he loves basketball. i said the same thing. i said obama loves basketball. he want obama to do one thing, call him. >> he wants a call from president obama? >> that's right. he told me that. he said, if you can, dennis, i don't want to do war, but that's one thing he don't want. >> he said in the past that he would destroy the united states. >> i think that's coming from his father. >> sounds like you're apologizing for him. >> no, i'm in and out apologizing for him. i think the fact that he's a good guy to me, he's my friend. >> someone who hypothetically who's a murderer who still your friend is still a murderer. >> guess what, what i did, what i did, was history. don't hate me. don't hate me. guess what, don't hate me. >> there was a moment, and mike, i think you were there in 2004 in boston, where i actually got

carl bernstein in a split screen debating triumph, the comic insult. i think what we just saw rivals that. bizarre. what did you learn? >> i think it's either have an opinion or keep your mouth shut. >> how do you learn anything if you don't have an opinion? >> we'll talk after the show. >> what's you learn, mike? >> i learned brian's middle name is eunuch. >> that's awful. >> hug it out. >> you're in the family. >> nicole, prop 8, baby. >> right. 100 republicans signing on agreeing that the truly conservative position is to be for gay marriage is overturn prop 8. >> what did you learn? >> come back soon and talk about prop 37.

>> i was going to say something about brian shactman but i'm not going to. what time is it, mike? >> normally it's time for "morning joe" but right now it's time for chuck todd. >> thank you, team. m.g. there's one tegame with no cuts to report, the blame game. that's if both parties don't immediately leap into mid-term madness. also this morning, a deep dive into a remote corner of max with even pakistani troops don't go. and traditional man of mystery. the worm wiggles his way onto the global stage. is there anything to take away from dennis rodman's adventures in north korea? >> good morning. it's monday, march 4, 2013, and

this is "the daily rundown." now here's chuck todd. >> oh, wow. how about that. and that's a great response rate for our friends at merris in lovely keepsee, new york. we pick a new winner every day and it should be you. just about an hour from now, the president will nominate sylvia mathews burwell, the president of the walmart foundation as his next budget chief. he's a veteran of the white house and comparative outsider. she'll have the unenviable task of squaring off with the house republicans. little was done to stop the sequester, and both parties seemed content to blame each other while waving the white flag and allowing a sequestration to continue.

>> we have this sequester because the president demanded it. >> it's happening because a choice that republicans in congress have made. >> i think in many ways the president and the congressional leadership have moved beyond the sequester. >> a sequester somehowdown was avoided by doing nothing. some furlough notifications have already gone out, but the first cutbacks won't happen until april. in a sign of political exhaustion, both the president and speaker are also signaling they won't be battle over sequestration during the funding of the government fight that could have taken place to the end of this month, so it takes the prospect of a government shutdown completely off the table. >> the president this morning agreed that we should not have any talk of a government shutdown. >> the president doesn't believe in manufacturing another crisis. >> so there you go.

and believe it or not, there's still a little bit of optimism, but it has to happen much later this year, after this time-out, if you will. >> what i would like to see happen is that the president and republicans and democrats reengage where they left off with boehner, that we as republicans put $600 billion on the table. >> bipartisan compromise on revenue raising tax reform with serious entitlement reform. >> you can see how this is potentially coming together, although w been here before. the president did spend saturday making phone calls to senators in both parties who have been open to that kind of grand bargain. the bottom line is neither side wants to have a big budget fight in the next months. the white house wunts to de-emphasize the budget and focus on other issues. they are leery of headlines like this one that said stymied by a

house, obama looks to his legacy. though the story quotes from no one from the white house, quotes like this one from dccc chair of israel, they don't help the white house's cause. quote, the president understands that to get anything done, he needs a democratic majority in the house of representatives. to have a legacy in 2016, he will need a legacy in 2014. and this could be the message of the 2014 elections. the white house was very nervous about that story circulating this weekend. they claim they do not want to start the political campaign this early. i do think september, i'm a little optimistic. it's possible. probably? unlikely, but it's possible. the grand bargain could still be alive. at as republican governors expand provisions of healthcare reform they wasn't railed against, one issue still does unite the gop and that's a

commit to lower taxes, less spending and smaller government. over the weekend, congressional leaders aware of what it would take to keep their own jobs had one relentless message, no new taxes. >> the president got his tax hikes on january the 1st. he got his tax hikes. $650 billion of tax hikes on january the 1st. i'm going to say it one more time, the president got his tax hikes on january the 1st. >> can you here, and republicans got their spending cuts after sequestration. that's why i'm optimistic about a grand bargain in september. but senator republican leader mitch mcconnell drew a hard line. >> so far i haven't heard a single house republican -- that's been why the reason reaching a ground bargain had been hard to obtain. republicans have no political incentive to do so because it would cost them their jobs in a

gop primary. meanwhile, the candidate the party is eager to move on from, mitt romney sat down with an interview with his wife, ann, and boy, did they make it painfully clear they have not moved on. >> obviously, it was a winning campaign. it worked. >> do you think it was fair? >> no. >> the president had the power of incumbency. obamacare was very attractive. >> i believe it was the media's fault as well, is that he was not giving -- being given a fair shake, that people weren't allowed to see him for what he was. >> in some of the debates you get asked questions that are kind of silly. >> the great princess bride line, mostly dead. i'm mostly over it. >> watching it golden critical moment slip away. >> though romney blamed much on

his failure to check with minorities, he did say this. >> people should not be given citizenship to this country merely because they've come here illegally. >> these a harder line than everybody is taking these days, most people in the republican party. former florida governor jeb bush firmly planted his flag as a thinking-about-it candidate. >> are you going to run in 2016? >> that's way off into the future. i have a voice, i want to share my voice about how the conservative party can regain its footing. >> you will not definitively rule out a run for president in 2016? >> i won't. >> i'm going to have more in a sit-down with jeb bush tomorrow. republicans in california, by

the way, had their convention this weekend, and if you want exhibit a about what happens to a republican party when they utterly alienate an important demographic group, the california gop provides the lesson. the state party is trying to still recover from embarrassing defeats in november that gave democrats two-thirds majorities in the state senate. on saturday california republicans got a. talk from none other than karl rove. >> we need to be asking for the vote in the most powerful way possible which has to have people asking for the vote who are comfortable and look like and sound like the people asking the vote from. look, i'm norwegian. i look at my shoes a lot. i don't dance. i twitch. my message is this. get off your ass. >> california republicans, problems started with prop 187. they've never recovered with hispanics, and that's the future some in the party are staring

at. finally, as the president prepares to make his first stip to israel this month as president, it's day 2 of apac. this morning both vice president biden and israel's prime minister, benjamin netanyahu via satellite will address the group. here was texas senator john cornyn last night. >> israel remains a country where arabs can serve in parliament and heckle the prime minister. can anyone imagine jewish legislators being allowed to heckle a prime minister? me neither. and that goes to explain why americans stand with israel. >> biden started by saying, quote, you're not going to like this. today he's expected to be much more conciliatory while

previewing the president's trip. the question though, is is there a window to we engage in the peace process. last night defense minister barack addressed that issue. >> a two-state solution is the only viable long-term solution. >> today secretary of state john kir's meeting with the palestinian authority's abas. up next, breaking barriers in our meet the new members series as it continues, with a woman who's changing the face of the new york delegation. then picking a new pope. the process is underway as cardinals from around the world convene in rome. first, look at todd's politics planner. at 10:15 this morning, in

addition to the omb announcement, the president will nominate mccarthy to head the agency. and another big scientist to take over energy. to take over the energy department from steven chew. you're watching "the daily rundown" only on msnbc. [ female announcer ] research suggests cell health plays a key role throughout our lives. one a day women's 50+ is a complete multivitamin designed for women's health concerns as we age.

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time again to do something we love doing here on "the daily rundown." meet the new member. and today it's congresswoman ming. ming is the daughter of

taiwanese immigrants. ming launched her own bid for the state assembly in 2009 and served two years retiring gary ackerman. focusing on tax reform and public safety during her campaign, she easily won in the heavily democratic district. nice to meet you. >> good morning, chuck. thanks for having me. >> i want to start with sequester. cut through this a little bit. what's hype? what's real? what do you expect and what have you told your constituents? >> i think it's a very serious issue. i think there has been a lot of hype in terms of the timing. on day one of the sequester, obviously people were not going to feel the immediate impact, but as time goes on, look, everyone wants to reduce the deficit, but it's important that we're not doing is on the backs of our seniors, of our babies, our children and our working families. and so we need to find ways, not

just to, as they say, prune a tree, but learn how to water and degree a tree. >> you mean the president maybe oversold this last week? >> i think it's a very important issue, and of course we wished, especially on the democratic side, that we were able to remain in washington, d.c., to work on these issues. we want to make sure that, while we want to reduce the deficit, we need to find ways to grow the economy as well. >> what dow expect to be the biggest exact in new york. >> we in new york, new yorkers rely heavily on a lot of programs, whether it's the wic program, whether it's our military families, our men and women serving abroad and we need to protect them. but we need to make sure that government is able to take care of our families. >> i want to talk about immigration reform. a lot of times it's focused a lot more, just simply about

hispanics and mexican americans. obviously there is a faster growing asian population. what do you want to see in immigration reform, and what do you think is getting lost with respect to asian americans. >> i think it is this is an issue important to many people. we are all, every single one of us, the children of immigrants in the united states. and we talk about the important issues such as the dream act. it's an issue for me and my economic constituents. we have students here who have done well in school. we want them to be able to get the education of their choice, to get good jobs and pay taxes back into the economy. our legal immigrants, we have people who have come to this country legally, now applying for their relatives, their children, and because of the backlog, inefficiency of the immigration system, people and families are separated for long

periods of time. >> how do we deal with this? we've got the 11 million undocumented immigrants that are here. how do you make sure that what you're talking about with legal immigrants, that they get priority, and is there a concern, that the undocumented immigrants and the ones that are legal, that this whole thing is just going to be one big mass of you applicants? >> well, i think the senate came out with great first steps and i think they showed that people are able to work in a bipartisan fashion. i think what we need to do and what we're working on in the house is we're continuing to have conversation to make sure no one gets lost in the shuffle. >> should there be a pathway to citizenship for these undocumented immigrants or just a pathway to legal status? >> the best part about america is that people have come from all throughout the world for ages, and we need to make sure that we are all able to achieve one level of citizenship. >> so there should be a path there, even if there's a longer path for the undocumented, but

there should always end up being citizenship. >> in some way, shape or form. >> i'm going to ask you about, and it's something i'm going to be interviewing jeb bush for tomorrow's show, and he talks in his book about how the republican party has lost ground with asian americans. you said yourself, you were just telling me before we went on, a lot of asian americans registered at republicans the first time. and the republican party lost them. how did -- and you said the obama campaign went and got them. explain. >> growing up as a kid in queens, in new york city, many asian americans, whether they were first time immigrants or daughters and sons, many registered at republicans. i think republicans have lost the ability or skill to reach out to a lot of minority voters,

including asians. for example, the obama administration did a great job in making sure everyone they could reach knew about the national elections. it's important to get out the message, whether it's a phone call, whether it's a volunteer or a piece of literature. >> and you're saying in their language? >> yes. right. >> this was done in korean and others. >> we had posters, for example, in south asian languages, and spanish and russian. >> grace ming, thanks for being here. hope to catch up with you again. up next, from north korea to south carolina, yeah, two very strange places, first you won't -- and then dennis

rodman's romance with kim jung on. today's trivia, who was the first director of the office of management and budget? the first person to tweet the correct answer at chuck todd and at daily rundown with get a shout-out. my mother made the best toffee in the world. it's delicious. so now we've turned her toffee into a business. my goal was to take an idea and make it happen. i'm janet long and i formed my toffee company through legalzoom. i never really thought i would make money doing what i love. [ robert ] we created legalzoom to help people start their business and launch their dreams. go to legalzoom.com today and make your business dream a reality. at legalzoom.com we put the law on your side. i'm maria, and i have diabetic nerve pain. i felt like my feet were going to sleep. it was like pins and needles sticking in your toes and in your feet.

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to hear more patient stories, visit lyrica.com. a hairline fracture to the mandible and contusions to the metacarpus. what do you see? um, i see a duck. be more specific. i see the aflac duck. i see the aflac duck out of work and not making any money. i see him moving in with his parents and selling bootleg dvds out of the back of a van. dude, that's your life. remember, aflac will give him cash to help cover his rent, car payments and keep everything as normal as possible. i see lunch. [ monitor beeping ] let's move on. [ male announcer ] find out what a hospital stay could really cost you at aflac.com. when you lost the thing you can't believe you lost..y could really cost you when what you just bought, just broke. or when you have a little trouble a long way from home... as an american express cardmember you can expect some help. but what you might not expect, is you can get all this with a prepaid card.

spends like cash. feels like membership. on our radar this morning, mark sanfords a surprising first choice for managing his coupleback campaign, dennis rodman style. but first, 142 cardinals gathered at the vatican today to get to know one another. hype on the agenda will be recognizing the issues facing the next pope including the sexual issues candle.

only a week so then the cardinal electors can enter the conclave next week. once the conclave process begins next week, no one is allowed to talk to anyone outside of the conclave and they can't leave till the white smoke emerges from the chimney. there's still no date for the con chaif but hopefully next week so he can pressured over holy week which begins march 24th. convene elizabeth remains in the hospital. buckingham palace says the 86-year-old was taken to the hospital as a precautionary measure. now something stranger than fiction. you thought i was going to dennis rodman story, didn't you? former governor mark sanford

asked his ex-wife to be his campaign manager. there was some early talk that jenny might start a campaign of her own, but jenny opted not to run. she said no to this offer, even after he made one final appeal, saying he's pay her this time. now for a stranger story, former nba star dennis rodman returned from his trip with a message to president obama. he told abc's george stephanopoulos that kim jong-un wants a phone call from president obama. >> he wants obama to do one thing. call him. he loves basketball. and i said the same thing. i said, became loves basketball. let's start there. let's start there. >> rodman called kim jong-un a very humble man who doesn't want

war. rodman is the first american man to meet the newest leader of north korea. he went to film a documentary with vice media. hey, we used baseball with the cubans. why not basketball? taking a deep dive in one of the most corners of that country and of the world. it's a hot bed of activity and the last pliace many believe osama bin laden was hiding. she's going to be here to share her story. ♪

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already in use. >> military markets now dot its path. tribal elder says life today is better than it's ever been. >> there's not one thing that you need in life that you can't find here now. >> reporter: local commanders say with ten years of large scale military operations behind them, pakistan must take a people-centered approach. >> the pakistan army fights within its own borders, that all the people who reside in the tribal belt are not trysts. >> that was a report by nbc's pakistani correspondent anna navas, and she joins with with that story from that very dangerous region. so we assume that this region has always been assumed to be a safe haven for al qaeda, a safe

haven for the taliban. what is it? is it a safe haven for all of those terrorists? but what else is it? >> this is a part of the world that you can consider among the least-developed, least. educated, least accessible in the entire world. the central government in pakistan has never had any control over this control. at all. and the people who live there have never looked to the central government for services anyway. so the efforts that the pakistani military is making is really the first of its kind. and we're talking generations back. we're talking back to the time of british colonial rule. we're talking for the first time roads and markets, the kind of thing that can develop this community in a way it's never been developed before. >> is it a safe haven for the taliban, is it a safe haven for kaek because of the terrain? what makes it the safe haven for what we think all the

troublemakers of the afghanistan are residing. >> one is just the terrain. you need only fly over it to see these several thousand-high foot peaks, these communities that are totally cut off from one another, let alone the rest of the world. it's a great place to hide and imbed yourself in the local community, which is what military commanders tell us that they have been doing. it's just a tough place to monitor. >> how serious are the tack stan kn -- pakistanis this time? they were going to try to get control of -- what doe we call it -- >> it's fata region, federally administered tribal region. >> they've backed off before. every time they have, and it's

almost as if they had a datante with the taliban. >> if you look at the last ten years, it's been dotted by periods of intense fighting, and then peace deals that fell apart, sometimes within days. what they're doing now is a continuation of a strategy that has been evolving the last several years. they have been fighting. remember the taliban were once 100 miles of the capital. they have managed to push them back and secure and clear large areas. north swaziristan does remain a troubled area. >> has this also been a motivators for the pakistanis because if they can't get control of it they're going to have to deal with the fact they can use drones? >> they find the drone strikes there counterproductive.

they say it undermines our mission. they believe that it creates more terrorists than it kills. that said, this one place is the single largest landing spot for u.s. drone strike. so it's clearly a policy the u.s. believes in and they've been taking out big names with this program. >> all right. thank you. i will see you later today. i want to talk about your more personal experiences there. >> sounds good. >> you can see more of a m&a's reporting throughout the day on msnbc. i'm going to see her at 1:00 andual see her tonight on the nightly news. we'll have our gaggle after the break. first, i won't leave you without telling you the white house soup of the day. if it's monday, apparently it's tomato basil. i think it's the third or fourth monday in a row. don't forget to check out the website. we'll be right back. have you heard? herbal essences smooth and shine collections

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so first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. >> daily flashback to this day in 1933 when that now famous line was uttered by franklin delano roosevelt. i'm in for chuck todd, who went off to interview former governor jeb bush. turning to the big story of the day, the sequester blame game. the start of those budget cuts have not improved the chances of a deal. the president seems to be counting on public pressure to force the gop to reverse its position on the cuts. but speaker boehner says he's not feeling it and neither are his rank and file. >> there's not one member of our caucus who said one word to me

that was critical of the fact that we lowered taxes for 99.1% of the american people. i'm here to lead the fight against out of control spending, and i'm going to lead that fight as speaker of the house. >> ben smith is the editor-in-chief of buzzfeed. and erroll lewis. let's start with the white house strategy, because this has been the president's strategy for a number of weeks if not months now to try and get folks worked up. it hasn't worked yet. why and the white house going to think it's going to work over the next few months. >> i think if you look at the polls, you can see that the people are getting ready to blame the republicans, they are getting ready to blame congress for this if there's going to be blame. >> if there's going to be blame. >> the president went out and made his case. the argument that he should have

stayed in the beltway, in back rooms with people, doesn't make sense. the president has been making his case as anybody in politics would do, and he's trying to make sure that at least it's not going to be blamed on the democrats or the white house. will there be a general uprising? i don't think so. >> let me interrupt you quickly, we've got some live pictures. this is convene elizabeth. over the weekend the queen was admitted to a hospital. as you can see, they're leaving that same hospital. she was being treated for gastroenteritis. she's doing much better. the queen leaving the hospital there in great britain. >> it was actually a consequence of the sequester. >> ben, pick up where you left off, because the strategy here, as erroll seems to indicate, you think the strategy could work.

>> i think it's funny you started with that roosevelt quote, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. the white house in particular is trying to get people scared. boehner can't decide whether one day people can be scared or the sequester is fine. i think the problem is people have seen a series of these. it's the boy who cried wolf scenario. at the end of that stir, the boy does get eaten by the wolf. >> let's pivot here. you're making a face. >> i think we have to acknowledge that the president and the white house made two calculations here. they were reasonable calculations but they didn't come to fruition. one is republicans would cave because defense is the sacred cow. the other was that drumming up this public fear would prompt republicans to get afraid of the political consequences. they didn't. so whoever gets the blame in the end, i think what's undeniable here is that the white house was

planning on a different ending to this. and now they're sort of left feeling like, okay, how do we mover to the cr and the potential government shutdown that doesn't make it look like we asked for this? >> people are talking constantly about jobs. there is actually a quiet bipartisan agreement the pentagon spends too much money. >> unless you talk to john mccain or lindsey graham. >> with some exceptions. >> let's pivot to the other big story this week. i'm sure you all saw governor romney give his first interview. take a listen to just a snippet from that interview. >> a long and blistering primary where people are attacking one another and where the attacks are sometimes not on the mark but are creating an unfavorable impression, those things are not helpful. >> and he also went on to talk

about the debates, those things are not helpful. kind of an understatement there, to say the least. >> says the man who eviscerated any number of candidates along the way. you ask newt gingrich how he feels about how those primaries went. ask rick perihow it was to stand next to mitt romney when he was in full attack mowed. somebody's gonna say something bad about you. it happens. >> he didn't sound like he was totally over the loss yesterday. >> no, he sounded really disappointed. he said it kills me that i'm not in the white house to work on fixing the country's problems. i believe that. i believe that he genuinely thinks if he were here today in place of president obama, he'd be having a better go of it. i will say, and this might sound tangential, but i was really disappointed that mitt romney gave this first interview to chris wallis. nothing against chris wallis or

fax. >> you couldn't have been surprised. >> ifs wasn't, but he had this sheltered media apparatus where he didn't talk to younger viewers. that was a mistake, i thought. so it would have been great, had he given this first interview to someone at msnbc, or even "the view." to branch out a little bit and say, i can't just stick in this fox bubble i think would have been helpful. >> ben, one of the things he said yesterday, we got to reach out to more minorities. we've got to speak to more minorities. but then in the very next breath he basically says, the president, he had a lot of success with minorities because he gave hand-outs. >> it is probably true that the party has to. he's not the guy to do it. the feeling i have from that interview, he wasn't going anywhere. he didn't have anything new to

say. i think it was sort of a box checked as he moves on with his life. but i think if the party's going to be that, it's going to be marco rubio or jeb bush. >> trivia time. he asks, who was the first director of the office of management and budget? the answer, do you know the answer, errol without looking at the prompter? >> afraid not. >> george schultz. and congratulations to today's winner, not erroll lewis. it's pundinit. that was pretty tough. if you've got a political trivia question for us, e-mail us at daily rundown at msnbc. we will be right back. i'm jennifer hudson. the reason i'm still in this body feelin' so good isn't because i never go out and enjoy

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>> right now, you are looking at pictures here. queen elizabeth ii leaving a london hospital just a few moments ago. the queen had spent the night for treatment of a stomach ailment there. the 86-year-old queen had been hospitalized as a precaution, but otherwise is in good health and you can see the queen there, hopping into the car headed back to buckingham palace. presumably, all seems to be well with queen elizabeth ii. did you see hear the one about the former nba all star who became best buds with the leader of one of the world's most dangerous nations? it's no joke. >> he's a good guy to me. he's my friend. i don't condone what he does, but as far as a person to person, he's my friend. but as far as what he does -- >> someone who hypothetically is a murderer who is your friend is still a murderer. >> well, you know, seriously, i

think that's what -- that's what -- what i did, what i did was history. >> that is undeniable. we don't have time to talk about that outset. but then was this just a bizarre side show or was it dangerous? >> i mean, you know, the americans who kind of stuck with stalin, were referred to as youthful idiots. and there are very few people dumb enough to pal around with the north korean regime. but, like, he's the only idiot to do so. >> watching this whole thing unfold over the past week, i mean, it was -- you know, at first, it's like, oh, this is strange. this is weird. and then by the end of the week, you're like, what is going on? and then he comes back with a message from the president. kim young unwants you to call him. >> i am going to choose to believe that somewhere in that delegation and somewhere in that

craziness an actual important message might have passed. >> you don't believe that. >> we've seen stranger things. when they open up the archives and you find out how much was going on in the last days of the soviet union, i chose to believe that because otherwise it is -- >> look at this. it wasn't just the pictures and the embrace and apparently in addition to watching the exhibition game between the north korean team and the harlem globe trotters, he goes back to the palace and they party it up and there's dinner. then he spends a fair amount of time in the subsequent few days talking about how great of a guy he is. >> if you'd not been following this story you would watch and you'd say, why is dennis rodman in north korea, a. why is dennis rodman at a basketball game with kim jong un. b, why is dennis rodman talking to george stephanopoulos? it was a really bizarre week-long story. >> to say the least. this is when we do the shameless

plug. article, wh earl, what are you plugging today? and gillnobleavenue kind ofs.com. it's 40 years of great interviews. definitely worth a look. >> one is to check out the new york daily news's editorial today. and two, on the -- >> can you plug two things? >> yes, that happens. that's allowed. and two, on today's the cycle, we have the great tom brokaw on to breakdown the sequester fallout. boom. >> okay. that's -- i like the second. >> my reporter, rosy gray, is working on the best named media scandal, the peola scandal and in which a number of conservative bloggers were taking money from the malaysian government to plant stories favorable to it including everything from the huffington post and the washington times. >> i like that. we should have done a better job

of naming the sequester. >> i called it the great ax of 2013. >> that's not much better. that's it for this edition of "daily rundown." coming up, next join msnbc. it's chris jansing and company. here is your business travel forecast. all eyes on this major winter storm that's going to make its zurnny across the country over the next four days. it starts today out here in the plains. north dakota and minnesota getting the heavy snow, including minneapolis, 6 to 10 inches. tomorrow, it's chicago's turn for the heavy snow. then through the ohio valley into the washington, d.c. earlier on wednesday. details throughout the week.