President Obama Delays Trip to Asia
BALDWIN: I love it as Ed Henry gets his own segment. Ed, obviously, get a lot of love from the bald guy with glasses, and I know I'm not the bald guy with glasses today. But hello there, Mr. Henry.</s>HENRY: Well, anything but. That's right. Anything but, in fact, a bald guy with glasses. I was going to say that the fashion, you know, quotient here on "The Ed Henry Segment" has multiplied by 1,000.</s>BALDWIN: I tried to keep it up there, you know, we know how Velshi is. You know, hopefully, I'm --</s>HENRY: Well, yes. I mean, no offense to Ali. Well, actually, I do mean offense to Ali. But anyway, welcome to the segment.</s>BALDWIN: If he's watching. Anyway, Ed Henry so, I want to talk first because the news today, that the president is pushing back his trip to Indonesia, Guam and Australia because, of course, health care, a top priority right now in Washington. So, how does that affect, I guess, you and your travel plans with the president, the White House press corps?</s>HENRY: Well, I can tell you that this morning there were many people at CNN and all of the other networks, the reporters covering the president who have been racing around changing passports and visa, doing all, you know, changing flights, some people taking a press charter over many of us, but others are flying commercially, going into some of the cities along the way because he's going to Australia, in addition to Indonesia. He was supposed to go to two cities in Australia and now cutting Sydney out, all kinds of things changing. But frankly, you know, our travel plans, our flights compare nothing to the health care situation in America. I'm sure that's what the president would say if you asked him about this change, and Robert Gibbs just basically said, they believe there's some new momentum. They believe that they can get this done. And that just in the last three or four days, they've been picking up steam.</s>BALDWIN: Yes.</s>HENRY: I think, though, we learned something from this change. The biggest thing we learned: this president does not have the votes. If he had the votes --</s>BALDWIN: He'd be going out of town.</s>HENRY: -- he'd already have one foot out of the door, and this trip would be going. The fact they are delaying it a couple of days, their target now is no longer March 18th as it was recently. It's now March 20th, next Saturday, right before he goes out of town. They think they may get a signing ceremony at the White House. We'll see it. It's still up in the air.</s>BALDWIN: OK. We will see. We're also seeing kind of a funky outfit on Mr. Gibbs today at the White House press briefing. What's up with that?</s>HENRY: Well, you know, he had made this bet with counterpart in Canada over the Team USA versus Canada in the Olympics, men's ice hockey all that. Well, he lost that bet, of course. And I think we got some pictures. Mr. Gibbs finally made good on the bets.</s>BALDWIN: There he is.</s>HENRY: He rolled out, rocking the -- well, there he is live with the Team USA. This is a kind of a -- kind of a surprise. He first had the team Canada jersey which was the bet he was supposed to do, and he also announced that the White House has now instructed U.S. embassy in Canada to deliver a case of Molson to the Canadian government. But you see Canada, but he had team USA underneath, a nice little switch up there by Mr. Gibbs.</s>BALDWIN: Superman change.</s>HENRY: I've been thinking -- you're right -- and I've been thinking that the Republicans were probably licking their chops of the idea of pictures of Robert Gibbs with a Canadian jersey at the podium, because they've been saying the president has a Canadian-style plan and wants a government takeover on health care, that's probably why they put team USA underneath, not just to have a little national pride, but to make sure that most of the pictures were showing -- as we are now -- say USA, not Canada.</s>BALDWIN: Yes. Yes. And, finally, Ed, sorry, forgive me. I missed it yesterday. But the segment you had with Ali, I guess you were making some kind of public plea for Tom Hanks. He's around town, making a movie. You asked him for what?</s>HENRY: Yes, an espresso machine. Now, the back story basically is that, back in 2004, Tom Hanks came by the White House and noticed that in the press room, we didn't have a good coffee machine. So, these guys were up late, they're working hart. Let's get them a special machine, he sent $1,000 special machine, but it's getting kind of old. On this show yesterday, I pleaded with Mr. Hanks if he was watching to bring us a new one. He actually came to the White House last night and -- guess what -- he's got some news.</s>BALDWIN: Get out of here.</s>HENRY: Take a look.</s>TOM HANKS, ACTOR: You know, because I never served in our military, I'm going to get you another espresso machine, because that one --</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Hanks.</s>HANKS: That is on the last leg. We have the Pony Espresso, a fine American model based on history of the Pony Express.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And you brought this?</s>HANKS: Well, long ago, I would have bought this for $19.90. So, let me see what I can do for this, you know, the poor slobs in the fourth estate here. Oh, come on. Come on.</s>BALDWIN: OK. That's hysterical.</s>HENRY: So, poor -- yes, isn't that funny, poor slobs in the fourth estate. Man, that's bringing down "The Ed Henry Segment," I guess. So much for fashion, but you see the president there in the White House, that's the Family Theater, there were Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. They screened "The Pacific" which is going to be on HBO, as you know. There's been a lot of publicity about that, as Tom Hanks continues to look at the history of World War II in particular. But, yes, he called us, you know, the slobs in the fourth estate. It's kind of funny but we're getting -- he vowed, Tom Hanks, that next week, we're getting a new espresso machine. I assume it's a little more expensive these days. But, you know, full disclosure, I drink coffee. I gave it up last year. I now drink tea. So I'm not getting any free coffee.</s>BALDWIN: Really? With those hours you're working, Ed Henry, you don't do a jolt of java every morning?</s>HENRY: You know, there's still -- there's caffeine in tea. And I don't know. I think it's better. I like it better.</s>BALDWIN: Interesting. We're learning something about you.</s>HENRY: I gave up, coffee. Yes.</s>BALDWIN: All right. Ed Henry doesn't drink coffee.</s>HENRY: Thanks, Brooke. I hope you'll come back next week.</s>BALDWIN: To where? To here?</s>HENRY: The segment, yes. I mean, we don't need Ali everyday.</s>BALDWIN: Hey, yes. Sorry, Velshi, you're out. All right. Ed Henry, thank you.</s>HENRY: See you, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: We love Ali, we love Ali. All right. Our stimulus desk is hard at work tracking your tax dollars and helping with your tax return. I'm sure you have all kinds of tax tips, lately. You've heard them at least. If you received stimulus cash, you need to hear what our stim desk is about to tell you. Josh Levs on the story desk.