it is hard to drag the guy out of the house after you shoot him, right? it's the most inconvenient thing that does it for us tonight. we will see you again monday. we will see you again monday. "hardball" is up next. good-bye. trump turns 100. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington with president trump on the verge of completing his first 100 days in office. he's closing out a week's long push to rank up as many last-minute accomplishments as possible. but in a candid overall office with reuters the president revealed he may have underestimated the difficulty of the job, acknowledging that he thought the work of the american presidency would be easier than it really is. >> i loved my previous life. i had so many things going.

i actually -- this is more work than in my previous life. i thought it would be easier. i do miss my old life. this -- i like to work, so that's not a problem, but this is actually more work. >> well, trump's remarks seem out of character for the man who repeatedly said being on the campaign trail being presidential and accomplishing as many agenda items would be, quote, easy. let's watch. >> it's so much to be presidential. it's much easier than what i have to do. you're going to have such great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost. d it's going to be so easy. there's never be a country that lost jobs like we do, so stupidly, so easy to solve. the wall is peanuts. that's going to be one of the easy negotiations, believe me. a lot of politicians said you can't get mexico to pay for the wall. it's going to be so easy. and it's so easy to stop the

globalists. and it's so easy to stop. and we're going to stop it. i just love doing it. i just -- so easy. it's so easy it's like four, five minutes of calls. so many of these things are so easy to fix. we're going to make america great again. it's going to be easy. >> well, the president's comments suggested that trump might not be ready for the office to begin with. his words bare striking resemblance of something he once told me on this show 16 years ago. here is trump in 2001 as if he could ever see himself as a president. >> i'm not sure i would ever really enjoy the life of a politician, chris. >> what is it that scares or offends you or turns you off about sitting in the oval office and dealing with the press whatsoever? >> i think you're just on all the time. by the way, no easy job. this is really tough stuff. it's something that i don't think would suit me very well or

enjoy me really well. vince lombardi said you have to love it and you do have tlof it. >> the reuters interview also revealed the president is still fixated on the results of the november election. quote -- midway through a discussion about chinese president xi jinping. handing out a copy of the map to each of the three reuters reporters in the room. the president went on to point out that the states in red were the states he had won. on a more serious note, the president also -- i think that was serious. also told reuters his biggest global worry is north korea. that makes sense with tensions mounting in that region. he said there's a real possibility of war especially if kim jong-un is willing to risk the survival of his own country. >> there's a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with north korea. absolutely. is he willing to destroy his

country, and is he willing to destroy millions and millions of lives and people? >> joining me right is -- howard fineman, also analyst for us and katherine ranpel. thank you all. gene, i remember the greatest bragger of all, babe ruth. pointed to center field. muhammad ali. this guy brags but he doesn't actually perform according to his bragging plan. does he? >> it was going to be easy to do the wall and so many things he can't get $1.4 billion for the wall which is a measly sum. it was going to be easy to do health care for everybody. it was going to be great. >> remember the ken berry song "it's easy like taking candy from a baby". >> the baby ain't giving up the

candy. >> this is a tough job, any school kid knows how tough the presidency must be and then he went back to like selling a car again. it was a sellsmanship. >> that's because as a salesman his whole pitch during the campaign was i'm a great businessman. i'm a great deal maker. i can see the simple essence of things that the bureaucrats and politicians can't. i know how to get in there and seize the thing by the throat. and in four or five minutes of phone calls i'm going to get it done. that was his pitch. and people who were upset with government, upset with washington, upset with the nagging complexities of modern life in america and it's unfairness thought, okay, this is the thunder bolt who can do it, and that's how he sold himself to those people on that map that he was showing the guys at reuters. >> i wonder whether no drama obama and his ability to do anything without any obvious sweat may have allowed the american people to fall into the

absurd notion of being ceo of america is easy. how do you explain why the voters thought it would be ease sni. >> they didn't. if you look at the polling throughout the campaign there was no point during the campaign during the primary or the general when a majority of americans thought trump would be prepared for the presidency. so, i think to a certain extent what trump was doing was he was trying knock away those concerns about his lack of experience. and the question is, to what extent when he was talking about how easy it would be and how simple it would be was he lying to the american public and to what extent was he just lying to himself? it appears it may have been a combination of the two. >> trump pointed out the danger of north korea. he's 27 years old. his father dies. took over a regime, so what you want but that is not easy especially at that age. i'm not giving him credit or not giving him credit.

it's a hard thing. i'm not saying that's a very hard thing to do. as to with whether or not he's rational. i have no opinion on it. i hope he's rational. >> if you want to be a psychologist and put him on the couch, another young man who inherits the empire of a powerful father and has to live up to that. >> and so maybe that's his thinking about kim's thinking. that's pure unsourced anything. >> oh, go ahead, gene. >> yeah, right. >> you look at it that way. >> that's the first thing that occurred to me, by the way. >> that's what scares me right there. people marching in regimenal form. americans wouldn't do that. we're a little more independent. >> i also think that donald trump hasn't almost comically or scarily belief in his own charm, his own ability to connect with anybody who is also a great strong man around the world, you

know. it's putin first. now he doesn't like putin. it's the tremendous bond he's bhaed that great guy xi jinping in china after spending a day with him. >> he's not the first president to do that. fdr thought he could do it with stalin. >> bush thought he had done it with putin. >> that's what makes someone a politician. >> that's my point. yes, that is what makes him a politician. he thinks he can do it with this guy somehow. and you know, i doubt it. but it's -- that's how he thinks. >> go ahead, katherine. take over here for a while because i think that so many people think if they think they're doing it. i watch people in these inaugural dances they have every year and recently the last couple generations they don't know how to dance and they do a couple steps, freddy or someone stupid one-step thing and they act like they're dancing. everybody applauds. thinking you're doing it, thinking you can do it is not the same as doing it. you have to know how to play the instrument. you have to know how to dance.

you have to learn it. you can't just think you're doing it. these guys lately i think w. did it too and obama did it. any way, the lack of training -- >> that level of confidence is what helps people win i elections. that's sort of faking it until you make it. the question right now is has trump sort of been humbled to any extent now that he seems to be acknowledging that things are more difficult? >> sounds like it. >> and if he has been humbled would he be willing and capable of learning. it seems like he acknowledges that he needs to do some learning, i just don't know if he has the disposition and the patience more over to do the kinds of heavy learning that he needs to be doing. >> let geese through this -- >> the comment about kim jong-un and his effort to sort of play nice -- >> he has to do that. >> i know he has to do that but that's more exemplary of his thinking which is this is still easy. >> during the campaign he dealt with a lot of politicians too. promised to move the american

embassy to jerusalem which sounds right. the whole area of jerusalem the christian portions say that's thies. then the game is over. no more negotiations. he seems to have just learned that. something we all grew up with knowing how tricky that would be and then he says, i'll tell you in a month. that's what he said in the interview. then the question from the reuters reporter british organization was are you going to identify israel having the whole capital area to themselves? that's even a bigger stretch. and he said i'll tell you in a month about that? does he know what that means when you say something like? that's a dangerous thing to say over there. >> this isn't clearly what he's been following in detail his adult life. he isn't. so he learns this stuff. so he's going to rip up nafta, except no actually he's not going to rip up nafta. you know who that would hurt? a whole lot of those farmer in

the agricultural states. he is learning. >> export as well as import. when you export as well as import. >> imagine that. imagine that. >> chris -- >> these are things kids learn in high school. >> well, chris, on that point, i talked to a bunch of his good friends, people who he talks with around the country if not the world. and i asked chris rutty from florida. what's the biggest thing that trump learned that he didn't know. rutty said that there is a congress. i mean, and he was sort of joking but he wasn't really joking. >> it's called article 1 of the constitution. >> that there's a congress and just because you're president you don't get to run that. it's pretty basic. >> explains why he has no accomplishments. by way of judging the first 100 day score card has always been legislative. if the president gets a bill through, that's a victory. president obama had to contend with the great recession when he moved in. trump has done nothing. >> yes, he has no major

legislative accomplishments. he does have a supreme court pick in place, but to be fair that's because it was robbed from obama. so normally probably a president wouldn't have the option of filling a seat this quickly in the term in their first 100 days. yeah, i do agree that i think trump -- his rhetoric throughout the campaign indicated that he thought that he could just kind of like barrel through, implement his agenda, have no problems. he's used to running a business, right? and he repeatedly said that his experience running a business was going to translate to running the country, but the die namics are completely different and the kinds of multiparty negotiations you have to do are also completely different. you have to answer to basically shareholders which is the public. you have to deal with members of congress. if you're running a family business, it's completely different. and, yeah, you kind of get why he didn't understand the dynamic going in. >> thank you, katherine, eugene and howard.

coming up, we've never seen a first 100 days like we've seen from president trump. we're going to stack this president's difficult beginnings up against his predecessors next. this is "hardball," where the action is. i we should take a closer look at geico... you know, geico insures way more than cars. boats, motorcycles... even rvs! geico insures rvs? what's an rv? uh, the thing we've been stuck on for five years! wait, i'm not a real moose?? we've been over this, jeff... we're stickers! i'm not a real moose? give him some space. deep breaths, jeff. what's a sticker?!? take a closer look at geico. great savings. and a whole lot more. with tempur-pedic.t our proprietary material automatically adjusts to your weight, shape and temperature. so you sleep deeply, and wake up feeling powerful. find your exclusive retailer at tempurpedic.com

if you want to stay on top of your health, one simple thing to do -- is take the pledge to go and get screened for the cancers that might affect you. so stand up to cancer and take the pledge at getscreenednow.org it only takes a minute to take care of yourself, and nothing rhymes with "org"... hey you've gotta see this. cno.n. alright, see you down there. mmm, fine. okay, what do we got? okay, watch this. do the thing we talked about. what do we say? it's going to be great. watch. remember what we were just saying? go irish! see that? yes!

i'm gonna just go back to doing what i was doing. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. welcome back to "hardball." president trump is waiving off claims that the first 100 days is of any real significance, telling the associated press the other day -- i think the 100 days is, you know, it's an artificial barrier. it's not very meaningful.

the press keeps talking about the 100 days but we've done a lot. when asked why he shouldn't be accountable for the first 100 day plan he campaigned on. somebody put out the concept of the 100 day plan. the somebody was none other than donald trump. let's watch. >> what follows is my 100 day action plan to make america great again. >> think about what we can accomplish in the first 100 days of a trump administration. i propose a contract with the american voter. it's a set of promises for what i'll do in my first 100 days. today i would like to provide the american people with an update on the white house transition and our policy plans for the first 100 days. >> well, with the pivotal marker coming up tomorrow, that's 100 day mark, how will history judge trump's 100.

doris goodwin, author and presidential historian. doris, i don't know how you give historic record or score keeping to someone who lives minute by minute in the most phenomenal way. he forgets the minute before he's on to the next minute, but that doesn't really count. what only matters is this minute. he keeps erasing the black board. how has he done so far? where is he projecting toward, if you can see, if anywhere? >> i think no one promised more and delivered less, you could say to quote somehow paraphrasing church hill. but if you looked at pure legislative achievements. obviously he didn't get what he hoped. executive orders have dismantled rather than built. he's so unpredictable, anybody is a fool who tries to predict anything about him since he changed his minds on so many things, got to look to the views of the people around him. he seems to be susceptible to what they're telling him. go find detectively as the media

what are they thinking? what are these views the ones close to him. otherwise, flost way of knowing where he's going. only fair thing about the ridiculousness of this standard, all the presidents hated it. jfk tried to put out a list so that nobody can match what fdr did. could ever devise a better entrance for a president than fdr, urgency. so i understand why they all get upset by this marker that we put on them. >> well, this has been the pet rowfied forrest, there's nothing there. but i wonder what do you make of it? i think this -- i thought -- i think, you know, i think doris raised a great point because this guy picked a brain trust around him. i love the idea of presidents pick people who are smarter than him to help him. >> it's so untrumpian. i'm successful and do it by

adapting to situations and hiring people by knowing what they're doing. he has a chief of staff, reince priebus. chief strategist steve bannon never been in politics before. these are the two guys guiding the inexperienced president. he blows two opportunities. >> what about the cabinet? mcmasters. >> if you have a staff who is not guiding you, the cabinet cannot clean up the mess. >> you're president of the united states. and the thing that would scare me, you know, sometimes i wonder what to do next when i'm on a project. what's next? should i do more research? should i do some polishing? should i catch up with this? presidents have to decide what to do with every minute of their day and relax sometime, do something to get it out of their heads to make the big decisions so they can sleep properly. harry hopkins was a troubleshooter.

jim baker was a great organizer of a wild mind. very focussed. what's the job of a reince priebus? i mean, how do they even tell them who to meet? what to do everyday? >> a president has to set direction. i don't think they can fully tell him what to do. in the end he wasn't waiting for consensus from them. once he learned from them what he knew that he didn't know he set the policy. ronnel reagan had people around him, but he decided he was going to go for economic recovery no matter what in the first 100 days. there's a sense in which unless he can figure out how to relax, i mean, you say something really important, all the presidents that i've studied knew how to take time off to replenish their energy. i'm working all the time. none of that is going to prove true and only he can decide that. we have to hope he self reflects that he learns, that he grows. the thing we've been hoping for ever since the beginning of the campaign. >> thank you. when we return, let me

finish with trump watch and this is "hardball," where the action is.

trump watch friday april 28th, 2017. donald trump turns 100 tomorrow, that many days in office for the unexpected president about whom nothing can be expected. i think the safest thing to say about the past 100 days or the november election itself is that this man was elected for what he was not -- which explains why 96% of his voters are still with him. instead he's still not part of the country's governing or media establishment. he is not to use the language of his people one of the reviled and resented them. i think a lot of the people refuse to get trump even at the end of this 100 day starter period, they do not get why people hate the ruling class trump ran against, refusing to fathom why people saw hillary as the symbol of that ruling class makes it impossible why somebody would root for him and perhaps

into the future. the fact is the political class trump defeated is obnoxious to a lot of people. they don't like the pressure groups and perennial candidates who make up both parties. the political system rewards the ability to get people to pay for their campaigns the tv ads that destroy your opponents and leave the voters stuck with nothing to vote with but them. they don't like seeing politicians constantly celebrating themselves. they don't like hearing or seeing celebrity packed parties they're not invited to. as long as trump bashes this world of self congratlation, the more his people will stay aboard his wobbly wagon train to who knows where. the political establishment is listening, when you begin to identify more with the regular people out there in the country and less with the paying customers of the pressure groups and, yes, less with this country's cultural winner circle, the better chance you'll get to the heart. 100 days of trump and the old political establishment still

doesn't look all that desirable. that, i believe, is the news as we reach this particular 100 day landmark. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. coming up next, "your business" with j.j. ramberg.

good morning. coming up on m nbc "your business," we sit down with actress kate hudson her latest role is -- brick and mortar retailers get shoppers offline and into the store. and you know about millennials, but what are perennials? why you and your customers may be one. find out who they are coming up next on "your business." will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job. or fill a big order.