how not to run for president, and win. let's play "hardball." good evening i'm chris matthews in washington. when donald trump rode down the escalator trump tower june 16, 2015 to announce his candidacy for president, even those who hoped he would shake things up wondered how long he'd last. his attack on mexican immigrants that day stoked outrage. it was hard finding an expert who predicted he'd wind up taking the oath of office. over the next 17 months trump roared past a field of 16

republican challengers and one of the best financed and best prepared democratic candidates ever. every turn he seemed to check the box what not to do. he went to war with a popular news anchor, acalled for his democratic opponent to be locked up and put away, said women who get abortions should face criminal punishment and defied republican orthodoxy on war, relations with russia and trade. he called for banning an entire religion from entering the country and whether to storm over recorded comments from 11 years ago that seemed to endorse assaulting women. for the next hour we're going to show highlights or lowlights of the most confounding out of the box presidential campaign ever, a campaign that broke every rule yet somehow turned out on top and that's the story tonight, how not to run for president and win. i'm joined by former chair of

the republican national committee michael steele, "usa today's" washington bureau chief susan page, heidi presbola and director howard fineman. we begin with donald trump's comments about women. for months trump's approval ratings for women hovered among historic lows. the wisdom said they'd preclude him from making it to the white house. he enflamed the problem at the first republican primary debate he was angered by a question moderator megyn kelly asked him about women's looks. >> she gets out and she starts asking me all sorts ofry lick duce questions and you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever. she asked me a question, it was an imappropriate question, it was ary lick kuls question. even the other candidates said that was out of line. the fact is she asked me very

inappropriate questions. she should really be apologizing to me you want to know the truth and other candidates have said that. >> i thought just as a guy watching this thing that megyn kelly, and nobody's not a competitor in this business, everybody's doing their job trying to get ahead that she won that exchange shoorks he made him look out of control, his temperament out of whack and she seemed calm and tough doing her job. >> i completely agree. she acted like a professional asking an appropriate question but not enough to cost him the presidency along with the series of other exchanging where you might take them in isolation and say at the end of the day he lost women, hillary clinton got 54% of women but he won white women by ten percentage points and that was a surprise. >> what did you make of that heidi? i thought the blood thing, i didn't even get it the first time. oh my god this guy is gross but didn't seem to stop him. >> it actually created that

outcome chris because it was such a good question and it did parlay back his exact words which spoke for themselves to all american women and he was very upset about that. and he couldn't let it go, because if you look at this war he had with megyn kelly it started with that, and that is what prompted the blood coming out of her wherever comments but he continued to beat up on megyn kelly for the duration of the next couple of months, even when looking at news reports she was behaving no differently than her male competitors asking questions no differently than her male competitors but trump kind of made her this unwitting symbol of sexism. >> apart from sex, apart from the context, he broke the oldest political rule in the business, when you're in a hole, stop digging. he wouldn't get out of that fight with this popular anchorwoman. >> he loves rabbit holes and the more he finds the more he finds an opportunity to go down them. the interesting thing about the exchange with megyn kelly ste the one thing you didn't think

was possible. he made megyn and fox news a creature of the vast right wing conspiracy against republicans running for office. in other words, you found republicans chiding fox and megyn for the way they engaged with donald trump. >> let's look at this first debate, hillary clinton knows how to fight, too, she seemed to bait trump bringing up a former miss universe who accused him of making fun of her weight. trump blew the story into a bigger deal spending the next few days attacking the beauty queen. >> she was the winner and you know, she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem been we had a real mem. not only that, her attitude. i saved her job because they wanted to fire her for putting on so much weight, and it is a beauty contest. say what you want but they know what they're getting into. it's a beauty contest. i said don't do that, let her try and lose the weight. can you imagine i end up in a position like this.

so that's the way it is. >> over twitter trump urged people to hunt down a supposed sex tape which turned out to be nonexistent. howard, again he goes into the hole, fights like a fox hole, he wants to fight on this line him against women. >> let me suggest two themes we'll be discussing for this entire hour. the media failed to analyze how trump used the media. let's talk about that for a second. he loves the controversy. he courts the controversy. he uses the controversy. he sucked the wind, energy and attention out of every candidate in the race. donald trump's model was and is if the attention is on me no matter what the cause it's a good thing. the second subpar is attack, attack, attack. always attack your accuser. we miss the way he used us the

entire year and the second big point is people want change, and want the change and they will pick up whatever they need to pick up no matter what you say about that instrument. that's what happened this whole year. >> the irony is of course once again to make your point the guy who got hurt in this next episode with the guy from the media, early october audio surfaced from a 2005 interview actually overheard comment by donald trump and former access hollywood host billy bush talking about women prior to a promotional shoot. to what donald trump says he can get away with because he's a celebrity.

that one i thought was probably mortal. felt like it at the time. >> it was like the 56 mortal wound that we thought he was going to have. remember when he said john mccain wasn't a hero and we thought that was a mortal kund woound and that was like an innocent time from long ago that that would have been so devastating. i think all the candidates your strength is your weaken, your weak as soon as your strength. his weakness is he says outrageous things and will never back down, never apologize. that's his strength. people think i want change and want them doing that on my behalf. in my funny way it helped make his brand. >> every fight he had was with the establishment, everything he said as gross as it was, no matter what you thought of what he said subtext i'm not one of them. >> right. >> heidi the issue with the tape we thought it would be about him

the women vote went that he bad. seemed like he benefited and women weren't as outraged as people were attracted by his insolence. >> there was a significant gender gap and for the first time in a long time the democrats took married women. i don't think we can completely dismiss this and say women decided at the end of the day this was all okay. i think this would have been a mortal wound and it was going into the final debate in las vegas, it was very grim. i saw no surrogates on my plane flying out there other than jeff sessions so it's also a little depressing for some women who did kind of put things, their reputations on the line and coming out in terms of what the lesson is, because of the

blowback. it's depressing for everybody to show in an odd upside down way hisinesssolent bravery. >> 11 points is not a record. that matches the record from 1996 which was bob dole and bill clinton and can you imagine that donald trump did as well as bob dole did among women. >> for me i think it's still boiling down to the fact that people in the media and in the political class continue to look at this election through conventional lenses. >> excuse me for living. >> i know, but here it is with the egg on your face after this guy has weathered all these storms really goes to what you were saying at the end of the day people were looking at this and kind of maybe put off but

tracted at the same time. >> we're taken with an exclamation point something happens. oh my god he did that, we read the headlines, oh my god and the people out there go they're making a big deal. >> trump voters, we come back to the fact half of the registered voting electorate chose not to vote. there's been compelling journalism out of the milwaukee districts for example, philly districts, these voters who voted in 2012 but were so disheartened by what has or hasn't happened and didn't feel like this would really make that big of a difference in their lives just stay at home. >> first woman nominee for president and didn't work in her favor.

>> donald trump may have made politics so distasteful it depressed everybody but his firmest allies. tmp donald trump's angry rhetoric on race from day one of his campaign he painted ethnic groups with a broad brush using racial language and imagery. he gets a lot of compliments.

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welcome back to "hardball." ever savvy businessmen burst onto the political scene warmly embracing the birther movement calling into question president barack obama's nationality. >> why doesn't he show his birth certificate and you know what? i wish he would. i think it's a terrible pail hanging over him. nobody comes forward, nobody knows who he is until later in his life.

he may have one but there's something on that, religion, maybe it says he's a muslim, i don't know. i have people studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding. >> you have people searching in hawaii? >> absolutely. and they cannot believe what they're finding. i still would like to see his college records, a couple of things. trump comes along and said birth certificate. he gave a birth sertical. whether or not that was a real certificate because a lot of people questioned it, i certainly question it. >> outrageous. questioning president obama's birth certificate provided trump with the foundation upon which he built his 2016 campaign. it's not entirely surprising he declared his candidacy by attacking an entire nationality. here he goes. >> when mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. they're not sending you. they're not sending you. they're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. they're bringing drugs.

they're bringing crime. they're rapist, and some, i assume, are good people. >> accusations plagued this campaign to the bitter end, of course, and for more on how demolished political norms discussing race in america i'm back with our panel, michael steele, susan page, hildie presbo and howard feinman. the rapist thing jumped out at me. what is it based on any data? i don't think it would be anything to do with that. >> it's based on crimes that have been committed by illegals here in the united states over a period of time. so you take one or two instances and kind of glom them together and becomes a pejorative representative in anybody. trump has this unique way of taking advantage wanlg and sort of exploding it up so you could do one thing, you could say one

thing, i've been hearing from a lot of people so that kind of political rhetoric worked very effectively for him and he was able to -- because he could always as you saw in the clips deflect. i'm not saying it, someone else said it. it may have been one guy standing in a corner whispering to himself. >> back to journalism on one point. he said, let's just fact check this, i've got people out in hawaii and you won't believe what they're coming up, and he goes to the manchurian candidate not only did the guy sneak in the country but assumed a false identity that he wasn't this guy going through harvard law, wasn't the guy at columbia, hawaii in high school. nobody knew him. what was that about, he was some mysterious pretender. >> it was about raising a cloud of dust about barack obama and not based in fact and in fact saying things that were shown to be disproven, things you could prove were not true and these

suggestions maybe his birth certificate said he was a muslim, that wasn't true. nobody knew who he was until he got into high school or college also not true. it's a rhetorical technique. that is dangerous and journalists have an obl face to call out. >> you makep completely different stories, nothing to do, just so the jury thinks there's plausible deniability, not probably, probable guilt you can't prove it, shadow of a doubt. it worked for some people. >> this is bringing back flashbacks to the campaign trail actually right after the primaries in new hampshire and bill clinton was telling voters to be careful because a lot of this is going to happen during this campaign and it's not about facts anymore. it's simply about raising the

suggestion, putting the suggestion out there and letting it multiply and we're seeing that not only by trump but by some of the people who are, some of the leading conspiracy theorists who have been brought on like michael flynn. some of the things he was tweeting days before the election about hillary clinton and child pornography and money laundering, it's really crazy stuff. >> we're beating around the bush here a little bit. donald trump goes for the perceived weaknesses of any public figure, anybody that stands in his way. with his voters and with a lot of other people we need to talk about race. we need to talk about religion and we need to talk about ethnicity. he was going after the first plaque american president, he was going after the notion that he was a muslim, which was somehow supposed to be a mark against him in this society, and he was going against latinos and mexicans in particular. and in this rough marketplace of

politics, he was willing to go, he was willing to touch buttons that other people have not been willing to do. as a matter of fact, not only gingerly do it but to do it aggressively. anything that's smacked of criticism of him he brushed off his political correctness. he was attacking the entire culture of the last 20 or 30 years of the supposed consensus that we had that you don't speak that way about other people. >> to make that point sort of like he's the only one to shoot the moon. >> yes. picked up all the cards. >> in may donald trump accused a federal judge who presided over a class action lawsuit against trump university out in california, he called him incapable of hearing the case fairly because of his mexican heritage. let's watch him here. >> i have had horrible rulings, i've been treated very unfairly by this judge. now this judge is of mexican heritage. i'm building a wall, okay? i'm building a wall. i'm going to do very well with

the hispanics. >> if you invoke his race as a reason why he can't do his job -- >> i think he's doing it. >> you talk about building a wall and make the mexican-american judge paying for it, "he can't give me a fair hearing. request. >> now they'll make mexican restaurants pay for it because nobody's paying for the wall. back to howard's point point. he crossed over the racial and gender barriers that up until now have been completely off limits and our civil discourse. >> why did he get away with it? >> his voters wanted him to get away with it and there were enough of them. >> it's enabled a certain segment we didn't realize how large that segment in our society is. >> you got 4% -- >> i think it's larger than people like to admit. the reality of it is he injected race in a way in which a lot of people said finally someone is saying what i'm thinking. and that may say a lot about how

we have not dealt with race in this country, but he understood that well enough to be able to pick that particular scan off the civil right's movement. >> or immigration for this matter. there were rellegitimate questi. >> he got more hispanic voters than mitt romney did. >> when we come back that is an interesting -- they're not all liberal democrats. trump's over-the-top attacks on his opponents are coming up like petty name calling to telling hillary she ought to be in jail. trump used degrading personal attacks against opponents, did it work? well, you tell me. this is "hardball" the place for politics. d ugly and messy. they are the natural born enemy of the way things are. yes, ideas are scary, and messy

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you have to brand people a certain way when they're your opponents. jeb bush, we call him low energy. jeb bush is a low energy person. so low energy that every time you watch him, you fall asleep. you have lying ted cruz. i nicknamed him lyin'. i say lyin'. how would you spell that? lyin' ted. l-y-i-n with an apostrophe. you know? we call him lyin' ted. little marco by the way is a choke artist.

he's liddle, liddle marco. don't worry about it liddle marco. >> gentlemen, you got to do better than this. >> that is high school and a bad high school. welcome back. that was a look back at how donald trump resorted to name calling during the primaries. it was clear trump relished hurling insults at his republican opponents, took a more degrading approach to his campaign against hillary clinton attacking her ethics, experience, even her health. >> crooked hillary clinton oh she's crooked, folks, crooked as a $3 bill. in fact she's the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency of the united states of america. it's her international donors control her every move. she is a dangerous liar. she's the devil. he made a deal with the devil. unstable hillary. she's really pretty close to unhinged. honestly i don't think she's all

there. she also lacks the mental and physical stamina. you see all the days off that hillary takes? day off. day off. she gives a short speech then she goes home, goes to sleep and shows up two days later. you ever see her 18-minute speech? bum, bum, bum, see ya. she can't even make it to her car, isn't it tough? i think we should take a drug test prior to the debate. no one is more corrupt than crooked hillary clinton. nobody. >> this all make you feel good? we're back with our panel. looking in the rear view mirror is staggering. the name calling, is this going to teach our young daughters and grandkids if we want to get ahead sticks and stones will break their bones. >> we actually see signs that kids are learning this lesson. we have these incidents scattered incidents, anecdotes about kids being abusive including in neighborhoods where you'd think that wasn't going to

happen. question in politics, can you put the toothpaste back in the tube? is it possible for someone who follows the traditional rules, the normative rules of courteous behavior and rhetoric? >> let's ask the gentleman from the rnc. is anything going to put this -- because trash talking is working. >> i think it's out. i think you have elections to look forward to in the future particularly in primary settings in which candidates take it to another level. i really do. i this i that door is kind of opened simply because it sort of draws people further into the conversation. he was defining his opponents because he knew that that would resonate with the audience, and that would be something that would stick with them. no matter what else she said or did they'd look at jeb bush at low energy. >> we were all amused by this and frankly thought look how off message is he, how off script is he. can you believe he said that? yet at every point there was a

strategic reason why donald trump would want to say look over there, because there was some news stories that weren't flattering that got to for example his taxes and he's even doing it now, now that he's become president-elect tweeting about "hamilton" et cetera. >> we'll get to that soon. let me ask howard what you said earlier because it seems to me everything we've talked about in this program, that's why we designed it this way the kind of things we'd point to if he lost. he lost because of the way he treats women, the way he talked about minorities, opponents. all of that we were wrong about. >> history is what it is, he won as he said. he was asked i think after the election if he regretted anything that he had said. he said no, i won. to him that's the only reason, the only rationale, the only justification. i would say that as somebody who is in digital media and in social media, i think the personalization of politics, the fact that it's gone from

programs and agendas more and more to the personality and the intimate relationship that social media allows between the person, the candidate, and the voter editing everything else out of the way, chris, when you're talking donald trump via twitter or facebook, you're talking directly to him. barack obama was the first to use this with facebook. he had 20 million facebook friends. he used it in what we would regard is an uplifting hope-filled way. donald trump is the combative side, the side that knows that a car wreck as it sells on tv a train wreck, a confrontation, a name calling is going to sell on social media. >> i just want to get moving. more pictures to look at. unprecedented move last summer trump called on russia, which was behind the cyber attacks on political organizations in this country to find hillary clinton's emails. let's watch them. >> i will tell you this, russia, if you're listening, i hope

you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. i think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. >> so there's another no-no, making a coalition with a government that for years, not the government, a nation which was our enemy in the cold war but to go against a rival in the world as your ally. >> i have a different interpretation on that. i kind of get some of his sarcasm sometimes. i saw that more as sarcasm than any alliance between him -- >> did the russians hear it that way? >> i think they probably did as well. i know how he meant it, and i think he meant that more as sarcasm but of course it was not played out that way. that's the thing about trump. he's like all right, fine, if the russians are doing this, hey, while you're in there, find the emails and turn them over. >> he was pushing on an open door as far as russia is concerned. you and i and maybe michael certainly not the ladies here grew up in the era of the cold

war when russia was the number one enemy. we were fighting the cold war against the evil empire. whole generation of people has grown up without that in their thinking whatsoever, and i think trump was very shrewd to pull on that. . >> the critical word in his statement was not russia. the critical word was email, because any time he could talk about hillary clinton's emails was a bad day for hillary. >> i understand that. >> someday somebody has to explain why email was a kill foreare hillary. i've never gotten the evil of that word. there were emails, evilmail. >> saying she hid behind it. >> it's not the worst that's been done in american history and it's been treated like that. up next she's secretive, let's stipulate hillary is secretive. the moment trump says women have abortions, when they should be punished that was a moment. you're watching "hard balball"

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good morning everyone. breaking news, florence henderson the star of the cult classic "the brady bunch" has reportedly died of heart failure. the actress burst onto the scene as carol brady. favorite of millions around the world, henderson was surrounded by her friends and family when she passed in a southern california hospital thursday evening, details confirmed by her manager, florence henderson dead at the age of 82. now back to "hardball." >> welcome back to "hardball." one of the more memorable moments for our "hardball" college tour this year some might call it a highlight or lowlight of the campaign an interview i did with donald trump in green bay, wisconsin, a few days before the republican primary. let's watch him. >> should the woman be punished for having an abortion? >> look -- >> this is not something you can

dodge. if you say it's not, it's a crime or abortion is murder you have to deal with it under the law. should abortion be punished? >> well, people in certain parts of the republican party and conservative republicans would say yes, they should be punished. >> how about you? >> i would say it's a very serious problem and it's a problem that we have to decide on. it's very -- >> you're for banning it. >> wait, putting them in jail? >> no, i'm asking you.. you say you want to ban it? >> i am against, i am pro-life yes. >> how do you ban abortion? >> you go back to a position like they had where people will perhaps go to illegal places. >> yes. >> but you have to ban it. >> do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle? >> the answer is that there has to be some form of punishment. >> to the woman? >> yes, there has to be some form. >> ten cents, ten years, what? >> that i don't know. >> why not? >> i don't know. >> you take positions on everyone else. >> i do take positions on everyone else. it's a very complicated

position. >> what about the guy that has her pregnant is he responsible under the law for the abortions or is he not responsible for an abortion? >> different feelings, different people. i would say no. >> he did have an answer on that baby, didn't he? >> we heard him figure out his position on abortion while you were talking to him. >> the man's responsibility that was a quicker answer. >> quicker than whether you should punish women. >> was he trying to find his way in an uncomfortable blind way find his orientation with the pro life people? they must be for some kind of abortion punishment. what does outlaw mean? >> the giveaway point what he said at the beginning, there are some inside the gop who would say yes punish the woman. so once you then began to probe that and say well what's your position, because you want to ban it, then all of a sudden to your point he was like okay, let me do the math, one plus one and try to find his way. i thought that was one of the more profound moments in the

campaign for a lot of reasons, because it really was a touchstone inside the gop for those who do believe that, and they had to reconcile that view with the family members who have a different point of view but more importantly for trump i think he realized these things are complicated. he kept saying it but i don't think he really appreciated how complicated it really was in that moment until you pushed him on it. >> i think it's a poignant moment because it's a moment that, when trump makes his first supreme court pick we're going to look back on, because i don't know that trump himself, the way he was flailing around, he didn't want to really say what he personally believed. but it shows how far he may be willing to go in terms of appealing to that wing of the party, and you see that already in some of his rhetoric after the election, and that he says he's okay with the court's decision on gay marriage, separate standard for roe v. wade should go back to the states. women are going to remember that moment when he picks his first -- >> i don't know what he was thinking when he was sitting

there, why did i agree to do this interview. not to butter you up any more than i always do, wait a second, that was probably the most sustained questioning on any one point that he got during the entire campaign. so when i say he was redwrgrett he sat down for the interview he managed to avoid that kind of situation almost exclusively and it showed that he hadn't really thought through what he was doing. he was making it up on the spot right there. >> there was another piece to that. >> he went to the right. he went to the right of most of the pro-life community on that. >> the irony of the whole thing is, and i'm not going to knock on the journalists, i'm not a media critic but i don't dislike him personally. i get along with him personally. when i was going at him there wasn't any viciousness about it. if he saw the blood come out of

my eyes he probably would have said stop this interview. i don't know what he would have said. >> the first part of what you said is why he came on the air. but once he's live on the air, that's different from what a print reporter is going to have a chance to do. >> i know. i've been interviewing since the 9 '90s so it is something else. ask me about the penguins. >> pittsburgh? >> or the penguins i know nothing about. that was one area he was vastly ignorant except for the guy he knew that part. when we come back trump's response to terrorism and his promise to ban muslims from entering this country. what that was supposed to kill him, a night that still scares people to this day and this is "hardball," the place for politics.

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we're back and in response to a terror attack in san bernardino, california, last december, trump made what is considered one of the most controversial statements and policy proposals of the 2016 campaign. an announcement that continues to haunt him and his detractors alike a ban on muslims entering the united states. >> donald j. trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of muslims entering the united states until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. heidi let me ask you about it.

i think that's considered a lot to americans some religious test on coming into the country even based on geography, it will still end up being islamic people and a lot of islamic americans who are quite rightfully scared about that. >> when he said that, the first reaction was that would be unconstitutional by the elite. i guess that would be us or anyone who is familiar frankly with the constitution but the concept itself of stopping people who may have bad intentions who may be muslim from attacking us, that had broad support because then you started to read the poll numbers and then you started to see that it was actually a significant number of republicans who agreed with it and as he began to caveat it a bit and now we're at the point where it is just people from certain countries it's becoming more accepted. >> now the democrats may pick as their dnc chair keith ellison, religious faith is islam. >> i think that's the point counterpoint, in the political

world. i think heidi's really touched on how they're two evolutions that have occurred here. one is among the american people themselves who in polls near the end of the campaign showed some 50% thought that islam was incompatible with the values of this country. trump understood that, spoke to it long before this poll kind of resonated more broadly. now as he's sort of assuming the rane s reins of authority ov the government and getting the full briefing what the stakes are, you heard reince and others around the campaign sort of back that down, so yeah we still want to make sure we protect the borders and that's going to be something he has to navigate over the next few months because the expectation is that you're going to protect them. >> the problem is having dipped into that to fuel his campaign, all right, having done that, he's going to have trouble putting that back in the bottle as well, assuming he even wants to and we don't know that.

by the way it's not unconstitutional. there's no constitutional right to emigrate to the united states, but we have an understanding in this country the diversity and immigration is our great strength, donald trump has questioned that entire premise of modern american life. >> this is where trump bragged during that campaign if he was elected america would start winning again. that would be defeating isis, though trump attacked hillary clinton's hawkish tendencies when it comes to interventions. his proposal to eradicate isis was aggressive to say the least. >> i would knock the hell out of the oil areas because they're rich as can be. i would bomb the [ bleep ] out of them. i'd blow up their pipes. i'd blow up the refinery, i'd blow up every single inch. there would be nothing left. we're going to declare a war against isis. we have to wipe out isis. >> with troops on the ground? >> i am going to have very few troops on the ground. we're going to have unbelievable intelligence which we need which

right now we don't have. now you have isis and others but isis cutting off christian's heads and others, they cut off anybody's head, drowning them, we have to go in with force and take the oil. >> how are we going to take the oil? >> we would leave a certain group behind and take various sections where they have the oil. >> matt's question was interesting because it's the biggest question in the world. of course you always want the best part of the country, the oil part but somehow you protect the wells with aircraft, you got to have aaa, all kinds of sff to prevent it from being bombed. how do you defend a certain portion of syria or iraq with oil? >> he has a secret plan. it's smarter than the general's. the problem is he aligns extremely aggressive steps i'm going to bomb the hell out of them but without a commitment of u.s. troops. that's one of the problems president obama had in trying to devise a strategy toward that region that works. americans are not ready to have a big deployment of u.s. troops. >> is he a hawk or a dove?

do we know? >> he's both. >> has everyone from kelce gabbert staunchly against the war to hawks like john bolton and rudy giuliani. >> he's not anything in particular. he's strictly transactional, deal by deal. >> iraq was a bad deal, we shouldn't have gone into iraq but we should go into -- >> iran deal wasn't a good deal, et cetera. >> we're getting retroactively, unfortunately finding out what the bad deal was after the deal. >> you have to deal with a lot of deals. >> got to deal with the bad deals already done. he has to come up with deals of his open. >> his whole philosophy is keep your options open. >> i got a minute left, going to make one big philosophical challenge to all of you. if you tell islamic people their religion is questionable and shouldn't let relatives come in the country, how do you expect them to rat out the cousin causing trouble? trump is saying somebody should

have dropped the dime on those people in san bernardino, because they were very suspicious out there. who is going to drop the dime on somebody living next door if they themselves feel under assau assault? >> that's hard to do and why should she feel aleenl yans to the values we hold dear if that he's the attitude america is taking toward them. >> i grew up in an area in detroit and after 9/11 the muslims were the first to have their american flags outside of their restaurants, their gas stations in part because of patriotism and in part because they were scared of exactly this type of scenario, and a lot of them are my friends, they're my friends on facebook, my friends from high school, and they are deeply, deeply distraught. i know muslim people legitimately wanting to move to canada. it's not that hard. >> i wouldn't limit it to that. i wouldn't end on muslims. every american has an obligation

including donald trump to understand and appreciate the virtues of diversity and tolerance in the country and however he ran, i think he has to do that now for the good of the country and if there's a muslim registry i'm signing up. >> i did this show in the spirit of black humor but there's a lot of information we're getting in the last hour that makes you shaken i think. we'll be right back with some final thoughts about where we're headed from here. you're watching "hardball" the place for politics.

they are the natural borns enemy of the way things are. yes, ideas are scary, and messy and fragile. but under the proper care, they become something beautiful.

this has been weirdly unsett unsettling, weirdly almost comic in its absurdity. michael, susan, heidi and howard, ail he start with michael, around the room here, how did it happen? everything that was considered off-base, out of line, wrong and somehow exploited it. >> for the if, time in the longest time the american people said to the political establishments in the media we got this. we'll decide this election not you and they wanted a nuclear option in this campaign and they got it in donald trump. >> half the people disagreed. >> i don't think this is what elected him. i think it failed to not make it impossible for him to get elected. he got elected because the number one people gave in exit polls voting for the candidate is ability to bring about change and voters who said i want change broke for him 6:1. >> you don't think this is the way he said change? >> might have worked with some voters. when you talk about the voters

we didn't think he was going to get that he got it was the change message. >> i'll call it the hail mary for change combined with the fact the democrats have failed to hold onto those white working class voters who were so strongly behind bill clinton, i don't know how many times i went out into the field and talked to people who voted for bill clinton, a guy in coal country who used to have a job in a mill on the back of a porch now cleaning houses because of people like him who felt like they've been abandoned by the democrats and hillary clinton was just trying to kind of build on and not completely, she wasn't completely genuine about rejecting the parts of bill's agenda like nafta, that they felt really hurt him. >> having begun my career in kentucky and spent five years there, i wasn't surprised that donald trump won but what i'll say is that the conversation that is the country, the argument is the country, that is the country, goes on, and it will continue and as barack obama said, hey, this is an ongoing conversation here, progress is made and zigzag, not in a straight line and there may

be some good things and strong issues that donald trump puts on the table that do need to be discussed, let's hope they can be discussed civilly in his administration. >> with that, thank you michael steele, susan paige, heidi and howard feinman. i'll be back monday night 7:00 eastern with another edition of "hardball." see you then. breaking overnight, one of the most iconic women in american television has died. we'll remember the life of florence henderson who generations of americans will never forget as carol brady of "the brady bunch." down to business, donald trump spends thanksgiving with his family in mar-a-lago but was working on his transition team as well. the great american past time not baseball, shopping. we'll look at the health of the economy one mall and one shopping app at a time. good morning, welcome to msnbc, live