sector growth. >> we have actually been gaining private sector jobs. >> republicans have completely distorted what clinton said last night. >> he wasn't saying that he favored the extension of the bush tax cuts. >> total, utter dishonestly, starting with john mccain. >> i want to thank you for having president clinton on. >> the same argument a actually that former president bill clinton has been making. >> who writes this crap? >> which implied clinton was for exten extending the tax cuts. >> it that's not what we remember you for. >> mitt romney makes an economic pitch to hispanic voters. >> we're a patriotic people. we love this country. >> republicans say one thing two latino voters in spanish. >> it's awkward when he tries to speak spanish. >> it's the same pitch he makes to women voters.

>> i met a guy yesterday, seven feet tall. i figured he had to be in sport, but he fwhunt sport. >> sport? that's what i'm supposed to say. >> i think he'd be better off speaking french to latinos. >> isn't he supposed to be the tough, smart business manager? >> oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave. >> claiming to hit a triple. as the stock market headed for its biggest gains of the year today, president obama headed to los angeles to attend a fundraiser that had to move to a larger venue because the demand for tickets was so high following the president's announcement that he supports marriage equality. the event at the beverleyly willshire hotel, which is within walking distance from where i sit in this studio at this moment, although no angelina would ever consider walking that far, is one of four fundraisers the president attended in

california today and will feature remarks by ellen dej degeneres and a performance i did darren chris. here is white house press secretary jay carney today responding to criticism from rush limbaugh that the president spends way too much time with celebrities. >> rush limbaugh is referring to him as barack kardashian, i believe. what is the response to that? >> two words, donald trump. next question. >> and moments ago, both candidates appeared during the country music television music awards in a sketch on whether toby keith or kristen bell should host the show. >> mr. president, do you have a decision? >> this is one of the toughest decisions i've had to make since in office.

i want them both. >> oh, i thought the presidential election was a tough race, but it's nothing compared to the politics at the cmt music awards. i think i have a solution though. i propose toby and kristen co-host the host. see, i just put two people back to work. you're welcome, america. >> see, there's something they can agree on. today, the obama campaign dispatched vice president joe biden to north carolina to talk jobs. >> four million new jobs. four million new jobs. [ applause ] private sector jobs. not enough. not enough. not enough. and it's up and it's down. but it's been constantly forward, but not enough. we have to do more. we have to keep fighting through this period of transition and this god awful recession we

inherited. >> this was mitt romney's jobs message today. >> the president spokesman said, you know, mitt romney was in business, but he was trying to earn a profit, not just try to hire people. it's like, well, i have to tell you, that's sort of what business is about. the free enterprise system is about people taking a risk to earn a return to earn a profit. if they do, they're able to hire more people. profits and people go together if you're talking about creating new jobs. >> a new research national poll shows president obama leading mitt romney. the president polls at 49%, seven points ahead of romney's 42%. joining me now is msnb c's joy reed and steve. thank you both for joining me tonight. joy, we finally have a poll where the margin is bigger than the margin of error. looks like the president actually has a real, if small, lead over mitt romney in the pew poll. >> yeah, and i think those

numbers are fairly stable, lawrence, because if you just think about it, the generic republican is going to go into the general election with a 42 to 45% floor and the president is somewhat higher. it's a good look for the president. i'm sure he'd rather be at 50, but it's not a bad place to be if you're an incumbent running into the head winds of the economic situation that's been delivered for president obama. i think it's been a good place to be at this stage. >> let's listen to mitt romney on the issue of the government subsidies going into business. he has said that taxpayer money should not be spent that way. he's been very, you know, adamant about that. but in fact, the bloomberg reports today that in california, taxpayer money built one bain company, a conveyor bridge between two of its buildings. new york city gave another bain company tax breaks and lower energy bills to discourage it from moving to new jersey. in indiana, a county government

issued bonds. now let's listen to how mitt romney talks about that sort of thing now. >> it should not be investing in a setting where if the business does well, the government just gets its money back. the taxpayers just get their money back. if the business does poorly, the government loses. that kind of, heads the cronies win, tails the taxpayers lose, is not the right way to go. >> steve, there seems to be a shocking failure of consistency between businessman romney and politician romney. i just don't know what to make of it. >> yeah, this is the theme. if you're not used to it yet, get used to it. we're going to be getting this for the next five, six months. there's going to be a basic inconsistency in mitt romney's message because he wants to bring everything back to some sort of blame obama point, even

if that means contradicting himself. he did another one today that was kind of going. he was railing against obama today for not having a plan, for not having presented a plan to create jobs. he says, you know, the economy is in such a bad place. we're not growing jobs. the president hasn't even tried to present a plan. the president did present a plan. you know, the american jobs act. he went to congress, delivered a prime time speech. he put this thing piece by piece in front of congress and asked them to pass it. died of a filibuster. he absolutely put a jobs plan together. in romney world, he's running against a president who doesn't exist. he's taking the economic conditions that make people very uneasy and just looking for every way he can to say blame obama for that. >> let's listen to rush limbaugh today trying to actually encourage racial separation in this country. let's listen to what he had to say. >> if you want to know where oprah's not on television anymore, it's because she supported obama. oprah decided that she would let

her racial association take precedence over her television and broadcasting knowledge. it was at that point that oprah's audience began to ask themselves, maybe suspect, you know, maybe race matters to her more than all this other stuff that she talks about. >> joy, rush limbaugh actually supported the white candidate for president last time around, and i don't remember people saying that that was a racial decision that rush limbaugh was making. >> yeah, and i think this was also the guy rush limbaugh, who did a skit on his radio show called "barack the magic negro." i think we tend not to go to rush limbaugh for wisdom when it comes to racial matters in this country. again, rush limbaugh's job is to speak to lower middle class white america and say, that guy thinks he's better than you. anyone like him thinks he's better than you. those people are taking your

stuff. those people tend to turn into racial and ethnic groups that rush limbaugh maybe doesn't like or feel are too close to the democratic party. let's put it that way. rush limbaugh is doing what rush limbaugh does. it does show limbaugh is so influential. entertainers like him and donald trump are so influential in the republican party that mitt romney can't assert himself as the leader of that party because those guys keep talking. >> steve, i think that's what the point of this is. limbaugh and trump together just constantly go at racial politics. they're constantly playing with it in different kinds of ways. now trump is running around with his new racial shield, his new defense against any such accusations saying, hey, come on, on my game show i picked a black man to be the winner, arcenio hall. so you can't possibly suggest i have any negative racial feelings. >> right. no, i mean, i think there is

something to -- this is a complicated subject, but you look at what trump it doing, look at what limbaugh is doing. then you look at these polls. take obama where he was now and in '08. he's gained a little among women. where is he really down? he's really down with white men who don't have college degrees. he's down with blue collar white guys. a lot of that is economic anxiety. when you listen to this limbaugh stuff and trump stuff, you wonder how much of it is it that too? >> thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. coming up, we all remember this picture of the boy who met the president in the oval office. he's 3 years old tonight, and he will join us to tell us what that moment was like for him. and later, the latest deep, dark romney secret to be revealed. mitt romney has a thing for men

in uniform. we have an exclusive report on mitt romney's uniform fetish. i'm serious. this is real. this is the weirdest romney story yet. and in the rewrite tonight, mitt romney rewrites himself from republican to communist. that's coming up. every bite goe beyond the call of deliciousness. that's a big 10-4 kosher. with no fillers, by-products, artificial flavors or colors. hebrew national. the better-than-a-hot dog- hot dog. [ creaking ] [ male announcer ] trophies and awards lift you up. but they can also hold you back. unless you ask, what's next? [ zapping ] [ clang ] this is the next level of performance. the next level of innovation. the next rx.

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no politician rewrites himself more than mitt romney. tonight, you will see him rewrite himself from republican to communist. and joe conason is here with an exclusive report on yet another romney secret. it turns out mitt romney has a thing for men in uniform. it's kind of a uniform fetish. in his case, it's actually more than a bit criminal. i know how insane this sounds. this is true. it's coming up. just when you thought mitt romney couldn't get any weirder.

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ca jun raw seafood pizza parlor french fondue tex-mex fro-yo tapas puck chinese takeout taco truck free range chicken pancake stack baked alaska 5% cash back. right now, get 5% cash back at restaurants. it pays to discover. tonight republicans want you to believe that bill clinton is opposed to the bill clinton tax rates because he said this -- >> they will have to extend -- they will probably have to put everything off until early next year. that's probably the best thing to do right now. but the republicans don't want to do that unless he agrees to extend the tax cuts permanently, including for upper income people, and i don't think the president should do that.

that's what they're fighting about. i don't have any problem with extending all of it now, including the current spending levels. the real issue is not whether they should be extended for another few months. the real issue is whether the price the republican house will put on an extension is the permanent extension of the tax cuts, which i think is an error. >> so it's very clear that bill clinton opposes the permanent extension of the bush tax rates that republicans want, and all clinton was referring to there is a possible legislative tactic to achieve what both he and president obama want, which is an extension of the bush tax rates for all, except the top tax brackets. but this is what republicans claim they heard bill clinton say. >> extending all of the current tax rates for at least a year is

really important if we're going to help job creators gain a little more confidence and put americans back to work. even bill clinton came out for it. >> i would make the same argument. it's the same argument former president bill clinton has been making. that is that we need to extend these tax rates. >> president bill clinton gets it. he knows in this economy you should not be raising taxes on anybody. >> so it took a while, but republicans in congress finally realize that bill clinton gets it. which i guess means they agree with him when he said this. >> well, i don't think -- the thing that's cost jobs here has been the congress policies. they want austerity now. they've enforced it in the house. while we had 4.3 million private sector jobs in the last 27 months, we've lost 600,000 teachers, firemen, other state and local jobs. >> is the tax policy today fair? >> first of all, a minimum tax

of 30% is not all that high. most americans agree if we could have a long-term debt reduction plan that the people that got the most tax cuts in the last decade should give back a little and contribute to it. >> joining me now are richard wolf and karen finney. richard, i said last night that this is much ado about nothing and republicans are just pretending that bill clinton said this stuff. but they're continuing it and pushing it, and it is a strange new tactic. i haven't seen this before where they simply lie about what someone has said saying, oh, no, he's on our team now. and they take someone as prominent and as publicly opposed to their position as bill clinton. how far do they think they can get with this? >> oh, look, you've got a candidate, a presumptive nominee who doesn't mind misrepresenting his own opinion. why would any of them care about

misrepresenting a former president? there are a couple of things that are being wrapped up together and obviously distorted and lied about here. there are a couple of things first of all, what former president clinton was talking about was a legislative need knowing that all of this stuff is building up towards the end of the year, spending cuts, the tax cuts being extended, all of that stuff. there's a sort of gasp among the people you used to work with saying, can we write that legislation in the brief tame of a lame duck congress? the other part is can an economy sustain everyone looking at each other in this staring game and everything going up in flames? right, the fiscal cliff they all talk about. the third piece is, what's the politics of addressing it now? so the republicans are not saying extend all the tax cuts permanently. they're saying, we need certainty, but only for a year or six months. just give us a little bit more. they're all jockeying around that. then you have president clinton noodling out in public.

so easy to distort it in a presidential campaign. >> let's listen to what jay carney had to say about it today. >> president obama has been clear about his position and has not changed. we should not extend and will not extends the tax cuts, the bush era tax cuts, for wealthiest 2% of the american people. we absolutely should extend tax cu cuts for the middle class. he will not extend tax cuts for the highest income americans. he will not support extension. he will not support extension of the upper income bush tax cuts. he could not be more clear. >> karen finney, being that clear doesn't seem to get you anywhere when you're talking to republicans. >> well, that's true, but, you know, there's another part of the equation here that's a problem. that is, frankly, my democrats. we should not be seeding the

ground on this. it is very obvious what the republicans are trying to do and why it is in their interest to try to spin clinton's comments and lawrence summers' comments to try to suggest they're saying something they're not. we don't need to buy into it. that's part of what bothers me about this. from the perspective of a political tactic, why we're accepting letting the republicans tell us what time it is, letting rush limbaugh tell us what time it is is ridiculous. there is no daylight between what the president is saying, what president clinton was saying, what lawrence summers was saying. you have both clinton and summers saying time and time again, there's no daylight between us and the president. so why this is still a conversation -- i mean, let's let the republicans have that conversation among themselves. why the rest of us are legitimizing it is a huge mistake. >> let's listen to the rush limbaugh take on this. >> the smart thinking, conventional wisdom, is that clinton is simply giving obama

cover to extend the bush tax cuts. that obama would pay a price if he did it himself without any support. if he wins re-election, the bush tax cuts are not going to be extended. i don't care what he can extract from the republicans for it. it isn't going to happen. that's why clinton running around and saying he thinks they should be extended is such a big deal. >> richard wolf, there's rush limbaugh on the smart thinking about this. >> look, the smart thinking. what's going on here right now is obviously this prepositioning for the big discussion, the big negotiation, the grand compromise, if you will, after the election. what's interesting here is really the republicans have one card to play, which is the debt ceiling, yet again. so that's all they have. the president has two cards, which is let the tax cuts expire

and let the spending cuts, especially defense cuts, move forward. he has two things to negotiate with, and here you have the republicans saying, actually, i think it's a kind of weak move from their part, where they're going, just give us six months and that's enough. i think there's jockeying going on here. >> richard wolf and karen finney, that's the last word on it tonight. thanks for joining me. , thanks. coming up, a moment captured on film that we can never forget. the little boy in that picture with president obama will join me later and tell us what that felt like. and in the rewrite tonight, mitt romney talks like a communist, a hard core communist. and no one notices. but it has landed him in tonight's rewrite. next, something even stranger about mitt romney. joe conason has an exclusive report for us on romney's very peculiar relationship with uniforms. we'll show you the one he loves

or at least used to wear, and we'll show you the military uniforms that he and his father and his sons have avoided wearing. that's coming up. laughs ] whoo. ♪ oh. nice! great! [ laughs ] a shot like that calls for a postgame celebration. [ male announcer ] share what you love with who you love. kellogg's frosted flakes. they're gr-r-eat! ♪ lord, you got no reason ♪ you got no right ♪ ♪ i find myself at the wrong place ♪ [ male announcer ] the ram 1500 express. ♪ it says a lot about you. ♪ in a deep, hemi-rumble sort of way. guts. glory. ram. the economy needs manufacturing. machines, tools, people making stuff. companies have to invest in making things.

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mitt romney is weirder than you think. i mean, like, way, way weirder than you think. he actually has or certainly used to have a uniform fetish that could have gotten him thrown in jail if his father

wasn't governor at the time. joe conason is here with an exclusive report on the uniform mitt romney used to love to wear. and while we're at it, we'll consider the uniform mitt romney did everything he could to avoid wearing. an american military uniform during the vietnam war. i'm here with karen and her bffs and we are talking about activia. i've been eating activia and i feel great! i'm used to having irregularity. i feel like that's normal. if you are not feeling like trying this on, that's not normal. activia helps with occasional irregularity when eaten 3 times a day. feeling regular to me was a new feeling... i came to find my 'new normal'

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tdd# 1-800-345-2550 so talk to chuck tdd# 1-800-345-2550 because when it comes to talking, there is no fee. and in tonight's episode of how weird is mitt romney, mitt romney has a thing for men in uniform. he has always wanted to be one. no, not that kind of uniform. and no, not that kind of unif m uniform. nope, not a military uniform. mitt romney's fetish is police uniforms. this one is his favorite. the michigan state trooper uniform. that's the michigan state trooper uniform circa 1966. when mitt romney wasn't gay

bashing kids whose hair he didn't like, mitt romney's other favorite sick thing to do was to impersonate a police officer. in an exclusive article just released tonight by the national memo, details emerge of a mitt romney who has a college freshman at stanford university allegedly admitted to fellow dorm mates that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer and laid out on his bed was a michigan state trooper's uniform. one of the people who saw the uniform said he told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father, george romney, then the governor of michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniform troopers. he told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. he also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top

of his white rambler. we thought it was all pretty weird. we all thought, wow, that's pretty creepy. and after that, we didn't have much interaction with him. hundreds of thousands of men mitt romney's age got uniforms in those days the old fashioned way. by being drafted into military service. mitt romney avoided that with four consecutive draft deferments that he obtained that allowed him to, like his father before him and his sons after him, avoid combat in the war of his era, the vietnam war. joining me now on mitt romney's love/hate relationship with uniforms, joe consan, editor in chief of the nationalmemo.com.

well, joe, you have the single weirdest report about mitt romney so far in this campaign year. this is as strange a thing as i've read. what was the legality that mitt romney was flirting with by using this uniform that his father got for him? >> well, lawrence, our research shows that impersonating a police officer is at least a misdemeanor in both california, where he went to college for a couple years at stanford, and in michigan where he was in high school, apparently doing the same thing, according to reports in the real romney by the two boston globe reporters and in the new republic in 2008. if you do it more than once in those states, it becomes a felony. he seems to have possibly done this more than once. so if he had been caught, he would have been in a lot of trouble, putting on a state police uniform and pretending to

be a state police officer. just by putting on the uniform, if you're not doing it for a theatrical presentation, you are committing a crime in the state of michigan. so, you know, you could go to prison for a year, possibly longer, pay a big fine, and have a big blotch on your record. but worse than that, from the point of view of robin madden, who spoke to me about this, they all thought this was bizarre and were creeped out by it, as you said. >> joe, i have a feeling if he had gotten caught in the state of michigan in that uniform, there was a phone call he could have made that would have gotten him out of trouble pretty fast. >> yes, and, you know, his dad was the governor, and i guess one doesn't like to think of special justice for special people, but he probably would have been able to get out of it. i don't know that he ever put the uniform on in california. even stranger to be driving around california in a michigan

state trooper's uniform in your white rambler. but, yes, i guess if he had been caught, he would have gotten away with it. he apparently did this and didn't get call caught. >> john, this brings up, by proximity, especially in time, the uniforms that so many men mitt romney's age were wearing at that time. we showed photographs at the beginning of this segment of john kerry in his military uniform at the time, of bob kerry in his military uniform, john mccain, all who went on to be members of the united states senate. what do you make of mitt romney's avoidance at that time of doing his military duty, especially as someone who was publicly in favor of both the draft and the vietnam war? >> well, i think it's simple. obviously the associated press has been digging in on this, and the article has been floating around a lot of publications. it's real simple. mitt romney didn't go to vietnam because mitt romney didn't want

to go. yes, he did go to europe. he served his church there on a mission. i personally have no problem with that. i mean, a tremendous amount of people of his faith have served our country honorably. but he did get a deferment in 1965, where at that point he was for the war. later on he came home and got another deferment. he basically waited this thing out over a five-year period until the draft changed. his lottery number came up. it's a question of entitlement. this is sort of the core issue that affects him. he didn't serve because he didn't really want to. you know, at the time he was for the war. in 1994 when he ran for the united states senate, he was then against the war. then now in 2007, he again wished he had served in vietnam but solely he didn't go to vietnam because he didn't feel he needed to. >> i was in high school during this period and watched the draft end, actually. my number would have come up,

except they ended the draft before i got there. i can tell you people who weren't around during that era, there wasn't a single able-bodied man in america who wanted to go to vietnam who didn't. everyone else avoided it, including all of my older brothers and everybody in my neighborhood. there were a couple people who went. everybody else did everything they possibly could to avoid it. many, as a matter of conscience, refusing to participate in what they believed was an unjust war, many as a cowardice. the willingness to go into combat is rare among men anywhere, and it's very rare among men in this country. there wasn't a single willing person left behind during vietnam. >> well, i mean, in my generation, the people i served with in iraq, we're the volunteer force. plenty of us don't agree with the way the president's handling

afghanistan right now. plenty of us didn't agree with the iraq war and we still went. so boohoo to mitt romney. the bottom line is he didn't want to go. he was afraid. that's okay if you're against the war. i think the problem for mitt romney is the fact that he was for the war. it's one thing to be against it and say, i don't want to go. it's a different thing to say, you're for it when you want to extend u.s. forces in afghanistan when you didn't want to get out of iraq, and when you essentially want to start another war in syria. that's a whole other ball game. >> i think it's all about honesty. if you're afraid to go to war, say you're afraid to go to war. i'm afraid to go to war. i would have been afraid to go to any war at any time during my lifetime. you can also be opposed to it. just tell the truth about your relationship to the war of your era. romney has not done that. joe and john, thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you, lawrence. coming up, the weirdness of mitt romney continues into tonight's rewrite where you will hear him talking like a hard

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to help business do more for customers. ♪ speaking without a tell prompter for once, mitt romney proposes a hard core communist idea, and no one notices. not the interviewer, not mitt romney because no one, including mitt romney, actually listens to what mitt romney says. that's next in the rewrite. and this is one of those white house photographs that we'll never forget. the boy in that picture with the president will join me to tell us what he remembers of that day in the oval office. that's coming up. our town had a. support team usa and show our olympic spirit right in our own backyard. so we combined our citi thankyou points to make it happen. tom chipped in 10,000 points. karen kicked in 20,000. and by pooling more thankyou points from folks all over town, we were able to watch team usa...

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time for tonight's episode of mitt romney rewrites mitt romney. this time mitt romney renounces republican conservatism and becomes a communiscommunist. >> a stimulus approach has not worked. the idea of item by item, looking for a quick solution, throwing a little gasoline on the fire, that hasn't worked. the first stimulus of almost $800 billion didn't create private sector jobs. the president needs to put aside these stimulus plans and instead to restructure the foundation of america's economy. >> so mitt romney wants the president, quote, to restructure the foundation of america's economy. that is a purely communist idea.

that was exactly what the soviet union's dictators were trying to do every day. and of course they failed to do it because totalitarian communism of the sort mitt romney is suggesting simply does not work. but romney doesn't even know he just proposed a communist idea because romney doesn't even listen to what he's saying when he spews that kind of nonsense. he actually thinks he's delivering nice sounding rhetoric. but his word is taken literally, which he doesn't want you to do, because he doesn't mean them. but mitt romney the communist is just an accident of rhetoric. mitt romney the double talker, t mitt romney the rewriter of mitt romney, is a very deliberate politician, a politician who's determined to say at every moment of his career exactly what his voters want him to say in that moment.

as a result, romney has left the longest self-contradictory paper trail and quote trail of anyone who has ever run for president. and republicans who attacked john kerry because john kerry said he was for a bill before he was against it, now support a candidate who was once for everything that he is now against. tonight's case in point is stimulus. in 200, when the economy fell off the cliff in the months after the presidential election, mitt romney thought something had to be done right then. and though we had a lame duck president, george w. bush, and a lame duck congress, mitt romney thought our economic situation was so dire, so severe, that we needed action from washington immediately. on december 19, 2008, he wrote this breathless exhortation in the national review. what is washington waiting for? the inauguration is less than

five weeks away. at the rate we've been going, another 500,000 jobs will be lost by then. the downward spiral is deepening and accelerating. congress and the president must act now. see? mitt romney once knew how bad the economy was just before barack obama became president. what did mitt romney and the president to do right then, right at that moment on december 19th, 2008? this is surely the time for economic stimulus. a stimulus plan is needed without further delay. on the spending front, infrastructure projects should be a high priority. we should also invest to free us from our dependence on foreign oil. by invest, of course, he meant spend. government spending. and he says so in the next line,

where he advocates, quote, funding basic research in renewables. so there is mitt romney in 2008 urging the president to invest, to fund renewable sources of energy like, maybe, solar energy. the kind of investment that president obama tried with, say, solyndra. the now defunct company where romney went last week to argue against exactly, but exactly what he was arguing for in 2008. and it wasn't just romney who advocated that in 2008, as he correctly stated in his article, quote, during the 200 campaign, virtually every candidate agreed on the need for an apollo-like mission to achieve energy independence. now is the time to start.

romney closed his national review piece with this dramatic order for congress, especially republicans in congress. the democrats may want to wait for obama, but the country needs action now. republicans can and must play an important role in shaping a stimulus bill that makes sense for america and lays a foundation for future prosperity and growth. well, the democrats did wait for obama and the republicans did too. the republicans waited for him to take the oath of office so they could then oppose every single thing president obama triped to do, starting with the stimulus that mitt romney advocated. the stimulus that mitt romney said republicans must play an important role in shaping. mitt romney, an american politician like no other. the only one who in four years has talked his way from being a

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white house photographers often capture history in the making. but sometimes they capture images that have nothing to do with the burden of the presidency but can still be among the most important images of that presidency. images that tell us something personal about the man in the oval office, and those are usually the unforgettable ones. this is one of those. chief white house photographer peter suza said this. as a photographer, you know when

you have a unique moment, but i didn't realize the extent to which this one would take on a life of its own. that one became an instant favorite of the staff. i think people are struck by the fact that the president of the united states was willing to bend down and let a little boy feel his head. the photo inspired jonathan capehart to recently write this. obama gets a bum wrap for not talking more openly about race. some critics think he ignores the issue, either out of fear or lack of real concern, but what they don't get and what the suza photo perfectly illustrates is that the president addresses so much about race without ever opening his mouth. joining me now, the young man in that photograph, jacob philadelphia. he's joined by his parents carlton and rosanne and his brother isaac.

jacob, what did you say that made the president do that and let you reach over and touch his hair? >> i asked him if i could touch his hair. >> and why did you ask him that? why did you want to do that? >> i want -- because i was wondering if we had the same haircut and was in common. >> and what did it feel like when you put your hand over there? >> it felt the same. >> carlton, dad, you have unpredictable kids, it seems. did you have any feeling in the oval office, a place where you'd been before working in the white house, that jacob might do something like this? >> oh, it was surprising. i knew that his mother had told me that every time he goes me to the barber, he always tells the barber he wants a haircut just like president obama. so on the way there, you know, i

said, hey, if you guys have any questions, just make sure you raise it with the president. it was very surprising that he actually raised that question. but it was memorable. i never expected a president to actually bend over and allow him to touch his hair. >> well, you were observing a white house tradition. you served on the staff of the national security council. you were leaving that job. it's traditional for people to get a family picture with the president on the way out. isaac, what was it like for you to be in the oval office with the president that day? >> it was special. i believe that it was a certain moment that i'll never have again or possibly will not. >> rosanne, your family, and thanks to jacob's request, actually, now has a place in the cultural history of this country. that's a moment that, as jonathan capehart has pointed out, speaks volumes, says things

beyond anything any reporter could have composed in words. what does it feel like for you to be part of a moment like that? >> very special. it's surprising that the president would have stooped to a child's level and have my son touch his hair to make sure that they had the same texture. it's one of the most precious moments in our family that i think -- and in other families because it touched so many people. the president did not look at this child as a child but as an equal. that's what i think was so special. >> jacob, you know, as your dad can tell you, they are constantly changing the pictures that they put up on the wall in the white house that the white house photographer takes. your picture has stayed up there since it first went up a few

years ago. how does that make you feel knowing your picture is still there? >> makes me feel amazed that it's still there and it's not there anymore. >> are you hoping maybe to work in the white house yourself one day like your father or like president obama? >> yeah. >> isaac, how about you? you think you might go back into that building some day with a job there? >> yep. >> well, your father has led the way. you got to take notes from your father. pay attention to him. he'll tell you exactly how to get there. jacob, carlton, isaac, and rosanne philadelphia, thank you all very, very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> you're welcome. >> welcome. >> "the ed show" is up next. good evening, americans. welcome to the ed show tonight from new york. republicans are claiming victory after scott walker keeps his seat in wisconsin. tonight, i have a message to

democrats and the middle classers of america. you don't want to miss it. this is the ed show. let's get to work. >> comfortable with all that outside money that came in and frankly overwhelmed tv stations? >> citizens united saved the day for scott walker in wisconsin. >> we've got to change the recall process. >> we'll go inside the numbers from last night with john nichols of "the nation" magazine. and i'll tell you why democrats and labor need a major wake-up call. responsible austerity measures of reining in government growth really will help our nation. >> wisconsin's the tip of the iceberg. >> and conservatives say scott walker with's win should mean austerity everywhere. >> austerity, who'd have thought it. >> tonight, thomas frank and e.j. dionne will tell you why the righties are dead wrong. good to have you with us tonight, folks. thanks for watching. governor scott walker and his allies took a victory lap of sorts today after winning the recall election in wisconsin. walker's divide and conquer strategy worked, but so did his lie and buy strategy.