chris matthews. vintage, trump, it's "hardball." good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington, tonight we look back at donald trump and his highlights with the interviews over the years. as a young entrepreneur trump said it was never his ambition to make a lot of money. >> mr. trump, what is left in your life? you said you didn't want to be worth a billion. >> i really don't, i just want to be busy and keep active and be interested in what i am doing. that is all that is important in this life, i look to enjoy my life and if that happens to go with it, that's fabulous. >> and now he is set to be the first billionaire to serve as

the president of the united states. in this edition of vintage trump, we're looking at past interviews how his savvy may affect his presidency. i asked him 20 years ago whether he felt like he was like that infamous character in "wall street" played by douglas, he said he, trump, said he was the inspiration for the role. >> gordon gecko was not the nicest guy, i get along with pelham, i have a lot of wonderful relationships and even in business, i had a lot of wonderful relationships. gordon gecko is not a good guy. i love what i do, the expression that they used in the movie, agreed is good, great for purposes of a movie, but greed is certainly not good. >> well, we're going to get a chance in a couple of seconds, i talked to david k. johnson, i

have been interviewing this fellow, trump for so many years. and it's amazing back to know him before he did the stuff that offended so many people. the charge that president obama was born in some other country and somehow snuck into the presidency. it was a different kettle of fish back there. anyway, i'm joined by the columnist, the author "the making of donald trump" tell us about the evolution, when he was sort of a show-boating business guy, nothing illegal about that i suppose. this guy who found a way to make himself the tribune of the right. >> well, donald has always been about money, despite that 1980 interview i guess it was with tom brokaw. money is very important to him. the first big deal in manhattan, the grand hyatt, he put no money into it. all borrowed money, he got

welfare, $40 million, the standard trump deal, put up no money of your own, get guaranteed money up front by taking proceeds or part of the loan process and then take as much cash out of the enterprise as you can, until it weakens or you have to close it down and you move on. that is with the exception of trump university, where he put up a million dollars to start it. that pretty much was his standard deal throughout. and then of course grossly inflate the money he is worth, just as he inflated the cost for the air force one. >> here he is, trump says he is nicer than gordon gecko, now after he stages the comeback from losing, he takes the opportunity to get revenge for those who have done him wrong. this could be a sign of things to come, let's watch. >> there are a number of people who i really helped who didn't

lift a finger for me when they could have. one person with one phone call could have saved me tremendous amounts of causes, refused to make that call, very easy to make that call. and i had made this person. so when the opportunity presents itself in all cases i will not be very good to those people. i believe very much in an eye for an eye. and i think a lot of other people do, too. and i think foolish people don't. >> well, there is a leading indicator. he believes in an eye for an eye and he is about to be chief executive of the united states. >> donald is very much driven by revenge and made remarks like that in many different forms over long distances of time and space. he talks much more like a mafia boss than what he claims to be, which is a christian. in fact he has referred to people who follow the teachings of jesus christ as fools and idiots, and promoting his idea of revenge, always get even, and destroy the lives of other people.

and with the powers he will have as president of the united states that is very worrisome. >> and in one of my 2004 interviews with donald trump, he told me he favored privatizing. george bush could not ultimately get it through congress. here is trump on privatizing social security. >> if you were president of the united states would you push individual retirement accounts for social security? >> i sort of think i would. something has to be done, social security is a huge problem right now funding it. >> so he is not a social democrat like bernie sanders. he doesn't believe in the government involved in all the new entitlement possibilities. he seems to talk about getting rid of obamacare or changing it radically. and yet he says he is going to keep coverage for people with pre-existing conditions or children. he is getting it both ways. >> chris, you hit upon the single most important things

that journalists are not understanding about trump. he doesn't have a political philosophy except for the glorification of donald trump. paul ryan, i wrote pieces about him, but i think paul ryan is doing what he thinks is best for the country, donald trump is doing what he thinks is best for donald trump and his ego. >> and in an interview he said he was proud starting with nothing, and that he just became bored by his career, he got bored with being rich. let's watch. >> i started out with virtually nothing, i built something that is recognized as being immense. >> did you get smug? >> i made a lot and made it when i was young and made it easy,

and i saw where people were in their 70s and 80s didn't do as well and were here a lot longer than i had. and i think maybe i got bored. >> let's give the cry some credit there. there he is with deborah norville. how do you come back from complete disaster? >> well, the state of new jersey's casino control commission took his side against the bankers and forced the bankers to take a huge hair cut, to walk away with more than $900 million that trump owed them. that was the key to his success. he got into trouble because he spent wildly. he would reach into his casinos, huge cash machine, and suck cash out of them as fast as he could. that is a recurring problem in his life, take cash out of an enterprise and weaken them. you know there are still people running casinos in atlantic city, but not donald trump.

>> all of this is food for thought. thank you. coming up, a look inside fake news, and a widely shared news story that went viral in the days before the election. that is next, and this is "hardball." the place for politics.

welcome back to "hardball" and a story about fake news. what is being called pizzagate showed that stories can quickly go viral on facebook and twitter. and there are stories about how much it could have affected the 2016 election. and a fake news story went viral in the lead up to the election. jacob soberoff spoke with the creator of the story that went viral. jacob, just to get everybody straight about this, this pizza joint is right down the street here, only about a half mile away here.

very nice low key family restaurant -- >> you're a customer, chris -- >> no, thin pizza, the big square kind, you have a diet coke and you're in heaven there. it's for kids. >> i heard it's a lovely place, and that is what is so tragic about this, chris, this very fake news is having very real life consequences. there was a guy here in southern california that was involved a day before the election, again, totally fake murder-suicide of a secret service man, shared 5,000 times, put that in perspective, that is more than any story i have ever created for msnbc, being put on line. one of the most widely shared stories. this guy has a wife, family, couple of young kids and he lives a pretty suburban life here in the l.a. area. this is what i found out when i went and visited him, chris.

>> so this is the national reporter, it was a controversial story for you guys. >> yeah, we did a series of stories on ebola, and i probably got about 6 million pages of these. >> you must have gotten a big kick out of it. do you feel like you're cold turkey? >> yeah, i'm good with that. i feel like it's kind of disappointing that it took president trump for actual news outlets to kind of focus on this sort of phenomenon. >> you would be disappointed -- >> did you vote? >> of course. >> who did you vote for? >> hillary? >> is this biggest one -- >> motive behind the killing is being investigated but police say brown was a very highly respected person in the community.

>> is that true? >> not a thing. >> three days before the election, half a million people saw there post. two days before the election, over half a million people read an article about an fbi agent who killed himself and his wife. >> most of that -- again goes kind of to the writer. >> 8,000 bucks in your mind, is it worth it? if 1.6 million people saw this, believe hillary clinton was involved in the murder-suicide of an fbi agent? >> this is one i would probably take back. >> and even to kind of add to that, google closed the accounts running on the site. so even that money is gone. do you feel like the work you did from this computer affected the results of the election in any way? >> i do not. >> again, i'm glad you guys are here talking about it but you should have been talking about it years ago.

>> so chris, we should have been talking about it years ago. >> it's our fault. >> he says he regrets it, says he is not going to do it again. but your local pizzeria already has consequences. in new notes, it would have been killed. i was there last night to check it out. it was closed. they're going to go underground and stop the place, because they think somebody could come up with a gun. how does the guy there feel? does he know the word lie, and liar, does that mean anything to him? >> he talks about it exactly as an addict would talk about taking drugs, chris. he said he felt like an addict when people clicked on his site for that article. he wanted to continue to do it. he said he got out of the fake news game but when he talked about the attention it attracted, and in the scheme of the things, the one article made him $8,000 but he is not making

a living for his entire life about it. there is something compulsive, the behavior, leading to stuff like this. again, he doesn't think that anything is his fault. he points to the mainstream media, he says they don't believe the mainstream media, so they're turning to him for that. >> i think there is a word for that, sociopath. and when a story comes out, you have to just say no, i don't believe that purpose, a murder-suicide, that is juicy, but we're not going to run it because we don't think it's true. and that is to me the difference between blogging and journalism, because you just don't know about the editor. anyway, jacob, you got guts. to face that guy and talk to him like he is an actual regular person, you know, like he is

selling newspapers on the corner. that is not what he is doing, he is selling lies. thank you, jacob soboroff. next up, wounded by bridgegate, cast aside, and utterly rejected by his voters in new jersey. this is "hardball," place for politics.

governor chris christie, folks, was unbelievable. thank you. >> well, despite that fist bump there, i'm not sure he is having a good year. welcome back to "hardball," that was donald trump earlier thanking chris christie earlier. two days later chris christie was given the old heave ho as he was pushed out. the telephone call said he had become a political liability. that is strong words.

and today, an even worse bit of news. he is still the governor, he has a year to go, at 19%, a record low, a huge 77% of new jersey voters disapprove the work he is doing as governor. chris christie has the lowest approval rating of any governor in the history of the quinnipiac polls. how the mighty have fallen. and next up, steve kornacki, how much personal responsibility do you take for bringing this guy down, steve? >> chris christie -- >> you brought the bringgate story to life, better than anybody. you really did an amazing job explaining it. of doing the reporting from a local perspective. and it really seemed to be one of those very small stories. i mean, cones out on a bridge to being the blastoff of a political career? >> yeah, remember the time it was happening, 2013, chris

christie had just won more than 60% of the vote. he was seen as the guy who could talk to the base, and connect with them like donald trump, but unlike donald trump he was seen as a guy who was acceptable to the party elites. at that moment before other stuff came out, it was not unreasonable to say he could be the candidate in 2016. >> he came in as prosecutor, and almost left as being prosecuted. 70% of the people believe he knew about the bridgegate, as a revenge move from the mayor. they believe megyn kelly and all the others against him. >> the legal proceedings just dragged out for years.

you finally got the convictions in the last couple of months. but again, something that started in 2013 didn't work its way through the court systems really until the fall of 2013. the headlines never went away. there were revelations here and there, the numbers are not good for him in new jersey. this has been the story in new jersey for a long guy, a guy who got reelected just three years ago, with 60%. the voters are sending a message they're ready for the christie group to be done. >> i thought it was a great sign of feebleness on the part of the democrats to make a shot at a guy for his weight. but then he won, and discussing the tunnel in new york, everybody knows there are

credible traffic problems there. you need it for infrastructure, the first sign, you're the expert, what was the up-do in terms of the policy decisions that got him -- he lost his popularity because of that. >> cancelling that tunnel at the time i think worked for him and just in terms of the politics of it in new jersey, he framed it, look, new jersey taxpayers are getting screwed. we're on the hook for too much here, when he framed it at that moment when he cancelled the project that was at the end of 2010, 2011, i believe. it was the tea party moment. the national republican party was all -- the sort of momentum was about spending and reining in the size of government. and chris christie sort of staged a moment there. again, the guy is a master communicator, say whatever you want about him. the guy is an incredible communicator. a flair for the moment, he said i'm going to stand up to barack obama's transportation

department in that moment it worked. now longer term, there were major transportation issues in terms of getting between new york and new york city cancelling that tunnel, certainly complicated that. right now that is the kind of thing used as a weapon. one thing that the new jersey voters may not like. but in that moment, i think it worked for him. >> traffic is not getting any better. congratulations, steve, i think you had a role in it. i wonder -- i still don't know his role. i'm not going to ask you the answer, i don't think anybody has it. there is a lot of murkiness, you don't have to give orders to get control of people under you. and i always think as michael dukakis puts it, the fish rots from the top. that's it for me on "hardball," thank you for joining us.

we'll see you tomorrow.

>> tonight on "all in" -- when president-elect rallies in north carolina as the current president delivers a farewale address to troops. >> we are a nation that can criticize a president without retribution. >> tonight, the warning from the president that reads like a rebuke to his successor and the lingering concerns about trump's

national security adviser after his son was fired in the wake of pizza-gate. >> i think that's the appropriate decision for us to move forward, avoid any further distraction. >> plus -- >> now they're keeping actually the numbers over 1100 people. >> a week later trump's job claims aren't holding up amid new concerns about a populist bait and switch. exclusive new data on how damaging fake news was to the election. and the movement to help electors bail on trump. >> the electoral college is here to do exactly what i think i'm doing which is standing up and saying no. >> when "all in" starts right now. >> all right. good evening from new york. at this hour donald trump is hosting his second thank you tour stop in north carolina, a state he won. he is there tonight to introduce general mattis who we believe will be the nominee for secretary of defense. we'll listen for a few minutes and then come back and monitor the rest for news.