it's called this town will meet the off the mark leave it that's all next on politicking with larry king. to this week's politicking we start with democrat and former white house environmental advisor and co-host by the way of c.n.n.'s new crossfire show then jones who joins us in washington also joining us is the independent and host of blazes hot list amy holmes she joins us from new york let's get right to it guys syria is let's start with you van should the president wait for the u.n. findings on the use of chemical weapons or should act immediately well i think he needs to act fast i don't think he should bypass trying to build a coalition he didn't go in by him self but we i think we already know russia and

china have been sticking up for assad they're probably not going to give him that legality to go ahead but there's a difference between legality and legitimacy if he goes in by himself he won't have legality or legitimacy he's got to build a coalition but that you have to go to the u.n. to do it. amy the white house and state department say the evidence is undeniable that they used chemical weapons leasure the president said we've been very clear to the assad regime there's a red line if he crosses it grosses it that was last year what does he do now rioted we've seen this ever shifting red line and now the president's credibility is on the line in fact chemical weapons have already been suspected to be used by the assad regime and the president seemed to move that red line yet again which turned out to be a green light to bashar al assad to attack that super that suburb of damascus i think what's different now is the death toll which estimates range from three hundred thirty souls to eight eighteen hundred people so this is one that this is

a huge scale chemical weapons attack i think president obama has no choice but to take actions because he told the entire world the united states wouldn't stand for this i agree that the u.n. security council with russia sitting on it is not going to give the go ahead or at least you know they're in premature for military action but i think one of the concerns that this administration has as do many conservatives is what is the end game we know that rebel forces are largely affiliated with al-qaeda in this are a lot of enemies of the united states in the west do we want to topple assad and put those people in power or we're trying to get these two sides to the negotiating table perhaps a military strike might accomplish that. then do you see troops on the ground and if so do you see the american public supporting that i don't think so i think we really this is going to be a needle for the president to thread he's got to on the one hand you've got to make sure there are consequences i don't think the red line moved very much is that if you use chemical weapons we're going to do something about it there was some lack

of clarity on the first round what were the weapons used by whom it's better this is absolutely clear now they use these weapons it's got to be a response america has an interest in making sure that despots don't start using chemical weapons around the world at the same time there are no good guys here there is no budget good guys who could fill a vacuum so he's got to be able to somehow send a message that you can't do this kind of stuff without pulling us into another land war i think that i've met i'm seeing that the president's supporters are giving him far more leverage our latitude rather in leeway than they ever did to president bush and we just heard there's a difference there's a distinction between legal and legitimate that distinction was never made when it came to president bush but back back to the point when it comes to syria i think that we need to be focused on what is the u.s. national interest and i think that is to a certain extent stability how do you get stability these military strikes there will not be ground troops there will be there won't even be

a no fly zone because that would require pretty pretty tracked it engagement in syria but at least enough to knock out headquarters palaces communications possible weapons chemical weapons depots those things could at least humble assad to try to come to some sort of negotiated settlement. then president bush went to congress with what he said was proof of weapons of mass destruction that turned out to be wrong and a lot of people lost their lives should congress be involved in this well absolutely and i think that one of the things that we've got to be here this is this should not be the united states of amnesia ok we've got something happening there we want to respond but i think we should learn some lessons of the past and i think when you have a rush to war you wind up making mistakes i think that congress should be consulted congress should be involved i don't think we should wait for the u.n. by do you think we should wait for the american people to make sure the american people understand a couple of strikes i don't i don't think we're going to people going to complain

too much if you military strikes but if we start moving in a posture where we're going to start picking sides we're going to start picking favorites we're going to start arming certain people we're going to start leaning in to a ground war posture congress needs to weigh in fully we need to have a full discussion a full debate either side would disagree with that in on syria what is what does russia russia can favor the use of chemical weapons how does it back off. well you know that's i think where the president's diplomacy with russia that so-called reset button has been such a failure because we've seen russia. helping assad in very material ways including satellite information about the rebel where the rebels are i think you have to have some of that backdoor diplomacy with russia where we go in with our own leverage with the russians and say hey look this is what this is what you get if you cooperate on this russia part of their interest in syria syria has has the only port in the mideast in the gulf that russia uses they have

a long term longstanding relationship but i agree with you larry what interest is russia have in arming al-qaeda linked terrorists with chemical weapons should assad fall at the same time what what interest does russia have in having assad used chemical weapons that could only spur more al-qaeda resistance and as we know russia has its own problems with islamic jihad let's go to some other areas then we'll show you last sunday ted cruz the new republican senator said he's not convinced that president obama wouldn't defund is own signature congress gave him the opportunity do you think obama would back away i think it's really amazing i think cruz is becoming a very entertaining colorful figure i wonder of the you know it's about anything happening in texas i thought he was a senator representing texas you've been there for six months already running for president and saying absurd things about president obama president obama said about obamacare call it obamacare because obama and i do care i think that he knows this

is a part of his legacy and i think that he's committed to it i think it's unfortunate that you do have these republicans who say implementation is going to be this train wreck and then you look and they're sitting there with a little black hat on with dynamite next to the train tracks yeah maybe a train wreck if they wreck the train but i think obviously president obama is committed to this program and of ted cruz things otherwise he is less in touch with reality than people thought. amy is your party going to. at this point it looks like the republican leadership is not remotely interested in that kind of you know face down but i do have to say that i find it ironic that supporters of the president are attacking a junior senator from raising his profile and running for president very early in his first term since that's exactly what we're going to have. more than ironic but in terms of in terms of a government shutdown you know let's face it tom coburn very conservative

republican from oklahoma richard burr another conservative from north carolina including house leadership john boehner and eric cantor have all said they oppose the government shutdown strategy they know what happened when newt gingrich went up against bill clinton and that's republicans got the blame and republicans are also looking at the possibility of pot you know slim but the possibility of taking over the united states senate having control of both chambers i don't think they want to blow it on something that in the end is not going to fund obamacare. now that mr snowden will publish kind of divided if you talk to other people though say they admired what mr snowden did in the wood the government did invading privacy is reprehensible on the other side people say well these are interesting times and they call for interesting actions where you stand then well you know i have some real sympathy for both snowed in also for chelsea manning you know these are tough times and you know all of us have been on

a job where something shady was going on something was happening and we didn't think was right and then what do you do do you tell the boss you get you've quit me to get fired and you've got a little young people all across this country on these contract and they're trying to figure out what to do i think the obama administration has to be faulted here for not creating a better pathway for whistleblowers it's more reliable and that is less treacherous you have seen whistleblowers actually being prosecuted by this administration and i think that part of what happens is if you don't create a legitimate pathway and the president has not for whistleblowers and you then you're going to have these kind of activities i think he should come the united states and face the music as any civil disobedience person supposed to but i have some sympathy for for him being in that situation and they were used him. i believe that bradley manning up was a extremely dangerous irresponsible individual who indiscriminately downloaded over seven hundred thousand security files he did not redacted names of spies and folks

who are helping us on the ground and they're very dangerous parts of the world when he gave that information to julian assange and wiki leaks us in danger in those folks lives and basically the rest of us and i find it very strange that this young man would ask the american taxpayer taxpayer who security has risks to pay for him for his next iteration of that's too i suppose become a woman i that's who they have known as it is referring to to chelsea in both. case of bradley manning and manning rather and ed snowden they did have options there are lawyers who do specialize in representing whistleblowers representing them to the government going through proper channels even going through congress and telling us those you know national security secret committees what information that they have i'm sure ron wyden the democratic senator from oregon would have been very pleased to speak with edward snowden let's also remember that edward snowden there's evidence that he went to go work for as a contractor for the very express purpose of gaining access to these files so it

wasn't like he was just an innocent twentysomething who stumbled upon some you know treasure trove of information that he wanted to get out to the people it seemed that he was into he was all that and it's actually well first of all that's a rumor that's going around now we don't know it that's true i also i really am surprised me i would think that when you have government officials coming in before congress and lying. then i agree with you james clapper saying that he told our sitting representatives united states senators that he gave the least untruthful answer that is outrageous but when we're talking about whistleblowers there were proper channels for them to go through and i you know i've i've read about where is who represent whistleblowers and they have different different steps they take long before they go public with national security secrets let me just have been guys when van jones was just a little lad he and his father used to watch crossfire it's source for you still leading to me every night on c.n.n. i love that i disagreed when c.n.n.

that time to get off i'm happy they're bringing it back and have been jones will be part of it along with newt gingrich stephanie cutter. van what it was what do you make of this well i mean it's amazing we just talking about speaker gingrich and the lessons that people learned when he was running congress and you don't shut the government down and cetera et cetera he's a living legend. i went to law school how can we quote you on the living. at a living. he one of the one of the few people in american politics he did what he said seventy nine if there's no take over congress and move it to the right he did it i graduated from law school in one thousand nine hundred three he took over ninety four and started tearing apart every program in value i hold dear i've been debating him in my mind for twenty years i cannot wait to see what i live tell us. that is going to be it's going to be a lot of fun as i said once to newt newt everyone is humble all will be.

waiting for it to happen in the case of newt gingrich watch crossed i thank you both amy holmes and van jones for joining me today don't miss crossfire's debut it's on c.n.n. september sixteenth coming up next a great new book creating quite a top ten scandal in washington we'll talk to the author of this town modern leibovich when we come back.

cuba is not to see a year of the cuban people it's a savior it's a dell castro. one assassination. back to the shows both hostility and suspicion and courage but they got. and these operations against cuba were known to the attorney general of the united states the president united states himself the defendant's intelligence arms had to infiltrate to resist. freedom fighters terrorists. who is. the real terrorists please stand up.

wealthy british scientists some. time to. market. to. find out what's really happening to the global economy monks concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kaiser report. welcome back there's a new book about washington that portrays the town as a culture of money hungry lobbyists and shallow politicians and journalists joining me in d.c. is the new york times chief national correspondent mark leibovich he's the author of this town two parties and a funeral plus plenty of valet parking in america's gilded capital it's now out by

penguin is a major runaway bestseller digits spec that mark to just pick the book to take off and not like it has i mean it's obviously it's been great i'm thrilled with the response i mean i think when you write a book like this i mean my my nature is to be neurotic and to worry about all the can go wrong in three hundred fifty pages so my initial concern was just the kind of storm it was going to incite and getting sued and so forth but now none of that's happened it's been it's been amazing so i'm i'm thrilled the publishers thrilled and hopefully readers like a too. the formation the i did did you intend to kick it off with the tim russert funeral did that with the idea come from a had you planned the book before i well know i hadn't planned the book before i mean i had i knew in the back of my mind that washington i think had reached a tipping point where the sort of hollywood missed but the sort of carnival atmosphere and the kind of money culture of this town had really reached a tipping point that i wanted to really capture over a period of five or six years tim russert died in the prime of his life in two

thousand and eight in june and i was a struck by how his memorial service at the kennedy center just became like a cocktail party us you had presidents there and former presidents there and all kinds of operatives there and just everyone was throwing business cards around and trying to work it and trying to replace him on meet the press and it just struck me as a moment that i wanted to capture and hopefully just sort of flesh it all out i having fun with what you're doing with lawmakers here they come to washington to make a difference they sell out to lobby is money becomes important you uses prime examples trent lott build thousand john breaux former house minority leader richard gephardt no one comes out really good yeah i mean there are there might be a few i mean look this is not a city that really should be feeling as good about itself as it does i mean there's there's great disappointment across the country for how congress for instance is leading how the two major parties are leading how the media is performing and and

frankly i wanted to sort of really describe for people who these people are what this town looks like and frankly this is the wealthiest community in the united states now i mean the washington metropolitan areas home to seven of the ten wealthiest counties in the united states at a time when the rest of the country has struggled and look i am having fun in that i think the book is fun in that it describes a lot of pretty rich scenes and it includes a lot of bold faced names and stuff but there is a serious point here which is that washington and the capital of washing the caught . but all of the united states has been given over to self-service when the city was supposedly built on public service you have coburn is very friendly to obama since publication the book he's listed as one of those who might try for impeachment what do you make of that you know there's this weird duality in the coburn obama relationship now i mean tom coburn is a very i ideologically driven conservative he has been able to kind of separate his friendship with the president that that started when they're

both in the senate together with his own political imperatives now you know that would actually i would think that if he went ahead with them based impeachment proceedings it might throw a wrench into their friendship a little bit but who knows i mean compartmentalization is a very powerful thing in d.c. . you take on former white house staffers and certainly take on lobbyists and how senator trent lott is an example senators become lobbyists. a lobbyist when i've interviewed them over the years always defended themselves as being very important because what they do is provide information to people they don't have to use the information they try to influence them as broadcasters try to influence presidents try that while a lot of the is bad lobbyists are bad first of all i think there are some good lobbyists i mean i think lobbying has gotten way out of control i mean these are it's basically a lot of people who are mercenaries who are doing the working for the highest

bidder and there's never been more money in politics i mean there's never been more money flooding into lobbyists and consultants and public relations professionals trying to influence government in a way that does favor i mean the wealthy interests whether it's big corporations or trade groups or something and and you know the little guys don't tend to have the more powerful lobbyists so i mean you're right i mean blood being has been around for centuries and it was present in the eighteenth century when the government was founded but i think right now it has just gotten so out of control and you know you have a situation where fifty percent of all former u.s. senators go on to become lobbyists that compares to three percent back in one thousand nine hundred four so you sort of wonder when when people are in the senate who are they working for they're working for the people who elected them or they're working for their next gig so i think there are a lot of fundamental questions that are embedded and have you as a reporter and a great journalist for a great newspaper have you kind of lost friendships and contacts all writing this book i don't think i have actually i mean i think look as

a reporter you got to tell the truth you also i mean you hold a mirror to a culture and i think you know on a very personal level when you're dealing with someone whether it's a source or a subject or someone that you're doing business with you've got to be straight with them and i think i fact checked all of this pretty rigorously people knew it was. they might not have liked the end result but i think ultimately a lot of the arguments i would have had a lot of the pushback i got was before publication and now i mean the response inside of him pretty muted and i think you know look everyone loves a winner people see the bookselling it's been well reviewed so i guess they'll have a lunch again but ultimately i don't think i lost any real friends in this i'm trying to decide about your feelings about my former executive producer my first executive producer with c.n.n. then was formerly with the radio tammy had and she's kind of a prototype of of what what what is what is attempts to a temple that is that is sort of her nickname tammy had that is this force of nature she was your exact producer for what two decades or something for radio and

teller and the on television right and then she went on to work for chris matthews and hardball i mean tammy has just rivet reinvented herself in recent years as this all purpose convener of official washington and she's everywhere she's a she's a party host she does videos i mean she signs on to multi media companies and helps them get into the white house and help them helps them you know meet people and that's love she is someone who has made the modern washington work for her i mean there have always been sort of socialites in washington but for the first time ever i mean i mean sally quinn and pamela harriman were not in it for the money i mean seven tammy is a very successful business woman i think she's an original i don't know if i'll be invited to her white house correspondents dinner brunch in the future i doubt it i'm not holding my breath but you know maybe one day will be friends again i don't like to get personal but you make jerry seinfeld said that i originated twitter which was a complement and you use a twitter is basically my old usa today column gone wild i think it is i think i

don't mean that disparagingly at all and i think you're you all that your old us addict which is legendary in part because of saturday night live i think but but also you know it's just random thoughts and that's what twitter is it's people having the technology and the means to just sort of throw their random thoughts out there and i don't think people do it as compellingly as you did frankly so that's me sucking up to the host. what do you make what washington has become in in this. era of terrible lack of harmony i mean when i was a kid and i'd read about senators like giants like herbert lehman you know people like everett dirksen and they don't seem to be around anymore ya know the grown ups the gate keepers seem to have died off or gone away or been marginalized in some ways and i do think that. look i mean one one distinction i think it's important to make is that washington is working very well for washington it's not working very

well for the american people and i also think that first divided is washington might look from afar it's actually quite interconnected in a lot of these democrats and these republicans are in business together the people who are shouting at each other on cable or off and business partners are doing these sort of paid dog and pony shows on the road and and so look if a tax reform bill passes tomorrow that's tens of billions of dollars in lobbying fees or consulting fees that are going to be paid out so failure in a sense is very very good for washington in the city sort of thrives on. the next time on there might be in the next week or so can we launch at the palm i would love to launch at the palm with you larry would be his it would be a thrill and i would love to do it i will call you is the palm still what the plan was you know i don't know what the palm was because they never let me in there so i didn't dress well enough but i think look at the palm is still a place where you need to get reservations to get lunch food still great i think the palm might be one of many now but i think it's still quite distinctive and so

a place about to go bob woodward who is my all lunch partner you'll be my next one i look forward to it larry thanks thanks mark mark leibovich and a great great book this town two parties in a funeral plus plenty of valet parking in america's gilded capital it's out now from penguin books thanks to mark and my previous guest ben jones and amy holmes for joining me on this week's politicking before we go we're going to take a look inside d.c. where the powerful in washington go to unwind and have a drink here are a few of daisies favorite bartenders on what washington drinks. hey larry welcome to the governor my name's torak i'm going to take in kerry tonight larry so this first guinness is on me. with the mixing politics and beer here since one nine hundred seventy four it's a good irish hans right around the corner from capitol hill we have

a lot of political those that come in this way so i'm going to make here one of our famous pints of guinness the frock obama had here and the way for a good time to get a hold of a forty five degree angle. just where the harp is going to let that saddle for about a minute. until it's like this here nice and saddle you going to push the handle forward. we call this to show you that about a minute and i'll turn and i struck for you and the top here the little collar has to sit above the heart that's how you know you've got a good point. going to see house the way to watch i know the people on the hill aren't all was that patient but you have to be patient when you come into the delta . hi larry welcome to all the relatives all the cylinders. been around since eight hundred fifty six and everyone who is anybody went there for a drink today they. just must drink here might be a martini. called sake and try people like something different every once in

a while still so this is the bothers me it's made with our how it came you know so it's very very good write properly so we start out with one line about eight minute leaves half an ounce come get our into the choir and we're just going to model. it in a little bit of a gathering. and a little slash that kind of will just take this you know. ten k. out. and strain it over the ice and have a nice precise a spicy cocktail with. hi larry welcome to the restaurant capitol hill. you get to meet interesting people such as centers in progress from john kennedy's favorite table was right over there in the window the speaker boehner will have red wine morello the former senator scott brown a beer drinker and we have to send your children comes in sure just drink iced tea

years ago our lounge should be packed with members from both sides of the aisle and they go on quite well with the show that it wasn't quite the acrimony there is today's we have a special a drink it's called the monopole punch is primarily in brandy used to be served to george washington so larry the strength sure you cherish sloan show larry hopefully you'll promise us one detail. don't forget. follow me on twitter at kings things and i'll see you next week for more politic it .

they were ready to do anything for their country to me is to love the country more than yourself if you join the military for any other reason that you're probably not going to have a good day and they were tools in the hands of the state now they live remembering the past which is impossible to get rid of. the war. but however good people get hurt. and i've heard good people empty

silent. a lot. but would prefer not to be sometimes i feel like. i should have died over there are. those. i saw some people who died and. there is cheaper than terrifying. on our. well if you're. the face i think you. should have you with.

the eyes to the right two hundred seventy two the nose to the left two hundred eighty five. the british parliament says no to intervention in syria after the prime minister a fails to convince lawmakers to launch war against president. abbas the u.s. is boosting its naval forces in the region saying it's ready to strike alone despite losing support of its closest ally. and more misery for thousands of stricken families in russia's far east where it's feared the floodwaters which have devastated their towns won't receive before winter.