think for some good reason. >> john nichols, washington correspondent. i'm reading your tweets at 11:00. will you get some sleep this weekend. >> i'll sleep when you sleep. >> that's "the ed show". the rachel maddow show starts now. happy friday. boy, what a friday it's been today. all right. i'm going to bottom line it right away. here is the big headline out of today's unexpected friday news dump of mitt romney 2011 tax returns. here is the big headline. mitt romney says that mitt romney is not qualified to be president. this has been a weird week. there's been a lot of fast moving developments but i do not think anybody could have predicted the week would end like this. you may remember back in july during mr. romney's big overseas

trip to europe in the middle east he sat down with abc news and spoke to them about his tax returns. he spoke about why we've not been able to see his tax returns despite the fact he's telling everybody what's in them. he said he's paid all his taxes. we have to trust him. here is what he told abc news at the time. >> i have paid all the taxes required by law. i don't pay more than our legally due. frankly if i had paid more than are legally due, i don't think i'd be qualified to become president. >> if i had paid more taxes than are legally due i don't think i'd be qualified to basic present. nobody who pays a dollar more in taxes than they legally owe is qualified to run for president. a weird assertion. it's weird for mr. romney because his own father when he ran for president in 1968 made it public knowledge that as a

rich man he declined to take certain tax deductions that he was legally allowed to take. was he saying his own father was not qualified to be president because he paid some more taxes than he had to. it was weird to assert when he said it in july. it was made all the more weird on today. what's the single worst of his entire presidential campaign, mr. romney released one year of his tax returns. his long awaited long promised 2011 tax returns. in the return we learned that mitt romney paid an effective tax rate of 14.1% which is probably lower than you but that's a higher tax rate than he could have paid legally. here is how the romney campaign explains it. they donated $4 million to charity in 2011, but as you can see here the romneys claimed a deduction of only $2.25 million

for those charitable contributions. they could have deducted all $4 million. in 2011 he paid more in taxes than was legally due. >> if i had paid more than our legally due, i don't think i'd be qualified to become president. >> ta-da. why would they put their candidate in the position of declaring himself unqualified to be president. last month he declared to the country in another interview that he never paid less than 13% in taxes over the last ten years. he's always paid more than 13%, he said. even though he said that turns out that was not going to be true in his taxes for this past year for 2011. in order to make that statement from last month true, mr. romney's accountants went back

and inflated his tax rate so it would comport with what he said. his previous statement about what he paid in taxes wouldn't be a lie. he unwittingly declared himself unqualified to be president of the united states. this is nuts. if he had filed normally taking the deductions he's entitled to make. he would have paid a lower tax rate. he deliberately overpaid the i.r.s. in order to purposely increase his tax rate on purpose and he explained that's why he was doing it. as it was put mr. romney was in the rather extraordinary position of selecting his own preferred tax rate and then working backwards from there. this whole thing is a mess for the romney campaign and maybe it was going to be any way but now we know what kind of mess it is in in these new tax returns we learned he made $13 million in

total income last year. aside from the gee whiz factor of making 13 million even though he hasn't had a paying job since 1999, even other millionaires pay way more in taxes. the average effective tax rate for your run of the mill millionaire is 25%. that's what the average millionaire in america ends up paying in taxes after all the things they do but rmitt romney is a special kind of millionaire. he pays 14.1%. how do you get ten points below? you get that by trying. you get that by working really hard at avoiding taxes. the romney's main tax return mentions entities based in the cayman islands on 28 separate pages. the romney campaign is insisting they have nothing to do with avoiding taxes. maybe his money just likes a

nice view. honestly, everything we know about mr. romney's financial history points to his involvement in decades and decades and decades of one tax avoidance scheme without the other. this house on gentle bend drive in missouri city, texas. mitt romney owns that house. every month the couple makes out a personal check to mitt romney for $600. they don't have the mortgage on that house through a bank. their mortgage is with mitt romney personally. why is mitt romney this one texas couple's mortgage lender. because of a tax avoidance scheme he got involved back in in the '80s. they refied with his this year. m marriott took advantage of auditing tricks. they got slapped with tens of millions of dollars in fines from the federal government. that's because son of boss was a

criminal tax avoidance scheme. it was at the center of mr. romn romney's run for governor in massachusetts. he said he filed taxes as a massachusetts resident but he declared his primary residence in utah in what the local paper described as an attempt of fax avoidance. his olympic horse not just a hobby for his wife. also a tax avoidance scheme. an attempted $77,000 write off on his tax returns. mr. romney's first release of his tax returns earlier this showed invests in switzerland, a swiss bank account where money can have a very nice view and can be shielded from american taxes. mitt romney's entire adult life has been one long boring plot to dodge taxes at one level or another. that's what rich people do,

certain kinds of rich people. that's what makes the specifics so exotic and therefore so interesting. that's why people want to see his actual returns for multiple years. they don't just want to take his word for it. today he released one year's tax returns but the other years still holding back. today they released a summary of 20 years. they are not releasing the tax returns. they are not releasing specific details. they are just leasing a summary of what tax rate he paid. he's had to release summaries of his financial situation in the past. mitt romney had to do that this year. rick santorum, rick perry, all these guys had to do that. mitt romney has hidden stuff that could have potentially been damming to him. we don't know much about it because he's never released much of the tax returns for us to compare them with. when he's released tax returns to compare with the summaries,

the comparison does not look good. here is what i mean. when he released tax returns for 2010, he had already made summary disclosures about his finances for that same year in order to run for office. we got the actual tax return and you could compare them and it turns out that in the tax returns were listed 20 different investment vehicles that were never listed in his disclosures including seven of the 20 that were overseas foreign investment vehicles. commenting on while it will juicy foreign stuff had been hidden in his disclosure forms the his spokeswoman said the candidates failure to include his swiss bank account in earlier financial disclosures were a trivial inadvertent issue. after months of stalling he leased the one additional year

of tax returns that he says the american public deserves to see. paul ryan had to give ten years of tax returns but we're only allowed to see two years from mr. romney. what he learned in the year he leased today is that obviously mitt romney is a zillionaire. 28 page ls in the cayman. the timing is incredible. i understand the campaign is thinking in terms of getting the bad stuff out ot once. we're having a bad day any way. it can get worse. it's a little bit crazy in terms of political strategy. in the same week that we get the new fresh evidence of mitt romney's lifelong enthusiastic pursuit of avoiding taxes. we also see how he talks about it behind cloedsed doors. while we get to see the

enthusiasm which he runs from the opportunity to pay taxes. we also see what he thinks about the 47% of americans who see themselves as victims and can't be convinced to take personal responsibility or care for their lives. while he's happy working full-time to lower his tax burden, other people paying low taxes disgusts him. >> 47% of the people will vote for the president no matter what. there's 47% with him. they pay no incomes tax. 47% of americans pay no income tax. >> it's real problem when you have half of americans that are not paying income tax. >> that's the real problem. the rest of the country is not paying enough. it's time for everybody else to do their part. chris hayes joins us in a moment. first, you want to know how bad the context was in which rom made the decision he would talk about his tax returns than

anything else. consider mr. romney did not just lose tim pawlenty. look at the travel schedule of this week of these three guys who are supposed to be top tier headliners. chris christie was in iowa which is not part of new jersey. rick santorum also this week, look. also in iowa. he's doing an iowa bus tour now. on wednesday of next week where is bobby jindal, not in louisiana. he's also going to iowa. when your own to tier surrogates are saying forget this guy. let's talk 2016 and me. then it's time to change the subject to anything even to your tax returns. [ woman ] dear chex cereal, you've done the impossible.

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for the dreamer, planning an early escape. for the mother of the bride. for whoever you are, for whatever you're trying to achieve, pnc has technology, guidance, and over 150 years of experience to help you get there. ♪ i have paid all the taxes required by law. i don't pay more than are legally do. frankly, if i had paid more than are legally due, i don't think i'd be qualified to become president. >> if i had paid more than are legally due, i don't think i'd be qualified to become president, except for this special circumstance that i'm paying more than is legally due because i'd like to become president. joining us is with chris hayes. chris, thanks you for being here. >> it's great to be here. >> the question that we will get to is the strategy of why now.

we will get to that. but substantively mr. romney paid more in taxes than he owed in order to make a statement to abc news from earlier in the summer retroactively true about 01:34:41:19 what he said his tax rate had 01:34:43:02 been. >> he pays about an extra $225,000 which is a lot of money to people, not that much to mitt romney to make that statement true. here is my favorite. he can file an amendment to the return after the election in which he claims that extra $1.6 million deduction and get the money back. the best part is when he's done and if he has lost or even if he's won, he just goes back and says i'm amending i return. i do want to take that full deduction. >> the amazing thing will be if he wins -- >> will he do that?

>> also notable that mitt romney in 2008 gave his campaign, what did he spend tens of millions of dollars. this time he's contributed essentially like $50,000 or something. this is a loan of $225,000 to the campaign. it's his biggest personal investment yet. >> that press release or that story about filing the amendment the day the election. it's an interesting set of questions. there's a question about what is morally acceptable. forget the law. as far as we know we're in the four square corners of the law. it's like what do we find to be admirable or neutral behavior and find condemnable. the thing i find condemnable about this is those 340 pages of his tax returns, 225 are to

shelter tax income from the government. it's one thing to take the deductions you're due. it's another to orient the entirety of your income streams to engineer them from the beginning to try in the most exotic fashion possible to minimize your tax liability. >> the romney line is there's not a lot of money in the cayman island but it's not there to avoid taxes. >> it's not possible. >> why would anything be in the cayman islands. >> i've talked to people at bain. bain says to you when they are recruiting, we structure these deals in ways that will minimize the tax liabilities. that's the pitch of bain. you're going to keep an extra 10% of your income which people like that. this is part of way it works. >> this is also difficult for mr. romney because of what else has happened about taxes this week. he's talking about and really

disdainful terms toward the second class citizenship of people not paying income taxes. he's not paying taxes. he hasn't had a paying job since 1999. this is investment income. in the same way that regular income is taxed. how does this politically and morally interact with the thing that he got caught on tape saying that so embarrassed him this week? >> it amplifies the bad message. there's a vision that the right holds. the right and conservative hold and some nonconservative hold and mitt romney holds is that nation is veering towards this point in these kind of super beings who are the job creators and in some deep core metaphysical sense are different than normal people. if you start attacking them with your petty slings and other rows

everything will fall down. this is a world view that they have that i think mitt romney shares. what we see is when you're looking at the actual social contract, those same people who view themselves as the pillars are well ching on the social contract. they're doing everything in their power to get themselves out of those obligations and this just reaffirms that. >> the idea that it's inherent in the job creator idea but also in the idea that the reason that people aren't paying income tax, things like the earned income tax were created by the government as ways to encourage the behaviors that are rewarded. if we're not challenging there ought to be a child deduction then we ought not be damming people who collect it. >> particularly when it was republican policy. can i say one more quick thing in. >> sure. >> brad malt is the trustee. this is a reminder to everyone.

remember rom says he has a mind trust the the man is his personal attorney. it's not a mind trust in any way that would be recognizable. >> there's no veil of ignorance. >> he can say let's make sure we pay 14%. that's not a blind trust. >> thank you very much. looking forward to your show tomorrow. also trying to regain some mojo was his budget slashing running mate paul ryan who did not have an ideal workday. i don't know how you friday was but you had a better day than paul ryan. that's next. [ male announcer ] let's say you need to take care of legal matters. wouldn't it be nice if there was an easier, less-expensive option than using a traditional lawyer? well, legalzoom came up with a better way. we took the best of the old and combined it with modern technology. together you get quality services on your terms, with total customer support. legalzoom documents have been accepted in all 50 states,

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if you're the republican presidential campaign you have two people on your ticket. you have two guys. you also have a very fragile lead in the poll among older voters. you must maintain or increase that lead among seniors if you want any chance of winning the election in november. there's a big speaking engagement coming up in front of aarp, the american association of retired persons. the voters you have and that you must keep. sensitive issue. which of your two guys do you send? do you send the old guy? the one who is 65 years ole and famous for being a great man or

do you send the other guy? do you send your senior citizen or the young blue eyed ball of lean muscle who is famous for his plan to kill medicare and want to privatize social security? which guy? old guy or guy with plan to kill medicare. which of the two guys do you send? >> the first step to a stronger maryland care is to repeal obama care because it represents the worst of both worlds. [ boo ] . >> i had a feeling there would be mixed reaction. >> that didn't sound that mixed. bonuses all around for the staffers who made that decision. we've got more ahead on that. stand by.

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and the first-ever es hybrid. this is the pursuit of perfection. the criticism of mitt romney this week from his own side, from republicans is essentially of two different varieties. first, there are some people who are criticizing him for his views, for his campaign message whands he says on hidden camera. that's mark mckinnon says how

can anyone support a candidate with this vision of the country and david brooks saying that mitt romney doesn't know much about the country that he inhabits and lost any sense of social compact of this country. that's one variety of criticism. i can't believe we pick this guy. this guy would make a horrible president. a lot of people making that criticism are being derided as not real conservatives. the other variety is not at all id idea logical. they're criticism is he's running bad campaign. when the campaign released more tax information today, alex castellanos said at first i thought this was an april fool's joke. i can't imagine why they would do this. there's 40 days left and you've made more of them about mitt's

taxes. the criticism is the back stabbers who are leaking things like there to politico. romney associates are baffled that such a successful corporate leader has created a team with so few lines of authority and account bl accountability. they are trashing their own candidate. the criticism of how mr. romney is campaigning and why he's losing is also focused a lot this week on the schedule. he's not campaigning very much. his spare campaign schedule worries some republicans. fund raising trumps rallies in romney's schedule. his light public schedule has led some gop donors to grumble. from the wall street journal, gop senators offer romney advice. what's the advice. the nominee should be spending more time campaigning in official states. he was asked about that criticism and asked if he will do more campaign vents or

campaigning harder. his response to a reporter who asked him that was this. quote, haha. we're in the stretch, aren't we? look at those clouds. it's beautiful. look at those things. it's such a strange answer you have to think he's uncomfortable maybe with the premise of the question. are you going to start campaigning harder? is that a very disorienting question. is it offensive. were the clouds that lovely. even if the prospect of campaigning nationally for the presidency is an overwhelming thing early in the process he's right that we are in the home stretch of the campaign but the important consequence of that is it makes campaigning less overwhelming at times like this. it's less of a daunting prospect. the map of places you need to campaign gets smaller, not bigger. it's clearer and clearer each day which states are in play.

within those states campaigns know by now in which counties they need to wrack up their big margins. in those counties can zero in even further within individual counties focusing on which specific voters and counties and states are the ones that they need. presidential candidate at this stage of the race ought to be able to answer that question about how hard he is campaigning easily. frankly, he ought to be able to campaign harder in those districts. how the two side ds do that focusing in is super interesting and it changes with each election cycle. naral pro-choice america is an abortion rights group. they briefed reporter on what they are doing with their $2.5 million. they narrowed it down to nine states. they picked out 25 counties.

within those 25 counties they have identified to the person 338,020 specific women who they believe they need to persuade. they voted for president in 2008 and who are pro-choice but they plooef they are likely to vote against president obama or more likely to not vote at all. naral has a very specific message about this election and their endorsed candidate that is targeted to those women and they will use direct mailers and live phone calls and more phone calls to try to move them. 338,020 of them and they know exactly who they are. here is another case. everybody knows that if you have to pick one swing state to win, you would pick florida. florida has the largest number of votes. the polls are tight right now in florida. knowing it's important and knowing you want to win florida is only about step one and a

half in a 20-step process. who exactly do you have to turn out? who exactly do you have to target? it's imper cal questions that have em per cal answers. look at the pattern. as the age groups get older president obama does work. he does great with younger people but he's losing among older people in florida. look at the latest numbers from florida, same pattern. same story. obama is winning overall in each poll but his support is totally dependent on specific age groups. you see the same thing again. the same pattern in the data from fox news's latest polling. president obama's support is high among younger voters but it drops off and mr. romney is winning with older voters. if you're a political technician and trying to win the state of florida for your can understand, this polling pattern is not just an interesting fact about how this state is likely to vote.

what you're looking at right there is actionable intelligence. what political messaging is going to be most effective for winning this state giving these age specific numbers? you do not have to guess. it's in the numbers. look from that same fox news poll. look at this question. regardless of how you might vote, which presidential candidate do you trust to do a better job on protecting medicare. president obama winning ta question in florida by a 13-point margin. the people who want barack obama to win florida are pressing that advantage and the people who want mitt romney to win are trying to eliminate that president's advantage. they are doing it in an intensely targeted way with this crucial block of older voters in florida that everybody knows they have to persuade. with that is mind listen to this radio ad that just started running there. >> hello. >> jeffrey, it's your mother.

>> how are you? >> i'm good. >> what are you doing? >> i've been watching tv all day but it's making my head spin. >> what do you mean? >> these adds about medicare is confusing. >> i've read about it. what do you want to know? >> what's the truth about romney and ryan. >> the plan does end medicare. that's what the wall street journal said. >> doipts like the sound of that. >> seniors would wind up paying over $6,000 more per year. >> that's a fortune to me. >> romney would make drastic cuts to medicaid too. >> two-thirds of seniors rely on medicaid for nursing home care. >> that's scary. >> go to this website. medicareromneyryan.com and have a look for yourself. >> okay. take care. >> paid for by seiy cope which is responsible for the content of this advertising not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. >> that's how you win florida.

that's a union that supports president obama. it's a medicare specific message targeting in a flattering and kindly way with a really good actress, right? older voters who are concerned about medicare. makes the case if you care about medica medicare paul ryan and mitt romney are the last people that should get your vote. as that radio ad is launched, the romney campaign launched this tv ad for the same state. >> mitt romney and paul ryan get it. medicare is going broke. that's not politics. it's math. anyone who wants to lead medicare like it is for letting it go bankrupt. my mother is 81 and depends on medicare. we is save it without changing hers but only younger americans accept that our medicare will be different than our parents when we retire in 30 years. after all they did for us, isn't that the least we can do. >> i'm mitt romney and i

approved this message. sdp >> you see the problem with the message. we need to drastically change medicare. might be okay for people using it now. also i have a mother. i want to throw the word bankrupt. if you like medicare we have some serious changes in mind for it. the democratic message is the republicans want to make serious change pps the republican message is the republicans want the make serious changes to medicare. this doesn't usually happen this way. when they are fighting over the same voters on the same issue but the republicans campaign verifies and underscores the validity with this usucrucial gp of people. i know that mitt romney approves that message but i bet barack obama approves that message too. joining us now is karen finney because i mentioned naral, she is a board member at naral. thank you for your time. >> good to be with you.

>> you're a political pro. what does it mean when one side is running ads saying how scary the other side's position is and the other side is saying the exact same thing? i feel this is rarely the way fights go. >> we're all saying we agree that the republicans want to make drastic changes to medicare. i think it goes to the point that you made earlier and why we look at things like honest and trustworthiness and shares my values so closely in the polling. there's an agreement that republicans want to make a change. the question for voters is who do you trust? if changes have to be made who do you trust to be the steward of those changes? they go into that conversation with a deficit. democrats largely are more trusted on the issue of medicare than republicans. they're already starting with a trust deficit on an issue where

they haven't locked in on a message that's going to get them even with democrats. as we saw from the aarp response today. >> we played a clip of paul ryan being booed when he talked about wanting to repeal obama care. he was booed throughout his speech. he was heckled and there were cat calls. i once asked nancy pelosi, i said when george w. bush came back and he said the thing he wanted to spend his political capital on was privatizing social security, how did you beat that? she said there was a big fight about whether to put up our own plan. i quashed all that. i said we have plan. we do have plan on social security. it's called social security. she felt that playing pure defense on that, we need to protect this thing that americans know and love was the way that president bush not only

lost that fight but i think it really scuttled a lot of his -- it was part of the reason his second term was scuttled. >> i remember the meetings around that very well. part of the calculation there is the majority of americans do not trust republicans on this issue. president bush really put himself out there and then he didn't frankly have an answer that asaged people's concerns. that's the biggest problem. when you talk about the romney-ryan plan there's so many gaps that they don't have answers for, that's part of why they're not able to win on that. democrats are saying here are the changes. here is the changes they want to make. romney-ryan don't have an answer for that. that's what hangs the people's minds. >> one last question for you on the technical side of this.

i'm marinating in this. i notice that mitt romney is leading in the no swing state polls. the polls where mr. romney is leading in the swing states are almost polls that stand out because of their methodology. he's leading with calling land lines only and ignoring cell phones. as a former dnc spokesperson, what do you think that means? >> here is what is going on there, when we're talking about people who are using land line, those are more traditional republican voters. they are likely to be older. this tracks with what you were saying in the intro. voters for whom the cell phone is the primary way to contact

them. they are more transient and younger and diverse. not surprising that's how you're seeing the number. one point i would make on how this polling is breaking down, it's not actually telling the us all the data in terms of the ethnic changes and demographic changes. barack obama won the state of virginia but he lost the white vote. it was the black vote that made the difference. the polls don't really capture a dynamic like that. we can look at the polls to get a snapshot but understand there are other things going on underneath that as you pointed out that's the kind of data that the campaigns are looking at as they go county by county and state by state. >> karen finney, thank you. i appreciate it. one story we did this week that got way, way, way more attention than any of the other stories that we did. it will surprise you when i tell

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about 40 minutes into our editorial meeting every day the whole thing devolves into us making jokes and saying things

that cannot be said on cable tv. somebody says we'll put that on our imaginary late night weekend show where we cut loose and break the rules. we don't have that show but there is that show produced and performed by people way better at us. >> romney did not apologize pr his comments though he did say they were not elegantly stated. he meant to say 47% of americans are victims and have a sense of entitlement ma lady. as for his claim it's not his job to worry about americans that don't pay taxes, i wouldn't worry, it's looking less and less like lit be your job. >> that's from the saturday night live special they did this week. that special is going to air here on msnbc at 10:00 p.m. tonight right after this show which is very exciting. you're not going to prison. you're going to that. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro.

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i'm also a survivor of ovarian a writand uterine cancers. i even wrote a play about that. my symptoms were a pain in my abdomen and periods that were heavier and longer than usual for me. if you have symptoms that last two weeks or longer, be brave, go to the doctor. ovarian and uterine cancers are gynecologic cancers.

symptoms are not the same for everyone. i got sick...and then i got better. one of the main reasons barack obama is president of the united states right now is because he was against the iraq war from the start. as a state senator he spoke about against the invasion of iraq saying he was not against all war but he was against that war. he was never against the afghanistan war. when he became president he quickly made clear that he would keep his commitment to end the war in iraq and he made clear the war in afghanistan would grow. at the end of his first year in office he announced a surge of tens of thousands of troops into afghanistan putting more americans there than george w. bush did. the president insisted the surge would not last forever. he said that surge in troop numbers had to be over by roughly now, by the end of

september 2012. a little before the enof the month the pentagon has announced the surge into afghanistan is over. there had been as many as 100,000 americans on the ground. now it's down to 68,000 which is still a huge number especially when you consider how little political attention those 68,000 americans get. our ongoing war in afghanistan is not much of an issue because one of the two sides doesn't want to talk about it at all. the war mr. romney said did not come up in his speech because the speech wasn't just a laundry list of issues. it was for things he thinks are important as in not the war. our war is not a major issue in the presidential race. that's a convenient reason not to talk about it even with 68,000 americans there risking their lives every day. there's one thing i want to point out but it's important. it's a misunderstood thing about

what americans care about and what politicians might find really rewarding to talk about and frankly what the media might find if we chose to cover this more. the war, people fighting the war and how those people get treated when they come home. here it is. anythi in addition to this tv show, we have a website. it's our blog. we also have a facebook page. just as an example here is something we posted this week about tim pawlenty quitting the campaign to become a bank lobbyist. that's the number of people who liked that post. this number right here is the number of people that have commented. anybody can comment and we really do read the comments. look at this. that is the number of times people shared this thing about

tim with their friends. they reposted what we posted on their own facebook pages. the post can go from living on our page to living on your page with just a click of that share button. that's an important metric. these are all important how people are interested in something and how valuable it is to know the thing. it has over 3,000 likes. it has over 500 comments. it was shared over a thousands times. a lot of people telling people that some piece of news they got from us was interesting and other people should know about it too. it happens like that a lot. for the last month an average facebook post got about 3800 like, about 1200 people commented and it was shared a thousands times. that's our average until wednesday. on wednesday republicans in the senate blocked a bipartisan veterans jobs bill that was paid for. it was paid for, five republicans across the aisle to vote for it with the democrats

but the rest of the senate republicans voted against it including four senators who had written parts of the bills themselves but then they voted no or jobs for veterans. we reported that story on this tv show and we posted about it on facebook. put up those average numbers again. nose were our monthly average numbers before wednesday. here is what happened when we posted about republicans killing this bill. you ready? that post got up to four times as many likes facebook wide as usual. it got 15 times the number of comments. it go 16 times more people shared that post onto their facebook pages from ours. remember our average numbers over the last month are especially high because of the political conventions and yet republicans killing the veterans jobs bill that blew almost everything else we've ever done out of water.

we know generally if people are paying attention to stuff we produce for this tv show by our overall ratings which have been lovely. thank you very much. in terms of getting specific, in terms of seeing and measuring the impact and your interest in one specific story, this is shocking. i know there's a presidential campaign going on right now. i know it's burning white hot. i can show you there's genuine, even fervent interest about how we are treating the men and woman coming home from the longest wars in history. it's not my impression, pst a fact. people don't just care about a story like this. they want to share it with their friends. to my friends in the media i say don't cover stories like this because you're a good person or trying to make a statement. cover the war and the military and people coming home from the wars because you are a craven