>> from washington, "the mclaughlin group," the american original. for over three decades, the sharpest minds, best sources, hardest talk. john: issue one -- hillary's emails. hillary clinton: i did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. there is no classified material. so i'm certainly well aware of the classification requirements and did not send classified material. john: hillary clinton may be adamant but the inspector general for the state department and the inspector general for the intelligence community disagrees. last week the i.g. for the

intelligence community advised congress that emails sent by hillary clinton on her private email server contained information that should have been classified secret. s-e-c-r-e-t, all caps. according to the inspector general, a sample of 40 of mrs. clinton's 30,000 emails showed that four had classified information. that's 10% of the sample. hundreds of hillary's emails may contain secrets, according to the i.g. mishandling government secrets is a criminal offense with a penalty of up to one year in prison. last friday the justice department confirmed to reporters that it had been asked by the two inspectors general to open a criminal probe into the matter. four hours later the justice department began backpedaling

saying instead that it had only been asked to prove potential mishandling of classified information. whether or not to open a criminal probe is up to attorney general loretta lynch, who has only been on the job for three months. lynch must now decide whether to open a probe that could either eexonerate the likely democratic presidential nominee or depending on the findings, cripple clinton's chances. a third alternative. lynch could recuse herselfs from making a decision. on grounds of a conflict of interests. in 1999 then-president bill clinton pointed lynch attorney for the eastern division of new york. a position she held until tapped by president obama to replace eric holder. question -- if you were loretta lynch how would you handle this political hot potato? pat: i'd turn it over to the

deputy attorney general and sort of semirecuse myself. and let them control the investigation. but look, hillary rodham clinton is suffering now the death of a thousand cuts. they gave over 40 of those private emails and they found there were classified documents on four out of 40 emails and there are tens of thousands more. she got rid of 55,000 emails. they're asking now that she give up the server. her poll numbers are sinking like a stone. her negatives are something like 10 or 15 points higher than her positives and recollect -- positives, and her trustworthiness is something like a 20-point gap, people leave she's not trustworthy. and then the potential of this thing blowing up down the road. i'm telling you, i think joe biden aught to start warming up in the bullpen. john: really? pat: i think he ought to take a look at this, sure. john: eleanor? eleanor: if the democratic party needs a savior, joe biden is there. there's nothing eminent. i think this whole email

controversy has been blown up out of proportion. loretta lynch is a straight arrow attorney general. i highly doubt that she would recuse herself. there's a procedure you go through. this isn't a criminal investigation of hillary clinton. it's looking at the state department security system and anytime the word "email" appears for hillary clinton, it's not good for hellry clinton. but controversy always comes with the clintons, both of them, but they've got enormous support in the country. she's the most commanding non-incumbent we've seen in a presidential race for some time. let's remember that bill clinton was elected and re-elected two times with trust numbers that weren't that great. remember slick willy and all that. hillary clinton has a lot of other attributes. we're not in the compare and contrast part of the campaign yet. none of the republicans have

numbers -- the republicans' numbers are worse than hers. tom: the problem for hillary is what comes next. when this first came out in march, my first impression was if you have a private server and foreign intelligence knows about it, the french, russians, chinese, israelis all have the capacity probably to hack into that. they may have the evidence, they may actually control hillary clinton's destiny if they have classified material that they could then leak. eleanor: manchurian candidate. tom: at best it was extraordinary negligence but at worse, it may be a criminal issue. this could destroy her campaign. john: here's what president obama says about the classified information. this is his position -- "as commander in chief i believe we must keep information secret

that protects our operations and our people in the field. to do so we must enforce consequences for those who break the law and breach their commitment to protect classified information. that was president obama in a counterterrorism speech in may 2013. what do you think of where we are now in this discussion? mort: i think in may of that year, that might have been relevant. i don't think it's relevant to what's going on with hillary. i don't think there was anything like some kind of serious attempt to avoid the secret or the security dimensions of what she had on her own equipment. this seems to me frankly, i can't get excited about this because it doesn't seem to me to be the kind of thing that anybody would have done deliberately. pat: you're walking through a minefield. mort: i don't disagree.

eleanor: it's a stupid thing she did and i believe it comes out of an excess of caution in her part and that's when she gets in trouble, when she's trying to be overly cautious. many times her predecessors also used privet servers. colin powell, i believe did. i believe gates did. pat: this is what, 15 or 16 more months before the election. this could go boom. all the justice department has to say is we have now begun to open a criminal investigation because it appears there are a lot more secrets just like the ones before. as soon as they say that in the primaries, that candidacy could blow up. eleanor: that's your fantasy. that's what you're

imagining. the lookly hood is that there's nothing here. pat: why do you say the likelihood is that there's nothing here? eleanor: i believe in that likelihood and you believe in the other one. the country could care less. john: you're out of control. i want to hear from you. tom: i tend to think it's a fantasy to believe there's not a big issue here for hillary clinton. why did she have a private server? she had something to hide, clearly. she knew as secretary of state there would be a lot of intelligence activity. you have a state department security procedure to protect you, private server. she wiped the server, which is -- eleanor: so she is deliberately skirting the intelligence rules, you're saying. i -- i -- i think that's not -- pat: 10 october of her emails had secrets on them, john. 10% of her emails they saw had secret on them. it's probably that -- probable

that in the 33,000, there might be a few more. john: right. eleanor: you know in the white house classification they classify just about everything. john: we have to move on. question -- is it time for joe biden to get in the race just in case hillary goes down in flames? pat: i think he ought to prepare himself to get into the race. he doesn't have to get in early. if this blows up, and it could, i think the natural leader of the democratic party is joe bind, if john kerry doesn't decide to get in the race too. john: do you think joe biden hungers for the job? and i think he's seeing something rising again. a real possibility -- eleanor: i said earlier if the party needs a savior he's there but hillary is in a strong position. much stronger than the dialogue today suggests. john: he said yes, he should get in. and you? mort: if anything we don't know now comes out he should be ready

to get in. john: joe biden, start warming your engine. when we come back, tales out of

school. john: issue two -- tales out of school. >> and the majority leader looked at me and said there is no deal, there is no deal, there is no deal.

like st. peter, he repeated it three times. my staff told me that afternoon, he's lying to you. that's what my staff said. we've been around the senate a long time. he's not telling you the truth. john: senator ted cruz has declared war on republican senate majority leader senator mitch mcconnell. senator cruz says that mr. mcconnell made a covert deal with democrats so ensure the or authorization of the export-import bank, something mr. cruz and many other republicans oppose. senator cruz claims senator mcconnell lied to him by denying that no deal had been struck. while some conservatives have praised senator cruz for his words, other republicans like senator orin hatch believe mr. cruz has impugned the senate's tradition of respectful

debates. >> deliberation without decorum is not deliberation at all. it is bickering. and bickers, mr. president, is beneath this body. john: would you consider senator cruz a whistleblower? eleanor: no, he's trying to get attention to make sure he gets on the debate stage. makes the 10-person cutoff for the republican debate next week. he's also the most disliked member of the senate, which across party lines tends to be a clubby place. he's talking about a covert deal. it was on the front page to have "new york times," part of the passage of fast-track trade negotiations in order to get the number of votes that they need because they and the president wanted that to pass. they agreed they would bring up this import-export bank as an amendment to the transportation bill. he's all twisted out of shape because he wants to kill that bank.

conservatives, they can't get rid of the cabinet department so they want to kill this little bank, which basically creates jobs and has helped reduce the deficit. most democrats want it and a lot of republicans want and it mr. cruz is out in the cold. pat: let me tell you what this is all about. cruz has elevated himself and has damaged himself with anybody in the senate that still likes him, but this is about the presidential election. cruz has gotten out front on this issue calling the majority leader a liar. he says barack obama is the biggest terrorist, the biggest supporter of islamic terrorism because of the iran deal. mike huckabee says the iran deal is going to take the jewish folks to the door of the oven. all this is about the republican primaries -- you know, trump has taken over the whole debate. they want to get themselves through through because there's a real possibility, for example, that trump could implode and if

he falls, these guys want to be out there on the edge, working with the base. working frankly with the jewish community with sheldon adelson, who's got tremendous amounts of money. this is about the whole dynamic of the republican presidential race. tom: i think that's right. i think it's more than the fundraisers. they are trying to demand media attention. but ted cruz, yes. all the other republican senators have openly repudiated his comments. he's deeply unpopular. i think ultimately this is a john: mort? mort: i share your views about cruz. somehow there's something about and he does it in a way that is inappropriate for the senate. i don't understand why he has to put it this way. i don't think he's a heavyweight as far as i'm concerned. pat: when trump slips and falls, they are the logical inheritors.

the heir apparent. eleanor: he wants to be the next donald trump saying the most despicable things and wants to inherit trump's support. mort: he doesn't have 1/10 of trump's charm. pat: raw trump man now? mort: are you kidding? pat: what does that mean? eleanor: that was a facetious comment. john: he has real estate all over manhattan. pat: i'm not disparaging what mort said. i'm just surprised by it. [laughter] i've known him for a very long tomb. person who should be the president of the united states. john: who should? mort: oh, you're asking me a -- john: what else about him? pat: the update is that donald trump has vaulted way into the nomination. he's got twice the support of jeb bush and marco rubio is sinking.

and trump is ahead in florida, new hampshire, iowa and all these states and the feeling is wait a minute, perhaps he won't implode. everybody thinks he's going to implode. everybody thinks test going to explode and implode, but if the nomination started off today, and it's not. if it started today he'd win the nomination. eleanor: he's getting 22% to 23%. 26%? ok, maybe he can get up to 30%. that's still a small portion. pat: with seven people in the field? eleanor: it's still relatively small. somebody is going to contest him and boy, if the republicans want to give him the nomination, i say bring it on. hillary clinton will win in a landslide. tom: ultimately if it comes to it, all the other republican candidates will gravitate towards one -- all the other support base will go to one

other candidate if it's trump. eleanor: anybody but. pat: why? tom: because he cannot win the general election and i and i think a lot of other conservatives think a lot of what he says is pretty stupid. john: why can't he win the general election? tom: because of the way he is. he's not presidential material. john: i don't know about that. pat: he's got a real hill to climb to get the nomination, no doubt about it. because of what tom says, the other candidates will drop out and endorse the establishment candidate. to win the election, he's got mount everest to climb but he's further down the road than i thought he would be. eleanor: i hope he spends many billions to get as far as he goes. john: ok, house of cards. congressman mark meadows launched a surprise bid to oust the house of representatives. mr. meadows claims speaker boehner has centralized power and failed to advance conservative interests, while the challenges largely symbolic, boehner has more than enough votes to hold on to his

speakership, it illustrates the bumpy road ahead when congress returns from itself summer -- its august recess. on the horizon are potentially contentious tax and spending votes on federal highway spending, federal government funding, due to expire october 1 and raising the $18 .1 trillion federal debt ceiling before the treasury department's coffers run dry in november. question -- are we in for capitol hill fireworks this fall? eleanor: this will be the fall from hell but not because speaker boehner is in any kind of jeopardy. this congressman meadows may have some people behind him but the speaker is not really as a -- vulnerable. but they're going to bump up against the spending cliff. they're probably want to shut down the government over defunding

planned parenthood and what this gentleman from north carolina represents is between 30 and 60 members of the republican congress who john boehner cannot control and who have basically paralyzed the republican house and paralyzed the congress in general. congress has an 8% approval rating. it's really a shame. pat: we could have a shutdown i think of the government in the fall over the bill that what's been attached and apencileded to it. it would be utterly unacceptable to the democrats in the senate and of course to the president if it ever got to his desk. john: they've got budget issues. they've got the iran nuclear executive agreement. pat: the iran agreement will be noted on i think around mid september. right now it has virtually no republican support. john: the federal ceiling debt extension. there may be as many fireworks here this fall as there were in 2013, as eleanor point out or somebody did here -- during the 16-day government shutdown in october. you want to predict that? pat: i think it's a pretty good prediction that you could have a

train wreck in the fall. tom: the reason is john, you're going to have -- the two sides, the republican leadership who want to essentially have it clean because they're worried about the party's 2016 ramifications. then you have the presidential candidates who want to generate that republican anger towards their own campaign. i think it will go to a shutdown. john: exit question -- how has the 114th congress done so far this year? assign a midterm letter grade from a to f. pat buchanan? pat: it's gotten some things done. i'll give it a b. eleanor: i'll give it a b. got some things done but left a lot of big-ticket items. tom: i think it's a b. it's improvement. mort: i'll give it a c. they've gotten a few things done but not nearly enough. john: i'll give it a b-plus. my reasoning is as follows --

first balanced budget in six years, the first major medicare reform in 20 years. the keystone x.l. bill. obama vetoed it. and number four, a major education bill and they're on their way to a highway bill. not bad. we'll be right back with predictions. i'm only in my 60's. i've got a nice long life ahead. big plans. so when i found out

medicare doesn't pay all my medical expenses, i looked at my options. then i got a medicare supplement insurance plan. [ male announcer ] if you're eligible for medicare, you may know it only covers about 80% of your part b medical expenses. the rest is up to you. call now and find out about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, it helps pick up some of what medicare doesn't pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. to me, relationships matter. i've been with my doctor for 12 years. now i know i'll be able to stick with him. [ male announcer ] with these types of plans, you'll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. so don't wait. call now and request this free decision guide to help you better understand medicare...

and which aarp medicare supplement plan might be best for you. there's a wide range to choose from. we love to travel -- and there's so much more to see. so we found a plan that can travel with us. anywhere in the country. [ male announcer ] join the millions of people who have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp, an organization serving the needs of people 50 and over for generations. remember, all medicare supplement insurance plans help cover what medicare doesn't pay. and could save you in out-of-pocket medical costs. call now to request your free decision guide. and learn more about the kinds of plans that will be here for you now -- and down the road. i have a lifetime of experience. so i know how important that is.

john: prediction pat? pat: issues like abortion and the planned parenthood and gay rights thing has caused a number of folks on the right to talk about something called a benedict option, which is basically a secession from the society in general. back to the old monasticism of the 13th century. eleanor: if there's anything good to come out of the knucklehead american dentist to killed the lion it's that the lid has been blown off of these companies that conduct these big-game hunting trips and charge tens of thousands to rich people to get a trophy on their wall. i hope they come into heavy regulation. tom: going on cecil the lion i think the big story coming out of this, american popular

society should be embarrassed we've atentative to this and not the syrian crisis and so many other issues. mort: you like lions? everybody seems to. i live with them. i work with them too. the man who i think is going to surprise everybody is governor perry of texas. i was just witness to his performance last week and he was phenomenal. very knowledgeable, very forceful. had a great sense of humor. he is an underestimated candidate. john: good to hear. i predict that senator will vote for a bill to defund planned parenthood. and divert the funds in taxpayers subsidies it now receives. enough democrats will get onboard to overcome the 60-vote minimum needed to bring legislation to the floor. bye-bye.

every cup has a story. dunkin' k-cup packs in my life were a good fit. a single serving for myself, it's pretty special. it is like having a dunkin' store in my home which is what i've always dreamed of.