u.n. here's hoping it goes well. now it is time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. ted cruz. >> here we go again. >> what are the odds there is a government shut down. >> a government shut down is over a week away. >> no american wants a government shut down. >> we're not about to shut the government down. nobody can explain how it can. >> there should be no conversation about shutting the government down. our goal is not to shut down the government. that's not the goal. our goal is to keep the government open. >> simple as that. >> i have said it thousands and thousands of times. >> the current strategy appears to be a lot like the old strategy. >> there is a tendcy towards --

>> i can't explain ted cruz. >> what is it that ted cruz has done to alienate just about everyone in his own party. >> he is the dog who caught the car. >> he doesn't really care. >> he's not going to have to suffer the consequences. >> screw what collateral damage there is. >> ted cruz has climbed out on a limb. >> i understand his great persuasiveness. >> ted cruz is out there on that limb and it's getting sawed off. >> how stupid is ted cruz. the answer is ted cruz now wants

to show his support for the house bill that defunds obama care by filibustering the bill when it comes up for a vote. senator ted cruz was for the bill before he decided to filibuster the bill. and he is so wildly out of control stupid, he is insisting that blocking the bill is the very best way to support the bill. >> the problem is that you would be blocking a bill that you actually support which would fund the government. how will you get other republican senators on board to block a bill that you support. >> well, let's be clear. last week's vote was a tremendous victory. just a few week ace go -- last week the house of representatives voted to defund obama care.

i think next week is a time for party unity. next in my view, senator republicans should stand united. to keep the funding for obama care being inserted. >> it's part of the senate rules and it says after you take cloetture that you can pass an amendment by a simple majority. >> chris wallace is correct. passing amendments only takes 51 votes. >> it would restore complete funding of obama care and that amendment will of course pass

with at least 51 democratic votes. this is just one of many, many reasons. >> every one everyone else in the senate understands that. >> i can tell you that in the united states senate we will not repeal or defund obama care. we will not. and to think we can is not rational. >> tactics and strategies ought to be based on what the real world is and we do not have the political power to do this. >> rand paul told the national review said that i don't think the president will sign any legislation that will defund obama care.

>> the exact wording of the statement is senator will support the house bill that defunds obama care. that is senator's way of saying ted cruz is barking mad. the republican leader in the senate who is being challenged on his right by a tea party crazy in kentucky still has not himself gone crazy enough to support the ted cruz strategy of trying to block the house bill in the senate. mitch mcconnel's office issued this statement. he supports the house republicans bill and would not vote to block it. joining me now. >> a senior fellow.

it is tempting for those freshman senators to come into town and say i know better than everybody. they say it can't be done so there is ted cruz trying to outsmart everyone. >> you and i disagree on this a little bit. he is not going to get this done. he just got a huge boost. >> it is very bad for everything. >> if things go wrong, all of the sudden, the democrats don't get blamed you do. things wouldn't be going wrong if you had kept the federal government open. and yet because it's not

actually going to happen, other republicans will take a bullet for it actually happening and he will come out looking like the one true conservative. >> and when he loses his campaign for president, he will also say that it didn't work for that either. let's listen to his explanation to chris wallace asked him the question about actual votes.

>> what we know is he does not have the 41 votes. nothing close to it. he will never come close to it and i'm not sure that the republicans have a very strong history of nominating the craziest person who runs for president in that group. >> right. i mean i think the calgary cruiser here has got himself in a very difficult corner. if ezra is right, so be it. but, of course, there is a lot that happens between now and then. it's getting a little difficult to see how we avoid a government shut-down unless once this thing does get pinged back to the house, speaker boehner allows a vote to go forward and pass with a lot of democrats. now that is certainly possible. a shut down and a breach of the debt ceiling but it's hard to be optimistic about that now. >> asking what is your end game.

what is your end game. the government is going to shut down a week from monday. >> i don't want the government to shut down. the american people don't want the government to shut down. i don't think that harry reed and president obama should shut down the government. if that happens, if harry reed kills this bill in the senate, i think the house should hold its ground and begin passing smaller continuing resolutions one department at a time. it should start with funding the military. fund the military and send it over and let's see if harry reed is willing to shut down the military just because he wants to force obama care on the american people. >> how's that for an end game? one continuing resolution at a time? >> that's quite an end game. it's worth noting that because of the insane way the rules work, it doesn't mean he has got

the votes to sustain it but he can cause a little bit of problem. that means given the long time to vote to break a filibuster, they wouldn't actually be able to vote until sunday. so then on sunday, you senld it send it back to the house and then the house has to come up with a number of continuing resolutions. you are sending this back to the house on sunday. if you don't pass it by tuesday, then the government has shut down. >> jerred, how do you see this playing out? >> first of all, let me say, listening to that last clip you played by ted cruz reminded me of my 11-year-old daughter when

she was 7 or 8 and she had a friend come over and they would make up the rules to a game they were going to play. it has an ad hoc quality that had nothing to do with procedure. it's actually possible for a bill to get back to the house even if it's on sunday that a week from today, next monday on the 30th, the last day of the fiscal year that the house votes for a clean cr with budget levels that continue at their current level of funding. the only way you do that is if speaker boehner is willing to take the vote, perhaps breaking the rule. he may not get a majority of a majority.

>> on the question of do you support defunding obama care if it means shutting down the government. there are 19% with ted cruz on that, 59% against. among independents it's worse for ted cruz's hopes. no real surprise in that poll, i don't think. >> no real surprise but probably the numbers are higher among republican members of the house. the thing that will be happening in the house this weekend, this is really incredible to be watching. it isn't a shut down. they are going to pass a debt krooeling. and alongside raising the debt limit. and what boehner is trying to do is convince his members that no, no, no. don't do this shut down.

this is, by the way, a more irresponsible fight than the one that ted cruise is threatening. defaulting on the dead even temporarily is much more catastrophic than shutting down the government for a period of time. and for boehner to be moving his people over to that fight and be climbing into a position that he can't climb back down from, no one in washington seems to have a good answer for how the debt ceiling fight resolves itself without any problem. eventually it will resolve itself, if they get that wrong, the results are truly catastrophic. the fact that boehner is hyping that out is really really worrying. >> thanks very much for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> coming up, an exclusive interview with the man who wrote the new profile of ted cruz

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>> he should get it. right now he is getting a federal employee subsidy. he is not part of obama care so he makes the rest of america who con va lawsuited constitutional logic makes us get it but he is exempt. >> okay, fox news. no one is making everyone get obama care health insurance. only about 15 million people

will get obama care health insurance. no one in government was exempted from obama care because no one in government was supposed to be included in obama care because people in government already have health insurance. employer provided health insurance. obama care is about helping people get insurance who do not already have it. obama care is designed to have no effect on people who already have health insurance like chief justice john roberts. but asking rand paul to understand or add and or admit any of that is asking way too much.

>> up next, republicans are now so afraid of ted cruz that they are actually sending opposition research against him to fox news. i want peacocks. peacocks? walking the grounds. in tuscany. [ man ] her parents didn't expect her dreams to be so ambitious. italy? oh, that's not good. [ man ] by exploring their options, they learned that instead of going to italy, they could use a home equity loan to renovate their yard and have a beautiful wedding right here while possibly increasing the value of their home. you and roger could get married in our backyard. it's robert, dad. [ female announcer ] come in to find the right credit options for your needs. because when people talk, great things happen.

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texas, it is writ than ted cruz has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is more intelligence, more right in both senses of the word than pretty much everyone else in our nation's capital. joining me now is the author of that piece. he is now a senior staff writer. jason, when is politico magazine coming out? >> stay tuned. you will find out. >> it's coming. so that quote that you have there about cruz's view of himself, he has come to the reluctant but unavoidable conclusion that he is more intelligent, principled and more right. that seems to emanate from him in everything that he does in the senate. >> he does not lack for self-confidence. he has a resume that should give him a fair amount of self-confidence.

pretty much every step of his career he has been an elite practitioner. he has arrived in the senate and he will be just as comfortable there as he has been everywhere else. >> but you do record a career set back that he had in this article. you talk about his work on president bush's first -- george w bush's election campaign and how he expected something big from the administration. something fitting. his view of himself. and he did not get that. and my reading of your article is that he didn't get a good job in the bush administration based largely on personality issues that people had with him? >> yeah. i think what happened during the bush campaign is not that dissimilar than what is going on now. he was young and got a very important job. he had this very impressive legal background so during the recount in florida he was involved in that. he did a very good job.

throughout the course of the campaign, his attitude rubbed people the wrong way. he was very arrogant and ambitious. he did not wind up in the white house. he got sent to the federal trade commission because i think personally, he just insulted a lot of people by his mannerisms. >> you write so far cr mpb z has proposed no major legislation and has shown no interest in changing that. he said i stop stuff. >> for right now. that's the thing that has been so puzzling about him to some of his admirers. he is a guy who is very smart. he has been very engaged.

>> he is not engaging in these debates that other people are. he probably could. he brings a lot to the table and i think he has made the political calculation that it is not reallied a van teenageous to engage in the debates. >> the man hailed as the tea party intellectual has used the intellect only sparingly since arriving in washington. you quote someone saying he's smart enough to know that it's -- i have been sitting here watching him and i am unconvinced that he is smart enough to know anything. i am going by his public record and i have heard few senators with a steady stream of stupidity on a daily basis in the senate.

>> you go back and you read his princeton thesis and you talk to colleagues of him at elementary school who might have disliked him personally but respected his intelligence. if you read his transcripts, he is a very brought guy and very disswasive. i think people are wrong to underestimate him. this is, you can argue this is very damaging for the republican party. it's damaging for the government. but whether it's good for ted cruz in terms of his political prospects, i think there is the possibility that is the case. >> i use a different score card for lawyers than i do for senators and a different score card for surgeons than i do for senators and i think you can be very good at all of the other jobs you have mentioned and be

very bad at being a senator. and based on the public evidence that i have so far, he is functioning as an abject moron as a senator and none of his academic achievements in the past make that shine any brighter. it's the stupidest senate career i have seen at such a short time, possibly ever. >> he has definitely made a splash. he has a different idea of what is happening in washington right now. i think he sees washington as completely broken. he sees -- he believes nothing is going to get done. i think he has made the conclusion, why try. when you look at someone like marco rubio. it just got him the emanity of all of the people that he will need to vote for him in the 2016 primary. cruz is saying why bother with that? that seems to be the calculation

he has made. >> thanks very much for joining us. thank you. >> thank you. coming up, robert is a movie star. okay. a documentary star, anyway. and he will tell us all about it. and later, president obama on what we need to learn from other countries. that's in the rewrite. u have joint pain and stiffness... accomplishing even little things can become major victories. i'm phil mickelson, pro golfer. when i was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, my rheumatologist prescribed enbrel for my pain and stiffness, and to help stop joint damage. [ male announcer ] enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. before starting enbrel, your doctor should test you for tuberculosis and discuss whether you've been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. you should not start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. tell your doctor if you're prone to infections,

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>> the siege in the shopping mall in nairobi is finally over.

the kenyan government claims it is now in control of the west gate mall and the attackers are believed to be from the islamist terror group. calling the country a regional pillar of stability. >> up next, robert joins me to explain why the u.s. income gap has gotten so big and why that is so bad for america. hero: if you had a chance to go anywhere in the world,

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>> as lawmakers in washington threat on the appeal the affordable care act and vote to cut nearly $40 billion from food stamps, many people are in the worst struggle of their lives economically forgotten by those lawmakers. the median income is not much different from what it was in 1989. when it was $51,681. just a little less. today's median income is down 9% from its peak of $56,000 in 1999. this despite economic growth and new jobs. former clinton labor secretary takes an in-depth look at the causes of our wealth gap. >> contrary to popular

mythology, globalization and technology have not reduced the number of jobs available. these transformations have reduced their pay. >> when you take into considerations rising costs. rising costs of rents or homes, dramatically increasing costs of health care, the rising cost of child care and the higher cost of education rising much faster than inflation. take all of these into consideration and you find that it's much worse than just stagnating wages. it's basically middle class families often with two wage earners working harder and harder and harder and getting nowhere.

>> joining me now, publy policy professor at the university of berkley. robert, you made a reference to the international effects of labor. to what extent is this an international phenomenon and the american worker, the price of american labor is in some ways competing with the price of labor in other countries and that drives down the american price? >> there is obviously an effect from globalization but also technological change. not many manufacturing jobs are coming back to the united states because they are being replaced by robotics. technology is also reducing wages for people who don't have the right education, the right connections who are not

basically in a position to add value to the global economy. what i want to emphasize and the person sitting next to me is the genius behind this film. it sounds like a down beat film. it's actually an upbeat film. the attempt was to be a positive and create a sense of hope. a lot of people are so disillusioned with their jobs and politics. they understand that historically they have bounced back. we have take p back the economy and politics. we have saved capitalism from its own excesses. >> jacob, what got you interested in this subject. what made you decide you wanted to make a documentary in this area. >> first of all, i felt it personally. i was suffering through a lot of the economic challenges that all of the middle class in america are suffering from. me and my friends were talking about it. i felt like i was desperate to have a story that explained it

to me. i just got fed up. i decided that i'm a film maker. what i can do to be active and do something about this is make a film. luckily i knew the professor to my right over here. i started asking questions about the economy and explaining it to me in a way that stepped out of the partisan fights that gave me information that i could make sense of what's happening to america and what's happening to my own personal financial situation. >> go ahead. >> he is being way too modest. he said i really want to make a film about widening inequality and the effect of all of this on our politics and economy. i want to put into film and sinmatic form. how is that going to be entertaining enough to get

people to see exit absorb it? >> sit true that i got him to participate in the film because he didn't know what he was getting into. it makes it accessible and it works as a piece of cinema. you go into a theater and turn out the lights and it feels like you have gone to see not just an issue-driven film but a film of any kind. it's a fun movie to watch and anybody can get it. even people who don't normally think they know economics and politics or care to follow these issues will get something out of this film. >> bob, in my experience, in courses that teach these kinds of facts, they really, the professors feel the obligation of presenting you with a statistical photograph of here is where we are and maybe here is where we have been.

but you take on the much bigger challenge which is what do we do about it and what can we be optimistic about. that seems to be the most challenging question. it's more than inconvenient. i'm funnier thannal gore. >> absolutely true. >> that may be a fairly low bar right there. but, it is important as you have just said it's important that people understand this issue and understand why it is hurting the economy, hurting our democracy, hurting so many people and what can be done about it. this is not a zero sum game. the rich in this country would

do better with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than they are doing right now. nobody has the purchasing power to keep it going. >> if i could add, i thought what we really needed was to step out of the normal way that people understand this. this is the issue of our times. the issue of widening income. i'm 40 years old. i didn't really understand that until i made this movie. my friends say the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and that's normal but in this film we get to see that this is an emergency right now. we're at a crisis point for our country. >> thank you both very much for joining me tonight. >> thank you. >> coming up, president obama rewrites what is now the new normal in america.

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>> here is the new yorker's new cover. that is breaking bad actor coming into the lab only to find a much worse guy is already there. the artist who did that cover said seems like there is never a shortage of real life villains to make even the most conscious free fictional character look carefree in comparison. the rewrite is next.

>> president obama spoke at another service for the victims of yet another mass murder.

the president tried to comfort families of the 12 people murdered. the president did something that presidents rarely do. he cited other countries that have rewrote their laws in the aftermath of mass shootings so they would not have to endure such tragedies again. president obama remains one of the people in washington who refuses to give up hope that we will one day take a step towards sanity to make it more difficult for mass murderers to get their hands on america's weapons of mass destruction. >> these families have endured a shattering tragedy. it ought to be a shock to all of us. it ought to obsess us.

it ought to lead to some sort of transformation. in the united kingdom, in australia. when a single mass shooting occurred, they understood that there was nothing ordinary about this kind of carnage. they endured great heartbreak. they immobilized and they changed. and mass shootings became after after the heartbreaking interviews with families, after all of the speeches and pundits and commentary. nothing happens. sometimes i fear there is a creeping resignation that these

tragedies are just somehow the way it is. no other advanced nation endures this kind of violence. none. here in america, the murder rate is three times what it is in other developed nations. the murder rate with guns is ten times what it is in other developed nations. and there is nothing inevitable about it. we americans are not more violent people than folks in other countries. we're not inherently more prone to mental health problems. we don't do enough. we don't take the basic common

sense actions to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and dangerous people. what's different in america is easy to get your hands on a gun. and a lot of us know this. the sense that our politics are frozen and that nothing will i ins cyst there is a common sense way to preserve our rights while at the same time reducing the gun violence that unleashes so much mayhem on a regular basis. it may not happen tomorrow and it may not happen next week. it will happen. our tears are not enough.

our words and our prayers are not enough. if we really want to honor these 12 men and women, if we really want to be a country where we can go to work and go to school and walk our streets free from senseless violence, without so many lives being stolen, then we're going to have to change. we're going to have to change. ...so you say men are superior drivers?

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senseless violence, but if we can prevent even one tragedy like this, save even one life, spare one family what these families are going through, surely we have an obligation to try. i fear there is a creeping obligation that these tragedies are somehow the way it is. >> the day after the massacre, sandy phillips was in washington. she was speaking from her tragic experience as the parent of one of the 12 people gunned down in the aurora, colorado movie theater shooting in 2012. >> it took six years to get the initial brady law passed and sarah and jim brady didn't give up. those of us who are involved,

we're not giving up. preventing gun violence. sandy, first of all, to both of you, i am very, very sorry for your loss of your daughter? and that's the reason you're in this dialogue tonight and will continue to be in it. and i have to imagine that given the loss. >> it took six votes over seven years to get the initial brady bill passed. we know that bill needs to be expanded to online sales.

we will finish the job. it will take time. and that gives us hope. >> you know, you can't stop every one of these things. both sides agree on that. you can't stop every one of these things. what the president is talking about is how easy do we want to make it for mass murderers to act on impulses with the best equipment in the world. >> you're right. we can't stop them all. but we can stop a lot of them. 20 years ago. brady enacted some laws to start

background checks. background checks that cover online sales. >> it stopped nearly 2.1 million purchasers from getting guns. when you stop and think 2.1 million people. >> i think we just lost our connection to -- and do -- now we're telling -- do we have them back? we don't have them. okay.

but i do think -- i think we have one more piece of what president obama had to say yesterday, let's listen to that. >> by now, it should be clear that the change we need will not come from washington even when tragedy strikes washington. change will come the only way it ever has come and that's from the american people. so the question now is not whether as americans we care in moments of tragedy. clearly we care. our hearts are broken again. we care so deeply about these families. but the question is do we care enough? >> do we care enough? that is the question the president left us with yesterday. sandy and lonnie phillips

certainly care enough especially because of the tragedy they have been through. i want to thank them for joining us tonight. dangerous cruz. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. a big story on hillary clinton tonight on that terrorist attack in kenya. but i want to say a word about this ted cruz guy. not since joe mccarthy have we seen a senator with such sinister self-assuredness. he knows who and what he hates. he hates everything about president obama. his goal is to exterminate the entire obama record. reject everyone obama nominates for office. demagoguery and history shows it, while dynamite for the short