confrontational at our voting sites and trying to suppress the vote. >> a republican saying we should not be trying to suppress the votes. there is no voting fraud. that is why many of us will not stop until we back down those that mere ely want to undermine every american's right to vote and vote easily. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. worst case. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews teaching at the university of san francisco. let me start tonight with this. nothing concentrates the minds of the great samuel johnson like the prospect of being hanged. knowing what republicans will do

if they have control of the u.s. senate this time next year roused voters to show up in november. the full gop agenda for destroying president obama presidency, killing ability to fill top appointments, running head lines of probes of benghazi. working on all options to bring down affordable care act and ensuing impeachment. ted cruz has been clear it is only a matter of getting numbers. to successfully impeach a president he said you need votes in the u.s. senate. says we have three years to get this guy. with that waiting the president and country come january will it cause minds of democrats to fight to defend it. the washington bureau chief and both are msnbc political analysts. it is great to have you joining me tonight for this big topic.

the republicans look like they are randy to grab the senate. you have scott brown making his move. all of the signs are the appetite has been wetted to grab control whether john cornen or mitch mcconnell. the thinking is one will be must just leader. has that scared democrats into trying to do something dramatic to hold on? >> it could scare some democrats. i think the democrats would probably be wise to raise that specter, as uncomfortable as it may be to them, because it acknowledges the political reality out there. they may as well as knowledge the numbers show the republicans have a good shot of taking the senate. what that would mean is mitch mcconnell if he wins in kentucky would be suddenly majority leader. mitch mcconnell has made it clear among other things that he wants to, for example, get rid of the affordable care act,

obamacare in his phrase is root and branch. i think that would be what the campaign will be about in 2014 for republicans and what the republicans first order of business would be to try to back the president in a corner and force them to veto things as they try to dismantle obamacare. that would be the number one priority in just the beginning. the whole philosophy of the republican majority. >> could you see them going that far? you have both houses in republican control. they can keep sending him bills for his signature. >> it would be like a frat house party for the republicans. i don't think they go nearly as far as impeachment. i think that would be stupid and probably hurt them in 2016. everything else is fair game. i talked to a person who saw internal democratic numbers and she tells me they are looking at

at a tsunami at this point. and so democrats if they are not angry or scared now have a few more months to get that way. not only will you see the appropriations go after obamacare and everything else, blocking appointments. if there is a supreme court vacancy obama probably won't get to fill it. he has been slow in filling judicial appointments. you will see joint hearings on benghazi and bring back irs and fast and furz and god knows what else in terms of phony investigations. >> if republicans control the congress that means the senate, as well. what would stop them from trying to impeach the president? house republicans have been abuzz about this. here are comments. let's see what they have been saying. >> i look at the president. i think he has violated the

constitution. at the end of the day you have to say if the house decides to impeach [ inaudible ]. >> if i could write that bill and submit it -- >> do it. >> excuse me, it would be a dream come true. i went back to my office and have had lawyers come in. these are lawyers. i say tell me how to impeach the president of the united states. >> here is the issue. if everybody is so unhappy with what the president has done, why don't you impeach him? i will give you a real frank answer about that, if we were to impeach the president tomorrow [ inaudible ]. >> we all have to do it. we have three years to get this guy out hopefully -- i think he probably has been engaged in

these unconstitutional approaches that may make his own ability to stay in office a question. >> here is what ted cruz had to say last summer when asked why don't you impeach obama? it is a good question. i'll tell you you need the votes of the u.s. senate. what makes you think the wild guys on the right who make the statements over and over again and keep making them to constituents at home won't be driven to begin a process? why would the house leadership stop them from doing what they clearly want to do which is impeach? >> i think some of them will try to do that. my guess is public opinion would be like 80/20 against impeachment. there would be two years left in obama's presidency. what would be the reason? that he changed regulations for obamacare. i think anybody worried about the republican party in 2016

including some members of the senate who might be running for president in 2016, republican members will say this is not the way to go. this will be the classic case of overreaching which we saw. some of these guys may not be the brightest bulbs. there is a very strong lesson from back in 1996 and 1998 about what happens when you try to impeach a president. the public doesn't tend to like it and there will be payback for the republicans. >> i completely disagree with him. i think that it's going to become a litmus test for tea party republicans heading into 2016 to advocate the impeachment of the president. i think it's cat nap ip to thes people on the right. the notion that he would be able

to control ted cruz and control other people either in the senate or the house is a fantasy. they are going to go out there and do it. and i don't think there is any doubt about it because you can't overstate -- if you talk to tea party people around the country and travel around and talk to them, you can't overstate the paranoia and fear and resentment they have of the president. even if they don't have the constitutional reasons to do it, even if the reed they lean on is changes in the affordable care act, it is not going to matter to them and they are going to push it. where it will get, who knows? i think it will be a strong theme from 2014 to 2016 if the republicans take the senate. they will take it as a sign to move ahead in the cruz direction. >> that will continue, though, howard. i think the civil war that we see in the republican party. because a lot of people will not

want to see this because they know the party will pay a price. i think you are right. there will be a lot of motivation, a lot of impetus for this to happen. but this is nuclear war, political nuclear war. and i guess i'm a little optimistic that they are not that crazy. >> they are not going to get him convicted because there is nothing to convict him of. >> what are the steps to atrophy this president? they are going to keep him -- if ruth bater ginsberg decides to retire they are not going to fill that seat. >> there are a lot of vacancies that will totally come to a stand still if the republicans control the senate. and all other major

appointments, major cabinet positions, e.p.a., they will drag and slow walk it. he won't be able to really run the government. >> the other thing they will do is carpet bomb him with more investigations. you see a preview of that today where darryl issa who may be on his way out as head of the house oversight committee is demanding e-mails and notes about the political office of the white house. they are going to be spending all of their time down at the white house answering requests for documents and subpoenas. that will be another theme that they are going to pursue, the investigation. even if they can't move on impeachment they will try to investigate him to a stand still. >> with all of this knowledge that both of you guys and i can see in the numbers and see in the fact that scott brown will make his move in new hampshire. he feels it is a good year. this is the year he is going to have to get in and new hampshire will have to be the state that

puts him in. and mark udall in colorado, it is a swing state. the wind is so strong, in my sense both of you now finally is do the democrats feel the wind coming at them the way republicans feel it coming with them? >> i talked to senior member of the congressional democratic leadership just yesterday. and i said do you think it is as bad as everybody is saying. he said our hopes of expanding our reach in the house are finished and will probably hold on. we won't lose many more seats in the house. republicans will maintain control there. but our hopes of gaining in the house are vanished. and the senate he said is at best 50/50 at this point. that is the thinking within the democratic leadership. the only good news for the democrats is it is still only

march. between march and november is a long, long time. as of right now i think the democrats are only slightly under the surface in a state of almost full panic at this point. >> thank you so much. the malaysian air mystery. authorities say data was deleted from the pilot's home flight simulator. that is raising more questions about the pilot, co-pilot and what has been going on. and we watchnow women appar going to war with themselves. does anything going on today have anything to do with the horrors of the holocaust. yet people making that comparison. this is "hardball," the place for politics. that's correct. cause i'm really nervous about getting trapped.

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next is every second of nbcuniversal's coverage 0f the 2014 olympic winter games. it's connecting over one million low-income americans to broadband internet at home. it's a place named one america's most veteran friendly employers. next is information and entertainment in ways you never thought possible. welcome to what's next. comcastnbcuniversal. welcome back to "hardball." 12 days and the mystery continues. what did happen to the malaysian airlines flight 370? for the families of the missing passengers the wait has been agonizing. today their frustration was on full display as some interrupted a news conference in kuala lumpur.

>> that's the mother of one of the passengers breaking down in front of journalists. she was removed by malaysian officials. meanwhile a lot of attention turned to the captain and the flight simulator he kept in his home. malaysian officials say data was deleted just before a month before the flight. robert haguer, contributor and greg fife former ntsb crash investigator. i have been watching this on tv. it's good to see you again. you come back toughest cases. this is such a sad tragedy. it it it's expressed in the face of that mother. anyone with kids understands the

horror of losing a kid. it's like one of these almost complete mysteries. is it a complete mystery at this point? do we know anything really for sure that could lead us to deliberate criminal behavior here? are we there yet or in the area of general unknown? >> i think more in the area of general unknown. there are things we know and there was the one piece of evidence that sounded like it might be conclusive about the flight management system which is flying the plane, being programmed before, being programmed for the deviant turn before the calm voice transmission of all right, good night. even there is question about that now with what the malaysian people said at their news conference today. they left it a bit ambiguouambi

we have where are the blips recorded. none of it adds up. it is just awful for the families. >> i'm trying to figure out the politics or the motivation of the pilot or co-pilot. all i have come across so far is that the pilot did side with the opposition leader and the other day there was a court trial and he thought the guy was screwed brought up on charges of sodomy or something they cooked up. the guy was basically held up again on charges. i kept thinking was there anything to the politics that might have led to the suicidal decision? >> when you look at his politics. malaysia airlines is government owned. it is the flag carrier. if you do something against the airline you are doing something against the government. >> that's what i was thinking. is it a way to completely humiliate -- this has been a

success in that sense that you have a country that has been humiliated here. >> and on top of that with all of the liability, the litigation, the government is going to be liable for all of the lawsuits that are sure to follow. so now you have an economic aspect to not only the humiliation. there is motive there from that particular standpoint. >> but we don't know. >> we don't know at this point. >> you know, i remember the other two suicides that we have had that we know of in the past and we are pretty sure they were suicides. and egypt air here u.s. in both of those cases it took the discovery of the flight data recorders to show what the pilot had actually done, showed

conclusively that they took the nose forward and took the plane in. in this case you have a plane flying around for all of these hours after they take the deviant turn. so that's another reason why it doesn't make sense. >> it's also possible, gentleman, that somebody could have done something deliberate to sabotage the plane but things screwed up. things didn't work the way the individual intended them to. it seems that is always a possibility here. let me ask you about the flight simulator at home. they found a flight simulator at the home and said some of the information was deleted within the last month. what does that tell us? >> what it tells us basically is nothing right now until we know exactly what file or files were deleted. i have a flight simulator on my computer, not as elaborate as this captain. you can record your flights and it goes into a file folder

called logs. it is curious to see exactly what file or files this pilot deleted. if he had done a dry run. let's say he fantasized about what he is going to do and he is out there and flying to perfect his technique and skill as to how to pull this off that goes into the file. you can review the files and play it back. it may be the day february 3 or 8 that that file was deleted he may have decided he has enough. he is going to do his thing on such day and clean his trail if you will. the fbi is working with the malaysians to try to recover the file folders. >> were you just naturally clear the flight simulator just to clear the memory out like you might delete messages from your computer? >> i have done that because they are big large files. you can also do that, as well. they will have to see what the

content of the file folder or files are to make that determination. but bob brought up a point. when i did indonesia none of that -- there was no tell tale sign until you started to dig into back grounds it was the cockpit voice recorder that shed light on the motivation of the captain. we found things he was doing out of character. on that day he was mr. happy. he talked to the co-pilot. he never ate in the cockpit. on that day he was going to leave the cockpit and get something to eat. that is when he pulled the circuit breakers. this goes real deep not just trying to gather a piece of paper or flight simulator at someone's home. there will be rsome real investigative work. >> in the egyptian case which horrified most of us that this

pilot would do it without any kind of sending a message ahead of time. as you said only when they found the recorder. there is a pattern. do you think there is a copy cat aspect to that kind of suicidal venture? >> it seems something as strong as suicide it is more than a copy cat, that he has something in mind. if you wanted to make a statement with your suicide, a political point or show somebody that you were mistreated or whatever, wouldn't you leave evidence, a statement behind or something to show why this was done? >> whatever he did, whatever the co-pilot did, whatever role fate played in this, it seems to me the effect has been to damage the malaysian government and airlines. that is where it ended up. i have been watching you all day. up next more praise from the

right wing in this country, not russia, right wing seems to love vladimir putin. this time about gay rights and the lack thereof over there. this is "hardball," the place for politics. so our business can be on at&t's network for $175 a month? yup. all 5 of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there's unlimited talk and text. we're working deals all day. you get 10 gigabytes of data to share. what about expansion potential? add a line, anytime, for $15 a month. low dues, great terms. let's close!

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republicans who praised putin. now a well known evangelical leader is doing that. evangelist franklin graham is commending putin for his policy against homosexuality. here is what graham said, in my opinion putin is right on these issues. our president and his attorney general have turned their backs on god. isn't it sad that america's own morality has fallen so far that on this issue protecting children from any homosexual agenda or propaganda russia's standard higher than our own. he said he wasn't sure if the president was a true christian. you heard about the war on women. now republican women are joining the fight essentially declaring

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in an interview with nbc's san diego affiliate president obama said no military option is on the table amid rising tensions with ukraine. fed chair janet yellin said interest rates will remain near zero for a considerable time. the central bank will cut bond purchases. two winning tickets were sold for last night's jackpot. winners will split the $414 million prize. now back to "hardball."

welcome back to "hardball." has the republican party's war on women so ingained that republican women declaring themselves on this. one said it makes women look like whiners. a progressive group got their hands on the audio of the remarks. >> we heard several of those last week about women's issues. i kept thinking these bills are putting us backwards in time. we are losing the respect that we so dearly want in the work place by bringing up all of these special bills for women and almost making us look like

whiners. >> whiners. doesn't stop there. on sunday ahead of the action group named red state women railed against texas gubernatorial candidate wendy davis by claiming women voters don't support laws that support correcting the pay gap. >> what is the solution you think for equalal pay, then? >> if you look at it, women are extremely busy. we lead busy lives whether working professionally or from home. and times are extremely busy. it's just a busy cycle for women. we have a lot to juggle. >> the key word there was busy. also in texas, the ahead of the state's republican party said women were wasting time with court battles over equal pay and discrimination. >> men are better negotiators.

i encourage women instead of pursuing the court for action to become better negotiators. >> how about doing both? >> joining me now, i will get to the other argument about being better negotiators. let's talk about the law and what it should do. first answer, what did you make of the charge that women are too busy to do what? i wasn't sure about the cause ality or correlation between the answer and the question. >> i am baffled and perplexed of the thing. the pursuit of justice, fairness and equality through any legal means necessary is not whining. it is the american way. and i say this to someone who believes in the free market. the free market only works if we are equal and treated as equals. i don't understand how they make this argument or make a statement about women being busy. i'm not too busy to earn the

same amount of money as you earn for equal work. >> the argument for equal pay, lilly ledbetter on the books now. yet there is a disequality of like 70 cents on the dollar. it seems like whatever laws go through and get signed by the president. this hasn't gotten to the reality level yet. >> this was signed in 2009, his first bill. he made a very big deal out of it throughout his campaign even in 2012. and so i think what you have at the state level are efforts to essentially pass state lilly ledbetter laws. in texas wendy davis pushed through a bill that got through the state and house but vetoed by rick perry. you have this happening in a number of states. in wisconsin the equal pay law was repealed. you have women running in these states making a big deal out of this.

at a time when republicans are trying to really reset their approach to women one of the things they are trying to do is have more high profile women. you have women carrying the message of the republican party and their approach to equal pay which is essentially to say it is not needed because state laws are already good enough. and also that any additional laws would hurt business and just lead to more lawsuits. i thinkt that woman there is clearly in over her head. she is just a poor surrogate. >> what is the good argument? why are they fighting like the alamo on an issue that will never win for them? the republicans will look like they are anti-woman if they keep opposing equal pay standards. >> i don't think they understand that they are never going to win this argument. i think they have decided and

there is a huge problem with the approach and with the strategy. what they have decided to go back to wisconsin. they had a male state legislator last year argue that they should appallish or get rid of and repeal wisconsin's equal pay law because in his words one could arguet that money is more important to men than women. that is what a lot of republican ledgislators believe. i think let's find women who will say what we actually think and carry our water for us and see if that works. i think eventually they will realize when they keep losing elections that this is not an argument that normal free thinking women believe. >> i thought that was an interesting counter point that the woman was making. why don't we make women into better negotiators? how about both?

if you have the law on your side you are a better negotiator. i came across an amazing story. a friend of mine is a recruiter for accounting form. he said when you go to colleges and say i have four standards for a person. the woman will say i meet four of them and i won't apply. the guy will say i have one and bs the others. women are so formal and exacting of themselves where men are into the bs business more. >> men are very overconfident. you see that when it comes to men running for office. women tend to go for lower office. men their first time out will try for congress or senate. and the woman will try for school board. you see that. i think there is another issue. women tend to cluster in jobs that are -- cultural expectations of what women should do in terms of their

career and what those careers are worth. you see women who are teachers and in the service sector. i think what women talk to their daughters about. i majored in cultural anthropology and literature. i wish i would have majored in engineering. i was never really good in math. in those sectors the pay gap isn't as vast. i think in a lot of these races when you are talking more practically about average women you look at minimum wage two-thirds of women are in those jobs. there has to be a re-thinking about where we are in terms of the jobs because we have so many female headed households. it will be a big debate. >> i say this all the time. i am so impressed by reporters who write for the a section of the newspaper and put out absolute hard news on incredible deadlines.

i have been on buses with you guys. i pick up the paper and there is a 1,500 word piece. that person wrote that. how did they get it in. it is brilliant english and perfect. it is tough. so you're at the top of the game. the idea of competing with men i think is way beyond that. thank you. i don't bs about this stuff. i am always impressed. thank you so much for coming on. it's an interesting topic and always will be. ted cruz has done it. ben carson has done it, all recently compared the obama administration to nazi germany. it is time those analogies stopped for good. that's ahead. this is "hardball," place for politics. ld-out. you need a permit... to be this awesome. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle...

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comparing your opponent to nazi germany has become a political weapon of church. one warned against populum saying if you go back to 1933 with different words this is what hitler was saying in germany, you don't survive as a society if you thrive on envy and jellany. it was written how dare so many of you politicians spit on ashes of the earth containinging bodies of the slaughtered by making such asinine comparisons. gentlemen, i guess i'm up to

here with this. i guess as a holocaust family member you are particularly bothered by it. to me the bone headedness and lack of historic perspective and any kind of knowledge about the world that was here before us, goes back to this sort of comic book world war ii notion of hitler. to me it should be recognized and never forgotten. why does it bother that these people from left to right keep talking about hitler to anybody they don't like? >> many different reasons. primarily the contempt they are demonstrati demonstrating, ignorance about what actually happened in the holocaust. nazi germany was not the same as obamacare or national debt or all of these little things that keep being brought forward as of such great import. the problem is you have a bunch

of truly ignorant, truly self-centered people who think that the events of their daily lives are equivalent of major traumas in world history. >> i'm just reading a book, the classical music guy. he talks about tracing the steps of his family that he lost in the holocaust. when you go through that and all of that experience you know how unique and horrible it was. for these people who just say hitler. you are a historian. including secretary clinton. don't they have reference points? can't they say assad in syria or stalin for a little variety? i think it is almost total ignorance in history. they have seen a lot of world war ii movies. >> or misreading history.

one of the reasons we were in the world war was because of the munich analogy. they considered negotiating with north vietnam to be the equivalent negotiating in 1938, a preposterous comparison. 25 years after the events. you have to draw a distinction here between people who go for the ridiculous hitler nazi analogies, we need a total moratorium on that. it doesn't matter what side of the political perspective you have, you're on, i have a story about steve schwartzman, a ju in new york, a billionaire who went there in 2009 on obama's tax policy, preposterous, it's okay to use, some nazi analogies when there's real genocide like in rwanda or cambodia under pol pot, these analogies need to be

reserved only for agagenocide, otherwise you cheapen the memory of all of those slaughtered. hillary clinton made a big mistake going there. it's also ridiculous apples and oranges comparison in just -- geopolitics. >> anyway, nazi references are not limited to one party as much there. jonathan, let's watch. >> you go to the 1940s. nazi germany. look, we saw in britain, neville chamberlain, who told the british people, accept the nazis, yes, they'll dominate the continent of europe, but that's not our problem. let's appease them, why? it can't be done. we can't possibly stand against them. >> think about nazi germany. most of those people did not believe in what hitler was

doing. did they speak up? did they stand up for what they believed? they did not. and you saw what happened. >> what i said yesterday is that the claims by president putin and other russians, that they had to go into crimea and maybe further into eastern ukraine because they had to protect the russian minorities, and that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when germany under the nazis kept talking about how they had to protect german minorities in poland and check les vac ya and elsewhere in europe. >> they went after the trade unions, hitler didn't want unions. >> well, the point there is, the absurdity and the evil. let me ask you this, kurt. did you see the reference that

ted cruz was making there? he was comparing republicans who recognized they didn't have 60 votes to accomplish certain things on the senate floor. comparing them to neville chamberlain who, like all of us, i'm a student of chamberlain to try to figure him out, idealistic thought that hitler only wanted the german people back together. he changed, unlike halifax was always an appeaser. i think to compare him to some republican who looks at the numbers rather than crazy talk, he's basically calling mitch mcconnell a bad guy. it seems so out of whack morally, a guy you disagree with in your caucus. >> well, it's also this thing of where -- someone like ted cruise, who is he in that analogy. he's the nazi fighter, you're talking about the rise of hitler, and leer the funding of obama care, he's making that equivalency.

and who is he? he's the guy who's standing up against the nazis, no. he's a coward. he's a coward who is taking the blood from the soil of people who were actually fighting evil, who were actually confronting evil, and bathing himself in it. so he can try to appear to be a lot more important than he is. >> yeah, i mean, the -- >> he also had his years wrong, it was 1938 munich, not the 40s by the way. >> even when hillary clinton's analogy was actually accurate, historically accurate if you look at what hitler was saying about the germans and the sudan land in czechoslovak. it doesn't matter whether it was accurate, once you go there with this kind of analogy, it's kind of like playing fast and loose with history in ways that just play on people's emotions and don't actually go to the current arguments. yes, we need to be tougher on

putin, but we don't need to be tougher on putin because he's another hitler. we need to be tougher on putin for 2014 reasons. >> don't accuse the russian people who lost 20 million people to hitler of being hitler. their great achievement taking on the eastern front and defeating hitler. and to accuse russians of being pro hitler is an absurdity, i'm sure they got the message. they don't like it. thank you, a staggeringly important piece on what could be a small thing. you've raised it to the level of historic conscience, which i'm glad you did. when you have diabetes like i do,

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there's something embarrassing about these unthinking referrals to hitler that become a desperate grab at gaining attention. let's agree it's stupid to compare moderate republicans to the appeasers of adolf hitler. it's stupid to compare the president's health care plan with nazi germany. hitler didn't organize elections to win over territory, he took over territory as he did with austria to prevent elections. the best thing you can say for labor unions, hitler was against them, that's your problem right there.

the best way to honor it is to remember its horrid uniqueness. comparing everyone you don't like to hitler is not right. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. good evening from new york, i'm chris hayes, serious concerns at the pentagon as thousands of russian troops with heavy armor and aircraft gather just miles from the border with ukraine. one official telling nbc news it's like they're on a hair trigger. this as nato labor willed the invasion of crimea a wakeup call. >> this is the gravest threat to european security and stability since the end of the cold war. >> president obama this afternoon specifically ruled out u.s. military action against russia. >>e