. >> joining us for reaction is perry bacon, at the big event today and wrote about it for nbc news.comis good to see you. >> good to see you, krystal. >> how was the energy in the room and what can we gleam the lane he wants to occupy? >> the lane he wants to occupy is two. one the evangelical lane and that is why he was at liberty, and so that lane and then the tea party lane. he talked today about he wants a flat tax, he wants to get rid of the irs, he wants to repeal obama care. these are ideas that the conservative parts of the republican party want to appeal to. so think about him in terms of winning iowa and use that as a spring board forward the way mike huckabee and rick sand or um did in 2012. >> were the students enthusiastic about his appearance? >> i want there today but what i've read is there was enthusiasm from students. and we should note that students at liberty were required to attend the speech so the crowd may have been smaller if the requirement was not there. >> and you had obama talking about mandatory voting. and that is mandatory presidential campaign launch at

nbc senior political correspondent perry bacon. nice to have you here in studio. great to see you.ne feinstein put pressure on hillary clinton over the weekend on "meet the press." let's take a listen. >> what i would like is for her to come forward and say just what the situation is. because she is the pre-eminent political figure right now. she is the leading candidate, whether it be republican or democrat for the next -- to be the next president. and i think that she needs to step up and come out and stay exactly -- state exactly what the situation is. i think at this point, from this point on the server -- the silence is going to hurt her. >> democrats frustrated a little bit with hillary in the lack of response so far. >> this is important. obama and hillary had a famous meeting after their campaigns where they got together. it was at die on feinstein's house. the fact that she said this is important and tells you. there are two core questions here. why did you only have a personal e-mail account and how secure was it? were you vulnerable to a hacking of any kind. and she's go

perry bacon, thanks so much. and i want to bring in luke russert who is on capitol hill.the server but boy are the gop people going to be like a dog with a bone. what is next for the committee? >> reporter: this committee has been operating in secrecy, they first learned about the fact she was using private e-mail last summer and that did not leak. so as far as the next steps, expect them to periodically have information dumps regarding secretary clinton about her role in benghazi and expect there to be other things about her tenure in the state department. and when john boehner said this last year benghazi was investigated thoroughly and people knew what happen and there was no wrongdoing. now it seems that his decision to do this committee because of clinton's use of personal e-mail at the state department has to some degree been vindicated especially amongst republicans here on capitol hill. this will be a thorn on her side from now through the election. this will be on target through 2017. so there are a lot of things that they could do. they could call for a subpoena

joining me now to break this all down political editor sam stein and perry bacon. want to start with the smart money in washington, which is where folks will tell you the democrats in the senate have already kind of worked this out. technically durbin was the whip. i want to start big picture and say at this moment in the country with everything going on and the obama era ending is it even a good idea for either party to rush to figure out who's going to lead it in a year and a half from now without a nod towards any kind of democratic process? >> it's a great question. i thought there would be more of a debate because durbin is known to be more liberal and schumer is known to be more centrist. the way to move the democratic caucus to the left -- or to the right for that matter is not through the leadership but you can see there are already changes. elizabeth warren has pushed some different things already. that agenda can still change. >> i think that's certainly true right now, sam. i think the model that harry reid used and dashel used before him was definitely w

. >> for more, i'm joined by msnbc political reporter perry bacon, christina bellatoni and gregory angelowho here is a conservative? you're not partisan. why are these guys just festering? they are so excited about this -- my brother said, i just love this guy. what is it about bibi that he likes? >> as a gay conservative, one of the things that i like is that they are all supporting gay people and part of the world in the middle east where people who are gay are being targeted for being executions. so in that regard, israel is our greatest ally in the middle east and from a greater perspective. >> orthodox on this issue? >> i was in israel in 2013. there are still difficulties like here in the united states but people are not being killed just for being gay in israel, right? >> widen your aperture. to the question of -- here's netanyahu running us into iraq, iraq becomes the conquest of iran and then says in the house of representatives, look the hell that broke loose, iran took control. he was behind it all and said it would help bring down iran. totally, utterly wrong as a visionary an

let's bring in nbc senior political correspondent perry bacon. perry, a good day to you. does this immediately change the dynamic on the gop side? does it give cruz a jump in any way on his competitors? >> it does give him a little jump. we expect rand paul to announce he's running on april 7th. we expect marco rubio and a few others to announce their runs in the next month, the next six weeks. cruz will be the first major candidate, so he'll get a lot of attention for that. that helps him because he's an underdog in this race. if jeb bush and scott walker are the front runners, ted cruz is pretty far behind right now. this gives him a chance to get a big start, start raising money. he's going to need a lot of money to come back in this race and establish himself. >> that's at the start. but can you assess his viability as a potential presidential nominee, realistically? maybe a long run there. >> he's a very long shot alex. he could ultimately win the iowa caucuses, but i think it would be hard for him to win much beyond that. the reason is that he's viewed as too conser

and perry bacon is nbc news senior political reporter. perry, i want to start with you about the question. i didn't think it was a worry anymore. somebody in "the new york times" figured the rest of them, that this is a big worry in the hillary clinton land about how they use bill or don't use him. >> it's got to be a big worry. i mean, he's been a great campaigner for obama and other politicians. when hillary clinton ran, he made a lot of mistakes. the big one, of course, being when he compared obama's victory in south carolina to jesse jackson's, offended a lot of african-americans. even before that he made a lot of gaffes -- >> you swallowed that. offended a lot of -- why did it offend him? he seemed to demean the victory, that the victory didn't mean anything. he basically said only black people voted for obama, that's how he won south carolina. it goes to the point -- >> he also yelled, it's a fantasy. >> it's a fantasy. he said a lot of things. he's otherwise great, but in terms of campaigning for his wife, he was very defensive and

republican consultant toure, and perry bacon jr.nywhere this week, was this crash. and let's talk about it for a minute. we've had a few days to digest it. we heard the retired airline pilot reassuring us how rare this is. i'm a person with a great fear of flying. i just -- i'm curious your reactions to this in terms of how this makes you feel? does this change at all the way any of you feel about air travel? >> no, not at all. it's an extraordinarily rare event. we keep telling people 40 million flights landed safely last week. 3.5 billion people got to where they wanted to go safely. you are safer flying in the air than you are driving to the airport. the media, correctly perhaps spends a lot of time talking about these stories. there is not a plane malfunction. there is not a lot we can do in terms of rules to deal with this. this is massive needle in the hay stack. >> wasn't it chilling in a way that there wasn't an obvious mechanical explanation for this. it's something embedded within a person's mind. a mechanical thing you ca

and senior political reporter perry bacon, jr. wonder why the clintons seem to feel above the rules and arrogant as some people say. and this is an unforced area and like malpractice, something she could have avoided and somebody one her circle should have said this is not a good idea and we both agree this is not going to have major elector implications in the primary or the general and she can have mistakes and survive them? >> i think it is important to look at today. in some ways hillary clinton has been trying to run for president without doing the announcement and being covered as such. and you saw today for the first time the stories that come out and therefore the media is treating her as a candidate for president because we assume she is and so she had to confront this. and the one things challenging about today, she wanted to give an announcement on her terms and this was the first event of her presidential campaign, standing in front of the u.n. answering the nine or ten questions that she sort of struggled to answer. a

perry bacon argues cruz finds himself with support among the party's grass roots but almost none frome party elites don't trust cruz personally and worry he's too conservative to win a general election. what does your gut tell you? do you think senator cruz has a serious shot at the gop nomination? cast that vote and we'll read the results and your comments tomorrow. after the movie "boyhood" made a splash this year girlhood is getting a lot of attention around the world. follows four teenage girls in the working class suburbs in paris. the film is a candid at times questioning look at how the female identity is formed despite heartbreak at times male domestic nation. joining me two of the stars. thank you both for joining us greatly appreciate it. let me start with you here this film already opened at the cannes film festival last year and received honors there, in philadelphia as well film festival. why do you believe that this look at gangs and female identity resonated so much at this time in the world? >> i don't really understand the questions -- >> why do you believe so many pe

perry bacon. thank you. >> and that will wrap things up today. we'll see you right here tomorrow