"hardball" with chris matthews is up next. unpopular vote. let's play "hardball." good evening, i'm joy reid in washington, d.c. in tonight for chris math use. donald trump spent the day in mar-a-lago meeting with military leaders discussing national security issues. when he came outside for a moment he briefly answered questions from reporters, one of which about the recent terrorist attacks in europe and what it means for his immigration policy. >> reporter: has it caused to to rethink or re-evaluate your plans to create a muslim registry or ban muslim immigration to the united states?

>> you've known my plans all along and i've been proven to be right, 100% correct, what's happening is disgraceful. >> reporter: it's not the first time trump has bragged about being right after a terrorist attack. he began the morning griping about his popular vote loss to hillary clinton. according to david wasserman, the final numbers show hillary clinton lead big 3 million vote. the tally has her winning 48% of the vote to trump's 46%. trump responded to that news in a series of tweets. "campaign withing with the electoral college is much more sophisticated. i would have done better if that's possible but if the winner was based on popular vote. i have not heard pundits discussing the fact that i've spent far less money on the win than hillary on the loss." for all this, i'm joined by kristen welker in palm beach, florida. a require opportunity for reporters to ask questions of

donald trump. how much content are reporters able to get out of him? >> not a lot, joy. that only lasted, for a few minutes. they got a few questions to him. they asked him if the terror attacks have caused him to reconsider his muslim ban. i thought his answer was interesting. you heard him take credit for predicting there would be another terror attack but he didn't hear any details. what we've heard from top advisors is that he's walking the muslim ban back. and i think it underscores the fact that he hasn't given a full press conference since he's been elected. he hasn't given a full press conference since july so while he answered a couple of questions it wasn't that rigorous back-and-forth that you typically get when you have a press conference but there was one more interesting nugget that came out of that back and forth. they asked him whether he saw

the attacks abroad as an attack on christianity and he sort of walked that back as well and said this is an attack on all of humanity. that is certainly lang twhaj is a little bit softer that speaks to a broader audience so i thought that was an interesting shift in tone. we'll have to see if that continues. again, though, the press corps pressing him to give a full press conference. we understand that's likely not going to happen until january, joy. >> kristen welker, thank you very much, appreciate it. trump's defenders reject the significance of winning the popular vote, chalking up the numbers to how well clinton did in california. newt gingrich argued trump played the game better. >> this is the football season. a team can have more yards and lose the game. what matters is how many points you put on the board. the electoral college is the points.

donald trump -- ironically he was the amateur who understood the electoral college mattered. the so-called professional forgot the electoral college mattered and that's what mattered. >> so does the fact that clinton got nearly three million more voters matter? if it doesn't, why is donald trump still griping about it on twitter? sam stein is political editor for the huffington post. hugh hewitt is the host of the hugh hewitt show on the salem radio network. great to be here in person with you in d.c. i'm going to let you play armchair psychiatrist. donald trump won the election, the electoral college certified him. why does he seem, sam, to be so bothered by this popular vote number? >> it's a great question. i think newt is right there. he won by the rules that you play the game and he's president

and there's no way to take that away. if you are going to say it matters it's only to the extent that he can claim a mandate which is sort of this symbolic thing because if you win you'll pursue your agenda regardless. why does it bother him? >> the election denieser don't bother him. the election deniers are on every cable show bringing up this irrelevant fact she did win by a lot in the popular vote. he's concerned about a.p. test takers. every the popular vote comes up someone gets a 2 or 1 on the test because they think it matters. he responds to the news. when we going to stop talking at it? it's rutherford b. hayes. >> it's rutherford b. hayes to you. it's interesting, donald trump didn't always like the electoral college and port of the reason people are still talking about it is because he's still tweeting about it and can't seem to stop but because he used to think the electoral college was

almost a scam. this week donald trump praised the electoral college. let's listen to that. >> the electoral vote -- i never appreciated it until now how genius it was, what they had in mind. because at the time they didn't want everybody going to boston and new york and everything else would be forgotten. and now it's the same thing. it's generals you. i'm telling you, it's genius. >> now let's take youiester year to 2012 when trump had a different view after barack obama's victory over mitt romney trump tweeted, incorrectly, that romney won the popular vote but lost in the electoral college. barack obama won both. he tweeted but later deleted "he lost the popular vote but won the election, we should have a revolution in this country." hypocrisy. shocked. >> shocked. but it does point out one fundamental difference between democrats and republicans. if donald trump won the popular

vote by three million, he would be calling for revolution. >> do you disagree with that? >> i do. >> come on. >> i believe in constitutional majorities. >> you do, i don't know about donald trump. >> his supporters might have been upset but the republican party is a federalist party, a constitutional majority has always been the same way. i love the electoral college, i've always loved it. you can learn to appreciate the genius of philadelphia. >> you're speaking for republican conservatives who read the federalist papers, that's not donald trump. >> i think that partisans on each side are a little bit selective in their outrage. i imagine had the situation been reversed democrats would have been loving the electoral college right now and -- donald trump would have been calling for revolution. >> it's tough to put yourself in trump's head but i think he would have been holding a pitchfork taking a selfie. >> and his supporters would have been railing the results were illegitimate and that the

president-elect was illegitimate. >> you don't understand republicans. a couple days ago stan -- >> it's on his twitter feed. >> it's literally on his twitter feed. >> that twitter is an exclamtory way to make a headline. >> that's all i'm saying. i literally just said that. >> a couple days ago you wrote a story -- >> oppo research on me. >> you said trump people are homophobic. >> i wrote something that said his people were homophobic. >> that he had been advised to purge the gay people. >> the family research council called for trump to take to the state department looking for people who pushed a gay agenda. quoting the family research council. >> but trump was not about that.

>> we want to talk about the loerl college because there's a bigger picture which is that you have republicans dismissing your state, the state you live in, california and pretending it should be thrown off the map and that one-eighth of this country's population doesn't matter. the reality is hillary clinton's popular vote majority is a fact and the way it's relevant i would argue and a lot of democrats would sarg that it would chasten donald trump in terms of his mandate. it has not. >> no, because you would be crazy to spend a dollar in california if you're a republican running for california. out of your mind to spend a dollar in new york in the same way that secretary clinton should not have spent a dollar in texas forshe did spend money in georgia it was stupidly spent. >> i don't know pooh f people would argue about texas because i think democrats made up ground in texas that could pay dividends. last night on his fox news show bill o'reilly defended the electoral college in the strangest way. he said liberals wanted to get rid of it to focus campaigns on

urban areas with large populations of minority voters. the result, he argued, would marginalize white voters. take a listen. >> in the large urban areas and blue states like new york and california minorities are substantial. look at the landscape. philadelphia, dallas-fort worth, miami, in all of these places the minority vote usually goes heavily to the democrats. talking points believe this is all about race. the left sees white privilege in america as an oppressive force that must be done away with therefore white working class voters must be marginalized and what better way to do that than center the voting power in the cities. summing up, left wants power taken away from the white establishment, they want a profound change in the way america is run. taking voting power away from the white precincts is the quickest way to do that. >> other than the afterkuan afri don't know what he's talking about. >> i don't know what he's talking about. >> it was in the script.

he wasn't riffing. it's not just the electoral college system, the first two states in the primaries are iowa and new hampshire, they have low minority populations. so there's a cumulative effect where politicians focus on issues that tend to deal with white suburban white working class voters. and there's not much or an urban policy -- >> the inconvenient fact is that the electoral college was designed when only white men could vote and therefore it was not designed to oppress black voters who were not citizens and couldn't vote. >> except that it was designed to ensure for prom mull -- prom mull negotiation of power. >> well you can look at it

objectively and say we have a system -- and this is true in the 2016 election -- where focused attention and influence was put on the rust belt states. bill o'reilly is on to something. if you were operating in that system, you focused on boaters that aren't necessarily representative of the population. >> there are very important issues facing urban communities, diverse communities that wind up getting marginalized. not sure that's a great system but we can debate that another day. >> and we shall. up next, president obama has less than a month in office and tonight we ask are we better off now than eight years ago? we'll pose this question to the "hardball" round table. you're watching "hardball" the place for politics.

what i can say with confidence is that what we've done works. that i can prove. i can show you where we were in

2008ened i can show you where we are now and you can't argue that we're not better off. we are. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was president obama during what was likely to be his final press conference as the 44th president of the united states. making the case for his legacy and successful stewardship of the country during the last eight years. according to a new "usa today"/suffolk university poll 54% of americans agree with him and approve of the job he's doing. what's up for debate is whether or not the affordable care act is his greatest achievement or biggest failure. 24% of americans ratist as greatest achievement, then the recession and his moral leadership. the same americans were acted a what ranked as president obama's biggest failure, 27% said it was -- wait for it -- the affordable care act followed by the wars in iraq and afghanistan and his failure to improve race relations. for more on how president

obama's legacy will be written, i'm joined by heidi perez bill la, jason johnson politics editor for the root.com. przybyla. heidi, to you on that poll, it's interesting. the obamacare life -- the affordable care act is loved, six more million people signed up for it today. or it's hated. why is that? >> if you look at the partisan correlation, you'll sigh why. it's heavily based on what part you you fwlong or identify with but the interesting thing about obamacare is that even if the republicans are successful in rolling back much of it when you ask specific questions a test ban treaty pillars of obamacare, including coverage for adult children, preexisting conditions, those are part of how obamacare is going to change the culture of health care and that's part of his legacy, too.

i think it's more than that but when you talk about obamacare being rolled back, that's part of the culture. >> and people who claim they hate obamacare say they want the pre-existing conditions. >> and president obama isn't a dummy. the affordable care act is like jenga, you cannot pull out pieces and they knew that. the other thing is it brought health care into public discussion. people know now that it's like wait so my cost come from insurance companies and not how much medicine is made, it's been a long time since we've had policy conversations about health care, i don't think anyone will be able to get away with saying i'll fix it. obama has changed the conversation. >> and mark murray. you've seen facts are on the ground are being built up everyday, six million more people signing up for it and you have republicans only able to use the most bludgeoning measures to repeal the taxes. they can't repeal the whole thing. it will be tough because they

have to remember a lot of people like a lot of provisions. >> so much will be determined by what remembers are able to accomplish and sometimes you don't want to be the dog that catches up to the car and republicans have used obamacare to bludgeon because here's the thing about the health care industry. it's incredibly complex, premiums almost always go up and president obama and democrats own health care. the question for republicans is do they want to be the owners of health care going in 2017, 2018, 2019? and they say they're on the replacement measure or delay it three or four years. that will be hard so i think obamacare's legacy, let's see what the situation is like 2020 and what the health care environment looks like. >> let's hear from the man himself before he headed on vacation. npr sat down with president obama and asked him about obamacare, here's what he said. >> i could not be prouder of the fact that the uninsured rate has never been lower.

that 20 million people have health insurance we didn't have before. but i said when the bill passed that it wasn't perfect and i don't know how many times i've said to republicans both publicly and privately and state of the union speeches and town halls around the country that if they're willing to engage and work with me then we can identify ways to tweak and improve this system. each time i've said this the basic republican response has been no, all we want to do is repeal it. and we'll replace it with something later. >> heidi, politically, can republicans get away with repealing it and replacing it with something later? >> i don't know they can because this is not rocket science. we have social compacts in this country and the way they work is you have people who are either

younger or healthier or both buying into the system in order to support those who are older and sicker. we see that with social security, to a certain extent with our tax dollars and medicare. what the republicans did was on philosophical ground opposed having that individual man sedate so it made it hard to fund and so if you take these parts away i think it will be very hard to kind of put back together a system that has broad coverage. you'll get sicker people, yes, maybe you won't take away pre-existing conditions, but those people will be in smaller pools where there are not healthier people and they will be paying through the nose. >> and mark there's polling that shows even trump voters want obamacare fixed not repealed? >> and to me the biggest political -- president obama took a big hit in 2013 and 2014 when there was the debate on if you like your insurance you can keep it and we found a lot of examples of people who said well i liked it and you took it away

or changed it somehow. i guarantee you if the republicans replace it or damage the exchanges, democrats will be able to find people who say look, i liked my insurance and you changed it for the worse. >> about 26 million of them at this point. the "hardball" round table is staying with us and up next, these three will tell me something i don't know. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. we are back, heidi, tell me

we are back, heidi, tell me something i don't know. >> i'll give you a hidden number in our recent poll that's instructive for republicans. they are equivocating right now on what kind of an investigation of russia they want to do. if it's impartial, independent counsel. a majority of americans -- and this cuts across all parties, independents, republicans, democrats -- want an investigation. >> all right. mark? >> joy, monday's electoral college count could end up being an issue in the dnc chair race going with the voting happening

in february of next year because of the fact that you had five bernie sanders supporters who were electors who voted for someone other than hillary clinton and as keith ellison has been using that mantle of the bernie sanders, compelling him, the people voting are the 440 some odd democratic party operatives who might not want to be holding the keys over to the bernie -- >> interesting, jason? >> the death penalty information center released their report, those people who are anti-death penalty advocates, this is bad news about race and gender and class but they also reveal 20% of people on death row are military veterans. >> thank you very much, heidi, mark, and jason. that's "hardball" for now. we'll be back tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. eastern. see you then. from the moment you met you wanted to surround them in

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tonight on "all in" -- >> everything good? >> yes. >> how do you like it? everything fine? >> president-elect briefly meets the press. >> what's going on is terrible right now. we have intelligence. >> 74 seconds with the press corps. and what trump learned about the attacks on christians. >> who said that? when was that said? >> plus -- >> he now says it was cute but he doesn't want to use it anymore. >> how the drain the swamp era just ended before it ever began. why dona