obama to republicans. let's play "hardball." >> good evening. i'm chris matthews in new york. let me start tonight with this. president obama lays down the law. he is doing what critics on the left have urged him to do for five years. he is saying what he wants. his new budget says no to austerity, no cuts in social security. he says yes again to a big hike in the federal minimum wage, right up there to $10.10. message to the democratic base, barack obama is with you all the way. message to the republicans, you guys had your chance when i was talking deal over entitlements.

you said no to taxes. now i'm saying no. the president's political message could be not hardly any sharper. this is going to be one tough election year. he is saying november is going to turn on who brings out their base. now hear this. president obama is going to do nothing between now and then, meaning november, that causes anything but joy for the democratic base. he is going to try to juice the base. social security, you've never had a better friend than me, he is saying. higher minimum wage? same deal. well, tonight we take a bold new look at a bold new president. richard wolffe is an msnbc political analyst and executive editor of msnbc.com. and joy reid is the host of "the reid report" debuting this monday, three days hence at 2:00 p.m. eastern here on msnbc. i want to start with you, joy, in this, the new look at the president. no more simpson-bowles. we're going down, meet down the middle. we're going to have a marriage of right and left. pretty clearly identification with the progressive wing of his party. pretty clear statement of clear-cut, old democratic principles.

>> absolutely. and you said it in your intro. midterm elections, even more than any other election, are simply about getting out the base. this is not politics of trying to persuade the other side that you'll work with them. no. president obama has got to get the base of the democratic party to do what they don't normally do, which is turn out in large numbers in a midterm. to do that, he has to strip away all the compromise stuff. he's going to strip away everything that irritated the democratic base over the last five years and he's now giving them exactly what they want. a hard line on social security. and more importantly, he is using the "s" word. spending. the mother's milk of states. he is going to the governors and did so today, i want to spend money on infrastructure job training, things democrats particularly at the state level love. >> let's talk about the politics. and the policy. because i think they coincide here. richard, thanks for joining us. >> it's my pleasure. >> this president is not a fiscal hawk. he is not sitting out there thinking of ways to reduce the debt. he thinks the deficit is coming down quite nicely, thank you. he believes the government can

help create demand. he is a keynesian. he has probably said to himself, i don't believe in cutting debt. i don't believe in trying to cut the deficit this current year in the current situation of recovery. i don't think republicans want to do it either. so why am i pretending anymore that i believe in debt reduction and i believe that they might go along with it. so ending the pretense, along with what joy said and i said before, it looks like he is now saying okay, you know what? i'm a progressive. and i basically think we could use a little more stimulus. we're going to get through a little more spending. and by the way, i'm not touching social security. no more chained cpi or that stuff. your thoughts. >> he is a progressive but he's also a realist. and the realistic view of the government finance and the economy has changed. that's to say the economy has bounced back better than people thought it would at a time of simpson-bowles. the deficit is looking a whole lot better because of things like the sequester cut, because health care costs aren't rising so quickly. but the third element is the politics has changed. you don't hear people getting fired up about the deficits and

debt, saying that it's the world's greatest threat to american values anymore. all of that has changed when this president looks at all of that and said, well, if i don't have a partner in terms of this compromise, then why should i get hit from the left and the right? the president's aides will tell you time and again, unlike 2008, 2007, when they said well, if we're getting criticized from both sides, that means we're telling uncomfortable truths. now they'll say after so many years in office, if we get hit by both sides, that's the worst position for us to be in. he's not going to do that again. >> richard, here's my theory, a week or so ago i started talking, you know discharge. meaning, wait, don't democrats and minorities in the house sit around waiting for republicans to push minimum wage, it's not going to do it. you get 218 votes you'll get it on the floor. even if they call short, imagine going into the room. it's like card check with the labor unions. they come walk in the door, we would like you to sign this. peter king is waiting for them. peter king, he doesn't want to not sign it. pat meehan, mike fitzpatrick,

these other guys, they're going to say wait a minute, if i don't sign this thing, they'll be able to go out and announce the democrats that i, representing a lot of working -- i've said no to minimum wage. i think it's a great way to screw the other side into doing something you want them to do. and it's a win-win, because if they don't do it, you kill them in november. >> right. if you're going to fight about jobs, if you're going to talk about middle class prosperity and opportunity, if that's what you think the 2016 and 2014 elections are going to be fought on, this is a great issue. it's a little bit of a color of politics, right? you're not saying you really think this is going to get through. but what is different here more than just the politics is you have retailers. you have the businesses that republicans say they speak for saying well, i'm okay with it, when the gap is out there saying we can afford this, that changes the dynamic. you've got not just who is in touch with the middle class, but who is in touch with the real economy. and that's where i think democrats have an opening. >> house majority leader eric cantor, virginia is readying his troops for battle in a memo just obtained by nbc news entitled

the imperial presidency outlines the attack strategy on president obama as the march to the midterm picks up. there will be bills planned to quote, restore the balance of power created by our powers. they say, and the memo also makes clear they will continue the drum beat criticizing the president's health care plan. first of all we know they're going to hit obamacare. fair enough. pure politics. we understand that. going back to this constitutional threat, this is really this is really ridiculous. that president obama is somehow lyndon johnson, that he is some sort of guy who stretches his arms and makes people do stuff? he sort of takes you in the back room and beats you and gets his way. what is this, this notion of him? this president has been a mild mannered ceo of this country and the idea that he's some sort of imperial presidency, i don't know, i guess they're really playing to their base with that kind of talk. >> well, they are. obviously it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. look at the number of executive orders out there.

it's a matter of interpretation. look at how the two strategies of playing to the base actually stack up against each other not in terms of size of the base, but whether you can reach someone who is persuadable in the suburban places where these midterms are actually going to get decided. and what you have. you have an imperial presidency charge against the minimum wage rise. which one is going to have more populace reach, not just for your core voters, but for some of those fringer, more infrequent ones who are smaller than a presidential cycle, but can still make the difference. i don't think these two strategies really stack up in the same way. >> we know the big one tonight, the big announcement tonight. thanks for joining us. the big news, the president is playing hardball. he is coming out for complete protection of social security benefits. everyone watching who cares about it should know where he stands. 100% support for the full cost of living adjustments coming up, no change in that. and all out for the working people, pushing hard for a real double-down i think of the minimum wage fight for $10.10.

don't forget everybody, after the reid report. interesting title, the reid report. 2:00 eastern here on msnbc. there she is joy reid. thanks for joining us again. thank you richard. coming up, the tale of two christies. the old tough guy, we know him pretty well. and now the damage control mode he is on right now. plus, the conservative clown car is back making a return. among them u.s. congressman steve king is back and says yes, it's true, illegal immigrants do have calves the size of cantaloupes from lugging pot across the border. especially the kids. also the right's love hate relationship with bill clinton. hate him when he's president. love him when they're bashing obama, then hate him again now that hillary is a threat to run. and yes, that is first lady michelle obama on "the tonight show" sketch with jimmy fallon and will farrell in this case in drag.

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welcome back to "hardball." chris christie's old empire continues to crumble. "the new york times" is reporting that paul nunziato, the head of the port authority police union who says the phony traffic study was his idea is now stepping aside from the union's day-to-day operations. that's according to a person briefed on the matter. in a statement nunziato has asked one of his deputies to take a more active role. in other words the story is true. so where's christie? yesterday christie amped up his damage control efforts at a town hall in a part of the state that's been friendly to him in the past. what caught people's attention there, particularly reporters covering the event, was the abrupt change in the governor's public personality. the "new york times" said, quote, the man who once commanded these rooms just by walking into them seemed unmistakably mortal. "the washington post" said it was nothing like christie's

previous town halls. deliberately low-key. and "the bergen record" noted that the governor's usual swagger and sarcasm was gone. instead he quote offered empathy and his undivided attention. what a shocker. this is the image he left people with, the larger than life christie kneeling to the floor to talk to a 3-year-old. this is the portrait of a politician in survival mode. jonathan capehart is an opinion writer with "the washington post" and msnbc contributor. and katie glick is a reporter for politico. gentlemen and katie, let me ask you about this picture. a picture is worth a thousand words unless it's a public relations stunt. i keep going back to nixon in my comparisons to this fellow. nixon had a new face. he presented it in 1968 when he ran the second time. he had town meetings put together by roger ailes in those days. so that he could portray himself as a regular duke it out kind of politician. not the dark old nixon of old. the herb block cartoon. so is this going to work? >> well, what we saw yesterday

in the town hall, certainly in stark contrast to the way we have seen governor christie really over the last couple of years. certainly more subdued. we didn't see much of that new jersey bravado that he has often exuded before and certainly displayed that softer side. at the same time the event seemed to serve as a bit of a reprieve from the really tough 2014 that he had. he didn't take -- he wasn't presented with too many real tough questions. that offered a little space to show the more empathetic side that comes as we have seen all the reports that are suggesting and raising questions about whether his administration is taking a bit of a bullying approach. >> you know, the old question, jonathan, you've been around long enough to know this, i think the difference between politicians in public and often the public version is the one we get. >> uh-huh. >> they like us all. they're so friendly when they meet reporters or commentators, anybody that might make them look bad or worse.

that's not really a good way to judge a politician, by the way he treats a reporter, it's been my experience. >> correct. >> you got to ask around. you got to do a little reporting to find out what they're like when you're not watching. so my question to you, the real christie is the one that was dancing around the floor the other day with the 3-year-old, or in fact is he the guy who put together the team of wildstein and baroni and bridget kelly and stepien, and all these people who think it's the business of the government of new jersey to punish opponents? >> chris, it's both. look, i'm one of those reporters whose gotten into an on-air tussle with governor christie. but what people didn't see was what happened off camera when he complimented me on a piece that i had written giving him a compliment for putting the flags at half-staff when whitney houston died. and after our on-air altercation, i thanked him again. and he was very heartfelt about sort of how he was disturbed by the reaction to his doing that for whitney houston and the awful names people called people dealing with drug addiction.

he talked about it as being a disease, and these people need to be helped. that was when i saw the empathetic, more real human down to earth chris christie than the larger than life bullying chris christie that i dealt with on air, and who we have come to know through all the scenes that we have seen of him at town hall meetings and radio introduce. >> what is the more important part of him, the part that is effective in politics or the part that is charming to you? >> well, look, the thing that is happening right now is politically speaking what chris christie needs to do. he is engulfed in scandal. his administration is engulfed in scandal. and the number one thing he can do to help himself politically is to look like he is acting normally, that he is going about the business of being governor, of tending to the needs of the people of his state. and yeah, he was there in a place that has always been christie territory. so the questions that came to him yesterday were all very friendly, except for one moment there when he got into it with someone in the audience.

but by and large, no one pushed him. no one tested him to bring out that bullying nature. >> they say a picture is worth a thousand words. look at the pictures called a tale of two cities. this is the old christie, his old style at work here. let's watch. >> if what you want to do is put on a show and giggle every time i talk, well, then, i have no interest in answering your question. >> i was wondering why you think it's fair to be cutting school funding to public schools. >> what is her name? >> what is her name, guys, real quick, because the governor is talking. >> what it is? >> gayle. >> gayle. first off, it's none of your business. let me tell you something, after you graduate from law school, you conduct yourself like that in a courtroom, your rear end is going to get thrown in jail, idiot. >> here is the new image projected from yesterday's town hall. see if you can spot the difference. >> how old are you? three. excellent. do you have a question for me? >> yeah. will you fix my house? it's still broken. >> your house is still broken? okay, come here, nicole.

what town do you live in, do you know? >> new jersey. >> all right. >> well, there he is playing art linkletter, or bill cosby, which of the two. it depends which generation you're from, katie. it seems to me, you got to decide. i'm seeing all kinds of politicians, including saddam hussein pull that number, pat the kid on the head. not that he is saddam hussein. but it doesn't mean much to me because he knew one thing, the camera was looking. and that doesn't tell you what happens when guadagno shows up in hoboken and says i talked to the governor last night. he said if you don't play ball in this real estate deal, you're dead. and this kind of reality is what i want to find out. that's the job of reporting. not to meet the person that he wants you to meet. meet the one that is there behind the scenes who is willing to do what is necessary. and is this person so ruthless, you've got to be damn careful of him. your thoughts. >> sure. at the same time, town halls have always been an important part of building our perception

about chris christie. the clips you showed us just now initially contributed to perception of him as very much a forthright kind of a tough leader. some people even at the time did use the term bully. but now the town hall that we saw yesterday, and he is going to have another one in the coming week or so, you know, his people are sort of looking at this as an opportunity to restore a bit of normalcy to the christie administration, to the governor who has really been besieged by this scandal since the very beginning of 2014. so while perhaps certainly a different chris christie than we've seen in previous environments, it's sort of in the view of some of his supporters an opportunity to show that he is taking steps to be back in the game. >> i'm still waiting to see what is in all the e-mails. i want to know everything, because this case is getting real. >> absolutely. if governor christie was testing a new persona yesterday, he got mixed reviews, even though he held an event in an area that has overwhelmingly supported his reelection in the past, there were still bumps in the road. for instance, a woman in the crowd held up a sign that read

"resign christie." at one point, members of the audience lost patience with the governor's explanations about hurricane sandy relief. >> why was hgi fired. why did you pay him $50 million? and why did you privatize -- why did you privatize most of the grant program? you didn't have to do that. >> i just disagree with you, okay. so you say we didn't have to privatize it. the alternative, the alternative is -- i'm answering the question. >> well, there is a little bit of that stuff. let me go back to jonathan and back to katie quickly. so what. this guy is facing a lot of legal action here. he's got investigations with the u.s. attorneys in new jersey, maybe in new york. he's got the u.s. senate committee looking at this. of course the democrats controlling that committee down in trenton are looking in this. they're all lawyered up. all the people he has pointed the finger at called liars and called stupid. they're all lawyered up. this to me reminds me of watergate in this sense, in this sense. this has got a lot of time

release capsules waiting out there that all could go off at different times. one can go off six months from now, three months from now, a year from now. this is something that's beyond his control except he can make nice and hope that the jury pool out there will have some impact. i don't know how he changes reality. nixon went -- he went with gorbachev -- i'm sorry, at that time brezhnev. he met with anwar sadat, that great man. he went big parades down into alexandria in to egypt. big crowds. he was kicked out of office after all because the evidence turned out against him. isn't the evidence going to decide this, not the pr, the personality or the politics? your thoughts, jonathan, and then katie. >> yes, absolutely. it's going to be the evidence. and you characterized it perfectly. he can try to be as normal as he can be with town hall meetings and radio interviews and going about the business of being governor of the state of new jersey, but as you accurately describe, the time release of documents and subpoenas where

people are combing through thousands upon thousands of pages of e-mails looking for the smoking gun or something that resembles it to try to tie him to that, every time a bullet like that happens, knocks chris christie off stride, diminishes the luster that he has on the national stage and makes it more difficult for him politically. >> okay, thank you so much, jonathan and katie. thank you. please come back. up next, michelle obama, the first lady of late night comedy? she is pretty good at this stuff. this is "hardball," the place for politics. . the volkswagen passat against all comers. . turbocharged engines against...engines. best in class rear legroom against other-class legroom. but then we realized. consumers already did that. twice. huh. maybe that's why nobody else showed up. how does one get out of a death cage? vo: hurry in and lease the 2014 passat for $189 a month. visit vwdealer.com today.

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>> and the best part of watching the canadians win. we got to watch toronto mayor rob ford celebrate. isn't he the cutest?

>> i wonder if the sound was out for that boom sound there for him jumping up and down. time for the sideshow, of course. that was jimmy kimmel and his favorite politician, rob ford of toronto. the main event for late night television last night was first lady michelle obama on "the tonight show." while she talked about the affordable care act that promoted her let's move campaign, the highlight of her appearance was a sketch with jimmy fallon and will ferrell who both played teenaged girls. >> michelle, you're pretty strong. you could totally be in the olympics. >> well, thank you, sara. i do try to exercise every day. >> really? because i think exercise is ew. >> exercise is not ew. you just have to find an activity that's right for you. for example, i like to dance, play tennis, even do some push-ups. >> what else, sucker? dancing is exercise? >> sure. as long as you keep moving around and get your heart rate up.

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her new yoga company got the attention of the press but she wasn't quite ready for prime-time. what did she do wrong? and meet the preteen bow tie designer who turned his pint sized passion for fashion into a booming business. all that and more coming up next on "your business." small businesses are revitalizing the economy and american express open is here to help. that's why we are proudo