crowley. this is "state of the union." today, wisconsin could be in play. florida is a gamble and the attacks are coming fast and furious. >> he put forward a plan that would let governor romney pay less than 1% in taxes each year. now, here is the kicker. he expects you to pick up the tab. >> his campaign strategy is to smash america apart and then try to cobble together 51% of the pieces. >> romney campaign senior adviser erik fern strom and stephanie cutter. >> you are entitled to your opinions rick santorum offers his insights on running against romney and what looks to be a brutal fall campaign. has the ryan pick altered the electoral map.

jack jack jackie and paul are here. medicare is suddenly a top campaign issue. >> is my mom, betty. >> refusing to yield any ground to democrats, he took his mom to work at the the nation's largest retirement community in florida. standing in front of a group of senior citizens, ryan insisted the gop plan is intended to save, not end medicare. >> we think the best way to save medicare is to empower 50 million seniors, not 15 unelected bureaucrats to make their decision on how they get their health care. mitt romney and i will protect and strengthen medicare so that the promises that were made, that people organized their retirements around, like my mom, will be promises that are kept. >> the president took his turn in another important

battleground state, new hampshire. >> since i have been in office frngs i ha, i have strengthened medicare. [ applause ] >> i have made reforms that have extended the life of the program that have saved millions of seniors with medicare hundreds of dollars on their prescription drugs. the only changes to your benefits that i've made on medicare is that medicare now covers new prep veventative sers like cancer screenings and wellness visits for free. joining me is eric fehrnstien. thanks for joining knee. >> thank you for having me. >> the press has accused mitt romney and paul ryan of seeking a system that would end medicare as we know it.

they would put in place a voucher system to buy into medicare or buy a comparable plan. how does that not end medicare as we know it? >> well, i think it is important to understand that one of the principles that they would put into effect, none of the changes would affect current beneficiaries. there is only one candidate that has made cuts to medicare that have affected current seniors. that's president obama. in order to pay for medicare, he raided the piggy bank and took $7 million out and shifted it to medicare. mitt romney will restore that money to medicare. as i said, one of the important principles he will follow in reforming that entitlement is making sure none of the changes

affect current seniors, 55 or above. >> it may not affect current seniors but we are talking about a dramatically different system in the future, isn't that right? >> well, not dramatically different. for future workers, those under 55, medicare will be there as an option, the existing program but we are going to introduce choice and competition through more private plans. what president obama did was take $700 billion out of our existing medicare program affecting current ben fish yaers, shifted that to obama care to pay for the new entight thement. we think that is wrong and will be restored under romney/ryan administration. >> aren't the same cuts in the ryan budget and hasn't governor romney said that his plan for medicare is virtually the same? what's the difference? >> well, i think if you have heard and been listening to representative ryan over the past few years or the past few

days, excuse me, he has said that he has signed up for the romney program, which is slightly different than what you saw paul ryan bring forward but, look, in terms of the operating principles, they are the same. no changes to medicare that will affect current seniors. of course, when we introduce more choice and more competition, we will preserve medicare as an option for those who want it. >> so as president, governor romney would take that $700 billion and put it back in medicare. that would be different from the ryan budget? >> well, look, it would go back into medicare. we think it was a mistake for president obama to cut medicare the way he did. i know you have stephanie cutter on the program after me. last week, she said it was an achievement of the president's to have made the cuts. we think it is a mistake. there are people out there right now many of whom are watching your program who are now shopping for new private health care, because their medicare

advantage program is being cut by this president. as i said, whatever changes get made to medicare under romney/ryan administration, will not affect current seniors. this president cannot say the same. he went in and raided medicare to pay for obama care. that was a mistake. by the way, this is the first election cycle i can remember where democrats are on the defensive because of medicare. the reason they are on the defensive is because of the mistake that they made to raid medicare to pay for a massive new entitlement called obama care. >> this is a concern for you campaign. you wouldn't have paul ryan with his mother down there in the villages if you didn't have some selling to do. you do have some selling to do down in florida. >> actually, it is not a concern. >> not a concern. >> if you look at the last few days of the campaign, you will see that paul ryan was down in florida, as you mentioned, with his mother, talking about the romney/ryan plan to strengthen and protect medicare.

mitt romney wrapped up a bus tour to five states where he was out talking about your o plans to strengthen the middle class and create more jobs in this country. then, you look at president obama and vice president biden, where were they? vice president biden was in virginia suggesting that if the republicans are elected, they are going to put everybody back in chains. president obama was on a radio program down in new mexico, not talking about jobs, not talking about the fiscal crisis in this country, not talking about the rapid increase in debt that has occurred under his administration. he was talking about his favorite chile peppers. we have serious challenges, a job crisis, a fiscal crisis. the romney/ryan ticket has plans that address both of the challenges. we have a sitting president that has no policy agenda. >> one of the reasons paul ryan wa wanted the $7 million was to help balance the budget.

earlier this year, you had trouble saying when a president romney would balance the budget. >> i don't know exactly when a balance is. we haven't run the numbers on that specific plan. the plans we offer in the house balance the budget. >> wolf, i am not sure of that myself. i am sure it is on our website. i should know it. i am embarrassed on your air i don't have that number. >> eric, what's the answer to that question, when does the budget get balanced under president romney? >> president romney has purposed a deficit reduction plan that will cut it by $500 million in 2016. it will take a while to achieve full fiscal balance. this president has doubled the national deficit. never before have we had a trillion dollar annual deficit. that's all we have had since he has been in office, four in a row. so it is going to take some while to balance that budget. the governor has said, he will cut $500 billion by the year

2016. i would ask you to go back and look at governor romney's. >> you are not committed to balancing it by the end ovt second term. governor romney says he hopes to have it balanced by the end of the second term. >> i think that's achievable objective. he has published a deficit reduction plan that will cut the deficit by $500 million by 2016. go back and look at governor romney's record in massachusetts. he came in in 2002. in massachusetts, the circumstances were not that much different than what this country is experiencing. the state was in recession. the budget was massively out of balance. we balanced that budget four years in a row without raiseings taxes. by the time the governor left, we were creating thousands of jobs every month, net new jobs on the order of 40,000. this was a huge achievement. that's the type of fiscal and economic management that mitt romney will bring to the white

house. >> mitt romney came out and volunteered earlier this week that he hadn't paid less than 13 fir % as an effective tax rate. why won't mitt romney prove it and put his tax returns out there? >> mitt romney has put out two years work of tax returns. he has put out his full 2010 return, hundreds of pages of tax return information, he will put out his 2011 once it is complete and filed. he has had financial disclosures going back to 2002 when he was governor of massachusetts. those too can be found on mitt romney's website. taxes are not an issue. it is not what the american people are talking about. just last month, we learned in july that 44 states saw their unemployment rates go up. what is obama's answers to that? higher taxes and more spending. if you are unemployed in america, you must feel like a drowning person who has just been thrown an anchor.

>> erik fehrnstrom, thanks for your time. we appreciate it. president obama's deputy campaign manager makes the case for four more years. to safely and responsibly providing generations of cleaner-burning energy for our country, drilling thousands of feet below fresh water sources within self-contained well systems. and, using state-of-the-art monitoring technologies, rigorous practices help ensure our operations are safe and clean for our communities and the environment. we're america's natural gas. mom: ready t♪ go to work? ♪ ♪ ♪ every mom needs a little helper. that's why i got a subaru.

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cutter, the deputy campaign manager for president obama. thanks for joining us this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> you heard some of eric fehrnstrom's comments. you are from massachusetts. you should know the boston globe ran an editorial that had the headline, biden should apologize for back in chains remark. i want to read an excerpt to you. team obama's manager said, the president would have no problem with that womt but imagine if e republican paul ryan uttered those comments like that. biden may not be the worst offender but is an offender none the less and should apologize. should we expect an apology from the president? >> no, no. let's look at what he said.

speaker boehner have been traveling this country and talking about the need to unshackle the financial industry. he was talking the metaphor a step further in talking about wanting to put other people in shackles. the word he used, chains is a distraction from the larger argument. i think the "boston globe" agrees with this. we shouldn't deregulate wall street or repeal wall street reform and have them play by a different set of rules than main street. that's the point the vice president was making and the point the president wholeheartedly agrees with. we can't go back to the days where taxpayers end up bailing out people because of their own reckless behavior. that's the point the vice president was making and the point we will continue making. if we want to talk about words on the campaign trail that are poor choices of words, let's talk about mitt romney's. he has been traveling for the last two years, basically calling the president unamerican. saying that he wanted -- the

president wanted to make this a less christian nation. those are poor choices of words. that's what we find completely offensive. this faux outrage by mitt romney complaining and whining about the tone of this race is completely hypocritical. his own opponents during the republican primary, santorum said -- rick santorum said the only way romney is winning is because he is bludgeoning his opponents. newt gingrich said he was trying to destroy him with lies. i appreciate the tone of this campaign needs to stick to the issues. we north going to be lectured by mitt romney on that. it is completely hypocritical. >> not to belabor this. was it at the very least a poor choice of words. >> i think it is a distraction. the word distracted from the larger point. the point is that wall street shouldn't be unshackled. they shouldn't be deregulated. i think wall street and main street need to play by the same

set of rules. the middle class can't carry the burden any longer. >> let's move on to this medicare discussion. i am sure you saw what paul ryan had to say down there in florida. i want to play a sound bite for you. it is very interesting he brought up this medicare advisory board. let's listen to what paul ryan had to say. >> he puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of medicare, who are required to cut medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors. >> so basically congressman ryan there is accusing the president of having a health care program that would ration health care for seniors. can you pledge right now that that is not a part of the president's health care law? >> well, by law, that board is not allowed to. i want to take a second and talk about medicare. i think the most disappointing

thing this week is that mitt romney picked paul ryan, because he was the intellectual leader of the republican party. because paul ryan decided to join mitt romney's ticket, he has completely reversed himself on some of the issues he has been very strong on, like the $716 billion in savings that are in two of his budgets. let's talk about the president's medicare plan versus mitt romney's medicare plan. president obama, through health care reform, strengthened medicare. how? he found savings by cutting subsidies to insurance companies, ensuring we were rooting out waste and fraud. he used that to put it back into medicare. this is not just from us. we extended the life of medicare by eight years and expanded benefits. 75% of today's seniors have taken advantage of preventive care, whether it is a mammogram or cancer screenings or wellness visits, because of the health care law without any out of pocket costs. seniors are saving $600 a year

on the prescription drugs, because the president is closing the doughnut hole. those are real and tangible benefits. they know that the $716 billion in savings has nothing to do with seniors benefits. all it did was expand senior benefits. if they want to put $716 billion back into the system, this is what it means. using taxpayer dollars to give subsidies and overpayments to insurance companies and allow for fraudsters to take advantage of the medicare system. is that what we want? the last point on this, if they put that savings back into the system, it means that medicare will go bankrupt in just four years. if mitt romney and paul ryan get elected to the white house, medicare will be bankrupt by the end of the first term. it is a complete distortion to say that the president is taking anything away from seniors. >> let's get to the tone. we are running out of time and we have other issues to talk

about. one is the tone of this campaign. i want to play for you some of what the president said in iowa earlier this week. he talked about when mitt romney as a young father strapped the family dog, shamus, to the roof of the family's car. he mentioned it at three different events in iowa earlier this week. let's play that for our viewers. >> governor romney even explained his energy policy this way. i'm quoting. you can't drive a car with a wind mill on it. that's what he said about wind power. maybe he has tried it. he has put other things on the roof. >> stephanie, is the president running a serious campaign when he talks about dogs being strapped to roofs? >> well, jim, that was a light hearted comment to play off of what mitt romney said. >> it wasn't so light-hearted. he brought it up three different times. it sounds as if this was a serious attempt to inject that into the president's remarks.

it sounds like he is making a mockery out of his opponent. is that what he is doing? >> i'm sure you saw the president's, the entirety of his remarks, where he talked about the importance of clean energy to the people of iowa, because it has created thousands of jobs on the ground there through the wind energy tax credit, wind energy has boomed in the state of iowa, because of the wind energy tax tax credit and the policies the president has put in place. mitt romn mitt romney wants to repeal that. he made that point. i'm sure you saw the president's remarks. he made that point and he made that point very forcefully. mitt romney if discrediting the wind energy tax credit and the importance of wind jen for an all above strategy to make this country energy independent, made fun of wind energy and said you can't put a wind mill on the top of your car. he was repeating that remark. he made a light-hearted comment

about mitt romney strapping his dog to the car many years ago. >> i have to say, as a young father, we all make our mistakes. let me ask you this. >> have you strapped your dog to your car, jim? >> i have not done that, no, i have not. >> so that's a mistake you haven't made. >> let's draw another contrast here. mitt romney had two news conferences. president obama had zero. as a matter of fact, the president hasn't had any news conferences for nearly two months. when should we expect one? the president was talking to reporters on the ground in iowa. is that less important than talking to somebody like you? >> everywhere the president goes, he is talking to the media. >> in addition to. >> i think it is important. he is traveling the country. we are running for re-election. iowa is a critical state. we are going to spend the time talking to media all over this country. >> and entertainment tonight and "people" magazine. he did that as well. are they more important than the national news media? >> i don't think they are more

important but equally important. that's where a lot of americans get their news. the president will continue do that. mitt romney might have had two media availabilities. what did he tell you? he wasn't going to release his taxes because he was afraid of getting attacked and spouted off lies about the president's medical system. do you find that useful if he is not being transparent about his own policies and distorting the president's? >> i am going to take a pass on answering your questions and say we are out of time. stephanie cutter in chicago. the attacks are getting stronger. it is only august. rick santorum spent the early part of the year under the gun. he will be here on his take on this harsh war of words. e dysfun that could be a question of blood flow.sfun cialis for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph,

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[ male announcer ] visit your local chevy dealer today. now get a 2013 malibu eco for around $219 per month. we say it every four years. the campaign rhetoric has reached a new low. this time around, the insults and out of con text attacks seem to have gotten nastier earlier. consider what vice president joe biden told a crowd of supporters when he used this choice of words to slam mitt romney's plan for wall street reform. >> he is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain wall street. they are going to put y'all back in chains. >> later that day at a campaign rally in ohio, romney fired back, condemning the obama

campaign's tactics with a razor sharp speech of his own. >> take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting america. obama campaign spokesman, ben la bolt offered no apologies. and said, governor romney's comments seemed unhinged at a time when he is putting millions of dollars in negative ads that are demonstrably false. >> the president's campaign is about division and attack and hatred. it is designed to bring a sense of enmity and jealousy and anger. >> three months to go until election day. up next, former presidential campaign, rick santorum, a man that was on the receiving end of some of those tough, mitt romney attacks.

joining me now is rick san forum, former republican presidential candidate and u.s. senator from pennsylvania. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. >> this week, mitt romney accused the president of waging a campaign of hatred. it has been nasty and tough. you know perhaps more than any other republican candidate, perhaps next to newt gingrich, how tough they can dish out over at the romney campaign. i want to play for you an ad that mitt romney ran about you in the primaries and get your perspective on everything you are seeing these days. let's roll the tape. rick santorum, another economic lightweight. is rick santorum ready to be president. he has never run the business or the state. a washington politician that proudly voted for the bridge to

nowhere. we fired him as senator. why promote him as president. i'm mitt romney and i approve this message. >> let me catch my bret for a minute. >> you are a top surrogate for the romney campaign. isn't it a bit much for governor romney to be complaining about negative attacks? >> i don't get the sense that governor romney is complaining about negative attacks. i think he will tell you as much as anybody else, you are in a political race. you are going to take your blows. you are going to go after each other. that's all fair game i think what he is talking about is the tone of the obama campaign, which is divisive. it is one thing to go out and attack governor romney's record. fair game. go for it. to go out and do what he is doing as far as dividing this country and he is and it is class warfare at its worse in this, and then you saw vice president biden play the race card in virginia. >> you think he was playing the race card? >> y'all. y'all is y'all.

when you are in a group -- i've been in groups like that. it is very easy when you are in a group of people that when you are in the south or when you are up in different areas of the country in different groups of people, you develop an affinity with the group you are speaking in front of. that's what vice president biden was doing. he was trying to develop that after finist. he did so in a horrendous way and should apologize for it. it is the tone of this campaign. governor romney is like any other candidate. you want to go after my record, things i have said and done, fine. that's not the complaint of the romt any campaign. the legitimate complaint ais that president obama is dividing this country to try to win this election. >> let me ask you about paul ryan. he was selected over you as mitt romney's running mate. you weren't surprised. you had some critical things to say about the ryan budget at one point in march of this year, you talked about the ryan budget and

said it is $5 trillion in cuts over ten years. it should be $5 trillion over five years. >> did they go far enough? >> the complaint i had was that paul ryan's budget was a good start but needed to go further. the complaint that barack obama is saying, it goes way too far. it doesn't go way too far. it is a reasonable plan. it is a plan that i believe is one that paul ryan designed to try to put a marker out there to try to bring bipartisanship. as you know, he did. he got ron white and his senator from oregon to join him in his medicare proposal. you have a proposal with paul ryan that is a bipartisan proposal. >> one democrat doesn't make it bipartisan. >> of course, it does. it does make it bipartisan. there are other democrats out there who are quietly saying, this probably isn't a bad idea. it is better than cutting $716 billion out of the medicare program. i just listened to the obama

spokesperson before this. my head was spinning. to suggest that adding $700 billion back to the medicare program is going to cause its financial collapse, you can only make that statement if you have been in washington way too long. the idea that president obama is strengthening medicare by ripping money out of it, by eliminating medicare advantage, by putting the patient advisory board that paul ryan talked about in a position to cut reimbursements to doctors and hospitals which will end up rationing care to seniors, that that is strengthening medicare, only in the fantasy world of washington does that make sense. >> you said that mitt romney would be worst person to go up against the president on the issue of health care reform in the campaign. the last couple of weeks, the romney campaign caused a built of a con tro verse circumstance one one of their spokespersons, andrea saul, had this to say about that pry sort usa's add,

the gentlemen whose wife died about that cancer. here is what she had to say. >> this was a plant that was closed years after governor romney left the company. to that point, if people had been in massachusetts under governor romney's health care plan, they would have had health care. there are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in president's economy. >> what did you think when you heard those comments? did that concern you at all? one of your big concerns was that mitt romney would sort of move to the middle on health care reform in time for the general election. was that a sign of that movement to the middle? >> that was in my opinion an unfortunate statement. i think it is pretty clear that the central issue in this campaign right now and i think will be going forward, because it is a big issue, is medicare. what i said about mitt romney had to do with obama care versus his health care plan in massachusetts. i have no concern about what mitt romney will do and his plans on the issue of medicare. i think his plans are

consistent. >> you are confident he will repeal the president's health care. >> who is the best to make the case. who is better on health care reform. he has been very clear that he will repeal obama care. the other thing he has been very clear about is that his plan for medicare is consistent with what paul ryan wants to do. what paul ryan wants to do, and people have to understand this, inspite of this incredible os fa kags i just witnessed, what he wants to do is take the medicare system, which is 25% of seniors last year were in medicare advantage, which is a private sector health system within medicare. all he wants to do is take that system and expand it so everybody has that opportunity. this is not a radical reform. this is exactly how the medicare prescription drug program is run. seniors like that program. this is common sense.

why? medicare prescription drugs save 40% of what was projected. we need to involve consumers in helping to reduce cost instead of patient advisory boards and the president mandating what the cost will be. >> senator santorum, a pleasure to watch you on the campaign trail. thanks for joining us the electoral map and the generational divide. we will be right back. [ male announcer ] its lightweight construction makes it nimble... ♪ its road gripping performance makes it a cadillac. introducing the all-new cadillac xts. available with advanced haldex all-wheel drive. [ engine revving ] it's bringing the future forward. it's bringing the future questions. when you're caring for a loved one with alzheimer's, not a day goes by that you don't have them. questions about treatment

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welcome back. republicans see a generational fix for medicare, whether older and younger voters buy it, may determine who wins in november. joining us, mark preston and jack jackie kucinich. one of the things that stands out for me is florida. i was down there and talked to marco rubio. he said, no, we are going to win florida, no doubt about it. i don't know if it is going to be that easy. quinnipiac university poll, barack obama beating mitt romney right now in florida. among senior voters, mitt romney is up by seven points among voters over 65. you take paul ryan's plan and

try to win in florida, it is not going to be easy. >> it is a tough sell. that's why we saw paul ryan flanked by his mother, a part-time florida resident and herself a medicare recipient. if mitt romney loses florida, he pretty much loses the election. cnn has eight toss-up states we are looking at. he would have to sweep seven of those states if he were to lose florida. that's why it has become so crucial. that's why we saw him down there this weekend. expect tens of millions of dollars in superpac ads to flood into the state in the coming months. >> i think it is important to say where he went too. the villages is a very republican community. it was a safe place to go to talk about this issue. it seems decidedly unsafe for republicans if you look at the ryan plan. he is not talking about the ryan plan. he is saying some of the things that are in the ryan plan are not what mitt romney would be for.

they are trying to walk the line here. they haven't quite decided what they would do. >> they are talking about the $700 billion he would take out of medicare to pay for the president's health care law. they do at least have some ammunition in this case. >> certainly, living in the now. if you go back to 2008, look at the exit polls, john mccain won voters, 65 and older. mitt romney needs to keep those voters. president barely won at the time when he was running. he barely won voters over 45 and he swept the young kids, right? right now, the romney campaign living in the now trying to get their base out. part of their base is going to be the older voters, especially in florida. >> they did well in the primary. romney did consistently well across the board with older voters. no matter what state you went to, that was a very reliable constituency. he has to keep them. >> we are going to pick this up after we take a quick break. we will be right back. stay with us.

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we are back with mark preston and jackie kucinich. >> it might be my imagination but it seems it has gotten

nastier earlier in this campaign cycle. let's put this on from dan balz. >> what is most striking about the campaign is not just negativity or the sheer volume of negative attack ads reigning down on voters in the swing states but it is the sense that all restraints are gone, the guardrails have disappeared and there is no incentive for anyone to hold back. the other guy does it, so we are going to do it too. it does sound a lot like this campaign. >> the primary was a good indicator of this. all the gloves were off throughout most of the primary. i think this is an extension of that. it is not going to get any better. >> you heard stephanie cutter during our interview saying that the president's reference to shamis, the dog was a light-hearted comment. >> i wrote about this, ou three words framed the campaign. shamis was one of the words and the fact that mitt romney

described the obama campaign as a campaign driven by anger and of course joe biden's comments. what we have seen happen in august is what we would norm le see in the last few weeks of the campaign. there is so much at stake and so much money on the line. >> especially from on-site groups. >> do we have any chance of seeing this get any better before the debates. one of the things that we ask stephanie cutter about is why the president has not held a news conference in so long. he will talk to "people" magazine and "entertainment tonight." that's where some people get their news from. she asked, do we think, the national news y national news media, think we are more important? is that the point? >> no, that is not the point at all. once you have a local news conference, you have spontaneity and the margin for error is larger.

there is no incentive to start being nice all of the sudden. >> jonathan martin had an interesting piece talking about how the vice president office was trying to influence pool reports. mark, we are getting close to the republican national convention down in tampa. we know you have been working hard making preparations for our coverage here at cnn and that you have also gotten some insights as to what we will be seeing this first couple of nights. >> they have done a really good job of having this slow rollout of who the speakers will be. chris christie did a big vint for "usa today." they have done a terrific job at at least keeping us suspense full. we are going to learn tom that they will now unveil the first night of the convention. they will give us the theme and tell us who the speakers are. what they are going to do is each day going forward will be that day next week. what i am told is that the person that will be the top headliner, no surprise, is ann

romney. >> you know why this is important, jim? it is important because this convention is really the only time for a campaign right now to focus on and be able to control the message. ann romney kicks it off monday night. that could change. we expect that to happen. >> jackie, you know from covering this campaign extensively that the romney campaign loves to put that family out there and have that norman rockwell, all the brothers and grandchildren out there. i think that's going to be a big part of the imagery we are going to see during this convention. >> absolutely. we both know, ann romney, people love her. she is a really good face for this campaign. a positive face. why wouldn't they put her out in a very prominent way. the family imagery is going to be very big. >> jackie kucinich, mark preston, thanks for joining us late night comedians are back and having fun with the candidates. thank goodness. that's next.

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before we leave, a look back on the week in politics. the campaign trail felt more like the low road.

the air waves offered no relief. all the more reason to look back at the week through the lens of comedy. mitt romney is hoping to energize republicans by announcing paul ryan as his running mate. >> bold! i mean, so daring. i mean, white christian and male. that's a triple not threatening to me. >> what, wait, that guy next to romney is not already a romney? you sure that's not like brick romney or chad or fudge romney? >> i don't really know him well, because i've never been to the gym. >> that's right, jokes from house minority leader, nancy pelosi. one late night comment, though, was not laughing. >> paul ryan, like mitt romney and like president obama and like joe biden, is a good family men. we have four good family men. what about me, i don't need family men. i have a monologue.

i need more herman janes and john edwards. i don't need family men. let's get herman crain and john edwards back in this race. >> or maybe donald trump. donald trump says he has a surprise for everyone at the republican national convention. a surprise he says people will love. apparently, he is not going. >> senator john mccain said it would be wise for president obama to drop joe biden from the ticket. wait, john mccain is giving advice about choosing a running mate. it is like donald trump giving advice about choosing a barber. speaking of the vice president. >> president obama said he is sticking with joe biden as his running mate, even though biden made a series of major gaff's this week. joe biden was, this is great. >> it was so hot today, joe biden was putting his foot in his mouth just to cool it off. >> president obama called mitt romney and asked him if he would

fire biden. true story. >> makes you wonder why anybody would ever run for president. >> it is the worst job in the world and you have to run. you have to beat yourself up before you get in to take over the worst job in the world. would you be surprised if nobody ran for president? no, i wouldn't be surprised. nope. sorry. i got a gig at dairy queen. that's where i'll be. i'm not running for nothing. >> after this week, we could all use a good laugh. thanks for watching "state of the union." i'm jim acosta in washington. special thanks to candy for letting me cover and congratulations for her to moderate the second presidential debate on october 13th. shi returns next week with a special edition from the republican national committee. i will be down there covering all the action on the floor. if you missed any part of today's