have a great sunday, everybody. \s on the buzz beater, the republican party declares war on nbc after the awful debate on cnbc, with the moderators sometimes sounding snarky, conned se condesce condescending. >> they said you have as much cutting taxes without increasing the deficit as you would away of flying frrp from that podium. when you look at the average of national polls right now is donald trump. when you look at him, do you see someone with the moral authority to unite a economy. >> that's such a nasty question, but thank you, governor. >> even in new jersey what you're doing is called rude. >> the questions that have been

asked so far in this debate illustrate why the american people don't truth the media. >> the democrats have the ultimate super-pac, called the mainstream media. why is the business network being so widely panned. will the rnc dump the upcoming debate. and launching a deathwatch for jeb bush. and why is donald trump after losing his lead in some polls calling the media scum? and we unveil our new microscope using cutting hef edge technology to how the candidates are being covered in print and online. which stores are getting traction. plus bob woodward on hillary's e-mail mess, and the challenge of cover trump. >> if i were doing trump, i would do 50,000 words, and do each deal, and look at, you know, how did he get his money. you know, this is a guy who's been in the news for decades.

and why he's once again investigating richard nixon and watergate. i'm howard kurtz, this is "mediabuzz." republican national committee is going ballistic over that cnbc clash in colorado, which was panned by critics of all stripes and didn't play well with the republican audience. >> does that the not sped to your vetting process or judgment in any way? >> no, it speaks to the fact that i don't -- [ audience booing ] >> the tone of the questions, why washington bureau chief john harwood, carl kin nilla and becky quick prompted -- >> ben carson, can you do math? john kasich, will you insult two people over here?

marco rubio, why don't you resign? jeb bush, why have your numbers fallen? how about talking about it is substantive issue that is people care about? >> so what did you think of the questions and questioners tonight? >> well, i think think obviously had an agenda. >> not only with the questions snarky, divisive and nonsubstantive, they were just biased. >> joining us -- mercedes shall lau schlaff, and andrew mccarron, a reporter for wusa-tv. and joan trippi, democratic strategist and fox news contributors. >> i've made my view clear thatted mod r5i9ors seemed to reek of disdain at times, but in your view, were they politically

biased? >> absolutely. they asked questions like would you support the budget deal in washington? or, for example, that exchange between carl quint nilla and ted cruz, i wouldn't have a beer with you? this tone, and quite frankly they didn't cover enough pont topics like health care. this is a business channel, we want to see what's -- they missed the ball with that. >> that's strong criticism. it is instead a business channel, usually covering the world of wall street and stocks and bonds. were they ready for primetime? >> i thofs it a the irony is cnbc has some of the finest business journalists in the world, but i think the questions were absurd and offensive, and the respect for the moderators

basically slim to none. i think in the end the greatest lot was for the american electorate who didn't learn anything about the candidates' policies or ideas. >> fox took some heat after its debate. i would argue those sequels were more on substance than many of the cnbc questions, but were they justified in complaining what trump called nasty questions, and then pivoting to rip the mainstream media? >> absolutely. i mean, absolutely. i don't even understand some of the criticism. it was so clearly biased, it was like fat pitch just sort of lobbed up there for each candidate to knock out of the park, and look, the gop field won, cnbc lost, i think part of that was disappointment that people were looking forward to an economic debate led by a network that has some standing in that, to ask the right

questions. they didn't instead sort of flail away. >> if you look at the jv debate, they actually asked substantive questions compared to what we saw in the primetime debate. it went from talking about the economy s. we talked more about jindal and santorum's policies than we did with the primetime candidates. >> i fell like the few times it was legitimate -- it was easy to make the villain at that point. like ted cruz, basically he went on a diatribe. >> he had the line of the night. what i've been saying is the moderators had a worse night than the mets. john harwood was interviewed. let's take a look. >> the energy and anger within the republican party that we saw expressed at's, the moderators, is much akin to what was going on in the house. >> so andrea, reince priebus,

the head of the rnc writing a her saying we are suspending our partnership with nbc, which of course is part of the same company, but not involved in the debate, the debate scheduled for february over what cnbc did, he called it a betrayal, mean-spirited and petty questions. what do you make of this? >> i think he had no choice, but like you, i believe that will happen. if you read his letter, i didn't realize until i read it was for part of the agreement was the candidates' questions to be about the finance matters. it was about their weaknesses, which i thought john kasich -- >> so lame. >> but very lame, but he set the tone of this entire debate by absolutely bypassing the question, so that fed into the lack of respect for the moderators, justified, i have to say. >> i think it is about the republican national committee and priebus himself being under criticism, basically getting nbc

to grovel, and then make up. in the brief note from nbc, what else was mentioned? >> i think one things analysis nbc was partnering with telemundo. i it tell you working with the folks at telemundo, we have jose diaz-balart, it is a missed opportunity. >> but don't you think it's highly symbolic. >> incredibly. >> i think it's absolutely insane to even think about skipping an nbc debate. for a whole bunch of reasons. first of all, let's say they did the same thing again. again, gop feel is going to win that debate. it's going to be so obvious how the questions are loaded, they'll knock it out of the park, and they are talking to a gop audience that will decide -- make the decision, so that will help them. second of all, i think, you know, what they missed was, no, we took the biased stuff that we

think is bias, we're going to do it again, we're going to let nbc prove to the world what they are, and by the way, challenge the democratic party. why won't you go on fox? why not have fox have a debate? it's a democrat, why not? so you sort of push -- you kind of push it -- >> so our viewers no, fox news asked to host one of the democratic debates and was turned down by the dnc. >> i think that's a mistake. >> after what i call the cnbc train wreck, i said this hurt everyone in the media, people say journalists are biased, and then you have ben carson saying maybe the debates shouldn't be on the television, but on the internet, and then ted cruz saying, well we should have republicans doble t republicans doing the is it questions? >> let's go. a lot of these gop caucus voters

listen to radio, this is where they get their news. why not? >> how about having journalists who try to be fair? >> why not down a town hall where the american people can do the questions? >> you need a mix of both. let's drill down a bit and look down as some of the questions, and we'll start with john heartward, if chief washington correspondent, he was mixing it up with marco rubio or over the senator as tax plan. this is what happened. >> just to be clear. >> you have to go back and correct the story. >> no, i did not. >> oh, you did. >> so harwood says, no, i didn't correct, but in fact there was a tweet earlier, in a different context, a different question, cited the criticism by the right-leaning tax foundation, rubio said it is a correction, but on television he said, no, no, i never corrected. >> it was if shocking to watch

him take that position, but he never said anything at the debate, which again mace harwood look very weak and gave rubio the upper hand. >> which he's not. he is a solid journalist. that's what -- the whole night was baffling that some of these question. >> i think unfortunately he gave them some ammunition. let's go to becky quick. she was talking to donald trump, and she was bringing up a statement where she said that trump in the past had criticized mark zuckerberg, the facebook mogul, on immigration. let's look at what happened. >> mr. touch you've been very critical of mark zuckerberg, who wanted -- >> i was not at all critical of him. >> where did i come up with this? >> probably, i don't know, you people where this stuff. >> my apologies, i'm sorry --

>> that was just a heart-stopping head-slapping moment for me as a journalist. look, it's not easy to moderate a president atdebate, but becky quick, who is a solid journalist in german, not a great moderator should have had that attribution right in front of her. she had about six questions, she should know every possible question. >> you never know a, and you said something, and here it is, and it turns out it was on trump's web page, and 20 minutes later, cnbc corrected it, so he policy gilesed, and she was right. >> she was correct. that was the irony of all of that. >> but there wasn't the prep. you didn't have the backup there. that's about preparing for the debate. it's not about the actual -- which makes it go haywire if you don't have that backup sitting there like you said. >> look at that lack of preparation compared to anderson cooper's performance, he listened intently to the answers, and clearly he was

superbly prepared. >> you know the moderators are in trouble when you become the story. so there you go. >> that sums it up. also the way the debate ended with donald trump taking credit for forcing cnbc to have only a two-hour debate, sxaending to three, and there were days of stories about how the campaign with you pushing back by the way, "new york times" asked its read es to post online the most ridiculous comments, got 600 responses. what happened? only for the republican debate, and i think that's the kind of thing that just makes people skeptical of the msm. ahead we'll go to our media microscope. our new technology that zeros in on what's moves, move this prompter, moving the needle. when we come back, bob woodward weighs in on donald trump, hillary clinton and how today's

journalists are covering the campaign.

bob woodward will also be renown for his role for blowing watergate open, but can those reporting methods also be applied to the 2016 campaign? i sat down with the author of the new book "the last of the president's men" here in studio 1. welcome. >> thank you. >> in the coverage of this campaign, do you feel more than any other that maybe substance and policy is taking a backseat to personality, polls and insults? >> yes, certainly. the question is who are these people? and how might they do things? in journalism or main job is to figure out what happened and

then why? and we need to drive into the question harder, who are these people? why are they running? what is their value system? i think it will be done, but it's going to take a lot of patience, and as you appointed out each week in the culture of the internet driven at an impatient speed, 144 characters, that depth doesn't get you there. >> on that point you were on a rally, you said we were going to find out my newspaper, your network all the news organizations will do a 20,000-word biography of every stage of her life. i must confess as it struck me as an old-fashioned observation, but what seems to drive the news cycle, the quick hits, the 50 tweets, the viral video. >> yes, but if you find something that is new and explains who these people are, that will drive the news cycle.

people will read it, or maybe they won't read all 30,000 words as frequently happens, but they will get the essence, because it will become part of the discussion. >> but does the culture reward that type of deep digging, which you know as anybody takes time, there are dry hauls, you have to cross check things, maybe have it checked by a lawyer. does the culture of journalism still reward that? >> yes, it does. what's important is the readers and viewers reward it. i mean at heart people want to look at the president as somebody who is very serious and what are the ideas driving them? and all of these questions that you can only answer with an in-depth excavation and biographical study. >> how would you cover donald trump, who not only seems to be attacks in the media, but

that criticism from the media in many ways seems to make him stronger? >> but if i were doing trump, i would do 50,000 words. do each deal and look at, you know, how did he get his money? this is a guy who's been in the news for decades. >> decades. >> and has a long history, as vladimir putin said, not a stage of our life passes without a trace, right? >> right. and trump is running on his business success. that's part of what he is selling to the company. >> sure. so there's a lot of work to be done. in fact with all of these candidates, in the end, if we talk about this after the election, i think we're going to say that we went back to the character studies, because -- you're not electing somebody -- a sound bite. you're electing somebody who's a person and we want to know that.

so i'm sold on the idea particularly after doing -- revisiting the nixon book. >> you have compared hillary's e-mail mess to rich v nixon's secret white house tapes, but later we now know as part of history, he talked about coverups and burglaries, and wiretapping. are you assuming there's something nefarious in hillries -- >> no, i'm not assuming anything, but the volume. give me 60,000 of your e-mails, and i will learn a lot about you. everyone always says something in an e-mail that perhaps they wish they didn't say. so, you know, we're going to see, but again it's the in-depth work, and in this case we have the fbi doing it for us. more with woodward later in the program. also ahead, is the press burying jeb prematurely and prodding him to drop out. what if you could measure every report, our brad-new media

microscope, in a moment.

we're unveiling an exclusive new feature on campaign coverage we're calling our media microscope. we're working with a new analytics company that examines, and how much pressure the candidates are drawing, positive or any, which issues are driving the campaign or fading from the radar, using a model the company calls the edge with technology that simply didn't exist a few years ago. let's look at who got the most attention before the cnbc debate on monday and turs. trump dominated, 55% of all coverage, wow, that's nearly 50,000 mentions in just two days. carson getting 22%, and down are down to 16% for jeb bush, under

7% for marco rubio. this was mostly negative. we've taken out the small proportion of neutral reports. the company foubd two thirds negative for trump, for bush, for rubio, and carson faring the worst of all, 79% negative. check out this sudden shift after the debate on thursday and friday. carson and trump still leading, but about 30% each, a significant drop for the donald and a sizable jump for carson, but rube i don't almost tripling, and bush up 19% after these went toe to toe. a dust-up that nearly everyone says rubio won, but when you look at the sentiment, negative still rules. all four candidates over 70% negative, carson still the highest at 78% negative. just a lot of negativity out there when you include so many

online sources. that cnbc debate really moved the needle especially no marco rubio. and. coming up, are the pundits hailing marco rubio and almost writing off jeb bush? what about donald trump complaining about the polls? and later, bob woodward diving back into watergate.

. the media consensus is -- >> let's talk about jeb and the deathwatch right now. it's not looking good. the donors are running for the exits now. >> if they're, kind of lack of a better term, a deathwatch. >> last night in boulder, in

that room it felt like a wake. >> there are those who says that decision is terminal for this campaign. >> i knew it was going to be a long journey, but to suggest it's terminal? c'mon, that's pretty funny. >> there is headlines -- >> it's not on life support. we have the greatest money and organization. we're doing fine. >> mercedes schlapp, andrea mccarron, and joe trippi are with us. should media be saying that? >> i think it's terribly unfair and highly editorial. there are nine candidates with poll numbers lower than jeb bush. the voters have a long time to make their decisions. no voters has cast his our her ballot. it did not help jeb bush at all, probably one of the most animated moments i've witnessed is his talking about fantasy football. but still -- >> a question from the cnbc

moderator, which he was bragging about his team, and chris christie saying why are we talking about fantasy football. >> let ate stipulate that jeb had a pretty lousy debate when he needed to have a good one, he's been struggling, no debate about that, but with the media constantly saying are you on life support, doesn't that -- >> the media already wrote the obituary. and we didn't see that with governor walker, though his numbers were low, we were caught a bit off-guard when he decided to drop out. so clearly there's been a stings in the way they've been covering jeb. >> on "meet the press" he said one of the challenges was breaking through the punditry class, but "new york times" editorial demanding that chris christie drop out and go back to being just governor of new jersey. who exactly -- should get off

the nat stage? >> it's crazy, so far this year, anytime the media has ganged up and said something was going to happen, take the other side of the bet. if everyone is saying bush is dead, i'm going the other way. i don't think he's dead at all. >> as a former campaign manager, you know it's not helpful. >> no, it's not, but it's not reality. there are plenty of episodes in the past and even this cycle that have proven that it's not reality. everything from hillary clinton was finished and collapsing, but it was way overdone. so the media gets on these bandwagons and just overdoes it. it does hurt a campaign, but it's also, does he come back from that? does he fight back? >> right. >> that's 134g he can do, and in that sense media may actually help him come back into this. >> he's even been couraging people to write his comeback

narrative. >> how many times has the media says donald trump is done. >> or that he's not a real candidate. i want to ask andrea about marco rubio. rubio and his campaign pointed out that the sunset, while urge -- by the voice, that was the basis for the jeb bush attack. didn't do that when florida senator bob graham ran for president in 2003, the paper did not, or when endorsed obama in '08, 25% missed votes. does rubio have a point? >> i think he has a valid point, and i think he deflected that question very very well, but that also -- that whole idea gave the media haters a whole lot of ammunition, because it did come across as clearly biased. let's talk about trump,

since you mentioned him. he is still making plenty of news. we have some video clips to show you. the first begins with journalists are now rated lower than, say, congress. take a look. >> they are horrible people. will you get your numbers up, please? what the hell are you people doing to me? i'm presbyterian. that's down the middle of the road, folks. seventh day adventist, i just don't know about. >> i don't consider you a horrible person or anybody at this table. >> we don't either, howard. >> thank you very much. >> was it odd that he brought up ben carson's religion? >> he did put it out there, which was a little strange, but again it's a donald trump

tactic, to say, look i'm kind of middle of the road, but you look at what ben carson's religion is. whether it was fair game or not is a different story. >> but i would say it worked. >> that's exactly it. >> i've seen several torrie of, what is seventh day adventist? >> there is so many stories about romney be a mormon. >> a proud mormon. >> so it was like, let's look into this. >> i didn't feel like it was his place to discuss ben carson's religious preference, though? >> what about saying he's -- >> this is what he's going to do it and it works. he 's much smart -- he knows what he's doing. >> he knows exactly what he's doing. >> when some of the pollsters don't like me or unscientific, because suddenly the numbers are -- they're very good, but not as good as they were. >> he definitely knows what he's doing, and, you know, it's that

strength of the challenge that makes it come through. people like that. >> andrea, trump said to me in an interview, certainly outlets, politico, they're scum, but now we're all scum. does that help him in a year when the presses not too popular? >> absolutely. we may be scum, howie, but we should be grateful we have a free press. >> that's a great note to end on. >> the fact that it's the us versus the media, because so for long we've been demonized by the mainstream media. >> thank you very much for joining us for these segments. this sunday ahead on "mediabuzz," how the press made chris christie sound like an out-of-control loud mouth. but first bob worldwood tracks down the man who blew the whistle on nixon's secret taping system and found even more dece

it was a grin moment when a senate committee questioned an obscure presidential aide named alexander butterfield. >> are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president. >> i was aware of listening

devices, yes, sir. >> butterfield is the central player in bob woodward's new books "the last of the president's men." here is more of our interview. >> in your book on alex butterfield and the secret tapes, it reminded me of a time when the country was absolutely consumed by the scandal, and president nixon went before the cabinet and said let other wallow in watergate, we're going to do the work of the country. over 40 years later, did you feel like you were is wallows in watergate? >> no, the opposite. in butterfield's files, 40 boxes, lots of original documents, some of it quite frankly shocked me, because the management of the vietnam war was done in a way to win reelection, not win the war. >> you were shocked by the memo in which -- this was at the time that president nixon said the bombing of vitt snap was highly

effective. in the memo you uncovered, it said it had done zilch. if it came out at the time, would it have been a bombshell? >> it certainly would have caused us to examine what's going on in the vietnam war. we now know from all of the bombing studies done and so forth that nixon had it right. it accomplished zilch. it was a failure in so many ways, but again, it's -- he said this on a top secret memo to henry kissinger. publicly and always he was saying for years, oh, the bombing is militarily necessary. >> when the staff of the watergate committee found out that alex butterfield knew of a secret taping system, which ultimately would bring nixon down. i think later your co-author scott armstrong, you told the late ben bradley about the

story. hi reaction was? >> i called him on a saturday night, because i was -- you know, everything was taped, this was all done secretly, it might resolve the conflict with nixon's denials and the assertions of others, tickly counsel john dean, so i broke bradley up at 9:00 and said -- he taped everything, nixon taped secretly. what do you think? and ben said, well, i wouldn't bust one on it to get a story in the paper. what do you think? how would you evaluate it? i asked him. he said, b-plus. i took sunday off the next day feeling i had broken the chain of command again and got right to brandly, because it was so, you know, tapes? is this is it possible? when butterfield testified on the monday, you know, it shook the world. it was one of these things.

to bradley's credit, he came by, knocked on my desk and said, okay, it's better than a b-plus. >> okay. what jumped out at me in this book, was the portrayal of nixon the person, as told through the eyes of alex butterfield who sat outside his office for nearly four years, even how awkward their first meeting was, because butterfield was brought in by halderman, the chief of staff. this was a politician who rose to the top of his profession, but seemed uncomfortable around people? >> a lonely man. he preferred to be alone. butter feel tells how nixon would work in the oval office, instead of goods to the residence, would go back to his office in the executive office building, put his feet up on -- and keep his jacket on and have a drink and have thinks man servant ma nola make dinner for him alone and sit there with his

legal tablet, but the story that butterfield has provided in this book is one about nixon's obsessions and his deceptions, and there are more and more of them, particularly on vietnam. i served in the navy. >> i know you did. >> and for people who serve, for people who care about the military, which i think are most people in this country, i think particularly a lot of conservatives who really believe what the military stands for and does, is a pillar of strength in this country, this is a level of deception and lying and mismanagement of that war. >> you are finally on twitter in 2015, but you don't tweet that much. are you a reluctant convert? >> no, i'm trying to get my feet into it.

i want to be careful. so, you know, at age 72 i'm trying to learn. >> many books, but 144-character thing is a totally different world. thanks for joining us. >> thanks. one journalist trying to pin down donald trump, and another says hillary clinton is making a trumped up charge of sexism. our video verdict is straight ahead. ooñóokñ.??????ó

time for our "video verdict." when donald trump called into morning joe, he tried to pin him down on the billionaire's favorite subject, the all-important question of polls. >> when you're ahead in the polls, you act like they're

scientific gospel. when you're behind, you'll oftentimes challenge the pollster, the legitimacy of the polls. >> i generally believe in polls. the problem with these polls is they're different, coming from all over the lot, because somebody else is up here, or you see swings of 10 and 12 points. immediately the same day. so right now it's not very scientific. >> it's not scientific when donald trump is not winning. i think he has this incredible fascination with the polls not seen with any of these other candidates. so when he's made this decision that, look, i'm losing right now, so these can't be working for me, but even just today, he tweeted out, he basically said, well, i agree with these polls, i'm up top again. we'll see what happens. >> it's a challenge, i can tell you from having interviewed him several times. he got a pretty revealing

answer. after bernie sanders said in the democratic debate that shouting wouldn't solve the problem of gun violence, hillary clinton responded with this jab. and msnbc was rather appalled. >> now, i've been told to stop shouting about ending gun violence. well, i haven't been shouting, but sometimes when a woman speaks out, some people think it's shouting. >> it's sexist. what bernie sanders said? >> no. that was -- don't make me say it, joe. >> say it. >> please don't make me say it. >> let me say, that's pathetic. >> that was pathetic. >> that's pathetic. >> say it, it is pathetic. i think about my family, whenever matt tells me, we were talking to your mother, and we're cuban, and i'm talking to my mom and he'll be like, are you shouting at your mother? i said, no, we're just cuban, we

just speak loud, that's the way we talk. for hillary clinton to basically be saying, well, i'm shouting, so i'm a woman, i mean, come on. it's such a weak play for her. >> it is an attempt to try to cast bernie sanders as sexist. her campaign has done this on a several occasions. mika is a liberal and would like to support hillary clinton, but she could not hide her disdain, even though joe had to pull it out of her. >> it's great to see women journalists come out and say it like it is. in this case it was absolutely pathetic. this is a narrative that hillary clinton wants to push. i'm a woman and i'm running and the media's buying into it. still to come, joe biden made his big decision. and have you heard about chris christie and the quiet car? it's a bogus story.

it was a spectacle. the pundits declaring that joe biden was going to run for president. turns out the one who was annoyed was biden. >> how often did the two of you talk about this decision? every night? >> what's driving me crazy, you guys, we love you. but, you know, serious press people would say, well, we have on good authority from a very close friend of joe biden's that he's going to announce tomorrow. or we have on good authority that he's not going to run. that used to drive me crazy. >> even the vice president was fed up. by the way, he challenged the reporting that his late son beau was on his deathbed urging the vice president to run. that's not how maureen reported it, she just said they had a conversation. bau follow-up news story left that impression and the paper has belatedly run a correction.

gary, the dems aren't allowing fox for the debates. fox has asked for a democratic debate. robert k. feldman, the left-wing loons, they should be fired for that crap they threw out there the other night, and mainstream media is no better. ouch. it's better off holding its own debate. i wouldn't think so, rnc a bunch of cry babies. it's actually okay to respond to questions. what a delicious story about chris christie. the gossip site reporting an amtrak conductor kicked the loud-mouthed governor out of the car for yakking loudly on his phone. >> not known for his inside voice, chris christie was kicked out of the quiet car for talking loudly on his phone.

>> he was ejected from the quiet car and had to go to the cafe car to finish his strawberry smoothie. >> he was sipping a smoothie, talking on his cell phone when somebody complained. that is a no-no on the quiet car. >> chris christie got on the quiet car and started talking. >> but hold on, a journalist was right there, and she said christie was running late, he was super courteous, was told he was on the quiet car and left. didn't cause a scene. a non-story, which is why it's written on twitter, this stuff is why people don't believe anything they hear or read. that's it for this edition of "mediabuzz." we hope you'll check out our facebook page. give us a like. we post a lot of original contents and videos responding to your questions. you can also hear my media minutes on the new sirius xm fox

radio station. and don't forget to dvr us. or better yet, watch us live. we begin with breaking news. fred thompson has died of lymphoma. the former u.s. senator and one-time republican presidential candidate is probably known most for his role in american politics, but also by millions of tv and movie fans for his role as an actor in film and television including his long-running part in "law and order." thompson was a watergate attorney who moved between politics and acting for most of his adult life. early in his time on capitol hill he was a rising star in the u.s. senate, but he retired from the seat in january 2003 saying he just didn't have the heart for another term. he later ran for president in 2007.