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 cash 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 relentless 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 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 reince priebus, john boehner and eric cantor would be saying about those apples? they'd be doing the republican equivalent of high-fiving each other. whatever that is. they'd also be doing cartwheels on fox, telling shane hannity that they were, in fact, in heaven. anyway. eugene robinson is a pulitzer

prize winning columnist for "the washington post." and alex wagner is the host of now, msnbc. two great people to join me on this. the absolute hill arte you have to look at it, when everything is turning up roses. >> reince priebus. and i just love that name, comes out and just dumps all over it and kantortore does it, we're talking republican stuff. maybe the unemployment rate doesn't sort of get to their erogenous 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? good work? >> 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

job creation numbers pulling the country out of the great recession. where are those -- >> anyway today before he began his press conference with german chancellor angela merkel the president did take a moment to tout somewhat exciting jobs numbers and repeat, there's more to do. let's listen to him. >> we have to keep a relentless focus on job creation, and creating more opportunities for working families. 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? >> maybe he's thinking about ukraine, which is a general downer and maybe that's why it

was such a dour recitation of what one would think he would be clicking his heels about and kind of strutting around the rose garden and saying look, i told you these were the right economic policies. i told you if we would be patient things are getting better. look things are better, 6.3%. you know, we're 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's 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 would acknowledge the good numbers. then, of course, they preceded to damn the whole thing with feigned praise. here's the iron imitable rnc chair reince priebus. quote, we're happy that were americans were able to find work last month but more and more people are dropping out of our workforce. then priebus adds this jab,

obamacare is to blame for slashing workers' hours. speaker john boehner joined the jobs numbers welcome news and put on the -- actually put in the shiv. quote, president obama ought to call on his democratic-led senate to take up the stacks of jobs measures so we can get this economy moving again. there aren't any jobs measures. all this stuff with infrastructure, democrat stuff, they won't lift it up an inch. anyway the house majority leader eric cantor followed boehner's lead issuing a statement that reads in part, it's time senate democrats stop ignoring these stacks of bills so that we can help hard-working americans deal with their stacks of bills. very cleverly put by some staffer up there. i got to tell you, they weren't even showing up for work today. they issued these statements on paper. they didn't even phone them in. >> it's unconscionable. it's unconscionable that john boehner, 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 at anything at all times.

and then has the audacity two weeks ago to go back home in ohio and say oh, blow, 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 logic to 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. which it's let's some of this for the is a lot of voters. paper 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, especially, if you look at watergate, nixon's big problem was stagflation all around that. the whole context was bad. the country had gas lines, everything was wrong. we've got to blame somebody for this crap. clinton on the other hand swam through his problems because the economy was really good. so the context we talk about 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. you know, so change the atmospherics. i mean -- the atmospherics should be getting better. >> that's what they're trying to do, though. the democrats are crafting a big message, if the news is bad, they're going to be the ones that are going to give the middle class and the working class a chance at fighting back. that is the elegant and overarching democratic 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. i think he should take some -- 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 didn't know how to do it. and i watched al gore, who should have won the electoral college as well as the numbers, and not have to worry about the supreme court. because he wouldn't say, we've

just come off eight great years of the clinton era. >> well -- >> he wouldn't do it. he just wouldn't do it. all he talked about was the lock box. and all this stuff about deficits and -- >> i feel like -- >> you've got to sell your own story. you've got to blow your own horn. >> democrats want consensus around intellectual honesty and it's harder for them to have no compunction about winning. it's a hard thing for the left sometimes. >> you're a great psychiatrist. >> thank you. >> honest about being cheery. >> i think you've got to sell it. get out there and sell it. >> you got a good product, sell it. >> remember the producers? flaunt it! anyway, eugene robinson, alex wagner. coming up, by the way, coming up, today's latest on the right's benghazi obsession. they know how to brag. first their committee subpoenas 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. weren't enough to do the job. also the news keeps getting worse for chris christie. today we learned that many of christie's wealthiest and best connected donors are preparing to jump ship if jeb bush gets into the presidential race. and i guess he's getting in. and president obama's sharp elbows at tomorrow's white house correspondents' dinner, look for the president to use his humor as a weapon. are you listening donald trump? >> no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter 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 biggie and tupac? finally let me finish with a great cause in my hometown in philadelphia.

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welcome back to "hardball." a dramatic escalation in the hard right's 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 she that e-mail sent by white house deputy national security adviser 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

announced the house will create a new select committee, that means a permanent committee, practically, 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 dismissiveness and evasiveness requires us to elevate this investigation to a new level. that's boehner. that's after darrell issa revealed he had subpoenaed secretary of state john kerry to testify in front of the committee later this month. issa is accusing the department. of quote failing to meet its legal obligations saying the new subpoena will compel kerry to, quote, answer questions about your agency's response to congressional investigation of

the benghazi attack. david corn has been following this. he's an msnbc political analyst. he's also washington bureau chief for mother jones. and michael tomasky is a special correspondent for "the daily beast." gentlemen, you know your stuff here. is there anything here? i've been arguing and watching this thing. i do have a file cabinet in my head. i can follow this thing. it's not like every day is brand-new thing. consistently we've gotten reports that what happened was there was a copycat kind of thing. there was terrorist -- i mean 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 whole thing seems to have come out of anger in the islamic and arab world about this crazy, obnoxious video that went out. we all know that. that's in the paper, the news that's in this new e-mail that came out. that was in the bipartisan report of the senate intelligence committee. 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 the talking points tell us that it was the cia, the state department, not the white house that put that language together. and now they're talking about a cover-up of a cover-up 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 libya, 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 close to what we knew months and years later now. which developed by a bipartisan committee. 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 pentothal -- imagine the thought -- >> or two bottles of cologne. >> -- what's your worst-case scenario about what happened? not when press releases were issued. what happened? did anyone deserve blame for a beloved ambassador getting killed? >> i don't have any idea what they believe. i guess some of them probably believe that. >> that hillary was after something else? >> something like that or that it had to be some kind of misfeasance or lack of preparedness 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 holding back this information? why was this e-mail not turned over to the congress? why was it not released when you released all the other e-mails? this is directly relevant. why did you told it back? >> john, again -- >> why did it take a court case for you 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 a prep for the sunday shows. >> 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

how people screw things up. internally they have a problem at the white house. my role is rolling disclosures. is the worst thing in the world. get it out. it's like fish. the longer you keep it, the more it rots. the more it smells. get it out if you have it. and move it. >> they waited a while to get out that initial batch that we were talking about a year ago. >> it took them awhile to do that. then these come out so now republicans are saying that's the issue. >> this is about bad management. i'm not going to defend the white house. i don't think it because jay carney's decision. it was somebody who communicates or a lawyer or an archivist. >> it may take awhile. >> i'm not going to get off on this in this case. the question is there a character problem with former secretary of state or not and nobody's 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 went bad. this happens in life. it happens in war all the time. we have had diplomats knocked off all the time. it's a horrible world sometimes and they're trying to exploit this into some stupid damn political thing. it's wrong. >> despite all that -- >> i've got to go. >> okay. >> i'm sorry. i've got to get rid of you. david corn, michael tomasky. have we finally seen the last of toronto mayor rob ford? god, this guy's got problems. this is "hardball," the place for politics. people join angie's list for all kinds of reasons. i go to angie's list to gauge whether or not the projects will be done in a timely fashion and within budget. angie's list members can tell you which provider is the best in town. you'll find reviews on everything from home repair to healthcare. now that we're expecting, i like the fact

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it might finally be game over for toronto's mayor rob ford. stills from a video taken over the weekend surfaced in the press on wednesday. they allegedly show the embattled mayor smoking crack again. nbc news has not verified the authenticity of the video but now ford is going into rehab, not for his drug problem, he says, but he says for 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 pretty overt subtext. >> toronto mayor rob ford has accepted that he has a drinking problem. so he is entering rehab. managing alcoholism is never easy but mayor ford is ready to take a crack at it and determined to crack down on his drinking. he pledges to get up every day at the crack of dawn and get cracking with his crack team of addiction specialists. and while alcoholism is a tough nut to crack, and sobriety isn't everything it's cracked up to be, mayor ford is determined not to fall between the cracks.

so for all the wisecracking critics out there, put that in your pipe and smoke it. rob ford, crack crack, crackity crack crack. >> it's not really that funny, is it. finally tomorrow is the white house correspondents' dinner. we'll be talking more about that later in the show. but in the meantime let's take a look at some comedic highlights of the past courtesy of c-span. >> people walk around under all kinds of delusions. there are men walking around thinking they're jesus, there are men walking around thinking they're napoleon. there are men walking around thinking that congress is going to pass their budget in the first 100 days. >> finally have an announcement for those of you watching tonight's event live on c-span. for god's sake, it's saturday night. >> president clinton had some wonderful, wonderful international triumphs such as bringing the arabs and israelis together. remember that day in the rose garden when they were all in step? ♪

>> that's "hardball" for now. coming up next, "your business" with j.j. ramberg. gy season, wiu be a sound sleeper, or... a mouth breather? well, put on a breathe right strip and instantly open your nose up to 38% more than allergy medicines alone. so you can breathe and sleep. shut your mouth and sleep right. breathe right. you're not doing anything as fast as you used to,

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i could feel the shock in my back and it was like "wow its got to get better than this or i'm in big trouble."

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