loss. the matter of what is in mr. romney's tax returns and what he says in his tax returns turned into a white hot political fight today. we have found some tape in the archives that may take this fight in a whole new direction as of tomorrow. we have got that tape that i think nobody has seen in at least a decade and we've got that story as our lead tomorrow night. we've gotta incredible tape for you tomorrow night. please be here. same bat time, same bat channel. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. have a great night. fair warning, i'm going to use the f-word tonight. is the big secret in mitt romney's tax returns a felony? >> i would like to talk to you for a moment about dollars and cents. >> some people call you the elite. i call you my base. >> we had big tax cuts in 2001, 2003. >> now i want to lay out for you specifically what i'm going to do. it's five things. all right?

five things. >> mr. romney is asking you to pay more so that people like him get tax cuts. >> i'm not going to raise taxes on the american people. >> he's shifting the burden on to middle class taxpayers. >> hold on. it gets worse. >> you get a little red arrow. i've got a green arrow. >> millionaires, however, would receive an $87,000 tax cut. how's that for early morning prompter reading. >> oh, my goodness. >> is that what you want for americans? >> sorry, guys. i've got nothing for you. >> he is a wall street rich guy who will not show shiz tax return returns. >> mitt romney tries desperately to say he's an every man. >> if you're running for the president of the united states, you should release your tax returns. >> romney is hanging fire on this thing. >> sorry, guys. i have nothing for you. >> mitt romney has gone above and beyond what the law requires. >> folks, i would be laughing if it wasn't so scary. maybe the joke is really on us. >> romney should pick a

chick-fil-a sandwich as a running mate, it's becoming so popular in the republican party. >> sorry, guys. i have nothing for you. >> chick-fil-a looks a lot bett better to me at this hour than rob portman does. mitt romney who is as far as we know, the only presidential candidate in history to have foreign bank accounts is now feigning outrage that we are speculating about why he continues to be the only modern presidential candidate who has decided to keep his tax returns secret. but he is not just keeping his tax returns secret, he is lying about them. he promised abc news on sunday he would check his tax returns and give an answer as to whether he ever paid less than 13.9% in income taxes. he has now refused to give abc news the answer he promised them, thereby making his initial response to abc news nothing short of a romney lie.

as romney's politically damaging lying and secrecy about his tax returns continues, our reason to question those tax returns only increases. and tonight's question is, is mitt romney hiding a felony in his secret tax returns? a former federal prosecutor will join me to address that question. but first, with 96 days until the presidential election, a new poll shows mitt romney heading into the election with the worst favorability rating of any modern presidential candidate. and today president obama hammered mitt romney for proposing a tax plan that cuts income taxes only for the romney-like wealthiest americans. >> we do not need more tax cuts for folks who have done very, very well. we need more tax cuts for working americans.

we need tax cuts for companies that are investing here in florida and here in the united states of america, hiring american workers, sending products around the world, stamped with those proud words "made in america." that's what we're fighting for. that's the choice in this election. and that's why i'm running again for president of the united states of america. >> ahead of the president's remarks today, his campaign released this ad that will air in eight battleground states. >> and work hard, stretch every penny, but chances are you pay a higher tax rate than him. mitt romney made $20 million in 2010 but paid only 14% in taxes. probably less than you. now he has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2,000 a year. mitt romney's middle class tax increase. he pays less, you pay more.

>> a new poll shows president obama leading mitt romney nationally by a wide margin. the president leads mitt romney by 10 points, 51 to 41% among registered voters in a dozen battleground states. president obama leads mitt romney by 4 points, 48 to 44%. on favorability nationally, the president leads mitt romney by a spread of 20 points. 50% view president obama favorably. 45% view him unfavorably. 37% view mitt romney favorably. 52% view him unfavorably. the only presidential candidates to be viewed negatively heading into the election in this poll were george h.w. bush in october 1992 and bob dole in october 1996. and of course, both bush and dole lost those elections.

joining me now, national campaign co-chair for obam for america and star of "herald and kumar" movies and star of "how i met your mother." and star of "the last word." the rule of this show is the person with the fewest credits gets to go first. so on these polling -- >> i'm work on it. >> on the favorability number, if that holds, that's all you need to know. >> that's all you need to know. until you said the word felony, i was going to say, the only thing worse than being an unpopular candidate going into election where all the negatives about you are reinforced by almost everything you do, right? you're a one percenter who wants to cut the 1%'s taxes. the only thing worse than that, expect the felony piece is vowing to raise 95% of tvoters' taxes. this is the death nel of any candidate, right? going into the election, democrats are terrified to look like tax raisers.

now you have a republican, you have an independent body saying he's going to raise your taxes, middle class. i don't see how it can get any worse, except the felony. >> ever since mondale's campaign, democrats have been afraid to mention taxes while running for president. bill clinton mentioned them but by only saying he would have a middle class tax cut, which he then didn't do. here you have president obama saying plainly, i would like to see tax rates go up on tax pairs above this level and the romney campaign doesn't seem to be able to find the answer to that. >> i think because the president has been very transparent about it, right in i think it was even this weak on barack obama.com, there's a tax calculator where you can punch in the numbers and see exactly which plan stands where. but we also don't have such a short-term memory anymore. we know eight years of failed bush tax policies equals the same as what governor romney is proposing and that got us into the mess to begin with. a lot of folks who have been struggling the last few years

and who are benefitting from a recovery remember we don't want to go back in that terrible direction. >> talk to me about voter turnout this time around for the president. you were one of the enthusiastic obama supporters four years ago. so enthusiastic you gave up your career, went to work in the white house. now you're back working in your previous career. and yet, you seem to have all the enthusiasm you had four years ago. it doesn't seem the obama team is ready to count on everyone out there having the same amount of enthusiasm four years ago. >> that's always been the case. the reason i'm so enthusiastic frankly, what got me involved in 20 2007 was having friends serving overseas in iraq. buddies who couldn't serve openly because of don't ask don't tell. friends who couldn't afford to go to college. we're out of iraq, bin laden has been taken care of my friends can afford to go to college. jobs are coming back to the united states. things went from idea to execution. but you're right. the campaign's, i think,

greatest strong point is making sure everyone who wants to be included is included. i'm going to seven states this week. the campaign is in all 50 states. we had a huge voter registration last weekend, doing celebrations for the president's birthday this weekend. the strategy is to make sure everyone is fairly registered to vote, everyone knows their rights to vote. you know, the idea if you bring five of your friends to the polls before that, make sure they know what the issues are, know what they care about, how are they benefitting, who are the 3.1 million young people that now qualify for health care that didn't have it before. what are the stakes? and sort of the political banter i know goes back and forth. it's nice the president is up four points now. i think, by the way, that's definitely tied into the fact that voters aren't buying the rhetoric that somehow romney is the guy to benefit the middle class. but those are things that are all, you know, that we're all sort of the pushing to make sure that everyone feels included and understands exactly how the president has benefited them. >> all of the efforts that cal is talking about are going to bang up against this voter suppression campaign going on

out there in those states that we've been covering on the show. it seems like the obama campaign is going to have to have a technique for dealing with that. >> yeah. there's going to be a lot of lawyer out there on election day. that's the "x" factor here, right? mitt romney's job is to take away constituents who voted for the incumbent. it's difficult to defeat a presidential incumbent. it's only happened three times since world war ii. but if the republicans can take enough voters off the playing field, that puts states like pennsylvania in play. it puts states like wisconsin, two of the states with the toughest voter id laws. then you have machinations like florida where they're cutting the early vote period, heavily used by african-americans. they're going right at african-americans, hispanics and young voters, which is what cal is working on. obama has to do a proactive effort to get people out. they have to also protect the vote when people get to the polls. >> there was a website set up

gottovote.or gp. wherever you live, type in your zip code. make sure you know what to do to register and your friends know as well. >> the most effective ad from the romney side, given the to get obama voters to switch. that's just the math from the last election to this election. is the one that says we understand why you voted for him. they have an ad that says we get it. we understand why you went for his hope message and he had a shot, he tried, he failed. it's time for change. it's one of those ads that says the guy just failed at this particular job. but we understand east-west highway you cast that vote four years ago. what's your answer to that approach? >> look, i think that's silly. that's the silliness of political sport. i think it's a very tough argument for them to make when you have folks like mr. mcconnell vowing his number one priority was not jobs, not to take care of the troops, not to make sure manufacturing was coming back to the united states. it was to make sure the president somehow failed. okay. you've got your candidate saying

the president failed. that's no surprise. the president obviously hasn't failed. he's done a tremendous amount of progress and we want to make sure we've got four more years of continuing that progress so we can get to where we all want to be. >> joy, the polling turnaround here is going to have to happen at a point in the calendar where it can hold. if romney is going to turn this around, when does the clock start to run out? >> well, i mean, the problem for mitt romney is that it appears that americans have already factored in their negative attitudes towards the economy. i think they're counting on jobs reports. that every time there's a negatives job report, there will be one right before the election, that will be his opportunity. but that hasn't worked. people already have a sour attitude towards the economy. and they still prefer barack obama to mitt romney. it's still a choice, not just a referendum. so i think probably what they're counting on is the convention. when he can sort of present his case, when the entire country is sort of watching. that somehow romney can make this grand case. the problem is, he doesn't have the personality for that. i have yet to see the mitt

romney who can get on a podium and move enough people, you know, saying it's okay. i don't think that's going to be enough. >> cal penn and joy reid, thank you very much. coming up, harry reid believes mitt romney is hiding something big in his secret tax returns. i suspect he might be hiding something even bigger. a felony. and in the rewrite tonight, a republican congressman says congress is an alcoholic on its way to hitting rock bottom. and grover norquist is its bartender. >> it's a weekend retreat. ays] ♪ ♪ [music plays] ♪ [music plays] it's something you're born with. and inspires the things you choose to do. you do what you do...

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♪ sleep train ♪ your ticket to a better night's sleep ♪ what could possibly be in those tax returns that makes mitt romney so reluctant to release them? coming up, the worst case scenario -- a felony. and later, chick-fil-a claims record sales on its appreciation day and bill o'reilly claims you should never pressure other

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decen decency, sir? >> the mccarthy moment has arrived in the presidential campaign. that was mitt romney's etch-a-sketch guy accusing harry reid of being the equivalent of the lying alcoholic republican senator of the 1950s, joe mccarthy who tried to ruin lives on a communist witch hunt which included precious little actual evidence of subversion. this is why romney world thinks harry reid is the new joe mccarthy. >> the word is out he hasn't paid any taxes for ten years. is let him prove that he has paid taxes because he hasn't. we already know from one partial tax return he gave us, he has money hidden in bermuda, the cayman islands and the swiss bank account. not making that up, that's in the partial year he gave us. >> that's not the first time harry reid has said something about mitt romney's secret tax returns. but despite harry reid repeating

that, the idea that mitt romney went ten years without paying any taxes has not become a major story until sean hannity unwittingly did the obama campaign this huge favor. >> do you have any response to harry reid or even paid attention to what he's saying about you the last couple of days and that you haven't paid taxes in ten years? >> well, it's time for harry to put up or shut up. >> have you noticed something about mitt romney's laugh? have you noticed when he does it? well, let's put it this way. you ask him a question about his secret tax returns and he laughs. >> you have refused to release your income tax forms. do you have something to hide? >> i believe very deeply in my personal privacy, what little about is left. i'm not going to release my income tax returns. >> back in 1967, your father set a ground breaking, what was then a ground breaking standard in american politics.

will you phfollow your father's example? >> maybe. i don't know how many years i'll release. i'll look at what the documents are. >> was there ever any year when you played lower than the 13.9%? >> i haven't calculated that. i'm happy to go back and look. >> let's listen to the rest of mitt romney's challenge to harry reid. >> well, it's time for harry to put up or shut up. harry's going to have to describe who it is he spoke with, because of course, that's totally and completely wrong. it's untrue, dishonest, and inaccurate. it's wrong. so i'm looking forward to having harry reveal his sources and we'll probably find out it's the white house. >> so we're talking about mitt romney's secret tax returns, and harry reid is now the one that has to put up or shut up when mitt romney could shut up harry

reid. mitt romney could shut up all of us by doing what every presidential candidate does and show his tax returns. every day that mitt romney refuses to show his tax returns costs him politically and therefore logically casts more and more suspicion on why he is not releasing his tax returns. tax expert rush limbaugh whose tax returns are object as big as complex as romney's rushed to romney's defense, echoing what both mitt and ann romney have said about why they are not releasing the tax returns and are doing so in a way that makes it much more clearly an insult to the intelligence of what ann romney would call "you people." >> once they get ten years of tax records, they'll be able to point to something in there that will make the uninformed class

think well, that's outrageous. how in the world did he write that off? he's a tax cheat myrtle. how in the world can we vote for a guy like that? something like that is their objective. doesn't have to be true. all it has to be is be complicated. all it has to do is be unusual. all it has to have is something in there that is not quite common. >> harry reid has just issued a statement in response to mitt romney's put up or shut up challenge. it is a long statement. i will read it quickly in part. harry reid says, there is a controversy because the republican presidential nominee governor mitt romney refuses to release his tax returns. as i said before, i was told by an extremely credible source that romney has not paid taxes for ten years. people who make as much money as mitt romney have many tricks at their disposal to avoid paying taxes. we already know that romney has exploited many of these loopholes, stashing his money in secret overseas accounts in

places like switzerland and the cayman islands. last weekend, governor romney promised that he would check his tax returns and let the american people know whether he ever paid a rate lower than 13.9%. one day later his campaign raced to say he had no intention of putting out any further information. when it comes to answering legitimate questions the american people have about whether he avoided paying his fair share in taxes or why he opened a swiss bank account, romney has shut up. but as a presidential candidate, it's his obligation to put up and release several years of tax returns, just like nominees of both parties have done for decades. it's clear romney is hiding something and the american people deserve to know what it is. joining me now are sam stein, political expert for hullington post and jeremy timpkin, a tax attorney who's a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. jernem

jeremy, you've handled cases of people with foreign accounts. there has recently been this amnesty program for people who did not fill out this form that they're supposed to fill out. if you have a foreign bank account, you're supposed to fill out this form saying how much was in it. maximum value that year, if it's over $10,000. the government discovered the cayman islands, switzerland institutions there were never reported. so people were getting away with giant amounts of money that they were not turning in these forms on. the government figured we'll never get it unless we offer them an amnesty. they've all been committing this felony of not reporting. if we offer them an amnesty, we might get a bunch of them to report and finally get an accounting of this money. is that where -- is that how the law has basically evolved hooer? >> it's a little more complicated obviously. you committed a felony if you willfully don't report the account. it's not just not reporting the account. >> provide an example of not willfully. >> well, willfully is proven by

if you lie to your accountant and your accountant tells you if you have an offshore account and you said no. >> your defense would be i told my accountant, i don't know how he got this wrong. >> the government has to prove -- in order to prove that it's a felony has to prove that you knew that you had an obligation to report. >> but certainly enough people thought they didn't have the defense available to them that they took a huge advantage of amnesty program. >> it's been a real boom both to people who felt they dependent have that defense available to them, but also to people who thought that, you know, i may or may not have that defense available to me, but let's play it safe. let's get it -- >> if you say well, it was a year or ten years or whatever, and you file for the amnesty and you get the amnesty, you then have to redo every one of those tax returns that was wrong, correct? >> go back to 2003. so the voluntary disclosure program that the irs ran required taxpayers who didn't

comply with their requirements such as disclosure requirements to go back to 2003, amend their returns going back to 2003. >> so if a presidential candidate, unnamed presidential candidate who had giant amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts, for example, availed himself of that amnesty, that would show up very clearly in every tax return going back to 2003? >> yes. and the older ones are the ones that would be most problematic. >> okay, sam stein, you covered presidential politics for a while. how do you suppose it would play in presidential politics if a presidential candidate had availed himself of a government amnesty covering tax felonies of this kind? >> well, first of all, ii'm gla you're not asking me the technical questions. it would have been met with a

blank stare. not only would it not play well, it could be used by the opposition campaign badgering the campaign who had the problem. again, i'm a little -- i think everyone in the news business is a little uncomfortable with the speculation that's going on here because you're supposed to presume innocence and get the facts oit there. but mitt romney has invited this to a certain degree by being oopaque, by refusing to budge even a smidgen past this year and a half so far of tax information that he's almost begun to invite some of this stuff. it's unfair in some respects but fair in others. >> i want to say running for president, you can't expect this type of privacy anymore. and i think he should have understood that. >> tell me one way, tell me one way in which it is unfair to speculate about these secret tax returns of a presidential candidate in a country where the custom has uniformly been for all presidential candidates, especially the nominees, to release their tax returns?

what could conceivably be unfair about a range of speculation about what's in those tax returns, as long as the candidate refuses to release them and then lies to the plead yeah, to the media that you say is uncomfortable with speculation, that man lies directly to that media on television about something he's going to tell them and then he never tells them. >> all right, so on the one hand it's perfectly fair to call mitt romney out for lying which he technically did to abc news when he said he would go back and provide an answer whether he paid the 13.9% rate. he hasn't done it. that was the campaign's fault. the way it can be unfair, and i'm being honest about this, if you start speculating about reasons that he's not releasing the tax returns. and people start listening to the speculation and taking it as fact. and it turns out to not be fact. they get an impression that it is. >> sam, tell me how it can turn out not to be fact. there's only one way, right? >> if he releases his tax returns. so yes, now that's where i'm

getting at. all this can be revolved with a little bit of transparency. and that's where this ends up being. reporters have a commitment, of course, to transparency. they should demand this type of information. and i think it's very telling that a tax return story that could have been done in two days, maybe a week tops has now dragged on for several weeks going on a month. and i think the mitt romney campaign is actually funneling this. my guess is that what's in there is probably much more tame than what would happen if he actually released it instantaneously. >> sam, quickly before we go. a media question. should the media be more uncomfortable with romney's secrecy about his tax returns or with press speculation about what the tax returns might be hiding? >> that's a great question. i wish i had an answer to that. obviously like i just said, the media should be very uncomfortable with the fact that we're not getting just tax returns, but bundler information for mitt romney. the people who are fundraising

his campaign in large chunk, we don't know their names. there's a lot of secrecy out there. just like they should be uncomfortable with revelations that the obama white house was using private e-mails. these are things the media should always care about. with respect to what's in the tax returns, god, i mean, that's something they should care about, too. it's a very important ethical debate. i wish i had concrete answers, but it's something that we struggle with at the huffington post all the time. >> appreciate the struggle, sam. former federal prosecutor jeremy timpkin and sam stein of the huffington post. thank you very much both of you. coming up, the only thing that might distract from taxes. might for, like, i don't know, five minutes. mitt romney's vice presidential choice are here. and bill o'reilly, who loves, loves calling for boycotts against things all the time, whole countries like france. now doesn't want people organizing a boycott against chick-fil-a. that's coming up.

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at the beginning of a hearing today in the house of representatives on a republican bill to make english the official language of the united states, the senior democrat on the committee, john conyers of michigan chose to make his opening statement, not in english. >> gracias, senor presidente. [ speaking spanish ]

>> and it's intern night once again here on "the last word." following our decades old tradition of putting interns on the show in their last week of service, here now is kaleen chung of new york city who is on her way to sophomore year at middlebury college to tell you and me what's coming up on the show. >> thanks, lawrence. coming up, the first rule of congress is never tell the truth about congress until after you've announced your retirement. a republican congressman's rewrite of capitol hill is coming up. and the additions continue for mitt romney's vice presidential picks. they were on the stage with him today and on their best behavior. that's coming there. >> nice little save there.

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>> have you made that decision yet? >> sorry, guys. i've got nothing for you. >> in the spotlight tonight, mitt romney moves closer to making his pick for a running mate with the head of his vice presidential vetting team in tow, mitt romney headed to colorado today for a round table campaign event with ten run governor, half of them seemed to be auditioning for a republican vice presidential nomination. >> governor romney, i first of all want to thank you for your proposal on education reform. >> governor romney is going to be and must be our next president because he understands our children only have one chance to grow up. >> we need president obama to be the next president of the united states because he's a proven job creator. so mitt, i want to say as the oldest of five kids that grew up in a real average middle class family in northern virginia that i really appreciate your focus on middle class families. >> mitt romney knows how to lead. his whole life has been about leading men and women of good

will and great intellect, fabulous ingenuity and great integrity to achieve great things. and he's going to do exactly the same thing for america as the next president of the united states. >> i know that when we have president romney, somebody is going to have our back. and that's all we're asking for is for someone to have our back. thank you. i'm going to fight for you. we're all going to fight for you. we're going to win together. >> mitt romney's campaign is adding more staff to work with the candidate's eventual vice presidential pick. the campaign said they will announce the choice via smart phone app. the romney cam pane has also announced a four-day bus tour of swing states, kicking off august 10. a potential rollout day for a romney running mate.

the national political reporter covering the romney campaign which means, nia, you must by now have the romney vp app on your phone already. >> that's right. haven't we all down loaded that app? >> obama did a similar thing in 2008. i don't think it was an app at that point. we all had blackberries, but it was via tex message that that was biden. but if it's one of these guys on the short list, either jindhal pawlenty or portman, it's ending up to be a anti-climactic pick. once this thing happens it's going to be something like i shaved my legs for this moment because all of these picks have been so picked over and talked about that you wonder if in the end it will be something of a letdown, particularly for tea party folks. if you think about the pick of sarah palin, she very much was able to gin up support in those

grassroots. you saw the phones ringing off the hook in those states and in a lot of door knocking happen because there was so much excitement around her. but you wonder if it was one of the people you're talking about so far. >> i lost patience. just tell us who it is. come on. come on, you know. i know you know. you're inside these campaigns. >> rob portman. >> okay, thank you. >> rob portman. >> so that is why rob portman said today, distancing himself from the bush budgets. he said when he was the budget director for george w. bush and the deficit went through the roof. he said i wanted to offer a be five-year balanced budget. but it was a fight internally. >> yeah. if you think about rob portman's

strengths and weaknesses politically speaking there's a long list of them on the strength side. both substantive and political. ohio won 55 out of 58 counties when he ran for senate. kind of amply fies rom niece's message of fiscal strength, management savvy and getting things done. the bipartisan senator. he's boring. like romney is boring. as you know, doubling down on what you're selling isn't always the worst thing, even if it's boring. his only weakness politically is he was tied to george bush for about a year and a half. you see him there trying to address the one liability that he has, there's no perfect candidate. that that's portman's weakness and he's trying to deal with it. >> it's at least portman versus pawlenty. >> so do you weigh the negatives of pawlenty versus portman with

the bush administration. >> pawlenty's strengths, i think, for one is that he's a governor. that would allow mitt romney to run as an outside washington candidate. i think his strengths, we saw him -- or his weakness as we saw them on display when he was running for president himself, he just didn't catch people in a straw poll. that's going to be his weakness. whether or not people look at him and see him as a president. if he comes across credibly as somebody who can take the roll of president on day one. another weakness for him is he has absolutely no foreign policy experience. portman is on the armed services committee. so that i think, weaknesses are for tim pawlenty. but he does have a sort of regular guy appeal. we know that's something that mitt romney struggles a great

deal with. he would be able to connect with some of those folks. >> pawlenty came in second last time to sarah palin. is he going to come in second again? i think almost certainly. i would add one other thing. the bigst stage a vice presidential candidate is in is in their debate. he's going to be up against joe biden. pawlenty was not a strong campaigner in the nomination fight. think in particular about the two republican debate he is took part in. he was disastrously bad in those debates. the romney people recognize one of the great question marks is can he hold his own against joe biden? you have to come to a draw and win that debate. i don't think there's a lot of confidence around tim pawlenty in that area. >> thank you both very much for joining me tonight. coming up, guess who's being

wicked hypocrite call on the chick-fil-a controversy. mr. bill o'reilly who called for more boycotts than he can remember. and in the "rewrite" congress is an alcoholic and needs to watch fight club. . >> congratulations. you're one step closer. we asked total strangers to watch it for us. thank you so much, i appreciate it, i'll be right back. they didn't take a dime. how much in fees does your bank take to watch your money ? if your bank takes more money than a stranger, you need an ally. ally bank. no nonsense. just people sense.

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>> you told me after we lost everything that we're free to do anything. >> congratulations. you're one step closer. >> tonig >>. >> i know you think congress hit bottom sometime after the 2010 election. but as bad as it's been, it can get worse. the crazier of the otwo runs running for senate in texas won the nomination. and one of the not bat crap crazy republicans in the house suddenly announced he would not be run for re-election with less than 100 days before that election. the main reason congressman

steve latourette gave for not running for re-election is because compromise had become a dirty word the maddening frustrations of the job often find themselves telling more truths than they ever did when they were committed to their jobs and committed to their re-election campaigns. but no one, no one has rewritten his attitude towards congress more colorfully and perhaps more honestly than steve latourette did today now that he is, as he put it, unchained. >> well, thank you all. i'm on the second day of my unchained tour. everybody's most important issue has to be where we find ourses on this fiscal cliff. if i thought my presence here could accomplish what we're talk about here today, i would stay.

congress is like an alcoholic who has a problem and needs to fix it. >> he thinks congress is an alcoholic who hasn't hit bottom yet and he says grover norquist is the bartender. he talked about the plan which reduces income tax rates but finds other ways to increase re knew through taxation. when congressman latourette supported simpson bbowles, he got a call from congress's bar tender. >> when we rolled it out, grover norquist called me an said you're raising taxes $2 trillion. he said we don't look at individual tax rates. we look at the aggregate of tax revenue versus gdp. and i said crap, i mean, nobody where i grew up understands that kind of baloney.

>> if they could understand the bartender is really serving them baloney, they might actually be able to get something done. ♪ [m ♪ [music plays] ♪ [music plays] jonathan horton climbed all the way to the ceiling... in the middle of a department store. some parents might have scolded him. ♪

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>> what i tweeted was i'm a kentucky fried chicken fan. that's where my loyalty lies. >> chick-fil-a said the mike hukabee chick-fil-a day was, quote, record setting. tomorrow, chick-fil-a will get to provide tomorrow service they've always prided themselves on on the other side of the debate.

kiss-ins at the fast food chain. now, i know what you're thinking, what does america's king of boycotts think about chick-fil-a? >> organized economic retaliation is not what america is all about. >> organized economic retaliation isn't what america is all about? it's what american was born in. that's what the boston tea party was, organized economic retaliation. what about the united states disinvestment in south africa during apartheid? or have you heard of cuba, bill o'reilly? the most crippling, longest boycott possibly in human history. you don't get more american than the cuban boycott. bill has more to say. >> if you don't like him, don't buy his product. "talking points" is okay with that. but the pressure others to think

like you is wrong. >> this is bill o'reilly saying this. this guy has led boycotts of france, you know, not just little things like a fast food chain. he lifted his ban on france in 2007, but he still has a boycott france page on his website. in august 2002, o'reilly called for a boycott of pepsi after it announced an endorsement deal with rapper ludikris. i'm calling on all americans to say hey, pepsi, i'm not drinking your stuff. you want to hang around with ludikris? you do that. i'm not hanging around with you. joi this brings out the madness on that side of the world. o'reilly pretending oh, we've

never done that. forgetting cuba and his own boycotts. but take me through what you see happening here. >> well, it's another example of their right wing contradiction. they like to argue that money is speech. so certainly withholding money is speech. it's also very unwise for business. these are also businesses that would like to encourage business. lgbt money spends just as well as anybody else's. why would you want to ostracize that part of the community? to say withhold your money and not boycott is worse. that leaves opportunity for negotiations, for demands to be met. and if the company responds to negotiations, giving them an opportunity to be a good actor, sometimes it's worse just for there to be a general culture brewing that says none of us should spend our money at chick-fil-a. it's really bad for business as well. it's just more of their contribution in the name of continuing to be discriminatory. >> and rush limbaugh, by the way, announced he's eating k-