good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. this war we know is bad. usually the bugles are blowing and the crowd is cheering, yet here we go back into iraq knowing how little hope there is, lacking any faith in our side. how can president obama sound the trumpet for a war that's already lost? and the story i love, how two bad guys got through thick walls to find freedom five days and counting. the latest on the great escape. first this horror in iraq and syria. why are we getting back into a bed that's already on fire? a prize winning columnist with "the washington post." and david inducted in the journalists hall of famer. thank you, sir. congratulations. and j.c. watts, congressman from oklahoma, supporter of rand paul's presidential bid. gentlemen, here's the big news from the white house statement today. quote, the president authorized

the deployment of up to 450 u.s. military personnel to train, advise, and assist iraqi security forces. the president made this decision after requests from prime minister haider al abadi and on the recommendation of secretary carter and chairman dempsey and with the unanimous support of his national security team. they will not serve in a combat role. do you believe it? >> i think i do believe what he said, at least for these troops. because what the president doesn't say was that these troops would be allowed to serve as forward spotters, for example, for air strikes. apparently, they will not be allowed to do that. so what that tells me is that the president has kind of grudging three agreed to these 450 new troops, but not with a new role, not with a forward-leaning role, and that he's still not sold on the idea of greater u.s. involvement, even as he slides in that

direction. >> j.c., you can tell somebody's on board with what they're doing, when they say they're doing it because the other guys wanted him to do it. if he really wanted to do it, why didn't he just say, i said so, i'm the commander in chief. >> well, chris, i don't think we drew down correctly back in 2011. you had many that cautioned back then, republicans and democrats, that the drawdown had gone way too far. now we're kind of having to retract that and send more back in. i do believe the president when he says that he's not putting them in a combat role, if you will. but that infrastructure has been lost. >> i'm going to get back to you, sir, because i think the republican party, which you represent here tonight, is not with this action here. let me jump on this today house speaker john boehner skirted questions about moving forward with a war authorization. instead, he ripped into

president obama's comments from earlier in the week that we don't have a strategy to train the iraqis to fight. here's boehner. >> he has no strategy, as he admitted himself, much less an overarching strategy to take to isil. and you can't have an authorization of military force, if you don't have a strategy. as the president admitted the other day, he has no strategy to win. where's the over-arching strategy? what's the over-arching strategy? >> the key word is strategy. why don't republicans support the idea of a war against isil? even the notion of it. if you're saying we should have kept troops in to fight them? >> i think rand paul and i'm supporting rand paul -- >> are you supporting the republican establishment here or rand paul? >> i'm defending the fact that i am not -- we didn't draw down correctly, but to send american troops back in there, to put boots on the ground when iraqis aren't willing to support themselves, and we're sending american troops back in there to

do it? again, i don't think we did it the right way, when we drew down, but we have to think through this thing going back. >> where i disagree with you, is the idea that if we had kept a hundred guys there they would have fought against isis. >> we drew down with the agreement with the iraqi government at the time. bush and cheney said that type of drawdown was fine. what the president is doing now, sending 450 troops, in essence, set up one more training camp. there are four training camps now for the iraqi military. we're trying to help, but it hasn't gone too well. he wants to train a few more, to have a chance to take back ramadi. it's very modest. but you see on the republican side, they still don't know what to say except to attack the president. what is john boehner's strategy? >> suppose you're moderating the first, second or third republican debate, or the one

with hillary clinton against a republican, and you say, which of you wants to send more troops back into iraq to fight this war on the ground? tell me what they would say. >> if i were moderating, i'd turn to lindsey graham and say, okay, lindsey graham here said 10,000 troops to start with, that's the ante. and by the way, we need to pacify syria somehow. so we need to take care of this big scale. whoa do you think? what do you think, rand paul? what do you think, scott walker? what do you think marco rubio? >> do you think any of those candidates will come in for more troops on the ground? you suggest no. >> rand paul has been hammered because he kind of took the prime minister netanyahu, he took his position to say, you know, when you support the enemy against the enemy, you're still supporting the enemy. so we're saying, okay, let's give the bad guys -- let's help the bad guys against the bad guys. you're still helping the bad guys.

he's saying, think through this thing. you have to think how you're sending american troops, if they're not willing to help themselves, why should -- >> there will be some. the ne-yo cons, whether it's lindsey graham or others, they want more troops, a more robust military presence. at some point, jeb bush -- >> by the way, when is the regimen from the american heritage foundation -- [ all speak at once ] >> i don't know. >> when are they marching over there? >> not any time soon, but there will be a crunch time when jeb bush and john boehner have to say what it is they want to do if they don't like the president's strategy of muddling through. >> senator rand paul is blaming his own party for creating this mess we're in right now. here's senator paul. >> isis exists and grew stronger because of the hawks in our party who gave arms indiscriminately and most of those were snatched up by isis.

they created these people. everything they've talked about in foreign policy, they've been wrong about for 20 years, and somehow they have the gall to keep pointing fingers and saying otherwise. >> i think it's a terrible situation we're in right now, because everybody at this table and everybody watching right now, has someone to blame right now for iraq. the condition we're in right now. you can blame the drawdown. i can blame cheney are being born. i think the hawks have the wrong instincts. they want to go in with big armies fighting, more casualties, more enemies, and more hell to pay. >> i think we ought to blame the bad people are being bad. start with isis. >> what do you do when you blame them? >> there's an enemy there. let's blame them. >> then what? >> that's the big question. >> you start with the guys beheading people. >> but the critical debate has

not been about what to do. it really has been a blame game. that's part of the issue. isis is bad. they do pose a threat to the region and probably some degree of threat to us, it's hard to assess it. and how can we have a debate over what to do when the republicans are -- >> nobody wants to go into another war except for this guy. the hawks are still screeching. scott walker, the guy with no foreign policy involvement isn't ruling out two more invasions with troops on the ground. let's watch him. >> would you rule out a full-blown u.s. re-invasion of iraq and syria? >> i don't think we should ever send a message to our foes as to how far we're willing to go. >> so you wouldn't rule out a full-blown -- >> i would not rule out boots on the ground. >> a fuel-blown re-invasion of iraq? >> if the national interests of this country are at stake, that's to me the standard of what we do for military engagement.

>> so here we have the guy with the best chance in the iowa caucus and starting with a big chance to win the nomination. and he's talking about, i got no problem with another big war in iraq. what is he talking about? >> the problem with the question, it's theoretical. he said i'm not taking anything off the table. you are ready to be president today? what do you do today? don't give me theories about re-invasion. what will you do? >> the message is, i'm ready to go back in. >> he's not taking anything off the table, because he wants to appeal to as many people as possible. he won't commit to anything. >> i think the question is this. ask republican and democrat candidates, are you willing to send american soldiers, moms, sons, wives, husbands, back into iraq to defend them and try to get some stability there, when they won't do it for themselves? >> that's a good question. >> and specifically, we could send troops in and retake

ramadi. then what? what do we do with it? >> that was our question when we went in the first time in 2003. who are we going to turn this over to? and rumsfeld was the architect of the campaign to take that country over. he said we made a mistake trying to enforce democracy, when that was the reason we went in, to overthrow the sunni, put the shia in power, and the shia said thanks. bye-bye sunnis. >> hello iranians. >> remember, at the time, before the invasion, there were people like general shinseki and others saying you're going to need hundreds of thousands of troops to keep control of this country. if lindsey graham thinks he can do it with 10,000 troops, he's crazy. >> but whatever the infrastructure was there, it's gone now. >> if we had kept a couple thousand more troops in that country, i don't think it would have stopped the creation of the caliphate over there, because they would have had to be fighting soldiers, to go into

the sunni areas and kill a lot of isis people to stop them from taking over. because they were all former military people from the government of iraq. they were trained, they were seasoned soldiers, who had been finding iran for years. and we get rid of them. what do they do? i got a job called isis. they found an opportunity. nobody knew this was going to happen. joe biden might have known. anyway, thank you. you guys laugh. i think he did know. coming up, it's been five days and so far, no sign of the two convicted killers who broke out of prison in upstate new york. we'll have the latest on the manhunt. where's tommy lee jones when we need him? plus, 2016 politics, hillary clinton isn't looking to her husband or president obama for inspiration as he gets ready to kick off her campaign. she's going back to franklin roosevelt. and why is big labor bashing democrats? and finally, let me finish with the failure of our leaders to lead. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

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a group of high professional people in new hampshire is pushing for a change in who's allowed to take part in the first presidential debate. it's scheduled for fox news, the top candidates as determined by the polls. the republicans say, historically it's been the responsibility of early primary and caucus states to closely examine and winnow the field of candidates, and it is not in the electorate's interest to have tv debate criteria supplant this solemn duty. we'll be right back after this. new neutrogena cooldry sport. micromesh technology lets sweat pass through and evaporate so skin stays comfortable, while clinically proven protection stays on. new cooldry sport. neutrogena.

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>> welcome back to "hardball." the manhunt for two convicted murderers who escaped from a maximum security prison over the weekend continued for a fifth day today. police were going door to door in dannemora, searching houses for the men. richard matt and david sweat have so far evaded capture. they cut through walls and pipes with power tools and climbed through tunnels to escape out a manhole. authorities say the two men almost certainly had help. i'm joined from dannemora now. gentlemen, thank you. how do you get power tools into a prison cell, john yang? >> well, we talked to -- nbc news talked to a retired corrections officer here and they say employees go in and out of there with duffel bags and other things that are not searched. they don't go through metal detectors, their belongings aren't searched.

so that is one possible route, but that is clearly one thing that investigators are looking into. as you know, they're interviewing a person of interest, joyce mitchell, a teacher in the tailor shop in the prison shop, where both inmates worked. nbc news is being told, they are still talking to her, she is still giving them information. chris? >> let me ask you about this distance traveled. i know if you do a compass and draw circles, you can find these guys anywhere in the world at this point. sir, it seems to me the distance traveled now is almost total, you could get to almost anywhere in the world in five days, if you get an airplane, or meet somewhere in canada, with all this time to think and their connections on cell phones, i wonder, they could be in churchill, canada, and flying from there to somewhere else in russia for all we know. your thoughts? >> absolutely. that's why this is certainly an

intense manhunt that's still ongoing and will continue, but it's also a fugitive investigation. and what i mean by that, the net has been cast a little bit further. there have been some leads sent by the u.s. marshall's service, my former agency, they have sent some leads out to a few other states, which unfortunately i can't share, but they're extending their search and the puzzle needs to come together. as they continue to get intel into the investigators and the tips that are continuing to come in, they're going to do what they do best. so they need to, yeah, certainly, they could be on the moon at this point. i mean, five days is a long time. >> prisoners like this, don't have to use credit cards. they must have some cash, to get food, you have to buy it, you have to meet some human being generally to get food. to get a car, you have to buy it or steal it. there's no record -- is there any reports of a car being stolen in that vicinity?

>> well, that's just it, there is not. and there's nothing coming in to the investigators that i'm aware of. and of course i don't want to get involved in the middle of their investigation, but from my past experience, that's why these guys certainly could be still local somewhere. if that's the case, and they've been out for five days, if there was help on the inside, was there money taken into them before they escaped. was a cell phone given to them before that? so there's a lot of questions that i'm sure the investigators have asked and have answers to. and they're continuing to ask. >> back to john yang, what's this about the vermont option, that they may have gone to vermont, because it's a less settled place. vermont has a lot of space with nobody living in it. is that solid, that news? >> well, the vermont governor said in a press conference here, just a little bit ago, with governor andrew cuomo of new york, they said it's information they've been developed in the

investigation, they've been interviewing inmates and employees and private contractors. as governor shumlin put it, their thinking was that new york was going to be too hot and vermont would be cooler, that a good place to hide out might be a camp in vermont. so they've worked out a deal where new york state troopers can go into vermont to search. there's a vermont state police person at the command center here in new york. so they think that vermont was at least a possible intended destination after the break-out. >> do we have -- let me get back to lenny. do we have technology that's any different than it it would have been in the movie the fugitive? do we have facial recognition technology, fingerprint technology, any way to capture evidence of these targets? >> certainly technology is more advanced than tommy lee jones in the fugitive. our financial and technological

surveillance units, we bring a variety of things to the table. and being asked into the investigation by the new york state troopers, we have resources, manpower, state of the art equipment, money, to go after these guys and not stop until they're caught. >> last question to john yang, are people rooting for or against these guys? is there a spirit of the chase here? i know they're evil guys, murderers. but is there some sense that people like the excitement of this up there? >> at least here in dannemora, where people have gotten the news they may not be that far away, there's no one rooting for these guys. based on what they did, based on their trials, they're nasty, mean, devious, deceptive, every adjective you want to think of. they want these guys caught. they want them back in their -- back behind bars. people here are locking doors

here for the first time in many, many years. people going up, checking their summer camps with great trepidation, taking hunting rifles with them when they go up and check them. i haven't found anybody who's rooting for them up here, chris. >> one of the things i learned from the gift of fear, be careful of bad guys, because they have a charming capability. they'll charm you, bond with you, they have all the techniques in the world. that's probably how they got out of there. thank you, john yang and be wear of the charming stranger. did we underestimate bush 41 as president? look at his numbers. he's up there with bill clinton, a very popular former president, and the guy bill clinton beat. this is "hardball," the place for politics. when a moment spontaneously turns romantic why pause to take a pill? and why stop what you're doing to find a bathroom?

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>> welcome back to "hardball." after 12 years of republican

rule and control of the white house with his approval rating at all-time lows, former president herbert walker bush was voted out of office. a poll found last month, among the living presidents today, bush 41 is now among the most popular. he's tied at the top spot with the man who beat him, former president bill clinton. 64% favorablity right now. in his new book, the quiet man, he argues that the 41st president deserves a lot of credit for the tough decisions he made, many of which were unpopular when he made the time. i'm joined now by the former governor of new hampshire. governor, thank you for joining us. i don't know whether it's the thing about, you live long enough and people -- but i think there's more to it. why do people like this fine gentleman of the old school? >> i think a lot of things that people criticized him for when he was president are turning out to have been right.

certainly not following saddam into baghdad after he kicked him out of kuwait. >> and not getting stuck there. >> people understand now that was the correct decision. and the budget that generated all the surpluses, with the budgeting rules that were part of it in the mid '90s -- >> and he promised no new taxes. read my lips. one of the toughest decisions he made was his reversal on that, despite his pledge at the republican convention. first the pledge. >> the congress will push me to raise taxes and i'll say no, and they'll push, and i'll say no, and they'll push again, and i'll say to them, read my lips, no new taxes. [ cheers and applause ] >> well, two years later when bush said he would, in fact raise taxes, i wrote a column, this column.

would any sane president, running at 70-plus percent in the polls start kibitzing about taxes if he didn't absolutely have to? want to know why he changed course, because the current heading is taking this country into a tornado. what i argued then, if we kept building the deficits in '90, we would have had hell to pay. ty think it's fair to argue, because bush had the guts to do that, reduce the deficits, easier for bill clinton to get the credit? >> absolutely. and that's what the president understood. >> he wanted to get re-elected of course. >> but he had another big reason. he had just sent young men and women over to the middle east to take saddam out of kuwait. and he was very concerned that we would end up with a budget stalemate that cut off defense funding with young men and women not getting the support they wanted. it was one of many reasons. and he also had to deal with a congress that was 260-175 in the

house. 55-45 in the senate, and tom foley and george mitchell were tough customers. >> you also blame newt gingrich of georgia, remember him? putting his interests above the best interest of the country. quote, as we moved into 1990, with the november elections just a few months ahead of us, i began to get the uneasy feeling that the gingrich agenda and the bush agenda were not completely aligned. by that point, i simply did not trust newt gingrich, dan quayle later told me that gingrich actually wanted bush not to be re-elected, so a gingrich-led republican house delegation would have a better shot at becoming a majority under a democratic president. do you believe that? >> yes, i believe that. criteria was set. the tax was a gas tax that had not been adjusted for inflation in almost a decade.

so he agreed to it, and then after everybody came to the white house, he avoided the last ceremony, walked out and decided to oppose it. >> right after you lost that election in 1992, a young clinton campaign staffer made fun of bush, your boss, saying, when he was asked, what was the most important thing about the president's job personally, he said the honor of it. they thought it was funny. >> i think that was an accurate description. george bush loved america, he thought it was an honor to serve, he thought it was a privilege to be in the white house, and he felt that he was doing each day what he would want someone else to do if they were in his job. >> during the 1990 gulf war, the one that ended right, president bush urged us to support saddam hussein's army out of kuwait. but it was a remark that became the public symbol of his resolve. >> this will not stand. this will not stand, this

aggression against kuwait. i've got to go. i have to go to work. i've got to go to work. >> how tough was it for him, when he had the whip hand, he had it done, he could have gone into baghdad, taken over the place, occupied it, he said no, we're killing iraqis now, we're not accomplishing anything. if we get in there, we'll be stuck running the place. the colin powell rule, you broke it, you bought it. how tough is it to say to the hawks, we're not going in there? >> we had a serious debate, but when the president decided, i think everybody was comfortable with the decision. he knew that we would get stuck there, but more than that, he also felt that since we were operating under the resolutions from the u.n., he had to meet the letter of those resolutions and they did not allow for him to go in. i remember watching the debates and clinton was loaded, great with the young african american woman asking him about what was the impact of the deficit on his personal life.

and she meant to say the unemployment rate, the recession. the president said, i'm not sure you know what you're talking about, pretty much. and then bill clinton said, i know exactly what you're talking about. gave a beautiful answer. but your boss was kind of like out of it. why was bush out of it in the second re-election campaign. >> there two were problems. ross perot was there. >> i agree. >> number two, the president got frustrated with a campaign that wasn't going in the right direction, with a campaign that i personally, looking from the outside, did not understand why they weren't hitting on ross perot. i didn't understand why they weren't running a tougher campaign. >> did you miss lee atwater? >> roger was gone, lee was gone. i had left. some people are a little tougher on opposition than others. >> lee is tough. >> that's what i'm saying. the toughness wasn't there. i think if atwater was there, i think i say it in the book, he would have hit perot over the head with a two by four. >> perot was against the push family for some reason.

he didn't solve anything. thank you. the book is called the quiet man. this is an outside objective -- this guy was on the inside. john sununu. >> thank you. >> up next, hillary clinton is not looking at her husband or barack obama for inspiration. he's going back to fdr, we hear, and it may be a smart strategy. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics.

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as many of you may recall, i have been known from time to time to have conversations with mrs. roosevelt. [ laughter ] >> welcome back to "hardball." that was hillary clinton there, as fled, recalling her fondness for eleanor roosevelt, but when secretary clinton holds her first campaign kickoff event on roosevelt island, she may be embracing the other roosevelt, fdr. who said, there is nothing i love as much as a good fight. that's exactly what hillary clinton is going to get in this campaign for the white house.

joining me now, howard fineman. and washington post columnist ruth marcus. and political correspondent jonathan allen. what do you think about hillary and fdr, is there going to be a parallel in her thinking? >> absolutely. i think she thinks that there's a necessity for her in connecting to franklin roosevelt. number one, it gets her away from bill clinton and barack obama, who republicans are going to tie her to as the third term of. but when you talk to her campaign officials, they want to make the argument that you can be rich and look at for common people at the same time. roosevelt was well known for that. from her perspective, there are other parallels. she wants to project that she's progressive on domestic issues and muscular abroad. roosevelt was no dove. hillary clinton is no dove. >> interesting. >> i don't think we'll hear a second new deal out of her, but we'll hear rhetoric that tries

to link her to the past of the democratic party. and that roosevelt coalition that forms the base of the democratic party. >> can new money act like old money? because it always tries. i'm dead serious. democrats have been comfortable with the stevensons, people with old money, second and third generation. the self-made, they've been more republican. >> i'm not sure that reminding people affirmatively that fdr was rich, hillary clinton is rich, therefore don't worry about it is going to be the best argument for the clinton campaign. i think it's going to be very interesting where she's going to have sayiances with eleanor roosevelt, now channeling franklin as well. nobody else can claim that. but it's actually a different coalition than the fdr coalition, certainly geographically for the democratic party. and also a completely different mind-set. yes, progressive at home. yes, muscular abroad. but we're not launching either

the fifth roosevelt term, or the could new deal, i don't think. >> that sounds like hubert humphrey. >> i disagree with that. >> disagree with what? >> i think that jonathan's right, but it's a next evolution of roosevelt. i think what she's going to be saying is, we need a roosevelt for our time, in the sense that franklin roosevelt was really fighting against, and being opposed to, the excesses of the go-go years of capitalism during the jazz age. to look at it historically. he brought in government to try to balance the scales. and i think the american people are looking for that now. they can't quite explain it to themselves. they don't have the policies for it exactly. but they sense that there's an imbalance here somewhere. >> i think you're right. >> that a lot of rich people are getting really, really, really rich, but the average american is not. and that's the spirit that she's going to fight with. it's very smart. and bernie sanders is practically of the roosevelt era.

[ all speak at once ] >> i'm amazed at the fact that so many people know all about the rich. when i'm at the homes of somebody really wealthy, if anybody saw it, there would be a revolution. roosevelt was elected an unprecedented four times to the presidency. hillary clinton struggling with her own aura of wealth as she tries to frame herself as a warrior for the middle class. last week, "the washington post," clinton can talk all she wants about income inequality and reducing the influence of money in politics, but her recent experience makes it seem insincere. is that fair? >> she said things that were completely out of touch, like we were dead broke when we left the white house. i think even though technically true, i think that makes it seem

like she can't be the person who is the wealthy woman that's serving the lower classes. but is it possible to do that? absolutely. i think we got to wait for a policy agenda. one of the things that i think is interesting, her staff has been working closely with the folks at the roosevelt institute, many of whom are liberal on regulating corporations and wall street. what comes out of the discussions, her big platform, we're still waiting to hear. ruth wrote a big column today -- >> i was disagreeing with you and now you're being so nice to me. >> i'm asking for american fairness. nobody has to take any heat, the bushes never took heat in the old days. george herbert walker bush, nobody ever held it against him he was born in the manor. i just wonder, when did we decide certain people shouldn't be rich? >> well, it's the way they got rich. they got rich off their public

service, and often times from the very people that they were helping when they were in office. so i think part of it is that. that's a huge part of what the negatives on hillary clinton are right now. >> but nobody holds reagan responsible for taking 2 million from the japanese. >> can i just say that old money becomes more innocent over time? >> yes. [ laughter ] >> reagan also -- >> like the kennedys. >> who was it that said behind every great wealth, there's a great crime? >> ann richards did say that george bush was born on third base, silver spoon in his mouth. >> he hit a triple. >> i think she lost the next election too. >> and it was controversial at the time, reagan's $2 million speech, but he didn't then want to go back into office. >> changed history when she wrote the acceptance speech for bush. it got to me. she made him into a regular guy. dan quayle didn't help. the roundtable is staying with us. up, next, big labor is

turning up the pressure on pro-trade democrats. 20 of them are facing the heat for supporting the press and the republican majority on this issue. "hardball," the place for politics. we'll be right back.

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we're back at the roundtable, howard, ruth, and jonathan. the house of representatives is expected to vote on the big trade bill, granted president obama trade promotional authority, otherwise known as fast-track. friday is the day. political co-reported that house leaders are confidence, but not certain they have the support to pass sweeping trade legislation, are aiming to bring the package to the floor vote by the end of the week.

many of those attacks are coming from labor unions who are targeting democrats who are planning to say yes. as we showed you last week, there was a tv ad against amy berra for supporting the bill ask yesterday began airing this tv bill, slamming kathleen rice, who has also decided to vote for fast-track. >> in january, congresswoman rice wrote a letter to president obama saying she opposed fast track trade authority because it would send american jobs offshore and push down wages. in april, she said it again. on saturday, rice flip-flopped and now supports exactly that bad policy that experts say costs millions of american jobs we can't afford to lose. actions speak louder than words. why should we ever trust kathleen rice again? >> the leader of the group running that ad, richard trumka

appeared earlier today sounding confident about labor's chances to destroy the bill. let's watch. >> well, i think we're going to win on friday. i think we have the votes. we'll see. it will be a close vote. this is going to be the most stark contrast that those 435 people ever had. either you vote for working people or for corporate entitlements. >> well, johnny stopped by my office after the appearance and he's confident, he says they got the votes. 70 republicans may be voting against this. they think no more than 20 democrats. numbers work against the passage. >> where do you see it? it is too close to call at this point. >> can the president and the democratic leader nancy pelosi who i am so impressed with will she help the president on this? >> i think she's trying to figure it out. she would like to leverage something more for labor if she can out of some of those democratic votes. she met with denis mcdonough and four our top white house officials, labor secretary came

down to her office, jeff ziance. >> what happened to politician dealing. you go to the congressman, we'll give you -- give us minimum wage. how about a deal? nobody does that anymore. >> this is basically a conflict between the spirit of american politics right now, which is extremely distrustful of big corporations, global trade and all of that, against the -- what the leaders of the country view as long range interest, presidents always support this kind of thing. i would bet it is going to come down to a couple of votes like jonathan says. even though barack obama is not lyndon johnson, he's got the presidency. >> can he deliver -- >> republicans have the majority in both the house and the senate. they got to be able to find a few things -- also hillary clinton as john was saying earlier, hillary clinton said nothing. >> nor has nancy pelosi or steny hoyer. >> exactly.

>> with hillary not coming out -- if hillary is a leftist, she would have come out against the thing. >> here she is. secretary of state hillary clinton advocated for president obama's trade deal. here she is. >> to continue this progress we are both pressing ahead on something called the transpacific partnership. it is an ambitious multilateral free trade agreement that would bring together many more nations of the pacific rim. australia and the united states are helping to lead those negotiations. >> she did have some concerns about that, in her book. but bill clinton, i heard him in tokyo a couple of months ago completely for the bill. he called it fabulous. >> he was the main proponent of nafta of the earlier trade agreement. hillary has been on both sides. >> now hillary clinton is staying on the sidelines of the trade debate now. here she is. >> do you have any concerns about the trade deal and whether that will hurt the competitiveness here? >> well, any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect

our security. and we have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive. i have said i want to judge the final agreement. i've been for trade agreements. i've been against trade agreements. i tried to make the evaluation depending upon what i thought they would produce and that's what i'm waiting to see. >> one thing -- >> hillary clinton knows this issue, but hillary has been an expert, secretary of state when this thing was put together. what does she really believe? is she for trade or against it? >> she's for getting elected. -- whether it supports the fast track authority and what the clinton campaign folks are saying which is really kind of laughable is that's a kind of procedural vote, that's really an internal congressional matter. she would have that authority if she were president. and the second is, whether she supports the transpacific partnership --

>> the whole vote in the week is whether you see the bill in advance or not. >> we play dodge ball. thank you. when we return, let me finish with the failure of our leaders to lead. my point entirely. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics.

let me finish tonight with the failure of our leaders to lead. am i the only one who sees the immense opportunity for getting

things done in this country if only our political leaders would learn how to be politicians again? i look at the big table of opportunities for this country to move ahead and wonder why our political leaders can't find trades and deals to make. the democrats desperately want to get the government back into the building business. especially on transportation. who exactly is against transportation? is there some senator or member of congress who wants dangerous bridges, who is happy with trains that shake, rattle and roll, that ramble along like a farmer's buck board, like the acela does between d.c. and new york? is there anyone happy that memorial bridge, which we marched across in the march on the pentagon in 1967 against the vietnam war is now crumbling? does anyone wish that president eisenhower had not built the interstate highway system that unites this country now, route 95, that cuts north and south, route 70 and 80 that cut across the continent uniting east and west? isn't there a way in all of the klatter of opportunities, the trade build, the minimum wage hike, keystone, infrastructure spending that grownups can find ways to jam things together and

make it work. is everything about killing something like obama care? can't we find a way to get something done by letting some things live? where are the lbjs, tip o'neills, bob doles, bill clintons? lincoln built the transcontinental railway in the middle of the civil war. and with it scientific agriculture in the same war. i'm waiting for a presidential candidate of either party to propose a deal that would actually get done. i wonder if any have the courage to do it because that would be interesting. and that's "hard ball" for now. thank you for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight on "all in". >> with all that happened that day, he allowed his emotions to get the better of him. >> a surprising message of regret from the attorney of officer casebolt as the backlash to the backlash continues in mckinney. >> you should just admit that. you're a race pimp.

>> live to texas for the latest. plus, as the white house announces 450 new advisers in iraq, why shouldn't we just bring all our troops home? then, why the attacks on marco rubio and his $80,000 speedboat seem a little unfair. and statistical proof that what lebron james is doing in the nba finals might make him the greatest of all time. >> i'm not too much worried about the game. i'm worried about the moment. >> "all in" starts right now. good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. reaction and repercussions, the police actions surrounding a teenage pool party arrive today from the police officer who has now resigned, and the 15-year-old girl who he shoved to the ground, both responding today through their attorneys. according to his lawyer, eric casebolt, the now former mckinney police officer, had already made service calls in an