>> if there's one thing this president's taught us is that controversy drives ratings. >> he's also had his share of vulgarities too. i guess it's equal opportunity. anyway, whatever. thank you both. thank you for watching. i'll see you back here tomorrow night 6:00 p.m. eastern. if you can't watch live, set your dvr and follow me on twitter @greta. check out my facebook page. "hardball" with chris matthews starts right now. blaming james comey. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews from washington. it was an extraordinary showcase on capol hill today for the man that continues to serve as year-round pinata for both hillary clinton and donald trump. that's fbi director james comey who passionately defended his actions in the run-up to last november's election. comey told senators he looked at two bad paths 11 days before the election.

one revealed that the fbi was restarting its investigation into hillary clinton's use of private e-mails or, two, conceal the new information. he said not disclosing it would have been catastrophic to the fbi and beyond. let's watch. >> look, this was terrible. it makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election. but, honestly, it wouldn't change the decision. everybody who disagrees with me has to come back to october 28th with me and stare at this and tell me what you would do. would you speak, or would you conceal? and i could be wrong, but we honestly made a decision between those two choices that even in hindsight -- and this was been one of the world oh maeft painful experiences, i would make the same decision. what i can promise you, i said to people, you may think we're idiots. we're honest people. we made judgments trying to do the right thing, and i believe even with hindsight we made the right decisions. >> well, just yesterday hillary clinton blamed comey's actions for her loss. >> i was on the way to winning

until a combination of jim comey's letter on october 28th and russian wikileaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off. did we make mistakes? of course we did. did i make mistakes? oh, my gosh, yes. you know, you'll read my confession and my request for absolution. but the reason why i believe we lost were the intervening events in the last ten days. >> president trump responded last night, tweeting fbi director comey was the best thing that ever happened to hillary clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds. i don't know what i meant by that exactly but director comey -- did he succeed in justifying his announcement 11 days before the election that hillary clinton was back under investigation by the fbi? that's a hard argument to make. susan page and michael schmidt, a reporter for "the new york times." both of you are straight

reporters on front pages of newspapers, and i think there was a statement today that nobody -- i think it was comey who said there's no such thing as truth as viewed straight down the middle anymore. everything is viewed from a side, left or right. how did you read him today? did he make that case that there's such a thing of truth down the middle? >> i thought you saw a drif jim comey today. that's the same room where back 13 years he testified about how he did this courageous thing during the bush administration. today he was unsettled. his voice was much louder. he's moving his hands. he was very animated, and it was a little surprising. you didn't see the usual comey that sort of, you know, a cool cat that we're used to. i don't think that helped him. >> what do you think the pressure is from, susan? i mean clearly from the members of the committee on the democratic side. even dianne feinstein was tough. >> nobody was happy with him. the democrats obviously weren't happy with him, but republicans also -- you heard chuck grassley making the point that these allegations about collusion are twisting innocent meetings with

russians into a conspiracy. what spreurprised me about both these two things, they've had six months since the election to figure out how they want to make their case and that they didn't have more compelling presentations, and hillary clinton's part, perhaps, a sharper conclusion about what happened is a surprise to me. >> a couple things. i think in the case of hillary clinton -- and i follow politics more than i follow the fbi. i think she wants the history books to say the russians did it. the russians influenced this because that will make the first paragraph or second paragraph in any -- it used to be the encyclopedia, but now it will be wiki pedia. we do have 17 intelligence agencies that said they tried to influence the election so she'd got a lot of fire power behindor on that. >> when the fbi comes back with this investigation in months or years, it may be in the first sentence of the story about --

>> the history of 2016. >> it's possible. i mean we're going to know more when the history books are really written than we know now about exactly what russia did and what role if any trump associates played. >> i think she's going to make the case -- i thought it was interesting. she didn't just blame comey the other day, but she blamed the russian hacking and all that stuff with john podesta, which seems a little bit distant now to most people. what was that about? what vote changed because of john podesta? but she said it scared people. scared. i thought it was an interesting idea. it scared people away from voting for her. >> i think what the hacking did was brought up the question of e-mails every day. so there was a clinton e-mail story every day, and if you're the average person and you saw that, you associated the questions about her own server. and it was every day that there was something embarrassing coming out, and there were headlines about it. i think they would arguthat

that distracted from the message they were trying to get out. to your point about comey, i mean comey's got more time here. you know, hillary doesn't. but comey has this trump investigation. and, you know, if comey could come back in the democrats' eyes and deliver them something on trump, then that would change the arc of the james comey story. >> what do you make of the giuliani piece of this thing? >> i think that's going to be an interesting thing to watch because giuliani -- >> he said a couple of days before it was coming that something was coming and all of a sudden comey came out with it. >> if something is happening in journalism and you know a bunch of journalists, you can usually find out what's going on. so giuliani was -- he was the fbi director. he has a lot of experience with dealing with these guys. i'm sure he had sources. >> well, it looked like he knew enough fbi guys up in the new york buru or whatever to know these guys had something come out of the sleazy anthony weiner investigation, that he knew something was coming and he was with cheering it on. get that slop out there because it's going to hurt hillary. >> two things on that.

>> then we had him on. comey seemed to reveal today that the fbi is looking into whether anybody leaked information to rudy giuliani. let's watch that part. >> during your investigation of hillary clinton's e-mails, a number of surrogates like rudy giuliani claimed to have a pipeline to the fbi. now, either they're lying, or there's a serious problem within the bureau. anybody in the fbi during this 2016 campaign have contact with rudy giuliani about the clinton investigation? >> i don't know yet. but if i find out that people were leaking information about our investigations, whether it's to reporters or to private parties, there will be severe consequences. >> well, that was the question, whether new york officers letting rudy giuliani what was going on. here i am now asking rudy giuliani about that.

>> what i was talking about, chris, was the advertising we're doing this weekend. we have been debating -- >> you were teasing with that anchor woman that you had an advertising plan? you sounded like you had something really good ready to come. >> wehat we were talking about was i've been working on a speech and i've been working on a presentation where he was going to buy a lot of time at the very end to lay out his message. i had no idea that jim comey was going to do what he was going to do. what i did know about, which is quite true for about four months, is that the fbi was very, very upset about the way jim comey had handled the case. but i heard that from former fbi agents, not from current fbi agents. >> the old thing, by the way, current and former is one of the murkiest things because obviously the current and former talk to each other, right, michael? i mean you source this stuff all the time. you want to know what's going on at the fbi you find a guy or woman who just left there last week and they're ready to tell

you everything. and they have an attitude that he shared politically with the people inside. they're all in the same source of point of view. >> one of the concerns that senior fbi officials had before he sends the letter to congress is that if we don't tell congress and we're using the new york field office to get the search warrant, because that's where the laptop is, this is going to leak. and if it leaks out and we haven't told congress, what does that opinion for us? and is congress going to come after us? and they see the new york office as very leaky and as a place where they couldn't trust this information. >> let me get back in realtime to what i thought. i thought that comey could have checked out those e-mails sitting in anthony weiner's little desktop quickly and made a judgment after he had seen them to make sure there was anything work doing. and if he had done that, he wouldn't have had to make any announcement. why did he act like if was some big effort ahead of him? he could have checked it out fast. >> that was hiss argument, that they weren't going to be able to finish it in time, which they did, and they found nothing.

>> lickety-split. >> yeah. >> what they would say, when it came to comey, they thought it was going to be a months long process like the original server where they were -- >> but they were off by a month. >> just telling you what was going on. >> they always know more than we know. i thought he was pretty good today, but i do think hillary clinton is going to come out this fall with her book, and it's going to target him and the russians. the russians will be more fun historically, though, because they're over there, and we don't like them much. naz, thank you, susan page and michael schmidt. comey faced a barrage of criticism from democrats today. after comey testified he faced to bad choices, adam schiff tweeted, the real choice was not conceal or speak. comey spoke about clinton and concealed trump investigation. the real choice was to abide by doj policy or violate it. here's ou democrats on the committee reacted today. >> this explosive announcement -- and it was -- came unprompted and without knowing whether a single e-mail

warranted a new investigation. it was, in fact, a big october surprise. >> on a number of occasions you told us to comment extensively on the investigation. you even released internal fbi memos. i may have missed this, but in my 42 years here, i've never seen anything like that. >> i'm struck that you chose to make public statements about one investigation and not another. >> i find that hard to believe that you did not contemplate that there would be political ramifications to your comments. >> do you have any regrets, or are there any things you would do differently? >> the honest answer is no. i've asked myself that a million times because lordy has this been painful. the only thing i regret is maybe answering the phone when they called to recruit me to be fbi director. >> i'm joined by senator blumenthal of connecticut. lordy. i've never heard a politician say lordy when they're talking about evidence.

anyway, what do you make of this testimony? do you think comey cost hillary clinton the election? >> i think without question, it had a part in the outcome of the election. so did the russian meddling and interference. now the question is did the trump team collude with the russians, and will they be held accountable criminally? the real takeaway for me from today's hearing is jim comey should not be making a decision about whether or not to prosecute trump or his associates. and the president of the united states is a potential target here. so there is a need for a special prosecutor because otherwise, either jim comey or a trump appointee will shabe making tha decision, and we know it will be tainted and in question. >> which way would it taint? i mean if it's comey right now and he has to prosecute or not prosecute perhaps trump involvement in -- or in cahoots with the russians in the campaign, where would he be tilted, do you believe, in

public perception? >> there will be taint and doubt either way. in fact, there is a need for an independent special prosecutor if there is, in fact, a criminal charge against trump associates, against page, manafort, stone, or flynn or the president of the united states. and there's a need if there's a non-prosecution because otherwise, the public will rightly doubt whether it is an independent and impartial decision just as now there is doubt about whether comey reached the right decision independently. >> well, democrats believe that comey helped trump. so you're saying that they would be likely to believe that he would help trump in this investigation as well? >> the overwhelming truth here is, chris, there's great and substantial well established precedent for an independent special prosecutor, and the doubts will just be multiplied if jim comey has a part in this

decision. he acknowledged that he would not and should not be the one to make the decision. now it is a question of whether the president's appointee, the deputy attorney general, does so. and in my view, the decision will be equally tainted and doubtful if a trump appointee responsible to the president, whom the fbi is now investigating, makes that decision. >> thank you so much, senator richard blumenthal of connecticut. coming up, house republicans say they're getting very close to having the votes they need to repeal obamacare. now late night host jimmy kimmel, who made an emotional appeal to protect people with pre-existing conditions, is facing a backlash from the hard right. that's ahead. plus from alternative facts to blocking members of the press to cutting off interviews, trump and his team have a rough relationship with the media. former obama press secretary josh earnest is coming here to talk about it and jfk's vision for america on the 100th anniversary of president

kennedy's birth. finally, let me finish tonight with the comedian who got serious. this is "hardball," where the action is. an ally? microsoft and its partners are using smart traps to capture mosquitoes and sequence their dna to fight disease. there are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. with the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. if we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks before they begin. why pause a spontaneous moment? cialis for daily use treats ed and the urinary symptoms of bph. tell your doctor about your medicines, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, or adempas® for pulmonary hypertension, as this may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. do not drink alcohol in excess. to avoid long-term injury, get medical help right away for an erection lasting more than four hours.

if you have a sudden decrease or loss of hearing or vision, or an allergic reaction, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis. i'm melissa ray berg erg with breaking news. republican leaders on capitol hill have just announced that the house of representatives will be voting tomorrow on the republican health care plan. nbc joins us now from capitol hill with more. mike. >> reporter: melissa, this is breaking news. i'm standing here in the house of representatives. the house republican leadership just breaking up a meeting now. we see some of them coming down the stairs. we have a majority leader kevin mccarthy of california. going forward tomorrow -- >> we're going forward tomorrow. >> do you have the votes? >> yes we do. >> there you have it. kevin mccarthy tell is us they do have the votes. they're going to go forward with this health care vote tomorrow morning. it was touch and go all day. there was some question of whether they would go forward, whether they were confident that

they did have the votes or not. mccarthy, you just heard him telling us they will go forward. house republicans feel as though they have the votes to move their version of the health care act that would reviolatize -- or i should say revamp the affordable care act otherwise known as obamacare. >> right there in the middle of it all on capitol hill. thank you. back to "hardball." welcome back to "hardball." this week, late night host jimmy kimmel reshaped the health care debate in this country with the story of his baby boy who was born with a heart defect. as house republicans push to replace obamacare with a law that strips away protections for people with pre-existing conditions, an emotional kimmel lamented what would have happened to his son if he hadn't had health insurance. >> on friday, april 21st, my wife molly gave birth to a boy, a baby boy. his name is william john kimmel.

he appeared to be a normal, healthy baby until about three hours after he was born. they did an echocardiogram, which is a sonogram of the heart, and found that billy was born with a heart disease. and on monday morning, the doctor opened his chest and fixed one of the two defects in his heart. and he opened the valve, and the operation was a success. it was the longest three hours of my life. [ applause ] you know, before 2014, if you were born with congenital heart disease like my son was, there was a good chance you'd never be able to get health insurance because you had a pre-existing condition. if your baby is going to die and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make. i think that's something that whether you're a republican or a democrat or something else, we all agree on that, right? i mean we do. [ applause ] >> but reactions from some conservatives show how contentious this debate has

become. conservative radio host and former republican congressman joe walsh tweeted, sorry, jimmy kimmel. your sad story doesn't obligate me or anybody else to pay for somebody else's health care. columnist charles hurt of the washington time in his opinion piece entitled shut up jimmy kimmel you elitist creep, writes i mean really jimmy, does your newborn child not mean more to you than petty politics. actually, jim, if you were a decent person, you would shut your fat trap about partisan politics and go care for your child, who just nearly died, you elitist creep. well, white house office and management and budget director mick mulvaney kimmel's assertions about the house gop bill. >> i don't think the logical conclusion is that, oh, by the way, the republicans are going to kick these people off of health care. that's not the point. the point behind the state waiver program is that the state governments know how to treat children like the kimmel baby better than the federal

government does. >> house republicans are inching close for getting the votes required to pass the latest version of their obamacare replacement plan. but they're struggling with getting support from moderate republicans. it's a challenge they may not meet. one reason is because obamacare's protections for people with pre-existing conditions have very popular with people. according to a new morning consultant politico poll, 50% of respondents oppose allowing the states to option out of requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. 38% go along with that idea. let's talk about the appropriateness of jimmy kimmel. first of all, i think jimmy kimmel is a hell of a professional and just in terms of his ability, i don't think there's anybody as good as him right now. but let's talk. i thought his oscar emceeing was spectacular by the way. just the right tone. let's talk about him as a father and a human being and someone with political opinions obviously. was he right or wrong, john, to bring this up on his program? >> well, first of all, i think

you need to cut him some slack. i mean i think you're right. he's a professional. this is a very emotional time for him. i pray for his son. i think he's right when it comes to pre-existing conditions. i think a lot of conservatives agree with him on ple existing conditions. he also talked about nih funding, and he's right about that. listen, i think that politics has a place in late night television. i think that he was using a personal story to convey a point. it's a very powerful story. i think people are going to have to listen to that. >> you know, people with good fortune have good health insurance. >> that's right. >> i remember ted kennedy who had all the fortune of the world in terms of his growing up and wealth and everything and yet he was caught in the fact that he had it and a lot of other people didn't. that's why he devoted his public career to it. >> that's exactly right because health karz is a human right. it should be a right, not a privilege. i think that's the message that jimmy kimmel was trying to send. look, there's a reason why 14 million people watched that clip. >> you know that's an argument you made just then. it's a good argument, but it is an argument.

it's not shared by everybody. it's an argument. >> i think it's a strong argument. >> first of all, right means the right to get the coverage from whom? who do you get it from? society? >> i think in this case from the government. >> who pays the government? >> we do. taxpayers do. right? but as i was trying to say, 14 people, the video went viral, and there's a reason why, because health care is indeed personal. and many people are susceptible to potential health care crisis. people want to hear how are you going to make their health care better, and if you can't do that, people are not going to buy into it. what was so controversial about what he said? he said, okay, we need to fund science. if you have a baby that has a pre-existing condition, they should have health care. i think that's what he was saying. if that's controversial -- >> i think you're going to get a lot of support. i mean certainly john is for it. i'm for it. national institute of health are incredible. you have to have state of the art development. we have the best medicine in the

world and the reason why every worst dictator in the world come here's to save their lives when it comes their time. how do we get through this thing? it seems like the republican moderates -- and there's enough of them to cause trouble just like there are enough freedom caucus members -- who have to go home to their constituents who really do have these life experiences. they have kids in their 20s they want to keep on their program. they have pre-existing conditions which is pretty darn common by the baway. most people certainly my age do have health problems. they have a health history. that's called a pre-existing condition, and it makes it hard to get insurance. >> listen, i think this is the point of contention in this debate. president trump himself has said he supports the idea of protecting people who have pre-existing conditions. the problem is it does race cis costs for people who don't have pre-existing conditions, and there has to be a way to figure out how to pay for it. >> thank you. up next, president trump says his press secretary -- that would be sean spicer -- gets

great ratings, better than the soap operas, he says. i'm going to ask former obama press secretary josh earnest about that and about the trump team's adversarial role with the press. earning your cash back shouldn't be this complicated. yet some cards limit where you earn bonus cash back to a few places. and then, change those places every few months. enough with that! (echo) with quicksilver from capital one you've always earned unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. welcome to unlimited. what's in your wallet?

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and may stop treatment. side effects may include diarrhea, nausea, upper respiratory tract infection, and headache. tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. ask your dermatologist about otezla today. otezla. show more of you. let's[ whimpers ] dog. find ping-pong. okay, let's go. find your awesome with the xfinity x1 voice remote. that's amazing! welcome back to "hardball." democrats have been dancing in the end zone because they denied president trump his key priorities like a southern border wall in the latest budget deal. they won that fight.

yesterday, however, white house budget director mick mulvaney said the white house plans to use money in that deal for border security to initiate, guess what, construction of the wall. but when the white house press corps asked him where that wall will be located exactly, mulvaney couldn't answer the question, and he and press secretary sean spicer walked out of the press room, leaving the press corps hanging. let's watch this act. >> when you heard in the last 48 hours about the deal, did you think we could build this? i bet you didn't. nobody did, okay? is it a replacement for an existing wall? yeah, that's fine. is it new wall? no. this is what's out there right now, okay? this is what's going to be put in as a result of this bill. thank you very much again and thank you for letting me have a shout out to my wife. >> will you guys just e-mail where that wall is from exactly so we can identify location. >> sean. >> sean! >> sean! >> come on, sean. sean. >> what about the putin call? >> sean! >> where did sean go? >> he walked away.

>> let's see. no one leave. sit and wait. let's see. sit and wait. let's see. >> he said he's not coming back. >> he's not? >> he's not coming back? >> let's sit here and wait. >> joining me right now is sean spicer's predecessor, white house press secretary under president obama josh earnest. i thought you were a pretty good press secretary, but you weren't able to beat those soap operas, were you? your ratings didn't compare. we watch sean like you're watching a stock car race. >> you're tuning in for the crashes. >> i'm waiting for the crashes. what do you do when your boss -- well, you probably didn't have the same kind of boss, right, obama? >> i had a very different boss. >> he says to you the crowd size was the biggest in history, bigger than my hands. the biggest crowd size there's ever been, and you go out there and tell them, spicer boy. he goes out there and tells the press. so who does he work for? >> yeah. >> he gets paid by the government. he gets his bennies from the

government. he gets a parking space from the government and celebrity and all that goes with it from the united states government. does he really work for the president who hired him? who did you work for? >> i worked for barack obama, the president of the united states. the way that i did this job was that it was in my interest and in the president's interest for me to tell the truth, for me to be a source of credibility. >> did you ever tell something that was the truth and he said why did you do that? >> off the top of my head, not that i could think of. >> did he say you could have done a better job of defending out there, buddy? >> he never did that. he was conscious of not wanting to second guess me. i'm sure there were times he thought that. >> are you trimming me out there? he never said that to you? >> no, he never said that to me. i'm sure there were plenty of times where he was reading through "the new york times" and he was reading the story and gets to my quote and is thinking, why would he say that or why would he say it that way? when you are famously the most eloquent communicator on the

planet -- >> i get the sense from everything i've learned that the nanny cam is on this guy, spice er is watching him for any slight infidelity, any failure to jump. >> yeah. that's clearly the case. everybody talks about the fact that in many cases, it appears that sean's performing for an audience of one. i had a different kind of relationship. when president obama called me into the oval office and offered me this job in the summer of 2014, he told me two things. he said the first thing is if you ever need to know something before you go into the briefing, you call my assistant. you can come in here and talk to me before you go out there and give the briefing. i want to make sure you are accurately conveying what i think to the american public. but the second thing is this. i'm not going to watch your briefings. i think the reason he told me that is he didn't want me to constantly live in fear that i was going to be second-guessed by my boss. now, if president obama wanted to know what happened in the briefing, i could certainly count on a regular phone call from his assistant to mine saying, in the afternoon, can josh come down to the oval? and i would walk in the door,

and the president would say what's going on out there? how did it go today? >> really. he didn't watch? >> there were clearly times where i had conversations with him where it was obvious he had watched my briefing. >> and wasn't happy? he never got mad at you? he never got mad oat you? >> he never second guessed something i said publicly to -- >> what do you make of this walking out mess? what do you make of that? and also this thing where the president was with john dickerson the other day on "face the nation" and was sort of like enough said, buddy and went over and sat at his desk? >> one of the things that i developed an appreciation for in being the -- >> let's watch. it's always better to see it. >> you called him sick and bad. >> look, you can figure it out yourself. he was very nice to me with w d words and when i was with him. but after that, there has been no relationship. >> you stand by that claim -- >> i don't stand by anything. you can take it the way you

want. i think our side's been proven very strongly, and everybody is talking about it. and frankly it should be discussed. i think that is a very big surveillance of our citizens. i think it's a very big topic, and it's a topic that should be number one. and we should find out what the hell is going on. >> i just wanted to find out you're the president of the united states. you said he was sick and bad because -- >> you can take it any way you want. >> but i'm asking you because you -- >> you don't have to ask me. >> why not? >> because i have my own opinions. you can have your own opinions. >> but i want to know your opinions. you're the president of the suts. >> okay. that's enough. thank you. thank you very much. >> dickerson was getting into him, i mean physically. i've never seen -- it's almost like middle east everyone-- >> some of that you wonder if it's a television construct. >> all those angles.

it was bugging him, bugging trump. >> as the press secretary who faced the press corps for about an hour every day -- >> you have a big lectern to separate you from the people. >> i developed an appreciation for how important body language is. that was what was so bad about walk ago way from those questions, literally fleeing the room to avoid questions about a topic they themselves had raised. people talk about the oval office being the ultimate home court advantage. it looked like he was playing defense most of that time. if you read his body language, he was pretty eager to escape behind the desk. >> where are you now professionally? are you able to criticize president obama professionally, or do you feel you have to defend? can you criticize him? >> i will say that i feel enormous loyalty to president obama. >> but if you criticized him on television, there will be a big -- all the right-wing crazies will go out there and say even josh earnest says, and they will use you to get to obama. don't you feel that's coming? >> i'm confident that's

certainly something they would do. i think the president would expect me to speak my mind. do you have an open invitation here? >> no. what i'm thinking about, i was very lucky the guys i worked for retired when i did. and you're lucky too. thank you, josh earnest. >> thanks for having me. up next, president trump says there's no reason there's not piece not peace in the middle east. tod can trump bring a deal to the middle east? can this guy do it? you're watching "hardball," where the action is. ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds! ♪ "dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application, it is with great pleasure that we offer our congratulations on your acceptance..." through the tuition assistance program, every day mcdonald's helps more people go to college. it's part of our commitment to being america's best first job.

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welcome back to "hardball." for the first time in three years, the head of the palestinian authority, abass, came to the white house today. he sat down with president trump and found a receptive partner. >> i would love to be a mediator or an arbitrator, or a facilitator, and we will get this done. >> let's see if we can find the solution. it's something that i think is frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years. >> but this new advocacy comes in stark contrast to candidate trump who was a staunch ally of bb netanyahu. yesterday vice president pence told a group gathered to honor israel a independence day that the move was still on the table. >> the president of the united

states, as we speak, is giving serious consideration to moving the american embassy in tel aviv to jerusalem. [ applause ] >> for more i'm joined by the "hardball" roundtable, mckay coppins, james zogby. i don't get trump on this one. trump out there playing this, the neoconcard. i'm going to move the embassy, which has always been seen as a kind of trouble because it's going to cause we don't know what kind of violence and trouble over there. eer basically saying we're recognizing all of jerusalem to be permanently part of israel. abass comes in today, sits in the white house and says we still want our capital in east jerusalem. we want the 67 boundaries, the old argument. i don't see them coming together. >> i don't either, chris. but this is the same president who was going to get health care. it was going to be easy. tax reform was going to be easy. so many of his commitments -- >> but he's making them harder.

he's making this baby harder. >> i'll tell you what. i don't think he has a clue. i think this is actually an issue that's been forced on him by regional demands. >> yeah. >> but he thinks this is a sort of a solo sport like golf or like tennis. it's not. it's a team sport. >> so he thinks el-sisi and abdullah are telling him you got to meet with this guy. >> because the arab side needs u.s. protection and needs the u.s. reasolationship, they're telling him you're the best. you can do it. the question is he doesn't have a clue about it, and he believes the sick oh fancy is real and he believes he's going to make something happen. if you go back to the netanyahu press conference, you have a guy laying out conditions that were nowhere near the minimum that anyone could accept. unless this president cracks down on netanyahu, which he will not do, nothing is going to happen. >> that's the question. i guy is enamored of netanyahu. they're both tough guys.

all these demands may be reasonable from the israeli point of view, but they're not from the arab point of view. >> that is correct. and i think that this president responds well to praise. abass came in, and he praised president trump. netanyahu came in and praised president trump. and sean spicer today in the briefing said, you know, here's a president who with his amazing interpersonal skills hat got two people who are ready for peace. this is not a nuanced view of how this is going to work, and president trump has discovered on numerous things like health care but also especially as it relates to the rest of the world that, you know, north korea, it was more complicated than originally he thought. and this is another one of those where at some point, i mean this is the most complicated one around. >> okay. this is not like reinventing the wheel. this is like not reinventing the wheel again. decades and decades of not being

able to do it, and he says i'm going to do it lickety-split. >> this is a reflection of trump's world view. there is no higher accomplishment than getting a deal done and it can be done through sheer force of will and personality. look at what he said about the civil war, that it could have been avoided if the right person was there doing the right things. >> you can't sell the same property to two different people. that's what the middle east is about because you're going to have to divide the land somehow and they don't want to divide it. >> it's not as difficult as people say. >> you're being sarcastic. >> that's what trump said. >> thank you. i can't tell sometimes. the roundtable is sticking with us. up next, these three will tell me something i don't know. be right back. i have asthma...

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learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. we're back with the "hardball" roundtable, mckay, tell me something i don't know. >> this week we saw former south carolina senator jim deminute was ousted from his world heritage foundation. >> fired. >> fair to say. i've been reporting on this this week. sources tell me this is basically a power grab by mike

needham, another person at the heritage. but what they said was that the way he did it was he worked the board by exploiting ideological tensions between the pro and anti-trump wing which is something we're going to keep seei seeing in conservative institutions. >> 2006. that is the last year that congress passed a spending bill -- numerous spending bills through the regular appropriations process. since then and including today with the house passing this omnibus, it's been a bunch of continuing resolutions, an omnibus bill. so when president trump says the system is broken, people might disagree about his solution for fixing it, but certainly it hasn't worked the way it was supposed to work since 2006. >> we thought we fixed it in 1974. >> well, how was that? >> sebastian gorka. >> yes. >> he's called an anti-semite. he's in the white house but can't get security clearance because of his suspicious links with a nazi group in hungary.

they're talking about moving him out. the dangerous thing is where they're talking about moving him. in the white house he has no portfolio except every once this a while he goes on television and makes a fool of himself. i hear he may end up at dhs running the countering islam. it would be a devastating blow to muslims and to america across the country. >> thank you so much. jim, tamara, and mckay. thank you. when we come back, the 100th anniversary of the birth of jfk. his nephew and presidential historian doug brinkley are here in a moment. this is "hardball," where the action is. it's how well you mow fast! it's not how fast you mow...it's how well you mow fast. they're not just words to mow by, they're words to live by. the john deere ztrak z345r with the accel deep deck to mow faster better.

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on this matter of experience, i had announced earlier this year that if successful, i would not consider campaign contributions as a substitute for experience in appointing ambassadors. ever since i made that statement, i haven't received one single cent from my father. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was then senator john f. kennedy back in 1960, a few weeks before he won the presidential election against richard nixon. i wrote an essay about president kennedy's knack for self-deprecation in the new book, jfk, a vision for america, a compilation of reflections on jfk's most notable speeches and commemoration of the month marking 100 years of his birth, in an essay about that, titled a damn fine speech, i wrote, even in the sound and fury of

politics, that sense of humor stuck with him. he was reliably ready for a joke, including one of himself. it was the old jack charm. a key rule of politics. if someone's got something on you, don't try to hide it. put it out there for people to see it. joining me now, the stephen ken smith, who is also a fellow at the m.i.t. media lab. hell of a book. there it is. hell of a book. coffee table book plus. great essays, great speeches. and, steve, i think this was your idea. so what do you get from speeches? jack kennedy. he was one of the last really great orators. >> his buyographer said he was the greatest orator of the 20th century outside of winston churchill. so there's about 15 or 20 of the greatest speeches of the 20th century in this book. and we asked prominent world figures, everyone from the dalai lama, six of our nation's greatest historians, john

mccain, two secretaries of state, chris matthews, and others to comment on those speeches. and we combined it with about 500 photographs. we went through 36,000 images of the '60s. >> i think the speech is ask not what your country can do for you, what you can do for your country, i trace back to choate and his head master. but that was his. that wasn't ted sorensen. kennedy came up with that one. trump has no orator cal skical . obama did. clinton had somebody, not bad. does it still matter? >> right now it's tweets and quick sound bites but i think oratory will come back into fashion. i teach at rice university where jfk came and talked to a student group about going to the moon. >> one of the great ones. >> it was so well done, and it

got so many cheers, and it kind of moved a generation. so i still think -- >> we made it by the way, within the decade. >> that helps. and when neil armstrong went on the moon at mission control in cape canaveral and in houston, it puts john f. kennedy's challenge to the nation up on the board. and all this technology grew out of that, by him saying let's go to the moon, like gps, medical miracles, all sorts of different things we use, wirings. >> tang, of course. steve, which of these speeches did you like the most? wh do you think we'll fight them on the beaches, we'll fight them on the fields? what was jack's? >> the one that's considered the greatest by, i would say, most historians is the american university speech. >> the peace speech right over here. >> right. >> right across the street. >> exactly. that's counted as one of the 100 great speeches of all time. graham alison from the kennedy school says it's one of the ten best speeches of all time. but he gave a great speech at --

>> the problems of man are man made and they can be solved by man. >> wow. >> that's from that speech. >> that's great. >> i know that one. go ahead. >> so he also said forgive your enemies but don't forget their names. >> i remember that. >> so jfk was an idealist in his own words without allusions, and he combined this idealism with realism, and that's what we really wanted to celebrate in this book. >> why is obama getting the profile and courage award? we're going to cover it for a couple hours sunday night. >> sure. one of the things that jfk conceived of were medicaid and medicare, right? so he conceived of the civil rights act, medicaid and medica medicare, the nation-- he had t broad vision for america as a grae great civilization. so i think president obama's

choice to take on the difficult political issue of providing health care to our most vulnerable citizens was a courageous decision and follows really in the legacy of john f. kennedy and edward kennedy, who believe that we shouldn't discriminate against people who can't afford to pay for medical care. >> thanks so much. doug brinkley, as always, you are a machine. >> thank you. >> his productive output is unbelievable. thank you. the book is called jafng, a vision for america. thank you, doug brinkley and stephen kennedy smiblth. join me sunday night at 8:00 eastern here for live coverage as president obama is awarded the profile in courage award at the john f. kennedy library. when we return, let me finish tonight with jimmy kimmel. you're watching "hardball."

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let me finish tonight with jimmy kimmel. i can't think of anything more profound, more empowering than the human condition as an argument for human behavior. is there a better guide to public policy? better than the experience of the parent caring for the survival of his or her young child? mr. kimmel, father, said on his program the other night that he wants no parent to be denied the chance to protect a child from a deadly health threat. he said we should all have insurance to do just that, not be denied it for a pre-existing condition such as heart illness. the few critic who's have attacked him did so for their own reasons, chief among them shock value because what normal human being would deny the call to duty of a baby.

jimmy kimmel has been given the chance to speak because of the frightening condition facing his family. he should not be denied this critical time to bare his soul. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in" with chris hayes starts right now. tonight on "all in." >> the plan gets better and better and better. >> new momentum for trumpcare as the white house presents the alternative facts on pre-existing conditions. >> why change pre-existing conditions? >> we're not. no, no, we're strengthening. >> tonight, will the hard sell work? >> the president said, billy, we need you. we need you, man. >> and what the latest rube goldberg version of health care would do to the sickest americans. then. >> it makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election. >> the fbi director makes his case. >> tell me what you would do. >> tonight, congressman adam schiff on comey's defiance and why he has serious