check that will change everything about the republican field. i'm telling you, you're onto something here. great to see you. thanks at home for joining us. we are going to do a big fact check on the making bacon with a that sheen gun video. that's coming up. i'm sure it's going to change everything. happy monday. happy august. august. it was all the way back in may when i instructed our graphics department that they needed to come up with a single image, a single way to show on screen all at once all of the people who we thought might be running for the republican nomination this year. there's no normal situation which you would try to show in an identifiable way 22 different people all on the same screen all at once, right? hollywood squares is nine people.

yeah, you get a crowd shot where you don't care who all the individual people are, but 22 individual humans, you're supposed to able to identify individually and have separate thoughts about? you don't put 22 individuals on screen at once. doesn't make sense. but i insisted we do that, because there was no other way to show at a glance who was in the running for the republican nomination. even though it was unfair to ask, we did it. it was a mess from the beginning. the only silver lining is i thought we wouldn't have to live for it long. i thought when we made this chart in may showing these 22 republican contenders, i felt sure this would not stay cluttered for long, a lot of these people, maybe they were toying with running, but they wouldn't get into the race, especially when they saw how many other big names were getting into the fight for the republican nomination. we figured we would be able to thin this out and make normal looking pictures to put on tv.

that's not how it worked out. we started with this chart of 22 people in may. yes, there were some who dropped out, not many. first, there was michigan governor rick snyder. he said he would not run until we got to rick snyder. then it was the very stern governor of indiana, mike pence, who seemed to be rattled by the big gay rights controversy he created in his state. soon thereafter, he said he would not run for president. so mike pence was out. three, too, one, poof. then it was the bellicose new york republican congressman peter king. three, two, one, poof. then it was the even more bellicose u.n. ambassador john bolton. he's basically made a year since he left the george w. bush administration. he's made a career saying he might run for president. so it was surprising when he said he would not. but he said he would not, so we

were able to say john bolton, three, two, one, poof. four guys dropped out. other than those four guys dropping out, all the rest of them stayed in. all the rest of them declaring one by one they were in fact running for president. the last one was the guy way down there on the bottom row in the middle, my friend jim gilmore, former governor of virginia. he made his announcement he's running in this -- do we have the video here? the less than riveting, 11-minute long youtube video he used. most of it is just one excruciating closeup of his face. jim gilmore is a very dynamic and handsome man. but 11 minutes, it was not the most scintillating start to a national campaign. but he got in last week and it

was exciting to complete our chart that we started all those months ago. just a nice sense of completion to nail down the decisions and the fate of all of these candidates. so first thing we were able to do is poof out four guys. good buy rick snyder, mike pence, peter king, john bolton. they're all gone. start at the top, everybody else stays in. mike huckabee, in, ted cruz, rand paul, marco rubio, jeb push, chris christie, rick santorum, bobby jindal, ben carson, lindsey graham, donald trump, jim pataki -- hold on a second, we forgot one. who is that again? who is that? i totally forgot about that guy. the guy in the bottom, that is bob ehrlich.

he's the only one of our original 22 as of this weekend that had not made up his mind whether or not he was going to run. but yesterday he told "the boston globe," poof he. he did not say "poof me" to "the boston globe," but he said he would try to advance the issues he talked by a action committee. but at least that's it now, right? a total of 17 candidates running for the republican nomination for president. 17, zone. except maybe not. because there's another guy who we forgot so hard, we never even put him on our initial list of 22 back in may. he was the commissioner of the irs in the george w. bush administration. he worked in the reagan administration. he was involved in the creation

of the department of homeland security. he's now filed a formal complaint seeking to force the fox news channel to allow him not even into their presidential debate thursday night, he filed this complaint just to be allowed to be in the predebate event that involves the other candidates. his make is mark eberson. the question is, on what grounds could fox say no to that request? mark eberson is not bristol palin, or sarah palin. his name is mark eberson, he's not a joke candidate or a protest candidate.

he's not the guy that calls himself on the s.e.c. filing "titus the great." he points out in this fec complaint, the rnc in one of their fake polls has been including his name on the list of people who republicans can choose to fake for in a republican primary. so if they're using him to promote the republican primary, why wouldn't they actually let him into it? why wouldn't they let him into the debate -- or i'm sorry, not the debate, that event before the debate that's just for the candidates who fox news says will not be allowed into the real debate because fox news says so. on what grounds can they keep him out? but fox is not saying whether they'll let him into the event on the debate night that will make place before the real debate. fox is still -- it's this week. fox is still not even saying whether they'll let jim gilmore

in. interesting story about jim gilmore. right now, it's freaking august. this is the first week of august. jim gilmore told his hometown paper he would make his announcement whether or not he was running the first week of august. but he announced. he made his announcement last week. maybe that's why his announcement video was so terrible. but the gilmore campaign has confirmed to us that the reason they moved up the date of his announcement and didn't announce last week is specifically because they thought if they announced last week he would be able to get into the kid's table event fox is putting on before their debate thursday night that's why they did it. is fox going to let him in? don't know. fox isn't saying. they'll decide when they feel like deciding. fox changed their rules since they first got this debate. they changed the rules, so there's no lower threshold in

terms of a polling ceiling that candidates have to hit in the polls to be included. jim gilmore thinks he ought to be at that event. if they're going to do another event for candidates not polling as well who are serious candidates and running, why shouldn't he be in it. why shouldn't mark eberson be in it? fox news just won't say. they won't say even thousand whether candidates like that will be allowed in. it does seem a little unfair, not only to those candidates but to the other candidates who are trying to figure out who they're going to be on stage with. who knows? fox still, the week of their debate, won't announce which polls they're going to be using for their calculations. they're going to announce apparently tomorrow night which ten candidates they're going to allow on stage to debate. but even now the day before,

less than 24 hours ahead, we still have no idea the criteria that fox is going to use to decide which polls count, who's going to be allowed to debate for the republican nomination, who's not, on one grounds they're going to say the candidates are competing, are they going to round to whole numbers, is it all going to be the same kind of poll? is it going to be polls that pick the candidates that fox news wants to be on the stage? they're not saying. it's nuts. and that's how we're picking a new president. it's so nuts that the national polling companies have started to go into revolt over how fox wants to use their data, or cite their data to give themselves some sort of semblance of scientific objectivity the way they're setting up the first debate. the pollsters are starting to want nothing to do with this. maris college do state by state polls and announced today that they will not release national republican primary poll thing week because they believe fox

news is misusing that kind of polling in order to include and exclude various candidates from the debate. monmouth university do another poll. they did release their latest polling number for the republican candidates today. surprise, surprise, donald trump wins. but they also, with the release of that data, they put out a cautionary statement explaining their polls, like every poll, they've got a margin of error, saying it is statistical nonsense to be making these decisions about who is allowed to compete based on these differences in the debates. look closely at -- look at these columns here. the number they put in their poll, the lower and upper margin, the report change, including the margin of potentially stacking error.

if you're honest about it, if you are honest about it, if you want to look at what these numbers really say, and you take account the margin of error and the statistical analysis and basically almost all of the candidates overlap. yes, there are a few candidates who you could safely say are top ten candidates like donald trump right now. and you could safely say that george pataki and my friend jim gilmore are at the bottom. but pretty much everybody in the middle, almost everybody in the middle overlaps. to say there's some meaningful difference between john kasich and rick perry is nonsense. because they really do have the same amount of support statistically speaking. it is radically biassing to the republican presidential primary process to say john kasich gets into the debate when rick perry doesn't when there's no justification for making that kind of distinction between them. so the pollsters are not only pointing that out, they're basically in revolt.

the candidates have moved beyond complaining to the press to making formal federal complaints. fox is still not saying who is even before considered for one of their events and not saying how they're deciding who will be in the actual debate. and it's this week. we'll have more on the pollster's revolt later on in the show. suffice to say, though, fox still has a chance to make the very easy switch here that basically every unbiased observer, and lots of biased observers, think they ought to choose. there's an easy way for fox to fix this problem. and there's nobody who could rightfully complain about it in terms of its fairness compared with what they're doing with their numb on the scale in picking the candidates for this debate on thursday. it's a very easy fix. they could still do it. what iowa republicans and south carolina republicans and new hampshire republicans have all asked fox to do, what pollsters from marist has suggested they

might do, with the republican voters surveyed by monmouth say fox should do is the easiest solution that they've got. yeah, i know it's a crowded graphic. that would be a crowded stage. you don't have to put them on all at once. just do two heats, two events. not some kid's table and the real thing, but two equal events, randomly assign eight to ten candidates to go first. and then the remaining eight to ten candidates you randomly assign to go second. just divide it that way. two equal heats. we don't know who will be in until that night. it would be exciting to give you bingo balls to pick who is in each heat. people would both watch. fox could still do that. there is still time to fix this. but tonight in new hampshire, nearly all of the republican candidates did all appear all at once on one debate stage.

it wasn't so terrible. the first time we've seen them together for the first time in the 2016 campaign. at this event in new hampshire, which took place tonight, some of the candidates overtly made the case from that stage that the way fox news is running the first real debate this week does a disservice to the whole republican field and particularly republican voters in the early states. >> let me start by saying thank you for hosting this, and thank you, joe mcquaid as well for reminding the national class we don't have a national primary and managing to get all of the candidates here. thank you for doing that. >> that's from this event tonight that happened in new hampshire, that just ended moments ago. this may be the closest the republican candidates will ever come to being on the same stage together. it was a fascinating thing to watch. rick perry was asked if he wanted to redo his oopse moment from the last time he ran for president. we have that and a live report

from what happened at this event in new hampshire tonight. that's coming up next.

today, more than ten republicans running for president this year all got on the same stage at the same time. when will we see that again? you're not going to see it at the first official republican debate on fox news this week. but what happened tonight in new hampshire was basically the kickoff to the competitive 2016 republican presidential nominating process. remarkable event tonight in manchester, new hampshire. we have a live report from the scene in just a moment. stay with us.

this was very exciting tonight. it started on time at the stroke of 7:00 p.m. eastern, 0000. they emerged. it was super exciting to see all of them, all these republican candidates standing on one stage, ready to debate in manchester, new hampshire. i say debate. technically they weren't debating, because according to the republican party's rules, this was not one of the officially sanctioned debates this year. so no one candidate was allowed to address directly any other candidate. instead what happened is the candidates answered questions individually. the questions had been selected for each of them by the moderator. and then it was like this. it was like a fire drill. they were just quickly musical chairs with one chair? i don't know. they were quickly hustled off the stage. it was like a republican conveyer belt. okay, you're gone, okay, you're gone. three of the senators joined in a "brady bunch" box because they

wanted to stay in washington for a vote to defund planned parenthood. that vote failed, but they wanted to register those failing votes any way. so they were in the "brady bunch" box with an unfortunate satellite delay between them and the monitor. but this was the first time we've had them in this big of a group, between the guys on the satellite feed and the 11 guys on stage, we had 14 of the 17 republican presidential contenders participating tonight in this forum. and hey, who remembered george pataki was so tall? the room was not filled, which i find hard to believe with all those candidates there. but the room was by no means full. hard to believe. the first candidate up was rick perry. he was really fired up, like almost inappropriately fired up. he had his wheaties, he seemed very excited to be there. over the course of the night, they gave him a chance to redo his "oopse" moment that sunk his 2012 chances.

>> governor perry, in the past you mentioned cutting federal agencies. we talked tonight about the debt, size of government not working for the rest of america. what specifically, what agencies would you either eliminate or cut? >> i've heard this question before. [ laughter ] >> i thought you might have. >> honestly, the forum itself was a little subdued. i think in part because the audience was not allowed -- they were directed specifically to not react. so there was no clapping. also, the candidates would not react to one another, so a little dry in part. the only candidate who got much reaction was senator lindsay graham, who unprompted brought up hillary clinton and bill clinton and he got a rise out of people. >> as to hillary clinton, the last person in the world you want to send into the ring of the russians is hillary clinton.

as to the clintons, i've been dealing with this crowd for 20 years. i'm fluent in clinton speak. you want me to translate? when bill says, i didn't have sex with that woman, he did. when she says, i'll tell you about bill in the pipeline when i get to be president means she won't. >> lindsey graham got a mild reaction from the crowd there. amazing fox news is not going to allow him to debate, how is this possible? that was lindsey graham tonight from new hampshire. the only real competition tonight did seem to be about one specific thing in their biographies, but the one thing they fought about is who had it harder growing up. >> two decades ago my mother was a maid at a hotel, my father worked in a bar in the back of a room. >> at 22 i was flat broke.

58 years ago, my father fled cuba. when he was standing on the deck of that ferryboat looking back at imprisonment and torture in cuba. >> thank god my father carried me on his back. his father was a coal miner. my mother could barely spoke english. >> i started out as a secretary and went on to lead the largest technology company in the world and now i'm running for the presidency of the united states. my story is only possible in america. >> had struggle upbringings and ancestors to whom much is owed. that was a personal theme. much of the rest of it went as you might expect. they all agree on basically all policy. so lots of promises to repeal obamacare and secure the border. scott walker announced he was an eagle scout and that's why he wants clean air. some of the biggest headlines to

come out of this event tonight is about who chose not to be there. my friend, jim gilmore did not separate tonight. apparently he announced he was running for president too late for the satisfaction of the new hampshire debate organizers. mike huckabee didn't show up tonight. we called his campaign last week and we never got an explanation for him. i don't know why mike huckabee didn't go, but strange he didn't. the biggest outstanding empty chair tonight was from the distant front-runner for the republican nomination, donald trump. donald trump was not there tonight answering any questions at this forum. he explained basically he didn't like the newspaper that had convened the forum in the first place. they wrote an editorial about him he didn't like, so he would not do their event. mr. trump could not stay away entirely, though. he did pose his own questions to all the candidates on his facebook page. >> i would like to ask all of the candidates that as politicians and really people that don't negotiate jobs and

much of other things, how are you going to make america great again? >> that was donald trump's contribution to the new hampshire candidate forum tonight. they didn't ask that question nor did they play the tape. it would have helped their ratings. we are thee days away from the real republican debate in cleveland. hosted by fox news. mr. trump will be at that debate, center stage as the republican front runner. maybe tonight was the practice round. maybe this is the stuff you say as a candidate when you can speak uninterrupted for several minutes. but this was the opening salvo, the first bit of competition, the first night of competition for the 2016 republican presidential candidates. joining us now from the spin room, at the first republican candidate forum of the 2016 campaign is msnbc political reporter anthony terrell. i love that you're there for us. thanks for doing this. >> reporter: thanks for having me.

>> so watching it tonight as it was happening, it was weird for me that the audience was forbidden from making noise or responding to the candidates. when you were there inside the room, would you get a bead on how the candidates were being received or was it a mystery to you? >> reporter: it was a little subdued. lindsey graham got one of the biggest rounds of applause. they were all sitting next to each other, but i'll tell you one thing, it put an exclamation point on how big this field is. they each had about 6 1/2 to 7 minutes and it felt like speed dating. there were some folks in the room saying is that it, is that all? this was also a preview of what we may be seeing on thursday when these candidates can go after one another. tonight it was a little more polite, more of a forum setting. but on thursday, these guys tested out their messages here.

but on thursday, we'll see them go after one another. >> anthony, were they -- i know they're not allowed to engage. they're not allowed to go "you, sir, are lying about my record." they weren't on stage together, they had that conveyer belt thing going on. but were there oblique shots at each other or at donald trump, was there any distinctions drawn between any of the candidates on policy? i felt like they were all talking about supporting the same policy and having the same noble grand parent. >> you're right. they were each complimenting each other. scott walker said he's won three times in four years in a blue state, so they were hyping their own records, not really going after one another. but they were going after the democrats and lindsey graham really went after the clintons. so they were focusing their attacks on democrats.

that will change on thursday. >> msnbc political report anthony terrell. love having you up there. thanks for being with us. >> reporter: thank you, rachel. >> lots more ahead tonight, including an interview tonight with one of the pollsters who is in revolt, who is publicly defining the fox news debate strategy, and how they're saying i want my poll to have nothing to do with this. fascinating take. and a brand new installment tonight of debunktion junction. stay with us. uldn't do half of your daily routine. so why treat your mouth any differently? complete the job with listerine®. kill up to 99 percent of germs. and prevent plaque, early gum disease and bad breath. sfx: ahhh listerine®. power to your mouth™!

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[ automatic gunfire ] >> that is the sound of automatic gunfire. that is an automatic rifle being fired so long. do you see the flames there this that it catches fire. and presidential candidate ted cruz just made that newly important in the presidential race, that phenomena. when he made that important in the presidential race, it turns out he totally screwed it up. that's straight ahead. stay with us. sizzurp, also known as

happy anniversary dinner, darlin' can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah. one bottle has the grease cleaning power of two bottles of this bargain brand. a drop of dawn and grease is gone.

sizzurp, also known as purple drink to those in the know. >> if you've never seen it -- >> all day, that purple drink. >> chances are your teenager has. >> 12:00 in the afternoon.

>> with youtube hits growing. >> it's turning purple. >> it's called sizzurp, yes, called like that, or the purple drank. a mixture of soda, jolly ranchers and prescription cough syrup with codeine, an instant high. >> the word is sizzurp, purple drink. i'm sure i am saying it wrong. even with that helpful pronunciation guide. but the rise of sizzurp in song lyrics and its use by young people, its perceived dangers, caused so much concern last year that last april, one of the companies that makes sizzurp's main ingredient, they decided they would yank their product off the shelves. they made this cough syrup with codeine in it. there was nothing wrong wit,

except for the day it was being misused in the real world. turned out to be the base for this popular party drug, so they yanked their cough syrup off of store shelves. they stopped selling it. this is how they explained it. >> so this is a bold step for >> so this is a bold step for this company, right? this product has a real use. there's nothing wrong with the product. but they felt that the only responsible thing to do was to yank the product off the shelves any way, because it was being wrongfully misused in the real world. and yes, maybe this drug company

just wanted to avoid a lawsuit or the media spotlight or avoid showing up on soldier boy's instagram account. but it was an honorable move. it was not a problem they created, but the misuse of their product was wrong and dangerous. so they fell on their sword. they pulled their product from the market place. and now the new sizzurp is national polling on the candidates for the republican nomination for president of the united states. the new codeine cough syrup is national polling among the republican candidates. national polling among the republican candidates itself is fine, it serves a purpose. but it's being wrongly and dangerously misused by the fox news channel and the republican party. and so now the pollsters are doing the only responsible thing and they are pulling their product out of the market place. fox news says they'll only invite the top ten candidates

from an average of the most recent polls. will they round up to the nearest whole numb? will they use a decimal point? no idea. who knows? and that is nuts for the candidates, right, that their campaigns are being made or broken by something this arbitrary and opaque and random. but for the pollsters, it's also a little bit of a moral issue, right? do you really want your work to be misused this way and in such a consequential way? misused as if you, the pollster, are saying something way more precise than you're saying, having your work there by misused, being used to decide who is allowed into presidential debates. now a number of pollsters decided they don't want to be part of this problem anymore. they are warning people that

sizzurp must be stopped. they do not want their polls misused to determine who makes the debate stage. the pollsters, as of today, appear to be in revolt. today's new monmouth university poll found donald trump in first place with 26% of the vote. he's ahead of jeb, in second place by more than a 2-1 margin. but that same poll came with a warning, that fox's system figuring out who makes the stage this year based on polls like this one is a bad idea. factoring in their margin of error, all these highlighted candidates could make the top ten, but it's unknowable whether or not they're a top ten nationally ranked candidate, because they are so close to one another. ten candidates have polling results so close, they statistically overlap. there is literally no sound way to tell which of them ranks higher than the other one. the monmouth poll director writes in their poll release, based on current polling, there's no good rational for

arbitrarily selecting a top ten. another well known national pollster is taking it a step further. marist college released a poll. they did some interesting matchups. they found hillary clinton would beat jeb and donald trump if donald trump entered the party as a three-way party candidate. but when it comes to figuring out who republican voters would vote for, for the republican nominee, marist says they will not moll on that now. not because that information is hard to get. but because that information is being misused as a determining factor for who gets into the debates, and that's wrong and they don't want their data used that way. the director of the poll lamenting -- these pollsters telling fox news, stop doing what you're

doing with our information. you're using it wrong. you were using it in a way that is dangerous and now how it's intended to be used. they're saying to fox news and the republican party, it was not our decision for you to use our information this way, and we don't want to be part of it. we don't want to be part of this disgrace any longer and one of those pollsters is here next.

joining us tonight for the interview is the director of the marist poll which announced they are leaving out of their polls questions about who republicans will vote for in the republicans. and they're specifically doing that pause they don't want that polling information misused as a determining factor for who is allowed to appear in the first republican debate on thursday. thank you for being here. >> my pleasure, rachel. how are you tonight? >> i'm good. i am -- >> but you're upset.

>> well, no. i think this is an important turn. you and monmouth have done something different but with a similar thrust, which is you do not like the way the polls are being used to determine who is in and out of the debate. we talked about this a few days ago. why did you make this extra step to not collect this data? >> we did do a poll, but we just didn't ask that question. we don't think it's good to determine the eligibility of who sits at the table for the republican debate, or for a democratic debate. so it's misuse of the data and it's affected the way the candidate have behaved. they're all trying to get the bump so they can get to the debate. it's so early in the process, even some people you think are well known in the poll today, 36% don't know who marco rubio is. 42% don't know who scott walker is. and other people are known even less well.

so it's so early, it's a chance for people to sort of look at the field, see who's out there. >> and you feel, if they were, we don't know which polls fox is going to use. if they ended up using a national marist poll, do of think you would be implicated in a way that was not, i guess not, wasn't treating your numbers with integrity? >> that's correct. but i don't think it's a great high crime against, you know, the future of the democracy. there are plenty of polls to pick from. i should say one thing about the way fox is doing this and the way that cnn is doing this that is good, the polls that they are talking about which they are likely po pick from are the scientifically-based polls. there are a lot of junk polls out there. >> we think. if they even announce which polls they use >> we think they will. we think they will be ones that are live interviewers, that they called cell phones as well as land lines. even if i'm unhappy with how the polls are being used to

determine eligibility, at least they've identified decent polls, we think, because a lot of the threat works do serious polling. there's no great conspiracy among the pollsters. we talk to each other, but we're hardly out there figuring out, who are we going to put in front this week. >> your stance on this coupled with monmouth, this may be the bump they need to make the change this week, if it happens, it will be in large part because of you. thank you very much. >> and if pollsters were so powerful, they'd just let us pick the presidential candidates. >> but you say my integrity as a pollster means i'm not going to be part of this is a powerful thing. >> thanks. >> we have much more ahead, including debunction junction. (ee-e-e-oh-mum-oh-weh) (hush my darling...) (don't fear my darling...)

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hoot, hoot. haven't done this in a long time, very exciting. debunction, junction, what's my function? ted cruz did a hilarious video in texas, the way they cook breakfast food is to wrap the bacon around the muzzle of a gun and wrap foil around and fire the gun until it cooks bacon. making machine gun bacon with ted cruz, this is designed to be hilarious and make gun enthusiasts excited about ted cruz. ted cruz cooks and eats machine gun bacon. >> in texas we cook bacon a little differently than most folks. ♪ ♪

>> mm, machine gun bacon. >> here's the question. is that true or false? did ted cruz just make and eat machine gun bacon? this is the title, right, making machine gun bacon with ted cruz. is that true or is that false? [ buzzer ] >> it's false, because that's not a machine gun. we reached out to the shooting range where that video was made. it's not a machine gun. you have to pull the trigger for each bullet you want to fire.

and it's pretty obvious, if you listen to the sound the gun makes while the senator fires it. [ gunshots ] >> here's what it would sound like if it really were a machine gun cooking your breakfast meat. [ shots ] >> it's true. you can see the flames here. guns can get really hot when you fire them a lot. the internet is lousy with people setting fire to guns by firing them too much and too fast, particularly in fully automatic mode. but there's a difference between a fully automatic machine gun like this and what ted cruz made bacon with. does he really not know what a machine gun is? does he want us to think he was firing one here? and he knows he wasn't? or does he not know? we know the moment when all gun groups get mad at ted cruz and say ted cruz doesn't know what

he's talking about when he talks about guns. next up, governor chris christie. this is our cherished clip of chris christie rockin' out without a care in the word at a bruce springsteen concert 15 years ago. but in a recent interview with lifezette, everything we thought we knew flew out the window. he and his wife were asked and each picked john bon jovi over bruce springsteen. if you know anything about him, it's probably about the bridge, he yells at teachers, one of them is he likes springsteen. but apparently for the purpose of running for president he's given that up. it's very sad.

but then this weekend, my friend jake tapper at cnn did an interview with governor christie and asked him to explain what that was all about. >> i read something in the press that really upset me the other day where you were quoted as saying -- and maybe it was a misquote -- but were you quoted as saying when it came to your favorite new jersey musician it was no longer the boss, mr. bruce springsteen, it was john bon jovi. how can you justify this flip-flop? >> it wasn't a flip-flop. what we asking, was, as a friend, who do you prefer, springsteen or bon jovi. >> as a person. >> they're friends of ours, and that was the answer. >> of course i didn't turn my back on bruce springsteen. the interview was asking as a friend, not their music. it was specific to the friendship, not the music.

that's how chris christie explains what happens in that interview. but is that true or is that false? [ buzzer ] >> very the false. here's exchange with laura ingraham. >> bon jovi or bruce springsteen? >> ah, that's hard. their music or their person? bon jovi. >> your explanation, mr. christie of dissing bruce springsteen is not true? >> what she was asking, what laura ingraham was asking, both me and mary pat, as a friend, who do you prefer, springsteen or bon jovi. >> their music or their person. >> no explanation. >> bon jovi. >> bon jovi. >> i don't think anybody really cares which new jersey singer the state's governor likes more. i do think people would care that he would pick that as something to lie about overtly. governor christie, in a blind

taste test, you and your wife chose bon jovi. that is a choice you are going to have to live with. we have the tape. that does it for us tonight. taste test you chose bon jovi. we have the tape. "first look" is up next. it's tuesday, august 4th. breaking overnight, two died and many more injured when a circus tent collapsed with many inside. ing -- polls say donald trump is hurting the gop image. a boy shackled at school. heart stopping rescue and more. "first look" starts now. good morning to you on this tuesday. thanks for waking up with us everyone. i'm betty nguyen. two have died and more