one that's rounded by by white house chief of staff dennis mcdonough.twoshgd get an immigration bill through the senate, crafted a deal to avert the nuclear option on filibusters and are now in talks to head off a government shutdown in the fall. for some the new mccain is reviving memories of the old mccain, the captain of the straight talk express who gave the bush machine a scare in 2000 before being done in by their dark arts. mccain continued to buck his party after 2000 by voting against the bush tax cuts and supporting campaign finance reform. but eight years later mccain became the establishment running as a national security hawk against an up-and-comer born in the '60s. >> it was a time of uncertainty, hope and change. the summer of love. half a world away, another kind of love -- of country. john mccain. shot down, tortured his philosophy before party, polls and self -- america. a maverick. >> in that campaign maverick was thrown off the bus and sarah palin was given the seat. these days with thoughts toward legacy and no primary to get in th

i think do not underestimate this dennis mcdonough reaching out. senators like to get stroked.be included. and this president is looking at john mccain because compared to whom? he can't reach out to rand paul for example or ted cruz for example. so eel take john mccain and john mccain's buddy, lindsay graham, both of whom are going to egypt. >> is he getting aggravation from his fellow republicans, senator mccain? >> not entirely. i don't think that the senate minority leader, mitch mcconnell was thrilled that mccain worked around him to cut a deal with the white house to get some of president obama's nominees through. but if he is aggravating some of his republicans, it's not going to be an unfamiliar place for john mccain. >> you know, but what does it say about our president, gloria, that he is reaching out to senator mccain? >> i don't think he has much choice. he doesn't have much choice. would he pick john mccain as his best friend? no but he doesn't have any choice when it comes to for example, immigration use, you saw chuck schumer there, they are working together on i

continue dennis mcdonough is working several hours a day on this issue. you have of course kathleen sebelius at health and human services.issue. and you have of course kathleen sebelius at health and human services. now you have advertising going on with conservative groups criticizing the administration. liberal groups $1 million. so you see a political fight has broken out. >> charles, but on the substance of the constitutionality of the administration saying it's okay, we have the authority to disregard the law as passed by congress -- >> it has no such authority. it's clearly lawless. it's undoubtedly unconstitutional. the constitution is a fairly basic tenant is that the executive is required to faithfully execute the law, not ignore parts of the laws. bl like dream act. you do that in bolivia, you don't did that in the united states. this is a continuation of the lawlessness. you don't announce it in a blog post. you go congress and say we made a mistake, we want to repeal this provision. and do you it legally. but it doesn't even think of doing tha

white house aides say the bottom line is that the chief of staff, dennis mcdonough from the white house republicans today and they will continue those conversations if they think republicans actually want to work with them. shep? >> shepard: house democrats say they also threw an early birthday party for the president. minority leader nancy pelosi gave him this cake and congress led the crowd in singing happy birthday to you. the president turns 52 this sunday. anthony weiner's spokesperson is apologizing now for calling a former intern names that i cannot say here. the intern wrote in new york daily news about anthony weiner's campaign for new york city mayor. she is on the top left of the front page here of the daily news. she claims lots of staffers only joined the campaign to get close to anthony weiner's wife yuma abidine who is a top aid to secretary of state hillary clinton. yuma is reportedly planning to take a break from that job. sources tell politico it will be an extended vacation. not a leave of absence. they say it was in the works before huma be a dean defended her husban

. >> we know that dennis mcdonough, the white house chief of staff, is going to be meeting with a numberans even as the president meets with some democrats tomorrow on capitol hill. but in one of the criticisms that the "washington post" put out this weekend, was that in the president's first economic beach at knox college he didn't mention entitlement reform. the. >> that's not true at all. president's made very clear that the larger fiscal package that he has proposed, which is a pro-growth fiscal package that calls for an investment now, leaving room to invest in education and research, and dealing with long-term entitlement reform, as well as raising some additional revenues, is very much still on the table. he putexplicit offer to speaker boehner and we are still having conversations about that. so that's still on the table. but andrea, just we have one grand bargain that we can do on the fiscal side that would be good for growth does not mean we should not be looking for every way possible to grow this economy in a way that benefits middle class americans. so the president put forw

who has been quite involved in this process says that he spoke with vice president biden and dennis mcdonough over the past few days about this. can you tell us what the white house's role was in trying to break this impasse? >> the white house was not involved in negotiating. the white house provided information and answered questions. when it came to working with senate republicans including, of course, senator mccain who, again, as i understand it based on what we've seen deserves significant credit for his efforts in trying to find a resolution here, a resolution that allows for, hopefully, the speedy confirmation of the president's nominees. but this has been, this solution that has been sought has been one that has been sought and negotiated by senators. and our position has been to communicate with and work with senator reid and other democrats on this issue. but the negotiating between democrats and republicans has happened between senators. >> also edward snowden has applied for temporary asylum in russia. has the white house reached out to the russians since he filed his application

john mccain, chuck schumer, and dennis mcdonough. >> for all the talk on this show about how everything in washington is broken and nobody gets anything done, you have three people starting to cut deals and talking almost every day. chuck schumer and john mccain, who didn't like each other a year ago, now talk on the phone five to six times a day. they helped cut a deal on immigration. they helped avoid this whole showdown over the confirmation process. they're already talking about how do you avert a showdown over the debt crisis at the end of the year? and you've got denis mcdonough in the white house, the chief of staff, who everybody, republican and democrat, is finally saying, hallelujah, we finally some somebody in the white house who cares what a house member thinks or feels. he's constantly on the phone with these two guys and others trying to craft a deal. that doesn't mean the political system is suddenly going to be fixed because three people have a conversation, but for the first time there is real activity among people who have some juice to get some things done. at least t