that's our program. thanks for watching. i'm john siegenthaler. some very good news. let's play hardball. good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with the very good news. the jobless rate down to 6.3%. the number of new jobs created -- catch this -- 288,000. way more than a quarter million, and this is just in the one month of april. the stock market this week, this week, hit its highest level in american history. more than doubling since president obama's inauguration. and what was the republican reply to all this news?

to rain on the parade. and you have to wonder if this relentdless debbie downer number of theirs isn't without a purpose, that being to discourage the consumer from spending, encourage business leaders to hoard their cash, put off investing, sit on the money they had already to invest if mitt romney had won, but you don't have to wonder how loudly the republicans would be celebrate had they held these bragging rights over numbers like these, a solid drop in the unemployme unemployment, well more than a quarter million new jobs in just a month, the highest ever point in the history of the stock market. what do you think raines priebus, john boehner and eric cantor would be saying about those apples. would be doing the republican equivalent of high-fiving each other, whatever that is and doing cartwheels on fox and telling sean hannity they were, in fact, in heaven.

anyway. m msnbc. when everything is turning up roses -- reince priebus -- and i just love this name. we're talking republican. maybe the unemployment rate doesn't sort of get to theirer raj news zone the way it does to the democrats, but certainly the stock market through the roof. wouldn't they be maybe saying good fine work by this man? >> everything would be coming up roses, happy days would be here again, except that's a democratic thought. it would be morning again in america. democrats tell the story, right, because they've got a story to tell. >> this is a problem with the democratic party for a while now. they don't know how to win. >> they don't know how to tout their accomplishments.

we've got mugs with the president's birth certificate. where are the mugs showing the country moving the country out of the great recession. >> anyway today before he began his conference with angela merkel he began to somewhat tout the job number. repeat, there's more to do. let's listen to him. >> we have to keep attention to the jobs. there's plenty more that congress should be doing from raising minimum wage to creating good construction jobs rebuilding america, and i want to work with them wherever i can, but i keep acting on my own wherever i must to make sure every american who works hard has the chance to get ahead. >> explain that. why is he like that today? is he caught up in something else? >> i think he's thinking about ukraine, which is a general downer and so maybe that's why

it's such a dower recitation of what one would think he would be click his heels about and strutting around the rose garden and say, look, i told you these were the right economic policies, i told you if you would all be patient, things are getting better, things are getting better, look. 6.3%. 288,000 jobs. happy days. >> i like the way you're doing it, eugene. it is funny. i guess we'll get onto this. let ee move on to the republicans. they're doing the opposite of glee. they're doing the opposite of what they would do with these numbers. anyway, the republicans thood acknowledge the good numbers. then, of course, they preceded to damn the whole thing with feigned praise. quote, we're happy americans are finding work but more and more people are dropping out of our work force. then predisadds this jab.

obama's to blame for slashing workers' hours. speaker john boehner joined the welcome news and put in the shiv. quote, president obama ought to call on his democratic-led senate to take up the stacks of jobs measures to get this economy moving. there aren't any. all this stuff, they won't lift it up an-inch. anyway, the house majority leader eric cantor followed boehner with statement that reads in part it's time democrats stop ignoring the stacks of bills so they can help hard-working americans with their stacks of bills. cleverly put. they didn't even show up to work. they issued these statements on paper. >> it's unconscionable. it's unconscionable of all the people to say stop sitting on your hands, start passing some legislation. here's a dude who's basically a dead end for any kind of

bipartisan effort of anything at all times and then has the audacity two weeks ago go back home in ohio and say, oh, whoa, it's so hard passing legislation, telling members of his own party to buck up. i mean it's outrageous. >> let's look at strategy behind this. i don't know the president's strategy for being somewhat hesitant here. there are certainly poor people and there will also be poor people and reasons to not say things are getting better for most people, but i don't quite get this. there's one lodge toik this on the republican side. we've got a poll out that says people who are absolutely certain looking a people who are going to vote this november. it's lates some of this for the paper 'eers poll. they show that an improving economy could boost democratic turning in november. among those democrats who are thinking well, three quarters of those who rate the economy positively say they're absolutely certain to vote in november. just 58% of those who rate the economy negatively, they're absolutely certain to vote.

so if you could get most americans to think it's not happy, it's nothing going well, if you could work them down and say, yeah, it's okay, but it's not so great, you could get them to vote. >> this is the republican playbook, people from the polls. >> why is the president acting like this? that's what i'm wondering. see, now, the playbook -- >> then it become base election and republicans continue to fire up their base with obama care and benghazi and whatever. >> let's talk about that. i know you can be accused of being a marxist for saying this but i do think economic drives politics and i do believe if you look at all the great moments of our lives, you and gene and i, if you look at watergate, there's stagflation all around that. people had gas lines, we've got blame somebody for this crap. clinton on the o'hand swam through his because the economy was really good some of the con tenlts of most of the politics, personality and all, oftentimes

comes in that package, that box that says how you doing? >> that's the whole atmosphere, you know. and so you take on the characteristics of the atmosphere, your term in office does. so change the atmospherics, you know, because the atmospherics should be getting better. >> that's what they're trying to do. they're making a big message if the news is bad, they're going be the ones that give the middle class and the working class a chance at fighting back. that is the sort of elegant and overarching strategy here. we know it's not that much better, so we're going to keep telling you guys that we're the ones fighting. >> i'm a little concerned about the president. everyone says you shouldn't brag and i know the bush family never bragged, but the fact is, that's old money talking. old money does haven't to brag. >> new money does. >> yeah. and i i've watched the feed of some good democratic candidates because they know how to do it and i watched al gore who should have won the electoral and more

because he wouldn't say we had just came off of eight great years of the clinton era. he wouldn't do it, just wouldn't do it. all he would talk about is the lock box and all this stuff about deficits. you've about got sell your own story. >> dem kralts want consensus around intellectual honesty and it's harder for them to have co come punks. win it. >> if you've got a good product, sell>> it remember the producers? flaunt it. nairks eugene robinson, alex wagner. by the way, today, the latest on benghazi. they subpoena john kerry, the secretary of state. then john boehner the speaker moves to select a new formal committee to investigate

apparently the other four committees already investigating this nonscandal. also the news keeps getting worse for chris christie. today we learned that many of krischristi christie's donors are getting ready to jump ship and jeb bush is getting ready to get in. and the president's sharp elbows, look for his to use his humor as a weapon. are you listening, donald trump? >> no one is happier or prouder to put this birth certificate to rest than the donald and that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing, what really happened in roswell, and where are biggy and tupac. finally let me finish with a

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the hard rights benghazi investigation. yesterday we told you about a newly disclosed e-mail that republicans were heralding as the smoking gun in this investigation, what set off a chain reaction inside the republican party starting with senator lindsey graham calling the white house scumbags. but as we noted in yesterday's show ben rhodes squares with the reality of what actually happened in benghazi. that hardly matters to some republicans today. there are rightists out there

going nuclear. house speaker john boehner announce they'd will select a new committee, a permanent committee, to investigate benghazi. republicans on the house armed services committee, foreign affairs committee, oversight and the intelligence committee have all conducted their own investigations, but for some republicans there's no such thing as enough. in a statement today the speaker says, quote, it's clear that questions remain and the administration still does not respect the authority of congress to provide proper oversight. well, this dismissive bs a ivive vavsness requires us to elevate this investigation to a new level. that's bane that's boehner. that's after issa selected john kerry to testify in front of the committee next month. issa is accusing the department. says the new s&p will compel kerry to, quote, answer

questionsing your agency's response about the investigation of the attack. david cornyn has been following this. and michael tomaski is a special correspondent for "the daily beast." is there anything here? i've been arguing and watching this thing. i do have a file cabinet in my head. it's not like every day is brand-new thing. consistently we got reports there was a copycat kind of thing. there was protests all over the middle east at that time. cairo was obviously all over the media. that led to kind of a copycat operation in this benghazi facility out there. and, of course, the whoelg thing seems to have come out o of anger in the islamic and arab world of this crazy and on knox vus video that went out. we all know that. that's in the paper, the news that came out. what's new, pussycat?

why do they keep making this into a big deal? >> because they have nothing else. their theory of the case has always been that the white house deceived the public because they were so scared obama would look at the counterterrorism potential two months after the benghazi attack. so we have all these e-mails that go out saying it was the white house that created the talking points that describe what happened being related to the video or somehow related to the video. and it was the cia, the state department, not the white house that put that language together and now they're talking about a coverup of a coverup that didn't exist. i went back and people can go to motherjones.com because i literally put this up an hour ago. if you look at what the white house said originally, that there was a protest related to the video that then turned into a more complicated terrorist attack. at the time reports from lib yarks media reports, said the

same thing and investigations by the senate intelligence committee and "the new york times" both come up with the same conclusion. so even with what susan rice said, if not entirely accurate was kind of close to what other people have found. so there if there's a difference of opinion here -- >> i think it's clo to what we knew months and years later now. my question, is this something in the republican brain soup? did they somehow get the idea that something bad happened here? if you've about got boehner under sodium pen thol -- imagine the thought -- >> or two bottles of cologne. >> -- what's your worst-case scenario about what happened? not when press releases were. did anyone deserve blame for a beloved ambassador getting killed? >> i don't have any idea what they believed. >> that hillary was after smlg else? >> something like that or that it had to be some kind of miss fee sans or lack of preparedness o on the obama administration's

part that this happened. i guess some of them believe that. think a lot of them don't believe it, chris. they're really drinking crazy juice over there at that committee now. >> anyway, the white house is taking heat for not disclosing the e-mails sooner. sooner. here's carney, jay carney, facing off with abc's jonathan karl who's actually quite good with his questioning earlier this week. let's watch karl going after carney. >> why were you hold back this information. >> was wasset not turned over? why wasset not released when all the other e-mails were? why did you hold it back? why did it take a court case to release this? >> john, i can say it again and again and you can keep asking again and again. this document was not about benghazi. >> it was prep for the -- >> it wasn't her only prep, john. she relied on -- for her answers on benghazi on the document prepared by the cia as did members of congress. >> well, this is just kind of -- this is to me not the thing i

want to argue about in my life hourk people screw things up. internally they have a problem with the white house. my role is rolling disclosures. it's like fish. the longer you keep it, the more it smells. get it out if you have it. move it. >> they waited a while to get out that initial batch that we talked about a year ago. it took a while. these come out and now the republicans are saying that's the issue. >> this is not bad management. i'm not going to defend the white house. i don't think it because jay carney's decision. it was swhb who communicates or a lawyer or an archivist. i'm not going to get off on this in this case. the question is there a character problem with former steak of state and nobody is pointing to anything that's real. >> what's real was that the state department, cia and defense department had a situation in which somebody and three others got killed. there's a lot to look at, there's a lot of blame to go around for that event, but what republicans are looking at has

nothing to do with that. they don't care about protecting people. >> can anybody here get back to life? a courageous, really courageous ambassador goes out and takes a trip. he knew there were some risks. he made a calculated decision that wenl bad. this happens in life. it happens in war all the time. we have had diplomats nooked off all the time. it's a horrible world sometimes and they're trying to exploit this into some stupid damn political thing. i've got to go. i'm sorry. i've got to get ready. anyway, darrener david corn, michael tomaski. have we finally seen the last of rob ford? god, this guy's got problems. this is "hartball," the place for politics. one drop of ultra n has twice the everyday grease cleaning ingredients of one drop of the leading non-concentrated brand... ♪

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back to "hardball" and the side show. it might be time for rob ford. videos surfaced on wednesday. they allegedly show the embattled mayor smoking crack again. cbs news has not authenticated but now ford is going into rehab not for his drug problem, he say, but for his alcoholism. the news inspired david letterman and the folks at the "late show" to create a video about ford's problems and it's got a progress overt sub text. >> toronto mayor rob ford has accepted that he has a problem. he's entered rehab. mayor ford issing are to take a crack at it and determined to crack down on it. he plans to get up at the crack of dau and get cracking on his crack keep and while alcoholism is a tough nut to crack and it's

not everything it's cracked up to be, he's determined not to fall through the cracks schl so for all the wise cracking critics. crack, crack, crack itty, crack, crack. >> it needs really that funny, is it? we'll be talking more about that later in the show. in the meantime let's take a look at some comedic highlights in the past courtesy of c-span. >> people walk around under all kinds of delusions. there are men walking around thinking that i're jesus, there are men thinking that're na pole yen, there are men walking around thinking they're going to pass the budget in the next couple of days. >> finally an event live on c-span. for god's sake, it's saturday night. >> president clinton had some wonderful, wonderful international triumph ps such as bringing the arabs and israelis together. when the day they were in the

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