just looking back at it is scary. i'm just thankful that i'm here and i'm thankful that nothing worse came from it. . >> how not to run for president and win. let's play hard ball. good evening. i'm chris that thus in washington. when donald trump rode down the escalator at trump tower to announce his candidacy for president, even those who hoped he should shake things up wondered how long he would last. his attack on mexican agreements stoked outrage. it was hard to find an expert who predicted he would wind up taking office. but over the next 17 months trump roared past a field of 16

republican challengers and one of the best prepared democrat candidates ever. and every turn he seemed to check the box of what not to do while running for president. trump went to war with a popular news anchor on a conservative network, called for his democratic opponent to be look locked up and and defied orthodoxy on war, and trade. he called for banning an entire religion from entering the country. 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 ever rule yet somehow turned out on top. and that's the story tonight, how not to run for president and win. i'm joined for the hour by former share of the republican

national committee michael steel, susan page, usa senior political reporter heidi and howard fineman. tonight we begin with donald trump's comments about women for for months trump's approval ratings among woman hovered at historic lows. he then inflamtd the problem, at the first republican debate, the primary debate trump was angered by a question moderator megyn kelly asked him about his past statements on women's looks. he didn't let it go, attacking kelly again and again over the next week. let's watch him. >> she gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions. and you could see there was blood coming out of her kwies, blood coming out of her wherever. if she asked me a question it was inappropriate, a ridiculous question. and even the other candidates came up and said that was absolutely out of line.

she should really be apologizing to me if you want to know the truth. >> susan, i thought just as a guy watching this thing that megyn kelly -- nobody is not a competitor in this business. everybody is doing their job trying to get ahead. that she won that exchange, that she made him look out of control, his temperament was totally out of whack and she seemed calm and tough doing her job. >> i completely agree. she acted like a profession noll asking an appropriate question but not enough to cost him the presidency along with a series of interactions. he lost women but he won white women by 10 percentage points and that was a surprise. >> what did you make of that? the blood thing, i didn't get it the fist time. oh my god, this guy is gross. yet it didn't seem to stop him. >> it created the outcome because it with us a good

question and it parlayed back his exact words which spoke for all american women and he was very upset about it and he couldn't let it go. if you lock at this war 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. but trump made her this unwitting symbol of sexism. >> apart from sex and 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 the fight with this popular anchor woman. >> she loves rabbit holes. he did the one thing that 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 take a look at this first debate. hillary clinton knows how to fight too. she seemed to bait trump by bringing up a former miss universe. trump blew the story into a much bigger deal by spending the next few days attacking the beauty queen. >> she was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight. it was a real problem. we had a real problem. not only that, her attitude. i saved her job because they wanted to fire her for putting on so much weight. it is a beauty contest. they know what they're getting into. it's a beauty contest. and i said, don't do that. let her try and lose the weight. i end up in a position like this. >> trump even urged people to

hunt don a supposed sex tape that turned out to be nonkp nonexiste nonexistent. he goes in and fights in a fox hole. he wants to fight on this line and against women. >> let me suggest two themes here that we're going to be discussing for this entire hour. the one is that the media failed to analyze thhow 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 energy and wind and attention out of every other candidate in the race. donald trump's motto was and is, if the attention is on me, no mat whaer the cause, it's a good thing. number one. the second sub part of that is attack, attack, attack, always attack your accuser. that's one thing. we noo the media missed the way he used us the entire year. and the second big point is people want change and wanted

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. >> and the irony is, to make your point, the guy who got hurt in the next episode with the guy from the media. the biggest bombshell was in october when audio surfaced from an interview with donald trump and former access hollywood host billy bush. listen to what donald trump says he can get away with because he's a celebrity. >> i got to use some tick tacks just in chase i start kissing her. i'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- i start kissing them. it's like a magnet. >> and when you're a star they let you do it. you can do anything. >> whatever you want. >> grab them by the [ bleep ]. >> so he's president of the united states elect and billdy bush is out of a job.

th i guess that's what happens to the media. that was mortal. >> but it was tliek 56 mortal wound. remember when he said john mccain was wasn't a hero and we thought that was a mortal wound? i actually think with all of these candidates their strength -- and multiplied for donald trump, your strength is your weakness. that's his streng because people want change, they want things shaken up. in a funny way it helped make his brand. >> to make howard's point, every fight he had was with the establishment. whatever it was, no matter what you thought of what he said, it said also, sub stex, i'm not one of them. >> therefore i'm a change agent. >> hieidi the issue here with te tape, i think a lot of women --

the women vote wasn't that bad for him, less than the majority for the republican, it seemed like he benefitted and women weren't as outraged. >> we all went back to our partisan corners. he's point out there was a significant gender gap here and for the first time in a long time the democrats took married women. i don't think we can dismiss this saying that women decided at the end of the day this was all okay. i think this would have been a mortal wound and it definitely was going into the final debate in las vegas. it was very grim. i saw no surrogates flying on my plane out there other than jeff sessions. this may have really be a mortal wound. but i think it's a little depressing for some women who did kind of put things -- their reputations on the line in coming out in terms of what the lesson is because of the blowback they personally -- >> he hasn't settled that stuff

yet. >> can i say it's depressing for everybody. not just women. it's depressing for everybody that he was able to use these to show in an odd upside down way his insolent bravery. >> the gender gap this year, 11 points. that's not a record. only matches the record from 1996, bob dole and bill clinton. can you imagine that donald trump did as well as bob dole did among women. >> people in the media and the political class continue to look at the selection through conventional lens. >> excuse me for living. >> i know. but you know, here it is with the egg on your face after this guy has weathered all of these storms. it really goes to what you were saying that at the end of the day people were kind of looking at this and were kind of maybe put off but also attracted at the same time. >> i think we're taking with the

exclamation point when something like that hams. oh my god he did that, we read the headlines in the news, oh my god, and the people out there are like, they're making a big deal about this. let me think about it myself. >> always come back to the fact that half of the registered voting electorate chose not to vote. there's been some compelling journalism out of these milwaukee districts, for example, philly direcstricts wh voted in 2012 but were so disheartened by what has or hasn't happened and didn't think this would make a big difference in their lives. >> i have an obvious point to make, which is first woman nominee for president and it didn't work in her favor in terms of consolidating the votes of women. >> donald trump may have in an odd way made politics so

distasteful, dragged it down so far it depressed the vote of anybody other than his firm eest allies. >> donald trump's angry rhetoric on race. me painted ethnic groups with a broad brush calling mexicans rapists. and that kind of talk would have destroyed any other politician but not in this case, trump. this is hardball, the place for politics. to folks out there whose diabetic nerve pain...

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welcome back to "hardball." well, recognizing an opportunity, every savvy businessman burst on to the political scene by warmly embracing the birther movement, calling into question president barack obama's nationality. >> why doesn't he show his birth certificate? you know what, i wish he would? because i think it's a terrible pale that's hanging over him. nobody ever comes forward or knows who he is until later in his life. it's very strange. he may have one, but there's something on that birth certificate, maybe religion, maybe it says he's a muslim, i don't know. i have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding. >> you have people now down there searching -- i mean, 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 certificate. whether or not that was a real certificate, because a lot of people question it, i certainly question it. >> outrageous. anyway, questioning president obama's birth certificate provided trump with the

foundation upon which he built his 2016 campaign. so it's not entirely surprising that 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 rapists, and some, i assume, are good people. >> well, accusations plagued his campaign to the bitter end, of course. and for more on how trump demolished political norms when discussing race in america, i'm back with our panel. michael steele, msnbc political analyst, susan page with "usa today," heidi przybyla also with "usa today," and howard fineman with the "huffington post." the racist thing jumped out at me. what is that based on? is it based on data?

how many rapists are there? >> it's based on crimes that had 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 it becomes a pejorative representation of everybody. >> yeah. >> so trump has this unique way of taking language and sort of exploding it up. so, you know, you can do one thing, but then all women, all right, you can say one thing, and it's like, well, 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. he said, i'm not saying, someone else said it. it may have been one guy standing in a corner whispering to himself. >> let's get back to journalism for a second 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 with. then he goes to this manchurian candidate theory, that not only guy snuck in the country, but he assumed a false identity.

that he wasn't the guy going through harvard law, he wasn't the guy at columbia, nobody knew him. what was that about? that he was some mysterious pretender. >> well, 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 that 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, that's also not true. it's a rhetorical technique that is dangerous and that journalists have an obligation to call out. >> you know when you go to a criminal trial or watch them. someone once stole my card and i learned how it was done, you make up completely different stories, that have nothing to do with reality, so the jury thinks there's plausible deniability,

what's it called, shadow of a doubt. just make up a story, because that might be true, too. it might be true that he doesn't even exist as barack obama. it works 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, quite frankly, who have now been brought on, like michael flynn. if you look at some of the things he was tweeting just days before the election about hillary clinton and child pornography and money laundering. it's really crazy stuff. >> can i say, we're beating around the bush here a little bit? donald trump goes for the perceived weaknesses of any public figure or 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 black president, the first african-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 smacked of criticism of him, he brushed off as 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. this is hardball, the place for politics.

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well this has been weirdly sup s upsetting. right around the room here, how did it happen? everything that was considered off base, out of line, wrong and he got past it and exploited it. >> i think for the first time in the longest time that i can remember, the american people said 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. >> and half of the people disagree. >> i don't think this is what elected him. i think it failed to make it impossible for him to get elected. he got elected because the number one reason, the ability to bring about change and the voters who said i want change broke for him by 6 to 1. >> you don't think this is the way he said change? >> it might have worked with some voters but when we talk about the voters that we didn't think he was going to get, it

was the change. >> call it the hail mary and change. the democrats failed to hold on to the educated white workers. i talked to people who voted for bill clinton, a guy in cole country who used to have a job, now on the back porch cleaning houses, it's because of people like him that felt he had been abandoned by the democrats. >> having begunny career in kentucky and spent five years there, i wasn't surprised that donald trump won. but what i'll say, the argument is that 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 in zigzag, not in a straight line. there may be some 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. i'll be back monday night at 7:00 p.m. eastern with another edition of hardball. see you then. the simple dna test that can tell them where they came from -by revealing their ethnic mix. you'll save 30%-and they'll have a new story to tell. order now at ancestrydna.com. offer ends monday. p is for privileges. o is for ordinarily i wouldn't.

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