assistance program or, as most of us know them, food stamps. the result of that cutting, according to the center on budget priorities, among those harshly affected are the 22 million low-income children, 10 million of whom now live below half the poverty line and the 9 million low income elderly and disabled people who rely on food stamps to try to get enough to eat. just to clarify, the federal poverty line is $23,550 for a family of four. 10 million american children now live below half of that which is $11,775 for four people to live on for one year. and the house republicans would like them to live with less. a democratic amendment to eliminate the cuts to food stamps was defeated late wednesday by house republicans. but if saner minds might question the political calculus of such draconian cuts, some republicans seem to have no call

s about making america's neediest that much needier. witness tennessee republican stephen fin cher. >> the bible also say it is poor will always be with us, and it also says if you don't work, you don't eat. but more than that, the role of citizens, of christians of humanity is to take care of each other, but not for washington to steal money from those in the country and give it to others in the country. >> the poor will always be with us. so why bother doing anything to help them? there was no more sympathy to be had in other corners of the gop. donny ferguson, communications director for texas tea party congressman steve stockman lived on food stamps for a week which amounts to $31.50 for seven days and said it was easy. quote, i wanted to personally experience the effects of the proposed cuts to food stamps.

i put my money with my mouth is. and the proposed food stamp cuts are still quite filling. not only did i buy a week's worth of food on what democrats complain is too little, i had left over. we have room to cut about 12% more. joining me to do, andrew ross sorkin, co-host of "squawk box," "new york times" columnist and author of "too big to fail." columnist joe klein, managing editor of grio.com and someone filling in for me so graciously, joy reid, and editorial director at the "huffington post" media group and msnbc political analyst, howard fineman. i believe joining us from washington, d.c. is "the washington post's" ezra klein. always great to see you. i would like to go to you first on the food stamp farm bill back and forth. you had a really interesting piece today, and you made the

point that this is really a change, sea change as it were, in terms of programs that help the neediest and using them as bait to get democrats to the table. this isn't just a bit cruel, it is also really unusual. for decades these ideas have excluded programs that serve the poorest americans. that's why sequestration excludes food stamps, medicaid and the earned income tax credit. conoway's amendment exclusively targets a program that serves the poorest americans. how do you read that, ezra? why is he doing that? >> we need to back that up for a second. representative mike conaway, one of the guys behind this farm bill, he feels the democrats are not moving quickly enough to help pass it. they disagree with it in different ways and there's chance that come september 30th it will expire. this happens all the time.

congress never gets anything done on time because they're unbelievably horrible at their jobs. so conaway came up with this unusual idea which is, if congress does not reauthorize the farm bill by september 30th, what will happen? the punishment for congress will be an across-the-board cut which would be essential lay 15% real cut in food stamps across the program. essentially either democrats come and pass this farm bill or poor kids get less food. the reason i say that's unprecedented, this is essentially a sequestration mechanism. we have one happening now. we've had these things since the '90s. there's typically in government been what you exclude from sequestration are the programs that affect the neediest. they can't handle the congress doing a terrible job. they're flipping that deal on its head. his thing only goes after a program for the neediest,

leaving everything else off the table assuming him and his colleagues can't come to an agreement. >> joy, the conceit that the poor and neediest would be exempt is now gone inherently. >> yes. that's pretty stunning. you're saying give us these subsidies for wealthy farmers or the poor get it. but you also do have within the republican base the new deal generation and their children who form sort of the base of the tea party withdrawing their support from the social safety net. polls showing less and less support for government programs that aid the needy on i think the basis of demographic change which is the same kind of overall problem the republican party is having. this sense that programs that help the poor are not what propped up their parents during the depression. they are the way that minorities steal from rich people. >> or gave them a leg up. >> or gave them a chance. it's what make minorities steal from them. >> well, i love this guy's

bible. >> fincher's bible. >> it ain't like any bible i've ever read. >> jesus said it's harder for the camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. they're essentially threatening people with some sense of humanity, as joy said, you cut off all these gentlemen farmers, we're going to starve the poor kids. >> i think the most offensive part is it's actually -- beyond the threat itself, it's not just the gentlemen farmers at all. it's adm. it's insurance companies, foreign insurance companies that are beneficiaries of this package that's worth close to $1 trillion. there's effectiveness of the threat onto the poorest which is ridiculous. but the bill itself is offensive as well. by the way, i think that's even a buy partisan problem which

there are democrats and republicans on both sides that are are not taking the knife to that in a way that some people at this table might not want. >> mat iglesias today say there is's not a ton to be said about it. but suffice it to say farmers have higher income than the average american while snap recipients have lower incomes. the house farm bill will redistribute tax dollars to the wealthy. it's outrageous. >> i think it's almost a $1 trillion bill over a ten-year billion. $750 billion of the trillion is for the s.n.a.p. program, the food stamp program. that money ultimately is all about propping up and enriching the agribusiness industry in the united states. that's really what this is in practical terms. what the texas congressman is doing is holding the poor people hostage to get the agribusiness

people to do whatever -- it is they want about the bee program or the corn subsidies, whatever. they're dangling the poor people over the ledge to get the business people to do what they want them to do. that's the political dynamic going on. >> what is ultra ironic about this, fincher, the one who says the poor will always be with us, is someone who has benefited from farm subsidies. the irony here is incredibly think. i wonder as someone in washington that follows policy and legislation carefully, how do you think the senate version of the farm bill and the house version of the farm bill are reconciled? the senate bill has cuts, but the house bill cuts five times as much, i believe, as the house bill does to food stamps, and also the cbo says the senate bill will not take money from needy families but cuts food stamps in terms of waste and fraud in that program. >> with some difficulty, like everything else in washington. somebody said to me in hill the other day, we've hit a place for

not only do people not have plans, there's no plan to even make a plan. john boehner doesn't know how he'll reconcile the senate. the senate doesn't know how they'll reconcile with boehner and the republicans. possibly the farm bill will be another one of these bills that after congress it goes back to the house and they have to swallow it and there's a revocation of the hasker rule. this is something you're seeing in the house. it's important to see the dynamic. they can't pass their own bill. the reason conaway is trying to put this rope around the neck of democrats is that unless a bunch of democrats come onto the bill because of the tea party focus in the republican party, they can't pass it with their own votes. this has been a continuously recurring dynamic for republicans. they've got folks way too conservative to get on the bills they need to pass because they have the government doing something positive for folks. on the other hand, bills are much too conservative, even so, for democrats to support. they're not willing to move the

bills to the left to get the democratic votes. that's where you get to, shall we say, creative solutions like the one conaway is putting forward in order to get democrats on the bill, to not only pass the bill, but if it doesn't pass, to hurt poor people to get the democrats to the table. >> that's the thing, joe. there is no plan b or c or d. there's no plan for legislator. >> no. they only pass resolutions congratulating themselves. they pass things that can't pass or they don't pass anything at all. 37 times they've knocked down obama care, right? >> right. >> i think we have to understand -- remember that this is a standard republican thing going back to newt gingrich and before, especially in the last presidential campaign, you remember that newt gingrich always called president obama the food stamp president because food stamps had expanded so much. the reason why food stamps

expanded so much is because we went into a power recession. so this is nothing new. >> when you talk about that, the reality is that food stamp enrollment has increased 70% since 2008. the average income growth from 1976 to 2011, the income of the bottom 90% grew $59. the income of the top 10% grew $116,000. the reason we need more assistance is because middle class and working class wages have effectively stagnated and the recession wiped out whatever wealth american families might have held on to at least if you were in the bottom 90%. >> there has been no recovery for people at the bottom of the income ladder. people who were subsisting on fast food job wages where they may not have health insurance. when you have people working

full-time for $8.00 an hour and having to feed their family with food stamps. these aren't people sitting around eating bon bones watching soap oprahs, these are people working 12, 13, 14 hours a day, two jobs, working at night, working all night. can't find child care for their kids. literally the i'm bod nabl cruelty of this, the fact that you would couch it in the bible is so sickening, it's almost impossible to respond to. >> one piece of context on the numbers we saw, important, it's not simply -- when you say income, i think of those numbers as the numbers i've seen before. it's not simply income in the sense that people are getting salaries, those numbers include things like real estate, capital, holdings, wealth. i don't want to suggest to you we don't have an inequality problem in this country. we do. by the way, that helps exacerbate the problem. when you look at those numbers on their face, you come away with the thought that one group

is making all this money through salaries. >> the foreclosure crisis had a lot to do with wiping that out as well. what's amazing to me is, you look at the food stamp enrollment increasing exponentially and the reaction from the gop is, there's obviously fraud and waste here. we need to cut the roles rather than thinking this is systemic failure that so many people are living on so little. >> beyond that i think there's a generalized turn in the republican party right now to the final solution they have left for them for how to handle poverty which is, if you're not willing to have the government do anything, then the only action left to you is to have the government stop doing a lot of things. this has become the argument you hear from pull ryan and others on programs like food stamps. you hear the argument that the government has become a hammock, what's going wrong in the lives of people who don't have jobs or only make $10,000 or $15,000 a

year, what is holding them back is the government being open to send them a help to help them buy food, is the government open to putting them on medicaid, that this is robbing them of their will to work. somehow, but just getting a little help, they've lost their character. it is about that communications guy trying to do this for a week. it is vacationing in the mind of a poor person, not actually understanding it. >> the house is expected to vote on the farm bill in about 15 minutes. "the washington post's" ezra klein, thank you for your time an thoughts, my friend. >> thank you. coming up, this week the pentagon announced a timeline to opal late combat positions to women. we'll talk to one member of congress who knows something about being a woman in the military. congresswoman tammy duckworth joins us. ♪ i'm tony siragusa and i'm training guys who leak a little,

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on wednesday, the u.s. naval academy charged three navy football players with sexually assaulting a female midshipman, a case that given the details will likely add to the widespread frustration over how sexual assault is hand nld the military t. female cadet says she was raped by multiple men while blacked out at a party in april 2012. when she first brought the cases to the naval academy she was disciplined for drinking while her alleged attackers were allowed to keep playing football. at the same time naval officials opened an investigation but later closed it for a lack of evidence when the victim stopped

quo cooperating. >> the accused will face a preliminary hearing with larger problem of military sexual assaults remains. according to a recent report by the pentagon an estimated 26,000 military members were sexually assaulted last year, that 170 sexual assault -- 70 per day. congress is trying to change this but efforts by kir stint gillibrand are willing thwarted. in a letter to defense secretary chuck hagel senator barbara mikulski wrote she is deeply troubled to the increasing rates of sexual assault within their academy. she added, if we are going to end sexual assaults in the military, we must start by changing the culture w. the pentagon announcing a schedule for integrating women into front line combat by 2016, the need to

address the epidemic of military sexual assault has never been more acute. joining me is democratic congresswoman from illinois, tammy duckworth, also an annive lieutenant colonel in the army national guard. >> thanks. it's great to be here. >> as someone who has served in the u.s. military, how much of the problem we face is a problem of military culture? >> i have to say even a single case of rape or sexual assault or harassment is not acceptable. i refuse to accept this notion that it's military culture, that there's a good old boys' club. the military consists of well-disciplined men and women who are fully capable of administering the laws and the systems to prevent sexual assaults and harassment from happening. that's why it's so devastating to me that these things continue to happen. there are obviously failed commanders out there and we need to go after those folks.

>> are you surprised at the efforts to keep this inside the chain of command? i know you've offered an amendment to give victims the option to pursue inside or outside the chain of command. are you apartment mystic that will be accepted and will pass? >> that is certainly what i am supporting. it's because there are great commanders out there and they do the right thing and they should be able to continue to do their job as commanders. one of the reasons i didn't support senator gillibrand's bill is because it took everything out, not just the sexual crimes, but theft, those types of things as well. we need to make sure that commanders can command their units. that's why i want to empower the victims by offering the choice, if they want to stay with the chain of command, they k. if they want to go with an independent prosecutor that does a full prosecution, both the investigation and the prosecution, then the victim should have that right. so i'm going to push very hard for this. i think it's an acceptable compromise. >> congresswoman, i want to bring in our folks in new york here.

joe, the military has undergone a lot of changes recently. we talked about don't ask don't tell, a profound change for military culture, the fact that pentagon is saying women may be allowed into frontline elite force combat starting in 2016, certainly a change. one of the things that seems to be at the root of this chain of command question is the idea that this is the way we do it in the military and this is the way we've always done it and we are loathed to change that. >> the problem with that formulation is that in my experience -- and i've spent a lot of time with the military over the last decade -- the military has been changing itself, reforming itself in a way far more dramatic than the rest of society. in the army -- if you ask david petraeus what he's most proud of, he will say the way he changed the training of the entire united states army so people knock on doors rather than knock down doors now, counterinsurgency changed the culture. the presence of women changed the culture. technology, the fact that in the

future most of our deployments are eerth going to be done by remote control via drones or via special forces is changing the culture. i will say on the subject of women in combat, you know, if someone as fat and as old as i am can go on patrol in taliban country a couple years ago, i think a fit well-trained woman can do it as well. >> i want to ask you about that women serving and the elite forces. senator gillibrand mentioned this in her argument, having combat experience is often a key part of the resume. by allowing women that combat experience, it opens the upper echelons to greater female participation. do you agree with that? give us a sense of what the combat experience is like in terms of expanding one's portfolio, if you will? >> there's two things going on. any time that we as a nation have dropped our restrictions and allow people to serve based on their performance and abilities, whether it was

japanese americans and african-americans in world war ii or women in combat, we've benefited as a nation. this is a good thing because they have a better pool, a bigger pool of people who want to do this. it's going to help women in the services. it's not just combat time. it's command time of a combat unit, alex. it's being a battalion commander of a combat unit, brigade commander, division commander. you won't get command of a division like the first armored division, first infantry division unless you have command time as a brigade commander. right now the only ones who can do that are the ones in aviation or some in air defense artillery. you've left out all these women. if you don't have that in your resume of having served as a brigade level or higher combat unit, you're not going to get as competitive a look when it comes to trying to pin on your first star or second star. you're not going to get through what we call the brass ceiling.

having more women in leadership positions and more female generals will help with the sexual assault and harassment issue. >> congresswoman duckworth land add blauk hawk after a rocket propelled grenade blew up in her lap. her kind of courage shows you that courage does haven't a gender. >> not at all. absolutely. i would say, howard, one of the interesting stats we discovered -- i didn't actually discover. my wonderful producers did. veterans who serve, taking the lead from congresswoman duckworth. in 1977, 80% of congress had served. in 2013, 19%. now, in some part that has to do with world war ii and the draft. we talk about big decisions facing america in terms of military service, combat, national security, and i do think -- the people who are making these decisions, very few of them have actually had any experience with the military. >> that's very true, and that

may be to the good, because as joe was pointing out, the nature of combat is changing in a way that those with that old experience wouldn't necessarily be great advisers on. the other big changing statistic in the senate, for example, is there are now 20 women senators. >> which is why military sexual assault -- >> one-fifth of the senate is female. that makes a huge difference in i think the rising consciousness in these kinds of issues relates in part to the increasing role of women in leadership roles and politics. in the off chance we have a female commander in chief some day -- >> one day. >> not mentioning anybody in about a year. >> not anybody who might be on this show on remote in the capitol rotunda. >> those numbers may begin to change. what i saw over there in iraq and afghanistan were our troops actually governing towns, not just protecting them, but doing public works, finding out what the people wanted, selling it to

the local councils. to plug my story this week -- >> which i was about to get to. >> -- i believe this generation of veterans is pointed because of that experience, pointed toward public service. and you find a lot of them coming back and participating in groups like the mission continues and team rubicon, doing community service now and in the future, congresswoman duckworth is in the vanguard, they'll be running for congress -- >> those aren't gender-specific skills, even if some of the others may be still. >> congresswoman, i do want to talk about the veterans issue, being a veteran as you are. we've talked a lot about the dark side of coming back after a tour of duty and the fact that i believe the veteran suicide rate is 22 per day, and the veterans' unemployment rate is lower than the national average, but too high for many people's comfort at 7.3%. we talk about the bag log of

benefit claims. the va reported more than 800,000 pending claims as of june of this year, 66% of which have been pending for more than 125 days. is america doing enough for its men and women who have served the country in times of war? >> i think america can always do more. i think what we need to do now is take the resources we have and employ them better. the va is working to fix the backlog. our men and women coming home face very unique challenges. they bring a lot of great advantages and benefits. joe's story, i'll plug his story as well, in talking about -- they come home with this sense of greater mission, greater good, wanting to zephyr next to their brothers and sisters and do something more. i was one of those soldiers in the hospital at walter reed. when you asked me what i wanted to do, i said i wanted to go back to my unit. i couldn't go back to my unit. finding a new mission for my life was critical for me, as it is for these other vets. the real hero of the day when i

was shot down is chief officer dan millburg who landed the aircraft. i just bled a lot. he tells me, tammy, i'm handling post-traumatic stress and everything i went through because i know you're out there serving another mission and that you're doing what you're doing and i got to play a part in that. that's what we as service members who come home want to do. we're looking for another mission, not just for ourselves, for our buddies who didn't make it home or are still in hospital beds and our nation needs to empower our veterans, provide them with jobs, make sure they get the training they need. one of the things that people have overlooked in the unemployment number is female veterans are entering into homelessness faster and becoming unemployed faster. when a female vet leaves the military and goes into the civilian job market, she gets a 27% drop in pay immediately because in the military she makes a dollar for a dollar her

male counterpart. >> unlike in the real world in america where women make 77 cents on the dollar. >> her income drops by a quarter just by taking off the uniform. that has severe significance for her family and children. >> congresswoman, before we let you go, i don't think a lot of people realize, you are not retired from the military. >> no. >> i don't know if it's called active duty. you really are serving the country in every way possible. i'm in no place to thank you on behalf of the american people, but personally, what you're doing is extraordinary and is really a testament to your leadership and i think your patriotism. thank you so much for joining us today. >> thank you so much. >> congresswoman tammy duckworth. >> while the president takes to the world stage to reaffirm his promise to close the prison at guantanamo bay, 104 of the 151 prisoners remain on hunger strike. 46 have been classified as indefinite detainees, five

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of the 166 detainees at the guantanamo bay prison facility, only nine have been charged with a crime. 86 have been cleared for release, and 104 are currently engaged in a month' long hunger strike. against this backdrop, military prosecutors announced yesterday they're seeking the bar the five detainees on trial for 9/11 war crimes from attending their own pretrial hearings citing national security concerns. further complicating the already complex situation is the news that the red cross is refusing defense lawyers' requests to make the organization's reports on prison conditions part of the public record. the red cross maintains its obligations are only to share with the government. the question of what will happen to the prisoners of guantanamo bay was on center sage yesterday when president obama revisited

his promise to close the detention facility in front of 6,000 berliners. >> even as we remain vigilant about the threat of terrorism, we must move beyond the mindset of perpetual war. and in america that means redoubling our efforts to close the prison at guantanamo. >> the president's words were met with applause by a european public, seemingly more outraged by the fate of gitmo detainees than his own american constituents back home a majority of whom seem to support keeping the detention facility open for business. the loudest political voices advocating for '6 closure belong to diane fine stain and john mccain. yesterday california's senior senator released a letter to defense secretary chuck hagel, decrying the force-feeding of 44 of the 104 hunger strikers saying she was concerned, quote, these policies are out of step with international norms, medical ethics and practices of

the u.s. bureau of prison. but spine stein and mccain remain in the minority. on friday, as part of the national defense reauthorization act, congress voted down an amendment to close the prison in a 249-174 vote with republicans casting the vast majority of no votes. while resistance to closing gitmo remains entrenched, the moral and economic costs of detention represent an ever increasing debt for this country. whatever the american appetite for debate rmt it's an issue that would seem to weigh heavily on the mind of the commander in chief. >> look, i haven't yet closed guantana guantana guantanamo. one of the things you've learned as president, what have you done for me lately? if you didn't get it done, it's your problem. i accept that. that's my job. until i close guantanamo bay, they're right, i haven't closed guantanamo bay. >> andrew, where do we go from here? >> i don't know. can i just talk about the

economic cost? i'm always a numbers guy. >> you are. >> $900,000 per inmate. that's the cost. >> compared to $60,000 to $70,000 for a super max. >> and $3,00,000 across the boa. if you're a republican and you want to cut costs, spend here. >> here we're spending $1 million per prisoner. >> i could talk about the moral costs and the diplomatic costs. we have a reporter at huff post ryan riley who spent time down there and told me what he had seen, the chilling, almost underworldly nature of observers coming and standing on a rooftop looking down through a plexiglass window at sad, rail-thin detainees, many of whom are there almost by accident, let's face it. yes, there are legitimate people there, but there are also people

there by accident. that's the moral cost that most people don't see. they haven't seen pictures of it. he witnessed it. a good friend of mine, a prominent middle east expert, pakistani, lives in america, knows the scene brilliantly. says the diplomatic and moral costs for us in the world of the example of gitmo are incalculable. are we a perfect country? no. are we the most generous empire that's ever existed on the face of the earth? who knows. but this is vivid, incontrovertbly wrong. it's devastating to whatever standing we have in the world globally. it makes things difficult for us. >> i agree with howard. it is one of the three worst things we've done in a generation, torture and the astrosity of abu ghraib. we've done some really horrible things in the name of the so-called war on terror. what the president could do right now in the face of a congress that is not willing to

close it and willing to thwart -- one of the first things the president did as president was to issue an executive order, two to close gitmo, followed by an almost unanimous vote in the senate to stop him. what he would have to do because of the way congress has set this up is to go ahead and certify those 86 people who are allowed to go. what they have to certify is we the government say that will never commit an act of terrorism. which is impossible. certify they will never do terrorism. it's a risk that would have to be taken, if any of those people were to commit an act of terrorism, you'll have to absorb that political cost. >> there is a problem with those 85, the majority of them in there for the wrong reason, and ha is their countries don't want them back. the saudis, the pakistanis, don't want them back. i'd add one other thing, if mitt romney had been elected president and said the day after

the election i want to close guantanamo, it would be closed now because a whole lot of republicans are using this as a political issue, something to stuff the president with. they could go to the super max in colorado. there's one waiting in illinois. it can be done. and we should expedite the trial process. >> joe, but there's something between closing it, shutting it down tomorrow and beginning to repatriate some of these -- i know their countries don't want them. what the state department has just done and what obama has just done is picked a brilliant lawyer named cliff sloan who is one of the best of his generation, to try to untie these knots and get some of these people returned. it's not like we don't have any leverage with the saudis or the yemenis and the others. there's got to be a way because it's doing too much damage to us and that, in turn, has damaged the people who are our allies. >> puting them in super max is just as cruel. you're going to keep them

forever -- >> how do you get them back to their home country i? that's a long, drawn-out process. >> they need to have a sense of urgency about it. >> am i crazy for saying this? i'm crazy for saying this. ifbl it's time to play hardball. the president said you're going to keep those food stamp cuts in the farm bill, we will veto it. in the same way you don't have a plan to close gitmo, you'll thwart adam smith's amendments to wind down the facility,ly veto the national defense reauthorization act. >> i'll veto everything that comes across my desk until you do it. >> this is a promise he made in his first day in office. >> he can pick those fights if you want. in the meantime, they have to have an administrationwide focused sense to get people out of there to show progress is being made, to show some

movement to tell the worth, hey, look, we are dealing with this. >> the new president in pakistan, omar sharif -- there are a lot of people who are pakistanis -- >> that's what i'm saying. if any of those people would be implicated in terrorist act, what do you think the republicans in the house are going to do? impeachment trial starts the next day. >> if we find they're innocent, it's not our business anymore. >> tell it to the house. they're not rational. >> we also have a pretty broad surveillance program as we've just discovered that's checking everybody out at all times. the recidivism rate is 15.9% which is not nothing but it is not -- >> a number of the ones released later committed terrorist acts. >> why do you believe the president is going to play hardball on this? >> i don't believe. >> then he's got to play hardball about 100 other things

first. >> what else is he going to do? at any rate, just a suggestion if anybody is watching over at 1600 pennsylvania avenue. we have to take a break. coming up, our pivot to the softer stuff. if you're like the many who read it for the articles, you might be surprised to learn who sat down with "playboy" magazine this month. we'll tell you who, ahead on "now." ♪ time for the "your business" entrepreneurs of the week. steve white, jack colter and dan malone own small businesses on main street in goll lena, illinois. historic preservation and restoration has helped turn goll lena into a thriving tourist destination. for more watch "your business" sunday mornings at 7:30.

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what do donna summer, "brave heart," angelina jolene, meditation and "passion of the christ" have in common? they're a few of sean hannity's favorite things. in an interview with "playboy" he talks about these things. hannity plays playboy obama grew up in kenya and told "the new york times" he went to a school there and one of the beautiful things on the planet is islamic prayer on a sunset. the problem with this is it's still in the water supply. >> not only that, but he got no geography education in school because indonesia, kenya, whatever. it's pathetic. >> television should be an educational tool. let me say to sean, indonesia is just off of asia. >> do we have a map. >> kenya is in africa, so they're very, very far apart. >> i think you lost him at arc

pell go. >> he doesn't read the articles, so he's not going to read the maps. he's looking for other pictures. >> oh. going there. "playboy." i do know just because someone thinks islamic prayer is beautiful at sunset doesn't actually mean they're a muslim. >> there are many things that strike me about this. one of them he says -- i don't know why people put faith in government. the system is dysfunctional. it doesn't work. that's like somebody saying, you know, this bicycle that i just stuck a twig in the spokes of won't go anywhere. the lack of sort of self-awareness, deliberate lack of self-awareness is just stunning. one of the reasons why the system is so dysfunctional is because of the mindlessly

accusatory nature of what he -- >> people like sean hannity -- >> -- what they do. nobody is innocent in all this, i will grant that. but he is a, for better or worse, an enthusiastically vigorous user of that style of rhetoric in politics, and it's one of the main reasons why things aren't working. wake up. wake up. >> the reason for it is is there's an audience for it. >> of course. >> there are an awful lot of scared people out there in this country right now. he preys on them, just as rush does and the others. he's shameless. >> but he likes disco. >> and he describes himself as a 51-year-old fat guy. anyway, that's the show for today. thank you to andrew, joe, joy and howard. i'll see you back here tomorrow at noon when. i will see you again tonight when i fill in for lawrence on

"the last word" at 10:00 p.m. until then you can follow us on twitter. "andrea mitchell reports" is next.

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backed by our 100% money back guarantee. walmart are you in the mafia? >> am i in the what? >> whatever you want to call it. organized crime. >> that's total crap. who told you that? >> all due respect, you got [ bleep ] idea what it's like to be number one. every decision you make affects every facet of every other [ bleep ] thing. it's too much to deal with almost. in the end you're completely alone with it all. right now on andrea mitchell reports, remembering a giant. he played larger-than-life character tony soprano for eight seasons. friends and family remember james gandolfini as a gentle