election, when they have been pulled to the extremes or pushed to the extremes, whichever way you want to say it by the tea party, if that maintains through another national election cycle, you might begin to see the permanent demise of the republican party. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. have a great weekend. "hardball" starts right now. cruisin' for a bruisin'. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. remember what president obama said about the republicans about how their endless symbolic votes to kill obama care are now part of american law, by the way, don't constitute an economic plan? well, they didn't get the word. before the congress left for a five-week vacation today, they had one last piece of business to attend to.

it wasn't creating jobs. it was another vote to kill obama care. if you're scoring this at home, it's the 40th time the republican-led house of representatives voted to repeal, defund or crip typical president's health care law. like all the others, it is government by tantrum, meaningless, meaningless measures, meaningless roll calls, meaningless speeches. as they say down in texas, it's all halt and no cattle. republicans are united against obama care when it comes to votes like this one, but a warring faction of tea party republicans led by ted cruz of texas are making it very real threat to shut down the u.s. government if the law is not killed. apparently the strategy is being lambasted as silly, dumb, unachievable, and actually, political suicide. and the people saying those words are not democrats, it's the republicans in congress who are saying those things. and those criticisms are delicate compared to what's in today's "washington post." charles krauthammer, a

pulitzer prize winning conservative columnist -- that's what we call them when we agree with them -- says cruz belongs to the loony bin. and this is krauthammer, this is nuts. every physical showdown has rebounded against the republicans. those who fancy themselves tea party patriots fighting a sold out cocktail swilling establishment are demanding yet another cliff dive as a show of principle and manliness. but there's no principle at stake here. this is about tactics. if i thought this would work, i would support it, but i don't fancy suicide. it has a tendency to be fatal." as for manliness, the real question here is sanity. nothing could better revive the fortunes of a failing, flailing, fading democratic administration than a government shutdown where the president is portrayed as standing up to the gop on honoring our debts and paying our soldiers in the field. wow. also in the "washington post" today, michael gershon, a former george w. bush speech write are says cruz views this as the last stand against obama care, a

conservative alamo. instead, it would be a little bighorn. cruz bids to become a custer for our time, an actual shutdown of the government the only realistic outcome of his strategy would work for conservatives only if voters blamed it on obama's intransigence. so americans would need to side with the distrusted faction of a disdained institution which is pursuing a budgetary maneuver that even republican lawmakers regard as desperate, desperate, doomed. wow. what a day this is. joining us now are two msnbc political analysts dave corn of mother jones and sam stein with "the huffington post." sam, what probably brought this to a head? what finally got people like gerson and krauthammer and others i assume out there over the prairie to say we'd better be careful here. if cruz gets control of the opposition here of the republican party, we may be in trouble. >> i think it was the sheer overtness of it. it wasn't as if he was trying to set the stage for a government shutdown. he was sort of actively courting

it. and when you're trying to shut cast blame on the other side for shutting down the government, you shouldn't be the one who says let's do it. i think that's what has convinced a lot of republicans that this is a stupid if not suicidal strategy. keep in mind you also have to look at the actual implications in how this thing would work, and the congressional research service did that. and they concluded that if you wanted to defund obama care, shutting down the government wouldn't do it. a lot of this is mandatory spending. it would continue going on as if nothing had happened. so in terms of substance and in terms of strategy, i think a lot of people woke up and why exactly are we doing this. >> let's go into the why. most times when you have a mission and cruz has got a brain, where is he headed? is he up to that sort of rock 'n roll politics, opposition politics of newt gingrich which is insurgent politics, if you will? is he trying to scare us with this? terrorize? what is the plan? >> i think this is a fight between the oppositional insurrectionist wing of the republican party and basically everybody else, whether it's

john mccain in the senate or charles krauthammer in the thought leaders on the right. there are all kind of bounded against this. this is about setting up 2016. we kind of thought after 2012 and the election results that this wing, the tea party radicalized wing of the republican party was certainly not in ascendance. but ted cruz and mike lee and others are saying hey, this fight's not over yet. what does politics really abhor? a vacuum. with nothing else happening in congress these days, ted cruz, mike lee and the others can get a lot of attention by making these threats. if the republicans had any real strategy, any real legislative program going on, they wouldn't get any traction for this. >> let's go back to the numbers here. sam. >> sure. >> it looks like obama floats around 50% now, maybe a little less. generally in that area. maybe it's 45 now. congress is down around 8 in terms of public support.

now, you don't battle 4 against 45. it's a killer mission, 9-1. i forget the math. >> sure. >> it's overwhelming. why would you do it if it's going toom when all of a sudden the average person out there can't go to the national monuments, they can't go to the national parks, they can't get their checks on time or threatened with not getting them and say wait a minute, we only have one president. we may not agree with him on many things, but there is only one of them. and as for congress, we don't want those guys running the show. >> twofold. one is that the 8% popularity rating applies to an institution at large, not to the member itself. and so for a ted cruz or rand paul or marco rubio -- >> do you think he's higher than average? >> i think back home in the state of texas, sure. a lot of house members, of course, gerrymandered congress feel protected to do things like this and don't need to take into consideration the long-term national ramifications of what this means to the party. i think also there's a bigger issue here which is that the longer that this thing, the health care law is in existence,

the harder it is to repeal. 2014 is a big year. a lot of benefits come into effect in 2014. it's a lot easier to repeal a law in abstract than take away the coverage you've gotten through obama care. hey, i'm going to reintroduce discrimination over preexisting conditions. i think a lot of people actually do recognize this and are making that type of calculation as well. >> let's look at how extreme the opposition is to obama. here is an example of what the republicans are in line with. you think cruz is far out there, at a town hall meeting in alabama the other day, republican representative martha roby was confronted by an angry tea party constituent who spouted some pretty awful stuff about the president. it's her response, actually lack of response that is notable. here's the back and forth. >> what i need from you is to know what you can do, you and your fellow con communist colleagues in the lower house, what you can do to stop these communist tyrannical executive orders laid down by this foreign-born american-hating communist despot. what can you do for me?

we need to know. >> so thank you for your question. he said it loud enough that you all heard it. look, i can't emphasize the oversight part of my job enough. and i think that that gets lost in what we do every day because that's exactly what we're doing. we're chasing down these executive orders. we're chasing down these rules that are promulgated that are backdoor legislation by agencies whether it's the epa, the irs, go down the list. >> you know, sam, and david, i've been saying for weeks if not months the real leader of the republican party today is no way is it john boehner. >> no, no, no. >> the real leader of the republican party is the loudest crazy person at the next town meeting you've got to go to if you're a republican member of congress.

that blond guy, that nutcase that calls the president foreign born despot was more powerful in that room than the member of congress who kowtowed to him. john boehner had said let's be reasonable, she would have shouted her down. this guy shouted her down. >> props to tim murphy for reporting this first actually. that was very great to jump on that. it gets to the question we've been talking about. ted cruz is not playing for people who are worried about shutting down the government. he's playing towards the republican base and -- >> the birthers. he was out with gohmert the other day, louis gohmert, one of the wildest of the birth errs. >> let me finish this. the pew study foundation came out with a study the other day asking republicans do you think your party is going in the right direction or not. most said no. but 54% said they wanted it to be more conservative. so that's what he's doing. this is all setting up 2016 and becoming the nominee or the champion of the guy who asked that question. >> well, that's the great question, sam. is more conservative meaning buying into people who say the

president's foreign born, he's an american-hating communist despot? the irony and i'm not knocking him for this, but ted cruz is foreign born. >> it's true. >> i mean, i know they take it as a deeriesive comment. it happens to be an accident. his mother was up in canada when he she delivered him. this right wing crazy crowd thinks foreign born is like evil and refer to the president being foreign born . that would somehow disqualify him, but when you have an american mother, you are american. your thoughts? >> yes, is he foreign born and yes the comment was reprehensible to the member of congress. there are concerns with what the president did the employer mandate. it has been done before. i understand the substantive concerns of that. but taking the argument to that extreme really is a distraction. it really is upsetting, and i don't think it does the party any good. >> let's get back to where we starred tonight. is this crazy?

is this extremism? what charles krauthammer calls looniness on the part of the people like cruz going all the way out there saying we're going to shut down the government. we haven't gotten to november yet. this is just september. we're going to default and the chinese will go crazy and ask for their money back. >> yep. >> could be dangerous. >> well, of course. >> is there a tipping point where obama become serenaded by the middle of the country as our only hope. >> i think there is a tipping point. and we saw this with the last showdown. the republicans in public opinion polls lost a lot more ground than did barack obama. but the guys who are forcing this or trying to force this on the republican side don't care. as i said before, they're in favor of chaos, destruction. they want to be an oppositional force, not a governing force. that's where the civil war is in the republican party. >> i think we're out. i love you getting that tape, because it shows a lot. that's who they're allied with, the birthers and the crazies. thank you, david corn. if that guy wants to come on the show, that guy who said the

things about the president, come on. we'd like to talk to you. coming up, ariel castro in court. what a scene that was. but a lot of people are asking why is a man who has admitted his monstrous guilt allowed his big moment in the spotlight? that's a question we're going get to right away. and also the racial divide we saw in the george zimmerman trial is reflected about how people think about the stand your ground law. whites support it by the same measure that african-americans oppose it. i think it's all tied into this trial. you've seen him countless times in beer ads, the most interesting man in the world. now the man behind the most interesting man in the world beer ads is out there doing something interesting. he looks interesting. this is "hardball," the place for politics. ocuvite. help protect your eye health.

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we're back. yesterday in a courtroom in cleveland, ohio, we saw two extremes. on the one hand, there was a compose and brave young woman, there she is, michelle knight, facing the monster who enslaved her for over a decade. on the other hand, we saw the monster himself, ariel castro, ramble on for 16 minutes with excuses and half-hearted apologies. even as he apologized to the women, he still insisted what went on in his house of horrors was normal. >> i would come home and just be normal like a normal family. these accusations that i would come home and beat her and beat them, those are totally wrong,

your honor, because like ifore, person. i know what i did is wrong but i'm not a violent person. i simply kept them there without them being able to leave. i am truly i sorry to the dejesus family, michelle. and amanda. and you guys know a lot of harmony went on in that home. >> i don't think those lawyers like him either. as the judge later told him, the prisoner there, there isn't another person in the entire country who would agree with his description of being nonviolent. but what was it like for michelle knight, the victim? and the families of the other victims to sit in that courtroom and listen to their torturer speak like that? someone who knows that kind of pain too well is marc klaas, a good buy. in 1996, klaas was in court for the sentencing of his 12-year-old daughter's convicted murderer. as the murderer addressed the court, he used part of the time to taunt klaas with a vile accusation.

here we see how klaas reacted. let's watch. >> burn in hell, davis. [ bleep ] >> well, why do monsters and like davis and ariel castro just yesterday get to taunt their victims and their families? why do we not object or their lawyers about to his self-important screed? marc klaas is the founder of the klaas kids foundation along with former prosecutor and defense attorney seema iyer. thank you both. marc, it's always an honor to have you on, sir. what did you think watching? i guess you watched on television yesterday as castro, the kidnapper, rapist, whatever, killer, murderer, he is all of them, walked in there and spoke like he was jeremiah, he had some big message for everybody? >> it was absolutely and completely offensive. i really, chris, physically started shaking because it took me right back to that time 17 years ago when i sat in a courtroom and had to listen to another extreme pervert excuse

and justify his vile crimes. it was an affront to humanity, i thought. >> let me bring in seema iyer, you're an attorney. i noticed that the victim, michelle the other day, she was very careful. she addressed to the court. she spoke to the judge in reading that statement. but the defendant here, who is already convicted now was able to turn around 360 degrees and basically enjoy the confrontation with his victim. >> chris, a psychopath and a sociopath and someone narcissist narcissistic, of course he wants the attention. and unfortunately, our law recognizes that. there are certain critical stages in the process. and this is what case law and statute tells us. so this sentencing is one of those critical stages. he has the right to speak, and he has the right to speak as long or as little as he wants. the difference between mr. castro and ms. knight is that ms. knight was well

prepared by the prosecutors and probably her lawyer. mr. castro, as you can see from those defense attorneys, and, chris, you know, for the audience, this was kind of an aberration, not something they're used to see. for me -- >> let's watch him now in action, mr. castro, ariel castro. i don't have to call him anymore. ariel castro winking sort of at the judge after enjoying eye contact with everybody in the room. he talks to the court about the sex with the three victims was consensual, he said, that they asked for it. it's that gross. let's watch him. >> most of the sex that went on in the house practically all of it was consensual. these allegations about being forceful on them, that is totally wrong. because there was times that they would even ask me for sex, many times. and i learned that these girls are not virgins from their

testimony to me. they had multiple partners before me. >> marc klaas, i guess that resounded to you. they asked for it, as if tied up or chained up in a basement for a decade, getting only your food from this guy, the only food you got, scared to death he is going to come down and beat you, rape you again or kill your kid or whatever, or drive you to a miscarriage or whatever he's going to do next to you, that's called nonviolent by his terms, and that's called asking for it. >> you know, i mean the only good result of his being allowed to give this testimony is that it gave us a window into exactly what his soul is like. he talked about a harmonious relationship within that house. well, for him, a harmonious situation is one where he gets to imprison, gets to rape, gets to bet beat and gets to torture multiple victims.

that shows you exactly how evil and horrible this creature really is. iee. >> go ahead. >> i agree completely with mr. klaas. and mr. klaas, because of his own tragedy, he understands that this person -- chris, you're trying to talk about him like you can connect with him. you cannot connect with him. he is a sociopath. that is not my opinion. that is a clinical fact from almost 20 years of dealing with people like mr. castro. so you cannot try to explain why he did what he did. in his mind, that was harmonious. in his mind, that was a home. for us, it is evil. we had the opportunity and the unfortunate predicament to look at evil in the eye. and hopefully, we will never see this man again. >> tell me about court procedure. maybe marc knows this too. you first, seema. is it within the bounds of an attorney for the victims there to call to order that moment and say you cannot talk about -- >> no. >> you can't shut the guy up?

no, you can't shut the guy up. and okay, so just to be clear, the attorneys for the victims, they are civil attorneys that were doing just kind of damage control, okay? but the prosecution represents the state who represents the victim in that will proceeding that we saw yesterday in sentencing. >> i see. >> now, you absolutely cannot cut him off, because, again, going back, under the constitution, this is a critical stage of the process. but chris, it's very important that most people did not pick up on that when he starred saying things about consent, that he wasn't torturing them, that he wasn't a sexual predator, he was bordering on violating the terms of the plea agreement and if it wasn't such a highly publicized case, i'm telling you most judges in this land may not have taken that plea. this may have all been for naught. >> let's take it back to the real world, the horrific world in which the woman herself was captured in. here's michelle knight talking about what it was really like in the captivity of this guy.

>> ariel castro, i remember all the times that you came home talking about what everybody else did wrong. and act like you weren't doing the same thing. you said at least i didn't kill you. for you took 11 years of my life away. and i have got it back. i spent 11 queers in -- years in hell. now your hell is just beginning >> marc, you've been helping out michelle knight. tell me about that relationship that you helped with her. >> well, sure. about six months ago, the klaas kids foundation started a new fund called the klaas family housing fund. and it was the brainchild of a local real estate lady named tracy mclaughlin who wanted to do something in her field to help the families of missing persons. so we came up with this idea of funding this new fund to be able to pay to the families of missing persons so that they wouldn't slip into financial ruin as they were looking for their children, but then all of

this business happened in cleveland and it turned out that michelle was one of the three young women that didn't really have a family to go back to. so we made the decision to take the money that was in the fund which was about $6,000 and donate it directly to michelle for the express purpose of allowing her to pay for her living expenses. >> marc klaas, it's always an honor to have you on our show. i hope you can proceed with your effort to get justice, not just in your case, but as much as you can get in your lifetime after what you have been through. thank you, sir, for coming on. seema iyer, great to have you on the show. we'll be right back after this. over 100,000 workers. the postal service is recording financial losses, but not for reasons you might think. the problem? a burden no other agency or company bears. a 2006 law that drains $5 billion a year from post office revenue while the postal service is forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts.

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has oats that can help lower cholesterol? and it tastes good? sure does! wow. it's the honey, it makes it taste so... well, would you look at the time... what's the rush? be happy. be healthy. back to "hardball." now for the sideshow. it was an accidental slip of the tongue that reaffirmed one of the worst stereotypes of the back country. u.s. congressman joe bonner of

alabama actually recalled an embarrassing story during his farewell speech in the house yesterday afternoon. here he was explaining how he once mixed up the word insects with the word incest. >> i said you know we have a real problem with incest in south alabama. [ laughter ] i said, in fact, i would venture a guess that we have more problems with incest in my district in alabama than in any other congressional district in america. so i got back to my office, thinking i had delivered one of the best speeches on insects ever made, and my staff said joe, in about two minutes you just reinforced in the minds of all americans what we have a problem with in south alabama. >> that's an honest guy. next up, he's the most interesting guy in the world, at least on tv that is.

since his first appearance on american television in 192006, the man has been an advertising icon. most are familiar are the bearded gentleman's feats of strength, daring adventures and debonair charm. but the actor who plays this hemingwayesque character jonathan goldsmith has taken on another real life after you world joining clear path international that aids survivors of landmine and bomb accidents. here he is in vietnam talking about the group. >> these are live bombs in a moment or two, we're going to blow them up. >> i'm here in vietnam to meet with bomb accident survivors being helped by a very special group. clear path international. sadly, millions of bombs left over from that conflict continue to maim and kill men, women, and children. mine's advisory group was kind enough to let me detonate two large piles of bombs. it felt good to hit that switch and remove these threats forever.

>> so wouldn't you like to have dinner tonight with the world's most interesting man? anyway, up next, interesting in another way. anthony weiner actually, will he bounce back in the new york mayor's race? he's certainly trying. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. it was progressively getting worse, and at that point i knew i had to do something. once i started taking the lyrica the pain started subsiding. [ male announcer ] it's known that diabetes damages nerves. lyrica is fda approved to treat diabetic nerve pain. lyrica is not for everyone. it may cause serious allergic reactions or suicidal thoughts or actions. tell your doctor right away if you have these, new or worsening depression, or unusual changes in mood or behavior. or swelling, trouble breathing, rash, hives, blisters, changes in eyesight including blurry vision, muscle pain with fever, tired feeling,

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networks over fees of the three million networks in new york, dallas, los angeles and other networks. back to "hardball." welcome back to "hardball." the weiner mobile rolls on. the twice disgraced new york mayoral candidate has endured a political beating from all sides. his campaign manager quit this week. he went from top dog to fourth in the polls. his communications chief has been lambasted for her foul-mouthed rant. and the clintons are wisely keeping their distance, have you noticed? if your think weiner will shrink from the new york spotlight, forget about it. after a campaign event this morning, he engaged in a round robin series of interviews with local media including wnbc's andrew siff. he struck a defiant tone when asked about his issues. >> you can if you want use this

is entire interview to talk about the scandal, trying to come up with some new form of the question. you can try a new formulation, did you see this, did you see that. look, i know it's out there. i did these things. i'm embarrassed by them. i'm trying to put them behind me. i want to put them -- i want going forward to have a conversation with citizens about what they care about. i mean, if you really think that this is what people get up in the morning and lincoln house is concerned about, if you think a middle class person trying to figure out why the public school they went to is not as good as it used to be, if you think that someone who lost their middle class job and now has a restaurant wage job cares about the cover of the new yorker, i think you might be wrong. >> the campaign rolls on. you can see new york loves an underdog. can he make it in the debates later this month? can he pull a comeback? could that be a turning point, the debates? as they say, every dog his his day, right? andrew siff is the reporter who

interviewed weiner today and michael greenbaum from "the new york times." gentlemen, let me pose something for the prosecution. if you go into an interview with wnbc today, they'll talk about a scandal which rocked you from first place down to fourth place. otherwise, if you don't want to talk about that, you don't go into the interview. you don't try to write the questions as well as the answers. that's my thought. we write the questions, they write the answers. if you think the question's coming, don't go into the situation. your thoughts, andrew. >> chris, he knew the question was coming. keep in mind it was their campaign that reached out to us and to the other affiliates offering up the one-on-one interview. so i think he wanted to send a message today that he was going to at least try and declare the scandal and move on. i think he is very realistic and knows that that won't happen, but i think he wanted to take a more combative tone today and to send a message that that's the fiery tone of anthony wean they're people remember from congress, and that's the message he wanted to send out today. >> how successful will he be? can you measure this? he's tried to personify himself as the people of new york. it's not that he's embarrassed

them, which he has, and embarrassed the city's name. i'm telling you, more coming from the republicans the next couple of years on this, especially if he does well in the primary. but he said no, i'm not the guy that's embarrassed new york. i'm new york. i'm the guy watching this thing. it's one of these old political transformations where you reposition yourself not as the guy causing the trouble but somehow you're the trouble, the media, and he's just a new yorker trying to get his apartment fixed. >> he's walking an fine line. he campaigned on staten island on friday of last week, and a retired school teacher came up to him and said if she had done what he had done, she would have been fired. by the same token, he is getting a warm reception in his old congressional district in queens and campaigning in much safer ground this week. he has been getting applause. he has been finding that crowds will listen do his message, but it's been a little bit of a delicate balance. he knows there are some new yorkers who are truly disgusted by his behavior and haven't moved beyond it. he says that's okay. i think there are enough other new yorkers who know my record

who will vote for me. >> well, in a wide primary, that makes sense, michael. a wide primary. what's he need to get into the runoff? 35? 40? >> no, he could score somewhere in the low 20s even and make into it the second part because it's such a splintered field this year. >> really? you'd have to beat out thompson who never seems to get above 20. so you'd have to squeak above thompson, go in against quinn. and he wouldn't be able to beat her, would he? >> i don't think so. you got to the think about his priorities going into the race. everything breaks his way, becomes mayor of new york city. but more realistically, he has a respectable showing in the polls, he brings back his credibility as a politician who can, you know, go on tv, have a job in and out of government. right now he's back to square one. >> he's using the public at subway stops and on media interviews to bathe himself of his troubles. in other words, the more exposure which has always been his game anyway, the more he gets with us, it sort of cleans him. this air bath he's taking right now. at the end he comes out second

or third or even a strong fourth and he can claim he's back in business, michael. i'm a politician. >> i think that's the goal. but the thing is he's back to square one after this second round of revelations surfaced last week. he's going to have a lot of trouble. this is apology tour part 3. we're seeing him go through the same script we saw. >> there's no reason to believe it's cleaned up either, is there? the only thing we know about him is what will he's told us. he's never come clean. >> well, i did ask him that today, chris. i asked him when was the last time he sent an explicit message of any time. he said it was a year ago. it was not past september of last year and the first time he put a time stamp on things. >> oh, it's creeping. it was august two days ago. now it's september. >> he said august, maybe early september, definitely not november, definitely 100% not 2013. and he also said 100% not, he is 100% not sexting or messaging with anyone right now. so he was more declarative about that than he has been in the past.

>> does he realize how stupid -- you realize, andrew, and you're a young age, how absurd this conversation is? >> not as young as i look, chris, covering anthony weiner for 12 years. >> you're talking about the guy that wants not to be forgiven or left alone on the corner without people spitting on him but to be be made the mayor of the greatest city in the world. that's what he wants as his acceptance here. it isn't to be forgiven, it's to be crowned for what he has done. >> he tried a new argument this week at some of the mayoral forums which is you see the pounding i've been taking in the media, and i'm still standing up here and taking it. that is a quality you want in your mayor. that's a new argument that he has tried out this week on the crowds. it's an aapplause line. >> let's talk about this. let's talk about associations. i have always said i'm not a new yorker. i love the city. i love going out there. but does new york want their name associated with this guy if he wins? weiner was asked, here's somebody i don't think wants to be associated with him, hillary clinton.

he was asked about it, and here's what he said. >> i have no reason to believe she's annoyed. i've got pundits saying it means this or that. they don't know what they're talking about. >> do you think a man who is politically smart enough to get elected to congress and to be able to play this game the way he is playing it doesn't know that hillary is being abused, their relationship is being abused by this, michael? >> i think the clinton world right now is protect the brand. you see the most trusted adviser to hillary clinton phillipe reinees has started playing a role in the weiner campaign, advising his wife whether to appear in a commercial. there's tea leaves suggesting there's concern in the clinton camp. >> what can they do? >> they're sending in representatives. it's unclear whose interests are being expressed here. mr. reines is a very good of friend of miss abedin's. something of a little sister the clinton world. he says he is mostly just trying to mitigate the fallout for her

and help a friend through a difficult time. of course, right around the time he talked to ms. abedin before she came out at the press conference last week, he called mrs. clinton to let her know what was to be happen. >> okay. 15 years the clintons have had a clean record without any embarrassments like this. they've done a good job. they've cleaned up their act. they get all the credit for that and this comes along and reminds everybody of the whole problem. i don't think it's going to hurt in the end but i can't believe they're not going to think it does. andrew siff, thank you so much. and michael greenbaum for joining us. up next, the racial divide in america. complete disagreement over stand your ground laws. let's talk about it. why would two groups in america disagree so much about a point of law that's supposed to be just to all? this is "hardball," the place for politics. some companies just don't appreciate the power of conversation! you know, i like you! i like you too! at discover, we treat you like you'd treat you. get the it card and talk to a real person. "do i really need to add downy every time?"

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yer always after me lucky charms! whoa. i forgot how good these taste! [ lucky ] ♪ they're magically delicious well, the united states of america may not be loved everywhere on the planet, but we're still loved in a lot of places, very much so. here are the top five countries that view america most favorable. number five, kenya, or as the brits would say, kenya. number four, senegal in west africa. number three, ghana in west africa. that's three african countries in a row in the top five. israel, and of course the country with the highest percentage of people who view us favorably, the philippines, where 85% say they have a favorable opinion of our country. now the countries who don't like us, who view us unfavorably. no surprise they're all in the middle east, i guess. number five, turkey, only one in five views america favorably over there. number four, i hate to see this, egypt. number three, the palestinian

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at olayfresheffects.com. we've been able to clear away rthe rubble from the financialf the amcrisis.people, we started to lay a new foundation for stronger, more durable economic growth. but we're not there yet. what we need is not a 3-month plan or even a 3-year plan. we need a long-term american strategy: job security with good wages and durable industries. a good education. reducing poverty. reducing inequality. growing opportunity. i'm going to keep pushing to make high-quality preschool available for every four-year-old in america it's time for the minimum wage to go up. (cheers) but i won't be able to do it alone, so i'm going to be calling... on all of us to take up this cause. good jobs; a better bargain for the middle class... and the folks who are working to get into the middle class; an economy that grows from the middle-out. that's what we need. (cheers)

and for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these stand your ground laws, i just ask people to consider if trayvon martin was of age and armed, be could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? and do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting mr. zimmerman who had

followed him in a car because he felt threatened? and if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws. >> well, there's a law professor talking there and a good one. welcome back to "hardball." that was president obama responding to the george zimmerman verdict. that was the day on the day he did that, and there he was proposing the changes to the stand your ground law. the president's proposing it especially in florida. he must be talking about that one. the racial divide we saw during the zimmerman trial is reflected in how african-americans and white people view stand your ground laws today. the quinnipiac poll just released a new poll that showed that 57%, that's three out of five african-americans oppose such laws while only 37% support them. the numbers are reversed when you look at the white people. joining us right now is mark glaze, the executive director of mayors against illegal guns and jonathan capehart. jonathan, i think you and i agree on a lot of this.

we live in the city. we don't like guns generally and the hands of people walking up and down the street. i wish without invading anyone's civil liberties, some way you could fell they had a gun, without offending anybody. i don't want any guns on the street. street. i don't want them in the movie theater. i don't want them anywhere near me. ideally i would like to be like in the old west where you leave your guns at the city limits. we live in a world where the people might mug you, someone might have a gun in their car. let's start with the racial piece of this. is this going to be an historic divide? because there's already a polarized view about guns generally, as you and i know. >> right. >> african-americans, they live in cities a lot of them. they look upon guns as a problem. >> right. i mean, i'm not surprised by the quinnipiac poll and the racial divide and even the political divide that it shows. and this comes, remember, three weeks almost to the day after george zimmerman was acquitted. and was acquitted -- >> the only time you heard that phrase used. >> right, right. and even george zimmerman in his defense didn't use a stand your ground defense.

what people have to remember is the language of the self-defense law in florida is the stand your ground law. when you look at the jury instructions, it is identical to the florida law. so, of course african-americans who are very upset by the zimmerman acquittal of course are going to look at stand your ground as a law that they just can't possibly support. >> let's just do it for people that are trying to figure this out like me. i'm not a lawyer. what's the difference between standard ideas of self-defense like we learned in old cowboys movies or your life, you're allowed to defend your life against serious bodily ground. how is that different from stand your ground? >> part of the reason we don't like stand your ground laws pretty much is they're pretty much redundant of what you can already do under common law for about 400 years. right now if i go out in the parking lot and i'm leaving and i'm attacked i'm allowed to use commensurate force. the aspect that changes is if i dan de-schat the situation, i'm required to do that.

if i can talk them down, if i can walk back into the building, i can do that. and you want that in a society. >> in a schoolyard fight, we i was in them, a guy wants to punch you a couple times to get you to say uncle. you lost, you won. he's not trying to kill you. he just wants to win the fight. >> that's exactly right. >> how do you know when wanting to win the fight, the matter of manhood guys grew up with becomes i want to kill you? or beat the hell out of you? >> one way is to look at studies they've done in florida is about how this actually impacts real world cases. in more than 30% of the cases where stand your ground law was asserted and somebody ended up dying, they didn't even have a gun. >> what was the circumstance generally? >> very often somebody will come at you. they might want to have a fistfight. they might come at you with an ax handle. somebody with a gunshot you dead. where i come from -- >> would you consider the guy with the ax handle armed or not? >> not with a gun. >> i'd call him armed. >> i have a word for him. i grew up in colorado where my dad was a gun dealer, and a guy who shoots somebody who has anything other than a gun when they could have done something else like talk or fight with their fists -- >> how do you talk to a guy with an ax handle?

>> yeah, you fight him. you run away. you de-escalate the situation. >> but here's where the scales are tipped in favor of the person with the gun who decides he or she wants to stand his ground. and that is the way the law is written, it says if the person who uses the deadly force reasonably believes that they are in danger of bodily harm or death, that's where stand your ground becomes to my mind insane. how do you determine that? how do you define? >> skip the zimmerman case. it's too hot. give me a case where you think somebody unreasonably claimed fear of death or bodily harm grievous bodily harm, when they shouldn't be able to do that? >> i would say the zimmerman case. >> then that gets to the question do you believe his testimony or not. >> if you look at the -- i don't want to give you a specific case -- >> issues of fact. >> but if you look at the same study of the stand your ground law in florida, in more than 60% of the cases the person who shot and asserted that defense could clearly have walked away or

otherwise de-escalated the situation, and they chose not to. >> and, chris, in the zimmerman case, there were many opportunities for george zimmerman to de-escalate. he could have identified himself as a neighborhood watch person. he could have asked trayvon martin who are you? are you lost? are you staying here? there are a number of opportunities where george zimmerman could have de-escalated. >> that's the part i have the problem with it. not that everybody's been right. i agree he shouldn't have gotten out of his car, shouldn't have had a gun, shouldn't have approach eed the guy, all that stuff. but what we don't know is the critical aspect of what happened in the minutes before he was shot. was his head smashed in? how many times? how close was he to seriously being knocked out? we don't know. it's all in that area of reasonable doubt. and i think that's why they acquitted. >> and that's the problem with stand your ground. because rather than an investigation that the police conduct and a prosecution based on the facts, you get this presumption in the favor of people who -- >> you're the lawyer here. what would be the presumption if you just had standard self-defense? >> you would -- they would have to prove that within a reasonable doubt, they had

reason to act in the way that they did. and this tips the scales on behalf of people who shoot. >> thank you for coming on. >> thank you. >> have a nice weekend. >> thanks, chris. you too. >> thank you for coming on. you'll all be back again. this issue is not going away. let me start the finish tonight with the jobless rate coming down. it's pretty good news for obama today. it dropped a lot, almost three full points now since he came into office. ...so you say men are superior drivers? yeah? then how'd i get this... [ voice of dennis ] ...safe driving bonus check?

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let me finish tonight with this. we got word today that the unemployment rate has dropped to 7.4%. this marks close to a full three-point drop since the joblessness of this president's inaugural year in office. in other words, the situation he inherited. with the risk of ranting, i still think this president being a democrat needs to focus on jobs right there, on employment, putting people to work. he began to do that this week offering the republicans a good deal, a good one-on-one deal. he'd cut the corporate tax rate dramatically for manufacturing if the republicans would back his proposal to get busy on this country's roads and bridges, matching growth in private sector jobs with those in the public sector. this is where we have to go as a country, rebuilding for the 21st century, getting back in the competition with europe and asia for a modern economic society. the job now is to stick with this proposal, mr. president. keep the pressure on the other side. show the republicans are the roadblock to greater job creation. they're the ones holding up full-blown recovery. that's what i think. that's that what i'm going to keep on saying. the jobless rate is down, but

not enough. we need to go at this with both fists, private and public, and do it soon. soon enough to get this recovery zooming. and that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes. tonight on "all in," the future of cars is not only super cool. it could make us all live longer. i'll talk about saving the planet one car at a time. also, if you're not sure how you feel about the practice of solitary quamt, tonight you'll hear from a man who spent eight years in solitary and the toll it has taken on him as a free man. the foreclosure crisis left a lot of people without any help and without any hope. but one city has finally taken steps to deal with the problem