contributor robert traynham, casey hunt of the associated press is, henry blodget co-founder and editor-in-chief of business insider and author of the maturation of the billionaire boy man. it's friday, it's buzzy ben smith of buzzfeed. at this hour, investors are friending facebook trading at $38. this morning, mark zuckerberg rang the nasdaq opening bell from a huge party at facebook's california hq. the initial public offering is the largest ever for an internet company. it raised $16 billion and valued the company at more than $100 billion. henry, welcome to the show. >> thank you for having me. >> there's lots to talk about as far as the business model here and the valuation. but i thought about this. i'm skipping right ahead to the story of an american company. and sort of what this represents for us. i mean, i think we all watched the big party this morning when

zuckerberg rang the bell and it is really the story of mark zuckerberg, the kid who invented this in his dorm room has come full circle. >> it is a great american story especially given the troubles in the economy for the last few years. it's wonderful to see this. company was a coding project in a dorm room eight years ago used by one-eighth of the population and an extraordinary business, as well. >> a lot of people have some -- people have said some unkind things about mark zuckerberg in the years since facebook's creation. you make a great point which is to say mark zuckerberg has been great manager and learned lessons, as well. the team zuckerberg has built facebook is pound for pound one of the two strongest management teams in the industry with the other being apple. this did not happen by accident. mark worked his way through it position by position. >> as a college kid, he did plenty of stupid things.

facebook made plenty of mistakes but mark from the time he was 20, was told you want to run this company, you need ceo lessons. he assembled a group of advisers including steve jobs, warren buffett. he's become a great leader. >> ben, i want to bring you into this because you are the grand lion of an internet property and we're talking about -- >> i am? >> as it henry, of course. we're talking about the new economy and facebook's ipo could be the second largest in history behind only visa. facebook's ipo 16 billion. google at 1.7 billion. a lot of people have said yeah, yeah, but this is a castle built on sand. what's the real value of the company here? >> people who work in our industry feel that it is not a castle built on sand. i think we're seeing a lot of people are seeing is our traffic shift dramatically from google to facebook. we spent a lot of time thinking instead of where two, three

years ago people were obsessing how you game google to get sorries to search for. now we think a lot about the what kind of stories people share. >> that's interesting. i didn't realize so much of your thinking was moving from the google-based model. i wonder if that will an exhibit the buzzfeed evaluation. >> stay tuned. >> robert and kasey, facebook has a $104 billion valuation which puts it 20 times it's projected revenue. google in 2004 was seven times its revenue. the question is whether they can monetize this. we know gm just pulled its advertising from google or invested $10 million in google advertising. it wasn't the return that gm wanted. some people say that's because they didn't now how to use facebook. how do you make money off of facebook, there's a great a.p./cnbc poll from this week, 83% of facebook users say they

hardly ever or never click on the ads which would seem to be a problem. 59% say they have little or no trust on facebook keeping their information private. >> the question is, they have all of this information about what you like, what you think about yourself and who you're connected to. so the question is, how do you use that information. there are a zillion different ways to apply that without you actually just pushing ads at people. the question is can they do that without violating the privacy concerns of users who have a tendency to revolt against things they feel is impacting their privacy and also the government. >> the question also becomes, how do you monetize that. it's almost like air. we need it. >> friend air. >> how much is it worth? no one knows that. if i can go back for a second, mark zuckerberg and the facebook culture reminds me a little bit of walmart in the context of it's worth a lot of money, they

do things very well but from a cultural standpoint they're very humble about it. mark is very, very wealthy today. but he appears to be very grounded and appears to be not motivated by wealth but motivated by success. that's the key american. >> henry, you make that point. the personality of mark zuckerberg. he has really worked at this. part of the reason he had to do the buzzer ringing in men low park is because he was up late hacking, not hacking in people's files but he's a real programming kind of geek. he wants to tweak this and refine it and make it better. >> he said very clearly in the ipo prospectus, the most important thing to me is facebook's social mission. the business supports that. that's haircy on wall street. they want to hear i'm all shareholder. facebook changed the world. that is his primary mission. any shareholder has to be aware of that. >> didn't he say we're here to

make money to make more money for the business? >> that's right. in his view, the business supports the product. most companies say we sell products to make money. to mark zuckerberg's huge credit, this is great for america and the economy. and if more of our corporations thought this way, that in fact the real focus of the company should be the products and the customers opposed to the shareholders, this economy would be much better off. >> alex, there's no greed there. it's all about making a good product. >> yes. i'm not saying that mark -- you know, he's going to renounce all worldly possessions in an effort to build a facebook world. i think his goal here is laudable insofar as it is changing the way we network with one another. it's worth talking about a little bit of palace intrigue. eduardo save rin, an estrained facebook co-founder put up on his page eight plus years in the

making, i as co-founder wanted to look back and cherish facebook's early beginning and posted one of the original facebook pages when it was called the facebook. he has an interesting relationship. i noticed that he actually misspelled mark zuckerberg's last name on that facebook posting. >> typing out of anger? >> but when we talk about right-hand men or women, sheryl sandberg seems to be an incredible if you want to call it v.p. for president zuckerberg. >> she was a wonderful get for him to pull into the company. people talk about it as though it's a blessing from the gods because she runs the business. mark focuses on product. there's the chief financial officer focuses on the ipo and the finances. you couldn't run facebook without that. cheryl is incredibly important to that. >> everybody wants to find their own cheryl. >> they do. that's the new model. it used to be these quirkily tech people, we have to bring in a real ceo. now the idea is, keep the founder a ceo, but bring in a real executive underneath him.

>> i'm looking for my own cheryl. my own coo >> can i fill out an application? >> they're in back. very strong vetting process. henry, thank you sir for your time. tune into andrea mitchell today at 1:00 p.m. u 2's bono becomes the world's richest musician thanks to facebook. and, of course, we'll have much more on this story, where else, on our very own facebook page populated with incredible stories, photos and more. coming up, mitt romney is crying character assassination. we'll discuss that next on "now." [ male announcer ] the inspiring story of how a shipping giant can befriend a forest may seem like the stuff of fairy tales. but if you take away the faces on the trees...

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mitt romney is playing the victim card saying he's been subject to "character assassination." the former governor made a statement yesterday in response to "the new york times" story where joe ricketts super pac in which he repudiated the use of reverend jir maya wright in an attack ad focused on president obama. in the four minutes and 20 seconds he took questions, romney used the term character assassination four times and tried to equate president obama's advertising strategy to the joe rikts. >> his campaign is focused on character assassination. the president's ad came out again as a character assassination ad. the centerpiece of his campaign is quite clearly character assassination. having a campaign focused on character assassination is one of the things i find offensive

among many others in the pac description that came in the "new york times." >> joining the panel now, msnbc political analyst columnist for the hill, the lovely karen finney. >> hello. >> so karen, character assassination. >> yeah. >> is it, i, i mean, i will ask you the question. character assassination is talking about mitt romney's record at bain character assassination. >> i certainly don't think so. he's the person who brought this into the context, right? he's the one who said his time at bain he characterized it as job creation. the point that the obama campaign is making it wait a second. these firms are about wealth creation. their primary goal is not job creation. let's look at the actual record. we've even see romney revise the number 123rz 00,000 jobs to 10,000 jobs back to 100,000 jobs. so that doesn't seem to be character assassination. it's ironic given that this

campaign was supposed to be called character matters. they've brought the url for that to go along with this. >> indeed they did. kasie, when we talk about mitt romney and his defense mechan m mechanis mechanisms, i thought this was a weird turn. to be honest, if we're talking about religion and insendry or controversial religious tenets or believes, his mormonism is something nobody has touched and would be an anathema to the democratic party in terms of character assassination. >> well, i mean, they've been very conscious of how they've handled that mormon question throughout the entire primary campaign and know that it hovers over all of this. you've seen the obama campaign come out and firmly say, this is not something we're going to touch. that's in part because if they do open that door, they know they're opening themselves up to

all of the stuff we saw in 2008 where folks were questioning obama's religion, whether or not he was a christian, whether or not he was born in hawaii. if you go there, you allow those floodgates to open. that's potentially problematic. >> do you really think that romney thinks criticism of job loss is character assassination. >> he feels that it is character assassination because that is what he devoted his life, too. he is running on it as his record. he's saying look at my record at bain capital and you can judge whether or not that's something that you want to vote for me based on. >> couldn't we -- would president obama say don't talk about the economy. that's character assassination? this is the job he's done. >> i think it's more nuanced than that. i think what governor romney is concerned about is twisting his record and making up things that do not exist. yes, bain capital bought companies. yes, bain capital laid off people but also yes, there's two sides to this coin here. bain capital created jobs, as

well. so what's frustrating about this conversation is that when the conversation is only half told. where it's disingenuous. that's where governor romney is saying look, it's fair game. i'm running for president but let's talk about the paragraph before that and also the paragraph after that. >> it's not like anyone's saying mitt romney's a mean dude. >> to be fair, they are. >> i like to fire people. come on. >> dog on the roof stuff is sort of character assassination. you're looking for stuff -- there was this line this the democrats were doing after last year like he's weird. >> that's right. >> there's something a little off about this guy. >> to robert's point though, there have been numerous instances where the romney campaign and romney himself has been fact checked by outside sources, the numbers he was using about unemployment among women where they don't tell the whole story, they don't tell the

whole story. a lot of that was set in motion before president obama took place. nor do they point out for example we were losing 750,000 jobs a month. now we've had all these months of positive job growth. a lot of losses in jobs have been public sector for a lot of different reasons. i think if we're going to say that, it's going both ways. >> at the end of the day, neither president obama's record on the economy nor romney's job creation record is about character. it's about how you're leaving a company or leaving the country. look -- >> this was more like this textbook reflex action for politicians to start whining how they're victims if anything gets complicated. that's the first resort into it was interesting, kasie, a reporter asked mitt romney about the president's efforts to make america a less christian nation. and this is what romney said. >> i'm actually going to -- i haven't -- i'm not familiar precisely what i said but i stand by what i said whatever it

was. >> okay. >> that was weak. >> that was weak. >> that is not -- now, mitt romney, the reporter was asking about a february 7th interview with sean hannity. this is what romney said in that interview. >> i'm not sure which is worse, him listening to reverend wright or him saying that we must be a less christian nation. >> now -- >> he that's wrong. >> okay. to go back further in time, that was remarks president obama made in 2008 where he said whatever we once were, we are no longer a christian nation, left out was at least not just, we are also a hindu nation and a nation of nonbelievers. >> which interestingly enough is a call for religious tolerance which is another theme we've heard mitt romney talking about. your point is right. if we're going to talk about people's public record as public officials and again, since romney interjected this into the

race and said you can judge me on my record at bain, that's fair. those kinds of comments are character assassination. i would also say remember that president obama last cycle, very specifically point by point went through and talked about specifics on what he disagreed with reverend wright on. he did a very painstaking here's what he said about israel, this is what i disagree on had point. here's what he said about this. and he went not only to mainstream liberal media. he went across the spectrum and went to bill o'reilly to make it clear those were not things that he supported. >> i would just jump in and say you know the idea that elections are about character, there's nothing wrong about that. i don't know about the assassination piece. democrats said bush was stupid, mccain was erratic. but these are important things. i think voters care about people's characters. do they think obama has enough passion. these are relevant issues the idea this is going to be fought about the bain and the

economy is ridiculous. >>ty think character does matter. mitt romney has offered these moments and he's been offering several of them through this campaign cycle where he can plant a flag in the ground and say this is wrong. i'm going to stand up for this because this is what is right and this is what is true. and i know it goes against the grain of what the gop and the very conservative wing of the republican party want me to say, but i'm going to say it because this is what i believe. he could have done that with this. instead whirls around and says i'm a victim of character assassination. >> that's what you're seeing too with this hannity quote. this is another example where romney had to run a primary campaign very far to the right and now scrambling as one of his spokespeople eloquently said etch a sketch as we move into the general election phase. all of a sudden, he's in these situations where news is breaking and they have to react it as a general election campaign instead of from a primarily mind set. >> he's still nervous about that

conservative base. >> absolutely. >> throughout this cycle is never not going to be nervous else. >> his presidency. >> look, at the end of the day, this is a numbers game. we know that there are certain states going to decide who our next president is going to be. romney needs his base to come out in record numbers in order for him to get to the finish line. the other problem is that governor romney, you know, when you have very little conviction, you don't speak up because you don't nope what you think. i'm not saying he doesn't note what he thinks but he's been such a generalist for so long, it's very hard for him to have that gut check and say wait a minute, this is not what i believe. with all due respect, you're wrong and these are the reasons. he doesn't say that. >> responding to that question yeah, what i said earlier i think is what i think now, maybe not the greatest conviction is not the think of when i hear that. up next, jiminy rikts. who is joe rikts? we'll look into that next on "now." [ male announcer ] research suggests the health of our cells plays a key role

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that's good morning, veggie style. hmmm. for half the calories plus veggie nutrition. could've had a v8.

today on "morning joe," brian a banger, the president of joe ricketts super pac the ending spending action fund, tried to distance the billionaire fans year from the proposed strategy to attack the president using reverend jeremiah wright. he spoke about a comment rickets made after seeing an ad with wright. rickets told the strategist, if the nation has seen that ad, they never would he have elected barack obama. baker said that was not an endorsement of the idea. >> perception did show one ad prepared for the mccain campaign and apparently reject bid senator mccain. now, mr. rickets did respond in that way to that ad. but that is no way an inference or suggestion or a request or anything like that that we have a proposal based on reverend wright. >> ben, we're talking about joe

ricketts, the man behind the money here. he's a founder of td ameritrade, owner of the chicago cubs and a bison meat product firm. we know joe ricketts was a former democrat, then a republican. now he's unaffiliated. his daughter laura is a big obama re-election bundler who has raised between a quarter a million and half a million dollars for the president's re-election. it sounds like it's a family where there is a diverse array of opinions. laura says we will have different political views how to achieve what is best for america but agree each is entitleded to our own views. has joe ricketts been impugned in this controversy? >> no, i think he learned a lesson, you talk about corporate money coming into politics. this is why it's not going to. these guys touch politics and get burned so badly. he's apologizing to the reporters in new york, the only thing anybody's going to know is this. it's dangerous for people who

have other interests to get into politics like this. i mean perhaps fairly. their customers care a lot about it, but that's what he learned here. >> he made a rookie mistake and he was playing with fire and got burnt. >> robert traynham is speaking the truth. >> you don't see a lot of publicly traded companies making racial attacks on the president. >> he was playing with fire. this is what happens when is a lot of people have a lot of money and want to play in politics. it's despicable to bring up the president's race and whether he was born in this country or not. he was born in this country. he's just as much an american as anyone else on this stage is. however, it is fair game to talk about his policies. if mickey mouse or joe ricketts wants to talk about that, fine, but to bring in reverend wright, that's character assassination. that's wrong. >> the issue is whether how much joe ricketts knew, how much he co-signed onto the strategy, right? >> something in writing. i don't know. >> and the proposal itself said

that there was a meeting in new york where some of his associates signed off on the plan. the "new york times" reported today actually that on wednesday when this he spoke with the fellow that we just watched here, that in fact, no decisions had been made whether or not they were going to go with this. that's not necessarily the definitive answer but it poses an enormous question. the man we do know if there is character assassination, the dude holding the rifle is fred davis of the infamous pete hoekstra ad. let's take a look at that. >> you borrow more and more from us. your economy get very weak. ours get very good. we take your jobs. thank you, debbie spend it now. >> i mean, you talk about race-baiting. that is obvious race-baiting. and the racial elements of the campaign that fred davis was prepared to launch against the president. >> and remember that that ad was taken down. even the actress apologized for

participating in the ad. i mean, i think pete hoekstra got a lot of negative publicity. it sounds like from the reports at least, people within rickets' universe were aware that this was a possibility being examined and signed off on. that at least in premise. i think to robert's point, this goes back to citizens united. this is when these guys say i want to play in politics because he didn't expect to get caught. he expected to be able to funnel the money through a super pac -- there are ways to hide even that disclosure. you get a portion of the disclosure through the super pacs. >> you can create a company to donate to super pacs. >> that's right. point being he could have created a way to ultimately protect himself and that we would not have known. remember part of the republican argument has been our companies are afraid of the retribution they might get. i think people saying i don't think i'm going to do business was ameritrade if this is what

they're funding is appropriate. our financial capital is part of our buying power. >> we don't know the how much money was exchanged between mayor afraid and fred davis's company. why is fred davis still getting work? >> he's amazing at getting money from rich people. the first couple of pages is what a great guy joe ricketts is. let me quote again from the great works of joe ricketts it's a pitch to this guy. >> at the end when he outlines exactly where this $10 billion budget they were allotted was going to go, 1.4 million was going to fred davis. >> $30,000 a month i think was the fee for creating racially incendiary character assassinations against the president. but let's talk about the power of super pacs. because there are some guys in this game who know what they're doing karl rove's group crossroads. >> he knows what he's doing. >>ing that dude knows what he's doing. this is stephanie cutter from team obama speaking about karl rove. >> here we are again.

karl rove's group crossroads is spending $25 million from secret donners to tear down the president. when robe says the president broke his promise on middle class tax cuts, he's not telling you the truth. >> amazing stephanie cutter taking it to karl rove in a campaign ad. >> i've never seen anything like that before where basically karl rove is a staffer. he's a high level staffer but for the president's re-election campaign to go after a staffer is a big deal which tells you obviously karl rove and crossroads is clearly making some headway for them to go after them people. >> rove is the lead person and remember when they first started crossroads gps, they were saying this was meant to be a shadow rnc. he very publicly put himself out there as the face of the critique of president obama. >> karl rove happy to take it from all corners i think. after the break, he's back. former president george w. bush is re-emerging. will the party embrace the

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can president bush be helpful to romney in certain places? absolutely. in certain places absolutely. >> do you think that's true, michael steele. >> what he can be helpful. >> that george bush can be helpful to romney. >> absolutely. he has a number of points he can help him make out there on the campaign trail which will benefit him. >> leading voices from both parties think president george w. bush would be an asset to the romney campaign. bush has been absent from the republican 2012 playing field but this week he seems to be coming off the bench. there was tuesday's elevator endorsement of romney and talk on the arab spring and manner ideals. kasie, will we see hand holding

between president bush and romney. >> i was with romney why erl in florida this week and i was trying to tie obama to president bush. obama frequently says he inherited the economy from the predecessor. he's reluctant to the even speak bush's name. >> robert, do you think republicans are coming around to george w. bush's legacy. >> he's traveled to africa for aids there's not there. there's probably going to be two or three more cycles before you see him actively campaigning for republican candidates. he helps him by one staying quiet and going to closed door fund-raisers. george bush is still a lightning rod on the democratic side, as well. >> he's not just a liability to romney but also to congressional candidates.

you can make the argument, well, so and so voted for the bush budget that got us into is this trouble. he continues to be a problem beyond just for mr. romney. >> i mean, he's clearly -- the op-ed "the wall street journal" today talks about effectively nation building and the role of women. it's an interesting op-ed. he's clearly trying to cast himself as a humanitarian and less of a former president or focus less on the political side. but it is totally out of sync in terms of the dialogue around afghanistan and what we should be doing there. >> i think that op-ed was careful really not to -- it was not an attack on obama for failing to do anything in particular. it was also not an endorsement of obama. it was trying to lay out broad principles around the middle east where burn's legacy is going to be decided. what's iraq going to be like in five or ten years, that's very much what his legacy will be judged on. >> i feel like the current republican party has very little tolerance or embrace of the notion we should be spending more to build up the society in afghanistan or places where we

have waged war. >> there's recognition the country is tired of being at war. this makes this a politically difficult proposition. what you saw george bush lay out was an arcticculation of the foreign policy he implemented the voters rejected in 2008. >> this is one of the best kept secrets about george w. bush. conservative republicans never bought into the george w. bush presidency with the kraefths tsa, with immigration when it came to harriet miers on the supreme court, they never thought he was pure on the right issues and especially on nation building. he's perceived as much more moderate in republican circles than many people think. >> we'll see more closing elevator doors. after the break, the future of the eurozone, withdrawal from afghanistan, a cease-fire in syria. there's plenty to discuss. former state department spokesman jamie ruben joins us to set the agenda for the g-8 and nato summits.

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world leaders are meeting this weekend to tackle the global economic crisis, and the war in afghanistan. first up today is the g-8 summit at camp david where leaders of the word's biggest economies will try to figure out how to prevent greece from derailing the economy here and abroad. foreign leaders will prepare for withdrawal from afghanistan in 2014. joining the panel now, yam i ruben, a former assistant secretary of state and spokesperson for the state department during the clinton administration. a pleasure to have you. big dogs at the white house right now. we know that the president is meeting with newly elected french president francois hollandee. tell us what your assessment of that relationship may be. >> we're going to have to get used to something that used to happen all the time. that is american/french differences of view.

sarkozy, the last president, was basically pro american. he returned france into the nato military planning committee. this was a major development. france was now fully part of nato. on issue of an issue, he supported america's position on iran, sometimes even more tough on iran than the united states. that is different than what occurred in the '90s and in the during the years of president george w. bush. hollande by contrast comes from the left. he will not be as pro market, pro-american and pro-american foreign policy. he will be what's called gallist. he will be returning france to a time when they are differentiating themselves from the united states, from germany and others on foreign affairs. >> "the new york times" in an editorial today says that pushing for the americans and perhaps the french to pressure angela merkel to ease up on some of the austerity measures. this is no time to mince words.

merkel's one size fits all program has been a failure, pushing heavily indebted countries deep near recession making it even harder to pay off debts. it is putting the already weak recovery in the united states at risk and fueling instability and extremism in europe. certainly president obama has a lot riding on economic stability in europe. >> for sure. look, their economy is directly tied to ours. that's the issue on which president obama is going to rise or election in the election in the fall. they're acutely aware of that as is the romney campaign watching this from afar, not stepping close to it very often. it's become a regular part of romney's stump speech saying if we continue on the path obama set us down, we'll become like greece. >> paul ryan has said we are on track for greece. speaking of greece, jamie, a lot of debate is going to be centered around in this current summit happening at camp david whether the jahr zone countries can convince greece to stay in

the eurozone. what do you think the likelihood of greece staying will be and if they do leave, what the repercussions will be? >> we should be aware that the united states doesn't have the kind of economic clout vis-a-vis the europeans we once had. we are not in a position given our own difficulties both in terms of growth and most importantly because of our debt to tell the europeans here, you should be doing xy and z. we've tried to do that. they don't like it very much when we do that now because of our own situation. it will be difficult for president obama to do what "the new york times" editorial seems to want him to do, to somehow have a big impact on merkel's esdecision making. her economy succeeded. they made painful reforms in germany. they changed their labor laws. they changed their consensus about how the german economy was going to function, and it worked. and they believe they went

through pain to achieve the status they're in. they're not going to take kindly to being lectured to. having said that, the german chancellor has indicated in the last 48 hours that she's not ridgid on this question, that she does not want to see greece leave the euro, there there are twos goals, one is growth and the other is deficit reduction and both are important. so i think we're starting to see the effect of the election of the french president hollande and the move in europe to say wait a minute, this german dictot is going to cause problems. finally, i guess the betting money in the economic world that i have spoken to is that greece will not make it. when that happens and how that happens and how it's done, i don't know. but the voters seem to be voting out of office people who want to follow the rules that the germans have set. so it doesn't look like there's a way to solve that problem.

>> i have two things to say about that. one is, when they were figuring out the euro and the euro zone, nobody made any plans and contingency plans for getting out which is shocking to me. paul krugman saying failure of the euro would amount to a huge defeat for the broader european project, the attempt to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to a continent with a terrible history. it would also have much the same effect that the failure of austerity is having in greece. >> you have very strong ethnic issues coming to the surface, pictures in greek newspapers, pictures of merkel in a nazi uniform, things of that nature. the greeks calling them the garlic-eating greeks who won't work hard and won't do the hard things that we and the northern

why you werians do. the caricatures of the different countries, greeks, italian, spain, mediterranean countries, germany and some of the others in the north regard themselves as the success story. so that's a bit of a problem. we have to wait and see whether the tensions are -- become more than just a newspaper article or become something more dangerous. >> certainly we'll have more clarity on that after this weekend. jamie ruben, thank you so much for your time. >> the pressure to win. it's friday and you know what that means. it's time to look back at the week and ask what just happened. that's ahead on "now." [ male announcer ] what's in your energy drink?

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heart, hogies or magic hands, which ingredient adds up to a win. >> it's time to look back and ask what just happened?

>> this game is not over. this battle is not over. >> after a rough stretch for the vice president -- >> so let's hear it one more time together. clear eyes, full hears. >> clear eyes and full hearts couldn't lose. >> my mother and father dreamed as much as any rich guy dreams. >> it was biden unleashed. >> probably no vice president ever assumed the office with fewer assets than joe biden. i assume they were talking about financial assets. >> team obama was feeling good. >> who's going to win. >> i'm going to win. >> meanwhile, mitt romney hit a few speed bumps. >> people of different faiths, we can meet in service. >> i think the one thing that is going to be the glaring problem is going to be the deity of jesus christ. >> and his convictions were questioned. >> i bet you if you put mitt romney in front of a gay organization, he will go boy, i like gays. i like the height on the gays. they're a great height. >> just watching. >> inside the beltway, trouble

was brewing. >> have a chance to see the congressional leadership when i get back to the white house. >> the president had his own prescription for national unity. >> going to offer them hogies while they're there. >> but the summit proved fruitless. >> i haven't heard kumbiya in so long, i wouldn't recognize it. >> people will see today as nothing more than an expensive sideshow. >> america has been hungering for something genuine, something real. >> i'm the shy modest herman cain. >> a shepherd to guide us through the wilderness. >> today i want to formal little endorse governor mitt romney for the president of the united states of america. >> if the gop can get it together, might the demes? >> talking about drawing a line. we're talking with karl. >> get hit by a car. >> then again if we know anything in this world, nothing is ever in the bag. >> you have ten seconds. can he do it.

>> manning i can hand, magic band is, candidate, janned, panned, fanned, fanned. wand. o oh! >> magic pand. magic wand. didn't get it. we only have a minute for this i'm told. very quickly who, won the week or who lost with the he can? take your pick. ben. >> i mean i think the jury in north carolina is going to tell us soon. john edwards one way or the other, it's going to be him. >> one way or the other, karen. >> i feel i should make sure everybody knows howard dean is fine. he walked away. so he may not have won the week but he survived. >> an important psa about driving. >> kasie? >> joe biden eating ice cream sort of made my week. >> worth noting joe biden just said i don't blame people for

voting for a felon over obama. people are tired referring to his results in the north carolina primary where he was almost beaten by a felon. >> i have to say mark zuckerberg and the thousand millionaires is created overnight. i wish i was one of them, but i'm not. >> i would like to friend some of those thousand new minted millionaires. >> would you wear a hoodie for mark zuckerberg for a million bucks. >> let's not get into what i would or wouldn't do for a million bucks. that's all for now. i'll see you back here monday at noon eastern/9:00 a.m. pacific when i'm joining by son of the vice president beau biden. till then you can find us on facebook.com/now alex. "andrea mitchell reports" is live from the global food summit in washington. happy friday, andrea. >> we're excited to be here at the global food summit. bono is coming on to talk about the global initiative to lift 50

million people out of poverty in africa over the next decade. we might ask him about his investment in facebook, too. he will be the world's richest rocker. the head of usaid and the president of tanzania. we'll talk about that and politics coming up next live from the global food summit at the ronald reagan building in washington. andrea mitchell reports coming up next. be with us. [ male announcer ] the inspiring story of how a shipping giant can befriend a forest may seem like the stuff of fairy tales. but if you take away the faces on the trees... take away the pixie dust. take away the singing animals, and the storybook narrator... [ man ] you're left with more electric trucks. more recycled shipping materials... and a growing number of lower emissions planes... which still makes for a pretty enchanted tale. ♪ la la la [ man ] whoops, forgot one... [ male announcer ] sustainable solutions.

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