equation, you got to go back to what 1980? there's been a bush or clinton president or vice president since then. i wonder how americans are going to respond to that. we shall see. >> the history would appear to indicate they don't mind. from 1980 on almost every election, there's been a bush. i think there's going to be a bush. i think he's going to come in second. i think he's going to lose to hillary. >> all right, bob sclump always great to visit. that's "the ed show." "politicsnation" with reverend al sharpton starts right now. good evening, rev. >> good evening, ed and thanks to you for tuning in. tonight's lead speaker boehner is standing by a powerful house republican who spoke at a white soup remist convention in 2002. today, louisiana congressman, steve scalise, the third ranking republican in the house, confirmed that he spoke before the european american unity and rights group back in 2002 as a

state lawmaker. the group, known as euro was founded by one-time coup clucks clan leader david duke. in a statement, scalise said quote, it was a mistake i regret and i emphatically oppose the divisive racial and religious views groups like these hold. and speaker boehner said quote, representative scalise made an error in judgment and he was right to acknowledge it was wrong and inappropriate. he has full confidence as our whip. but today, many questions remain unanswered. scalise said he didn't know about the group when he spoke at the event. david duke's long-time political adviser said he was the one who invited scalise to the event, but that scalise did know about euro's philosophy.

quote, he was my neighbor. i don't think scalise knew anything about euro. steve was someone who i exchanged ideas with on politics. we wouldn't talk about race or the jewish question. but david duke himself today said quote, it would seem likely he did know. but that doesn't mean that he did. and if he had known, i can understand why his memory would fail him a little bit. it would seem to me that he would have realized that it was our group. but i can't swear to it. either way, there are serious new questions about a congressman who just weeks ago was about boasting about diversity with the new gop. >> if you look at this new class, especially such a great new diverse group of members with great backgrounds too. and they're going to come and i think give us a really strong

boost in the new congress. >> joining me now are jason johnson and michelle cottle thank you both for being here. >> thanks rev. >> glad to be here, rev. >> jason there's still so much we don't know about this story. why do you think speaker boehner is standing by scalise today? >> because the republicans don't care. because they can say bad things about women, bad things about gays bad things about black people, and they keep winning congress. so they have no electoral consequences for supporting people with this kind of behavior. it's clear steve scalise is lying. he knew where he was. he's not fooling anybody. but the republican won't suffer any consequences for it so boehner will have his back and they'll still give obama trouble in the next couple of years. >> we're not talking about all republicans, but he is the third top ranking guy in congress. and many people make mistakes. all of us have said things we didn't do but we talk about a

pattern here that's a little more when we thought when we first heard this from a blogger yesterday. for example, 1999 a newspaper talked about then state lawmaker steve scalise about david duke possibly running for congress. quote, state representative steve scalise said he embraces many of the same conservative views as duke but is far more viable. scalise said quote, duke has proven that he can't get elected and that's the first and most important thing. and that same year michelle scalise was one of just three louisiana lawmakers to vote against making martin luther king day a state holiday in louisiana. he voted against it again in 2004. so does scalise need to provide a fuller explanation for his past including voting against state holiday for martin luther

king including he didn't attack david duke's apparent racism but that he just said i'm a more viable candidate than him, he can't win, i can win? i mean this starts to build up a little pattern here. >> i am certain that the democrats are going to come at him and want to have a little bit more explanation. i think what's going to save him is, we are talking about events that happened 12 13 14 years ago. to be honest louisiana back then that's not so far away from when david duke was a republican candidate for state-wide office. >> right. >> this is a state where race was a very tricky issue, and you had to kind of play in those dangerous waters. and i think probably what the congressman would say is that he has matured since then. and i think that that's probably kind of what the party line is going to be. that he learned his lesson or whatever. >> jason, isn't that more acceptable to say i've matured, than to say, i didn't know where i was going? >> yeah the problem with this

for me is that he's lying. look, david duke got half of the white vote in louisiana when he ran. you can't run as a republican in the state of louisiana -- ask mary landrieu -- unless you can appeal to a certain segment of the population that happens to be racist. and i'm tired of these republican candidates saying i didn't know i didn't know. it's like the guy who gets caught coming out of the strip club, saying oh i thought it was the dmv. we know where you were. that's the real problem here. he knew what he was doing. >> david duke told "the washington post" that his political adviser was friendly with scalise. quote, scalise would communicate a lot with my campaign manager, kenny knight that is why he was invited and why he would come. kenny knew scalise, scalise knew kenny. they were friendly. at the very least, does this raise questions about scalise's judgment, that he was friends with a white soup remist?

>> i think this should remind people of what politics in louisiana was like as recently as then. david duke was actually fairly prominent in the party for longer than a lot of people remember. you know he had party chairmanship issues county seats and stuff like that. so you had to kind of being aware of who he was, and you had to handle him carefully if you were a state politician back then in the republican party. >> i did that jason, and that's the reality of politics but then do you then make this person the third highest ranking member of your party in the congress and say you're trying to reach out and you have an autopsy done and the chair of the party and say, now we want to be more diverse and you roll him out to talk about with diversity? i mean fine people have their past. but you can't use him if you're trying to reach out and if he's not even going to say, yes, i've

made mistakes and i've grown, oh i didn't know where i was. >> rev, you're exactly right. this shows how disingenuous the republican party is about this issue. the reason boehner doesn't want to go after scalise is because this happens all the time. we had trent lot. we just had rick perry who had a ranch for 30 years and no one saw it. boehner doesn't want to go after him because he realizes you have a lot of other republicans with that ground. until they clean up this issue, until the republican says we are going to purge open racists and biggots, they'll never win a national election. . >> we're talking about some of the party leadership not all republicans. but if republicans are going to win an election, they're going to have to break out of the boundaries that they're in in terms of the demographics. and how do you reach out without

being transparent, open about who you're dealing with and having leadership that has the capacity of delivering that message? >> well this does put scalise in a particularly tricky situation. i mean, the party is desperate to overcome its image as a bunch of cranky old white guys. he's going to have to be careful. maybe we'll luck out and he decides he has to try extra hard and they'll work on overcoming these issues. but no question this puts a crimp in their current rebranding plan. >> you know jason, does scalise need to hold a press conference and take on questions and end it once and for all? i mean, put it all out there, deal with it and admit if he made some errors in judgment and go on. i mean does he need to stand up, rather than hide behind boehner and text statements or written statements? >> i mean he could show up with will hurd sing kumbaya, sit

down and do an interview, but the damage has been done. no matter what he says and no matter what policies he tries to promote in a new leadership position, the public still sees this as the republicans not being able to police their own. the republicans see it as a party on the one hand we want diversity, but we don't want the ideology that goes along with that diversity. i don't think he can fix this problem, and i i don't think he's going to step down from his position. >> clearly it's race but it's also transparency and honesty. it's a time ago, if he was honest and dealt with it it may be different. but when people feel like you've done things that i don't like or that i'm uncomfortable with and now you're going to try to mislead me i think that's an underlying issue that a lot of people are saying well wait a minute -- it's one thing for me

to say, look it's all in the past. it's another for you to tell me something today that i feel that you don't respect my intelligence. >> look in politics we learn time and again, it's not the sin, it's the cover-up. and yet people constantly do things that then they don't come clean about, until somebody catches them. and then they have to kind of hem and hau or back pedal or whatever. it's just always been that case. >> jason johnson, michelle cottle, thank you both for your time tonight and happy new year. >> thanks reverend. coming up, new questions tonight about the wreckage of airasia and the flight 8501. why aren't there life vests on the bodies being found? plus, republican recovery, you won't believe how the right is trying to take credit for the millions of jobs created under president obama. also why is an airline

suing a 22-year-old kid over a website that helps you find cheaper tickets? and the white house photos of the year. what's your favorite? it's all ahead in "conversation nation."

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breaking news. investigators are widening their search for the main wreckage of airasia flight 8501. and tonight, some big questions, why aren't the bodies wearing life vests? and can searchers find the black box before more bad weather moves in? that's next. but your erectile dysfunction - that could be a question of blood flow.

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breaking news. investigators are ramping up the search for the main wreckage from the missing airasia jet. this after searchers recovered six bodies and the various pieces of debris from the northern java sea overnight. the u.s. military is sending help to assist in the search effort. already the uss sampson is in the recently and two more navy ships, plus two dive teams are expected to join as well. but in the meantime the family of those who lost loved ones continue to look for answers. >> until we have the

investigation, we cannot make any assumptions as to what went wrong. all i can say is that the weather in southeast asia is bad as the moment. >> searchers are in a race against time as more bad weather is expected to move into the region throughout the weekend. joining me now is jim tillman and safiation expert and former american airlines pilot. jim, now that they found the debris, what are investigators looking for now? >> well, there are all kinds of clues. of course we know about the black boxes giving us a tremendous amount of information. but the wreckage itself will tell a story, if you can recover enough of it to reassemble the airplane to a certain extent and find out what it looks like in terms of where the problem started and where they ended and what we end up with. so there's information with

every little piece of material that they're able to recover from that sea. >> now, jim, reports say the bodies that were found were not wearing life vests. does that tell us anything about the crash? >> it tells us whatever happened, happened very quickly with a catastrophic result. i don't think anybody had enough notice or time or anything else to get those passengers equipped with their life vests on. i even wonder what it would have been like for flight attendants going up and down the aisle, trying to instruct people how to do that. >> does finding debris mean they're close to finding the larger wreckage of the plane? >> yes, it does. and it's a matter of mapping that whole ocean floor that's involved here to determine what is wear, and did come up with some explanations about why it is where it is. lots of impact from the ocean

itself in terms of the currents and the wind and then of course, the debris itself the pattern that was set up. the really heavy stuff is not going to be affected as much by the wind or the currents. >> now, this type of plane, an a-320 airbus it has very good safety record, 0.14 fatal accidents per one million takeoffs. does that give us any indication of what likely caused this crash? >> no i think the design certainly should not be in question here. you know the airplane has proven itself over and over and over again, every single day it's been in operation. so i don't think the airplane is really where we want to go to find a clue to what happened here. i think we want to think in terms of the crew response to a very, very difficult situation. maybe it was a response that the

best anybody could do. >> the pilot apparently requested permission talking about the crew he had requested permission to change altitude to avoid storms but was denied. what kind of issues could thunderstorms pose to a plane? >> some severe issues. i've been in very, very heavy turbulence before, and i got to tell you, to a certain extent, the only thing you're doing as a pilot, you're holding on keeping the wings level. there's not a lot more you can do. you can't control the climb or the descent, because that's what the wind currents are doing. you got currents inside those storms moving over 100 miles per hour, some down some up. as you move from one to the next, you can end up with a sheering situation that can really be disruptive and very, very uncomfortable. >> and you're dealing with thunderstorms there and then turbulence also backing that up which only further complicates matters and makes it even more

dangerous. >> and i got to tell you about this business of altitude change. i've had some questions in my mind as to whether or not the crew really was asking for 38,000 feet when actually the airplane was being pushed up rather than just being at the assigned altitude of 32,000. they may not have had any choice. they may have been saying i'm going up how about giving me clearance for 38 so i'll at least be legal. >> captain tillman, thank you for your time toned. >> thank you reverend. still ahead, who should get credit for the millions of jobs created over the last six years? the facts said president obama, but some right-wingers have other ideas. but first, jeb bush tries to run away from obamacare, but instead falls right into tonight's gotcha. and the legion of super fans. wow! [ narrator ] on a mission to get

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jeb bush is starting to get serious about running for president, so he's doing a political check-up on all his business dealings ahead of a potential 2016 campaign. he's cut ties with a big bank barclays. and he's leaving the board of a real estate and timber firm too. but one move by jeb really caught my eye. he's stepping down from the board of tenet health care it's a company that's been booming ever since -- drumroll please -- you guessed it you guessed it since obamacare. tenet has saved millions. their stock has more than doubled since the affordable care act passed. we know obamacare is helping millions of people and now we know one of them was jeb bush. he made nearly $300,000 last year as a tenet board member.

a big pay day for mr. bush thanks to a company that's booming under the same health care law that he's been bashing. >> the best way to repeal obamacare is to have an alternative. we never hear the alternative. show how obamacare flawed to its core doesn't work. >> it sure seemed to work for mr. bush's bank account, though. perhaps it didn't work in a gop primary debate. did the governor think we wouldn't notice his sudden allergy to the affordable care act? nice try, but here's a diagnosis from dr. sharpton, we gotcha. [ narrator ] on a mission to get richard to his campbell's chunky soup. it's new chunky beer-n-cheese with beef and bacon soup. i love it. and mama loves you. ♪ ♪ we come by almost every day to deliver your mail so if you have any packages you want to return you should just give them to us

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2014 was president obama's sixth year in office. the year where he faced some of the biggest challenges of his

presidency. but it's also the year where he realized some of his greatest achievements. here's what he was up against. confronting the terrorist group isis and establishing a soltion to fight them. staving off the global health threat of ebola. and facing the crisis of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing our southern border. he was dealing with all those problems, but 2014 was much more than that. >> in last year's final press conference, i said that 2014 would be a year of action, and would be a breakthrough year for america. and it has been. >> in the breakthrough year the president's health care law helped ten million more americans get insurance. his executive action on immigration, protected up to five million people from deportation. the economy's roaring back with

the dow closing today at nearly 18000 points. up more than a thousand from last year. the unemployment rate is less than 6% its lowest level since before the bush recession, and a gallon of gas now costs around $2.27. it's a big drop and making a real impact on families' budgets. these numbers don't lie. and the president isn't done. >> my presidency is entering the fourth quarter. interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. and i'm looking forward to it. >> it's the fourth quarter and the president's got a whole lot planned for 2015. joining me now is ryan grimm, washington bureau chief for the huffington post. thank you both for being here. >> congressman, despite

headlines, this was a year of achievements for the president. am i right? >> absolutely right. the president has been on point, cool, calm and collected, meaning what he says. when you check out his pre-election statement, you'll see that he is living up to the promises. when you talk about health care it's done. when you talk about ending the war in iraq and afghanistan, he's doing that. when you talk about the improving economy, it's there. what's funny, reverend all of a sudden when republicans were talking before about nothing happening with the economy, now i see grover nor quist admitting the economy is turning around but they're trying to take credit for it. that's laughable. >> here's a funny headline. it's not the obama recovery, grover nork wist says it's the gop recovery.

that's right, "the new york times" says grover nor quist may have heralded a republican shift on the economy. he credited the budding revival to the party's austerity push. he wants republicans to take credit for the improving economy. i mean what's next ryan? taking credit for obamacare? >> you know the stimulus in early 2009 is what really stemmed the bleeding and started the turnaround. and at the time, yourself and a lot of others were saying it ought to even be bigger. >> right. >> grover nor quist was not one of those people who was saying we need more stimulus. they started calling it the job-killing stimulus immediately. then they started calling it job-killing obamacare. so we got the job-killing stimulus, we got job-killing obamacare, now the economy is starting to rebound and all of a sudden they want credit for it. i think a lot of republicans

aren't going to go along with him because they're on the record so many times as saying that all of these regulations, obamacare, et cetera all of these things are going to crush the economy. so it's much more difficult for them to make that pivot. that doesn't mean some of them won't try, though. >> you know congressman, we need to keep in mind while the president was dealing with immigration reform and gets millions of people insurance, i need to remind everyone what the house republicans were focused on. watch this. >> are you planning to initiate a lawsuit against the obama administration and president obama over his use of executive actions? >> i am. so the house i'm sure at some point next year will move to repeal obamacare. we're determined to get to the truth regarding the terrorist attack in our mission in benghazi libya. i believe the path we're going down is the correct one. >> i mean repealing obamacare, reinvestigating benghazi suing

the president. i mean it's kind of funny things to be focused on while we're dealing with all these critical issues. >> could you imagine how far we would be if the republicans just would have worked with the president? supposing we'd have passed the infrastructure bill, supposing we didn't have sequestration where we had to lose thousands of jobs on the public sector. our unemployment rate would be down below or right around 5% or below. more people would be working and we would be even better off than we are now. the president has done this despite the republicans being obstructionists and focusing on issues of all of which are nothing. benghazi. their own report came out to show that the president did not hide anything there was nothing done there. and so if they would just -- so the verdict is out on them now. if they really want to help america, the next two years, they should work with president obama and we'll get that much

further. >> they're in the majority in the house and the senate now. do they have a responsibility to govern now? >> they absolutely do. all they talk about before is rhetoric trying to make up things. but now, they have to deliver. and the question is will they deliver? the only way they can deliver is working with the president. that's what has to happen here. >> the president made a push this year to raise the minimum wage. and on thursday workers in 20 states will see an increase in the minimum wage. president bush signed the minimum wage hike. will democrats keep the pressure on this issue next year? >> they will. and the way that politics works nowadays. even if something is dead in washington, and we can be pretty certain that mitch mcconnell and john boehner aren't going to help raise the minimum wage that doesn't mean it doesn't move on the local level. and even if it doesn't move at the state level, it can move at the city or the town level. and like you said on january

1st, in 20 states they're going to be people who are getting a raise. more than 1,000 walmart stores across the country, they're having to adjust their pay schedule, so they can boost the wages of some of their workers. so we're seeing real people's lives made better by the pressure that's being put on here even if nothing is happening in washington. >> you're a member of congress and a senior member now. you've been there a while. i remember when you went in. and the pressure and the movements around minimum wage around immigration, around policing, does that register even in a republican congress? you're there every day. >> i think it has to. you know when you think about middle class and poor people wanting to get into the middle class, minimum wage doesn't have color on it. it helps families. and that's what the american people need. we had this wage disparity. it's not only in communities of color, it's throughout the country. >> right.

>> and so when you talk about issues that's going to affect families and that's what minimum wage does. when you talk about bringing communities together making sure that police and communities work together that makes for a more peaceful neighborhood. so those things resonate with everybody across the country. >> ryan grimm, congressman meeks, thank you both for your time tonight and happy new year to both of you. >> happy new year to you, rev. >> still ahead, speaker boehner's statement on a republican who spoke at a white supremacist event. also airlines sue a website that finds cheap flights, and they say they're being untreated unfairly about airfare. plus the best moments of the year from the white house photographer. it's all ahead in "conversation nation." this guy first roamed the earth over 65 million years ago. like our van. yeah.

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time now for "conversation nation." joiping me tonight are political strategist angela rye, legal analyst john burns, and the grill's zerlina maxwell. let's go right to our first topic, speaker boehner's leadership. the speaker was reportedly pivotal in forcing out gop congressman michael grimm, who's resigning after pleading guilty to a felony and after making this notorious threat to a journalist. >> no no. you're not man enough.

you're not man enough i'll break you in half. >> but today speaker boehner is standing by republican congressman steve scalise, even though scalise admits he spoke to a white supremacist group in 2002. are you surprised the speaker is standing by congressman scalise today? >> i'm not. actually republican member and new whip steve scalise has actually received support from the louisiana delegation, so it doesn't surprise me at all. and similarly, when nancy pelosi took over as speaker in 2007 you had a similar situation where she came out really hard against ethics and any types of ethical issues. so it's not surprising that he stood against and encouraged michael grimm to step down. >> and when angela says that he stood -- that he got the support of the whole louisiana delegation that includes cedric

richmond who is an african american, well respected. >> that does. rev, i think you're directly on point. and i think it's disingenuous are if the speaker to say this gentleman made a mistake. you speak all the time and i speak from time to time. the first thing you do is you ask who you're speaking to, to tailor your points. so for him to say he had no idea he was talking to a whole room of white nationalists is just unfounded. >> zerlina? >> i think part of the thing that i'm focusing on here, the problem for the republican party and this has been since the beginning of this administration, but all the way to the present, it's not that they end up having individual race racist in their party, but they pander to racist voters. so he ends up at a white supremacist conference because he's trying to reach that constituency. and that's the problem that the republican party has not properly dealt with. >> and angela you know politics very well. one of the top strategists in

the country, don't you really hurt your announce plans to broaden your base reach out for more diversity after the autopsy? whether it was rhetorical or not, don't you even lose the ability to say that when you have this kind of situation? >> rev, i think you and i would both agree that they lost us at autopsy. there's not been anything genuine about their approach their outreach or anything else. >> but i'm asking a different question. because i don't know that they were trying to get us in quotes, i think maybe they were trying to get independents to feel like they were trying to be more broad-based. >> and by "us," i mean american people with sense. >> oh i thought you meant progressives. >> we were never the targets. i think the reality of the situation is it's just another case in point where they continue, to zerlina's point to, pander, to outreach to folks who

will tout their message regardless of if they should be audiences they should even be talking to. i think that's the real issue. when you have an autopsy report and you say you need to reach black and latinos and gay folks and young folks, and you continue to go not only to your base but also to the fringe audiences that continue to further divide this country, i think you only further exacerbate the problem. >> let me move on. john, a young man being sued for helping people find cheaper flights. united airlines and orbitz are teaming up to try to shut down this 22-year-old's travel website. here's how it works. the site looks for cheaper flights with layovers in a city you actually want to visit, then you just never get on the next connecting flight. john, there's nothing actually illegal with this. so what's the kid doing wrong? >> well, the kid's doing nothing wrong. you hit the nail on the head.

he's doing nothing illegal, but he's taking money from the airlines. what his website does, it circumstanceum circumstanceum vents the airline's structure. i don't think there's any legal basis. i think it's done to prevent him from moving forward with the website. i think it's more an intimidation factor than anything else. >> zerlina, i travel a lot and i don't know who doesn't try to look for cheaper tickets. >> he deserves a medal, not to be sued. anybody looking for solutions to make airline travel more bearable deserves a medal. certainly there are a number of problems that are popping up. it's more expensive to check your bags. it's more expensive for the actual flights. there are long delays. you get to the gate and they're like, there's no seat for you on the flight. airline travel needs to be

easier. and any 22-year-old out there who wants to make it easier i think he deserves an award for that. >> angela? >> number one, i applaud this gentleman and this website, i thought i was the only hustler on the go. going from seattle to d.c. atlanta is my hub, i would often stop there and see my god kids. i'm definitely behind the ball, but i do it all the time. >> confession is good for the soul angela. [ laughter ] but i think that doesn't this really risk john public sentiment getting behind the kid, 22 years old, doing something that angela says she does all the time that zerlina says people want to see done. i understand what you're saying about intimidation but couldn't this backfire on the airlines? >> well, it definitely could. but you have to remember rev, it's so expensive to defend lawsuits. we know the young man's trying to get funding from different

people. typically it costs millions of dollars to defend a lawsuit like this. we know orbitz and united have tons of money. he might have public support, but in terms of courtroom support to defend a lawsuit, that's a different thing. >> is there any airline more unpopular zerlina, than the airlines industry? >> i don't think so. we had the neat offender earlier this year and that made everybody focus on the horrible experiences that we all have while traveling. airline travel is being herded into a plane like you're cattle. and it's really unpleasant. i think the airline industry needs to focus on what their job is which is to serve the consumer, and i think this young man is solving a necessary problem. >> i'm going to have to hold it there before they turn my show off on all the airports around the country. our panel is going to stay with me. we'll be right back with the year's hottest political date for new year's. and the best photos of 2014 from the obama white house.

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go to ziprecruiter.com and post your job to over 30 of the web's leading job boards with a single click; then simply select the best candidates from one easy to review list. you put up one post and the next day you have all these candidates. makes my job a lot easier. over 100,000 businesses have already used zip recruiter and now you can use zip recruiter for free at a special site for tv viewers: go to ziprecruiter.com/offer700. we're back with our panel, angela, john and zerlina. tomorrow night, is there any politician who you'd want to ring in the new year with? hillary clinton topped a poll here in new york. 37% say she'd be their date of choice for new year's. zerlina, which politician would you want for your new year's date? >> i actually want a group date. and i thought hillary clinton

would be a fun politician but also i would love to just get some wine and senator elizabeth warren to join in to have a power duo feminist discussion to bring in 2015. >> john? >> i'm a d.c. guy. i think i'm going to join the first lady and the president and cruise down to the white house. i've been to a few galas, and they're had a good time. i'd like to ring in the new year with them. >> angela? >> well since john stole my answer with the first lady although i still want her to help me pick my outfit. i will pick the new congressional black caucus chair, also known as dad 3 for me. >> butter field is a lot of fun. i'll be in church. so unless somebody wants to go to church i won't get on that list. finally, we just got a batch of the best photos of the year from the obama white house. like this candid moment of the first couple laughing together. and this shot from easter. the president told a

photographer that it was the two most famous sets of here's in washington. here he is getting a check-up. i'm not sure the doctor went to medical school. and here's the president meeting with the koala. and helping a 1-year-old girl walk across the oval office. angela, which photo did you like best? >> well i love the ones you just showed us but i picked one that was a little more serious and that was from the ferguson the day-long meetings i know that you participated in rev. it was so important to see the president step up in that way, so that's my favorite moment. >> john? >> i think it's important to see when you see the president in the community. i remember there's a picture of him going to a local shack in d.c. and it hit close to home because my office is one block from there. i saw how engaged people were and it's important to see the president separate himself from the executive sometimes. >> why didn't you go? >> secret service was blocking

the door rev. i tried my best. >> all right. zerlina? >> i think the perfect combination is the president plus small children. usually magic ensues. i also like the little boy who was face planting on the oval office couch. and i'm certain a lot of the staffers in the white house have had that feeling in the past and maybe wanted to do a face plant of their own. so i thought that picture was really funny as well. >> i thought so as well. it's funny when you look at these pictures and you think of the scenes that people don't see, and it tells you a lot about the human side of the president and the first family. and i think sometimes people forget they're parents, they're a married couple they have feelings they have hopes and desires. and when they release these photos i think it just gives people more of a sense of these are real people. >> right. >> absolutely. >> interesting. well let me also say that i want to wish all of you a happy

new year and i have enjoyed having all of you on the show. >> thanks rev. we'll be right back with the biggest story of the year and the reason to be optimistic about race relations in this country. wow! [ narrator ] on a mission to get richard to his campbell's chunky soup. it's new chunky beer-n-cheese with beef and bacon soup. i love it. and mama loves you. ♪ ♪

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new chunky beer-n-cheese with beef and bacon soup. i love it. and mama loves you. ♪ ♪ finally tonight, turning the biggest news story of the year into positive change. the shooting death of michael brown jr in ferguson missouri sparked more twitter mentions than anything this year any other story. a new report says the ferguson grand jury decision and the ferguson shooting were the number one and two most tweeted stories in 2014. people care about what's happening in this country. and they want to talk about it. in a recent npr interview, president obama said that conversation is good for the country. >> i think that the fact that there's a conversation about it and that there are tools out there that we know can make a

difference in bridging those gaps of understanding and mistrust, should make us optimistic. >> the president also said he thinks progress is coming in 2015. >> and what's been striking to me in the conversations we've had is that their interest in solving a problem, as opposed to simply stewing in the hopelessness of race relations in this country and i'm convinced that we actually are going to see progress on this issue next year. >> and we will make progress but only if we're willing to talk about it. we can't turn our backs on each other. we need to have this conversation. and if each side approaches the other with respect and an openness to problem-second halving, we can make real progress and that would be something big to celebrate in the new year.

we don't need to limit the conversation. we need to have the people in the room that have different views, but understand we got to solve this. we've got to have justice for everyone. equal protection under the law and equal opportunity. why do i believe it? reverend al you're always out there protesting and you believe it will be better? yes. because when i look at the protests and see all races protest, but all races mourn the shooting and despicable act of two policemen being shot it makes me understand that people are not locked in the lines of some of those of yesterday that want to pick and choose who ought to be in the conversation and what ought to be in the conversation. real people having real talk will lead to real change. and that's what 2015 must be about. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. i'll be back tomorrow with the

fourth annual revvie awards. you won't want to miss it. "hardball" starts right now. ♪ ♪ >> another gop reboot? let's play "hardball." ♪ ♪ good evening, i'm michael steele in for chris matthews. can you survive? that's the question hanging over majority whip steve scalise after it was revealed he spoke to a group of white supremacists in 2002. he defended himself saying he spoke to a variety of groups as a state representative at the time. and he didn't vet all of them. he said in retrospect it was a mistake that he regrets.