were to get all those people out alive. i didn't want my girls to see somebody drown on christmas day. that's what really drove me to try and help them. walk the line. let's play "hardball." >> good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. well, it begins like this. the new leader lays down the gauntlet. he dares anyone to stand in his way, ignoring the laws, he does what he wants. if he smells weakness or an eagerness not to displease him, he shoves furt, demanding more of what he wants. today, he's testing the limits of his new power, probing to see what he can get away with. a federal law outlaws hiring a member of the family, it

includes a son-in-law. he says no federal official can do it. donald trump is deciding to test it, daring the media to take a stand. let me get this straight. i believe letting a big man ignore the law, in fact, the spirit of the law, you send him the worst possible signal. you tell him he's above the law. if you say this isn't a big deal hiring your son-in-law to sit with you in the oval office, tell me when you plan to say no to donald trump. tell me now because believe me, this is just the first stip, the first taste of what it's going to be like, and remember the mentality that gave us the worst constitutional crisis of all time, in the words of nixon, when the president does it, that means it's not illegal. we stand now at the bridge connecting what donald trump wants to do and what the constitution, the law, the media, and the american people will let him get away with. what we do will decide what this moment in history will look like

in american history. as evidenced so far, this is part of a larger issue. not only did donald trump het his family sit in with a leader of a foreign country yesterday, but he's pushing the envelope with his choices. michael flynn, jeff sessions for attorney general, and mike pompeo, well, for his director of cia. flynn's made no secret of his disdain for muslims. sessions has reportedly used racist remarks toward african-americans and pompeo has revealed himself to be a partisan iledology. donald trump suffered a suit against trump university for $25 million. i'm joined by ari melber. let's talk, i had this -- i sense that big shots, big men will push as far as they can. they'll treat the united states government in this case as an acquisition. and therefore, begin to think they can shape it to their will. now, donald trump knows there's a law, an anti-nepotism law that

says you can't hire family members. it says you can't hire a son-in-law or daernl or a mother of father. you can't bring the family into the government business because the first loyalty of every public official should be to the people of the country, nautto some relative who put them on the pay role. trump, what's he up to in regard to jared cukushner, his highly trusted krlsh adviser? >> as you say, the congress felt this was dangerous. that the bias that most people might naturally hold for their family is a dangerous thing if it can lead them to give out perks or power to poem who wouldn't otherwise get it, and on top of that, bad governance, because as you know from covering washington for so long, hiring and firing go hand in hand. you have to be able to fire, to remove people if they're on the job and not doing it right. that's hard to do if that person is your son or son-in-law.

talk about a difficult family conversation. that's why it was banned by congress in the anti-nepotism law from 1967. second, you mention thd constitution and the spirit. this is something your founders were well aware of. they set age minimums for the senate and the presidency under the constitution never to be changed because they were so worry about the hereditary habit from kings trying to roll their family members in. you have to get old enough, win it fair and square with the voters if you wanted to. all of this flies in the face of the spirit of the flal laws on the book, of the constitutional system, the trump administration and the transition format as we're seeing it seems to think the family business can roll right over into government. >> let me ask you how he does this. so trump just decides he's going to do this. pete williams here said he thinks that this might be able to pass muster. i read a lot of coverage today that says it's very

controversial. the "new york times" says everything you just said, that you start going down this road of picking family members, bringing them into the office with you. by the way, here's a case of the son-in-law who's married to the person you're going to turn over your entire empire to. ivanka runs the empire. her husband is sitting in the room with her. you think he might talk to his wife once in a while and suggest what's up? it's an absurd relationship. if trump pushes ahead with this and says i'm going to make my son-in-law my consigliere in the white house. what stops him from doing it? the congress? or the new attorney general he picks? in this case, jeff sessions. who stops him? >> you're laying out the questions that should be presented to the transition team and to jeff sessions who has to put aside any role he had as friend or endorser of donald trump to be the leader of the top law enforcement agency in doj in our country, and this should come up in the confirmation hearings. who's going to call the line

here? the legality, the law is clear you cannot put him in the cabinet. you cannot put them in an agency. that law explicitly applies to the president and agency heads. gres is worried about the secreta secretary of defense saying i'm make my son my secretary? that's illegal. the question we have reported on is whether you can get around that, which has never happened before, but could you get around that by setting up some kind of adviser who is not in an agency? how would it be tested? you could sue over it. there was a suit that went into federal court over whether hillary clinton as a spouse could run a health care task force which folks remember, and she was ultimately allowed to do that. the difference there being it was an outside task force on one thing, temporary, not being a pumpinant adviser. >> ari, you're great. >> thank you. >> now to trump's pick for attorney general. alabama senator jeff sessions. he made that pick this morning. after the "new york times" reported on allegations of

racism, democrats expressed their concern about his serving as a.g. elizabeth warren said in a statement, 30 years ago, a different republican senate rejected senator sessions nomination as a federal judge. in doing so, there senate affirmed there can be no compromise with racism. congressman luis gutierrez said if you have nostalgia for the days when blacks kept quiet, gays were in the closet, immigrants were invisible, and women stayed in the kitchen, jefferson sessions is your man. that was tough. joining me, joe walsh, and howard fineman is editorial director of the "huffington post" and msnbc political analyst. before i get to you, mr. brooks, i want to go to howard. this son-in-law thing to me is a clear cut law, and for trump to say i'm going to go around it, skirt it, ignore it, is a

statement. it's what dictators, what pow e hungry people do. it's a good test to whether he's going to obey the law or plow through it. >> the question is, who's going to stop me? >> yes. >> he's going to dare them to do something about it because it is difficulty procedurally, probably, to charge him or sue him. he's going to say, go ahead. you know, we don't need no badges. >> well said. but the fact is, he's also saying, i read the law. simply put, i'm going to ignore it. the spirit of the law is clear. >> donald trump has built his entire career of ignoring barriers, ignoring spirit of the law, ignoring everything that is not nailed to the floor on. >> like paying debts. >> he'll sue, and like he did with trump university. they back him to the corner, he settled, he paid. >> let me go to cornell brooks. thank you for coming on. the 1st time you're on and i

appreciate you taking the time. what is the position of the naacp, your organization, of jeff sessions as an attorney general? >> we're very, very troubled. when you think about the fact that 30 years ago, as a prosecutor, he described the aclu and naacp as un-american organizations, he described a group of civil rights organizations including the naacp as, quote, forcing civil rights down the throats of americans. he described an african-american subordinate as boy and told him to watch what he said around white folks, as it were. and if we move from his prosecutorial misconduct to his legislative record as a senator, he's received a consistent and bad failing grade from the naacp. so what we see here is an administration in its early days signaling that it is hostile toward or indifferent to the civil rights agenda of the

country. so the question is, if he was not good enough to be a federal judge, in attributing the law, how is he good enough to be attorney general, actually enforcing the law. and so if he has an indifferent or hostile attitude toward civil rights, how then can he lead the civil rights division of the justice department? the nation's leading law enforcement agency, particularly at this moment where we're in the midst of a millennial civil rights movement, quite literally. >> do you think he's an angry old time southerner? or do you see more of the old days than the new days with this guy? >> i'm from south carolina. it's not about being a southerner. it's about being an american in 2016. these attitudes, that perspective, that legislative record does not comport with the duties and responsibilities of the attorney general. this is a moment where we literally see in the streets a generation of students and young people putting their bodies and

conscience on the line in terms of standing against police misconduct. you had eric holder going to ferguson, loretta lynch vigorously pursuing prosecutions in terms of racial terrorism in charleston. we need an attorney general who is going to enforce the law on behalf of all people. no matter where they come from, their religion, their race, their hue or their heritage. so to nominate someone with this kind of a record at this moment in history, following the appointment of a chief strategist who represents the chief architect of a digital platform for the alt-right, misogynists, islamophobests, is disturbing. >> we need your voice. i see why you're head of the organization. we needed to hear that. anyway, multiple senior intelligence officials tell nbc news today they have deep reservations about trump tapping mike flynn as national security adviser, another pick he made today. one describing him as a hot head and another saying he doesn't

understand the magnitude of the job. some of the incendiary comments flynn has made in the past are also resurfacing like his tweet last february saying that, quote, fear of muslims is rational. please forward this to others. the truth fears no answer, no questions. certain personal e-mails from colin powell were also revealing about flynn. while they have not been independently verified, he wrote of flynn's retirement, flynn got fired as head of d.a. i asked why he got fired, abusive with staff, didn't listen, worked against policy, bad judgment, et cetera. he has been and was right wing nutty ever since. joan, the perfect person to get a response from on this. right wing nutty. this is from colin powell, a political moderate. look at this whole thing. i want your take on the whole thing. kushner as his consig leairy. it's unbelievable when congress

says we can't even do it anymore. we can't hire our relatives. >> terrifying. going back to jared kushner, kri chris. donald trump promised to drain the swamp, fight crony capitalism. he promised to fight corruption. there are his kids, meeting with the prime minister of japan. he is the very definition of crony capitalism at this point. we don't know what's in his taxes. we don't know anything or much about his domestic or international business holdings, so you start there. but to talk about flynn and sessions and pompeo. let's bring pompeo in. what you're seeing right now is going to be the expansion of a national security state. mike pompeo wants to expand the domestic spying that barack obama unfortunately did. everything that edward snowden revealed. he wants to roll back the very limited, limited reforms that took place after snowden. jeff sessions is an implacable

foe of the wonderful movement, bipartisan movement for sentencing reform, criminal justice reform, for trying to do something about mass incarceration. he opposes that. he wants to strengthen the war on drugs. i believe he believes in putting more people in jail and not fewer. as cornell brooks said, he's not going to be in ferguson trying to feel people's pain and figure out the right thing to do. it worries me as well in a time where we're going to see rising dissent. and it's our right. this man lost the popular vote. i'm not saying he's not the president, but he lost the popular vote. he's going hard right. we're going to see more dissent, and i'm afraid we're going to see the criminalization of dissent under jeff sessions. it's a bad day. it's the worst day we had -- >> i agree with you. mike pompeo is also an outspoken critic of hillary clinton when serving on the committee on benghazi. he and a colleague released a

harsh statement, a report saying that among thing hillary clinton failed to lead. i want to get back to howard and go to mr. brooks again. it seems to me that after naming stephen bannon, who is maybe the most notorious of the most reprehensible, however you put it, appointment as inside. inside the white house. one thing to call him up and ask for advice. putting him on the pay roll with a key to the white house, he's in there with him when he makes decision. steve bannon of breitbart. then he goes to jeff sessions and this this guy, flynn, with his kid, flynn's kid sounds out there, to put it lightly, and this guy. are they going to go after hillary clinton now? is it going to be third world, they going to prosecute her? >> i wouldn't rule it out, although he has been nominated for cia. >> but it's the spirit of this thing says i don't care about the law. this is going to be vengeful, pushing administration.

>> none of this is really a surprise. at this point, especially after paul manafort was kicked out, who turned out to be a moderate influence. >> the russian guy. >> just the russian guy, but he's out, and bannon came in, and bannon and trump together, along with the rest of the inside crew, really said we're going to win this, if we're going to win this, we're going to win it the way we want to win it and we're going to get a mandate such as it is for whatever hard right policies we want to pursue. whether it's on immigration, on torture, on spying, on civil rights, you name it, they're going right down the line, and this should not roly be a surprise. this is what donald trump campaigned on. he campaigned on extreme vetting. he campaigned on more than water boarding. he campaigned by appealing to all of the people who these policies appeal to. >> we have another national

choicing coming up. this is the bridge on which we all stand, between what donald trump wants and the american people and the constitution and congress are going to accept and our laws are going to accept. you have to be alert on this bridge right now. cornell brooks, we'll have you back as many times as you can come, joan and howard. coming up, senator ted cruz describes donald trump's election victory. and trump watch, and the critical time to watch what the incoming president is up to. this is "hardball," the place for politics. (vo) stank face.

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he wears his army hat, he gets awalks aroundliments. with his army shirt looking all nice. and then people just say, "thank you for serving our country" and i'm like, that's my dad. male vo: no one deserves a warmer welcome home. that's why we're hiring 10,000 members of the military community by the end of 2017. i'm very proud of him. male vo: comcast. well, texas senator ted cruz spoke today at the conservative federalist society. listen to how cruz described donald trump's election last week. >> the election was an incredible vindication for the american people across this

country and especially those, as you know, in rural america, in what elites on both coasts consider to be fly-over country. this election could be well understood as the revenge of fly-over country. >> well, heading into the weekend and the thanksgiving holiday, be sure to keep up with "hardball" online. follow the show on twitter and instagram and like us on facebook. you'll get access to interviews, videos, and behind the scenes photos as we cover the trump transition. my number one goal is getting more funds out to parks because some animals and plants are only found in one place in the world, and that's in some national parks. i find that's a great cause, and i want to support it. (avo) the subaru share the love event has donated over four million dollars to help the national parks. get a new subaru, and we'll donate two hundred and fifty dollars more. ♪put a little love in your heart.♪

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kwaepth, 2016. this is a key time for donald trump and those keeping guard on him as well. he's poking around the dark, trying to figure out where he is and where he can go. this makes it an historic time to tell him what he can and cannot do. the united states government, even for a president-elect, is an opportunity for leadership and national service. what it is not is an

acquisition. it's not something donald trump is taking ownership of. however much he depends on his son-in-law to make decisions or see a matter clearly, it law is clear. a federal official cannot hire his son-in-law. he can respect the law or not respect it. there's no middle ground. the hardest thing about this transition is keeping a clear eye on what trump is up to. what gives reason to hope, what can be negotiated, what we should stop him in his tracks from doing. if he hires his son-in-law for a without position, he's thumbing his nose at a law clearly meant to prevent this position. it's not to the government or the people of the united states but to his father-in-law. in this case, the oply one who would likely award him such a high entrusted post. the fact is i can see why he wants his son-in-law working with him in close circumstances because he trusts both his judgment and his loyalty. but the law is the law. we need our president to obey it. we need to let him know he has to. and that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. coming up next, "your business"

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