with eliot spitzer. up next. have an awesome weekend. ♪ >> good evening, i'm eliot spitzer, and this is vie point where we drill down on the top stories of the day in search of facts that inform. a disappointing jobs report and a mixed signal of where the economy may be heading. in the middle of an election year where employment remains the single most important issue. the department of labor reporting the u.s. added 120,000 jobs pushing the unemployment rate down to 8.3 to 8.2%. but after the the economy aided more

than 200,000 jobs, the i today's numbers are considered relatively weak. president obama spun the numbers as best he could at a white house conference on women and the economy. >> our economy has created more than 4 million private-sector jobs over the past two years. and more than 600,000 in the past three months alone, but it's clear to every american that there still be ups and downs along the way, and that we've got a lot more work to do. >> g.o.p. challenger mitt romney one of those at work today on the campaign trail. he called the jobs report weak and troubling, in a statement adding, and i quote, millions of americans are paying a high price for president obama's economic policies and more and more people are growing so discouraged that they are dropping out of the labor force all together. it is increasingly clear that the obama economy is not working. >> actually, it's not clear at all. more positive numbers released

this week show. first time unemployment claims at a four-year low. and planned layoffs for march at a ten-month low. joining me now to help make sense of the numbers jeff madrick, senior fellow at the roosevelt institute and author of "the age of greed." what explains missing that target? >> there's no doubt that it's disappointing. maybe we were on a roll than we seemed to be. what explains it is the ups and downs of the economy. we should be creating more jobs a month than we did in the previous three years. we've got a leverage problem in america. people can't spend when they borrowed all that money to buy houses and other things. >> let me decode that for folks. when you say we have a leverage

problem, consumer spending still 70% of our whole economy. consumers have too much debt and that debt is weighing them down. whether its housing debt or credit card debt so they're afraid of spending. >> exactly. that makes this recovery different than the entire post world war ii period. this is a tough one to get out of. on top of that, the stimulus which i think did work and create jobs is starting to run down. there is very little stimulus left. we're facing problems in europe. the worst economic managements of my lifetime and yours in europe. it could lead to a recession meaning they buy fewer of our goods. there are a bunch of troubles out there, including high gas prices. >> europe teetering on recession. their growth rate is negative, we sell stuff to them so we're not selling as much. that hurts our exports. >> and our income and job creation. >> you referred to something that is more fundamental. consumer debt.

what drove this, what is different now. going back to world world 2 where house prices are increasing, and people feel poorer. >> add to that enormous amounts of household debt and we've got a real problem pulling out of this recession. people have been talking about it a lock time long time. >> you said the numbers were ambiguous. 120,000 jobs were created. the unemployment rate went down, but we need 250,000 a no long firm to stay stable. >> that's just to stay even. just to create enough jobs to employee people coming into the workforce. we have to create 100 to 120,000 jobs. we have to create another 3 to 5 million jobs on top of that to get us back what we think of as

full employment, 5.5%. let me say one other thing eliot, the unemployment rate dropped faster than it should have according to all economic given the rate of economic growth we had. >> i want to drill down to those numbers a little bit, and i don't want this to be an econ 101 seminar, but something that mitt romney talked about, and i think he's saying something that is true. people are dropping out of the workforce. why is that happening, and what does that do to the unemployment rate. >> that has been happening for a long time. the proportion of americans who work is well down from 2007. they're giving up. they're not finding jobs. they're not finding good jobs. that's the single most important factor going on here. and the only way to get out of that is to get a strong economy back. >> i'm going to use a technical phrase. that's the labor force participation rate. that's the phrase, right? people should get used to

hearing that phrase because over 20-year time period looking backwards that number had been increasing, more people working which means more wage earners and more wealth to the middle class. if we dip, fewer people working and less income to the middle class. >> and less income to spend to keep the economy growing. we know that. the unemployment rate is really 15%. when you include the people who can only get part-time jobs or basically give up. that's really a high rate. >> to get wonky for one second, there is something called u-6. the other unemployment measure that is the 15%, that includes people who are only so-called marginallymarginally attached. >> that's the part-timeworkers or the discouraged workers. they want work and they can only work part time. that has increased enormously. 1 out of 6 can't get a job. >> you've painted a grim

picture. it's friday night. you're head of a project to redefine to resuscitate of what we believe that works. what would you do right now. >> it's a new initiative called, rediscovering government. we have to spend on infrastructure and we got to increase social programs. it's tough with republicans demanding the opposite. if the republicans-- >> wait, wait, wait. >> they would wreck this economy, i'm sorry to say. >> i'll get to that in a second. i agree with you, but you're saying the concern right now should not be the deficit. >> not at all. we don't have--it's just tragic. deficit fetishisms some economists call it. it is tragic that we think we have to take care of this now. the real problem as you've discussed, and we've all discussed is healthcare costs driving up medicare. we got to deal with the

healthcare. >> we'll deal with with conversation in the months and weeks ahead. the republicans who want to turn us into the europeans into recession. author of "the age of greed," many thanks. >> eliot, thank you. >> for more on this numbers on this election season i'm joined with brian from taking points memo. these jobs numbers are ambivalent. the person for whom they've been a live preserver is mitt romney. we've been talking about gender gaps. he can't relate to real people, the latino community, now he can talk with what he wants to talk about again, the economy. does he suddenly have a life raft to hang on to. >> that's right. when he's not trying to dodge all these other battles about women, contraception and whatnot, the obama recovery took

too long and was too tepid and that's obama's fault. that's hard to make resonate when you're economy is adding 250,000 jobs a month. but when you get a report like that, when it's less than half of that figure, that starts to sound like it making a bit more sense. >> if there is a fundamental divide in this the arc of this campaign, it's going to be whether or not the economy picks up quickly enough for concerns about the economy to drive voters or not. and for president obama with job numbers like today if the trend continues to be down below 400,000, suddenly he'll be playing defense and not offense. that's how i see this macro-level. tell me if i'm wrong about that. >> that's exactly right. there is a fine line when morning america and the light being too far at the end of the tunnel for voters to really change their perceptions about who they want to have running the country. and at 250 250,000 jobs a month with

the unemployment rate ticking down, many think their jobs are secure and now there are different options, the encome benefit seems like a better deal than changing over to the other guy. but when things are not that optimistic, voters make different choices. >> the real problem for mitt romney is he'll have to give us an agenda. it's one thing for him to be attacking the 13th century of rick santorum and newt gringrich, wherever his ideas come from, but it's an entirely different thing for him to come up with an affirmative agenda to compare to president obama's about bringing the economy back. what is his argument going to be, tax cuts and deregulating again? i don't see that resonating. >> you have a muddle from republicans. because on the one hand the parties governing agenda is this budget that the house past last

week, which has all these croft medicare reforms medicaid reforms, tax cuts for the wealthy that do have anything to do with improving the job situation in the country. with what they end up talking about is the fact that obama promised better employment numbers at the beginning of his presidency than he has been able to deliver and reverting to bush-era trickle-down policies will improve things. but president obama is a pretty good response to that, which he delivered in a speech earlier this week. and so at some point i think it will be crucial for mitt romney to say something a little bit different about why--what he plans to do as president that will be better for the economy. >> the president will respond to to, been there, done that, and it didn't turn out so well. and in the 2010, there was a

harder hold to dig out, but in 2010 the president was saying the same thing about the republican agenda and the republican party did quite well. it's not clear to me that the republicans won't repeat what we view is a broken tape and a tape that ends in tragedy and not comedy, but it seems to me that that's the president's response. having said that here is my question for you. what can the president offer in terms of new policy agenda. there's not going to be an any stimulus. the sorts of things that jeff madrick was just talking about i think it's absolutely credit, and congress just isn't going to do. where does the president go for support of his agenda. >> when you're talking about real sub substantive report, he has the fed or nothing. he'll get backup from the party in the senate. he did introduce this jobs bill that included infrastructure and

investment. it included a host of measures that the mainstream of economic thought is would it improve the economy. and they'll shadow box over that bill. they'll continue to hold test votes do you want to provide jobs and teachers and pay for it with a millionaire's increase on tax over income of over $1 million. then president obama can campaign on that. that's obviously less than ideal for him. he'd prefer for some policy direction to improve things for the comply. he's likely not going to get it. messages is better than nothing. >> what you said before is exactly right. he had the fed and nobody else. the problem with that, given it's exercise of monitory policy has used up all the tools it's got which is why this talk of easing three, they're jumping through hoops, gyrations of all sorts to drive interest rates

lower than what they are has pretty much run it's course and the fed is a different part of government. the president does not have running room with actual levers to push and pull if the jobs numbers don't get better. from his perspective, that's what worries him. >> as far as policy tools from the executive branch controlled on its own, he's basically out of luck. he has got to hope that this month's numbers were less statistical noise, or that his incumbency, and his talent as a politician, all the other factors that make re-election easier than defeating an incumbent push him through to november. but just in what he can do outside of the bully bull pit he's out-- >> if i hear you there is going to be a lot of screaming and shouting a shakespeare said

signifies absolutely nothing. brian, thank you for some of your time tonight. >> thank you so much. >> coming up, british television giants admit to hawking, but insisted it was just, quote editorially justified and in the public interest. oh, i guess that makes it okay. rupert gets to decide when he can break the law. sure, why not. let's give rupert that power too. coming up next on viewpoint. 10/9 central. only on showtime.

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ahead on viewpoint. i know this stuff and i love it and i try to bring that to the show. >> it keeps getting worse for rupert murdoch. sky news murdoch's sometimes

news channel admitted to e-mail hacking on two separate occasions. it's a criminal offense to hack into networks, and while it was illegal, he said, it was done in the public's interest. i quote, we stand by these actions as editorially justified and in the public interest. we do not take such decisions lightly or frequently. they will decide for us when they get to break the law. on tuesday murdoch's son and former heir james stepped down from b sky b. the younger murdoch is fighting the perception he gave dishonest testimony before parliament. they're expected to release a report detailing the hacking in the paper, news of the world. 40 of murdoch's journalists and executives have been arrested

from news of the world. let's bring in the man who owns the news, michael, nobody knows more about the media, journalism or rupert murdoch or you. does this go all the way to the top. >> of course it does. i mean, in every respect this is about one thing. it's about the murdoch family. it's about the ethos that they brought to this company. it's about how they carried out the ethos. it's about how the children relate to the father. it's about how the father relates to the children. it's their mess. >> this is a shakespeareen play on so many different levels. but it strikes me as someone who has been a prosecutor and in government, yes, we broke the law but we determined it was in the public interest, hence it's okay. you shouldn't prosecute us. is anyone going take that seriously?

>> no, i'll carve out a parentheses, we're journalists and we broke the law and the public benefits from this. put that aside. the focus is going to be on a pattern, a pattern, a pattern, a pattern. >> let me explain. when this began going on nine, ten months ago the first word oozing out because celebrities sensed their e-mails and phones had been hacked into and then where they hacked into the voice mail of the kidnapping of the kidnapping. >> they were saying that as early as 2005. >> every time they made such a defense, completely false. >> everything. that's finally why james murdoch is in the situation that he is in. it became the pattern there was everything they say was proved wrong again and again.

>> so their internal investigations, pure whitewashes, a joke a sham horrendous. the testimony before parliament, do you think james murdoch intentionally deceived parliament? >> i don't think he told the truth. >> i don't want to put words there, but it was stark. >> yes, i've written about this. i think james was trying to do something else and his mind was on something else. it is possible that he never quite focused on what was really wrong here but forget about it. he knew. he covered up, and yes, he lied. >> we now have this in the heart and the major piece of their journalistic empire, the newspapers, we have is did in their tv stations as of a few days ago. we have it in australia, was it in the united states? >> let me set the stage here. this is one of the most aggressive companies that has succeeded over the past several

generations. everything they do they do in the most aggressive way possible. they don't go out and say we're going to break the law. we're just going to do it harder, tougher than all of our competitors. if there is a situation in which they can get to the line, they will go to the line. have they done it here? have they hacked phones here? to be perfectly honest, i can't believe their british counterparts, news of the world they have a lot of reporters here, a lot of celebrity here's. i'm sure that something went on. >> you're referring to something that i think is important for folks to understand. not only are there celebrities on both sides of the atlantic but business executives go from one side of the world to the other for rupert. operating in different continents, hard to believe that they leave those practices behind when the technology is just as easy here. >> aggressive is incredible.

it's just about aggression. i will say, a carve out he has two news operations here put inside the world street journal which he acquired later. he has fox news, the new york post. fox news doesn't really do any reporting. they're out there getting stories. they sit here, and it just comes out of their mouths. a cheap way of running a news organization. >> right. >> likewise the new york post. it is a lean, small ultimately ineffectual organization that gained it's voice because they have a gossip page, which both you and i no something about. >> this is correct. let me ask you a slightly different question. you have this entire structure of news counselor under assault in england. what is happening here in the justice department in the united states. is there a basis for prosecution and if so, is it likely to

happen. >> that is the question that everybody is asking because ultimately what happens to this company, the fate of this company depends on what the justice department does. this is an american company. the bulk of its revenues come from its american operation. so that's what everyone wants to know. and no one knows. they do have, there is the federal corrupt practices act, which is basically says if you bribe a foreign government for business advantage, which clearly they have done in the u.k. and separate from the hacking, by the way. that's the police investigation. >> correct. >> they bribed tons of police officers. >> the bribes, which they have admitted. those bribes, as a lawyer, you know, practice--used to being involved with cases as a lawyer. i know a little bit about this. the fcpa would permit prosecution in my mind based on facts that are already out there

if justice department wanted to do it. >> i think they will more likely have the willpower after the election. >> are you suggesting that politics intercedes in-- >> oh my, oh my. >> michael wolff. author of "the man who owns the news, rupert murdoch."

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attack on women that perhaps the majority of the population woke up? >> idaho is not known as approaching act i.v. you had hundreds of women show up, thousands signed petitions. they made their voices heard. what happens is that now, the legislators are running scared. very similar laws have passed quietly in other states for the past 10 years, really in the past two years have intensified. pennsylvania a similar law was shelved, idaho this proved to be political poison. women are paying attention and having their voices heard. >> thanks for coming in. >> the aclu considers a demand

that to get a job you have to let an employer open your private mail, the senate wants to make it illegal to hand over a password to your facebook account. murdoch. >> still to come, my view on today's job report. but first let's see what we weren't able to take a look through the viewfinder. >> bill murray just introduced. i guess he's going to run the bases first. >> can you make bill o'reilly pay $4? >> are you a borat fan. >> do you like mitt romney? do you support his views? would you feel comfortable on a ticket with him?

>> well, i've never been out on a dinner date with him if that's what you're asking him. i don't know if i would like him. >> would you pay $4 for a shrimp if it were wrapped in a $10 bill netting you a profit of $6. >> i would steal the $4 shrimp and donate it to the occupy wall street. >> he told us in the book of john when he said, in this world you will have trouble an i heard an amen. [air bubbles] >> there will be a sacredness of easter. it's not a tim tebow show. >> would you buy $4 shrimp and save the planet? >> no. >> we don't elect a president any more. we elect a healthcare dictator. >> i hope they take callista seriously. >> he sold his soul to a hack

who will take anything for the job. >> police chief talked about a morning radio show. >> we apologize, we don't have that clip. >> o'reilly-- >> allows $4 shrimp not worth saving. >> saved! >> i've seen a lot of politicians these days, i'm voting for bill murray more president. coming up, the u.s. geological survey links frack to go a cringe of recent earthquakes. all this time we thought they were trying to extract natural gas when really they were trying to create more beach-front property coming up on viewpoint.

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>> a new report with not so new findings. a string of recent earthquakes to hydraulic fracturing or fracking. efforts in states sitting along the shale formation. in the process of extracting natural gas, hundreds of millions gallons of water and

sand and chemicals are pumped underneath ground at such high pressure that it releases the gas. quakes may be the reinjunction of waste water into drilling wells. they conclude, i quote, a naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock of which there were neither in this region. while the seismicity rate changes described here were almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they were extraction method methodologist or rate of production. joining me now joe romm, fellow at american progress and editor of the climate progress blog.

thanks for joining me. it is clear as you understand it, you're the expert in this, the fracking is causing the increase in earthquakes. >> i think the answer is that it's very likely that it is. what the u.s. geological survey found was this unprecedented increase in earthquakes just around areas where fracking was done. and by fracking, as you said, hydraulic fracturing injecting fluids with unknown chemicals deep underground. but the thing to remember is both ofmost of these earthquakes are thought to be caused by the reinjection, after the fluids come back up you have waste water with a lot of gunk in it. it can't be treated. so it's reinjected very deep underground. and that's what triggers the earthquakes. it's a staggering amount of water. that's what it is.

we're consumer billions of billions of gallons of water for this purpose, and it's having a geological impact. >> i want to ask a fact before this analysis, the increase of the number of earthquakes, if i understand and read this, a six times increase, a six-fold increase of the number of earthquakes in this region; is that correct. >> yes, they were looking at the mid cotton area of the united states. we're talking about areas from ohio, oklahoma, all the way out to the rocky mountains really, an unprecedented increase. these aren't the biggest earthquakes, but these are earthquakes larger than magnitude three. they're not tiny ones, either. >> on the six-times increase, this is not a 10% increase, a 600% increase suggests something fundamental has happened here and needs to be explained. >> yes, and this is a tipping point may have been crossed. this is very puzzling.

seismologists will say it's hard to trigger earthquakes, so they don't expect it. when you see a huge increase right around where there is this new type of oil and gas drilling it seems that we've crossed a threshold. my intuition is because we're using vast amounts of water. texas in the year 2010 used 13 billion gallons of water for fracking. so it is a staggering amount of water. in one texas county it's 40% of ground water withdrawals are for fracking. >> just to put this into context, when fracking wasnalled or considered nobody considered the magnitude of the water reinjected into the water into the wells, concluded this. >> no one suspected even ten years ago that we would getting such a large fraction of natural gas from fracking. but it's everywhere, as you

know, from new york state all the way over to the colorado rockies. it's a gold rush and it's exactly like the wild west in that there are very little regulations. it's all trussed up regulations with the industry which got away with very little regulations saying this is not going to amount to very much, so you don't want the hassle of regulating something so small. >> am i also correct the nature of the debate had been pretty much, look, we've seen the video of somebody's water coming out of the faucet catching on fire. it's isolated to one person's kitchen. now you're talking about the possibility of earthquakes sometimes the entire debate takes on a different order of magnitude. this report could be a seismic event in analyzing and thinking about fracking. >> i think so. it should be a wake-up call. it's not that these earthquakes are big enough, but it should be a signal that hey we are really

starting to do so much that we're effecting, you know, the geological system. we're affecting mother nature. this is the earthquake problem on top of the toxic chemicals the methane releases, the very real global warning concerns of leaking methane, natural gas is mostly met then. it's a potent heat-trapping gas and then all the staggering amounts of water that we're using. it's time to a step back and say we need to take an easier look as to whether we're causing more harm than good. >> what is the industry response to this. i've had the same conversations with those who see fracking as the panacea of bringing back the energy needs back in production. what would the response be to this particular issue much

earthquakes and the seismology of fracking. >> for a long time they would be saying, it couldn't be happening. now they would be saying it was small, and it was mostly caused by people who didn't know what they were doing. i guess my response would be, if you look at what the state of ohio did, when they came to the view that there was, you know, induced earthquakes caused by this they put rules in place. you have to plug up certain of yours wells, on and on. ideally if we were a rational world there would be federal regulations on how you go about doing this. but as you know, this is a tough world to push federal regulations in. >> indeed, those words on behalf of the american public to congress. thank you for your insights tonight. no doubt this conversation will continue.

>> thanks for having my. >> the unemployment rate falls but it's not good news. i'll give you my take coming up next. lucky for me your friends showed up with this awesome bone. hey! you guys are great. and if you got your home insurance where you got your cut rate car insurance, it might not replace all this. [ electricity crackling ] [ gasping ] so get allstate. you could save money and be better protected from mayhem like me. [ dennis ] dollar for dollar, nobody protects you from mayhem like allstate.

>> an audio surfaces that shows encouraging players to attack other teams injuries. next, the u.s. economy creates 120,000 jobs and the unemployment rates drops. i'll give you my view on the jobs report next. >>the rest of the media seems like, "ho-hum, no big deal." we've have no choice, we've lost our democracy here. just refreshing to hear. no other television show does that. we're keeping it real.

can't see you, so this is big for me. >>tv and radio talk show host stephanie miller rounds out current's new morning news block. >>it's completely inappropriate for television. >>sharp tongue, quick wit and about all, politically direct. >>politically direct to me means no bs, the real thing, cutting through the clutter. my show is the most important show in the world. >> coming up the saints defensive coordinator is caught on tape telling his team to target the other side's injuries. but first my view. we heard today that the economy was not growing as quickly as it should be. three numbers are going to determine the outcome of this november election we could talk about gender differences minorities votes, the three

numbers are unemployment rate, the price of housing and the price of gas. we should all know there is not really anything the president can do about the price of gas. that's a ten-year, 20-year set of policies. between now and november the president can do. the price of housing, i hate to admit it, but for the past three and a half years this administration has not had a houseing policy. it needed one but it didn't have one. we gave the banks all the money but didn't do anything for homeowners. when it comes to job, they've done what they could do. what has worked? what has worked has been a stimulus that the federal government and the president pushed through and quantitative easing, a bunch of hard words but something that the federal reserve put in place. those things brought us back from the deepest resuccess we've seen from 1929. we've seen the fruits of those policies over the past couple of years when jobs were created and have been created not at a sufficient pace but it's been

working. here's the funny thing. this patient is getting healthier. but the stimulus is running out and the fed is running out of political support. the republicans wants to take the patient off the medicine that's working. they keep saying austerity austerity. stop spending money. you know, what the republicans want to turn us into europe. europe went the route of austerity, and you know what is happening? they've fallen back into recession. i think it's i assume that problem stood up loud and clear and said you the republicans are going to kill this patient. you the republicans are going to turn us into europe. we don't want that. we want an economy that works. old fashion economics. stick with it. that's why we should be voting for this president. that's my view.

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>> 2 those years ago it was gladiators battling lions in the coliseum. today it's ultimate fighting the nhl and the nfl. we learned of the saints where players were rewarded for damaging the other team. today, audio captured by a filmmaker who released the tapes as a warning for parents whose children play football. williams is very specific in goal. players would be paid to inflict brutal injury to 49ers

including quarterback alex smith. >> remember me, i got the first one. i got the first one. so lay that [bleep] out. we're gonna dominate the line of scrimmage, and we're gonna kill the [bleep]. every single one of you before you get off the pile affect a hit. >> and williams headed what could be the an tradition for the nfl mindset. >> another thing we always say in this room is never apologize for the way we play. >> joining me now sports editor of the nation, and author of "the john carlos story," dave zyrin. >> thanks for having me here. >> have we made any progress? >> yeah, we're in tremendous

regress since then because the coliseum was what it was, and people knew what they were getting. the problem with the nfl is there is a huge gap between the image of this $9 billion in terms of revenue league and the reality of what happens inside a locker room, what happens underneath the pile, and what you see right now with this whole saints bounty gate is the tremendous tension that exists between an nfl that wants to present itself as america's game family-friendly sport, fun for the entire family, and the reality of what it takes to compel 20-something and 30- 30-something millionaires to do incredibly violent things. >> i don't disagree with you but the players know what they're getting into. these are guys who are paid extraordinarily well. they know what it takes knees and broken limbs, but the players know what they're getting into.

it's not that they're forced into this industry. >> one could make the case that in this country, with the professionalization of youth sports and the nfl largely draws its players from poor and working class strata, and it's a game that you can only play for three and a half players. the typical nfl player dice 20 years before the typical american male that's set up for people who are willing to engage in brutality because it's their own way out of a specific situation. in that regard we haven't progressed that far. joe dimaggio said 70 years ago if you want to find someone who becomes a world series champion, you better find someone who grows up with hunger in their belly. in that with regard we haven't come very far. i'm very concerned with the terms of the debate about violence in the nfl. it's almost like a debate between scarlett o'hara and tony soprano. on one side-- >> explain that for me. i have a hard time seeing that

debate. >> i think it would get great ratings. on one side you have scarlett o'hara clutching the pearls saying, i'm shocked to find out there is profanity in the locker room and violence in this great game, and then the tony soprano side, their reaction is very much like, hey, it's a violent game. we do what we do. this is a life that we have chosen. >> i've read your articles, and saying, this faux surprise, let's get rid of this. everyone close to the sport appreciation it. let's get rid of this management, put that aside. the deeper question is what do you do about it? do you go to the sport and say we're not going to tolerate it and would the sport survive if you cleaned it up the way i gather you would want them to. >> well, it's interesting if the sport wanted to clean it up, they would be looking at

investigating at every team in the league, not just the new orleans saints. if they did that this would truly be the story that never went away. the nfl would be dealing with this at the next several years at tremendous cost to its brand and earning potential. i argued that this is really about the nfl making an argument to the judiciary of the country. they're facing a class action lawsuit that involve more than a thousand former players who said that the nfl consciously put them in situations where they would be at risk for chronic head injuries. they're saying, we're taking care of this now. look at what we're doing to the new orleans saints rather than dealing with the players in an honest and open fashion. this is a sport with 100% injury rate. consumers and parents have the right to know that instead of affliction being projected that said we can regulate violence in this league. >> boxing has gone to something

of a similar transformation. we see boxers who in middle age have dementia, they've had serious brain injuries. do you think it's because the public saw what the actual impact of what boxing was, that boxing lost it's popularity, then when you move to headgear it's not the same sport. and it disappears to the fringes of sport. >> that's interesting. i've spoken to people high in the nfl. they have told me that this is the great existential fear. what had a turned it into a regional sport really is because of generations of parents seeing footage of oh muhammad ali. and there used to be a dozen boxing jims-- >> dave, time runs really short but quickly, ultimate fighting is growing.

ultimate fighting is perhaps as close as you can get to the roman coliseum today. the brutality. people bleeding profusely putting guys in a cage, saying go at it. is that legal or should we ban the sport. >> i don't think it should be banned. people do go in with a sense of free will. we're going back to a time like the late 19th century where we have high sports and low sports. the nfl wants to avoid becoming a low sport because it means loss of passion and loss of a lot of money. >> dave, thank you for your time tonight. in question this is going to be an issue that continues to be you have tough for the nfl to deal with. that's viewpoint for tonight. stay right here for "the war room" with jennifer granholm. thank you for spending time with me.