he described the horse's upkeep as a business loss. the matter of what is in mr. romney's tax returns and what he says is 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 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 have that for you tomorrow night, please be here. 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 a tax cut. >> 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 america? >> sorry, guys. i've got nothing for you. >> he is a wall street rich guy who will not show his tax 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 damn thing. >> sorry, guys. i've got nothing for you. >> mitt romney has gone above and beyond what the law requires. >> folks, i'd be laughing if it wasn't so scary. >> you guys, really? >> maybe the joke is really on

us. >> romney should pick like a chick-fil-a sandwich as a running mate, it's becoming so popular in the republican party. >> sorry, guys. i've got nothing for you. >> chick-fil-a looks a lot better to me at this hour of the day 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. >> you 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 pew poll shows president obama leading mitt romney nationally by a wide margin. among registered voters, the president leads mitt romney by ten 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, cal penn, national campaign co-chair for obama for america and star of "herald and kumar" movies and the television show "how i met your mother" and nbc contributor joy reid 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. because 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 one percenters'

taxes. the only thing worse than that, except the felony piece, is vowing to raise 95% of voters' taxes. this is the death nail 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 taxpayers 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? i think it was even this week on barackobama.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 that 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 they had four years ago. >> absolutely. that's always been the case. the reason i'm so enthusiastic frankly, what got me involved in 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. now 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 is 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 we 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. >> joy, all of the efforts that kal 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 lawyers 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 kal is working on. the obama administration have to play three-dimensional chess. they have 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.org. wherever you live, type in your zip code, find out whatever you need to do to make sure you're fairly registered and your friends know as well. >> the most effective ad from the romney side 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 why you cast your 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. >> kal 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 "rewright" tonight, a republican congressman says congress is an alcoholic on its way to hitting rock bottom and grover norquist is its bartender. because it matters. at hp we don't just believe in the power of technology. we believe in the power of people when technology works for you. to dream. to create.

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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 people to boycott something. unless, of course, you're bill o'reilly who has called for more boycotts over the years than he can remember. that's coming up. ng for your attention. so we invented a warning you can feel. introducing the all-new cadillac xts. available with a patented safety alert seat. when there's danger you might not see, you're warned by a pulse in the seat. it's technology you won't find in a mercedes e-class. the all-new cadillac xts has arrived, and it's bringing the future forward.

>> bf little did. little did i dream that you could be so right and so cruel. let us not assassinate this land further. have you no sense of decency, sir? >> harry reid's charges are baseless and they're untrue. and i would ask him one simple question -- have you no sense of 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 moral 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's out that he hasn't paid any taxes for ten years. let him prove that he has paid taxes because he hasn't. we already know from one partial tax return that 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 like that 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 amount that's left. i'm not going to release my income tax returns. >> back in 1967, your father set a groundbreaking, what was then a groundbreaking, standard in american politics. will you follow 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 paid 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 about as big and 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 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 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 the huffington post and jeremy t timpkin, a tax attorney who's a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. 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 here? >> 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 that defense available to them that they took a huge advantage of the 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 when i didn't file these forms 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, 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've 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, i'm glad you're not asking me the technical questions. you would have been met with a blank stare. obviously it would not play well. it could not only not play well but 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 out there. but mitt romney has invited this to a certain degree by being so opaque, 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. i think it's unfair in some respects but it's 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 media, 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 get them an answer if he ever paid below a 13.9% rate. he hasn't done it. that's not fair to abc news and that was the romney 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 true. >> 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, just 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? >> it'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 not 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 this week 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 temkin and sam stein of the huffington post, thank you very much for joining me tonight. coming up, the only thing that might distract from taxes. might for, like, i don't know, maybe five minutes. mitt romney's vice presidential choice. 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 the ♪ [music plays] ♪ [music plays] to drive a car filled with as much advanced technology as the world around it. with the available lexus enform app suite,

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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. [ 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 in the show. go, kaleen. >> 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.

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 roundtable

campaign event with 10 republican governors. 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 mitt romney 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 presideney st romnebody 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. >> the "wall street journal" today wrote about the fact that mitt romney's campaign is adding more staff to work with the candidate's eventual vice presidential pick. the campaign said they will announce his vp choice via a smartphone app. the romney campaign has also announced a four-day bus tour of swing states, kicking off august 10. a potential rollout day for a romney running mate. nia, you must by now have the romney vp app on your phone already. >> that's right. haven't we all downloaded that app? this is reminiscent -- obama did a similar thing in 2008. i don't think it was an app at that point because we all had

blackberries, but it was via text message that he alerted everyone that it was biden. but this is shaping up, if it's one of these guys on the short list, either jindal, 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. and you saw those phones ringing off the hook in those states and a lot of door-knocking happened because there was so much excitement around her. but you wonder if it's one of the people you're talking about so far if that's going to happen. >> john hilemann, i've 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 port lan, rob portman, 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 was frustrated when i was there about some spending issues. specifically, as you know, i wanted to offer a balanced budget over five years. and a lot of people didn't. i wanted to offer a 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 two years ago. kind of amplifies romney's message of fiscal strength, management savvy and getting

things done in washington. he's been a pretty 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. competence. really the only thing that is his weakness politically is that he was tied to george bush because he was tied to george bush for a year and a half. you see him there trying to address the one liability that he has. there's no perfect candidate. that's portman's weakness and he's trying to deal with it. >> nia, john has convinced me it's at least portman versus pawlenty. so how do you weigh the negatives of pawlenty versus portman's weakness 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 we saw 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 i think weakness for him is he has absolutely no foreign policy experience. portman does have some foreign policy by virtue of being in the senate e.'s on the armed services committee. so that i think are weaknesses 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. so i think he would be able to connect with some of those folks mitt romney hasn't been able to do. >> john, pawlenty came in second last time to sarah palin. is he going to come in second again? i think almost certainly. i agree with everything nia-malika just said, but i

would add one other thing. the biggest 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 debates he 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 at least come to a draw if not 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. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up -- guess who's being wicked hypocritical on the chick-fil-a controversy? mr. bill o'reilly who's called for more boycotts than he can remember. and in the "rewrite" congress is an alcoholic and nes to watch "fight club."

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anything. congratulations. you're one step closer to hitting bottom. >> tonight congress is one step closer to hitting bottom. 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 two 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 reelection with less than 100 days before that election. the main reason congressman steve latourette gave for not running for reelection 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 reelection campaigns. but no one -- no one has rewritten his attitude toward 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 ourselves on this fiscal cliff. if i thought my presence here could accomplish what we're talking about here today, i would stay. but the current atmosphere is a little bit like an alcoholic in my mind. i think the place has to hit bottom before they realize they have a problem and start to fix it. >> so steve latourette thinks

congress is an alcoholic who hasn't hit bottom yet, and he says grover norquist is the bartender. he talked about the simpson/bowles plan which reduces income tax rates but finds other ways to increase through taxation. when congressman latourette supported simpson bowles, he got a call from congress' bartender. >> when we rolled it out, grover norquist called me and 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 congress could really understand that congress' bartender is really serving them baloney, they might actually be

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what i tweeted was i'm a kentucky fried chicken fan. that's where my loyalty lies. >> chick-fil-a says that the mike hukabee-led 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. same-sex 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 dan cathy, don't buy his product. "talking points" is okay with that. but to pressure others to think like you is wrong. >> to pressure others to think like you is wrong. this is from bill o'reilly who's 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 ludacris. he told his viewers, i'm calling on all americans to say hey, pepsi, i'm not drinking your stuff. you want to hang around with ludacris? you do that. i'm not hanging around with you. joining me, mark thompson host of making it plain on sirius xm radio, a guy i like to hang around with. this brings out the madness on that side of the world, o'reilly pretending, oh, we've never done that, boycotts are unamerican, 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. first all, they like to argue that money is speech so certainly withholding money is speech. it's also very unwise for business. these are also individuals that

would like to encourage business. but, lawrence, lgbtq 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 gives 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 contradiction in the name of continuing to be discriminatory. >> and rush limbaugh, by the way, announcing that he's eating chick-fil-a now. he didn't say if he's having it for breakfast or lunch or dessert. we just don't know. >> he doesn't need to eat any more chick-fil-a. >> he doesn't. where does it go from here? >> again, i think it's unfortunate, and we have to be very, very clear and not separate these matters.