in next month's "redbook," mike has a recipe. >> that's what people call me, flaming fondue. is chuck there today? of course he is because he was here with us. chuck todd is up next. great guy, great show. take it away, chuck. today is the day, the final decision day for this supreme court term and the big one all long is the one they waited until the end. hobby lobby, it could undo part of the president obama's signature health care law. meantime, today marks the halfway point of 2014. believe it or not, we started the year with a tiny, teensy bit of optimism something was going to get done in washington and then we woke up. also this morning, a new chapter begins for one story that dominated in recent months. the president plans to nominate a former ceo of procter & gamble and a west point grad, robert mcdonald, to lead the embattled

agency of veterans affairs. good morning from new york, it's monday, june 30th, 2014. this is "the daily rundown." let's get right to my first reads of the morning. parents around the country have been getting their kids' report cards in the mail. perhaps last week, perhaps this week. but there's no more pathetic report card than the one from washington. six months into 2014 and we're in a very bleak place. the federal government may technically still be running. we don't have a debt ceiling crisis right now or government shutdown issue, but 2014 is shaping up to be a year defined by full-fledged gridlock and few legislative accomplishments. from the outset it was clear 2014 was the president's last best opportunity to make some progress on secretaond-term goa that he sut out after re-election before he fell into complete lame duck status. >> i am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. reducing our deficit, reforming

our tax code, fixing our immigration system, freeing ourselves from foreign oil. we've got more work to do. >> that's a to-do list that still remains. two weeks into january it was already clear the white house had reconciled itself to the idea that the president would have to go around congress to leave any imprint on domestic policy for the rest of the term. >> i've got a pen and i've got a phone, and i can use that pen to sign executive orders and i've got a phone that allows me to convene americans from every walk of life. >> white house advisers desperate to turn weakness into a strength and to make congress look like the impediment tried to declare 2014 as a year of action. but let's be realistic. there hasn't been much. the president was careful to set the bar about as low as he possibly could do it. in his state of the union address there was no mention of big things, like entitlement reform, for lofty plans for deficit reduction, tax reform,

no big challenge of his own party or the other party. instead it was a set of very scaled-down ambitions. >> let's get immigration reform done this year. help more kids access the high quality pre-k that they need. work together on tools like bipartisan trade promotion authority to protect our workers. this congress needs to restore the unemployment insurance you just let expire for 1.6 million people. join the rest of the country, say yes. give america a raise. >> that last one was on minimum wage. the president has largely failed to meet even those modest goals, whether it was raising the minimum wage, signing new trade agreements, getting an immigration reform deal done. while there hasn't been much achievement on the president's goals, there have been a series of unplanned setbacks, especially abroad, from an escalating civil war in syria to ukraine, a new wave of sectarian violence in iraq, all eroding confidence in the president's leadership on foreign policy. there may have been management

problems at home from the crisis at the va to the continued fallout from edward snowden's nsa leaks, two areas where the administration did accomplish some goals this year, one is on health care. after botching the rollout, the white house managed to turn the problem around and ended up with more sign-ups than expected. and two, the epa has taken significant action on climate change issuing rules calling for cutting carbon emissions from existing power plants by 30% within 15 years. the president has put his rhetorical shoulder into the issue of climate change. but let's turn to congress. the year began with unexpectedly smooth negotiations on a compromise on the budget. but then things deteriorated very quickly into gridlock. on tuesday, the senate blocked two proposals to extend emergency unemployment benefits that expired last month. the question is if congress can't pass unemployment benefits, what will it be able to pass? there you go. six months later, the newest version of the jobless benefits

legislation shows no sign of picking up any traction in the house. and senate democrats are reluctant to bring it up for a vote anymore. earlier this year house speaker john boehner that the party of no label was weighing on republicans. as we look at this year, i think we go back to what we did in '07, '08, '09, '10 and that is to be the party of better solutions. when i took over as leader i told our members you can't go out and criticize democrats unless you tell them what you're for. the most positive way to do it thaz immigration reform. at their winter retreat republican leaders circulated a one sheet state of principles for the undocumented immigrants living in the country illegally. congressman paul ryan in fact rolled it out right here on this show. >> the plan that you guys are going to push will have a pathway to legalization but not citizenship. is that how you understand it? >> that's right, but it also involve basically a probationary

kind of a status to make sure that a person is not rewarded for having broken our laws. >> but there was immediate blowback from some in the republican base. the bipartisan group hoping to negotiate a compromise on immigration completely fell apart and congressman eric cantor's defeat left the chances of legislation at next to zero. last week the house's leading immigration reform advocate declared it officially dead. >> you're done. leave the field. too many flagrant offenses and unfair attacks and too little action. you're out, hit the showers. it's the red card. >> now both sides acknowledge that immigration reform is effectively dead until president obama apparently leaves office. so today the president is expected to ask congress for more than $2 billion in emergency funding to respond to the surge of children and adults that have been cross little border from mexico from other central american countries. now, house republicans argue the crisis is evidence the time is not right for immigration deal.

now, in addition to legislative gridlock, 2014 has been marked by a steep deterioration in personal relationships. in late january after the president's state of the union address, house republicaning working to rebrand the party wrote the president a letter that said sometimes things don't come easy but we should never give up and never quit. we haven't given up on working with you to find areas of common agreement. boehner announced thaemts the house to take the president to court. meanwhile in the senate, the relationship between harry reid and mitch mcconnell has never been worse. republican senators are voting against bills they sponsored because they are angry with reid's tight hold on the amendment process and it's hard to find a senator who's happy with the way the institution runs. joining me now dan balz and msnbc's senior editor, beth fuey. dan, let me start with you. we don't have a debt ceiling crisis, we don't have a government shutdown to sort of

focus the public on just how bad it is in washington, but it was striking to us going through this six-month report card, things have -- it's like watching a slow erosion and then you look from january to now and you went oh, my god, things really did get bad. >> that was a pretty bleak report you put together, i must say as you reviewed the whole year. i think the striking thing is, you know, we started the year with only, as you say, a little bit of optimism. i think things have gone much worse than people had anticipated. the congress shut down far earlier than we thought. the relationship between the white house and the congress, which was pretty bad at the beginning of the year, has gotten worse. and i think that one of the things that we didn't touch on that's important is the absence of any serious discussion about the state of the economy. i mean we still have an economy that's in real trouble. the latest numbers that came out recently show how bad it is, and yet either party, neither the president nor the republicans in

congress are doing or saying anything important on that front. >> it's true. beth, i've gone around and looked on the campaign trail to see how candidates are trying to talk about the economy, because if you do a poll, you find out that's what people want to talk about. they have no clue on what to say. >> because there's so much gridlock. think of the things that lawmaker could say do to boost the economy. the idea of another stimulus is completely dead. that's not going to happen. >> you can't even get a transportation deal, an infrastructure deal that is something you have to do if you want the roads to not fall apart. >> they can't seem to do anything to spend any money to improve the state of the economy in any way. as you say, the highway bill, the no stimulus, unemployment insurance as you mentioned, long-term unemployment, that's going nowhere. so you've got all these people, as dan says the economy is still very weak. a lot of people have been unemployed months for months and they're not spending money to boost the economy so basically nothing can change unless the white house or congress can come to some agreement about what they can do that would not make their base completely revolt in

terms of stimulating the economy. >> well, dan, it does seem like the only thing that could change the actions in washington is for the voters to speak. but i don't sense that the voters are ready to just sort of rebel full bore against everybody here in washington. >> no, it doesn't seem that way, chuck. we're clearly still in a period in which we're divided red and blue and everything as we watch heading toward november seems in those two channels. the republicans have seen this year all along as an opportunity really to take over the senate. it took, i think, the white house some time to recognize the peril of that and to really begin to try to step up into the elections. but both sides really for any number of months now have been much more focused on november than they have about the immediate business at hand. >> beth, the way i look at it, i don't care what the result is in november unless it's some sort of tsunami that throws out 200

members of congress, which would be the wake-up call that they would -- hey, you've got to actually do something on your job sometimes. i can't imagine. we're going to be in a presidential election cycle and it starts the day after the midterms. >> this 2014 cycle does feel very odd. it's not like 2010, which was the last big tsunami election. everybody saw that coming so far in advance and that just hasn't been the case this time. it certainly looks like a good election cycle for republicans. not necessarily great. so their big top targets in senate seats in arkansas and north carolina, louisiana, the republican candidates aren't rushing out ahead of the democrats who were incumbents there. so you've got mitch mcconnell, the republican leader of the senate, who's actually in a fight on his own turf in kentucky. so it's a very odd election. people just seem unhappy in general as opposed to specifically unhappy with democrats. >> and, dan, do you get any sense that individually you probably hear it too, i hear it from elected leaders on capitol hill and from folks in the west

wing, they all know that this is just an impossible -- we can't stay this way and yet nobody knows how to break it without messing up their own politics. >> i think everybody is hoping that there's some kind of magic solution that is imposed on the political system but that isn't the case. as you said, chuck, it has to come from the voters ultimately and i think at this point the voters are not quite ready to push in a strong direction to send a message all across the board to all the i incomumbentst they have to change the way business is being done. at this point if one side can gain an advantage, they're trying to do that. but as beth said the interesting thing about this political year, it has not quite taken shape n some ways the republicans have a few more races on the board than they thought they might have, but they're not great opportunities. and the races, as beth again said, the races that we've been looking at from the beginning are still basically where they were in january or february. >> but there is a sense that

we're susceptible, that something could shift things, could move things a little bit. but the voters already threw people out. they threw out the republicans in '06 and 'so08 and threw out e democrats in '10. maybe they're acting logical. well, we've tried to weigh in and that didn't do anything. >> they should all talk to each other and come up with a plan. there's no worse time than congress has ever seen in polling. we're down to the high single digits, low double digits in terms of approval. but people are so cynical at this point, they're not ganging up together to foment a big revolution. they're just behaving as they usually do, particularly in districts where democrats control a whole bunch of them and republicans control a bunch and there are very few on the margins. >> beth, dan, thank you both. the decision on the hobby lobby case, one of the biggest challenges to the affordable

care act at least right now. it's about religious rights, contraception coverage and the rights of employers versus employees. we'll also have a look today at the politics planner. the president going to nominate a new va secretary, of course. his name is robert mcdonald. he's the former ceo of procter & gamble. we'll tell you a lot more about him, including his republican credentials after the break. you're watching "the daily rundown" on msnbc. the fact is, it comes standard with an engine that's been called the benchmark of its class. really, guys, i thought... it also has more rear legroom than other midsize sedans. and the volkswagen passat has a lower starting price than... much better. vo: hurry in and lease the 2014 passat s for $199 a month. visit vwdealer.com today.

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well, the supreme court's decision on arguably its biggest case of the session will be handed down in less than an hour when the court rules on the hobby lobby case, determining whether corporations can claim one of the rights that individuals have. the court already decided that they do have a right to free speech of that was the result of citizens united.

this time the question is whether corporations have religious rights as well. at issue is whether the owners of hobby lobby stores can deny their employees specific parts of contraception coverage mandated by the affordable care act. the owners claim doing so would violate their right of religious freedom. they aren't objecting to all contraception coverage, just a handful that include iuds, the morning after pill, drugs and devices that some on the right argue actually cause abortions. now, the case also includes a related appeal from conestoga wood, a pennsylvania cabinet maker, that has the identical objection. the government insists that corporations are set up to be legally separate from the people that run them. the contraception man date is under fire all over the country. at least 100 cases have been filed in two dozen states, all focusing on simply this part of the mandate. keep in mind the obama administration has already had to backtrack and change the man

date once responding to public pressure. they carved out an exemption for church-affiliated groups two years ago. the contraception mandate has become a political issue as both parties have a stake on whether the court upholds or strikes down a piece of the aca. >> i think the statute itself as interpreted by the president violates the first amendment of the constitution. i'm hoping the court will uphold the rights of individuals for their expression of their religious freedoms. >> the owner has a right to his or her religious beliefs, but that doesn't mean you get to discriminate against women if women have different beliefs than the owner has and the woman wants to exercise her rights under the constitution. >> joining me now, nbc justice correspondent pete williams. pete, i dwguess two questions. do you have a sense of where you thought the court was honing in on and, two, is this going to be narrow or broad? it always seems as if on social issues roberts looks for a more

narrow interpretation. >> i'll consider those variations on the same question because during the oral argument, it was the chief justice who was suggesting there might be a middle ground here. rather than to say that any corporation has freedom of religion, you know, what's the freedom of religion of ge or comcast or general motors, they might say that companies like these. family held companies that are not publicly owned in which there's a clear record of clearly established religious views, perhaps they would get it. that was the middle ground that he seemed to be searching for. and i think that's the main question here. will the court say any corporations at all can assert freedom of religion, and if so will they limit it. that will inevitably lead to the next question which is, okay, if they're exempt from the requirements of the obamacare contraception mandate, then what other requirements of the law might they be exempt from? so it's important to think about the fact that while the people

you had earlier were talking about the first amendment freedom of religion, the core of this case is actually a federal law passed by congress. the supreme court said a couple of decades ago that there is no religious exemption from generally applicable laws. congress in essence overruled that bypassing the religious freedom restoration act, and that's the question here. how much protection does that give to corporations. clearly individuals, but what about corporations that are really set up to be legally separate from the individuals that own them? >> and that seems to be the case there. anyway, pete, i know -- it sounds like the protesters on this one are there. >> yes, and their batteries are fresh and their amp fires are working. >> yes, it all is and i know you've got to get going. pete, big day. thank you, sir. a short time ago i spoke with legal counsel for the beckett fund for religious liberty, the group that is representing hobby lobby in court. i asked her about concern that say a ruling in favor of hobby lobby would create a slippery

slope allowing other for-profit corporations to use religious freedom exemptions or all kinds of issues. >> the green family founded hobby lobby in their garage in 1972. the family, david and barbara and their three kids, darcy, mark and steve still own everything about the company and control its day-to-day operations, including what they put in their self-funded health care plan. now, the government says they have to put in the four contraceptives that may cause the death of a newly created human life. the greens say their faith prevents them from doing that. let's be clear here, hobby lobby is a pretty unusual business as far as businesses go in america. the greens have decided to close it on sundays to give their employees a day of rest. that's a decision that's motivated by their faith and costs them about $100 million a year. they make lots of decisions motivated by their faith. the government says david and barbara and their kids can't even come to court to make their

case because they operate a family business. what the beckett fund says and what the greens say is religious liberty is a fundamental human right, it's a constitutional right. you don't gain it when you go to work for somebody else and you don't lose it when you open a family business. >> but, when you incorporate, you're not incorporating your individual, you've decided to become a business entity, in many ways because there are differences between individuals that run something and a corporation. sometimes it has to do with liability. sometimes it has to do with taxes. but there are certainly specific reasons you do this. and so are we going to find -- are you making the case that a corporation is a person in this case? >> look, the default rule in american constitutional law, and it's been this way for 50 years, is that corporations generally enjoy all constitutional rights. religious liberty is no exemption. you wouldn't want it to be an exception either because if corporations couldn't exercise religious liberty, then

churches, most of whom are incorporated, synagogues, mosques, none of them would have religious freedom either. some of its easier to think about the kosher butcher down the butcher lock. all of those businesses operate by a way heavily influenced by the owner's faith. and owners who make the decisions to run the companies, they don't get out of their moral responsibility before their god just because they happen to have used a legal form of incorporation to protect their material assets. that's all the greens are asking for. they're asking for the court to recognize their flesh and blood people who are operating this company. if they were employees, they could ask their employer for a religious exemption and title vii would protect them. because they're the employers and they own the company, they have come to the government and asked for an exemption. >> what do you say if this is granted -- first of all, do you think you can grant basically a hobby lobby exception only in

this case or the ruling has to be more broad? >> you know, we're asking for a broad ruling, but some of the questions at oral argument, for example, from the chief justice indicated that the court may be thinking along the lines of a more narrow ruling that would cover family owned businesses where the flesh and blood shareholders are few in number, their religious beliefs are completely undisputed, they're unified on their religious beliefs and the court seemed to indicate through some of its questioning that it may want to focus on that kind of corporations. those are called s corps. their income is taxed to individuals as personal income and not as corporate income, so in that sense it makes a lot of sense to have a narrow ruling. if the court wants to go broader, it certainly could and has the legal grounds to go broader. >> if they go broader, do you think it suddenly gives the right for a private owned business on religious grounds to only hire, people, say, of their own faith? >> that's not this case. the greens hire people of all

faiths. >> i understand. but do you see that's one of the slippery slope arguments? that's one of the concerns here by some? >> i would prefer to talk about this case and what the government is doing, for example, to our client, the beckett fund client mother angelica and her catholic tv station. did you know that at midnight tonight the government is going to start to impose massive irs fines on mother angelica and ewtn because they won't use their health plan as a condue it for contraceptives? that makes no sense. the government has already exempted health plans covering millions of american work freer from providing these contraceptives for -- why wouldn't they stop making them provide these drugs against their religious beliefs. it just doesn't make any sense. >> if you're saying -- where should it stop where a company says, you know what, this health procedure, we're talking about con tra sepgss but there might

be more controversial health procedures, maybe it has to do with stem cells or more controversial health procedures that some people think is a slippery slope, a violation of religious freedom. can a company sit here and tell a doctor what they can and can't prescribe in order for it to be covered under their policy? >> absolutely not. absolutely not. patients always have the right to make their health care decisions in tandem with their doctors. listen, instead of talking about the slippery slope, let's talk about the real issues in this case. >> hang on, let me stop you there. supreme court rulings are about press dents. this isn't always about one case, it is about applying the law more broadly. >> okay. then let me talk like a lawyer. religious liberty is a balanced right. it's not a trump card, it's not a get out of jail free card. all the greens are asking is that they have their day in court. once the greens show that their religious liberty is being burdened then the government has the opportunity under the law to come back in and say we have a compelling interest in this case in imposing this law on these

religious believers even though we understand they have a religious objection. and the courts evaluate that. they have been doing that, using that balancing standard for over 20 years. none of the cases you've talked about, still cell research, these other things have even arisen under the law. that's not because nobody had the right to bring those claims. they certainly did. in fact before 2010 employers had the right to put whatever they wanted or exclude whatever they want fred their health care plans. it's only since 2010 that this has been an issue. religious liberty is a balanced right, it's not a trump card. this will just give the courts the ability to do what they have been doing for 20 years very successfully, which is balance the competing rights of society. in this case, though, the government can't show that it has a compelling interest because it's already exempted millions and millions and millions of americans from complying with the health plan for political reasons. they just won't exempt the hobby lobby for religious reasons. that's not fair. >> with non-profit groups. narrow or broad, what's your sense this is going to be? >> i think -- you know, if you looked at the terms so far and

seen the decisions that were issued, especially in the last week, they have tended to be on the narrow side but they have also tended to be -- there's been a huge number of unanimous decisions so we're looking very much forward to seeing what kind of coalition comes out on the court. i think on this specific issue that you're focused on, which is whether a family owned business can come into court and bring their religious liberty case before the judges and the justices, i expect to see a very strong rule from the court. >> very interesting. thanks for coming on this morning with your views. i appreciate it. >> thank you. >> very spirited discussion there. hope you enjoyed it. up ahead, saddle up, tdr rolls into the wild west of wyoming. first, today's tdr 50 trivia question. since 1904, what is the only year wyoming and neighboring idaho did not vote the same way in a presidential election? the first person to tweet the correction answer will get the on-air shoutout. the answer and more is coming up in three equivalent minutes. instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos,

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later today, president obama will formally nominate his choice to be the next secretary of veterans affairs. his name is bob mcdonald. he is a former ceo of procter & gamble, known more for business acumen than his military experience. the nomination comes exactly one month after eric shinseki resigned amid revelations of widespread problems at local va health facilities. to fix those problems, the obama administration wanted someone who had run a big organization and they got one. the 61-year-old mcdonald rose from an entry level position with procter & gamble to head the 120,000 employee company over the course of a 33-year career. he was appointed to an advisory committee on trade policy by president obama in 2007 and reappointed by obama in 2010. he also does have military experience. he graduated at the top of his class at west point and served

in the army for five years rising to the level of captain. he received praise from speaker boehner but the head of veterans said it was a surprising pick and as someone out of the military he'll have to move quickly to get up to speed on the issues of current veterans. by the way, the initial sort of vetting of him, people looking at his donations, he's only given to republicans in the past, procter & gamble a big cincinnati company so he's somebody that's given money to john boehner over the years, this is a guy who is essentially a republican ceo that the president has tapped. should make for fairly easy confirmation, but that's in normal washington. up next, the latest twists in the mississippi primary mess that just won't end. and senator elizabeth warren drops in on the tennessee clash for senate. that and much more as we hit the trail on "the daily rundown." (vo) after 50 years of designing

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well, it's a short week, four-day week rather than five thanks to the holiday so the tdr 50 train is pulling into one of our smaller states but an interesting one, nonetheless. it's wyoming, land of the three cs, cowboys, conservatives and coal. as one of the most western of the western states, wyoming still includes unspoiled land left over from america's frontier days. it includes old faithful, which you can see behind me. population is scattered among the mountains and plains with just five people per square mile. the lowest population density in the lower 48. it has the smallest population in the united states, but with three electoral votes, it is the most overrepresented in the electoral college. your vote counts more in wyoming. it's mostly made up of republicans and has been that way for a long time. they have voted for a democratic presidential nominee just once, the lbj landslide of '64. over the last four elections the average margin of victory has been 38 points. that's no surprise since the

state appears to be further to the right than any other. gallup did a poll that found 51% of wyoming residents identified themselves as conservatives. the only state where conservatives were a majority. hasn't voted a democrat to the house or the senate since the '70s. although three of its last five governors were democrats. one possible explanation for that discrepancy, local politicians have a better chance to meet and greet their constituents and frankly there aren't that many to go meet. today the cowboy state seems to have more tourists than anything else. yellowstone and grand teton help bring in more than $3 billion in consumer spending every year. it's not just tourists, the movie industry has also taken notice of the wyoming landscape. films shot there, including several westerns like "the outlaw josey wales." >> why not have a little clint in there, right?

while tourism and movies are relatively new movie makers, energy production has the history. the first oil was drilled in the 1800s. wyoming supplies more energy to the nation than any other state. it typically generates 40% of the coal mined in the u.s. and is significant -- has a significant contribution as an oil and natural gas producer as well. some say the success of the oil and gas industry has contributed directly to the state's solid red status by drawing conservative-minded residents to the state. the fact is wyoming's registered republicans outnumber democrats 3 to 1 up from 2 to 1. that means the state has gotten much more republican over the years, not less. we're going to focus on it all week. very interesting little stories out of wyoming, from the women's suffrage movement to dick cheney. we'll get into all of it later this week. now to some 2014 trail mix

news. we're going to start down in mississippi where state senator chris mcdaniel is not giving up on the fight. he claims that his team has found hundreds of irregularities in last week's runoff election. he has called the election unfair. one way that mcdaniel is trying to change the result is by challenging votes cast by people who voted in both the democratic and republican primaries. those votes are considered illegal under state law. it remains to be seen if mcdaniel can find enough votes to invalidate cochran's 7,000-vote margin of victory. most of that has been credited to african-american voters who turned out in strong numbers to support senator thad cochran. now the congressional black caucus is expecting the senator to may them back. we are hopeful he will be responsible and responsive to the voters who pushed him over the top. there's a sad footnote. we told you about the illegal videotaping of senator cochran's bed-ridden wife. we sadly learned over the weekend that one of the men

arrested was tea party leader and a lawyer named mark mayfield. he died friday in an apparent suicide. although a mcdaniel aide initially lashed out at the cochran campaign, official responses from both sides simply offered thoughts and prayers for mayfield's family. folks, let's think about where the discourse has gotten in political campaigns right now that we got to a point where, first of all, somebody thought it's a good idea to break into a nursing home and then the pressure of the politics of the moment somehow made somebody believe that suicide was a viable option. this is ugly, folks. we all need to be looking in the mirror and say is this the politics we want to have. let's turn to iowa where an internal political struggle caused a big shakeup within the state's republican party. after three months on the job, iowa's republican central committee voted to remove the state party chair, danny carroll, from office by a 14-2 no confidence vote. he's barely been there. they replaced him with jeff kauffman, a close ally to the

governor. the governor and his allies have spent the better part of the year trying to wrestle back control of the party from ron paul and rand paul allies. kauffman announced his goal to raise $300,000 immediately after elected saturday. let's move from iowa to kentucky where elizabeth warren made her latest stop as she crisscrosses the country trying to support democratic candidates. she's in a red state, folks. yesterday she campaigned with secretary of state allison lundgren grimes who is running against mitch mcconnell. grimes is just the latest candidate senator warren has stumped for. she's also traveled to oregon, washington and minnesota, but this is a red state. she heads to west virginia next where she will campaign for natalie tenet in july. it's reported warren has already raised and given upwards of $2.3 million to 20 candidates so far this cycle. coming up next, how lies and misconceptions are destroying america's integrity. we'll talk to someone who has some hope left and some ideas how to fix it.

first, our tdr soup of the day comes from aspen's market from jackson hole, wyoming. they're serving up perhaps my favorite soup on any given day, split pea. this one has sausage in it. we'll be right back. out there. that's keeping you from the healthcare you deserve. at humana, we believe if healthcare changes, if it becomes simpler... if frustration and paperwork decrease... if grandparents get to live at home instead of in a home... the gap begins to close. so let's simplify things. let's close the gap between people and care. ♪ cut! [bell rings] this...is jane. her long day on set starts with shoulder pain... ...and a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for... ...all day relief. hmm. [bell ring] "roll sound!" "action!"

well, faith in american institutions is at an all-time row, we've told you this for years now. in a recent nbc news/wall street journal poll, just 16% of the public said they had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the government. large corporations fared even worse. just 13% of americans expressed confidence in them. only 19% said they had some faith in the national news media. even the supreme court once seen as irreproachable above politics has the trust of only a third of the american paolitics. in a new book it's diagnosed this way. my career in journalism has coincided with a tragic period in american history, one in

which faulshood has come to dominate our discourse and the bedroom of values we once took for granted have been steadily eroding. joining me now is charles lewis, a very depressing but excellent book that he has here called "935 lies." mr. lewis, good morning to you, sir. >> good morning. >> well, it is this serial part of lies and obviously whenever we have this discussion about sort of the public losing faith in institutions, we always say it began with the vietnam war and it's been a steady erosion with maybe a tick up or down but a steady erosion over that 45-year period. >> it has. i think it may have gone back a little earlier when we were told there were 200 communists in the state department and we found out there actually wasn't a single one back in the early '50s. yeah, we've had a problem here and i notice your segment is called "truth and consequences." i would call it "no truth and no

consequences." the polls go up and down, but actually the misrepresentations continue steadily. i think one of the reasons for cynicism maybe and lack of voter turnout and especially on midterm elections, things like that, is because of this. i think people feel that people can get away with it essentially. for the most part they do. >> well, it does seem that way. you just look now. congressional investigators, they twist their investigations for partisan gain now. there doesn't seem -- you know, there used to be at least some -- when it came to congress, there used to be at least some wall there that there was an attempt at least by the investigators to play it straight. >> exactly. i think as a journalist myself, i think i covered one and i know of one perjury conviction in like 40 years. it was a $2,000 fine and the person convicted defiantly said he had nothing to be ashamed of and his friends paid the fine

later that day from their pockets, from their wallets. welcome to washington. i mean that's sort of what happens here. >> so you see it as sort of two big causes of this renewed sort of lack of faith, if you want to call it that. renewed lack of faith rather than renewed faith. one is the iraq war. talk about it. >> well, i mean, you know, i had a group of researchers, we looked for two and a half years at every statement made by the president then, george w. bush, and seven other of his top people and we looked at it closely and counted 935 faults and erroneous statements and that's basically why the book is called "935 lies." these were flat assertions that there was weapons of mass destruction and very authori authoritative, saying it might happen within a day or hours even. it turned out not to be true.

all the memoirs of the folks involved say we had bad intelligence, saying they helped to find as much intelligence as they could. >> they were searching for the bad intelligence. >> essentially, they were, yeah. >> and the other part of this talks about sort of the neutering of the media. and you seem to make the case that lawsuits -- that the big corporation that own all of the major media entities are so fearful now that a few successful lawsuits in the '80s, one having to do with tobacco in particular, but those successful lawsuits in general have cowed media at all levels. 60 years of the media telling that story, tens of billions of dollars in advertising going to the media. i worked at a tv network, and as we all know in the --

>> all right. charles lewis. this is a discussion i would like to continue but i've got a clock issue. the book "935 lies." you noted it was about the iraq war where you got the title. you dig into a lot of things here including getting after the media as well. mr. lewis, thank you very much. >> thank you. trivia time 1944 is the only year since 1904 that wyoming and idaho did not vote identically in the presidential election. republic congratulations to today's

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my inartful use of those words doesn't change who i am, what i've stood for my entire life, what i stand for today. >> that was hillary clinton walking back her dead broke comment after being criticized how she described her wealth. she continues to cries cross the country testing out a white house run while selling her book. she's been commanding over $200,000 per appearance on the speaking. the public doesn't find her out of touch in our poll. we asked whether she could relate to the average american. 55% said they believe she in touch with the average american despite the secret service or newfound worth. 37% think she's not.

it's partisan though. reminder it could be a challenge for hillary clinton going forward. clinton fatigue exists inside the beltway. it may be less so. it's a lesson a lot of people learned in '98. that's it for "the daily run down." i'll see you tomorrow. she's still the one for you.

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