kevin madden, they said it's okay. they know what this is. an out growth of the same stuff.on't condone it but looking at it politically, you hear the questions coming from the media after huma finished her statement. he foolishly took questions, anthony wiener and the media attacked him. why should this matter? >> this matters because this is no longer a question about a campaign that's really about ideas and issues that they care about. right now this is a campaign that's in crisis, and it's a campaign about anthony wiener and his past. and i think that is his biggest challenge right now as a candidate. as lannie talked about earlier, what you need to do to handle a crisis is get the facts out there. a big problem is there may be more facts to come and more embarrassing than the facts today -- >> it doesn't matter -- >> the second part is counter communications and changing the top pick and tory. i don't see how he will be able to change the top pick and talk about issues that many voters matter. right now there is a mother in wood side queens, there is a father in sheepsh

kevin madden, anita dunn, and clinton yates, "washington post" columnist. so, wow, that was an intense 16 minute speech by president obama. i want to ask you all what you think the purpose of that speech was. what he wanted to achieve and whether he achieved it. anita? >> i think you saw the president refer to context several times in the course of this speech. the need to give context to this discussion and i think this is something that he does as president and that he did as a candidate is to address these issues and to try to give context to both sides to try to reduce the polarization and the divide around them. and i think that as he watched the conversation unfold this week, that he felt this was an appropriate time to step forward again, it felt very spontaneous. >> it definitely felt spontaneous. i didn't feel like in this speech as opposed to other speeches that he was trying to give context to both sides. i felt that he was trying to speak as an african-american and maybe trying to explain the reaction in the african-american community to people

kevin madden the former aide to mitt romney. >> i think it's almost impossible at this point. look. i always believe that there were other candidates given they were stronger in this race that they were going to have a better chance of winning. the key to this campaign for him to win was to move past that entire chapter and talk about what it was he was going to do for the people of new york city. and this is an extraordinary distraction. this is something that is going to consume his campaign from here all the way until when the voters rendered their judgment. and it's going to be impossible for him to breakthrough. he's never going to have another good news day again. >> you can only imagine how painful this must have been for his wife to be put into this situation. >> as we keep saying, she's a private person. she's a staffer. but think of the person she works for, hillary clinton. and remember hillary clinton's famous "60 minutes" conversation. tammy wynette, stand by your man. this was very reminiscent of that, except it oc