tradition in the base state. that's "hardball" for now. "politicsnation" with al sharpton starts right now. thanks, chris, and thanks to you for tuning in. tonight's lead, the gop's fairness fail. today, the republican party's priorities were on full display as they push to protect airline passengers but left in place republican budget cuts that are hurting millions of americans from preschoolers to senior citizens. today, the house approved a senate bill to end the drastic cutsha ended thousands of flight delays this week. the cut, cut, cut party found a cause worth uncutting for. why? because the delays inconvenienced business travelers and company bottom

lines. but the republican's block helped for millions of other americans hurt by the same gop push cut. people who are desperate for housing, food, health care, education. the reports of how much people are hurting from these cuts are flooding in from all around the country. >> it's terrible. all the house come through, the water brown, it's terrible. >> they are on the waiting list for federal vouchers that will one day allow them to live somewhere better. >> a little boy teaches me his name in sign language. >> j-o-s-e. >> he learned this skill in his head start class. they've been told to carve out about $60,000 from their budget. >> that could be less classes, lesse

less enrollment. >> federal sequester cuts could cause oncology centers altogether. >> this meal delivered to her home is a critical lifeline. >> i really rely on meals on wheels and i cannot get out to get meals. i can't afford what meals cost in restaurants or elsewhere. >> but thanks to the federal funding cuts brought on by sequestration, meals on meals may have to stop serving people like helen. >> meals on wheels, cancer patients, kids in preschool, real people in real trouble because of the gop spending cuts. real people like the woman we just heard from 92-year-old helen mond. ed what she would do without her regular visits from meals on wheels, helen was at a

loss. >> if i didn't have it? i'd just have to have someone deliver groceries. >> could you afford that? >> not really. >> this is who the republicans in washington aren't listening to. these are the people who don't have the high-paid lobbyists in washington. this is a matter of fairness. it's a matter of helping people who are hurting. if the republicans aren't listening, we have to raise our voices to make sure they hear us. joining me now, dana milbank and jared bernstein, thank you for coming on the show. >> hi, rev. >> you wrote an article titled "this faa sequester vote doesn't smell right." what does that tell you about why republicans allowed this vote? >> well, it has everything to do with visibility, access,

politics, and virtually nothing to do with fairness. you know, i thought ben applebaum tweeted something that makes sense. maybe those losing head start ought to hang around on airport runways. maybe that's how they would get notice. we are a $16 trillion economy now and you're telling me that in the state of indiana they are having random lotteries to figure out which kids, which low-income kids are getting kicked off of head start. >> random lotteries now? >> random lotteries. 800,000 people across 19 states are losing unemployment benefits to t tune of 120 bucks a month because of the sequestration but they don't have the visibility, they don't have the access. >> i'll tell you what else they don't have, dana. democratic congressman rick

lawrence said they don't have lobbyist head start kids. >> reverend, this is true. it's not only, however, just a matter of unfairness in protecting the rich. the whole idea of trying to do this ad hoc response to the sequester is foolishness because everyone is going to get hit by this. the rich people now have the faa guys in the tower. well, they are not going to have the guys inspecting the plane. do they want their airplane to go down? they are not going to have the tsa guys inspecting passengers in the airport. do they want that? they are not going to have meat inspections. this doesn't affect rich or poor alike and i think that's the mi misconception and the reputation of takers, it's everybody. >> when you look at the spending cuts, let's compare that have

been addressed and housing aid, head start, meal on wheels, cancer screening and when you look at starts the priority sitting there and as you say will it's actually a little worse than that in the following sense. the things that are fixed are going to hurt the things that are not fixed. something was said earlier, there is new money to shut off the sequester. what they told the transportation department was, don't worry about the sequester. you can go into your budget and find other places to cut. >> right. >> what that means is when you start replacing parts of the sequester for people who have the visibility and the access to

get their voice heard and get their sequester pain taken away, the cuts have to be deeper elsewhere. and where will they come from? from the poor, the unemployed. >> it's getting much worse and it's impacting people and as you say, they are shifting cuts and they are not doing anything that would really in a substantive way deal with the fact that they've rendered this court in a situation that increases pain for people. i mean, when you look at who's affected by the automatic budget cuts by the end of the year, 600,000 women and children lose nutrition aid, 125,000 families are going to lose housing aid. 70,000 kids lose head start. 25,000 fewer cancer screenings.

dana, a local news report that was referred to by jared from last month on how head start programs in indiana were using lotteries to decide which preschoolers would get kicked out, look at this report. >> head start has made a big difference in 4-year-old sage, how he plays with other kids, how he's advanced academically. >> i'm very proud of him. >> but alice just learned her son soon has to stay home. he's being cut from the program as a result of federal budget cuts. >> our hearts are broken because he loves school. >> earlier this week, staff put all of the kids' names in a fish bowl. names picked get to stay. the rest have to leave the program. >> what happened? >> his name didn't get picked. i don't know how to tell him he's not going back. >> i mean, these are hea heart-wrempheart

heart-wrenching stories. we don't want to see kids like that can't go to head start just so business men can fly and do what they have to do for their companies. >> it does show the stupidity of it all, reverend. this is your government on auto pilot. even if we can agree that government spending in some form or most likely on the entitlement side needs to be trimmed over time, people could get together and make sensible cuts. it's absurd to do things in this way and it's going to hurt a lot of the weak and the poor and it's going to hurt a lot of people who politicians profess to care about. guess what else is going to be taken a whack out of here? military hospitals. they have a lottery to tell us which of our soldiers deserved to be treated in hospitals. >> you know, jared, the fact is that we as a people, the citizens need to be heard on this. if they can come together and find a way to have a nonpartisan vote to deal with the airline

delays, it shows they can come together for what they want to. what do we have to do to make them want to do this for the rest? >> i think it's a great question. i think it has a lot to do with both visibility and pressure. the problem with the kinds of cases that we've documented throughout our discussion here, some kids in indiana, some unemployed folks, people on meals on wheels, they are not people flying every day in airports, much more, as i said, high visibility. there needs to be a mechanism for all of those folks to come together with one voice and say, how about getting together to help us as well. >> dana milbank and jared bernstein, i agree with you. part of the job is to make sure we have fairness. it is the job of those of us that care about people to make them visible and make it

unavoidable that we are seeing that people are hurting and sometimes you have to put it in the face of those that want to ignore you so they can't ignore you anymore. thank you for your time. >> thank you, rev. >> keep at it, reverend. president obama takes a stands for women's rights and smacks down the republican bid to roll back the clock. >> i want you to know that you've also got a president who is going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way. thank you, planned parenthood. god bless you. and historical fiction. george w. bush wants to rewrite history. we won't let him once we finish laughing. >> one of the key parts of this museum is what is called the decision points theater. it's an interactive exhibit. >> i guess it's better than its original name, disaster piece theater. and news in the boston terror attacks to smear the

president of the united states. so much for their supposed respect for the office. it's terrible. and we're going after them tonight. you're watching "politicsnation" on msnbc. i was cooking dinner for my family. boom. heart attack. the doctor recommends bayer aspirin to keep this from happening to me again. it's working. [ male announcer ] be sure to talk to your doctor before you begin an aspirin regimen. it can happen to anyone. talk to your doctor. investors could lose tens of thousands of dollars on their 401(k) to hidden fees. is that what you're looking for, like a hidden fee in your giant mom bag? maybe i have them... oh that's right i don't because i rolled my account over to e-trade where...

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how serious is the gop? serious enough that president obama became the first sitting president ever to address planned parenthood. giving a speech in support of women's rights. >> so when they tried to turn planned parenthood into the punching bag, they are not just talking to you, they are talking

to the millions of women who have been served and are trying to roll back basic rights when it comes to women's health. you want to make sure you're still living in 2013. >> the year is 2013. but republicans are trying to roll back the clock. last year, 42 states passed laws to restrict abortion. and already this year, 326 proposals have been introduced that would restrict a woman's right to choose. president obama says we have to fight back. >> no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, there's one thing the past few years have shown, it's that planned parenthood is not going anywhere. it's not going anywhere today, it's not going anywhere tomorrow. as long as we have to fight to make her own choices about her own health, i want you all to know that you've also got a president that's going to be right there with you fighting every step of the way.

thank you, planned parenthood. god bless you. >> we're seeing that fight in the halls of congress and in states across the country but there's also a darker side to this story, a hidden world of violent rhetoric. this week we heard the prison phone call reportedly done with the man now serving life for murdering an abortion doctor. in that tape, there is talk of shooting abortion workers, a sign of hate that is still festering deep inside that movement. joining me now is frank schafer, columnist for "the huffington post." he's author of "crazy for god." in 2008 you wrote an op-ed that said "the prove life cause poisoned many of us who were part of it. me included. it led to the self-righteous

hubris that extended to a general hate of each other. do you still think that today? >> absolutely. when you look at the tea party and people who were part of it or the obstructionist congress who have done everything in their power to stop president obama from having a successful presidency, the bitterness at the middle of many of those movements comes out of the heart of the anti-abortion movement which is an opposition to women in america and protect their rights. in the last election round when it expanded from even abortion rights to contraception, these were the guys who got together with the anti-choice roman catholic bishops and tried to paint the president as anti-religious because he wanted women to have contraceptives paid for by their insurance providers. the move is generally

masogonistic. one of the reasons that i became pro life was because i realized in the 1980s, people picketing cl clinics were going to be killing people. right from the beginning it justified murder of people who were disagreeing with you on these issues. >> that's what's so disturbing to me. let me play you something that was a little chilling that i played earlier this week. it's a tape of a man said to be scott roeder, who is talking about the people who reopened the clinic of the doctor he murdered. listen to this. >> it is a little bit death defying, you know, for someone to walk back in there, to walk in there and reopen a clinic, a

murder mill where a man was stopped, you know, it's almost like putting a target on your back saying, well, let's see if you can shoot me. ha. >> now, they just reopened the clinic this month. the clinic told us that they are treating the threat seriously but they won't be intimidated but he's talking about this woman having a target on her back. i mean, help me with this, frank. how do you love fetuses so you want to save life but you talk about killing people. >> uh-huh. >> one does not at all make sense of the other. >> yeah. you've got to realize, there's a lot of inconsistencies. they want to have access to 31 round magazine clips. they think that's freedom. pro life is a weird word to use.

250,000 iraqis ran up $4.5 trillion debt. you know, the right wing is not pro life. okay? if they were pro life, they would be anti-nra. they would be funding women. they would be funding women who have babies and take care of their children. they would not be doing lotteries in indiana for head start. they would be taking care of those babies once they are born. this is not a pro-life movement. this is an anti-choice movement. you saw it with the catholic roman bishops being down on the contraceptives. you were talking about how shocking it was that people were not standing up in the republican party to people like rush limbaugh and have a history of cow-towing. where are these people that call themselves pro life and denounce the fact that you have people like roeder making statements

like this and say, this is awful and go back to a position where we are debating this. >> where are they? we played this by roeder the other night. where are the mainstream moderate pro-life leaders? this is despicable. this is inexcusable. where are they? >> i tell you where they are, they are in private in meetings of pro life meetings going back into the '70s and '80s that i was part of. you have one set of rhetoric for your own people. then if they murdered someone, burnt a building down, afterwards you would make very pale statements, sort of after the fact pussy-footing around that you see from the right wing and the republicans when people like limbaugh or people are outrageous. and that's it and people like

operation rescue before he was convicted of murder you know, if this was an islamic murderer, five years from now he was making statements like this talking about targets on americans' back who were not islamic, if it's targeting for violence and health care for women, apparently there's no outrage. >> it should be human crime no matter who says about targets on the back and i think it would be right if what you use on it should be done as well here is right to have an outcry and we don't hear it. >> right. >> frank, thank you for your time tonight. still ahead, tall tales about president bush. you'll want to hear this. but first, the gop is swinging

this on hillary. they totally numbered their latest attempt to bring her down. [ male announcer ] this is betsy.

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these days hillary clinton is riding high. a new poll shows that 64% of americans view her favorably. of course, this terrifies republicans so they've kept their favorite line of attack. benghazi. as secretary of state mrs.

clinton testified about the attack on our consulate and an independent review board cleared her any personal fault. but the gop doesn't care. house republicans huddled behind closed doors and cooked up their own report that blames clinton personally for lower security at the benghazi consulate. and they've been going on fox news to promote it. >> secretary of state was just wrong. three months before the attack she outright denied security in her signature in a cable april 2012. >> her signature in a cable. that's a powerful accusation. there's only one problem. it's not true. democratic congressman elijah sent this letter. he points out that the cable issa is talking about has a

section with the secretary's name typed at the bottom of the page. just as thousands of other cables, typed, text, no signature. clinton never signed it. there's no indication she ever even saw it. the fact checkers at "the washington post" looked into this theory, too. they agree. four pin noek ohios for issa's signature argument. anything to say about that mr. issa? >> bless the democrats' hearts. they like their report but can't find a factual error to ours. >> well, looks like we found one. a big one. did congressman issa think that we would sign off on his attempt to take down mrs. clinton? nice try, but we got you. ♪

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privately but also very publicly that for syria to use chemical weapons on its people changes a line and my calculus on how the united states deals with these issues. this is going to be a long-term proposition. this is not going to be solved overnight. >> president obama today making it clear he's talking very seriously but he's not about to rush into war. what a difference. what a difference we saw with president bush in iraq. with iraq, the wmds didn't exist but he led america into war anyway and that's why the debate over the bush legacy is more relevant than ever. his fail policies still haunt today, what to do in syria, how to treat terrorist suspects and how to deal with the budget america needs. an honest assessment of the bush

legacy so we don't repeat those mistakes today. but this week leading up to the opening of his library, president bush and his allies have been very busy rewriting history. >> i took my duties as commander in chief, technically the duties of honoring those who wear the uniform, very seriously. i will give you my judgment, removing suddam mu sane was the right decision and the world is better off with him not in power. >> we've advanced the cause of peace and freedom and helped improve the human condition. >> advancing the cause of peace, improving the human condition? we need to have an honest discussion about whether that's really happenings during the administration. joining me now is melissa harris-perry and bob shrum. thank you for being here.

>> saying he advanced the cause. it's clear he's not going to let that be an impartial jury, he's going to try to influence that jury because for him to now rewrite what has been for us more than a decade of war, an ill-defined enemy, we can't really know when there's a victory, responding in the way that he did to the context of 9/11, as the president said at the moment of his election, we're going to shift this back to the people who are responsible for 9/11. what does the president do, ultimately is responsible for the death, capture of 9/11. george bush moved us in a false war built on pretense and lies into iraq. how does that advance the cause of freedom? >> and then when you look, bob, at the former chief of staff for

president bush, andy carr, talking about president bush's economic record, listen to what andy carr said. >> president bush probably has the best track record of any modern president in terms of fiscal discipline at the federal government level as well. that's something the government has forgotten up. >> the best record of any modern president. he's driven current and future public debt more than anything else. i mean, the chart on priorities shows the bush tax cuts and the wars in iraq and afghanistan, the yellow and red parts of the graph you see account for nearly half of the public debt. they talk about the debt and the deficit, half of it comes from bush tax cuts and the two wars he put us in. >> look, these people are in a state of illusion and denial. the fact is, there's no debate among historians.

historians of presidents, i think that will continue. we had out here in california for a while a nixon library that was an exercise until the government took it over and turned it into a fantasy. i don't care what exhibits they have, how they spend this. iraq was a complete disaster, a war we never should have fought. we were misled, if not lied into. the afghanistan war was bungled. bill clinton took us to a surplus and they turned it into massive deficits, gave us the worst economic crisis since the great depression and then got re-elected barely in 2004 by appealing to homophobia to ban marriage equality. he should have been a painter in the first place, never a

president, and barbara bush is right, we don't want more bushes in the white house. >> you think that andy card went too far but let me show you how there's one upsmanship on that one. karl rove, the architect of the bush years, let me show you how he reframed the history and where it belonged. >> on the big things he got right, i do believe that the iraq war was the right thing to do and the world is a safer place for having suddam hussein gone. >> george washington, abraham lincoln, ronald reagan, fdr, the greats. yeah, i put him up there. >> he would put them up there? >> let me just say, i live in the city of new orleans and we will not forget. there is no library that you can build. there is no whitewashing of history that you can do that will ever, ever, ever lead us to forget that this was the man who

was president when americans were left on the roof of their homes to dehydrate, to die, to have no potable water, they were left in super domes, they were left in the convention centers. >> literally. >> literally. american citizens left in to die in a city while the president flew over and could not come home from vacation. >> you know what amazes me when i listened to bush yesterday, if he invited us to the white house, we respected the presidency. the thing that got me was when he said new orleans. one of the reasons is not because i went and marched there and protested but i beat george bush there and i didn't have air force one. i got there before he got there and i had to drive in through all of that to get to the protest and i went in and saw people in the superdome and

astrodome in houston. how do you see weapons from mass destruction in iraq that wasn't there and you couldn't see people suffering in new orleans that was there? >> we will never forget that. what you just said was so important. there is, of course, respect for the office of the presidency of the united states. and, in fact, i think there was so much respect and dirns on the part of the democratic party post 9/11, because we recognized that terrorism was this fundamental thing that impacted all of us, despite the fact that you may not have voted for this president, you nonetheless supported him but so much so, so much so, refusing to ask the questions that needed to be asked by the patriot act, that we allowed ourselves to be taken down a path that had horrible consequences for our economy, for our public safety, and for our national security. >> and civil liberties. and when you look at this, bob, he talked president bush yesterday about seeing the character of the nation. and that's why i heard that reference to hurricane katrina. it was unbelievable.

listen to this. >> ultimately the success of a nation depends on the character of its citizens. the president and i had the privilege of seeing that character up close. i saw people in new orleans in homemade boats to rescue their neighbors from the floods. >> i mean, why would he even bring that up? >> i don't know. i suppose that he is living in this state of denial. it was one of the low points of his administration and it's really a pretty big claim because this administration spent most of its time below sea level. look, this is a guy who doesn't rec fiz that he made a mistake. he was asked in one of the debates, can you name one of the mistakes you made as president and he said he couldn't. it goes to something else. he failed the other test of presidential consequence. he doesn't enlarge or didn't enlarge or deepen america's conception of itself. one of his most famous lines was

uttered in new orleans to his fema director, heck of a job, brownie. only other thing i can think of a axis of evil, it left the country in terrible shape. >> melissa harris-perry, bob slu shrum, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you. still ahead, the right wing's moment of shame, using the boston bombings to launch a personal attack on the president. and boston strong. how the city and the country are uniting and inspiring us all. stay with us. everybody has different investment objectives,

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there's been an unbelievable response to the boston marathon bombings from the right wing. unbelievably bad. there's new reference is to use the bombings as an excuse to smear the president. just listen to this guest who says the president is soft on terror and this genius has a kok ka maim me idea why. >> maybe his middle name is a clue and also the fact that he spent most of his childhood

practicing the muslim faith and so i think of course he's a christian now but we have to understand where he came from. he said the sweetest sounds he's ever heard are prayers at sunset. >> the president's middle name and childhood are clues to his policies on terror? yeah, whatever. >> without an orientation, i think it's hard for this president to say anything because it runs contrary to the things he was taught when he was a boy in honolulu, chicago, and indonesia. i think rudy said it best. he's got a pre 9/11 mentality. >> worse than that. >> only thing worse than that is your response. insult of the president of the united states. it's no better from actual elected republicans.

listen to this one. >> this administration has so many muslim brotherhood members that have influence, they just are making wrong decisions for america. >> that's louie gohmert from texas saying the muslim government is in our government and the sound of silence from the republican leaders. thanks for being here, angela. >> thank you, rev. >> don't you think more moderate republicans would want to denounce this kind of rhetoric? it can go over well with voters. >> well, rev, the interesting thing is this rhetoric is not new. we've heard this from the very beginning of president obama's first election. from 2008, this rhetoric is so old, you begin to wonder whether

the silent strategy really works. there are a couple of things that folks do hopefully it will go away if you ignore it or to address it head on and dim it. perhaps it is now that time. louie gohmert is a public official and clearly he does not take the oath he's required to take in the constitution, according to article 6, to heart. there is some obligation that you have to act in good faith and he continues to display that he doesn't have any ability to do so. i want him to name one muslim brotherhood in the president's administration. >> a right wing blogger -- and it's amazing how they grab these things out of nowhere and try to make them stick. erick erickson, he tweeted "i think the rise of

multiculturalism played a role in the boston bombing. multikul tralism? what does multiculturalism have to do with this. >> it has nothing to do with this, rev. people have used whitewash, hitler, for example. america over time has been built on this principle that we are a melting pot. and that our differences make us who we are. in fact, our differences in our diversity is the tie that binds us, is what makes us indivisible. if you have someone saying the exact opposite, the basis of the fear and fearmongering here, it's tremendously dangerous, particularly in a day and age where our national security has been so compromised. we've got to come together and lay partisan differences aside right in this moment.

it's so critical. this rhetoric is reckless, very, very dangerous, and extremely toxic. >> tons of reports about how the obamas received public assistance. take a listen to this. >> were the two bombing suspects on assistance the entire time they were in a court they now hate? >> so we paid for that bomb? >> let's face it, a lot of criminals in the united states are on welfare. >> a lot of criminals are on welfare. now we're going to criminalize everybody on welfare because of these two bombers. why don't we just go through the litany of terror attacks. why are we getting into this absurd discussion rather than dealing with securing and uniting the country around

securing american people? >> well, rev, in part, if you look at this -- and i hate to make this a partisan issue at all, but the fact that they don't want to address what would have happened in boston had we not had the resources necessary on the state, local, and federal levels to really deal with this immediately, the best thing for them to do is to talk about whether or not they are on welfare because it's a distraction from what really matters. we know that our resources are stretched very thin and we've got to make really critical decisions to ensure whether a sequestration or other budget challenges that we're still doing what's right for our nation security. >> angela rye, thank you for your time tonight. >> thank you, rev. we'll be right back with the spirit and courage of boston shared now with the entire country. [ male announcer ] how do you measure happiness?

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is it. the two explosions that ripped into the city's iconic event, bringing people together to give comfort to each other in the hour of need. and a makeshift memorial in a sign of solidarity. this week, a marine who lost both legs in combat visited a hospital to inspire a mother and daughter. who never imagined how their lives would change. they both suffered serious injuries. celeste lost both legs. >> i can't do anything right now. >> right now, yes. but i'm telling you, with all my

heart that you are going to be more independent than you ever were. this is basically the start. this is the new beginning for the both of you. and so many opportunities is going to come your way. >> you look good. you look real good. >> thank you. >> this doesn't matter. this is just a change of scenery. it really is. >> i know. >> he's moving, running, doing the paralympics. >> really? >> you may want to do that one day. >> the start of a new beginning. the marines help show both women the possibilities ahead. another victim, heather abbott found hope in a bedside visit from someone she did not know. >> if someone had told me that i was going to have half a leg at the age of 38 before this happened, i think i would have never believed it. i think i would have been devastated and i really haven't had a moment yet of being devastated because i've gotten so much support from the

hospital. i mean, the hospital's brought in individuals who are in the same situation as i am, they live normal lives, they were able to tell me about that, which has been great. >> we've heard so many inspiring stories this week. including the story victoria who suffered life-altering injuries. she left the hospital this week. she's already on the road to recovery and ready to get back to normal life. >>. >> i want to go and have a home-cooked meal. i want to see my pets. i want to sleep in my own bed. >> earlier this week, victoria had an emotional reunion with the stain injuries who risked their lives to save hers. >> thanks for seeing us. >> thank you. >> they saved my life. you saved my life.

otherwise, i would have bled out because it hit the artery. >> wow. >> boston reminds us of the greatest parts of the american story, that no matter what happened, whatever the crisis, whatever adversity, get up, stand up, finish the race. we've come too far to turn around now. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton t "hardball" starts right now. dogs of war. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start with this. war. bombing people. shooting down airplanes. breaking into houses. i can think of what we mean when we so casually say, let's go,