By: David Gregory & Michael Leiter, NBC News
GREGORY: Big week in politics and the roundtable is here.
I'm joined now by Jane Harman former Democratic congresswoman from California, now president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the house between 95 and 99 who ran for president in 2012; Rana Foroohar, who is the assistant managing editor at "Time" magazine; and our own political director Chuck Todd.
So many issues here but I want to talk about Edward Snowden because it`s been such an interesting conversation, I think, for the country after Brian Williams exclusive interview with him this week. And we wanted to know just how his own words, speaking to the public might have changed views. And Chuck, you did some new polling around this to gauge people`s attitudes. Let`s look at some of the findings that you put together.
CHUCK TODD, NBC NEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, let`s do.
TODD: New polling we conducted before and after Snowden`s interview that we are revealing for the first time here shows at least for now his appearance does not seem to have changed many minds. More Americans disagree with Snowden`s decision to leak NSA documents than agree. That number essentially unchanged from a January 2014 NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll.
When it comes to Snowden himself, 27 percent of those surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of him, while only 13 percent view him positively, but note the age gap. When it was limited to 18 to 34-year-olds, the numbers nearly flip. 32 percent view Snowden positively, 20 percent negatively.
And that younger support may be reflective in the shift of the conversation online. Thousands of tweets poured in and tracking data from NBC News shows responses to the #patriotortraitor were neck and neck leading up to the interview but once Snowden started talking, the #patriot took the lead and ultimate won out by nearly 20 points.
What`s next for Snowden? One thing that`s clear from his interview, he wants a deal.
SNOWDEN: Whether amnesty or clemency ever becomes a possible, is not for me to say. That`s a debate for the public and the government to decide but if I could go anywhere in the world, that place would home.
TIBBLES: And that`s exactly what critics and government officials say he should do.
REP. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, (D) MARYLAND: As far as I`m concerned, he needs to come to the United States, he needs to face justice.
TODD: Famed whistleblower and leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg disagrees.
DANIEL ELLSBERG, PENTAGON PAPERS LEAKER: He knows that he could not get a fair trial. He could only inform the public and inform reporters about the significance of the information he`s given to them when he`s outside the country.
GREGORY: Interesting, Chuck, that views did not change about him. America seems pretty entrenched on this debate about traitor, patriot, good thing, bad thing that he did.
TODD: Well, it is. And there`s always been -- you know, there -- on Snowden it really has been in threes, I would say, right. There`s a third that really do -- or hyper traitor, hyper patriot, and then there`s a third of the country has been just -- they sort of shrug their shoulders. I think they`re disappointed that maybe the president didn`t have a conversation with the country about this, it wasn`t fully honest, but at the same time sees the upside security-wise of some of these surveillance tactics.
So I think that that`s that`s what bails the administration out here because public opinion I think him personally, if you had 20 million, 30 million, 40 million people viewing him, I think public opinion would flip on him bigger.
GREGORY: Newt Gingrich, can you understand -- some people I've talked to this week have -- they've been struggling with this. In other words, struggling with the idea that basically who is he to decide, right, what secrets to reveal but also struggling with the very nature of the program still and the fact that he is quite eloquent in his description of what he did and forceful in his own defense. Can you understand people being uncomfortable with his firm decision.
GINGRICH: Oh, sure. I understand being uncomfortable, but the fact is Christa and I went about a week ago and visited the national 9/11 museum, and I would just urge people to go and visit the national 9/11 museum.
What right does any single American have to decide that more than the president, more than the congress they`re going to leak our secrets? This is the act of a traitor.
Now you can decide that`s too strong of language. He may be a patriotic traitor. He may think he did the right thing. This was treason. This is extraordinary dangerous to the country. And if he gets to decide, what about the next person and then the person after that?
We are in a war with people who want to destroy us. They`re very clear about it. And he ended up aiding and abetting the enemy.
GREGORY: I just -- I want to offer the other side for a point of discussion, Jane, which is one thing he gets at is that this country did not have a real debate about all of these measures. And so there was a security apparatus that was put in place that got beyond the debate of the American public and congress failed to really keep that debate going.
HARMON: Well, I was there, and we did have a debate once it was disclosed by the Bush administration in its first term that the authority used for the program was the president`s commander in chief authority and it didn`t go through congress and it didn`t comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Congress remanded FISA in 2008 and we had a debate. I wish more people had listened in...
TODD: Wait a minute, seven years later we had a debate.
HARMON: Well, yeah, but four of them were in secret. We had a debate. We tried to amend it earlier, it took a while, congress doesn't move very fast, especially since Newt left.
But can I just finish my thought. We should have had a better debate. Labeling this guy a traitor before he`s convicted I don`t think is fair, but I think what he did was, one, he wasn`t a whistle-blower, and, two, it`s not just that he leaked information about so-called spying on Americans, he leaked our technology playbook, and that really compromises us.
GREGORY: But what about what he says which is you can`t prove there was any real damage done?
GREGORY: How does he know that is an obvious follow-up?
FOROOHAR: Right. And I think both sides have some credibility problems. I mean, the fact is that the administration has been evasive and has on occasion lied about its espionage tactics, but on the other hand I would have more of a belief in Edward Snowden if he wasn`t a guest of Vladimir Putin.
You know, I think that there are sort of problems on both sides.
One of the things that`s very interesting to me about your numbers is that younger people have a more favorable impression, because they`re actually less worried about how their data is used, so that`s an interesting juxtaposition.
TODD: Well, they`re used to it. I do think there`s something on that -- on the one hand we`re used to the world being that way. On the other hand, I think there is this sense of -- the way young folks I think relate to Snowden goes to this generational, this idea that Millenials, you know, I`ll take it into my own hands, I can do this.
So I think there`s also part of Edward Snowden that sort of represents I think more of a culture of the Millenials.
GREGORY: So Newt, here is reaction -- here is Secretary Hagel this morning in our interview when I asked him to respond to what Snowden himself said which is, "hey, the government can`t prove their claim that my disclosures actually harmed anybody.
This is what Secretary Hagel said.
CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: David, his disclosures have damaged the security of this country. And I`m not going to get into a point-by-point inventory of the specifics of how he`s done that. I think it`s been very clear, every responsible position in our government who has had any responsibility for security or intelligence from NSA, from Cyber Command, the Defense Department, from the State Department have said the same thing.
Let me assure you, there is plenty of evidence. He did damage to the security of this country.
GINGRICH: Look, the first time there`s a major attack on the United States, all the Millennials are going to decide do they really want the government to protect them? The core idea here that one person has the right to judge very complex issues more than the commander in chief, more than the congress, more than the Secretary of Defense is an act of such extraordinary arrogance that it threatens the very fabric of our national security.
People need to understand, this is a big deal. And that this guy is dangerous. And the precedent he sets, if we decide it`s OK to be a Snowden, then we are really going to have dramatically crippled our capacity...
GREGORY: So, where does it go then, Jane? What is the future for him? He`s -- I mean, it`s unlikely to get any kind of clemency by any administration. I`m sure he wants to come home and wants to cut some deal. But he`s not inclined to serve a long prison sentence.
HARMON: Well, but let`s go through this. He goes to Hawaii where we have the least secure facilities. He then arranges in advance to have the journalists and the filmmaker before he goes to China. He then goes to Russia. He claims neither country has exploited his information.
He has every right to try to cut a deal. I`m sure that deal won`t be enormously favorable to him, but he should cut a deal. He should come back. He should serve prison time. And I think that that`s where it should come out.
And the lesson to other kids ought to be that watch out here, this is very dangerous.
GREGORY: Let me -- I want to move on and talk a couple minutes about Hillary Clinton, the issue of Benghazi, which is going to be a hot political issue here going forward. As her new book "Hard Choices" coming out and an excerpt released to Politico on Friday. Here is a portion of it in which she engages on this. "I will not be part of a political slugfest on the backs of dead Americans. It`s just plain wrong, it`s unworthy of our great country. Those who insist on politicizing the tragedy will have to do so without me."
She wants to take this on.
TODD: And get it out of the way.
GREGORY: Clear the deck she said this week.
TODD: This is what she`s up to, and it`s a very concerted effort. You have to be looking at it just as a press rollout, not to judge left or right here.
You have to be impressed with what they did. They said, all right, we know that that Benghazi chapter is going to be all the news -- and we don`t want to be the news the first time the book comes out.
GREGORY: And it looks like she`s running. She wants to do all this.
TODD: That`s right, we`ll leak it early.
Second thing we`re going to do, we`re going to go on Fox News. We know that they have been covering Benghazi more than anybody else. And we`re going to be able to say, Bret Baier was able to ask me all these questions about Benghazi, it`s old news when it comes up in 2015.
So this was -- you can tell this is a...
GREGORY: Is it though?
TODD: ...a campaign game plan.
GREGORY: Is it, though? What`s the key question she has got to face down?
FOROOHAR: Well, the key question I`d like to see answered in this book is why she was not front and center, why Susan Rice was the one on the Sunday shows. I think that that`s an issue I haven`t seen answered in the excerpt. There`s a lot of legalese. You know, I think frankly her tally of the events is pretty accurate. I don`t think that there was anything venial going on, but it`s interesting that she was not the front person And I think she`s going to have to answer that question..
GREGORY: To you both?
GINGRICH: Look, I actually think Boko Haram is going to come back and bite her much more than Benghazi.
GREGORY: This is the terrorist group...
GINGRICH: This is the fact that she rejected naming them as a terrorist group and it`s a trait of the State Department that goes back, frankly, into the Bush administration, and she did nothing to correct it, and this whole -- which is why, by the way, the Cairo riots and the Benghazi riots were wrong, because the State Department`s first inclination is it can`t be that they hate us, it`s why are the secretary of defense here talking about finding moderate Taliban.
FOROOHAR: I do think West Africa is going to continue to be a huge issue.
HARMON: And I think Hillary Clinton was on it. She`s taken full responsibility for Benghazi. She appointed an accountability review board and implemented all 29 of their recommendations.
As for Sunday shows, she said it`s not the same thing as jury duty. Some of us like being on your show, David, you know what -- and take the red eye back to be on your show, David.
But nonetheless, I think this congressional committee will reveal what most of us know, which is there is no there there.
GREGORY: Here`s the bigger question for me as a policy matter, what is America`s responsibility in a place of chaos, whether it`s Taliban -- I mean, excuse me, whether it`s Afghanistan post our withdrawal, whether it`s Libya post some kind of invasion? What is our sense of responsibility?
HARMON: We have to protect our people in the field. We have to protect our embassies and consulates. And we didn`t go a good enough job there.
TODD: Wait a minute, we chose to go into Libya though.
GREGORY: And that`s when you...
TODD: When you choose to do this, and we tried to do this, the infamous leading from behind, but this is to me what the policy debate should be about is what was the policy? Was that a good policy?
GREGORY: Let me do this...
TODD: Which is why Benghazi was so dangerous.
GREGORY: Let me get a break in here. We`re coming back later. We`ll come back also with this story -- ahead of the 70th anniversary of D-Day and the landings, our Tom Brokaw will join me with a unique look at how one of Hollywood`s greatest directors captured the war in vivid details.
GEORGE STEVENS JR. FILMMAKER: They gave it to the projectionist and I said, my god that`s D-Day.
GREGORY: We are back.
Next Friday, President Obama and other world leaders will gather in northern France to mark the 70th anniversary of D-Day, the dramatic invasion that changed the course of World War II, and indeed world history.
Our special correspondent Tom Brokaw will be there for NBC. And he joins me now.
Tom, good morning.
TOM BROKAW, JOURNALIST: Good morning, David.
You know, in World War II it was all in, and in Afghanistan and Iraq, we`ve been fighting the two longest wars in our nation`s history with less than 1 percent of our population. But 70 years ago, Clark Gable was in uniform, Jimmy Stewart was in uniform, and what we`ve just learned recently is the prominent role of five of the most excellent directors you could possibly imagine in the history of film, George Stevens, Jr., William Wiler, John Houston, John Ford, and Frank Kappa. These men went to war. They not only went to war, it changed their lives and it changed the way that we see movies.
BROKAW: Five of Hollywood`s finest directors all at the top of their game -- John Ford, John Houston, William Wiler, Frank Kappa, and George Stevens.
MARK HARRIS, AUTHOR: These guys were artists, so they wanted to make great movies. They were patriots so they wanted to serve their country. And just as men, they wanted to tell the truth.
BROKAW: Filmmaker George Stevens, Jr. remembers when his father signed up to serve.
GEORGE STEVENS JR. FILMMAKER: He saw many Leni Riefenstahl`s "Triumph of the Will," the film about Hitler and Nuremberg. And the next day, he arranged to go in the army.
BROKAW: But it was a discovery that Stevens made in his father`s archive almost 40 years ago that would change forever how we view D-Day and the war in Europe, some old rolls of Kodachrome film perfectly preserved.
STEVENS: Went and sat by myself in the screening room and up on the screen came this blue sky, ships, barrage balloons in the sky, and I said, my god, that`s D-Day.
BROKAW: A war that was in black and white in our collective memory.
ANNOUNCER: Single-chord cameras captured the full drama of the fateful hour.
BROKAW: Suddenly, in vibrant, startling color.
STEVENS: You see along the roads going through France, they`d see dead German bodies, and you see the picture, and there`s just something so personal to see it in color, and the festiveness of the liberation of Paris, you know, the girls in their summer dresses.
August 25th, 1944, my father and his friends had the greatest day of their lives.
BROKAW: Stevens recorded some of the most joyous moments of the war as when the U.S. and Russian troops met on the Elba River to seal Germany`s defeat; and some of the most sinister, discovering the depths of Nazi depravity.
HARRIS: Stevens said he could never direct a comedy again after what he had seen at Dachau.
BROKAW: Stevens and the other directors succeeded in telling one great truth about those who answered their nation`s call seven decades ago.
HARRIS: This was a war fought by human-scale people. We see their heroism as larger than life. They were human beings who became larger than life. They didn`t start that way.
STEVENS: I think the war was at the center of their life. As they approached 40, they go to war and see something else and they come back and they have a different attitude toward making films.
GREGORY: Tom, amazing images, just to see them in color. And it also strikes me, as you will be there, Tom, here`s 70 years after D-Day at a moment when the U.S. is pulling back from war in Afghanistan, the president is talking a lot about American power in the world, how to wield it, and it`s not always by going to war. It`s a striking irony now of where we are today.
BROKAW: Well, it`s a different world now, David, and gratefully it`s a different world. We`ll never see the likes of D-Day again. There had never been anything like it before and there won`t be again in our future.
But at the same time D-Day will be a reminder of what can be accomplished when allies work together and when everyone understands what`s at stake, every citizen, all the way from the best directors and the biggest stars in Hollywood down to some kid living on a dairy farm who signs up and nine months later is piloting a four-engine bomber.
So it was a unique time. And the interest in it seems to grow I think in part because of the magnitude of it. So much was at stake and we`re just now beginning to understand that, David.
GREGORY: All right, Tom Brokaw for us. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.
BROKAW: My pleasure.
GREGORY: Good to see you.
We`ll take a break. Coming up here, the Isla Vista, California, shooting rampage took place despite California having some of the toughest gun laws in the country. I`ll have exclusive reaction from former New York City mayor and anti-gun campaigner Michael Bloomberg who speaks out for the first time since the tragedy.
VIDEO CLIP: MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: The parents of this kid knew he had a problem, knew he had done something, cops couldn`t do anything.
GREGORY: Last weekend`s horrific mass shooting in Isla Vista, California, once again focused attention on the nation`s gun laws and raised concerns about the mental health system in America.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending $50 million of his own fortune to take on the National Rifle Association and push for more controls on gun ownership.
I sat down with him in New York for his first reaction to this tragedy.
GREGORY: Let me start by asking you about guns. This rampage in Santa Barbara, as heart wrenching as it is, is there any reason there any reason to think that it gives new momentum to the debate for more gun restrictions?
BLOOMBERG: Well, you certainly hope so. We`ve had shootings on campus and at the same time some states are passing laws to explicitly let people carry guns on campuses. I don`t know what you were like when you were in college, but my recollection of college 50 years ago is kids just should not have guns on campus.
The real problem here is we have too many guns in the hands of criminals, people with psychiatric problems as this guy obviously did, and minors. And we`ve got to find some ways to stop that.
And we`re making a lot of progress. Some things are two forward, one back, but the public understands what`s happening here.
GREGORY: But more specifically about mental illness, because this is where you may have some agreement with the likes of the National Rifle Association. How do you make it more difficult for somebody like this young man with some signs of mental illness to get a weapon?
BLOOMBERG: Well, you always have to have due process, and you can`t just go incarcerate people, and psychiatrists will tell you they can`t predict which people with mental illness will get a gun and start killing people, but you want to have laws that let you get a temporary restraining order.
The parents of this kid knew he had a problem, knew he`d done something. The cops couldn`t do anything. Now, you don`t want cops to be able to go and grab somebody off the street and put them -- institutionalize them. There should be a process, and long term that`s what most of these laws allow, but we don`t have that thing that a cop could use right away. Maybe you`d have to go before a judge and make a case but you can solve that problem.
And also the states don`t populate the database of who is mentally ill. It`s hard to do because if some people go to their private doctor and how do you find out about it?
Nobody says any law is going to solve all the problems. What we do know is a lot of people with mental illness do things that are destructive to themselves and to others. We also know that there`s an enormous problem with domestic violence around this country, and in the 16-odd states that have background checks for gun show sales and internet sales, just to make it a little bit harder, one step harder, not perfect, but a little harder to buy a gun, domestic violence in those cases is down like 40 percent, shootings of cops is down like 40 percent, suicide rates with guns is down 50 percent.
It works. It`s not perfect, but it gets you there.
GREGORY: You have made it very clear you want to take on the NRA politically.
BLOOMBERG: No, I want to make sure that the public gets together, tells the congress and their state legislatures we want reasonable background checks. We don`t want to end the second amendment. It has nothing to do with gun control. It`s about just making sure that three groups that 80 percent or 90 percent of the public think should not have guns, don`t get guns.
GREGORY: But you have that public opinion perhaps on the side of that argument. It isn`t a political reality that a lot of folks who believe in greater restrictions don`t vote on that issue when those who believe in protecting their gun rights absolutely vote on that issue and that`s what gives the NRA a political advantage.
BLOOMBERG: Maybe I`m too cynical but I think it`s all driven by the politics of election and re-election. If those people that vote think that the public wants one thing and that it will influence their re- electability, they`ll go that way, and if they think there`s another single issue advocacy group that`s not supported by the vast bulk of the public but has an enormous clout at the polling booth where you get people to come and you fund ads and that sort of thing, they`ll vote the other way.
And so what we`re trying to do is make sure that people that really care tell their congressman that this -- I think every one of those in the federal government and legislature, the Senate and the House, should watch the video of this father the other day saying no more.
GREGORY: Mayor Bloomberg thanks, as always.
BLOOMBERG: You`re welcome. All the best.
GREGORY: And coming up here, our images to remember this week, a special tribute to the late Maya Angelou.
GREGORY: Now to a special Images to Remember to pay tribute to the extraordinary life of Dr. Maya Angelou who passed away this week at the age of 86.
Nice tribute to Maya Angelou. We`ve been monitoring the conversation online in response to our Chuck Hagel interview. A lot of reaction, including this question, what`s the future of Guantanamo Bay.
Chuck, you tweeted this, got a lot of conversation going, " On #MTP Chuck Hagel calls Bergdahl release a prisoner exchange, refers to Bergdahl as POW. U.S. government does not classify GITMO detainees as POWs."
The future of GITMO important here?
HARMON: Got to close it to win the argument with would-be terrorists in the future.
GREGORY: Yeah, but I mean, these are enemy combatants. The thought was to hold them indefinitely, but we haven`t called them that.
GINGRICH: I don`t think any would-be terrorist worries about Guantanamo, they worry about defeating our civilization and they couldn`t care less what we do.
GREGORY: Right, but this conversation continues.
FOROOHAR: I agree with Jane. I think he`s got to close it. I think this whole situation sets such an interesting precedent about when you trade prisoners and when you don`t. And that`s got big implications.
GREGORY: Yeah, this debate will continue. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.
Continue the conversation amongst yourselves as well.
That is all for today. We`re not here next week because of NBC`s sports coverage of the French Open tennis final. Some preemptions of late, we`re sorry.
But we will be back in two weeks.