but that's what america is here to debate. thank you both. thank you for watching at home. i am ari melber. you can find me on facebook at facebook.com/ari melber or e-mail me about reforming the electoral college or anything else at ari@msnbc.com. thanks for watching. "hardball" starts right now. obama hits putin and the press. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm joy reid in new york in for chris matthews. president obama delivered a strong message today in his year-end news conference, backing the intelligence community's assessment that russia meddled in the 2016 election. he made it clear that, yes, vladimir putin was involved, and he said there would be an american response at the time and place of our choosing. >> the intelligence that i've seen gives me great confidence in their assessment that the

russians carried out this hack. not much happens in russia without vladimir putin. this happened at the highest levels of the russian government. and i will let you make that determination as to whether there are high-level russian officials, who go off rogue, and decide to tamper with the u.s. election process without vladimir putin knowing about it. >> the president said he personally told putin to cut it out and warped of consequences. let's watch. >> in early september, when i saw president putin in china, i felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly. and told him to cut it out and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn't. >> obama also had a message for republicans who refused to criticize trump's coziness with trump, attributing to it partisan calculations. >> some folks who had made a

career out of being anti-russian, didn't say anything about it. there was a survey, some of you saw, 37% of republican voters approve of putin. ronald reagan would roll over in his grave. >> there was a very different message coming from the man who will take over as commander in chief next month. donald trump rejected the intelligence, mocked its seriousness, and questioned the motives of the white house. on sunday, he told fox news he didn't think russia was responsible. >> they have no idea if it's russia or china or somebody. it could be somebody sitting in a bed some place. personally, it could be russia. i don't really think it is. but, who knows? i don't know either. they don't know and i don't know. >> yesterday, he tweeted incorrectly that the white house acted only after the election. and today, trump returned to campaign mode, using the information from the russia hack to attack hillary clinton. tweeting, quote, are we talking

about the same cyberattack where it was revealed that the head of the dnc illegally gave hillary the questions to the debate? meanwhile, according to "the new york times," trump has also questioned the motives of the intelligence community. quote, mr. trump has said privately in recent days that he believes that there are people in the cia who are out to get him. and are working to delegitimatize his presidency. according to people briefed on the conversations who described them on the condition of anonymity. for more on all of this, i'm joined by kristen welker in orlando where president-elect trump is set to hold another thank you rally this hour. yamiche alcindor and eugene robinson. and he is a "washington post" columnist. kristen, i'll start with you. if you can elaborate a little bit more on these conversations apparently inside trump world, that the cia is out to get him. >> right, well, i think there's a sense and a concern inside trump world that this story line will ultimately undercut the

fact that he won. and i think that's why you're seeing him push back so strongly. and i have been talking to some of those who are close to him, his advisers, who kind of echoed what you heard from him there. it could be russia, it could be china. they're not prepared to say it's russia definitively. but here's what we also know, joy. we know that the pressure is going to mount on the president-elect, to not only acknowledge that it's reduction, but to do something about it, because you have president obama saying he's going to take action against russia. we know that he has been in close consultation with the president-elect and i think one of my top headlines today, joy, is that one of president-elect donald trump's advisers say he believes that the president-elect is prepared to in some way, shape, or form consult with the current commander in chief about how to proceed and the not necessarily block him. the big question, of course, is what happens when he takes office? now, there are bipartisan calls for an investigation to get to the bottom of exactly what happened. will he be prepared to support

those investigations, once he is in the white house? that is going to be the critical question moving forward, joy. >> and eugene, i think that is a critical question. because if the president of the united states, wois still president, barack obama, takes action against russia as he said he would, what would then happen in our politics if the president-elect were to criticize the president for taking action against russia, rather than russia? >> well, that would be a huge mess. you know, one hopes it doesn't come to that. there are a lot of questions here that haven't been answered, even by the president's press conference today. and i think one of those questions that just has to be asked is, you know, should he have acted more forcefully back in september? more publicly back in september? what impact would that have had? and i'm not sure we got the answer to that question today. >> and yamiche, you know, i think a big question that's hanging over the entire proceedings is about the fbi. the fbi suddenly has signed on

to the idea that the russians are behind the hack, something the cia assessment said back in october and november. we know that the white house did announcement. they made that announcement, unfortunately, the most definitive announcement came on the same day as the "access hollywood" tape came out on october 7th. but the question is now, per your reporting, is jim comey in any kind of hot water here? this is somebody who took a lot of action to talk about what hillary clinton was or wasn't doing, but held back when it came to russia. >> it's really tough to say whether or not he's in hot water, because there are so many variables to what affected this election. and i think one of the reasons why this could have been in some ways people think the perfect crime is because you can't really say, okay, fake news is why hillary clinton lost. or fake news is why -- or jim comey talking about this letter in the last couple of weeks of the election is why she lost. it could have also been that she called people deplorable. it could have also been that people never really trusted her. it could have been that she d d

didn't have a good message or people wanted change. and no matter what they said, they were going to go for people they weren't seeing. so it's hard to say whether jim comey will be out of a job. i doubt it, because even when harry reid said to you he thought he should resign, donald trump is the one that won the election. >> wii going to go to sound of hillary clinton. you were on the campaign trail, and couldn't it be possible the narratives that were coming out of wikileaks, the narratives that were coming out on the e-mails, that would have fed into what people thought about hillary clinton? they just didn't think about it coming up with it on their own. they were being pushed in that direction in part by what was coming out in wikileaks. >> it's tough, because, yes, it's true there was a lot of media coverage of the e-mails. i, myself, was looking through the e-mails -- >> daily. >> but -- it was, it was a drip, drip, drip of constant news. however, i think hillary clinton not being trustworthy happened way before the wikileaks issue. the reason why bernie sanders

and i covered him for a long time, why he went so far, why in january people thought he was going to go anywhere, and it took him all the way to the dnc to get a role count is because hillary clinton didn't resonate with a large part of this population. she obviously won the nomination, but she had real problems that showed even when she was getting nominated, she had issues kind of really sealing it up until the summer. so i don't think you can say the wikileaks e-mails are why people didn't trust hillary clinton. >> i think people would argue that 30 years of the media treating her in a particular way didn't happen in a vacuum. but at an event in new york, hillary clinton with her top donors, she talked about the russian hacking. she called it not just an attack on her campaign, but an attack against our country. take a listen. >> putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people. and that is the direct line

between what he said back then and what he did in this election. i want you to know this, because he is determined not only to score a point against me, he did, but also to undermine our democracy. >> i want took quickly around the table and ask each of you what you think the political outcome and the political fallout will be of these revelations about putin. you hear hillary clinton there saying she specifically believes this was a vendetta against her. kristen, i'll start with you. >> reporter: well, look, i think you have a number of democrats who are saying, we want to get to the bottom of this. not only those comments from secretary clinton, but of course her campaign chair, john podesta, writing, something is wrong ear, in that op-ed today, pointing to the fact that it's unprecedented, really, that russia would intervene in a u.s. election. i think in terms of the political fallout, what is happening right now, it is

creating a very tricky situation, if you will, for the current commander in chief and his successor. you heard president obama today, from the briefing room, trying to take a much more careful line than secretary clinton took at that fund-raiser last night. still pointing the finger at russia but not going so far as to say he thinks it has an actual impact on the election. i think he'll continue to get pressed on that so many times. they want to make sure the transition is smooth, so you're seeing him sort of resist attacking each other. white house press secretary josh earnest had some sharp words for donald trump yesterday. but the president was much more careful in his tone today from the briefing room. and i think politically, that's part of the fallout of this. it is making this transition more complicated, i think, than either leader could have anticipated. >> yeah, absolutely. i think we move might be out of

time. thank you guys very much. coming up, president obama is promising to take action against russia, but with just a month left in office, what can he do and when can he do it? and later, republicans in north carolina are stripping the power of the newly elected democratic governor before he's even sworn into office. yes, you heard it right. this is "hardball," the place for politics. can i give it to you straight? that airline credit card you have... it could be better. it's time to shake things up. with the capital one venture card, you get double miles on everything you buy, not just airline purchases. seriously, think of all the things you buy. great...is this why you asked me to coffee? well yeah... but also to catch-up. what's in your wallet? ♪

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welcome back to "hardball." president obama has again vowed to take punitive tax against russia. but with only a month until the end of his term, time is running out. what price will the kremlin pay for meddling in the u.s. election is still an open question. and as the president acknowledged on npr today, there are annoy a assurances that donald trump will necessarily do anything in response to russia

after he takes office. >> it sounds like you hope any response would continue after skbran 20, but do you have any reason to know that it would? >> well, i -- you know, i can't look into my crystal ball and that's probably a question better directed at the president-elect. >> ever since the news of the hackings broke well before the election, trump has defended russia, even against the conclusions made by the intelligence community in his own country. but president obama gave trump the benefit of the doubt in his press conference today, saying that the president-elect has yet to transition away from the partisanship of the campaign trail. >> when donald trump takes the oath of office and is sworn in as the 45th president of the united states, then he's got a different set of responsibilities and considerations. i think that the president-elect, you know, is still in transition mode, from campaign to governance. i think what we have to see is, how will the president-elect

operate and how will his team operate when they've been fully briefed on all of these issues, they have their hands on all the levers of government, and thauf got to start making decisions. >> i'm joined now by naveed ja mali, who's worked for the fbi as a double agent against russian military sbleblgs. he's the author of the book, "how to catch a russian spy." and malcolm nance is an msnbc terrorism and intelligence analyst and the author of the book, "the plot to hack america." two of the perfect people to talk to about this situation. naveed, i'll go to you first. malcolm and i spent much of the amp watching the president's speech together. so you're the new guy for me today. give me your assessment of the fbi, you worked with the fbi, their very late sort of come-to-jesus moment on russian hacking. >> first of all, joy, i sort of feel like watching the president's speech, i felt heroic it was that guy who's just given two weeks' notice at

work, he's checking in, but he's not going to do much. it was pretty uninspiring. inso much as the fbi, there are sources that the fbi has, they're probably sharing that. the good news is i feel that by the president saying this is russia, even though the public may not see this, this is actually going to have an impact on the russian's ability to collect intelligence. i think that just by saying, hey, we know, russia, what your sources and methods to do this, essential you're saying those sources and methods are burned. and now russia has got to rebuild that. there is that silver lining to it. but beyond that, i kind of have to say, i feel a little rudderless here. >> what would you have wanted him to say? >> i would like him to have this sort of adlai stevens moment in the height of the cuban missile crisis. i think he should have come out here and laid out the moment and said, look, russia is behind wikileaks, russia stole the information of the dnc, released it to wikileaks, and we know that putin himself was directly

either behind this or authorized it. so this was, in fact, a russian intelligence operation. i think we need to have this very clear-cut presentation and it needs to be laid out there and he isn't doing that. >> malcolm, do you agree with that? and what could the president do with a month to go? >> the president could carry out an operation right now, and it would be over at the stroke of a key on a computer. and it could be -- or he could be placing systems in place that could worm their way through over a matter of months and create financial mayhem. the point is, we dona't know. this is the nature of intelligence operations. you might recall, and this was said earlier today, this is the same man who went to the white house correspondents' dinner and played nine rounds of golf while s.e.a.l. team 6 was flying into pakistan and shooting bin laden in the face. so in cyberwarfare, the ability to conflict damage can be sustains. but i personally think that the

president should take a more aggressive approach and if he doesn't tell us, it's going to come out in the briefings to congress and come out when the president-elect takes over control of the country. but my preferred methodology for retaliation is steal their money. go to the oligarchs, their illicit billions of dollars that the gangs do it. and i'm speaking to every intelligence watch officer in the world right now. go take that you are money. they'll have to complain to moscow. >> the president today also armed of a potential cyberarms race. let's listen to that. 7 >> we've also tried to prevent some type of arms race. because we have offensive capabilities as well as defensive capabilities. >> what could a cyberarms race look like, naveed, and what would be the risks of doing

that? we know that there are other european countries that russia has its sites on, coming up with germany? >> the risks with anything cyberrelated is always escalation, and more importantly, the transference from cyber to straight kinetic, which is bombs and bullets. kbrong t i don't think the russians want to escalate things with us and i don't think we want that. however, clearly, when you do a cyberoperation, the big thing that you're hoping for is n nonattribution. and perhaps the best method we have to combat this is to say russia's behind this. put them on notice, there is something to that. that has value. and lastly, joy, when it comes to cyberweapons, it's not quite like shooting a missile or a bomb, in that you use a cyberweapon, you can only use it once. once you use it, you can then build defenses to guard against it. so cyberweapons are one-time use

tool. and i think that, you know, one of the best things we can guard against is actually knowing that russia's behind this and then you build a defense. you've got to call it for what it is. let's actually see the evidence that says russia's behind this. >> let's say they release that evidence and the president does some sort of retaliation. how much confidence do you have that a trump administration would continue said operation, or that they wouldn't just criticize the president. >> the president made a great point. they have to transition from this sore winner electoral, you know, mind-set that they have. and i've met people in the transition team, and they are bitter about winning this election and not getting the credit that they want. they need to understand govern instance about to happen. 30 days from when they take over control, and that doesn't mean that the russians will not attack this nation again. because that's what this was. it was an attack. the problem is, the attack could be aimed at them, personally. donald trump has just been a

communications wealth for russian intelligence. they know everything that's on his phone since 2012. i am certain of that. and they can exploit him and manipulate him in way that they just did hillary clinton. and every other member of congress. >> yeah. >> this is their operational policy as a nation. >> absolutely and to that point, the president today said that he hopes the russian attack will not be treated a as a partd sedan issues. but trump and his allies have done that. the trump kpaun said, we believe it was the dnc that did the hacking as a way to distract from the campaign. in the second debate, trump again blamed democrats and suggested the hacking may not have even happened at all. >> i notice anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say, the russians are -- she doesn't know if it's the russians doing the hacking. maybe there is no hacking. >> even as recently as his last television interview, which was last weekend, trump was still blaming the democrats.

>> so why would the cia put out this story that the russians wanted you to -- >> well, i'm not sure they put it out. i think the democrats are putting it out, because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country. >> naveed, with the president surrounding himself with russafiles, how does somebody get through that phalanx of pro-russian people and convince donald trump that he meeds to treat russia as an adversary, not as a pal? >> well, you know, look, malcolm and i just wrote an op-ed about what we feel is perhaps the last sort of method that we can get good information to the incoming president. and that's the director of national intelligence. the director of national intelligence, we were talking about the fbi before. the fbi, of course, under the doj, but in a counterintelligence capacity, they actually fall under the director of national intelligence. the director of national intelligence holds this incredibly important position, in that he or she has to synthesize data and present it to the president.

that cabinet position is still open. malcolm and i have come out very strongly that we are hoping that frances townsend will fill that role. but you need somebody with credibility both with the president and with the intelligence community. and what you are seeing here is an absolutely breakdown. joy, the last thing, as an intelligence officer, the point of intelligence as an analyst is not to bring in your bias. you're supposed to take intelligence, analyze it, and present it objectively to decision makers so they can make an informed decision. that's what they do. it's not partisan or trying to push a particular course of action. and once the president-elect trump gets sworn in, he will understand that that is actually what the intelligence community is trying to do here. >> it's not partisan now. we don't know what it's going to be after january 20th. thank you both. appreciate it. and up next, newly elected democratic governor of north carolina, rio cooper, is facing legal action against his state's republicans as they try to unseat him before he's even sworn into office. we'll explain after the break.

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even if you're not a customer. i'm milissa rehberger. here's what's happening. the u.s. is demanding the return of an underwater drone seized by china in the south china sea. the pentagon says tun manned glider was collecting scientific data when it was taken. mourners have been filing into the ohio statehouse where the body of astronaut and former senator john glenn is lying in state. glenn died last week at the age of 95. and the first family is headed to hawaii for the

families. they will return to washington after the new year. back to "hardball." most people might think that this is a partisan power grab. but it is really more ominous. if i believe that laws passed by the legislature hurt working families and are unconstitutional, they will see me in court. and they don't have a very good track record there. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was north carolina governor-elect democrat roy cooper, threatening legal action against his state's republican-controlled state legislature, which in the past 24 hours, took power grabbing to a whole new low. north carolina republicans passed legislation to strip the power of the newly elected

democratic governor, before he's even sworn into office. and this afternoon in what the associated press called an extraordinary move, the defeated republican governor, pat mccrory, signed the legislator's bill into law. the new gop-crafted law scaled back the team that the democratic governor leggett can bring into office and requires the senate's approval for top administrators at state agencies and erases the governor's ability to shape election boards statewide. i'm joined now by the reverend dr. william j. barber. this is extraordinary. just everything we've seen happen over the past week or so, were you surprised, having dealt with him all these many years that governor mccrory signed this legislation? >> no, he's been low. and this legislature's been low. they're not even republicans. they are extremists. and they've constantly done things that the courts have overruled. and i believe the courts will skbroefr rule this again. i'm coming fresh from the general assembly.

hundreds showed up. people were arrested, joy, for knocking on the door, trying to get into the gallery that's supposed to be open to the public. they were arrested because the legislators on the floor said their voices were too loud so arrested them and took away their first amendment right to protest. this is a cynical session, not a special session. and it's the politics of harriet, you know, harrah was insecure on the throne. this is the politics of harrah and not the politics of love and justice. but it will all backfire on them. they are very unpopular and it is just so tragically sad and cynical that the governor would sign something like this and that senator burger and speaker moore would even pass these things. >> and you say they're very unpopular, but they've also made it more difficult for people to vote and they have been relentless and very open about trying to find ways to stop anybody who they don't think will vote for them from going to the ballot box. will these moves that the governor signed today make it harder for people to vote them out if that's what they want?

>> it could. but on the other hand, some of the things they're doing are because we don't have the pre-clearance package under section five. but let's flip it over. they did this because they're afraid. they're afraid of this movement in north carolina. they vote past the worst voter suppression. we beat them. they passed to worst redistricting. we beat them in court. now the courts have ruled that the headlines have to be drawn and we have new elections in the new year. they purge voters, we beat them. we got voters put back on the roles. they cut 158 early voting sites this year, 158 less than we had in 2014 pb and we beat them. the governor's race, the ag's race, the secretary of state, and an african-american in north carolina won 76 counties, in north carolina, joy, in the south, in a 350,000-vote margin. they are scared. they know things are changing. they know a deeply moral, deeply

constitutional anti-racist, anti-poverty fusian agenda can transform the south and come against the southern strategy. and they've tried everything. and we're going to beat them again, because what they've done is unconstitutional and immoral. >> reverend dr. barber, look forward to talking with you again. thank you so much. >> take care, ma'am. up next, chris matthews's interview with the screenwriter of the new film "jackie," which tells the story of first lady jacqueline kennedy and her story following the assassination of her husband, john f. kennedy. that's coming up. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics.

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i love crowds. >> you remember governor? >> welcome to dallas, darling. >> thank you so much. >> that was natalie portman brilliantly portraying jacqueline kennedy on that tragic day in dallas in november of 1963. it's a scene from the new film "jackie," which chronicles how the first lady faced the emotional whirlwind of her life following the assassination of her husband, john f. kennedy. and as she describes it in the film, i lost track somewhere, what was real and what was performance. well, here's a clip. >> you'll have to share sympathet something personal eventually. people won't stop asking until you do. >> and if i don't, trathal intet

my silence however they want. she holds back her tears, but she can't hide her anger. >> most writers want to be famous. >> do you want to be famous? >> no, i am fine as i am, thank you. >> you should prepare yourself, this article will bring you a great deal of attention. >> in that case, any advice for me? >> yes. don't marry the president. are you afraid i'm about to cry again? >> no, i would sit here more likely to scream. >> scream what? >> my husband was a great man. >> i'm joined by the scre screenwriter of this great film, "jackie," knnoel oppenheim. i told people your age that 9/11 was a horror, an iconic moment in your life. but there was nothing in our lives like the death of john f. kennedy. there's nothing like it.

it's very hard, when i've written about it myself, i can't deal with it, so i write around it. you wrote right to the heart, when we all got the word from cronkite, that our president, this young, handsome guy who had everything going for him, including this beyond belief beautiful wife, everything going for him, and then he didn't live anymore. he was dead. >> yeah, it's a stunning moment. and you know, it's funny, my interest in jackie kennedy actually began because my mother was similarly scarred for lack of a better term by the assassination. she was 13 years old at the time that it happened and she can recall in vivid detail the principal of the school coming into her classroom, and you know, she saved from that week in 1963 all of the newspapers and magazines and so when i was a kid, i would go to my grandmother's house and leaf through them, and that's where my interest in jackie sort of first began.

>> and jackie, as she survived that day, and as she went into it, tell us about how -- what her fear was, about her husband's legacy. the fear that she confronted in the interview -- the interview with teddy white, there a fictional character, but her interview with that reporter, what she was fearful of. tell us about that, because i think people don't know that. >> it's extraordinary. she had many fears in those immediate days afterward. she had the most mundane fear, where am i going to live? where am i going to go? how am i going to support myself and my family? which seems crazy to us now, but she really was worried about it. and on the bigger picture level, she was concerned that her husband was going to be quickly relegated to the, you know, the dust bin of history and that his accomplishment in office would be quickly forgotten. i mean, we now, the notion that john f. kennedy would be forgotten seems preposterous, but he was not the first president that we lost to assassination.

we had lost others before him. and when you look at the short period of time, you know, a little less than three years, that he was in office, and you look at the list of things that he actually was able to accomplish. you know, the fact that he would now be remembered as amongst our most admired presidents, in most gallup polls of the american people was not guaranteed. and it was only because of the work that jackie did during that week after the assassination that he is thought of as highly as he is. >> well, i may buy some of that, but i also think there's a reason why people who live through his presidency believe you should be on mt. rushmore. they say, he's the one that should be added. but there's no doubt that she lit a candle for that. let me ask you about the word "assassination," and it's like the word "impeachment." when we were growing up in the '40s and '50s, nobody had heard

that word, except in old terms. we didn't think of an assassination that happened in modern times. the idea of a president being shot and killed in front of us was -- it was just -- it didn't seemed -- >> absolutely. and the on the most hauman leve, and what we try to do in the film, what jackie kennedy the woman, not just the icon, endured during this period of time. and if you think about it, she was seated beside her husband when he was violently murdered. and physically showered in his blood. she had to go home and, you know, talk about the world being upended for her. it was a really personal thing. she had to go home and shepherd two young children through the tragic loss of their father. she had to deal with the trauma of having been this up-close, personal witness to, as i say, the violent murder of her husband. she had to vacate the home that she lived in.

you know, just, to me, the extraordinary strength that she displayed during this period of time, is mind boggling. people think of jackie kennedy as you said, at the beginning, you know, she's this extraordinarily beautiful woman, incredibly stylish, glamorous, but the sort of steel beneath the surface that she possessed in order to navigate that week and months afterwards, it kind of blows the mind, when you think about all of the things that she was juggling and how just out of -- how unthinkable this thing -- this event was. and she was in the muddiddle of. >> i love the part where she's smoking and the reporter's talking to her and she says, i don't smoke. >> yeah, well, she did smoke throughout their time in the white house and it was never photographed, never written about. obviously, it was a different era, a different media climate, but she was someone who really,

intuitively understood the role of photography and the role it could play in shaping people's impressions of her husband and her and she exercised extraordinary control over that image to great effect. >> the name of the film is "jackie," and thank you, the screenwriter, noah oppenheim. >> great interview. i cannot wait to see that film. when we come back, president obama responds to questions about russia's cyberattack, and donald trump makes a very controversial nomination to the u.s. ambassador to israel. all of that when our "hardball" roundtable comes up on "hardball," the plaux. nobody's, but there will still be pain. it comes when your insurance company says they'll only pay three-quarters of what it takes to replace it. what are you supposed to do? drive three-quarters of a car? now if you had liberty mutual new car replacement™, you'd get your whole car back. i guess they don't want you driving around on three wheels. smart. with liberty mutual new car replacement™, we'll replace the full value of your car. liberty stands with you™.

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the truth is that there was nobody here who didn't have some sense of what kind of effect it might have. i'm finding it a little curious that somebody is suddenly acting surprised that this looked like it was disadvantaging hillary clinton, because you guys wrote about it every day! every single week, about every little juicy tidbit of political

gossip. including john podesta's risotto recipe. this was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. >> that was president obama earlier today responding to a question about russia's cyberattack on the dnc and rolling wikileaks dumps of john podesta's e-mails during the 2016 campaign. obama said, it shouldn't be surprising to the press or anyone else that russia's hacking was intended to hurt hillary clinton and help donald trump win the presidency. let's bring in the roundtable. beth fouhy, genie zinii, and aussie the senior reporter at politico, new york. everybody's names are hard to pronounce, but i think i got them all. aussie, the president, i think, made a valid point that the press is behaving sort of shocked that the wikileaks had their desired effect, but i know on our show, we were saying from summer, beware of wikileaks, this is russian intelligence, this is a russian dump. but the media could not get enough of wikileaks.

>> right, but the president coming out later and blaming the press, it's much easier from his point of view to blame the press than to actually stand up there and say hillary clinton didn't run a great campaign, she may not have been the best campaign. she may not have been the best messenger for a changed election cycle, but to blame the media, this is something he could have addressed sooner. >> you know the president did address it. in october and to the point our nbc news reporting was that after the white house put out a statement on october 7th which is the same day as the infamous "access hollywood" tape, the press asked him zero questions about russian hacking. are you saying the media has no responsibility? >> 2016 is a year that a lot of people looked at what they did, what they wrote and said, i could have done better. if the president is waiting for them to ask him about this, he could have been a lot more aggressive about bringing this forward. people could have asked themselves, is this the right thing to be doing.

the president could have come out sooner and stronger on this issue. >> let me talk to you about this because this has been the storyline of this day in the last 24 hours really throwing it on to the obama administration and the media really saying, hey, don't look at us. but we did see, if you look at the number of stories done on hillary clinton's e-mail server versus the number of stories done on russian hacking, it's not even close about the wikileaks were used. they were developed into stories. even "the new york times" came out and said we were used by the russians. we did these stories as well. do you think the media should take a step back and maybe take responsibility for that? >> i can speak for myself and the people i worked with and i think over and over again every time we did a story on these wikileaks e-mails we would say that they came from a russian hack. it's not like we didn't acknowledge that was there. we didn't say it maybe definitively maybe that we didn't know. we now know much more, there's incontrovertible evidence apparently that an intelligence

agency is telling us this. i sort of agree with ozzie, that i don't think we all have a role to play on how we played a role in this. but at the same time, president obama seemed more upset with the media than he did with the fact that putin and the russians did this. that was a little jarring. a lot of reporters wanted to see him come out and be upset and emotional about the fact that the russians did do this. >> he's been living with this eight years. i want to know if there's a quantifiable way to tell how much damage these things did. the story was constant, drip, drip, drip, nothing smoking gun. you have the wikileaks tranche of information that wasn't even really damning but was ongoing and furthered the narrative of hillary clinton as this corrupt person. then you have the fbi extraordinary happening which

has never happened in a presidential election or 11 days out, they come out and say, hey, there's more e-mails. is there a way to quantify the way it did impact on the election or was it hillary clinton's campaign not working? >> i think over time that's what scholars and researchers will be looking at, what's the effect of all these things. if you just look at the russian hacking, he's ap ore's one of t concerns that i have with president obama's statements today. it's fine to blame the media, but the issue that we as the american public deserve the information and the evidence on exactly what happened when, to whom, because that's the only way you get to the bottom of the real question that you're asking, which is did this change in election in any quantifiable way? and for me to sit here and speculate or reporters to sit here and speculate, that's all we're doing. we really depend on the government to give us the information, the hard facts so that we can move forward. and that's where i do agree with beth and ozzie on the fact that you can blame the media, but the media shouldn't be out there

making suppositions about what happened. they need hard evidence to tell us, then we can move forward from a policy perspective and say this is what we wanted to have happen going forward. >> at the same time a lot of people would make the point that the media didn't have hard evidence that the clinton foundation had done anything illegal. that's the associated press with a blockbuster story with the nobel laureates. you have donald trump that's got a lot of people on his team that are soft on putin. he's got a very warm feeling toward vladimir putin. what's the expectation that whatever barack obama does, if president obama puts out the information, lays it out there definitively that this was russia, puts the intelligence out, that the next administration will act on it? >> none. i mean, this is a guy who very much says we have to change the paradigm between america's relationship with russia. that's his stated goal. and also, it's going to be a wonderful sort of experience to

see the president attacking on the intelligence community. whatever reports they put out that he doesn't like, he can dismiss. >> up next, these three will tell me something i don't know. very easy thing to do. [burke] hot dog. seen it. covered it. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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and we are back. beth, tell me something i don't know. >> last night hillary clinton thanked donors, those rich folks who gave money to her campaign at the plaza hotel. a very nice event. it was closed to press but a few

things leaked out. she was wearing the white suit she wore in the third debate, white being the color of suffragettes. it seemed to be hopeful. it seemed to be saying we will march on. just because we were defeated this time doesn't mean we're defeated forever. >> do we know what she's going to do? >> we don't. she's been walking her dogs in the woods a lot. >> tell me something i don't know. >> well given everything that's going on with technology whether in the national security arena or microsoft announcing they'll flood our lives with a.i. i'm looking at the cabinet level posts and thinking that donald trump should do something innovative, which is we should move up the office of technology and make that a cabinet level post because we do need somebody in this country who is going to help us regulate all the microsofts and everybody else in the world that will change our lives with a.i. >> i'm not sure he can pull it off with some of these cabinet picks. azi? >> lots of reports of hate crimes in new york city especially after the election. two days before the election,

november 6, new york city police had reported 300, 400 hate crimes. the year before that for the entire year 309. >> crazy. that's "hardball" for now. "all in with crist hayes" starts right now. >> tonight on "all in." >> over a third of republican voters approve of vladimir putin. >> president obama sending signals to his successor. >> ronald reagan would roll over in his grave. >> and his russian counterpart. >> we can do stuff to you. >> as the fbi today said russia acted to help trump. team trump draws its own conclusions. >> this wouldn't have happened if hillary clinton didn't have a secret server. >> then michael moore joins me on obama's strategist, what he will and will not do. >> it is not my job to decide my successor. >> plus north carolina's republican governor signs a law stripping power from the democrat who defeated him.