bryan. >> thanks to nikki haley and to kelly o'donnell in statue area hall tonight. those with motorcades have left the building. who were there tent for president trump's first address to a joint session. we have just passed over the top of a new hour of our coverage. welcome to all. it is not too early to announce that chris matthews has a broadcast plan for later tonight, which should probably violate anti-trust laws because it is the largest assembly of big-name guests really anywhere in the united states. >> i think colbert is worried. >> yeah. justifiably so. >> we've got bill maher on, michael moore will sit right here with us, kathy griffin. we'll have to be careful with some of the language. >> seven-second delay. >> it's going to be a hell of a group. >> all of those people are on

live at midnight. >> all here. i wanted to do something a little more sparkling than the former governor of kentucky. i think they need some gritty, nasty even response to the st e address to the congress. >> that's the headline. >> here live. >> sharp-eyed viewers have noticed that steve schmidt has been remarkably replaced by nicole wallace is is here with us. the circle of life continues. nicole, this is our first chance to ask you what you made of the president's first speech before congress. >> so i was livid until i heard you talk about nasty and gritty and now i'm interested.

i know this from working as the communications director to a president and to a candidate for presidency. you don't erase your narrative and twitter feed in an hour and eight minutes. this was remarkable to me that he went that long without attacking the media and without boasting about the size of his electoral victory. i've never seen him do that before. >> he did call it an earthquake. he said it was a rebellion that became an earthquake. >> and it was the best trump can do and that's where we are as a country. that's why i'm going to stay up until midnight to see what bill maher has to say. >> i think he did what reagan did in his debate with carter. when you come out and you go, i can do this. >> yeah. they say i'm a crazy person but watch me. >> the bar was low. and that's why -- it's a form, a

tone, it had to be inclusive. it did have steve bannon in it. >> totally. >> and he knew he had to do all of the glad handing and retail stuff. he did it just like he's been watching movies of this. >> like he's seen the scene in a movie and knows exactly what to do. >> but only someone like us would pick that up. >> what was up with the two-handed water drink? >> marco rubio. he wanted to -- >> seinfeld episodes were done on less. it was a two-handed water drink. >> it was just -- >> here's a question, though. is donald trump -- donald trump is a unique personality. is it possible that this early in his presidency views of him

have calcified. those who are with him will be with him and some may never be with him? >> i think it sounded, too, like he participated in his own intervention tonight. you know, what i picked up from my calls today was that there was a desire to change his feedback group. he stood up and acknowledged hillary clinton because someone provided him an update. i think he was part of an effort to change his own feedback loop. i talked to a white house official who thought he was very interested in getting positive reviews tonight directly to the president of the united states to try to reinforce -- >> are you inside enough to know this? why did he switch from lunchtime briefing the anchors that he was going to do something truly dramatic on immigration, in other words, accept the people that have been obeying the law,

what happened to that tonight? >> there wasn't enough time to vet the policy. i think that's his impulse. we've had glimpses -- his impulses on health care is not what was on the speech tonight. i think that might be -- >> don't promise and not deliver. >> i don't mean to burst the bubble around, oh, he wrote his own speech. he didn't write this speech. he's not that much of a policy guy. >> nobody said that. he said something that he didn't repeat tonight. >> yes, because he's not connected to policy in any substantive point. when he talks to people and they say here's a reason you shouldn't get rid of the aca or deport 11 million people, oh, sure, that's great. that's not his policy. >> we saw him mouthing the speech. didn't he notice there was nothing on there about a compromise on immigration? >> he doesn't care. >> i counted seven, eight references to curing disease.

obviously he's been briefed on federal funding for -- >> he is cutting dramatically the kinds of domestic spending. >> i don't think he knows that. >> he doesn't have any connection to the policies that he's promoting as president. >> i think the thing with the anchors was just kind of amusing. it was likely more just sort of, gee, what if, wouldn't it be neat if -- and i think this is the policy that he announced again tonight. >> the policy is in the speech. >> i think he's afraid of the headline and he didn't want the headline tonight to be immigration. we'll see what the headlines are. >> we have the new leadership of the democratic party standing by, but first we'd like to hear some of what the president took a little bit over an hour to say here now some of our collected excerpts from the president's speech. >> for that reason, we will soon begin the construction of a

great, great wall along our southern border. [ applause ] as we speak tonight, we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our very innocent citizens. bad ones are going out as i speak and as i promised throughout the campaign. tonight i am also calling on this congress to repeal and replace obamacare. same time provide better

health care. the time for small thinking is over. the time for trivial fights is behind us. we just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts. >> joining us now, because they've been very patient, are the new chairman of the democratic party tom perez and the new deputy chairman of the democratic party keith ellison. they competed fiercely for this job so they decided to join together. thank you for being with us. >> great to be with you. >> so let me ask you first, mr. chairman. in terms of what you heard tonight, our group assessment here at our msnbc headquarters is that we didn't hear anything

substantively new from the president. we did hear a more measured tone did you hear anything tonight that changes your view of him or what the democratic party should be doing in response to him? >> this was steve bannon on steroids with a smile. start out with alternative facts. i inherited a mess from barack obama. no, barack obama inherited a mess from the great recession. and then taking credit for stuff you have nothing to do with. all of these new companies are adding jobs. since january 20th, the washington wizards have the best record in the nba. must have been trump. then you move to a little immigrant baiting. that's like the salt and pepper on the table of the trump administration. and then you close it up with a bunch of promises that you'll nifr keep. frankly, some of the promises, i'm glad they can't keep because

affordable care is not a job killer. two hours into this administration, he made it harder for first-time home buyers to buy a home. a few days later he sets in motion a process that is harder for people to save for retirement and then we have a rule to help people work overtime get that overtime pay that they so deserve. the empty promises, this is steve bannon on steroids with a smile or two. >> mr. deputy chairman, congressman keith ellison, the big story that most of us saw as the sort of 30,000 feet story of the democratic party last year was the division within the party, was the fight within the party, the unusually difficult primary that happened between bernie sanders and hillary clinton. you two gentlemen standing there together is itself a message. but i wonder if you feel like

there's a new story of the democratic party, whether those divisions are still the most important thing that we should be focusing on, whether in the trump era the democratic party is going to be able to move on to a different story line. where do you think we're at? >> you know, i do think there's a new story. the fact is that we have people all over this country who are active, in the streets, the women's march was awesome. people going out to protest. local democratic parties seeing a real surge of people who want to be involved. we've got a new spirit. people are highly motivated. and, of course, in the leadership of the democratic party, tom and i are working together, we're glad to be doing that. we both have been friends for years and we have talents that we both bring to this. this is a good time to get reinvolved with the democratic party. we have a level of unity, commitment and passion that i think is going to serve the american people very well. >> we're about to have a handful of congressional elections.

mike pompeo's seat is up in canvas. do you guys expect to win any of the seats that are republican-held now? do you expect to flip any of them? >> i look at what happened in delaware last weekend. there was a state senate seat up there and what was important up there is the body is tied going into that election when the election was held a few years ago, the republicans lost by two points. this is a perfect illustration of the democratic party in action. we won by 16 points. the dnc contributed. we channelled that energy that keith was talking about into volunteers, boots on the ground. that's what we're going to try to do everywhere. because our most important area of agreement, and we have many, is that we need to redefine the mission of the democratic party. >> that's right. >> it's not simply to elect the president. we need to be electing folks

from the school board to the senate and i'm not just talking about the u.s. senate. the state senate race last week is the exact example of what we need to do at scale and we're going to swing the bat. today, there was another special election in connecticut and i believe the democrats won there. so we're making progress but -- >> we believe that we ought to fill every single seat across america with a democrat. no more free passes for the republicans. but we've got to ask people to run. we've got to train them. we've got to encourage them. let them know that they're going to have the support. that's our mission. to train, recruit and make sure we're competing everywhere, all the time in every seat. >> new leadership, tom perez, keith ellison, thank you for being with us tonight. appreciate your time. >> thank you. always a pleasure. let's continue a conversation we started before the president's speech with hugh hewitt, radio talk show host and frequent contributor around

here. hugh, thanks for your patience, you got into -- we started talking about military funding. the president likes to say that our military has been depleted, our military has been decimated. in what way has it been depleted and in what way would you spend the money that the president is talking about spending? >> he said tonight in the speech that he was going to do away with the sequester. six out of ten f-18 and other strike aircraft are not ready to fly. you bring me to the key point where there was a transendent moment and that was the prolonged, sustained applause for mrs. owens. that also showed something, chris mentioned earlier, the president is commander in chief

and being willing to do the hardest job that a commander in chief does, which is to recognize and talk with the families of the fallen. and i think tomorrow, all around the country, they may be talking about the disaster that is obamacare, the regulatory rollback. he did call on neil gorsuch to be confirmed swiftly. but they'll be talking about mrs. owens, may be talking about megan crawly but i think that sustained applause, it was a very patriotic speech and the reluctant trump voter that's out there wondering can he do the job that i put him in there after the barrage of the first month, i think they are tremendously reassured by what i thought was a transcendent moment, to be sure. >> it would take someone awfully hard-hearted to concede that. but in the 12 hours before this speech tonight, the president

got a little sideways on the mission itself, seeming to indicate in his interview with "fox & friends," seeming to blame, quote, the generals for losing ryan in this mission and not seeming to grasp that the title commander in chief means just that. it's all on you. that's part of the job. >> well, i'm not going to concede that, brian, because i always try to listen to donald trump differently than i listen to other people having been involved in so many exchanges with him. i think what he was trying to say is that the mission was planned on president obama's watch. it was executed with the approval of the generals and it did contribute to the national security. i do think he has to become more deft in those settings and when he talked about immigration with chris and others, he may have overextended what was just a creek in the door tonight that i heard. i actually listened to that and

said to myself, he's got to tinker with that but it wasn't what the media said it was. if i'm sitting at home tonight, the biggest gap that i've got, i think, that's occurring in blue state turned red state in america, the media is not recognizing what was a terrific speech by someone that weren't sure could give the state of the union speech. >> i said it was his most speech-like of speeches. but did you just tell us we have to listen to him differently? >> yes, i did. >> how does that go? >> it's going to go very well outside of the beltway. some people take him seriously and not literally. others take him literally and not seriously. and tonight, you could take him both literally and seriously. for example, i heard when he took up obamacare, it collapsed,

the lack of choice, the broken promises of, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. it was deftly delivered. he was talking to the 20% in the middle. the 40% that is satisfied, those 20% heard a lot tonight. here's the downside. he made a lot of promises tonight, brian. a lot of promises. a year from now we're going to roll the tape and see what he delivered because he wants to be the promise keeper president. >> among those promises, dying industries will come roaring back to life and drug epidemics will stop. thank you for your contribution. >> you were mentioning that the president's remarks about the yemen mission and how different those were from that moment that

hugh was describing the event with the navy s.e.a.l.s widow who was there. i'm quoting this verbatim. "this was a mission that was started before i got here. this was something that was, you know, just they wanted to do." . he then said, "my generals are the most respected in decades" and they believe they lost ryan. when he talked about the mission in yemen, basically saying the problems was their problem. this wasn't me. i didn't make that decision. so to put on him that he's somehow taken responsibility for the death that occurred on that mission that he did order, that it is his responsibility for it because he's commander in chief, that's not supported by what the president said in that interview. it's light year ace way from him trying to say it's the generals, it wasn't me, this is obama's fault which is how he has dealt

with the death thus far. >> this really offends me, the fact that he said that. i agree with you completely. because war is guys shooting at each other. you go into battle and fire fight. anything can happen. and casualties are part of war. the europeans knew that way before we knew that. and to dick around about this thing, the president of the united states saying it wasn't my job, the buck does stop there and it is the commander in chief and i go back to the pay of pigs. kennedy said, it was me, i'm the officer in charge. you have to say that. you can't write the letter to the widow and say it wasn't me. by the way, casualties come from war. it shouldn't be, let's figure out what went wrong here. to dwell on this, these are difficult, dangerous missions. people get killed and the idea that the president has to argue with somebody about whose fault it is is below the office. >> they have to change it to

instead of they lost ryan, we lost ryan. >> he quoted general mattis in his address to congress tonight but that is a different fact than what john mccain believes of this mission. >> and what nbc reported last night. >> and all of our reporting does not line up with what donald trump quoted his secretary of defense, very well respected general. so i think he opened up the issue. it was already opened. the father has asked for an investigation. but he presented something that is not in the current fact pattern. >> i just spoke to general mattis who reconfirmed that ryan was part of a raid that led to many more victories in the future against our enemies. >> some people should know say that's not true. i would agree with hugh hewitt on one point, which is i think

that moment in the speech will penetrate people's consciousness a lot more than the back and forth about the mission, whether it was worthwhile and what happened. so i do believe that will be -- >> you know why? because the one pure -- just a minute, hugh. the one poor communication tonight was that woman karen owens talking to her husband. this is a chance. i've got to talk to my husband right now. this was pure love communication. there's not a guy in the world who doesn't want to have a spouse like that. she is a lover of her lost husband. this is real. the rest of that is politics. that's real. >> chris, i agree with that 100%. that's so moving. what i have to respectfully disagree, when the president said they lost ryan, here's what i heard, the s.e.a.l.s didn't bring back one of their own, not

that i'm blaming my generals. how do you posture yourself listening to the commander in chief. i'm sitting down with w. on thursday to talk about the wounded warrior he's been painting. they don't think about them and they, not any president that i've met. so i'd ask for a former s.e.a.l. to come up and talk about that. when he said they lost ryan -- >> hugh, his quote was, this was a mission that was started before i got here. they just wanted to do it. my generals are the most respected and they lost ryan. he was asked about his reaction to this loss and to the grief of this s.e.a.l.'s father who didn't want to meet him on the tarmac at dover. he said this was started before i got here. >> we can disagree, rachel. >> that's what he said. >> it's not. it's interpretation. "my generals" mean i have

confidence, they lost ryan means the s.e.a.l.s on the ground lost ryan. you may want to attribute to him the distance but that's not what he's done. gold star fathers get to say whatever they want. i just admire mrs. owens for coming tonight and i admire the president for inviting her and saying we appreciate the sacrifice and we know you're out there tonight and this administration is going to be with you. we're going to give you what you need and my generals will follow up on it. i heard it completely differently. that's the divide in the country. people hear things differently. when they said they lost ryan, i think that was a recognition that a band of brave warriors, the best that we've got, lost one of their own and it's not something civilians can say we lost. we don't put it on the line the way they do. >> we all hear you about the speech tonight but so far his comment about the raid is this wasn't me, this wasn't on me.

and that -- you can't get around from that by rounding up the emotional value of what you heard him say, not if we have quotations. >> we disagree. >> reasonable people can disagree. and that brings us to cory booker, democratic senator from the state of new jersey who has been very patiently listening to our conversation about this. and senator booker, i'll begin with you the way i started with a colleague of yours. you take someone from the southern part of the state, the home town of kellyanne conway, a blue collar family that found hope in the president's words tonight, that dying industries are going to come back to life. >> appreciate it, brian, your knowledge as a new jersey boy

yourself. he's been in office now for 40-plus days. you hear these grandiose and expansive speeches but i worry about people from cumberland county and all over my state about what they are going to be experiencing. he talked about safety. the one piece of safety legislation he's really focused on was allowing people to have more seriously meantly ill people to have access to buying firearms and talks about kming empowerment and helping out the working people while he made mortgages more expensive for people in my state with the stroke of a pin. the policies don't add up in any way to the grand yoes statements that he's making. in fact, every time i sat there, i felt like it was a betrayal of many of the people in my state. >> senator, what do you make of this surprise -- it's only an uptick but it's an uptick in the

consumer confidence. still a negative but up from where it was before the election. why do you think people are more economically confident than they were about president obama in his last days? >> again, look, that's a sentiment analysis. i'm just looking at the facts and what's going to help working people in my state. we have a lot of work to do, especially if trump wants to talk about the bread and butter issues that most americans are facing. we have a health care crisis because his rhetoric is putting health care in jeopardy because just talking about the future of health care in our country is making insurance companies waver. and he's talking about giving governors more flexibility. what he's talking about is

blocking a lot of these things which will hurt the coverage for people in my state and that's going to hurt working-class people in new jersey. i understand there's lots of market indicators and people want to watch the stock market. i want to find out what is going to help people meet their basic family needs and have success that every american deserves. i just don't see real solutions. i see him doing things that is going to make him less prosper. spending billions on a border wall when we need investment in other areas, the biggest group over mexican which is mexican immigration, frankly, these are overstays. so this is a time when we need real, thoughtful policy that can bring both sides together to solve real problems and what we

get from him is divisive rhetoric. >> senator, this is nicolle wallace. why didn't a sitting office holder respond to tonight's address to congress? >> way over my pay grade in terms of making those decisions. >> you gave a detailed rebuttal on -- seriously. we were out of power for eight years and every year republicans gave that to a rising force. why not have you spend to those address to congress. >> as many people in our party could have given that voice, and we'll be talking about this over the coming days. that was a trump speech. i've heard them before. the real issue, as far as a legislator, our job is to check and balance the president. we have a lot of work to do on real issues ranging from health care to, frankly, we're in the

midst of a foreign policy crisis. >> why not have somebody out of office who has no ability to do what you just ticked up. on a night like tonight with millions of people watching and half the country desperately rooting for those of you to checken him, why not respond to the president. >> i heard the last half of the response by the time i got back to my office. >> it was great. >> it is very strong. and i think that's a good thing. i don't understand why we're not having more discussions about our nation being under attack. and they are saying, look, this has been happening to us for years. you are under attack by the russians. we have work to do in congress

to check this president, to investigate substantially things like what happened to that great soldier that fell under donald trump's command and i think it was wonderful. i savor the moments and my job is to check and balance that president and to give oversight. and it's frustrating to me that we're not investigating them like we should be, whether there's that incident where we lost an american soldier or, frankly, the larger issues are going on right now with russian attacks into this country. >> senator cory booker of new jersey, thank you for your patience and thanks for taking part in our discussion tonight coming out of the speech of president trump. >> thank you all. thank you very much. >> a break for us when we come back. it just gets us closer to chris matthews big names at the top of the hour. >> a parade of stars.

also, we have special programming tomorrow night on just what senator booker was talking about, and that is the electronic warfare under way by russia on the united states. much more to get to when we come right back.

provided by the department of justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorists and terrorism-related offense since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. we have seen the attacks at home from boston to san bernardino to the pentagon and, yes, even the world trade center. >> president speaking tonight. of course, part of the context in terms of making sense of that statement is considering that nobody claims that people have been convicted of terrorist-related offenses in large numbers who are from the seven countries on which he imposed a travel ban. we are told tomorrow the president will introduce or release his new version of the refugee ban and muslim ban. the a.p. breaking news that we've had on that since the president's speech ended is that he will drop one of the seven countries originally listed in the travel ban. they will reportedly drop iraq

out of the list of seven countries. for further context, we're joined by foreign correspondent richard engel who has the good luck to be watching this tonight from moscow. good to have you here, my friend. >> reporter: absolutely. and i think it's very significant that if the a.p. report is accurate, that he's going to drop iraq. the u.s. has a lot of interests in iraq. the iraqis had threatened to ban americans if iraq was kept on this list, which would mean banning american contractors who support the military mission and potentially banning the soldiers themselves the fact that you can just drop one of the seven nations shows how arbitrary the ban is. when you listen to the president today, he also said that this ban, his policies are preventing the united states from becoming a beach head of terrorists, as

if there is this army of terrorists trying to come in from around the world that the u.s. is undefended and literally trying to wash up onto our shores and carry out terrorist attacks. the fact is, it's very difficult to get a visa to the united states and that most terrorist attacks since 9/11 have actually been carried out by people who are already in the united states, legal residents, u.s. citizens and that when they've been carried out, like the 9/11 attacks by people who came in from the outside, they generally were not from the seven countries that were listed. so it is an important distinction. the impression that he was given, that this travel ban that is tough immigration policies are preventing this legion from washing up onto our shores doesn't match reality. >> richard, we had a really interesting leak this week where the fact that the leak happened

is sort of part of the story and it was a report from the department of homeland security from their intelligence bureau, sort of within dhs, assessing the travel ban on national security grounds and concluding that on national secured grounds it was essentially nonsense, that there was no reason to try to approach the issue of terrorism based on the national origin, the passport name of people coming into this country. the story behind that was that the department of homeland security under the trump administration rejected that report but the analyst who is created oemland security has leaked it to the press and we've all been able to read it. do you read that as a sign of a broader resistance in the national security community to this ban and to some of the other measures and assertions that the president has made about terrorism and about how he's planning on fighting it? >> reporter: absolutely.

i think the number of leaks that we've been seeing in general, especially regarding national security and intelligence, reflect the deep unease that many national security professionals feel about what is happening. just going back to this travel ban and the way isis works now and we've done a lot of reporting about isis over the last several years, isis is an international organization. people come from all over the world to join that group. oftentimes they live in multiple countries. the same person will have lived in multiple countries so you might have a saudi national who lived in europe who then transited through turkey and just banning a particular nationality, a blanket ban, doesn't reflect the reality of isis. especially when the countries that they most use as their

beach heads are not on the list. there are a lot of saudis that remain in isis and turks that remain on the list. the boston marathon bombers from here in russia and the caucuses are also on that list. and i think that reflects that fact. if it was that important and if it was the only thing stanting between us and army terrorists trying to get on our shores. >> richard engel, thank you very, very much. i should mention, as we were speaking with russia, we got an updated word from the white house and actually to richard's point, they are changing their plans. they are not going to have the president sign the new travel ban tomorrow. specifically because they want

to allow for this speech to breathe a little bit. now, that's interesting on two points. one, they think the speech went over well and don't want to step on its tail and there's no urgency while he allows the -- >> richard engel, a, there's nothing more grim than 7:40 a.m. for a jet lag american than a february morning in moscow. richard, thank you. we'll also be talking to you tomorrow as part of our special coverage starting at 9:00 eastern time on this power play going on. trump and putin, our examination of it, our deconstruction of it. we're back right after this.

we are back as we continue our coverage covering the president's speech tonight. we have thoughtful people stacked up like jets over o'hare. first of whom is steve kornacki at the big board. steve, we talked to you before the address about expectations and now we can talk to you about tone. >> that's one of the words that we're hearing about in the aftermath. a more sober tone, a more presidential tone and a more optimistic tone even though the

basic message remains the same. we're going to go deep inside the numbers here because i think we can show you the number that explains why the white house decided to do this tonight. let me set this up for you. first of all, take a look right now at our "wall street journal" poll this week. this is donald trump's approval rating with white voters, with black voters and latino voters. to put this in some perspective, compare how he's doing with these groups right now in our poll with how he did with them on election day. here you go, a side by side comparison. he's up very slightly with latinos, very slightly with black voters but down with white voters. white voters is still 70% of the electorate in this country. this isn't an approve or disapprove. this is what he won on election day. 58% of the white vote on election day. break this down one step further right now. white voters, whites with a college degree, more

suburbanites. strong favorable approval rating right now with whites without a degree, opposite, though, whites with a college degree. compare that to election day. again, this is donald trump's number. donald trump won whites with a college degree on election day. this was a big surprise. he's now way, way upside down with these voters. when you start seeing a change in tone, the kind of change in tone we saw from donald trump today, it tends to be these kinds of voters that strategists have in mind. these are strategists that tend to care more when you get to issues about tone, about style, issues about clean government, good government. and this is key for the next two years of american politics. if democrats want to take back the house in 2018 and they are bullish on that right now, there are two dozen districts out there that hillary clinton won in the election, that are currently represented by a republican and they tend to be

populated by whites with a college degree. trump's thinking of them, democrats are thinking of them. >> steve kornacki, thank you. also with us is marie a teresa kumar. >> good evening, brian. >> good evening. and we sure thought the message and the talking point on immigration going into tonight was going to be something other than what happened. what remains your goal out of this white house and what are you going to listen for? >> well, i think what steve kornacki hit the nail on the head, the point of this whole conversation was recognizing that he's off to a shaky start by the group that brought him into the white house that folks didn't expect and that was, for the most part, white working class white voters who basically said, shoot, do i have buyers' remorse and he doubled down and

wanted to clearly in his speech say i'm not a racist, i'm not a sexist or against the environment and only want to deport the undocumented who have committed crimes and who are felons. that said, you take a step back and most folks don't feel any better and people are getting swept up. i want to point out there's the family of guadalupe garcia who is there today. she was the first person deported after the executive orders by donald trump. she's the mother of two american children. she went in to self-check on i.c.e. like she was doing for the last couple of years and they promptly deported her. she was not a risk to herself or the community. and something that nikki haley said really illustrated the type of governing that the president believes in. this is the u.n. ambassador who said he's not given me any

directive. so we know that we have a problem with russia, we have a problem with ukraine, you could actually extrapolate that and speechifing and not legislating. it's an ability to bring in what he brought in as the base and folks said is this buyer's remorse that i remorse and he needs the democrats. >> indeed. we heard groans when he announced this new initiative v.o.i.c.e., victims of immigration crimes. maria teresa kumar, good to see you again. thank you for being part of our coverage tonight. also part of our coverage tonight, presidential historian and author michael beschloss in washington. if you follow michael on social media and, really, it's a patriotic thing to do, you would

have seen that michael tonight posted a picture, 1961, tomorrow, 1961, john f. kennedy launching the peace corps, which is still today, of course, enjoys success around the world ch michael, i was thinking of you tonight because i was thinking of the history in that chamber and we're coming off eight years of a president who was a history officiana officianado and what does he know about speaking in that chamber tonight? >> not a lot. one may say a lot of things for donald trump but no one is going to say that he's a good reader of history, brian. there was a piece in "the new york times," not long ago, with the amazing words that said mr. trump, who does not read books, comma. that's not something you would have said about harry truman or

franklin roosevelt or dwight eisenhower. if we saw a little bit of a pivot tonight in terms of the inauguration immigration, my guess is this would not last for a very long time, if i could vote for it, it would be nice to see a pivot in terms of him having a little more respect for history and maybe someone on his staff, who can tell him a little bit about things in history that have an echo of what he's trying to do. >> hi, michael, it's rachel. >> hi, rachel. >> the president announcing this -- something he's talked about, this office of immigrant

crime. promoting the idea that immigrants are vicious, murdering, violent criminals. is there anything like that in american history? obviously people are making references and that's not pretty comparisons. have we done anything like this before? >> nothing that i can think of immediately. the other thing, rachel, is that he put some of the victims, people who were said to have suffered from these crimes in the visitors gallery and i was thinking how far we have come from after the air florida disaster in 1982, all the way to, you know, putting people in the gallery to illustrate this presumed threat to the public good. >> michael, i was thinking about the chamber tonight. i was thinking about fdr, churchill, the kings and queens

that have spoken there. one thing that you and i have in common, lbj after the death of john f. kennedy, the sentence that said all i have i would db. >> be gladly not talking about the assassin's bullet. you're right, brian. so much history there. one thing i was really surprised by, i think it would have been in trump's interest to announce something new tonight. we've been talking about this for hours. hard to think of a surprise that came out of this speech. it was a lot about what i've done over the last month, what i intend to do which is pretty much the same. you think of the history of the way that lyndon johnson used one of his speeches to announce the war on poverty or john kennedy, 1961 to announce the moon landing program or richard nixon announcing an initiative to try to conquer cancer. that would have been in his interest and it's interesting that he missed that bet. >> just as we urge americans tonight to follow michael beschloss on twitter.

he lives on in my phone. michael, thank you. we'll talk to you along the way. >> thank you so much. >> this is going to end this hour, just this portion of coverage. again, for those just arriving from work or travel or coming to their senses or coming before a television, just some of the guests chris matthews has in the hour after us, bill maher, kathy griffin. that's the -- >> my french is almost conversational. >> chris matthews is about to do stunning during the midnight show. you'll want to see it. >> thanks to our family and friends, our political family -- >> bye. >> bye.

the state of donald trump. let's play hard ball. ♪ ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews live from new york tonight with a late night special edition of hard ball. this hour we are going to get reaction to the president tonight with an all-star lineup of special guests. bill mare is going to be here. michael moore is with me already. kathy griffin. mike, robert dauby, griffin,