start to diverge. two pictures of the economy from two different surveys. >> chuck todd, the president just spoke. here is what he had to talk about. we have to ask ourselves, what is the white house doing about a jobs bill? this was the president moments ago. >> next week, congress will start debating many of the jobs proposals. if there are additional ideas from either party, i'm happy to consider them as well. but what i hope, what a strongly urge, is that we work quickly and we work together to get this done. america's small businesses are counting on us. >> chuck, do you see any sign that the president and house democrats are senate democrats, who were in dispute with each other, are going to work quickly together to get this done? >> on the jobs bill, yes. in fact, it looks like on the senate side, at least, there are some republicans that i have heard of, three or four of them, that it looks like they are going to come together on something, this is something the white house is insisting upon.

number one, we kind of have no choice now in this 59-vote environment when they feel like that he have to get that 60th vote, which the minority party will insist on. on that front, it looks like they may make some progress pretty quickly. they have this joint leadership meeting of congress early next week here at the white house. this is where this could get edged down. the house republicans, they're not probably going to be on board. there will be senate republicans that are, on this front. at least that's not the optimism, both here at white house and talking to some folks on the hill. that's probably going to move forward pretty quickly. >> john harwood, how -- in moving quickly on jobs, how do we feel in the economy -- how long will it take? steve, chime in here as well, for any kind of action on the hill, to have any kind of impact? >> this is one of the problems. even if you spend money right now to create jobs, impact on the unemployment rate will be fairly marginal. maybe if you had a robust

package you move it down half a percentage point to november. we're only nine months from that election. i talked to the independent economist, somebody both parties listened to in washington. he says he still expects on the basis of these numbers despite the drop to 9.7 that unemployment will be at 10.5% or higher on election day, a bad outlook for democrats and that's going to fuel what chuck said, the desire to move forward. it will be difficult, i think, for all of the republicans in the senate to hold out against that package, which is why they have reason to be optimistic that something can move. >> steve liesman, what about the other piece of what's happening in the markets today, which is concerns about greece, portugal and spain? >> it's not really greece, per se, that matters to markets, andrea. it's this idea of small governments that have gone out, issued a lot of debt and what is the possibility or chance that they might default on that debt? that's a question that involves

not just greece, but spain, italy, ireland and several other smaller countries. the broader question which is how solid is the euro zone? we have a dollar zone, all part of the same central bank. same over there in europe except they have all different kinds of governments. that's one of the achilles heels of the euro zone. investors are worried about the cohesion there. >> all right. steve liesman, chuck todd, john harwood, thanks to all of you. for more from the labor union side on the job deficit, we're joined by the president of afl-cio, rich trumka. it's down from 10%, you've heard the negative outlook out there. it's going to take a long time and could end up at the end of the year, or at least in november at 10.5%. you live where the rubber meets the road. >> we hope not. american workers are really hurting. quite frankly, america is really

hurting. we have about a 10 million job deficit in this country. 8 million jobs we've lost since the recession started and another 2 million that we needed for population growth. and nobody from our point of view is talking about a jobs program that's on the scale necessary to fix the program. everybody is focused on jobs, but it's on a small scale. >> what would you like to see happen? >> i would like to see a robust jobs program enacted in a bipartisan way that helps with several things, extends unemployment benefits and cobra benefits, brings aid to state and local governments, infrastructure, 2.3 trillion dollar infrastructure deficits, where unemployment rates are high and use of the t.a.r.p. money to start loaning, bringing loans to small and mid-sized businesses so they can start creating jobs. >> do you think you have a real partner in barack obama when it co comes to crow ating this kind of a program? >> yeah.

i think he truly understands the need for jobs. we're trying to get everybody to look at the scale right now. remember what happened in japan. in the '90s, they would spend a little bit. when things got -- they got a few green shoots around the edge, they would stop spending. that went on for a whole decade. >> you saw the size of the deficit in his proposed budget. that kind of deficit environment, how do you get them to buy off on as large a program as you're talking? >> first of all, we don't have a short-term deficit problem in this country. we have a mid-term or long-term deficit problem in this country. what we have is a short-term job crisis in this country and a short-term demand problem. we have to spend, invest in the country, create those jobs and then collectively those job also help reduce that deficit because people will be working, paying taxes, the economy will grow and the deficit will shrink. >> you know your rank and file better than anyone. you come out of the united mine workers union and that part.

>> third generation. >> i know it well. i knew you in pennsylvania way back when. let's talk about the massachusetts results and the real red flag for democrats and for the white house is that the president has lost independents, he is having trouble with the very blue collar democrats, the blue collar voters that you represent. what is the failure to connect? what are the warning signs, do you think, for the democratic party? >> first of all, it was a wake-up call. some of it was local issues, but if that's all you take away from the election, i think you're very, very naive and you're looking for disaster. it was a working class revolt. people thought that they weren't being taken care of. they thought wall street was being taken care of but main street wasn't. they didn't think that the democrats were overreaching. they thought that the democrats were underreaching. they were tired of excuses. they wanted action and jobs created. anybody who looks like they're standing in the way or being an

obstructionist or dragging their feet is probably going to pay the price in november. >> rich trumka, interesting polit political warning for a lot of democrats. thank you. great to see you again. >> good to see you. more on today's job report with austan goolsbee and democratic senator mark warner. was todd palin really acting as alaska's shadow governor, at least the chief of staff for the state house? we have that msnbc exclusive. at&t covers 97% of all americans. that's a lot of people. i've collected a few postcards of all the places that at&t has coverage... spokane, washington; boston, mass. san francisco, tulsa, oklahoma... dated a girl from there. warren, michigan... didn't work out. bozeman, montana; daytona beach, florida; madison, wisconsin... good college town. i think we get the picture. [ male announcer ] if you want coverage, we've got it. at&t. this valentine's day, buy any smartphone after mail-in rebate and get any messaging phone free after mail-in rebate.

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the white house calls today's unemployment report, quote, mixed news. joining me now to explain what that means, austan goolsbee.

austan, thank you for joining us today. >> hi, andrea. >> it's encouraging, but obviously not good enough when you've lost 20,000 jobs. what are you going to do about it? >> the president says we ought to do three things about it, one is this continuing emphasis on small business, the payroll and employment expansion credit, expanding small business lending that he outlined yesterday and today. second area being infrastructure spend i spending, going forward and the third being clean energy jobs. i think that's what he's going to try to do about it. i think your statement at the top is probably the best one, look, it's encouraging, the unemployment rate went down a bit. there's going to be a lot of fits and starts in this thing. in addition to the unemployed, you've got people working part-time involuntarily, people dropping out of the workforce. the unemployment rate will go up, it's going to go down. we're on the right trend but still way too high from where we want it to be.

we have to keep on pressing. >> this won't surprise you. republicans don't think it's good news at all. guess who will do the republican response for the gop tomorrow weekly address? jeb henserling from texas, one of the house members who challenged the president a week ago today on what was riveting television. you can expect he will bash right back. rnc also put out today that this is really not good news, that the close to one year ago president obama and congressional democrats passed their stimulus package promising it would fix the economy and keep unemployment below 8%. unfortunately, those have proven to be empty promises, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. you know the drill. >> yeah. i'll say two things about that. the first is how could anybody look at the economy as it was when the president took office, when we were losing 790,000 jobs in a single month, and now, when the job loss is down to 20,000 -- obviously it's not far

enough. how could anybody look at that and say oh, there hasn't been any improvement? that's kind of crazy. and the -- it's decidedly one sided to keep citing the statistic that they said the unemployment rate -- they, the administration, said the unemployment rate would not go above 8.1% or what have you after the stimulus. but leave out the part that the administration and all other private forecasters thought with no stimulus unemployment would go all the way to 9%, when it was already 9% before the stimulus was even in place. what we and everyone else missed was that the baseline level of how the economy was doing was awful, was abysmal, even worse than we thought when the president took office. but the impact of the stimulus, as documented by all the private forecasters out in the free market as well as by the nonpartisan congressional budget

office is that it created well over a million jobs and maybe as many as 2.5 million jobs more than would have been there if it hadn't existed. >> some people might argue 2.5 million is on the high side. let me show you the way you described how far we've come to jon stewart earlier this week. >> we're coming out of the worst recession since 1929. the short run, you've got to run a deficit to keep yourself away from great depression land. as we go out of the short run -- >> can i tell you something? >> we argued about this last ti time. >> great depression land is the worst amusement park i've ever been to. i've been there. terrible. >> somewhere between king's dominion and disney world, great depression land? >> i came from chicago land where everything is a land. i guess it doesn't translate. >> it does. it translates great. it's just fine on this snowy

day. thanks so much for being with us, austan. great to see you. >> good to see you. democratic virginia senator mark warner, a member of the budget committee, joint economic committee and someone who ran a state as a former governor of virginia, but you know how to make money. you actually ran a business. what should the white house do, and the senate and house do to try to climb out of this situation? >> first of all, we've got to recognize that while it was good to see the unemployment numbers drop, that doesn't mean very much to you if you're sitting at home, watching this show and you can't find a job or you've been looking for a job for months on end. good news was an increase in manufacturing jobs, about 50,000 more part-time jobs and temporary jobs that are usually a precursor to more job growth. we've got to do more and remember at the end of the day while the government can do certain things, the most important creator of jobs is going to be the private sector, in particular small business. that's why i welcomed the

president's focus this week on trying to kick start small business lending. i've been proposing this since late fall, try to make sure we get some resources particularly into the smaller banks, so they can do the kind of lending that they're candidly not doing right now because a lot of those small banks have still got bad real estate loans on their books and they're being extra conservative. small business lending, creates about 60% of the new jobs coming out of a recession. we've got to drive this job growth and i hope we can move forward, particularly in the small business area. >> senator, i know there's been a lot of conversation with the white house and you, not only, with the president with the democratic caucus earlier this week, al franken really took on david axelrod from the white house, that there's a lot of frustration that the white house is not being specific enough and you have the tensions between the house and senate democrats and between liberals and

conservatives in the party. you were in that meeting. how challenging was it for the white house from members of your caucus? >> folks are frustrated. at the end of the day, as a new guy, i'm as frustrated just with the whole process up here. if there was ever a time when we ought to check our democratic and republican hats at the door and walk on to the floor of the senate, it ought to be now. some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, republican national committee, criticizing the fact that the unemployment level has dropped. that's crazy. let's find a way -- i'm glad the president is saying we've got to get good ideas from both sides. we should look at an idea, whether it has an r or d next to it. let's get the best ideas, see what we can do to help stimulate particularly the small business growth and small business lending. let's see if we can provide this first piece of a jobs bill may be around other tax credits or tax breaks we can get, particularly geared to small business. let's look what we can do around

the margins. i've been working on a proposal, for example, that can take folks who used to be in the construction industry, where there was enormous job loss, see if we can give them a little bit of training and actually incent them to get into a home rethet o retrofit. start decreasing our overall energy costs. we've got to do a better job, as well, on this next phase of the spend-off of the stimulus. we're waiting on a lot of the stimulus spending that was going to come from health care i.t., broad band, high-spiel rail developments. we need to see those dollars get into the marketplace. i've been a little frustrated that the spend out on some of those programs -- it's been a year. in a lot of those areas, we haven't spent a single dime of the stimulus dollars. let's get those out as well. the main way this economy is going to recover is with the increased overall business confidence and if we can get the

small business lending started. >> you bring fresh eyes to washington. how do you feel -- there was some talk be athe the white house by brother gibbs this morning about the holes put on by appointees. how do you feel about the process where any one of you guys can put a hold on a nominee and stop everything in its tracks? >> i can see why people around the country say this place is a little wacky at times. both sides have done it. i'm not trying to throw stones here. it just seems to me unless you've got a real problem with somebody in the administration, we ought to let the president have his team and let these folks get to work, trying to do their jobs. you know, i think at the same time we've got this challenge. one of the more surreal incidents happened to me last week. i've been a big believer that while we've got to do some spending now, unless we can get our deficit under control, we're

going to be long-term looking at an economy that will leave our kids with a lot of red ink. i put up a plan that has both revenues and entitlement spending, cut a lot of that. put it up for a straight up or down vote. when we had that chance, we found a lot of our colleagues who actually had been co-sponsors of the bill ended up voting it down. didn't make sense. >> mark warner, thanks so much for coming. hope to see you off in safe travel back home in the snow storm here in washington, d.c. >> thank you. coming up, president obama caught between the left and right wings of his own party. can he find an exit? politico's amy bard joins us next. est breeze harbors immense power. the tallest buildings leave the lightest footprints. a fifty-ton train makes barely a mark on the environment. and a country facing climate change finds climate solutions. somewhere in america, we've already answered some of the nation's toughest questions.

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right wings of the party with no obvious exit strategy. politico's andy bard joins us now. what happened at that key meeting between al franken and david axelrod? >> reporter: the president had this question/answer session with democrats, talking with senator democrats, al franken stood up and very kind of loudly voiced disappointment in the administration, that they had not clearly mapped out their strategy on health care, his criticism directed directly at axelrod, saying that the white house hadn't mapped things out and left senators hanging in the wind on this issue. >> in fact, when gibbs was asked about that today, he said that there is no specific white house approach yet on health care, right? so, is it going to come from the liberal side or conservative side? how are they going to satisfy everybody and when are they going to move forward? >> that's the question.

everyone is looking who is going to step up on this. the senate is looking at the white house, and the white house is looking to the senate. >> thank you very much, andy barr from politico. sarah palin gets ready to address the tea party convention in nashville, newly released e-mails are raising questions about the role her husband really played during their time as alaska governor. exclusive up next. [ announcer ] you make healthy choices every day-- oh, max! and you want to do the same for your laughable, lovable dog. [ barks ] that's why purina fit & trim is specially formulated... with high-quality protein, including delicious real chicken, to help him maintain lean muscle and a healthy weight, so he can make the most of every day.

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as governor from so-called first dude. mark halperin, co-author of "new york times" best selling book "game change," former michigan congressman, now chairman of the american rights at work and john feehery, former aide to speaker of the house. let's talk about sarah palin. mark halperin, first to you. are you surprised at what these e-mails show? they're pretty revealing and he is asking questions about every possible appointment to commissions and judgeships. he basically was signing off on everything. was he the chief of staff? >> it's not a surprise for a couple of reasons. first of all it is a very small state and as the palins point out, past governor families have been involved in politics but as i show in "game change," todd palin was involved in every aspect of his wife's

professional and personal life, political standing in alaska and constantly working with her to try to get the mccain campaign to devote resources, yard signs and television advertising to support them back home. very focused on their state. as the e-mails you all have maintained show, very focused on todd playing a huge role in appointments and other official business. >> john feehery, does this hurt her within either the republican party, tea party, the palin movement, whatever it is right now? >> andrea, i don't think so. i think spouses play a big role in almost every elected office i've seen. sometimes they want to stay completely out of it, but jenny sanford played a very big role in mark sanford's governorship, hillary clinton played a very big role in bill clintons. sometimes you get two for one and sometimes the spouse wants to downplay it, but sometimes the spouse plays an extraordinarily important role in how the actual candidate is doing. this is absolutely no surprise to me.

>> david bunyer, the tea party meeting in nashville, but some tea partiers saying nashville isn't their representative, drop-outs from leading congress members as well. you know a lot about blue collar anger and the reagan democrats from michigan, your home state. a lot of them came out and saw them in massachusetts and they seem to be the rank and file of the tea party. not just republicans, not just conservatives but a lot of democrats are attracted to this. >> in the political world we have a vacuum through the george w. bush administration but it appears through this first 15 months of -- since barack obama was elected and this congress was elected. people aren't seeing anything done. they're worried about the fact that the government can work, whether it's competent enough to make things happen. and in that vacuum with the economic base eroding, they're

searching for avenues and the tea party is a populist movement that is trying to fill that vacuum just as, for instance, moveon be.org and some of the other pieces fill the vacuum during the george w. bush era. it's a serious movement and needs to be taken serious.strucy well. any time you get a disagreement -- ross perot -- >> this is what it reminds us of. >> very similar to or the progressive movement at the beginning of the turn of the century. lot of passion, commitment, left-liberal thinking but not really well formed in terms of instru structure. it has a lot of work ahead of it. but i think it says something about where we are, politically in this country. people are getting tired of democrats and republicans and willing to look at independent movements and candidates. >> let me ask you about sarah palin, more about her role within the party, mark.

you look at where she's going. after she keynotes the nashville gathering on saturday night, she's going to campaign for rick perry in texas and will pop up in nevada, going up against harry reid. she's going to be in, understandably, campaigning for john mccain out in arizona. but we're going to see her all over this country. is she the most prominent republican right now and also the standard bearer for the tea party, angry voter that has been described by david bonior? >> if you want to raise money or get press coverage, sarah palin is probably as good as anyone in the party right now. not surprisingly, she's campaigning for john mccain. on one level, that's obviously true. he elevated her to the role she now has. on the other hand, john mccain has a primary from a candidate whose issues profile and emphasis of john mccain is probably more in line with the kind of campaign palin intended to support.

what she has to do on her speech saturday and when going after these candidates is to talk about mothings more specificall not just i'm against barack obama, not just pine for an america that no longer exists but broaden her appeal and make her agenda more specific than she did in her book or she has up until now. >> if you look at some of the topic lines, some of the slugs on these e-mails, by the way, from todd, they're board staffing, budget cutting, some of the 243 that they would not release, claiming executive privilege, potential budget vetoes, cuts to governor staff, judicial nominee, arranging a special session. he was involved in just about everything. let me switch gears for a second and ask you about your home state of illinois. john feehery, what is going on with lieutenant governor nominee on the democratic side? i want to ask all of you quickly about this. this guy -- i mean, the governor wants to get him off the ticket. he says he's not going anywhere. this is a man who denies ever

putting to life the throne of the woman that he was living with. he said he never knew she was a prostitute, that she was, fars he knew, a massage therapist. he didn't pay child support. >> the one thing that comes to my mind, andrea, is that all of his opponents should be charged with some sort of official political misconduct because they did absolutely no background research on this guy and let him win. illinois, as a state politically, is such a mess, the second worst bond rating of any state in the country. the last two governors have been in jail. this is almost par for the course but almost beyond par for the course. i just tell you, if you're an illinois voter, you're just about fed up. >> political malfeasance, david bonior? >> it sounds like it. it wouldn't be the first time, obviously. but it does sound like malfeasance. can i go back to the palin thing without changing your direction here? >> sure. >> i think it's important. i think what john said with respect to spouses and

governors, it's not unusual to have them involved. it's often times people you consult with, maria shriver, i'm sure, has impact on what governor schwarzenegger does. >> you bet she does. arnold would be the first to tell you that. >> he would be the first to say it. one of the things that did disturb me when i looked at the nbc request was that there was some connection between todd and his employer. >> exactly, bp. >> and the government. and that gets into another whole area that i think begs looking into. >> david bonior, mark halperin "game change" and, of course, john feehery. thank you all very much. >> thank you. for more on mark's reporting on sarah palin and the tea party movement, check out thepage.time.com. coming up this weekend on "meet the press," david gregory has an exclusive interview with former treasury secretary hank paulson, out with his new book "on the prink" along with

another well-known but some would say obscure economist and former head of the fed. plus an exclusive with president obama's counterterrorism chief, john brennan. all that on sunday's "meet the press." check your local listings. coming up, the most important player in president obama's war cabinet. overseeing two wars and now taking on don't ask, don't tell. up next, "time" magazine's elizabeth rubin with her in-depth cover story, profile of defense secretary robert gates. follow us online at andrea.msnbc.com and on twitter. host: could switching to geico really save you 15% or more on car insurance? host: does charlie daniels play a mean fiddle? ♪ fiddle music

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just, out of the blue at 43. now i'm on an aspirin regimen because it helps me live the life i want to live. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. it's not a big deal to go to your doctor. it is a big deal to have a heart attack. robert gates is the only secretary of defense to stay on during a rival party's administration. now the bush white house veteran is leading two wars for barack

obama. elizabeth rubin is a "time" magazine contributor and wrote "man of war: on the battlefield with defense secretary robert gates." great to see you. thanks so much. great work. >> thank you. >> you've been traveling with bob gates and you know him as well as anyone does in the journalism world. tell us about what this has been for him, this transition to the obama team from the bush team, the previous bush team. he actually had such a prominent role in bush 41's white house. >> that's right. thank you, andrea. i think what nobody quite expected is how prominent his role would be in this white house. especially since he's the only republican in the cabinet. and yet he both operates as a kind of foil for the white house, when there are issues about national security, sometimes they will put him forward as the man behind that, to protect him from the republicans but also he -- when

he came into the last administration, he was sort of seen as the adult in charge, that finally we had an adult back in the white house. and i think, to some extent, he has carried that on. he is a very rational, controlled, sort of nonideological operator. and i think a lot of people appreciate him for that. >> one of the things that's been very interesting to watch is his relationship with hillary clinton, because they seem to have created an axis. they don't agree on everything, but certainly agree a lot more than the normal institutional rivalries i've seen between the state department and the independe pentagon i've seen in past administrations, democrat and republican. >> that's true, best supporter because he doesn't miss an opportunity to say how underresourced the state department is, pentagon has a $700 billion budget and the state department has a $52 billion budget. he often says you could populate

one aircraft carrier with the entire foreign service. they feel like he's actually behind them in trying to help boost more funding for the state department, to get the state department out in both iraq and afghanistan. and i think that relationship could actually affect how both iraq and afghanistan turn out. >> and one of the other things is, just sort of the demeanor and the style of the man. you write that gates made himself easy to trust. by nature not a guy who seeks the limelight and obama has no patience for media hounds. staffers say it trns out gates has got more in common with obama than he did with bush, both cerebral, analytical and reflective. seeing terrorism as a long-term challenge. so, he helps to validate this new, younger president, new to foreign policy and national security challenges but they also have sort of a common kind

of way of approaching problems and being analytical. >> that's right. one of the things everybody says about gates is how in a meeting, he's quiet and he listens and then suddenly, you know, after about -- whatever, 20, 30 minutes, he'll ask the one question that sort of gets to the heart of the matter. and he has an ability to consume massive amounts of information. he has a photographic memory that everyone talks about, and he knows also how to help people think six, steps down the line. he's very, very, very analytical, much more than he -- rather than having some sort of grand vision that he wants to carry out, he's a great problem solver. >> one problem he hasn't solved is don't ask, don't tell. there was a real disconnect between the way admiral mullen, joint chiefs chairman approached that in answer to questions at the hearings this week and gates. gates wants to take his time and study it. mullen was speaking of it as a

moral imperative. >> that's one of the things about gates. there's two sides to him. the careful side is what i think we saw with this issue. he isn't going to get out there and make a big moral statement. he's going to go methodically through the steps to see what the causes -- what the effects are going to be and he -- i don't think he was originally a champion of repealing the law. but i think his commander in chief wants to, and he's going to follow that through and do it slowly. he also likes to point out it's up to congress to actually repeal the law. >> thanks so much, elizabeth rubin. great cover story in "time" magazine. just this quick point, i wanted to point out that our friends over at huff post did first break that story that politic ol fronted today, that axelrod had challenged -- that actixelrod w challenged by al franken at that meeting. we just want to give credit where credit is due, to the

huffington post. we have two words for you, super bowl. we're heading live to miami with e espn's trey wheedle and our own chuck todd next. as small businesses are busy reinventing the economy, small business owners have a lot of questions. can paperless billing get me paid faster? how can i keep my best employees? how can i bring down my insurance costs? that's why we're building a community called openforum.com where owners can swap ideas and ask questions. will tweeting get me more customers? how can i get paid faster? i was about to ask you the same thing. join the conversation at openforum.com. [ male announcer ] crunch, wheat thins. ♪ that's what's gonna happen here. why? ♪ because you're tasty with toasty whole grain. that's why.

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president obama, like all the rest of us, out in the snow today. he's out in the oval office. this is the scene as the presidential motorcade made it back from the economic event in maryland. the d.c. area is expecting two feet maybe more. the white house joked even a transported hawaiian to chicago has sufficient respect for a forecast of two feet of snow. he doesn't even have to shovel the walk, said gibbs. what story will make headlines in the next 24 hours as we keep trying to deal with this storm? how about the game in miami?

let's bring back nbc news chief white house correspondent and chief football fan chuck todd. joining us from miami, a special appearance, host of nfl live. thanks to both of you for joining us. first i want to ask about your picks. you've got some injuries and other problems to deal with. what do you think, will he play with the torn ligament from the playoff game? >> yeah, i think we expect dwight to play. the question is how effective will he be. he's going to go out and give it a shot. he may be in on certain passing downs, use his feet to get at the quarterback. he certainly will be limited. the normal healing time for that ligament is six to eight weeks. if he's on the field, he won't be the dwight we've seen on the field since the early 2000s. >> in that case, who steps up for the colts defense.

>> you're putting me on the spot. i was prepared for proposition bets, how many times will they show kim kardashians, the mannings. >> the over under. >> over under on kim kardashian is 2.5. >> how will she affect reggie bush's play. >> unless reggie bush doesn't cor, right, tray? >> exactly. the kim kardashian shots will be in direct correlation to how many times reggie bush scores touchdowns, andrea. >> touchdowns. >> that's what i'm here for. >> let me clean this up, what i'm talking about archie manning, a hero to the saints. what is the divided loyalty here. how torn up is he? he's got to be rooting for his son? >> not much of a divided loyalty. i talked with him and ely was down here as well.

listen, they understand the historical significance of what it means to new orleans. it's kind of ironic this is the 44th year of the franchise and there have been 44 days between the christmas day and super bowl, we're in the 44th presidency, barack obama, a lot of people fooil feel it-- feel their time. i had to bring some numbers. >> they love that. >> they know they are pulling for payton. i was going back for mardi gras, but if he wins i won't show up for a while. they understand what it would mean to new orleans but their hearts are with peyton for sure. >> it wouldn't be sunday without chuck todd tweeting every score. how do you tweet something that's as important as the super bowl. >> i'm like every fan. i want to relax, see a high-scoring game on paper.

who is not rooting for new orleans. it's hard to root against the colts. you have two classy franchises, classy teams. the nfl lucked out here. this is sort of one of these -- there's really no bad story lines here. we keep talking about the mannings, who are sort of what the kennedys are as far as new orleans is concerned. how about this fact, and i'm sure you brought this up, drew brees, a purdue grad. you have these divided loyalties. plenty of people in east lafayette, louisiana, colts fans but love drew brees who never got the credit he deserved in college is seen as an elite quarterback. this is the super bowl i think i was rooting for after the packers got eliminated other than rogers beating favre from the playoff. besides that, this was the great game to watch. >> go ahead. >> it's so rare. >> go ahead, andrea, sorry.

it's your show. >> you also have two haitian americans, one on each auto team. pier pierre garson and the linebacker. there's that as well. >> there's a lot of compelling story lines here. i think chuck is right. i think a lot of people with their heart are pulling for new orleans because of all the city has been through. the saints in so many ways have really sort of epitomized the rebuilding. a lot of people in their hearts are pulling for them but the colts will be hard to beat. >> i'm rooting for you. thanks for helping us out. chuck todd, always, thank you. thank you. that does it for this edition and this week of "andrea mitchell reports." join us next week when we talk about the super bowl winners. our guest will include public

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right now on "msnbc live" the latest video in virginia where the snow is beginning to fall, a massive winter snow making its way to the mid-atlantic. a video of the white house there. the traffic is still moving now but it will be a different story, trust us, a little later today. a judge ruled he wants the sex tape involving john edwards and his former mistress or he will put someone behind bars for contempt. bill clinton is in haiti right now. he actually visited the jail where the ten americans charged with kidnapping are being held for the form -- will the former president negotiate in this case. they are under a snow emergency as a crippling winter storm is moving in. forecasters are calling the storm extremely dangerous with some areas seeing up to two feet

of snow. emergencies have also been declared in virginia and maryland. blizzard warnings in effect for delaware and south new jersey. southwest airlines and us airways canceled hundreds of flights at airports in washington, d.c. as well as philadelphia and amtrak has canceled service for most trains south of the capital. our nbc station live at reagan national airport where i mentioned they had to cancel and delay a lot of flights. what's the latest there. >> reporter: that's right. you can see the snow is steadily coming down. it's been coming down since 10:30, 11:00 this morning. this isn't the worst of it. we talked to the metropolitan washington airport authority and they told us the airport runways are still currently open. planes have pn taking off all morning but we are now starting to see plenty of delays and we looked to the board and saw plenty of cancellations. most of the flights scheduledo