we'll talk with a panel including fox news digital politics editor, and chris stirewalt, juan gyms and lis weihl -- williams and lis weihl. >>> cypriot banks announced they are confiscating 40% of bank deposits holding more than 100,000 euros, but that legislation of course could never happen here. or could it? we'll talk with legendary investor and financiers about the economy and, what we can expect next and the white house announcing president obama will hit the road pushing for gun control and meanwhile, billionaire mayor michael bloomberg is picking up the slack in the campaign effort, pumping millions of dollars into a tv ad campaign urging senators to support expanded background checks and, whatever else they could possibly win, on gun control. we'll have a debate on the effort to restrict the second amendment. we'll talk with eric pratt, director of communications for the gun owners of america. paul helmkey, former president of brady campaign and, indiana university professor. the supreme court took up the first major examination of gay rights in a decade. the court hearing arg

>> i think chris stirewalt has it right with one caveat, the other thing that happens is right afterection or re-election the president's numbers, any president's numbers usually soar a little bit then there is a drift back. i think it's both that drift back and then the realities of payroll taxes kicking in. there was a payroll tax holiday. it doesn't matter whether it's a new increase or not it's still 40 or $50 less in your check. plus gas prices going up. you're seeing people respond to that, and see that in the numbers that the -- increased numbers of people thinking the country is heading the wrong direction. the interesting thing, though, jon, is throughout this, and it's not new for obama, but his favorable ratings is actually moving up to 57%. there is a difference between, i approve of the job that i'm seeing or approve of my pocketbook or the direction of the country and whether they like the president. and 57%, the highest number of anybody in washington i and both john boehner and harry reid and other leaders in washington have much lower favorability ratings and much lo

chris stirewalt is next on what may be hurting the president's standing and how the administration is likely to respond now. someone is at least 220 million dollars richer today and we're learning more about who that someone might be. and how they came to purchase the winning lottery ticket. a lot of change. and a new perspective on the cost of an exotic vacation. as the great white shark holds an impromptu test of one couple's supposed cage. >> are you okay? >> whoa! look what mommy is having. mommy's having a french fry. yes she is, yes she is. [ bop ] [ male announcer ] could've had a v8. 100% vegetable juice, with three of your daily vegetable servings in every little bottle. love your passat! um. listen, gary. i bought the last one. nice try. says right here you can get one for $199 a month. you can't believe the lame-stream media, gary. they're all gone. maybe i'll get one. [ male announcer ] now everyone's going to want one. you can't have the same car as me, gary! i'm gettin' one. nope! [ male announcer ] volkswagen springtoberfest is here and there's no better time to get a p

chris stirewalt is our fox digital editor on foxnews.com live. and this is a guy who goes out and inspects fish and want today make the cuts less painful and claiming his bosses were saying, well, you can't do it the way you want to do it and by the way, don't do anything that would contradict the warnings that we've put out. and that's is what? >> that tells us that mitigating the consequences, mitigating the effects of this so-called sequestration, you talk about the changes, the automatic decreases to automatic increase toss federal spending, any change that would be made to that, to soften the blow for taxpayers or consumers of federal products, if you will, is not attractive if your goal, as it seems very clear now, that the obama administration's goal is, to make it as bad as possible or seem as bad as possible, in an effort to get the upper hand on republicans in the ongoing battle over how much money the federal government is going to spend in the next six months. >> they are saying it's being misinterpreted and that vil villesack who ove

chris stirewalt, our digital news editor on power play fox news live.something that the white house has denied saying they're not doing it for us at all. it's real, but why would a senior white house official tell a well respected reporter, you know, with the-- formerly with the ap, with the national journal that this is a joke and they're doing it just for the media? >> well, here is the thing, as you say, ron fournier is a serious dude and he's very well-respected in this town and he's very good at what he does and his point here is, whether it's cynical and insincere or whether it's an earnest move to the middle, it has the same net effect on the president, the rest of the president's strategy. he was going to delegitimize the republicans. he was going to cast them out like he has tried to do with certain media outlets for the years, but he was going to beg the republican's illegitimate bargaining powers and say i don't have to deal with these people. and even by meeting with them, because of the slumping polls, it's forced him to engage the republic

chris stirewalt is next on what all of that means. plus, the first lady found herself taking serious political fire yesterday after taking to twitter for what was supposed to be a conversation on u.s. health problems and her "let's move" initiative and wait until you see the feedback she got from some of the american folks tuning in. and the video that appears to show a toddler swapping his bottle for a marijuana bong, and lands his parents in serious trouble. we'll debate the mother's claim that this is all a funny little prank. [ male announcer ] this is kevin. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again. and now i've got to take more pills. ♪ yup. another pill stop. can i get my aleve back yet? ♪ for my pain, i want my aleve. ♪ [ male announcer ] look for the easy-open red arthritis cap. >> well, after four months of being reelected, poll numb

here is chris stirewalt explaining the political optics of the tour shutdown. >> the president or whoevernt in a corner. >> stevie wonder can't see it, either. i'm just sayin'. >> i did not say that. i did not say that. >> i'm say going to you want to get technical. >> michael: really megyn? really. the sequester coverage is one bad joke over 12,000 new hits christ white house tours while 1,000 cite cuts housing assistance. now heading to the college campaign front. this is when political am missions on university campuses are ignited. rick santorum's son ran for class president at the citadel. he declared, i love america and i love guns. another campaign slogan asked voters, help me finish what my dad couldn't. turns out the santorum charm is limited, even at a conservative school at the citadel. he lost his election yesterday. as they say like father like son. they also say like rodman like un. when surrounded by world leaders there is only one

people. >> megyn: that's a great point and by the end of the show i will have physical proof of chris stirewalt'se for the cow. >> that's not cool and i'll be watching. >> megyn: i'm in the shot well. (laughter) >> and chris, thank you. >> you bet. >> megyn: going to e-mail that to my producers during the break. well, as we await the confirmation process for latest nominees, president obama is holding his first official meeting with members of his second term cabinet. the white house apparently eager to get back to business as usual especially after the president and congress failed to reach an agreement on the 85 billion dollars in federal spending changes that did, after all the hullabaloo, take effect on friday evening. yet, we're still here, here we are. now, president obama is said to be focused on moving forward with the rest of his second term, including trying to overhaul the nation's guns and immigration laws. meantime, the administration continues to raise alarm bells about the impact from those changes, those spending changes that kicked in last week. the controversy, did they overwarn

joining us chris stirewalt, host of power play on foxnews.com. s man, perez, is probably not that well-known outside of washington d.c., but he is a controversial figure and the news on him, reading the report today, the president would have to stretch to find somebody farther to the left for this position. >> yeah, you know, for all of the meals that the president has taken with republicans lately and all of the fawning that you see from establishment press outlets, the president's reach to the middle and moderating and trying to do a deal with the republican. if he were to make a deal like this, a guy who is tangled up in so many things and the justice department that the republicans do not like, that's not exactly an olive branch. his first action after the so-called charm offensive is to put mr. perez to run the labor department, this would not increase the chances for detante. >> let's talk about the labor secretary in particular in 2013. >> the national labor relations board that passes on labor practices and infringements when labor unions

chris stirewalt, host of power play foxnews.com. >> megyn: this hacker appears to have hacked, it's not good kind of gucci. >> no, no, the bad goochically. >> megyn: he managed to hack a person very connected to the clintons and apparently obtained about four memos between blumenthal and mrs. clinton in the days immediately after september 11th, 2012 when she was being informed about what happened in benghazi. this was an interesting question for the media because the memos, you know, the hacked memos contained correspondence about a subject that is news worthy, that has been covered by most organizations, some more than others, but most organizations and yet, when obtained by a hacker illegally, what did the media do with such correspondence? >> validate is what they do, the base rules of journalism would say, something ill-gotten, if it's consequence people are less likely to use it. the bush e-mails that included self-portraits by the former president, and sensitive family descriptions of his father's condition when he was in the hospital, those things made it out pretty quickly. thi

and chris stirewalt is the host of power play on foxnews.com live. chris. >> hi, ali. >> this seemed to be a rare bipartisan agreement from lawmakers that they don't like for the most part, this medical device task. what don't they like? >> well, they don't like that it will, would, raise costs on medical devices, that includes things like pacemakers or braces children get on their dat or artificial lens, things like that. it's not necessarily a politically popular thing to tax those kinds of items and so there was broad bipartisan support. and 30 billion dollars worth of tax revenue for funding the president's new health insurance entitlement for lower middle class households. >> right, so then now, if that goes away, if the device tax goes away, what happens and where do we get that 30 billion dollars? >> well, you could get it from the bank of china or ben bernanke. you could get it from a new tax, and you could get it by cutting something else, but the message here is that three years, where tomorrow is the third birthday of the president's new he

chris stirewalt is our fox news digital politics editor, host of power play on foxnews.com live. and chris, it's a dramatic lift if you look at the numbers and how they play out. almost, if you look at right track, wrong track now, 61% wrong track, 32% right track. and just a month ago, it was only a 14% difference and now only a 30 percentage point difference and what explains it? >> well, it's even worse than that, if you-- if you broaden out your time line. the nation, the electorate was the most optimistic as it had been in 41 months at the beginning of december. the election was over, it was a terrible election. people were happy it was done. the president was reelected, okay, onward and upward. so the people were more optimistic than at any time since 2009 and then, kablewy, all of a sudden we see the numbers, sliding, sliding, sliding, it's a very dramatic moment. now, there's a lot of things that could be part of this, certainly. but one thing that you have to look at is that in the month of january we saw the steepest decline in personal income since 2006. that was when a

. >> megyn: chris stirewalt is our fox news digital power editor on power play live.oward jenna lee who asked him a legitimate question. he maintained, look, this will be funded by the sale of the eggs and outside donations and apples and oranges, at that time she was asking about the sequester, to say -- to question the budget cuts as possibly affecting the easter egg roll. and now we get word from officials in the administration that indeed, they have been worried about funding on this. and apparently, they don't think the little eggs and the little outside donations are necessarily going to cover it all, chris. >> well, now those little outside donations aren't necessarily so little, first of all. these are perhaps corporate partners, corporate sponsors that might like to partner with the white house and the administration. >> megyn: cadbury? >> well, hey, if they're not, they should, if anybody should. then again, that would not be in keeping with the first lady's initiative as relates to healthful choices. >> megyn: here is what i want to know, if it's funded by

chris stirewalt is the host of power play on fox nnews.com live. it's been no secret that president obama is focused on environmental issues and that the epa would be similarly focused, but right now, as the polls clearly show that the number one issue for americans is the economy and jobs, look at that. 41%, by far over the next closest issue, which is the budget and debt, you know, is this the time to be unrolling or unveiling a new environmental regulation that's going to cost people more at the gas pump? >> well, the irony, megyn, is that for the regulators here and for the president, the second term is great, in terms of doing stuff about global warming and other environmental causes that are very important to more affluent people and the president's political base, but if you don't start now, you can't have them in place, it takes so long to work through the bureaucracy, that if you don't start now, you can't have them in place by the time you leave office, so if they're serious about dropping the boom on this stuff, they're going to have to

jon: well, as chris stirewalt points out in his column today on foxnews.com, it is also all perfectly legal just as it would have been for obama's predecessor. it's not that he's exploiting some new legal loophole that allows him to have a permanent campaign, still it's just that his predecessors were either not so creative or so brazen as to try it. so so much for, you know, getting big money out of politics as the president promised when he was campaigning the first time. i mean, the hypocrisy part of this, you can almost see it from space, it's so huge. and i think that's, you know, and it's a perfectly legitimate thing to say, it's all perfectly legal, but we used to have the idea that the presidency set a standard slightly above the merely legal and that there were certain things that were seen to be unseemly or inappropriate. that was certainly what obama gave the impression that he believed when he ran for the first time and even a little bit for the first time. he clearly doesn't believe that anymore because with obama the rule is always if he's doing it, it's okay whether it'

. >> shannon: fox digital politics editor and host of power play chris stirewalt is here. didn't slam the door shut. >> kicked a kentucky foot right in there. first i want to commend you. green for st. patrick's day and purple on palm sunday. i can't way to see how you will color coordinate easter. >> i do have a costume. stand by. >> funny. >> rand paul is running for president. he may change his mind and not run for president later but he is running for president. what is interesting is basically three main factions inside the republican party. the chamber of commerce probig business, that is a more moderate wing of the party that is mitt romney. then there is the libertarian wing of the party. that is rand paul's dad, ron paul and then there is a social conservative side. the one who wins the republican nation gets two of those and then is able to carry on to get the nomination. so it is up to rand paul now to see if and i bet we will see it when goes to iowa in may to speak at that state's lincoln day dinner when goes to iowa in may to see if he can convince christian

. >> shannon: chris stirewalt always good to see you.ou you on the internet tomorrow. >> i'll be there. >> shannon: if you land the first post election interview what would you ask the romneys? we have been asking you to tweet us. here are some of the responses we have gotten so far. >> shannon: he said it was the experience of a lifetime. tweet us at anhqdc. or @ shannon bream. we will hear more of the potential questions you would have asked the romneys later in this hour. as the free fragile economy braces itself for the spending cuts. president obama and the republicans are pointing blame squarely at each other. even as some ever working to retroactively undo cuts. steve centanni is watching it all in washington. >> house speaker john boehner said the president didn't have a good plan for athe $85 billion in cuts and blames the president for kick the can town the road and failing to come to terms with the real problem at hand. >>> the issue here is spending. spending is out of control. there are smarter ways to cut spending than this

. >> and chris stirewalt our digital editor and host of power play. the president is out there again pushing for this gun control legislation, but as i said in the introduction, i mean, his main problem here is members of his own party who led harry reid to conclude accurately, according to most pundits, he doesn't have the votes in the senate. he's not oeven putting this in the main bill. >> and he made no secret of it. ten votes short, maybe 20 votes short on this. it wasn't even close, so for the president to go out today on what a group led by new york mayor michael bloomberg is calling a national day of action, calling for gun control, for the president to join that push today increases the pressure on those moderate democrats, those pro-gun democrats, including those facing reelection next year and this is a squeeze play that can't make folks feel comfortable in their own state. >> how is he going to get it done. the democrats control the senate and they need 60 votes and including they need some republicans. they're pretty frank that they don't

. >> megyn: chris stirewalt is our fox news digital politics editor and host of power play on foxnews.com live. the secret service? when would i ever get the chance to talk to the secret service? >> i don't know this guy. >> megyn: when would they have sought from me? and that's fun had at the president's expense, he would suggest to george stephanopoulos he had nothing to do with this and no say in it and many in the media are now crying foul. >> well, i'm here to bet you, whoever it was inside the white house who gave the go ahead to that, wherever the origin of that was, or if that was on a menu of possible money saving options from the secret service, somebody inside team obama, i'm sure, had to look and sign off on the idea that they would close, as you said, the people's house. i mean, what could be sadder than school children with their faces pressed up against the gate. please let us in, can we see the house? pretty please, pretty please. whoever said it's a good idea, that will make the republicans feel really bad if we do that. that person has not had the best weekend. >> yes, b

chris stirewalt is our fox news digital editor and host of power play on foxnews.com. we wi live. they've been rising and so has approval. and i don't know if you want to call it a precipitous drop, but it's a 7 point drop. >> it's the course correction, i think they would say, on wall street, it's the course correction for the president who got a bump out of getting reelected and people say, okay, the guy won, let's give him another chance, they're in a honeymoon phase for a reelected president and it's shorter and conditional for people who get elected the first time and they already know him and when he does things that reaffirm things voters don't like about the president and haven't traditionally approved of. we start to see the move and i'm sure the sequestration, things like the gas prices and we mustn't ever forget the increase that everybodyaxes, th paycheck that everybody-- >> why would that have happened last week? that kicked in in january, early january, everyone is walking around, what the heck happened to my paycheck, or mid january if they get paid bi-weekly. this

first, let's bring in chris stirewalt, our editor and house of power play on foxnews.com live. >> howdy. >> of all the expenditures that the white house has every year, including bo's motorcade, the white house decided to cancel the public tours of the white house, why start there? >> look, if that fur were to get tangled up, there would be no telling what happened up, it's a fuzzy dog. >> fair enough. >> things could get out of hand in no time. what this is, obviously, the president is trying to hit republicans where it hurts. the administration wants republicans -- you remember how the tours, those school kids how they got their tour, they asked their congressman for tickets. that's how you get a tour of the white house. now the president and his team figured last week we'll tell them they have to call and e-mail those folks about the tour, you don't get to go and then it would hurt the republican congressman. as it turns out people are savvier than that, hey, wait a minute, you spend a ton of money on a ton of stuff and how come the first thing you close and take away from us is publ

let's talk about it with chris stirewalt host of power play 11:30 a.m. every week week day.. >> i can think of no better place to be on st. patrick's with a fair lass named shannon. >> we will do a little jig on the break. you have to pay for the extra content. >> only online. >> only onnine. >> shannon: actual votes that made it through the senate judiciary committee. what ton chance do they have ie actual senate? >> in it weigh it is what you were talking to senator king about. how big of a budget deal the president wants and does he really want enough borrowing power. the government needs to borrow 1.3 there will today's $1.5 trillion to get from the beginning of october of this year to election day which is about as far as anybody could think. they need a big deal. it willle take a long time to get a deal that big. unfortunately for the president if he talks about gun control during that time he will alienate people possibly including senator king who represents a state with a lot of gun enthusiasts and people big on the second amendment and the alienate other red state

and chris stirewalt editor of power play on foxnews.com live.apparently over if the mainstream media declares it's so, it's so, i guess. here is the deal, they were going down, the fox news polls, the gallup news poll showed the president's numbers going down and then came the charm offensive, met with the republicans and paul ryan and had the dinner and there was the wine and merlot and okay, look, i'm trying. and now we get the latest poll out and shows he's still 47% approval rating, 47% disapprove, which is down consistently from where it had been just a few weeks ago. >> well, maybe the israeli embassy is on to something there and he could get like sophia, blanch, get the girls together. >> megyn: well done. >> do like a charm-- i know, i'm hip, i'm down, circa 1989. no he, t no, the situation for the president, second term irony and the president made it more difficult for him to layout a bold agenda when you get started. you come in, make a bold agenda and try to blow up the republicans with the sequester and it doesn't work, oh, i'm losi

jon: here is what chris stirewalt said about this in his column yesterday.e said that the obstacle, the primary obstacle to the sweeping gun control legislation he demanded in the wake of the horrific december-school shooting in connecticut is currently a dozen or so democratic senators who have balked at the president's plan. is that the case in do you see it the same way? >> there is so much attention on marco rubio, rand paul, mike lee, ted cruz who may filibuster any bill that comes to the floor of the senate. they are not the real obstacle. the real obstacle are themocratd to this gun control. you have five democrats up for election next year largely in red states with big gun cultures and opposition -gs to any kind of big gun control. they are srul that rabl here. harry reid would like to protect them, so would the president. jon: why doesn't harry reid lean on them to pass the legislation that the president purports to want? >> what he did was takeout the assault weapons ban, he's making that a stand alone bill so people can vote against that if they

chris stirewalt, host of power play on foxnews.com live, there will be no point of any kind in the u.s. senate, rand paul eating the candy bar is the only fun tonight. do i make that clear. >> don't look like you're enjoying it as you're eating the milky way, not a fun lovi fun-loving bunch. >> megyn: what was this about. >> fortunately for rand paul it was clearly explainable, clearly principled and a lot of people in both parties tend to agree with him on. the federal government under the the obama administration has gotten rather casual about what authority it has to kill people, including americans where and when, and that's something that dakts usemocrats to have knickers in a knot over and in the age of obama slippery on that point and that's rand paul going out speaking for a broadening swath of republicans who say, wait a minute, we need some clarity and we need some answers about which americans the president can kill at which time without trying to subject them to trial. >> megyn: he wanted to know about, you know, what americans could be killed on u.s. soil. he said what, yo

chris stirewalt, happy easter. >> happy easter to you. >> my blood sugar is so high that if i seem toll give you more chocolate. >> a peep. >> shannon: we heard mark kelly talking about the high numbers for universal background checks. criminals aren't going to get background checks. nobody is going to stop you on the street and say i will buy this gun from you but first let's check with the fbi. >> not much of what has been proposed would address what happened in newtown. for people in favor of gun control any time a horrific crime is committed with a gun this is an opportunity to revive the discussion. what the n.r.a. is tacking about is an integration of mental health records with the background check records and when kelly talks about what is different now. people have always generally supported the idea of universal background checks. but what it is means something different to everybody. the n.r.a. has a very different threshold for what they think is acceptable versus what gun control advocates like mr. kelly do. >> shannon: and if you are talking about then keeping records of

. >> megyn: chris stirewalt is our digital politics editor and host of power play on foxnews.com live. >> indeed. >> megyn: what a juxtaposition. the cuts are dumb, arbitrary, unnecessary and inexcusable, cuts that jay carney, it was the white house's idea a different message we heard from the president. >> this was our dumb and inexcusable idea. to be fair, the president designed these cuts as a penalty for not coming up with a grand bargain for the so-called supercommittee to come up with a grand bargain. but, yes, this was as has been thoroughly hashed over for several weeks, the brainchild of the president and his new treasury secretary jack lew and it's their baby and now the president says it's going to make your life very terrible for the next decade as it goes into effect. >> megyn: and both parties took a risk. they both signed-- welsh the president signed it into law, but the republicans passed it in the house and the democrats in the senate so it passed, but thanks to both parties. both parties thinking that it probably would never stay the law because this had' reach a dea

chris stirewalt is our fox news digital power editor on power play.com live. tom perez's tenure heading up to the doj has been controversial to say the least, but he is beloved by those on the left as someone who embodies virtually all the principles they stand for. what does it say that president obama is proceeding with that nomination despite some of the controversies that emerged when he they floated the trial balloon earlier? >> well, in washington we can tell a lot more about somebody's intent by what they do than what they say. what we've heard a lot said of the white house of late is that they're interested in reaching out to republicans and forming accords and looking to get past some of the partisan bickering that's gone on back and forth. what the president has done today in nominating mr. perez for this job was to throw down the gauntlet to republicans who-- for them, as you say, he is the embodiment of a kind of eralism that they say that the core of what's wrong with the obama administration. there are other people who probably share every bit of

chris stirewalt is our fox news digital politics editor and host of power play on foxnews.com live. and so, there was all this kerfuffle yesterday about the exchange between dianne feinstein and senator ted cruz of texas. he challenged her with whether you could similarly limit the first amendment rights and the fourth amendment that protects from search and seizure and so on in the way he thinks she's trying to do to second amendment rights. this was all over the broadcast yesterday. i ask you this, chris, as much attention as that got and we're going to show the viewers point of that in a minute. what was the point? because as of right now, are there even arguably the votes for the thing in the senate, the full senate or the house? >> megyn, don't start raising the bar for-- or lowering the bar for pointlessness in washington d.c., we'd all be out of a job in no time. come on, no, i kid a little. >> megyn: can that be done? can one lower that bar? >> well, congress is trying. we try, this city tries all the time, but the truth is that the exchange is important in this pay, that it