so hard for jerry ford. despite that we had this great transition and he said, president carter said, i think i and jerry ford in the end had the best friendship of any two ex-presidents in american history. that sounded extreme. best friendship. i went all of the way through american history and pretty hard to find two ex-presidents who got along better. >> michael beschloss and julie pace, thank you both. we'll be right back. xecutive prt marvel studios. we are very much hands on producers. if my office becomes a plane or an airport the surface pro is perfect, fast and portable but also light. you don't do 14 hours a day 7 days a week for decades if you don't feel it in your heart. listen i know my super power is to not ever sleep. that's it, that's the only superpower i have. >>> still to come, defeat and then disbelief. how do democrats restore their party to power and work with this new president? >> i want to show you something, mika. >> this might give you a clue. >> i want to show a picture from yest

. >> and it was jerry ford, 1976. the russians aren't in poland. >> yes they are. now it's the russians aren't in the withdrew crane. it was baffling. and take us through all of that. >> donald trump is facing criticism after his response to the parents of an american soldier killed in america. the parents of captain khan took to the stage at the dnc thursday night to condemn trump's proposals and statements about muslims. he said trump had sacrificed nothing and no one and questioned if he had even read the u. s. constitution. the trump campaign responded saying captain khan was a hero to our country. the real problem here are the radical islamic terrorists that killed him. but it didn't end there with both speaking with the sunday shows. >> what sacrifice have you made for your country? >> i made a lot of sacrifices. i work, very, very hard. i created thousands and thousands of jobs. tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. >> those are sacrifices. >> sure. i think they're sacrifices. when i can employ thousands and thousands of people and take care of

he, of course, ran jerry ford's campaign. then he ran george h.w. bush's campaign in 1980. a campaign that actually got pretty nasty between bush 41 and ronald reagan in the primary. and yet after bush was vanquished, ronald reagan reach out and began using baker almost seamlessly. talk about that relationship. that doesn't happen in politics often but it happened here, why? >> it is extraordinary. first of all, it speaks to the fact that they wanted jim baker's talents inside the reagan circle. what's amazing is that baker had actually run two national campaigns against ronald reagan, his first assignment as you said in 1976 was counting votes, delegate votes at the contested convention in 1976 against reagan and ford won that. and that made his career. he was known as the miracle man after that victory. so he ran that campaign. he ran bush's primary campaign against reagan and they still wanted him inside the tent. there was enormous intrigue and back stabbing in that reagan inner circle. and some of his people in particular stuart spencer and mike diever realized that ba

you had jerry ford talking about the soviet union not in poland. there is one example after another of how these debates did make a big difference. >> and it would appear, i don't want to put undue pressure on them but given the state and nature of the campaign we have had thus far with both candidates refusing to talk in substance and specifics about things like medicare and afghanistan which is barely mentioned at all, the moderator's role tonight might be really, really key. >> if this is all we get as a country, the ads, the stories in the ads which turn out not to be true and then 35 minutes or 40 minutes of what might be genyn and spontaneous maybe the whole thing doesn't work very well. on the other hand there is no interest in changing it. >> it puts a lot of pressure to say let's do something different. let's try something different and call out the lack of it. >> ronald reagan won because the americans became comfortable with him. it is not the specifics as much as americans getting the chance. over 90 minutes you can look at a guy and sa

i thought -- i mean how can you go wrong when you open with jerry ford saying long national nightmare is over. >> where do you rank dave among the late night hosts? >> you can't really rank dave high enough because he was such an influencer. every guy that is on now thanks him, cites him as an inspiration. >> category of his own. >> he opened up the door for them. he showed with a was possible. the talk show was sort of the phone any show business construct. and he ploou it apart and allowed people to be themselves and bring different things to it. and plus you have to remember before dave came organization there was nothing on after 12:30. he had the venue to himself for so long which is why we know him so well. and it proliferated from that point on. >> what is so interesting donny, is that obviously carson was his hero. carson was everybody's. carson was just unbelievable. i've got no words for him either. every night you'd see johnny carson and that's obviously who inspired him. and yet at the end of dave ear's career, david letterman was far more influential on the comedians arou

jerry ford. and jerry ford was a much better president than people will say. he was a fine man and a good president. he was a decent man. nixon was surprisingly a much better president than his reputation. although he was as churchill said, a great bad man. >> is there a certain period, a certain era? washington doesn't work right now. is there a period where washington and congress seemed to work most eveningi ieffectiv? >> before i got here, obviously the new deal. roosevelt had a series of terrible crisis on his hands and a depression and he was scared to death of the communist take over. he had the worst war in history and on top of that, he had to prepare for the end of the war and for the postwar peace. he did well in all. >> debbie, you have to be proud obviously. friday i guess your husband breaks a record. >> i am proud of him, but i think what i'm the proudest of is that he believes people have to work and he stays working every day saying republicans and democrats have to work together. i think you should talk about that? >> i think the country dema

you go back to 1976, everybody remembers '80, but mike, 1976, you know, jerry ford says that the soviets aren't dominating eastern europe, and max frankel said excuse me, and he repeeted it again. and ford, who was sort of seen as a bumbler, who was making an extraordinary comeback at that time, obviously, that's something that connected with americans. >> well, as tom pointed out, i mean, both he and i were in nashua for that -- i paid for this microphone moments, and debates, if nothing else, tom, if nothing else, they're a tribute to the power of the single moment and a single line by a single candidate. >> yeah, i'm the one who asked dan quayle the third question about whether he was prepared to be president if something happed. he then compared himself to john f. kennedy, and lloyd benson turned to him and said i knew john f. kennedy. he was a friend of mine. you'renone john kennedy. that got a lot of play. dan quayle still got elected, but a friend of mike's who was a friend of kennedy's called later and said we have gone through the files. i we don't think lloyd benson was a frien

. >> but jerry ford said governor reagan can't start world war iii, president reagan can: he was fall it had fashionest gun in the west. i mean, reagan was vilified pretty roundly by even the republican establishment. >> the other thing about reagan was from the beginning when he was running for the republican nomination for governor of california he was always congeni congenial. whatever he had to say, everybody had a kind of a he's our guy, friendly approach to him and he could do the every man thing better than anybody i'd ever seen. at the end of the recession, they had to do something so they sent him up to southie in boston, they sent him into a working man's bar, all irish southies and we thought he was going to get his head handed to him in there. 20 minutes later he emerges with a schooner of beer and all these guys around him cheering him because he could pull that off unlike anyone else. >> up like anyone else except maybe who we're talking about today. >> the same thing trump can do with evangelicals, for example, not his natural constituency, he misquotes the bible but ev

jerry ford accused ronald reagan of being the guy that would start world war iii. that was remember how ugly '76 was between ford and reagan? what did reagan do? he gracefully endorsed ford. he got a spot speaking at the convention. that was his best revenge. santorum, if he had been gracious about this may have had an opportunity to outshine romney at the convention. god knows it wouldn't be that hard to do. >> you know, already, before this happened. romney folks were saying to me, remember our former colleague pat buchanan's speech in 1992? they did not want to give him that forum. they already did not trust him. i can imagine him speaking five blocks from the convention in the protest part. >> i don't know. with this sort of endorsement, i don't know if the romney people would give him a speaking role. get his news articles, let people write about the split between romney and santorum, you know. some suburbs of philadelphia, they might help romney. >> yeah. >> being distanced from santorum. in iowa and the i-4 corridor and the swing districts, it might not hurt

ford. so the notion that newt gingrich is dead given this year and the dynamic of the republican party and the still underlying weakness that you point out about mitt romney. he is not a conservative in the sense that the party wants a conservative seems to me there's room for two things. a comeback by newt and continuing panic in the republican establishment. >> and look what's happened. so mitt romney wins new hampshire. the morning after, conservatives say this cannot stand. we are not going to elect, nominate another moderate big government conservative, or big government republican. so then newt pulls ahead and the conservative establishment says this cannot stand. we're not going to elect an unelectable guy. >> what are you doing this for, joe? >> i'll tell you what, i think the next thing we're doing is looking at rick santorum. i wonder if santorum if he gets enough money, mike, the rick santorum i saw last night was impressive. >> he had a big night. >> this is a guy -- and everybo

eileen ford the brains behind the beauties. the new york native built one of the most successful modeling agencies with her husband jerry. he ran the business. she was in charge of the talent. a powerhouse spawned from necessity in 1946. >> i couldn't get a job because i was pregnant. >> reporter: so ford took bookings at home for two models who paid her $65 a month. by the 1990s, the ford modeling agency took in $40 million a year. a big business with a family touch. many of their young clients moved in with ford and her husband as she explained in this hbo documentary. >> i forget how many models lived with us. they had to live by my rules. it was like having a bunch more children. >> you had to be in the house by a certain time. >> reporter: ford's idea of beauty long neck, long limbs and wide set eyes stretched all the way to hollywood. actresses candace bergin and ali mcgraw found their first work in front of cameras as ford's models. ford's client list acquired an international flare with el lep. her influence on models w

i'm not going to ride off into the sunset with jerry. >> you've worked here for 27 years. you will have wasted everything at ford here. >> great, great event yesterday in detroit. >> get to keep any of those cars? >> no. they wouldn't let us. what did you learn? >> it's a good thing america's got great young people like ty carter. great things on the battlefield but keeps it up off the batt battlefield. >> i learned you're a little too cozy with james carville. >> he says he likes me, that's bad. >> i learned any attack against syria is not going to overthrow assad and not going to keep him from gassing his own citizens again. >> i learned a lot military skepticism internally about this. a lot. i hope you guys have a great labor day weekend. i'm always so tired. this is friday, right? >> yes. >> it is the fall and we're not going into memorial day weekend, right? >> no, it's labor day. >> great, then i can go. the way i know it is, because alabama's going to win on saturday night. thanks for watching us this week. if it's way too early, it's "morning joe." stick around bec