myself in, i have a cheerful attitude at all times. attitude has a healing effect on the body, and it works for everybody. this sunday -- >> we can fot have -- we cannot have a society in which dictators start to impose dictators' censorship in the united states. >> has a dangerous precedent been set by sony? and is north korea behind the cyber attack, and can the government and businesses be protected? and a shooting in new york adding more stress in the city.

they were assassinate and targeted for uniform for the duties they embrace of keeping the city safe. and keeping the policy against cuba. >> this is an illusion. >> not everybody is happy. i will be joined by florida senator and possible presidential candidate marco rubio. joining us are chris matthews, and former bush white house director chris fagan and former white hou white hou white house spokesman bill richardson. this is "meet the press" with chuck todd. >> i will be talking about the e

sony attacks, but first, two men shot at point blank range saturday afternoon killed while simply sitting in their pale troll cars. police commissioner william bratton the and mayor william de blasio called it an assassinati assassination. the man started by shooting a girlfriend in baltimore who is recovering in a hospital. social posts from the gunman pointed to the actions being related to the deaths of michael brown and eric garner. and members of new york police department turned their backs on mayor de blasio as he walked to the hospital last might. and a former new york police department officer joins us. let me get your reaction to the benevolent police officer president and here is mr. lynch.

>> are there is blood on many hands tonight. those who incited violence on the street under the guise of protest protests, and that blood is on the hands starts on the steps of city hall in the office of the mayor. >> and now, mr. adams before i get your reaction, let me reed the mayor's statement, it is unfortunate that in a time of great tragedy that some would respond to heated rhetoric, and mayor deplauz what owe knows that this is the time to come together to the families of the brave officers that new york lost last night and the entire nypd. and now, first to the charges of mr. lynch, what is your are response to it? >> first of all, our hearts goes out to the family. and in addition to that, the bullets strikes the body of a police officer, the path raises many concerns.

but this is not about one voice, but the voice of the entire city crying out for unity, and crying out of saying, how do we come together and deal with the real issues in policing and at the same time protect the city. i wore a bulletproof vest for. 2 years to protect city and i know how trying and difficult these times are. >> we have had protests and heated rhetoric and do you believe it contributed to this? >> no, not at all. i believe we can not mix the two. those who were calling for the police reform were not calling for the police retribution, and they were not calling for harm to police and we cannot allow someone to get in the way of moving towards police reform. blood is not on the hands of the mayor. the blood is on the hands of the sick person who took the life of two innocent police officers, and innocent people should not die in america. it does not matter if they are wearing a police uniform or a

three-piece suit, innocent people should not die in america, and we are better than what we are seeing. now is the time for adults to stand up and decide the direction. >> two weeks ago we were talking about trust issues in the african-american community and trust issues. and today, we are going to to to be talking about trust issues between the law enforcement and the mayor of new york city, and how do you fix that trust issue? >> that is not the issue. the police officers of new york city are professionals and they will get up and do their job. just as we saw when the world trade centers collapsed, they got up and did their job. we cannot allow other methods in the way of policing will think that the men and women who wear the blue uniforms as law enforcement officers are going to move away pr that. that assassination was not an attack on individuals, but it is at a tack on the beliefs in public safety, and with e are n

allow an attack on public safety in america. >> and you wrote an op-ed that said "we cannot allow the police abuse of black men." are you concerned that any reform efforts that people are talking about when it comes to law enforcement, the grand jury process, that something like this is going to be halted eed its tracks? >> no. we will reach the point where civil rights marches are going to be in the street, and this is where the caribbean and the spanish americas and people of all ethnicity are saying that america vetted in the violence a that we are seeing, and vetted in the lack of police reform, and so i don't believe that anything is going to derail that. with we won't let the sick mind of one individual to get into the way of creating a sim bee y -- symbiotic relationship

between the law enforcement, and the community. >> thank you for coming on "meet the press" this morning. i appreciate your time. >> thank you. and now the news that has dominated the press this week, the cyber attacks on sony. and this when there was a movie by seth rogen about a plot to assassinate kim jong-un, he could not have anticipated the fact was stranger than the fiction. and it is the box office smash of the year despite that the public has not seen it. >> we cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can impose sensorship some place. >> and the president called out sony for catering to the demands of hackers. >> we have not caved this in, and we have persevered and we have not backed down. >> what started as a hollywood comedy has turned into an

international crisis. >> and president obama's comments concluded that north korea was behind the hacking. >> it is is a wake-up call that north korea has this capability. >> we have no real policy to handle this. >> and it says something interesting about north korea that they decided to have the state mount an all-out assault on a movie studio because of a satirical movie starring seth rog rogen. >> the cia would love it if you wo could take him out. >> huh? >> take him out. >> what? for drinks? >> i wish they had spoken to me first. i believe they made a mistake. >> i did reach out to speak to senior folks in the white house. we do not own movie theaters, and we cannot determine whether or not a movie will be played in movie theaters. >> stars burned up. and ben stiller said, i cannot

believe. this and rob lowe compared him to hitler. >> and i can't believe that this is rolled over to north korea. >> and clooney -- >> i waited until hitler was dead. i don't foe how cra't know how , so i want you to stop talking about him. >> i believe the audiences can choose what they want to see. >> and we did not say boston could not run the marathon because somebody might cause harm. >> and the sony president of legal affairs who also represented al gore in his lawsuits, and so, let's start

with the statement released by s sony, because they said, david, they said they had no choice. but david, they had a choice, but they chose not to release it, correct? is. >> well, not really. you can't release a movie unless you have a distribution channel. the theaters with were subject to threats of physical violence against the theaters and against their customers. and quite understandably a large number of them a majority of them decided not to show the picture when it was scheduled. when that happened, sony had no alternative. nobody was stepping up in the three weeks with when sony fought the issue by itself, and nobody, and maybe george clooney and a few people like that, but none of the second guessers out there saying, oh, what a terrible thing this is, none of them were stepping up to help sony then. >> and actually, the president is quoted this morning in an interview that he taped friday, but new this morning, he is

saying that had coney k sony co him, he would have called the distributors and pushed h them to air the movie? >> well, i was not there this the white house and you heard in the introductions that sony did talk to senior people h in the white house, and the decision is made, and we have to move beyond who is responsible, because this is a state-sponsored criminal attack on a private corporation can and its employees. if the nsa had invaded somebody like this, the people would have been outrage and north korea does it and couples it with threats, and people sit back while sony fights h this on its own. we have to use the president's are recognition of the importance the of this issue as a rallying cry so that all americans can unite against what

is really a threat to the national security, and if state-spons state-sponsored criminal acts like this can be directed against sew manyny, k-- against can be directed against anybody. >> you are saying state-sp state-sponsored acts instead of terrorism, so if you use that, you are looking for cover on this, and are you looking for that ruling? >> i am not looking for criminal vandalism or terrorism, but we know it is a state-sponsored attack the on the privacy of an american corporation and its employees, and what sony is trying to do is to protect that privacy and get back what was stolen and asking everybody to cooperate in that and not to aid and abet with whether you call them vandals or criminals or terrorists or with whatever you call them, they are bad actors, and people should not be cooperating with them. >> do you believe that sony be held liable if violence had occurred in a movie theater if

violence had occurred in the showing of a movie? >> with well, i don't know, but if you have physical threats against people's lives, and these threats with were public, and there was not anybody stepping up with these threats, oh, no, we will protect the public and make sure nothing happens there, and under those circumstances, whether it is a legal liability or not, you have to be very careful with people's lives, and remember, sony only delayed this. sony has been fighting to get this picture distributed, and it will be distributed. how it is going to be distributed, nobody knows quite yet, but it is going to be distributed. and what sony has been trying to do is to get the picture out to the public, but at the same time be sure that the rights of the employees and the rights of the mov movie-going public are protected. >> do you think that the laws

need to protect corporations that are being attacked like this? >> well, similar the 9/11 attacks, and we have to recognize that this is not a sony problem, but a national security problem, and the government has to lead. the fbi has been terrific in this. they have been diligent, and unbelievably competent in helping to analyze and understand what the source of this attack was. now, the rest of the government has to get behind it, and they have got to figure out a way to protect the national security, because this is a national security threat. i think that the president is beginning to reck miz that, and that is a good thing, but now we have to have some actions following from the words. >> do you think that the president's comments were helpful the to you friday to you? >> i think it was helpful in m some respects, and helpful to have the president recognize publicly that this was an unacceptable attack that we

cannot have state-sponsored attacks e designed to sensor what we do here in the country. i would have liked to have seen it a little bit earlier, and i would have liked to have seen it without the sort of blame the victim aspect of it. but i think that the positive aspects of it where we are beginning to come together as a country, and are recognize this is a threat, i think that is positive. >> thank you, david boyce, lead attorney for sony pictures. and now we have a panel from harold kumar and he also worked with president obama in the office of public engagement, and thank you for joining the are rest of the panel. and first, sony's decision as an actor, was it something that bothered you? >> first of all, thank you for having me, chuck.

yes, it did bother me, and i echo a lot of the sentiments that a lot of my colleagues in hollywood have had, and the folks at sony are our friends and co-workers and i can't imagine the horribly tough decision they were in and privacy of the records being released and the intellectual property, and at the end of the day, the president said that it sets a dangerous precedent and a tricky situation for somebody to say that their hands were tied, and i don't believe that is necessarily true, pause the exhibitors and other theaters that refused to show the movie, and they could have put it down on the having owned xbox and other ways to distribute, and they didn't. >> and there is some mocking of him, and is there some way that kim jong-un was portrayed, and is that true? >> well, i have not seen the if

film, so you could argue in both way ways was the movie in good taste or poor taste, but that is the way of in harold and kumar escaping in guantanamo bay, and we had a fictitious george bush and is this in poor taste or not, a hand is the beauty of art and particularly in comedies like that, you can always have that conversation. >> and john meltie, welcome to "meet the press" and you have spent a lot of time covering hollywood h, and you wrote a defense of sony, and quite interesting to your followers that you defended sony in delaying the release. >> it is not up to sony to fight north korea, and that is the government's job and they kept the product viable and it is not a good precedent if you are threatened by a foreign

government to squander a $80 million project. and as david boyce says, the government needs to make it as safe for people to make it safe for people to make movies as they are to fly against al qaeda and once the structures are put in place and shield against liability, then you can say, nanny, nanny, boo, boo, to north korea and it is a win. >> chris matthews, the president was trying to protect american ideals and being the president of the united states, and then sony who is worried about sony. >> imagine, and i like to flip the thing to think about how to think, and suppose that the president came on in the press conference and said with sony, i agree with them, and they had to pull the film. and regal refused to show it, he would have been part of the buckling, and he had to separate himself from the decision to do that and he had to be church

hhill and not chamberlain, and that is his role. and sony had the profit-making decision. a and the president stands for strength and confidence and what he could have done better and i like what he did friday and a couple of weeks before he could have said, we will find a way to indemnify the theaters, but we get on airplanes all of the time with the threats floating around and because the american people have to be resilient, and that is the number one role of the president, to be resilient. >> and there is still an active lawsuit against the airlines from 9/11. >> yes (and so -- >> indemnify is the big part of it. >> if you are sony, you think that congress is going to go there? >> well, congress has to do something. you can't have american businesses being threatened by bullies around the world. and you know, the thing that is really scary is about this, look, as bad por sfor sony and free speech and the american

institution, and imagine if it were the financial institution or the electric grid. >> you have been around the world, bill richardson, and you have been there, and you didn't think they were capable of this and you were skeptical. >> skeptical, well, i don't know that the proof was conclusive, but i believe that you put them on the terrorism list, and you squeeze the cash so that the leadership of north korea can't get the money will through to a macao banks. and so the key here is china, and they have to press north kree ians to stop the cyberterrorisms and we have to get rid of the north korean hackers in china, and lastly the internet process in china for north korea needs to be shutdown. and we don't know if china will

help us. >> and so if you are offered a penn script that you believe is going to be actors say, on one hand i want to be a part and this is fun is a tearize -- satireizing leader x or y, and do you want to be a part of sthit. >> well, you can take the moral high ground and speculate, and this is something that actors deal with that you have something that might offend part of the population, and you know that people will protest outside of a theater, but few calls to pull down a film, and less that the theaters will do that. but it is a certainly not to this scale. >> why are you one of the few to speak out? >> well, you invited me, and i

don't have a lot to say. >> well, you know, george clooney did not get anybody to sign publicly on the petition. fear in hollywood? >> well, fear, and i think confusion of what is going on. on what was it, wednesday when sony said they have no plans to release the film. and on friday, they said they might release it on demand and then saturday they pulled down all of social media, because i have six movies that have trail trailers on them, and the studios don't take them down, because they know there is longevity in it, and so there is fear and not that we are going to to be saying anything that will angerr our friends at sony or around the world. >> and thank you cal pen, and we will talk about cyber security and just how the government should respond to this attack. and what will with we do with

corporate and cyber threats with our panel in a moment. [ male announcer ] whether it takes 200,000 parts, ♪ 800,000 hours of supercomputing time, 3 million lines of code, 40,000 sets of eyes, or a million sleepless nights. whether it's building the world's most advanced satellite, the space station, or the next leap in unmanned systems. at boeing, one thing never changes. our passion to make it real. ♪

welcome back. we have been discussing the north korean cyber attack. how vulnerable are we as a nation to further attack ss? i'm joined by michael leiter, michael churtoff and christopher

hill, a former ambassador to south korea. welcome all. michael leiter, let me start with you. cyber terrorism seems to be something that washington has had a hard time getting, quote unquote, excited about and doing something about this. people have called for this to be tackled and yet nothing happened. is this the wake-up call? >> it probably is. it seemed too ee femoral. if it takes a sellationous amount of celebrity gossip to get americans to listen and realize that companies can be hacked and material destroyed, then maybe there's some silver lining here. congress and the president and the private sector i think will take note of this and maybe, with the new congress, will get action. >> does it matter whether we

call this terrorism or not? >> i think it does matter, because i think it puts it in perspective. there are a couple of things about this that i think are different from what we have seen before. first, this was a destructive attack. it wasn't just the theft of information or something that could affect one's credit score. this actually damaged and destroyed infrastructure in a major company. the second thing is, this is the first time we have seen an act of terrorism that attempts to coerce behavior. that's the essence of terrorism. the threat that we will commit physical acts of violence if it's not pulled out of theaters is exactly the kind of thing that they experienced. so this is really crossing into a new terrain. >> ambassador hill, you have a lot of familiarity with the north koreans in dealing with them. were you surprised at the sophistication? second, what can be done to

punish them? >> first of all, north koreans don't mind that the rest of us don't like them. they don't like to be mocked. i have seen that on several occasions from them. i'm not surprised that they did this. frankly, i'm not surprised that the technical prowess to do this. they have -- it's a complicated economy with most of it very much third world. burt certain segments, including the nuclear program, that are first world. i'm not surprised that they actually did this. now the question is, what we need to do about it. i think we need to punish them. and i think we do need to be proportionate in how we do this. probably it's something where we may not want to get up and acknowledge our fingerprints on it. look through what the options are. but we do need to respond. we need to deter this in the future. >> let's talk about the deterrences. michael and secretary, i want

you to comment about the idea of retaliating with a cyber attack ourselves. the united states government unofficially has done this at least once that we know of of a cyber attack. we know nobody ever confirms this. it has been widely reported. but there's been a debate inside the national security community whether this is ethically something the united states should do. are we going to get into the cyber warfare business? >> we already are. but the real challenge we have in terms of using cyber offense is that we live in a glass house right now. it's not just sony. sony is good at defenses. sony has invested in this. they have seen attacks before. the rest of the u.s. corporations have the same vulnerabilities that sony does. we can't just look at the private sector. it's going to have to rearchitect. the government has to be involved in defending. then we will have the option of being more offensive. i think until we set up the defenses, being offensive is going to be very challenging.

>> should we be engaging in cyber warfare ethically? >> well, i don't think there's an ethical issue here. i think as mike points out, there's a practical issue in terms of our own vulnerability. also recall, north korea is a nuclear state. it's very close to south korea and japan. those are considerations as well. you cannot let this go unanswered. in addition to the suggestion that the ambassador made about putting them on the terrorist list, back on the list, we ought to at least consider some kind of covert action that would make them pay a price. last thing is this, if they are using the chinese infrastructure as a way of carrying out these attacks, we've to have a more serious conversation with china. the president signed this climate agreement, everybody was patting themselves on the back. and then within a matter of weeks, china becomes the attack vehicle tore for a major terrorist effort against the united states. that's a problem. >> ambassador hill, it does seem

that the leadership is split about how much more political capital should be they spending defending north korea. should the united states try to drive a wedge through there? >> i think, first of all, the chinese are never very happy to be defending hollywood. i was just in china. i was really struck with the degree to which they are just fed up, sick of the north koreans. it's a good time to really be engaging with them on north korea. i think ultimately the cyber issues -- this needs to be further developed. there need to be more than just international covenants, maybe international laws. i think that's down the road. in the meantime, we need to work very closely with the chinese. they are the key to this issue. they are the key to north korea's nuclear issue. >> we have a lot of work to do to catch up our laws with our defenses. thank you, all three of you.

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this week's announcement on u.s. relations with cuba will do little to change the situation in guantanamo bay where 132 detainees are being held at the base. those who call for its closure point to it as a rallying cry for our enemies. the other side sees it as a prison option for detainees who cannot be moved to facilities in the united states. we asked two experts, chris saunders and cullys stimson to argue to and for this.

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welcome back. this week, president obama announced moves to normalize relations with cuba, writing another chapter in the complication history that goes back to the spanish american war of 1898. in a moment i will be joined by one of the president's fearest

crit critics, marco rubio. it starts in 1959, the u.s. has huge influence on cuba. a group of fighters led by castro overthrows the cuban president and establishes a socialist revolutionary state. at first, many in the u.s. saw him as a potential ally welcoming the end of the brutal regime. here is castro on this show in 1959. >> democracies, my idea. i am not agree with communist. >> fast forward to 1961, the height of the cold war. president kennedy weary of castro's relationship with the soviet union sends cuban exiles to invade the island at the bay of bigs in an attempt to overthrow the regime. kennedy's failure to oust castro alienates many first and second generation cuban americans from

the democratic party for a generation. 1962, the kennedy administration establishes a full economic embargo on cuba. that october, the cuban missile crisis, u.s. spy sat lied discover nuclear missiles on the island. the president orders a full naval blockade. at the brink of war, thea deal made. 1980, the boat lift. castro allows the mass emgracious of 125,000 cubans to the united states. relations continue to sour as it appears castro empties out his prizs on. more trouble in the '90s. cuba shoots down two aircraft prompting congress to pass an act codifying the embargo into u.s. law and making it impossible for the president to end it unilaterally. in 2000, cuba back in the spotlight. the immigration status of a young cuban boy transfixes the

nation. the international custody battle divides the country and florida, the state that ultimately decides the most closely contested presidential election in a century. 2014, a half century later, a break in the stalemate, something that candidate obama hinted at. >> it's time for more than tough talk that never yields result. it's time for a new strategy. >> the prospect of normalized relations with cuba on the horizon, but challenges ahead in the form of potential opposition on capitol hill. i'm joined by florida senator and potential republican 2016 presidential candidate marco rubio. welcome back to "meet the press." >> thank you. >> what was working with the old policy? >> well, i think that's not the question. the question is what new policy can we put in place that will actually achieve our goal? our goal is freedom and liberty for the people. my opposition to what the president has done is it won't do anything to further that cause. on the contrary, yesterday raul

castro gave a speech where he made clear there with ill be no political changes. nor did the president ask for any. if you are going to make concessions to cuba, recognize them, if you have more commerce with them, there has to be some resip cal opening towards democracy. there was none in this engagement. that's why this policy is misguided. >> but you acknowledge the old policy wasn't working? >> the old policy -- i keep h r hearing reports about how it was designed to overthrow castro. that's false. the embargo's purpose was to protect american companies. they had asset seized. to prevent that, that was the reason why the embargo was put in place. the new purpose of the embargo in the 21st century was to serve as leverage towards democracy. we now have sanctions in place with the embargo that allows us to remove those sanctions. it's codified in exchange for a democratic opening. what the president has done is given away much of that leverage in exchange for zero democratic opening. >> you have heard the criticism of this cuba policy that it

flies in the face of u.s. policy toward china, u.s. policy toward vietnam. why should cuba be treated differently than china? >> we should learn our lessons from those policies. you talk about china as an example. we re-established commercial and diplomatic relations in the 1970s. the chinese economy has grown. politically, there are more repressed than they were 20 or 30 years ago. there's no freedom of religion, speech, no free access to the internet, no political parties. that is the model the cubans will try to follow. they are -- they control the economy. they will use all the benefits of access to the u.s. markets to grow their own -- line their own pockets, government. there isn't going to be any political opening. vietnam and china are the model for that. >> if you are president, would you change our policy with china? would you pull back on the engagement? >> first of all, to compare china and cuba is really not a fair comparison. there are geo-l

reasons for this. china is the most populous nation on the planet. third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. cuba is a small impoverished island that our policies have an opportunity to help bring freedom and democracy to. if i were president, what i would have done is i would have actively and vibrantly engaged with democracy activists in the island of cuba who have all -- many of whom wanted changes but who feel betrayed by the president. he completely ignored them and threw them to the side in this process. >> you made an interesting charge in a previous interview this week. i want to play that clip and ask you about it on the other side. >> if cuba was a right-wing dictatorship, right now the obama administration would call for increased sanctions. i would support them. because it's a left-wing

dictatorship, they find some support in editorial pages around the country. it's outrageous. >> the president of the united states signed new sanctions against a quote unquote left-wing dictatorship in venezuela. what's the -- isn't there a contradiction in your attack? he is sanctioning a dictatorship with venezuela. with cuba, he is trying to change the policy. >> look at honduras. there was -- the u.s. took action in 2009, even though it was the supreme court that ordered the president removed who at that time was a liberal -- a left-wing -- had become a dictator, which is a model that we have seen followed throughout the hemisphere. the venezuelan example is perfect. on wednesday -- the president announces a new policy toward cuba lifting sanctions. on thursday, he signs a bill imposing sanctions on venezuela, but their human rights violators

have learned all their tactics and received support for the tactics of vie lighting human rights from the cuban government. there's no consistency here. >> i want to get you to react to a fellow republican senator of yours, rand paul of kentucky. he sent you a series of tweets. will roll them on the screen about his support for lifting of the embargo versus your criticism of the lifting of the embargo. he has questions here. calling you the isolationist. what do you say? >> rand paul -- if he wants to align himself and become a supporter of the obama foreign policy, particularly towards cuba. he has a right to do that. my interest here is singular, that is freedom and democracy for the people of cuba. i want people in cuba to have what people in the bahamas have, what people in jamaica have, what people in the dominican republic have, which is freedom and elections.

i don't think this furthers that goal. you are going to provide currency for a repress receive regime to fund. >> you can imagine running in the same primary as jeb. >> he will be a very formidable candidate. he's someone i have respect for. when you reach a point where you are thinking about running for president as i am, what you have to make your decision is on is not on who is running, it's on whether you think that's the right place to achieve your agenda and serve your country. if i make that decision that that's the right place, i will run for president. that's what my decision will be built on. have i respect for jeb bush. i think if he runs, he will be a very credible candidate. >> marco rubio, florida senate, thanks for coming on "meet the press." speaking of jeb bush, it was a big hint this week that he's more likely to run than not. is the coverage going to be all about the cable catnip of jeb versus hillary?

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nerd screen time. this week, jeb bush took the first step toward a 2016 presidential bid by announcing that he is officially exploring the possibility of running for president. so what is his first hurdle?

according to our poll, it will bow winning over the conservative base. take a look at these numbers. among republican primary voters, among just about every group, he does well. second overall. 63% of republican primary voters say they could see themselves supporting jeb bush. only mitt romney does better. a little name recognition helps there. let's look at tea party conservatives. that's about half of overall republicans. on this, jeb bush doesn't break 60. look who does, rand paul tops. then romney, then huckabee, then cruz then jeb bush. now you see why a lot of folks are saying, okay, jeb bush in a general, maybe. how does he get through the primary? for jeb, he is thinking make sure all of these guys run. the more the merrier. let's look at the other side of the aisle. when it comes to the democratic primary, it shows how dominant hillary is. the former secretary of state

had support from 80% or more of voters in the democratic party and every group. if she decides not to run, our numbers show what a race would look like between joe biden and elizabeth warren. this is where you would see some familiar trends. joe biden edges elizabeth warren among every democratic voting group except one, that is white democrats. white democrats the progressive elite the party. these are the same folks that fuelled bill bradley, fuelled gary heart, paul songos. that's who elizabeth warren topping joe biden among those folks. this could break down in the same way we saw gore bradley, maybe kennedy carter and perhaps obama clinton. we will see. obama had something going for him when he had progressive whites. he also had

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we are back. the political earthquake inside the republican party. was jeb bush doing what a lot of us were specty cal he was doing? we're running until he says he's not. before he was thinking about it. but we assumed he wasn'ted. he is in. is bush world excited? >> bush world is so excited. in fact, one of the operatives at the party committee told me there was a palpable cheer outside in the bullpen when that came across. yeah, all of white house have been close to the bush family saw in boxes light up. >> financially, he would dominate raising money in texas, florida, maybe even wall street. one of the reasons i wanted you on representing the wing of the party, that is like going wait a minute, no more establishment, no more bushes. >> he is showing belligerence toward the base. he should talk to john mccain and mitt romney about how much

you need the base to turn out in a general election. you need them to show up. >> here is the thing, chuck. all you have to do look at the florida press corps that covered jeb bush when he was governor. they are shocked that people are calling him anything but a conservative. >> it's the '90s. >> look. this guy vetoes $2 billion from state budgets, including republican law writers. he was vetoing spending before the tea party existed. he cut taxes every year in office. he was a very strong conservative governor. >> a lot of democrats are fearful of him as the nominee. >> i'm fearful, especially his potential connection to the list panic vote. all they need is about 40% of that national vote. i think that -- >> could he do well in new mexico? >> he has a hispanic wife. he speaks a little spanish, not too good. >> better than hillary.

>> yeah. i think his draw back will be foreign policy. i think you saw this with rubio where i think president obama's initiative on cuba will be very popular by the time the election happens. although i think rubio has a point. cuba -- we don't know on cuba is how castro will react to this. >> where is fidel? >> he was down on this. i think cuba has to release political prisoners, they have to be more positive on civil society. they have to end the repression of pro-democracy groups, open the internet. this is going to be a debate in 2016. >> i will be curious. i think it's a chance that this isn't as big of a debate, the cuba part of this. >> i like -- >> let me go to bush and clinton. >> peggy noonan is for this opening of the deal.

she said she wants to imagine castro as own old man and seeing tourists snapping pictures of him with their iphones as he goes down and realizes he lost. >> bush, clinton, dynasties. is this the american way? >> it's more the republican way. the republican parties are more genteel. >> not this republican party. >> nixon got his second chance. bush got his second chance. dole got his fifth chance. mccain got his chance. the democrats are acting like that with hillary. republican party tends to go -- if they go with the hot hand shgsz who is it? who is the hot hand in the republican party? that's the -- we know the hot hand, it's elizabeth warren. >> who is the front runner? >> i think there's a series primaries that are occurring right now. there's the quote unquote establishment primary which -- >> jeb is way ahead, isn't he? >> i think he's ahead, for sure. then there's the -- who is the opposition party?

that's the rand paul, marco, r b rubio, ted cruz. >> the governors. do you agree with that? >> i think that someone could come in. i think a guy like governor walker, the establishment likes him, the base likes him. he might be able to unite this. i think jeb bush will have a big problem with common core. >> the education, i think that's going to be a bigger one than immigration. i want to show this before we go. it has become a tradition at the end of the year. the president before he leaves, whoever the president is, he gives an end of the year press conference. this year is one that is for the record books of sort. see if you can guess why. >> josh has given me the who has been naughty and nice list. i'm going to use it to take some questions. we will start with april, go ahead, julie, leslie, colleen

and juliette. >> well, sarah, when you were at the -- in the white house there, how gender diverse was the white house press corps than today? >> it's more gender diverse. the difference is that the bush white house was also more gender diverse than -- >> a plug there. it was. it was a diverse white house. i think it was a neat thing there for josh earnest. good for him. that's all for today. happy hanukkah, merry christmas. we will be back next week, because we're not taking a holiday break, because if it's sunday, it's "meet the press."

this morning philadelphia's police commissioner has a message for his officers following the killing of two members of the nypd. and later today, friends and family will remember the victims of a montgomery county killing spree. this morning we're taking a closer look at the help that's out there for crime victims. we won't see really any sunshine today. take a look at the radar. rain is on the way, so make sure you keep that umbrella handy. good morning. this is "nbc 10 news today." i'm rosemary connors. let's get right to meteorologist michelle grossman with her first alert forecast. and michelle, we saw it on the radar, that rain is coming. >> that rain is coming and it will stay with us a couple days, at least through