regarded figures in national security in washington. former chairman of the joint chiefs, admiral mullen and ambassador tom pickering. nonpartisan serving both parties for different administrations. they conducted an extensive review of this. they said they have access to all the information they needed, had access to all the people they needed to talk to. they produced an unsparing report with a serious of very critical observations and very serious recommendations every single one of which the state department has adopted. so that's the way the system should work, and it worked that way because the president and secretary of state insisted that it work that way. >> jay, we come back to what you said. you said that the only changes that were made by either the white house or the state department were stylistic in a single word. what we see here is that the state department raised objections about the references to ansar al sharia, raise ed

objections to the fact the cia warned about terror threats in benghazi prior to the attack. those subjects were taken out of the cia talking points at the direction of the white house based on -- >> no, they weren't. first of all -- the only -- this process, everybody is an equal player in this process, says everybody's concerns have to be listened to and taken into account. but ultimately, these were intelligence community talking points that the intelligence community, led by the cia, had -- >> changed because of objection. >> john, could i finish? you had a long time there. that the intelligence community has to sign off on and believe represents the intelligence community's view of what they knew at that time about what happened. and, again, this would be more significant if we didn't acknowledge from the beginning that extremists were likely involved, that we didn't acknowledge from the beginning that it could very well have been ansar al sharia that was involv involved, al qaeda, itself, or other al qaeda affiliates.

this is an effort to accuse the administration of hiding something that we did not hide. in fact, we spoke publicly about it. the secretary, i mean, the ambassador to the united nations who was the lead administration official talking about this that weekend, spoke openly about that possibility, and every bit of information that's come out about what we know happened in benghazi has been a result of information provided by various agencies of the administration. this skrainvestigation, in fact continues to this day. last week the fbi released photographs of individuals they believe might be connected to the attack on benghazi in their effort to bring those people accountable. that's the important business that remains to be done when it comes to benghazi. >> just a clarification -- >> last one. >> when you said what you said, did you know that this had gone through 12 versions and that there had been extensive changes made? were you aware of that at the time? >> john, there's always a deliberative process, there's always input by agencies. what i -- i knew that.

what i also knew was that the cia on saturday morning said, we're going to draft these points. they drafted those points and those points were delivered virtually unchanged with the one change i mentioned with members of the administration for use. >> ask you a slightly different way. do you acknowledge your initial characterization of the white house's involvement was to some ex-tense a mischaracterization of the extent to which the white house was involved in the evolution of those talking points? >> i think it's really important to examine now the information, again, we provided congress months ago which they have chosen for political reasons to leak today. which is their prprerogative, i suppose. the fact is, the white house's involvement to the talking points generated by the cia that saturday was to make the single change, subject the single change. by the way, the white house suggests the change. everybody signs off or doesn't. because it was a matter of fact. i think people were fine with

it. and even prior in the deliberative process that i was referring to that john was talking about, the white house involvement in the actual -- in any changes that were made to the so-called talking points was extremely minimal and nonsubstanti nonsubstantive. >> why not come forward initially and say friday night white house officials were involved in the interagency process that you've been describing? why not offer that information at the start? >> again, there was no intent here to do anything about answer the question, which the questions were related to -- this was the republican accusation that everybody was very excited about at the time, that did the white house change the intelligence community's assessment of what happened? did the white house tell the intelligence community to say that there were demonstrations? and the underreported fact of all the revelations, today, is that these documents bear out what we said all along. the answer is no. the answer is no.

>> speaker boehner -- i have a few more questions, jay. speaker boehner asked for you to release the e-mails. house officials are asking they get more documentation about the saturday september 15th meeting at the white house. >> i think they're asking for e-mails they've already seen, that they were able to review and take extensive notes on, apparently provide verbatim information to folks. i think -- including the speaker's house. maybe he's unaware of that. >> one more on the irs, is the president concerned about the allegations? and will he make sure that those who are involved are held accountable? >> allegations of what, sorry? >> the irs story. >> i think i made clear -- i haven't spoken to the president about that, but you can be sure that if there was inappropriate conduct here that he would want it thoroughly investigated and we would not tolerate that. bill? >> when did the white house become aware -- >> good afternoon. we have been watching the white house briefing delayed for several hours with spokesman jay carney taking heated questions

on those benghazi talking points. that after reports that in edits from the state department, references to al qaeda warnings were taken out. questions about just how much the white house was involved in those edits and what was the motivation have been the subject of much scrutiny coming largely from republican quarters. and we just heard our own white house correspondent kristen welker asking jay carney, white house press spokesman, questions. we'll get to her later. let's go straight to our panel. with us from washington, msnbc political analyst, and soon to be msnbc host, karen finney. in philadelphia, lehigh university professor, james peterson. karen, what is your reaction to this revelation that there were 12 versions which contained what have been described by members of the press as extensive changes to the talking points? >> i find it absolutely absurd and an obscene waste of time. i have to tell you, martin, having been a part of this kind

of process where, i mean, and literally, i think as some our reporting earlier today indicated, we are talking about words were moved around. one case a sentence was taken out. not a sentence of consequence. when you have an it rative process, there are going to be changes. the bottom line is, i think this is what jay is getting to, did anything change that changes our understanding of what happened then and what we know that? i think the point jay has been making very well, frankly, is, no, actually what's been revealed today basically is exactly what they've been saying all along fairly consistently. one point that i will make that hasn't been raised -- >> just before you do that, karen, i just want to put this to you. because state department spokesperson victoria nuland asked the cia to delete a paragraph because, and i'm using her words, "that could be used by members of congress to beat up the state department for not paying attention." >> right.

here's the -- i mean, again, i think in this instance -- >> that sounds quite significant, doesn't it? >> it does, however, what do we know about the behavior of the gop? we know that congressman chaffetz leaked into a hearing a cia installation that was supposed to be secret, by the way. we know time and again republican leaders of the house have leaked important information that if a democrat ever did that, i mean, they would be, you know, tried for treason. so my point is, i think we need more information about what was her concern. not just about necessarily from a political context, beating up the state department, but, again, there could have been a concern that, well, if we put this out there right now and we don't have the facts to back it up, because we don't know all of the facts, that could create a problem, let's go with what we know. let's go with what we are most comfortable putting out. remember, this was a very sensitive situation. you had petraeus saying we also don't want our enemies to know how much we actually know. >> right.

professor peterson, in these talking points that apparently were revised, there was this removal of references to terrorism and specific terrorist groups. now, that actually proved to be the right thing to do because the initial claim of responsibility was subsequently rescinded and refuted, wasn't it? >> that's exactly right. and, again, karen is right here. if you were to compare this talking points memo to other memos about anything in government, you would see there are lots of edits, nots of revisions, lots of changes. i wish we could separate the policy issues here from the politics. if we want to pay respect to the lives that were lost in this incident, we want to address the issue of how do we wrestle with making interventions overseas that don't continue to exacerbate violence but hope to reduce violence overseas and at home. we can't do that as we're bickering and fighting over the politics of this. aft the end of the day, we need more support for our military. we have to be more strategic and more tactical about how we

prosecute the war on terror if we're going to continue to prosecute it. all this discussion around benghazi, i'm sorry, it is a distraction. it doesn't get to the core of the matter which how are we going to fund and resource folk in these outposts, be better about how we're communicating across agencies, how can we be effect if delivering the information to the public? none of that is coming out of this because there's distraction, focus on things that don't really matter at this particular point in time. >> karen, do you think the description of benghazi, though, might have been different if they had included in the talking points the cia's previous anxiety about threats to the consulate in benghazi? >> i don't think we know the answer to that, martin. i mean, part of the problem is this was clearly a complicated situation. facts on the ground were changing quickly. the information coming in. i mean, i think you could say that we would criticize them if certain things had been in there that weren't thein there. you can always in hindsight pick

at this. what concerns me, though, to point to part of what james was saying. that is there may actually be a real problem here, but we're not getting to that because we're playing politics. one of the problems we absolutely know is this issue about a need for increased budget for security for our embassies. let's have that conversation. >> no, because, cakaren, nobodys interested in the fact fiscal year 2012 republicans voted to remove $331 billion from security budgets at international consulate and embassies. nobody is interested in discussing that. that was the year when ambassador stevens was murdered. >> i believe that is what the gop is most terrified of having to talk about. because they know they screwed up. their us a tearty measures. who did what to whom in talking points? what words were changed when by whom? rather than focusing on i think

what is the critical issue is what do we need to do to make sure it doesn't happen again? >> right. professor peterson, do you get the impression this week involved a bait and switch by republicans? at the beginning of the week, we were promised the most explosive testimony from whistleblowers who were literally going to light up the ferment with revelations, yet we come to the end of the week and we're back on talking points we were discussing months ago surrounding susan rice, ambassador susan rice. >> well, martin, we covered this earlier in the week. we explained what we knew from what had leaked from those so-called whistleblowers' testimony wasn't any revelation. right wing media beat us up over that particular story. you're right. here we are again. i still wish -- maybe you or karen could answer this for me. what has been covered up here? what is the evidence or where is this striking evidence there's been some kind of cover-up about what happened? i mean, we now know what happened, how it happened, how it unfolded. maybe there was miscues in communication or too much ed editing in the talking points.

but is there some kind of elaborate and deliberate attempt on the part of members of the obama administration or the state department to cover up the information surrounding this particular attack? can someone please just tell me, what is the evidence for why we're having this conversation? >> professor peterson, when jason chaffetz was asked that question on fox news, specifically, what is the cover-up? his answer was, "that's why we're having another hearing." >> that's chronological, though. >> that's why we're having a press conference. that's why jay carney is answering questions. >> from a national security perspective, let's go back to one of the things that we know. that is at the time, we did not want our enemies to know we had a cia installation there. thanks to congressman chaffetz, that later was out. >> of course. absolutely. >> there were other things we did not in the immediate aftermath want our enemies to know that we knew. let's just say a decision was made to take out some of these references because of that. at the worst, maybe somebody said, and you know what, politically, maybe that's not something we need out there

right now given that we don't want our enemies to know and we need to get a better grasp on what's going on here. again, that has nothing to do with what actually happened. that has nothing to do -- all of tho that is in the aftermath. the talking points were written in the aftermath. what we should focus on is, what happened on that day and what can we do to make sure it doesn't happen again? >> karen, once again, you made a fundamental error because these hearings are about injuring a potential candidate for the presidency in 2016. and that's what rand paul said that he doesn't believe hillary clinton should ever hold a public position again. that's what these hearings are about. karen finney, professor james peterson, thank you both. as i said, we'll have more on the benghazi controversy throughout the hour. but coming up, a delicate dance within the republican party. how to appeal to a broader demographic while not unnerving the base. don't trip, senator graham.

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the loudest shot against any kind of immigration reform has come not from a sitting senator, but from a former member. i'm talking, of course, about jim demint, who gave up his south carolina seat last year to become head of the heritage foundation. mr. demint's so-called think tank put out a report this week which appeared to defy evidence-based reasoning by claiming that immigration reform will cost american taxpayers in excess of $6 trillion.

that's correct. $6 trillion with a "t." now, the claim was so fantastical that even republicans have turned away from it. matters got even worse when it was revealed one of the study's authors, jason richwein, is also the author of a harvard dissertation entitled "i.q. and immigration." in which he says "no one knows whether hispanics will ever reach i.q.parity with whites, but the prediction new hispanic immigrants will have low i.q. children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against." we're joined now by victoria de-francesco soto, contributor for msnbc latino, and nbc. victoria, we actually have breaking news about this so-called scholar at the heritage foundation. turns out he's just resigned. it happened moments ago. what about this leading

intellectual saying immigrants have an intellectual inferiority that will never be improved? or does this show ph.d.s at harvard are now as cheap as chips? >> absolutely not. a lot of my close friends are harvard ph.d.s -- >> they can't possibly be lat o latinos. >> we would hope any good social scientific -- >> they can't possibly be because mr. richwein says your i.q. is well below that so you can't possibly get into harvard. >> and the problem here is with this methodology. and the methodology is looking at this very narrow scope of the i.q. measures and i have not looked at the study in its entirety, but beyond that, you're ignoring the fact that immigrants in the united states have the highest entrepreneurial rates. that immigrants here in the united states fill every level of occupation, from the high-tech to the low-tech. so he's just perpetuating this stereotype. martin, is your troublesome to me, aside from the fact he has

resigned, is we're starting to see these ugly racial arguments about immigration bubble up. we see it here with this co-author of this study. we saw it with the hell hole comment by sessions. we're also seeing -- >> that was absolutely astonishing. i mean, have you ever heard a sitting -- >> i'm not surprised. >> -- senator refer to a nation as a hell hole? >> sadly, i'm not surprised because those racial antipathies, that stereotype is always simmering under the surface, and now that they see that immigration might actually pass, you start to see those -- >> extraordinary. >> -- racial social arguments come up. once they see that the economic arguments aren't actually persuading the party and the party base, they come up with the racial argument. >> victoria, i want to give our audience the benefit of actually hearing this high-quhaality debe going on in the senate with regard to the immigration reform. >> the people coming across the southern border live in hell holes. they don't like that. they want to come here.

our problem is we can't have everybody in the world who lives in a hell hole come into america. >> i think my colleague doesn't mean to suggest that while there's poverty in mexico and some really poor areas, it's not a hell hole. >> i'm looking forward to those senators telling prime minister david cameron that britain is a hell hole, because i happen to have emigrated from britain to here. so that must also be a hell hole. london is a hell hole. mexico is a hell hole. where else is a hell hole? >> well, anywhere that is not the u.s. is, according to what sessions is saying, a hell hole. anywhere that sends immigrants to this great country. you know, these are folks who are coming to seek a better life for their family. and instead of focusing on that, he focuses his disparaging remarks on the sending country. and we're also seeing very disturbing remarks coming out of senator lee who says, look, i don't want immigrants here on a path to citizenship, but if we're going to let them in,

we're going to make it easy for them to be domestics. they can be our chauffeurs. they can be our nannies. they can be our cooks, but that's about it. again, we're seeing this perpetuation of the racial stereotype of hispanics as only being able to fulfill certain types of jobs. >> i think we can conclude if these individuals who refer to these nations as being hell holes, i think it's obvious that they may correspond to that abbreviation, a-hole. thank you, victoria defrancesco soto. coming up, we'll talk to our reporter who was inside the white house briefing on benghazi. stay with us. one...

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one a day 50+. [ agent smith ] i've found software that intrigues me. it appears it's an agent of good. ♪ [ agent smith ] ge software connects patients to nurses to the right machines while dramatically reducing waiting time. [ telephone ringing ] now a waiting room is just a room. [ static warbles ] the white house briefing this afternoon was originally slated for 12:30, but as new questions arose over the handling of benghazi information, that start time slid all the way to 3:30 and, indeed, it's still ongoing. spokesman jay carney pushed back on the idea the white house tried to color the talking points for political purposes.

>> the whole effort here by republicans to find some hidden mystery comes to nothing because the president called it an act of terror. the ambassador to the united nations, that very sunday, that has caused republicans so much concern, talked about the possible involvement of al qaeda and ansar al sharia. all of this is a distraction. >> joining us now, nbc's kristen welker who we saw earlier asking questions about jay carney. kristen, how would you characterize the response of mr. carney to the talking points issues that were raised by yourself and other journalists in the briefing room? >> reporter: well, martin, look, there is no doubt the white house is playing a little bit of defense today. you heard that during the white house press briefing. they also organized what is referred to as a background briefing with a number of senior administration officials and a select group of reporters.

i was also in that briefing. that lasted for about an hour. and the message was the same. both during that meeting and during jay carney's briefing which you just referenced which is the white house pushing back against these allegations that they in some way mischaracterized their involvement in those talking points that susan rice had during those sunday shows when she basically said the benghazi attack stemmed from a spontaneous protest. so that is the first part of this, but what we are learning, according to e-mails that were just recently obtained by nbc news as well, i should say the content was obtained by nbc news, is white house officials did weigh in to some extent on that friday after the benghazi attack. now, the white house is saying that their involvement was purely stylistic in nature and didn't have to do with the actual substance of the talking points that are being formulated. the cia sort of jumped in on saturday morning and said, look, we're going to take all of the discussions that we've had with the white house, the state

department, the fbi, and other aswr agencies and sort of consolidate them into a single talking point or list of talking points. and the white house says from that moment on, they only made one change to those talking points. that is what jay carney has said all along. but the question is, is there a problem with the fact that white house officials, state department officials, did weigh in on friday night? and from the first iteration to what became the 12th iteration of those talking points, there were significant changes that were made. one thing is certain, martin, this is not an issue that seems to be going away. as you know, house speaker john boehner calling for them to release e-mails which he has already viewed. he's calling on e-mathem to rel the e-mails to the public. >> lost in all of this is what the president staged earlier today about the affordable care act which might make the difference between life and death to many people in this country. >> reporter: one of the president's key messages in that event, by the way, it was targeted at mother's day.

he was joined by a number of women there. making the point his health care plan is something that will help women but also young people. he called on young people to enroll in health care. this is really vital to making sure that the health care plan actually works, because if you get a disproportionate number of seniors or people who are, in fact, already sick that could drive prices up. so that was one of the president's key messages today and, of course, some people expressing concern that there's a lot of confusion about how folks should sign up for this health care. so the white house trying to clarify that for folks. >> and, yet, difficult to get that message out because of the republican obsession with what happened in september. nbc's kristen welker. thank you. coming up, the rise and troubling fall of charles ramsey. and then -- >> parties were bigger. the morals were looser and the liquor was cheaper. the restlessness approached hysteria. >> shall we? >> who is this gatsby?

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from a daring escape, and a truly disturbed mind, to a hero under scrutiny. here are today's top lines. the week in review. >> three women who were held captive in cleveland. >> found safe after being kidnapped more than a decade ago. >> found in this house back here. >> they were bound and there was chains and ropes in the home. >> rapes, multiple pregnancies, miskarnl miscarriages. >> the nightmare is over. >> the real hero here is amanda. >> help me, i'm amanda berry. >> he's the one who got his rolling. >> three men are under arrest. >> ariel castro charged with

four counts of kidnapping, three counts of rape. >> the man who made this rescue. >> idiosyncratic hero. >> my living room eating my big mac and this girl going nuts on the door. her screaming was so loud, children stopped playing. >> you didn't see anything? >> not one iota . if we had known about this, you would have never got this call. eat his food when he's barbecuing, when he feels like playing sauce to music. you know. what are you doing in there? not reading a bible. either i'm that stupid or his kind are that good. coroners coming, putting a white sheet over somebody. >> message after message from around the world. praising him as a hero. >> there was a woman in distress. >> what does that feel like, charles? >> that feels like mobile is going to charge me more than $50 a month. >> my father would have whooped me. >> there's a reward, $25,000 for

amanda berry's safe return. >> all you have to do is make that check out to amanda berry. >> an ordinary man, aeceven an imperfect man can be a hero. >> i'm a dude who did what he had to do. >> let's get to our panel. joining us, political strategist, angela rye, who's principal of impact strategists. of course, my colleague, toure of "the cycle." charles ramsey, the heroic neighbor, has seemed to gone from hero to villain in five days. is this a classic case of co-modification? you brand the man as a hero and the end of the week attribute and repeat all of this mistakes? >> i'm not sure that i see him as a villain. i haven't seen that characterization yet. this man is undoubtedly a hero. he is key to amanda berry and the rest of the women, gina and initial getting out of there. yes, he's not from central casting as these women seem perfect and this villain seems perfect in his villain role, but

charles ramsey is not perfect, he's colorful, he doesn't speak the king's language. this is a great american hero. this is a real american. sarah palin should be hailing him as a real american. and, you know, wone of the thins that jumped out at me in the top lines, h e spoke about his father, his father would have whooped him if he hadn't done the right thing. he was inspired by his father to do the right thing in this situation. this is a heroic american and should not be written out of the story as some are thinking he is being. >> angela, i'd like you to take a listen to mr. ramsey reflecting on his own past. listen to this. >> so there was a domestic violence. >> my wife? oh, yeah. >> what happened? >> i was a [ bleep ]. >> does mr. ramsey's own past overshadow what he did on monday to help those three desperate women? >> absolutely not, martin. one is apples and the others is oran oranges. there are tons of americans, both heroes and villains, who have colored pasts.

what we reck nice from charles ramsey is all of us can become our better selves. he talked about his domestic violence past helping him to become the man he is today. he refuses to call himself a hero. his co-workers, him being a working class american 2013, are calling him a hero and made t-shirts to call him just that. so certainly not. >> we should remember the poorly apostle described himself as the chief of sinners and became the leading writer of the new testament. anyway, let's move on. mr. ramsey may be most famous for saying this. "i knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms. something is wrong here. dead giveaway." what do you understand by what he meant? >> that was definitely the quote that jumped out at me. that and i was having ribs and dancing to sauce lsa music to t monster. it speaks to the social distance some of us have, especially in working class communities. that he's like, white women would keep a certain social

distance from me unless something is really, really wrong. and she really, really needs me and she come running toward me. but all of this also makes me think about some things that the naacp legal defense fund has spoken about around rosa parks. right? there were other peep before ro rosa parks they were thinking about using and getting behind. they weren't perfect. there was a young woman who had a child before it was socially acceptable having a child. young. they were looking for somebody who was perfect. when we have to be perfect to get that full acceptance under the law or under social conventions, that's not right. that's too high a burden that this man has made mistakes in his past is irrelevant to the fact in this situation he did something heroic. >> do you agree, angela? >> i do agree to that. i also think the quote speaks deep to me. it's reminiscent what i think of when i think of black men in my family, when i think of my father's friends, colleagues.

they're literally self-conscious to walk down the street in the dark by a white woman. it's not because they're working class people. it's because the color of their skin. every time people say we live in a post-racial society now because we have our first black president, i think about the fact that black unemployment is still double the national average or they're working class people and still struggling not only financially but with the very image that they carry. i hear a lot of hurt in that and i personally feel a lot of hurt in that. i hope that charles ramsey's quotes and oall of the ways he' been caricatured will help us have a discussion. >> we sure will. angela rye, toure, thank you both. coming up, new questions about what happened after the benghazi attack. and a new debate over what it all means. stay with us. [ female announcer ] switch to swiffer 360 dusters extender, and you'll dump your old duster. but don't worry, he'll find someone else.

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just moments ago white house press secretary jay carney finished the administration's pushback on the latest controversy regarding benghazi. the question of its involvement in crafting the initial post-attack talking points. here's a sample. >> all of this information was provided months ago to members of congress. a fact that we made clear to all of you at the time. during the confirmation process for john brennan as director of the cia. >> joining us now eleanor holmes norton, washington, d.c.'s, representative in the congress. welcome, ma'am. >> thank you. >> you sat on wednesday's benghazi hearing. you've heard today's reports on the talking points. have you heard anything at all this week that makes you believe the administration, the president, has been involved in some kind of major cover-up? >> they got nowhere near the administration. they got near the military who made the decision. there should be a second plane

to go because there wasn't time to get there and it would do no good. they -- they made a case about the intelligence, but the intelligence people say that -- have a perfect pushback that they did take al qaeda out of the cable. it's the only thing they erased from the talking points, and they did that because they didn't want to signal that that's where their investigation was going. that was new, but i'm glad they explained that. but what was supposed to be new, i think i figured out what was supposed to be new, but it blew out in their faces before it even came, before the hearing even began, and that was the notion that hillary clinton's name was signed to the cables, and what did we find out? just a day or so before the hearing with four pinocchios from the fact checkers, that her name, like the name of every

secretary, is on every cable that comes from the state department, including the one that tells you what kind of paint to put on the wall in missions. that's just to show it's official. >> what do you feel, though, about the admission, or the revelation, that state department spokesperson victoria nuland asked the cia to delete a paragraph, in her words, because it might be used by members of congress to beat up the state department for not paying attention to security issues in benghazi? >> well, she wasn't before us, and here we have some hearsay. what -- the only information we have which has been verified is the information from general petrae petraeus, that what was taken out was taken out not by the state department but by the cia, by the intelligence forces.

and that was mention of al qaeda. now, if they want to bring her, bring her, but what they did was to bring us some of the officials that were on the ground 400 miles away in tripoli. they weren't on the ground in benghazi. and they -- they spent, perhaps, 45 minutes talking about what they heard from 400 miles away. except we had heard each and every bit of that. let me tell you what they should have done. what we haven't gotten to yet. and what oversight is for. what has changed and what should change? there has been no discussion of what is now the case in benghazi or in similar posts throughout the world. which is what this is supposed to be all about. but that's not what it's about for them. >> of course not. delegate eleanor holmes norton, thank you so much. >> always a pleasure. thank you. coming up, the year 2013 has

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1922. the tempo of the city had changed sharply. the buildings were higher. the parties were bigger. the morals were looser and the liquor was cheaper. the restlessness approached hysteria. >> shall we? >> who is this gatsby? >> who, indeed? because gatsby is back. and i'm not just referring to the new movie released today, because while the film may seem like perfect escapism, you might be interested to learn that income inequality of late is now approaching that of the jazz age. a huge and heady bubble that inevitably led to a decade-long hangover generally known as the great depression. and joining us now, a man who knows a score about the 1920s, jared bernstein, senior fellow at the -- >> i remember them well. >> well, i wasn't implying that,

jared, though your hair is a singular hue of silver. >> i don't often get mistaken for leonardo dicaprio. >> i understand that. you should. i don't mean to suggest income inequality at this level will bring us to the next great depression, but it's never necessathels the case we're learning in a gilded age for some people marked by that kind of disparity we saw in the 19120s? >> not only that, there are a number of striking parallels that really should make us think about the costs of such high levels of income and wealth concentration. it's not a coincidence that the, as you mentioned, that the levels of income inequality in the late 1920s proceeded the deepest depression we've had over the last century. and many of the causes there, particularly speculation and unregulated financial markets, we saw very much the same in the 2000s leading to equally high

levels of inequality and a very deep recession followed by a very tough recovery. so the parallels are there. >> okay. so we know, jared, that the government doesn't need to worry about the gatsbys. the so-called job creators, as speaker boehner calls them. we need to focus on the middle class. what form should policies take that are going to assist, sort of shorten that wealth disparity and also generate wealth for everybody else in the economy? >> well, the first thing you want to do is to do no harm and to stop exacerbating the inequalities that exist. we have had, for the last couple of decades, and i would say both sides of the aisle have been implicated, a tax policy that is asymmetrical. that is, it goes in one direction and that's only down. basically you can only tax -- you can only cut tax. you can never increase them. i certainly give president obama some credit for pushing back against them, but remember, you know, he ran on a tax increase for $250,000 and above and

implemented one that only started a couple of hundred thousand dollars higher than that. one of the problems we have is the tax system is actually kind of exacerbating the inequality story. and the second problem, as your question suggested, we're not doing enough to boost the employment prospects of the middle class. because in today's economy, especially with such little union power and low minimum wages, the only way the middle class gets ahead is with a full employment, very low unemployment labor market and we haven't had that for over a decade. >> indeed we haven't. jared bernstein, sir, thank you so much. >> thank you, martin. and we'll be right back to clear the air. [ male announcer ] need help keeping your digestive balance in sync? try align. it's the number one ge recommended probiotic that helps maintain digestive balance. ♪ stay in the groove with align. ♪ need help keeping your digestive balance in sync?

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it's time now to clear the air. and given the marketing campaigns of multiple businesses, most of us now know that this sunday is, indeed, mother's day. and whether, like me, your mother is thousands of miles

away if london, or just down the road in louisiana, you'll want to convey your deepest appreciation and affection. but there are a vast number of mothers in this country who won't be able to receive that kindly written note. and that's because their children have been killed by gun violence. the numbers are simply overwhelming. since 1968, more americans have died from gunfire than have died in all the wars in this country's entire history. but to concentrate the mind, just think for a moment of how difficult this sunday will be for those 20 mothers whose children were systemically massacred at sandy hook elementary school. those little boys and girls who won't be there to help serve breakfast in bed to their moms, who won't be able to plant a kiss on the best mom in the world. who won't be able to say thank you. many republicans were celebrating last weekend at the nra convention in houston after they managed to stop legislation that would have required a background check for anyone who wanted to buy a gun. but this weekend, there is no

nra convention. there's no celebration. there's only silence. because those children who would have said, "happy mother's day" were killed in their classroom. so, maybe this weekend, those members of congress who believe that we should do nothing to improve gun safety might pause from their own celebrations and spare a thought for those women, for whom this sunday will be even more painful than all the days, every day, that they have to endure. thanks so much for watching today and this week. chris matthews and "hardball" picks things up right now. scandal, or just playing politics? let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm michael

smer kconish in for chris matthews. let me start with benghazi. do republicans have a smoking gun? no, do they have enough to keep the story alive? yes. today we learned the state department asked for and received changes made to the administration's talking points after the attack. that doesn't mean that hillary clinton or president obama orchestrated a conspiracy to cover up some sort of malfeasance, but it does give republicans fuel to keep this story alive and they are. throw in lindsey graham's call for mrs. clinton to testify before congress, and a new anti-hillary ad by karl rove, and you've got a growing political story. david corn is washington bureau chief for "mother jones" magazine and msnbc political analyst. danielle pletka is vice president of the american enterprise institute. we now know that the talking points used by susan rice were changed 12 times in a 24-hour period and the white house and site state department were more involved in the process than previously revealed. the first draft of the talking