. >> daily columnist for the week, matt lewis.d to see you. >> good to see you. >> gene, you've been dialed in on this world cup. >> totally, totally. >> i'm not a crazy soccer guy. nothing against it but never been into it but you can't avoid it now. >> i'm a fanatic soccer fan. i love international soccer and the world cup. club soccer, i don't have a scarf or anything like that that a friend of ours has. >> affections. >> it's fabulous. brazil needed penalty kicks the other day to get past chile. that was incredible. columbia looks like a world beating team. looks like they could wipe out the host in their next game. it's just been a phenomenal world cup full of surprises. great. >> what really been interesting about it is almost immediate fever here in the united states about it. people talking about it and watching it. i'm like you, willie, i never played it as a youth because they never had rubber balls back then. the athleticism of these guys. i was catching clint dempsey in the u.s. game last week. i can see like a great c

matt lewis, ryan lizza, and gloria borger, cnn's chief political analyst. thank you all for joining me. >> thank you. >> gloria, let me start with you what you wrote on cnn.com earlier this week. you said years of internal deliberations have gone into this moment where this prisoner swap occurred. why did the white house so mismanage this pr situation? >> well, i think that's the good question we don't know the answer to. in talking to people at the white house, what i can tell you is -- i think the rose garden appearance, that triumphant rose garden appearance, it struck a bad cord. the white house was thinking that they were going to get pushback on the national security side. why do a swap for five prisoners. what they were trying to do with that white house appearance was put a human face on it. was to say, look, sergeant bergdahl has a mother. he has a father. they haven't seen him in five years. and so let's put a human face on it. instead what that seemed to inspire was a lot about the apparent circumstances in which he left his post and they weren't

joining me is matt lewis, a contributing editor for "the week" magazine and perry bacon, jr. is still with us. matt, you're sort of on the right here. my reading on this situation has been that john boehner was there in 1998 when the republicans impeached bill clinton. john boehner remembers that republicans were supposed to win big in that midterm election and they ended up losing seats and newt gingrich had to walk away as speaker. john boehner doesn't want his party impeaching this president and giving democrats an issue in the midterms so he's giving the base this. is that right or is that too cynical? >> i think it's cynical. look, first of all, it's not just about executive orders. it's about recess appointments, not the lawsuit, but i think the broader issue here. recess appointments, you have the obamacare mandates being unilaterally extended. so, you know, the individual mandate. there's really an issue of executive overreach, and it didn't start with barack obama. so i think it's appropriate to adjudicate this. i think that, you know, over the -- >> but, matt, so i t