appreciate you being with us tonight. dan and sanjay, andy serwer, thanks. stick around, another look at steve jobs' impact not only as an innovator but as an inspiring speaker. we're going to hear some

poignant words from his speech at stanford university in which he talks about death. next. our 4 new rich & hearty soups really have people talking...

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our breaking news tonight, steve jobs dead at the age 56. he once recruited a top executive at apple by asking him, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want to change the world. whether it came to products or words, steve jobs had the touch.

that way with words held true through the years, including this moment speaking to graduates at his hometown university, stanford. >> my third story is about death. when i was 17, i read a quote that went something like, if you live each day as if it was your last, some day you'll most certainly be right. it made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, i have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, if today were the last day of my life, would i want to do what i am about to do today? and whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, i know i need to change something. remembering that i'll be dead soon is the most important tool i've ever encountered to had help me make good choices in life. because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly

important. remembering that you are going to die is the best way i know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. you are already naked. there is no reason not to follow your heart. about a year ago i was diagnosed with cancer. i had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. i didn't even know what a pancreas was. the doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable and that i should expect to live no longer than three to six months. my doctor advised me to go home and get me affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." it means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next ten years to tell them in just a few months. it means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. it means to say your good-byes. i live with that diagnosis all

day. later that evening i had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle in my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. i was sedated but my wife told me when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable by surgery. i had the surgery and thankfully i'm fine now. this was the closest i've been to facing death and i hope it's the closest i get for a few more decades. having lived through it, i can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful by purely intellectual concept -- no one wants to die. even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there.

and yet death is the destination we all share. no one has ever escaped it. and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. it's life's change agent. it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now the new is you, but some day not too long from now you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. your time is limited so don't waste it living someone else's life. don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. they somehow already know what you truly want to become.

everything else is secondary. >> steve jobs in 2005 speaking at stanford. not a university he graduated from. he didn't graduate from university. sanjay, it's so poignant to hear him obviously talk about death and hear back then when he thought he was fine. >> yeah. i listen to that, he had the operation, had the tumor removed. he talked about the doctors literally crying when they saw the types of cells because it was a variant, as he said, of pancreatic cancer. but even this variant, which is called a neurodermal tumor, it's still a very difficult tumor to treat. >> and the pancreas does what? because he in the speech admitted he didn't even know. and i have no idea. >> which is something for him, because he knows seemingly everything. but it makes a lot of enzymes, the enzymes that help digest your food and makes a lot of hormones including insulin. so people who are diabetics, for example, have problems with their pancreas not making enough insulin. it also in part can explain why someone is so wasted, loses so

much weight because of that hormonal imbalance when people have problems with the pancreas. there's no doubt the very aggressive forms of pancreatic cancer where the numbers are terrible. they say the one-year survival rate for the most aggressive forms, 20% at one year, just 4% at five years. that's what it sounds like he thought he had. again, he had a variant. but even with the variant the numbers, it's rare so the numbers are harder to come by, but 25% to 50% they say five-year survival. so eight years ago he was diagnosed, back in 2003. >> to think what he accomplished from the age of 21 to 56. 56 is what he was when he died. 30 more years, who knows what he would have accomplished. ali velshi joins us now as well. you're just joining us, it's hard to imagine what we have all lost because of his family's loss. >> yeah. you say it well, anderson because this isn't the normal thing that i talk about where a

ceo has passed on and what's the structure of the company going to look like. we know that apple will be fine "fortune" did a piece on tim cook some time ago to indicate he's a great strength in the company and the creative value of apple will continue. but there are very few companies in history that you can associate the name with everything that that company represents. and there are very few companies in the world where you can say -- envelope your life the way apple does. some of us don't have every product that apple makes -- i'm not one of them, i think i have every product -- but you have something. there was a time when people invented devices so you could carry your entire cd collection around on one device. others did it but apple is the one that made everyone want it. he had a way of taking things that didn't exist and there wasn't even a need to be met and creating a way not to do it but to do it elegantly and in a way that everybody wanted. >> elle elegantly. andy serwer, you were talking

about he dropped out of college and went back to a community college to take a calligraphy course. >> he studied in oregon. before that, the typing on a computer was just those block letters. he said to the programmers we're going to make fonts. and the programmers said, what's a font? now we all take that for granted. just another thing. i was struck watching that stanford video and you were asking earlier, anderson, who motivated him. well, we saw that in part death motivated him. as he got sicker and sicker and realized his time was getting less and less he worked more and more feverishly to create more and more. over the last couple of years he really became very cognizant about passing his legacy on in terms of the company and then working on a biography with walter isaacson that's coming out very, very soon, which will be interesting. >> it will be. we've got to take a quick break. our coverage continues. we'll be right back.

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twill be giving away passafree copieslk. of the alcoholism & addiction cure. to get yours, go to ssagesmalibubook.com. our other breaking news tonight -- sarah palin, perhaps the biggest brand name in republican politics is not -- i repeat not -- running for president. that bus tour this summer through battleground states like new hampshire, turns out she was maybe just there to get attention and raise money for sarah pac, her political action committee, sell books. more than $1.6 million in the first half of the year, according to her last federal filing. late today, the word came out first in a statement read on air by conservative radio host mark levin, then in a phone call from governor palin herself. >> i am thankful that i believe not being a candidate really you are unshackled and you are

allowed to be even more active. and i look forward to helping coordinate the strategies that will assist in replacing our president and retaking the senate, maintaining the house, helping good constitutional conservatives be elected to the governor seats around this nation. >> governor palin tonight. she's been keeping a low profile lately which fueled speculation that a decision was coming. she hinted at the outcome last week when she played up the hassles of running for president and seemed to downplay the office. >> is a title worth it? is a title and is a campaign too shackling? does that prohibit me from being out there out of a box, not allowing handlers to shape me and to force my message to be what donors or what contributors or what political pundits want it to be? >> pundits and titles aside, one factor in her decision may have been polling that showed the vast majority of americans don't believe she has the presidential right stuff. the question is, does she have

the personal qualities a president should have? a whopping 70% said the answer is no. let's start out with political reporter peter hamby. you've been talking to sources who know palin. any sense on how and when she actually came to this decision? >> yeah. a lot of calls into palin world were sent to voice mail tonight. i spoke to one person who spoke to the family who says the statement is what it is. she spent most of the summer in wasilla, aside from the trips as you said, the bus tour, p trips to iowa. she's been talking to her family in iowa, that's what it came down to, this is a life-altering decision. but i can tell you that going back through the summer they were looking at, can they raise the money to run for president? she never opened a presidential committee to raise the kind of money you need. can we put together an organization, a state like iowa, that would have been crucial for a palin candidacy depends heavily on a caucus organization. they were looking at staff. and as you pointed out, poll numbers, two-thirds of republicans just this week according to a "washington post"

poll said they didn't want her to run. were those considerations? probably. palin's never really cared about things like that. she's always gone her own way. but the official line out of palin world is at the end of the day it came down to whether or not she wanted to put her family through this process, anderson. >> peter, i want to bring if the rest of our political team we've gathered tonight, roland martin, former george w. bush spokesman ari fleisher, gloria borger ed rollinsed and dana bash. ari, you never thought she was going to run? >> i never did. i don't know anyone who really thought she would get in. now she's not, it's a good thing for the republican field. it removes what would have been an element of real chaos in the republican party and in this presidential race. but anderson i do want to say one thing. sarah palin was the one and a only reason john mccain ever surged to a lead over barack obama which he it did when he announced sarah palin. she wasn't able to sustain. i think she crumbled under the

media glare and scrutiny. she accomplished something tremendous in 2008 for a while. now she's unshackled and free. i think we're all better that way, frankly. >> ed, had she run and not done well, it would have been devastating for her status as a book seller, as a celebrity. this allows her to maintain that status. >> for a while. i mean, obviously she's still a big draw. she's our personality like a movie star. she can go raise a lot of money for candidates. no one is going to sit her down at the strategy table and say, gee, what should we do to go beat the president? the bottom line is she will draw crowds and for a period of time she'll -- you know, she didn't like handlers. the bottom line she got picked in 20 minutes, got thrown on an airplane with a full entourage ready to go. she never basically did well with that. so to get in and try to win multiple states is a very, very difficult task. >> gloria, does this have any real impact on the race right now? >> no. i think in the short term

everybody kind of discounted her and they assumed she wasn't running and they went on with their business. i think there are some republican candidates who would -- i think all of them, in fact, welcome her endorsement at some point, should she decide to give it. i can't imagine her doing it early on, but i can imagine her doing it some time late in the game for party unity. but we'll have to see. i think in the end she'll still be influential. she'll be influential in house and senate races and in getting out the vote for the republican party. >> roland, do you have any doubt that she's going to be out on the campaign trail for obviously the nominee but for others before that? >> of course. i mean, they're all going to be vying for her support, frankly more so than donald trump. look, anderson, i thought the day she decided she wasn't going to run for president was the day she resigned as governor of alaska.

you don't leave the governor's office, which is really your best shot to go into the presidency, by resigning and then saying, oh, i'm really unshackled. i get to travel the country. to me, i just thought that made no sense whatsoever. i get the deal, you want to do a book, a reality show, travel, make lots of money. but i thought, if you want to be a serious politician, you don't walk away in the middle of your first term when you're elected by the people. that was always going to hinder her so it's no shock she chose not to run. >> dana, are you disappointed? do you think it was the right call? >> well, i'm not disappointed. i think what it does is it sort of confirms and sets who the gop field is going to be going into the primary. i do think that sarah palin's ultimate power resides in her being a king maker. she had a pretty good record last election and i think that's going to be incredibly useful for republicans and it will do her well this next time around.

i think definitely the thing everyone is going to be watching and what is either going to hurt her credibility or help her credibility is who she does endorse now. and i think now that the mystery of whether or not she is going to be running for president, now that that mystery has been removed, i think that she's going to be making even smarter endorsement choices. i think it's probably going to be even more difficult to get a sarah palin endorsement. i think it was a good choice she made because i think ultimately her power is behind the scenes. >> ed, where do her supporters go? >> well, some will go to perry, maybe some will go to bachmann, some may go to cain and some may even go to santorum. those are the four who sort of draw from the same constituency group she does. there's one role she can play. she can go out and be the leader of the tea party. the tea party deliberately has not had a national leader. she's now free to basically take that role. they would certainly welcome her in many places and she can be a strong voice and can help motivate them to get out and do the things they did in 2010.

>> well, it's going to be interesting, though, to see just how she contributes to the debate. she says that she's unshackled. she's been critical of some of those republican presidential candidates already. by "unshackled," does that mean she can come out and criticize mitt romney who could wind up to be the nominee and therefore make the base less enthusiastic about him? does she come out and start saying nice things about rick perry, for example, who's challenging mitt romney? so she's got to decide exactly how involved in this primary process she's going to get. >> yeah. >> because she can still pull some strings. >> gloria, appreciate it. ed rollins, dana, peter, ari, thanks very much. the anti-wall street protest in downtown manhattan swelled to thousands today after local unions pledged their support to

the pledgie in fledging movemen. the protesters are rallying against income inequality and corporate greed. more fallout from fast and furious, that botched gun running operation we've been reporting on. the new boss at the bureau of alcohol firearms and explosives announced a major shake-up at the troubled agency, including 11 high-level staffing changes. an emotional day in the michael jackson death trial. jurors heard a four-minute recording of the singer made just weeks before he died, describing his lost childhood and the pain he was in. he sounded as if he was in a drug-induced stupor. it's being billed as the world's cheapest computer with students in mind. india's education ministry says it will begin producing an intimate-ready tablet that costs just $50. that's the latest. now back to anderson. thanks for being with us tonight. more at the top of the hour. rity and economic growth. north america actually has one of the largest oil reserves in the world.

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