solved in settlements, where the women cannot speak about what happened to them. or they go into secret arbitration with the prevalence of those clauss and employment contracts. and again, women are silenced. >> the key point there, what gretchen carlson was alleging about at fox news is also what others are alleging about the u.s. congress and the products of both parties, money buying secrecy. we'll have more on that story in the days ahead. "hardball with chris matthews" starts now. trump backs up moore. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews up in boston. late today, after manner a weor week of silence, president trump weighed in on alabama senate candidate, roy moore. >> i can tell you one thing for

sure, edonwe don't need a liber person in there, a democrat, jones. i've looked at his record, it's terrible on crime, it's terrible on the border, it's terrible on the military. i can tell you for a fact, we do not need somebody that's going to be bad on crime, bad on borders, bad with the military, bad for the second amendment. >> mr. president, is an accused child molester better than a democrat? >> well, he denies it. look, he denies it. if you look at what is really going on and you look at all the things that have happened over the last 48 hours, he totally denies it. he says it didn't happen and, you know, you have to listen to him also. you're talking about, he said 40 years ago, this did not happen. so, you know. >> are you going to campaign for roy moore? >> i'll be letting you know next week, but i can tell you, you don't need somebody who's soft on crime like jones. >> well, moore has been accused of sexually misconduct by nine

women, including one who says he sexually abused her when she was 14 years old. moore has denied the allegations. well, today president trump was asked if he takes moore at his word. >> do you believe this? >> well, he denies. i mean, roy moore denies it. >> but what about the women? >> and by the way -- >> what about the women -- >> a total denial. and i do have to say, 40 years is a long time. he's run eight races and this has never come up. so 40 years is a long time. the women are trump voters. most of them are trump voters. all you can do is you have to do what you have to do. he totally denies it. >> but what about the nine women, mr. president? "the washington post" went to them. >> well, his support for moore, which falls just short of an endorsement, comes after the daily beast reported yesterday that steve bannon intervened with trump in defense of moore. quote, according to two sources, bannon has spoken multiple times on the phone to president trump since late last week.

at least one of those calls was devoted to discouraging the president from rejecting or criticizing moore in public statements. amid the wave of allegations against men in positions of power, trump was also asked if he has a message to women. >> women are very special. i think it's a very special time, because i think a lot of things are coming out, i think that's good for society and i think it's very, very good for women. and i'm very happy a lot of these things are coming out. and i'm very happy it's being exposed. >> well, prior to the president's remarks, in an interview published in the alabama newspaper, moore said he has known intention of withdrawing from the race, adding, quote, president trump has not asked me to withdraw from this race. i'm sure he understands the damage false accusations can do. and the danger of rushing to convict someone in the court of public opinion, closed quote. meanwhile, moore's opponent, democrat doug jones is running a new ad out there, using the words of president trump's daughter, ivanka, and other

alabama republicans who have spoken out against moore. >> on roy moore's disturbing actions, ivanka trump says there's a special place in hell for people who prey on children and i have no reason to doubt the victims' accounts. jeff session says, i have no reason to doubt these young women, and richard shelby says he will absolutely not vote for roy moore. conservative voices putting children and women over party, doing what's right. >> for more, i'm joined right now by eugene robinson, columnist for "the washington post," heidi przybyla, with "usa today," michael steele, former rnc chairman, and john archibald, a columnist for the alabama media group. i want to start with john archibald. i was a sense that this election down there, coming up in early december, is still, even though their margin is being overrun by an edge to jones, that this race could go either way. why it is still up in the air this race, given all the stuff

thrown now at judge moore? >> i think first of all, the sheer motion of the liberal media and the washington establishment, coming out with these things against moore, as the moore campaign would say, as a sense of sort of mobilizing that base. and his surrogates today got up in a press conference and basically said all of those things and did everything they can to impugn the women who made the statements. so i think they put a little crack in it and let people try to grab on to something they can use to rationalize voting for him. >> well, moore's supporters are still fighting back against the allegations against moore, battling what they believe is washington establishment conspiracy, as john just said. at at a press conference earlier today, moore campaign strategist dean young said the voters' decision would affect the course of the nation. let's listen. >> i think the future of this country rides on this race. and let me tell you why.

donald trump just exploded the establishment. this is the first senatorial election since donald trump went into office. so, the magnitude of what's going on here can't be overestimated. you've got to understand alabama,alabam alabamanealabam alabamians that the world is watching you. and you have to show the world that we won't be tricked, we're not a bunch of idiots. we're not a bunch of sheep like the mainstream media wants you to act like or mitch mcconnell. are we going to be sold a bill of goods by mitch mcconnell and the fake news? are we? are we that -- are we that gullible? and that's why you saw kellyanne come out yesterday and say, we've got to have somebody like judge moore. we've got to have someone like judge moore. you know, kellyanne does talk to the white house. >> gene, why don't you explicate all the shots that just came from that man, dean young's mouth, because there was a lot in that fuselage.

>> well, he's just drawing lines between us, the good people of alabama, the, you know, alabama republican tribe and the -- you know, washington, which is a bad word. and mitch mcconnell, which is a bad word. and fake news and liberal media. you know, it's tribal. and it's an attempt sheerly on that basis, really. without credibly dealing with the accusations against roy moore, strictly on the basis of us versus them, to get alabamians to vote for roy moore. >> so, they're changing the subject. he's also doing something else, he's nationalizing the election there, saying the world is watching. this isn't just about the qualifications of mr. moore, it's not about the other guy, it's about how this is going to look to the country. this is going to hurt trump, if moore loses. >> yeah, and, you know, we can't back down. they're all looking at us. we can't back down. we've got to stand up for our

side and go ahead and vote for judge moore, that's what he's saying. >> you know, heidi, i just heard a phrase there from the old days, stand up for alabama. i remember that phrase from governor wallace, stand up for alabama. what do you make of this? because the choice issues come in here, too. i think they're appealing to women who are -- men who are pro-life, to say, well, as bad as this customer might be, this judge moore character is unfit. he's proven himself to be based on the testimony of all of those women. he's still pro-life and the other guy ain't. >> it's a short-term political calculation. it's the same calculation that the president is saying by saying look at doug jones. he's soft on crime. look at doug jones on the military. but, chris, i think that the lawyer there is right, and that this is a much bigger issue and that, yes, the country and the world is watching. and i actually believe it's not an overdramatization to say that

if there is a breakup in the gop as we know it, that these events and this election will most certainly be in the timeline. because let's think about what we've seen here. we've seen eight or nine women hold hands, come forward, and share very intimate stories about how they were abused as children. you have the community, trump voters too, by the way. you have the community having a mall watch out on him. and despite what donald trump said, that that he strongly denied, he did not strongly deny it. he just said that he asked the mother's permission and he never assaulted anyone. and we haven't really heard much from him since. so i think we are going to watch what happens both in alabama and in the suburbs with those more educated moderate women voters and how they are going to respond to this. >> and you see this has a breakup of the trump coalition beginning now? >> i see it as the establishment justifying the breakup that may be necessary in the new year,

depending on what happens in the 2018 midterms, going into the 2018 midterms, whether women, moderate women, in the gop are going to be able to stomach this. because implicitly, what's happening here with what both trump is saying and what the lawyers for moore are saying is don't believe the women, believe roy moore. he denied it. that's it. this is the play book. game over. >> michael, you've got a fight here going on. it's a three-sided fight. you've got stephen bannon pushing the president to stick with moore. you've got the republican organization down the post civil rights era, republican party down there backing this guy, and you have that core of evangelicals, tough, hard right people. is this -- tell me how all those three sides deal with this thing between now and early december, the 12th? >> well, they all play to their core base. and that is, in this case, keeping the seat in the hands of the republicans.

i think whether you're an evangelical or a bannonite or a trump voter, whatever you call yourself, this is the fight, i think, of the individual there in the tape put it best, he said, this is about, you know, the first senate election after trump has become president. this is also a little face saving, as well. steve bannon calling the president is all about saving face. because, remember, steve bannon went out there and jacked up roy moore and said, this is our guy and the president was not with him on that. and so, now, with the possibility of the president backtracking and stepping away from moore after his victory, that's an embarrassment to bannon. this is about self-preservation and they're own self-petty political agendas. this is not about the republican party. they don't give a damn about the republican party. this is not even about the women in this case. they don't give a damn about them either. that's what s's so sickening abt the what the president did today.

and every self-respecting republican needs to stand up and say, enough. you cannot side with roy moore on this. you've got nine women who have came out, credible, laid their case out there, made that case to the people of alabama, and the president is going to sit there and go, oh, well, he said he didn't do it. i mean, this is beyond stupid. and it's irreparable harm that's being done to this party and to this country. someone needs to take control here and it's certainly not the president and it damned sure isn't steve bannon. it's got to be the people of alabama, who stand up and say "enough." >> is there a voice down there, like michael's, john? archibald. is there a voice like you just heard from michael steele down there? tell me how it sounds down there? >> yeah, i would like to think i have one at times, you know. there are a lot of people who come out and say, this is ridiculous, what you're seeing now from the president is exactly the same thing you've seen here. and that's simply a matter of putting ideology in front of decency and character and behavior. and the thing that is different

now is that we are just coming o out and admitting that we're going to do that, whether that's the president of the united states or whether that's the governor of the state of alabama. and that is a point that in my lifetime, i've never seen before. we have crossed a point that i don't know if we're going to come back from. >> let me go back to gene about the column you wrote and the use of the word "tribe." it's a new word for us. as long as you say you're pro-life, as long as you say certain things about immigration, the ethnic stuff, as long as you're sort of conservative on ethnic stuff, right-wing, you're okay with us. no matter what else you're like personally, the tribe is what matters, not the person. >> yeah, i think it does. and i think you could call it cultural. i mean, you know, you could look on the broadest scale, you can see how republicans and democrats have become more tribal generally, but this is a more specific and more specific

instance, i think, and example of that sort of tribalism in american politics. and it's just like, my side right or wrong, i'm sticking with my side. unwillingness, even in the case of a credibly accused child molester, to consider voting for a democrat whom everyone agrees is a decent man. you might disagree with him on abortion, but he's not an accused child molester. he's not an awful person. he's a person of character. and that doesn't matter anymore. >> well, i think we're used to laws now that say if you're a child molester, you have to be registered and known in the neighborhood. here's a guy that's known pretty much like that and may well win, still. anyway, thank you, geneprzybyla michael steele and john archiba archibald. coming up, cbs and pbs cut their ties with charlie rose after eight women accuse him of

unwanted sexual advances. rose is the latest in a string of high-profile men accused to varying degrees of sexual misconduct in what has been an explosive moment for our country. and that's coming up next. plus, donna brazile is coming here to "hardball" tonight. i want to know whether she agrees with hillary clinton's latest that the 2016 election was not legitimate. and the russia investigation. trump and putin talked on the phone today, as robert mueller closes in. the trump white house seems to be whistling past the graveyard. finally, let me turn tonight with a troubling trump watch. and this is "hardball," where the action is. usaa to me means

peace of mind. we had a power outage for five days total. we lost a lot of food. we actually filed a claim with usaa to replace that spoiled food. and we really appreciated that we're the webber family and we are usaa members for life. nbc news caught up with some undecided alabama voters in huntsville where many offer on a similar take on their choices in the december special election. let's listen. >> roy moore and doug jones? >> neither. >> why? >> don't like either candidate. >> do you usually vote republican? >> yeah. >> this time, though?

>> neither. >> a little hesitant. >> probably not going to vote. >> would you vote for the democrat or just not vote? >> i probably won't vote. which means that the democrat probably will take it. >> we'll be back after this. e b. it's what's inside the person who opens it. ♪ give ancestrydna, the only dna test that can trace your origins to over 150 ethnic regions... ♪ ...and open up a world of possibilities. ♪ save 20% for the holidays at ancestrydna.com. we're on a mission to show drip coffee drinkers, it's time to wake up to keurig. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this.

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welcome back to "hardball." cbs, pbs, and bloomberg all said today they are dropping charlie rose. it comes after "the washington post" reported today that eight women accused rose of, quote, unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks, or genital areas. well, yesterday, rose said that while he didn't believe all the allegations were accurate, he apologized for his, quote, inappropriate behavior. rose is one of a number of high-profile men accused of various degrees of sexual misconduct. bu buzzfeed broke the news last night that michigan congressman john conyers, quote, settled a

wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not succumb, in her words, to his sexual advances. conyers said today, i expressly and vehemently denied the allegations made against me and continue to do so. my office resolved the allegations with a an express denial of liability, in order to save all involved from the rigors of protracted litigation. the resolution was not for millions of dollars, but rather for an amount that equated to a reasonable severance payment. a third story making national headlines today, senator al franken responded to an allegation by a woman who said he groped her on her rear while taking a photo together at the minnesota state fair in 2010. franken said he didn't remember taking the vote, but feels badly that the woman came away from our interaction feeling disrespected. in "the new york times" today, columnist michelle goldberg said she's conflicted about franken. quote, it's easy to condemn

morally worthless men like trump. it's much harder to figure out what should happen to men who make valuable political and cultural contributions and whose alleged misdeeds fall far short of criminal. michelle goldberg joins us now along with reuters correspondent, ginger gibson. michelle, i've been reading you, a couple of your columns recently, and i've seen a lot of unusual, in these circumstances, true discernment. i think discernment is a term that shouldn't be just for religious thinking, but secular thinking about people's behavior, pad and good, discerning one from another, looking for the unique, looking for what's different, and what's the same. and trying to find at some point, it seems to me, a standard we can enforce across the political aisle. your thoughts? i think you already have them. pretty clear. >> well, i don't know if we have found a standard that we can enforce across the political aisle. and that's part of what's so difficult about this moment, right? i mean, part of me wants to say that the democrats should be the

party of no groping whatsoever. and, you know, that this should be a place to draw the line. and at the same time, there's something so utterly perverse about the idea that al frank, would be forced out of the senate, while roy moore is brought into it. the alleged misdeeds are so different in scale that i actually think that rather than having a hard-and-fast rule, as much as i might like one, we're going to have to learn how to discern and, you know, and judge these things individually, even though it means this is a difficult case for democrats to make, right? because although i don't think there is any moral equivalency between al franken and roy moore, republicans will certainly milk the al franken thing for all its worth and use that as an excuse to let moore into the senate and excuse the fact that their alleged sexual predator of a president is now out there basically endorsing

him. >> ginger i wonder whether we in the press can do this. i think we can report and i like the graphic nature. we were prudish and they would say words like molest or something like that. i wanted to know exactly. i'm sorry, i want to know what the priest did. once i learned what they did or sandusky did at penn state, i was smarter about the issue. and i had an attitude about it. i didn't have as clearly and as powerfully as i did once i heard what was going on. i think we do benefit from the language i used in the beginning of this segment, talking about what charlie rose was accused of doing. i think it's helpful. but i don't know if we can go past the descriptiveness to really making the judgment for, as if we're the tribunal. that's where i don't know whether we can do that. your thoughts? >> we can't make the decision for the voters of alabama. we can't make the decision for the voters in john conyers' district. they're going to have to make that. we can just give them all of the details. and i think as journalists, it's important that we don't allow

ourselves to start writing these off as just another case. there's a real risk there that if we hear about another one, and i know there are likely more being reported as we speak, other stories to break, more to come, that we don't start brushing them off saying, that's not as bad as franken or moore or as bad -- but we've already heard that story before, so why are we going to talk about it again. i think it's important we remain diligent in bringing those facts forward. >> how about discernment? how do we categorize. do we take a construction worker yelling something eshe shouldn' a woman who walks by, compare that someone who's a predator, who's out to use his office and the power to get sex, to go to bed with someone. there are discerning differences here, it seems to me. >> there are, and we have to treat them equally. i think we also need to be aware that we're writing about industries that we have close exposure to, people that we work, with people that we encounter and see on a daily basis. we're not writing about industries the that don't get this kind of exposure. we're not writing about the

chain fast food manager who's harassing his employees or the guy running a retail shop who's using his power to influence the women working for them. and we also need to make sure that when we're discerning in this way, we're looking at those, too. that we're making sure that while the manager of the fast food restaurant might not warrant a story in "the new york times," his employees warrant the same amount of respect that other women do. and it's important, i think, that we remember that, as well. >> well, let's look at the current situation, michelle, first, then ginger. because this is real life. the president is talk about franken. he's talking about al franken in the same regard that the conversation was all around roy moore. is that fair, michelle? >> i mean -- >> are they in any way equal? i don't see the equality -- >> of course they're not equal. and i think part of the problem here is that because there is so much bad faith on the right and such sort of bottomless depravity among trump and his circle, that it makes it

difficult to reckon with these things properly among democrats, which is where most of this is going on. right, most of these kind of purges are happening in left-leaning industries, in part because that's where people in power are responsive to this torrent of revelations, you know? republicans just hear about it and shrug their shoulders and do nothing. so, you don't have the same sort of energy of people being exposed and held to account. one result of that is that you have this hugely disproportionate standard, where democrats and democratic institutions are sort of turning themselves inside out, while republicans are skating blithely forward. >> i'm so with you. >> it's complicated, because on the one hand, we also don't want to lower our standards and say that the standard is, as long as you're not a child molester, than we're okay. >> ginger, can you imagine if barack obama had been taped saying what he -- what trump said on the "access hollywood" tape, about women's private parts and how he could grab them

at will, because he's a celebrity. i think he would have been cashiered in about two weeks. >> there's no doubt that almost no one else but donald trump could have survived that. and i think that one of the things we have to remember is that electoral politics might be the worst universe to have this discussion in. >> i think you're right. >> there's a lot of rationalizing that can be done. and i think we're seeing that in alabama, where you can be a conservative and say, okay, maybe moore was wrong and he did what he's accused of, but he would vote against abortion, and that just matters so much more to me than anything that he might have done. and i think that rationalization can happen on the left, just as easily. and for that reason, there can't be a worse way to have a discussion about the horrors of sexual abuse than doing so in an election. >> i agree completely, because, you know, your vote is such a crude tool. it's yes or no. and you have to use it to include every concern, every value you have, every behavior, observation you made, everything into one yes or no, it's always binary.

two people running, yes, that guy. no, that guy. you're right, it's a conflicting lifetime. and i wonder whether we should be doing it in politics, but we're doing it. michelle dpoegoldberg, great writing. ginger gibson, great to have you on. coming up next, former dnc chairman, donna brazile is coming here. hillary clinton says there are questions about whether the 2016 election was legitimate or not. does donna brazile agree? this is "hardball," where the action is. ing right now? we're facing 20 billion security events every day. ddos campaigns, ransomware, malware attacks... actually, we just handled all the priority threats. you did that? we did that. really. we analyzed millions of articles and reports. we can identify threats 50% faster. you can do that? we can do that. then do that. can we do that? we can do that. can we do that? you everfor help?r broker >>when volatility spiked... and? >>by the time they got me an answer, it was too late. td ameritrade's elite service team can handle

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i'm page hopkins. air force one has touched down in west palm beach, florida. president trump is spending thanksgiving weekend at his mar-a-lago resort. uber paid $100,000 in ransom after hackers stole the data of $57 million user 57 million users and drivers. they hid the breach for a year and has now fired their chief security officer. we'll take you back to "hardball." welcome back to "hardball." days after wikileaks dropped its

first batch of e-mails hacked from the democratic national committee, donna brazile took to the stage as the interim leader of the dnc and put on a brave face. >> and let me say this. as your incoming chair of the democratic national committee, i promise you, my friends, i commit to all americans that we will have a party that you can be proud of. we will elect democrats up and down the ballot and we will celebrate together the inauguration of president hillary clinton in january 2017! >> but according to a new book, "hacked: the inside story of the break-ins and breakdowns that put donald trump in the white house," donna brazile paints a very different picture. the picture she paints is that of a party engulfed in turmoil and a candidate wearing an anemic campaign. brazile writes, quote, as i saw

it, we had three democratic parties, the party of barack obama, the party of hillary clinton, and this weak little vestige of a party led by debbie wassermrssserman schultz that wg a very poor job of getting people who were not candidate elected. she was our best hope and i wanted more than ever before for her to win even if in my heart i had doubts she could. donna, thank you for coming on. you finally got here. you've been waiting here for weeks. i know why you put us off. this is "hardball." i watched from the outside as the democratic debate schedule got set up in the primary season for last year. and i noticed that a lot of the big debates were the same nights as big nfl football games. and i thought that looked rigged in favor of hillary, so not too many people would watch bernie sanders take her on. is that a fair assessment that i had? that it looked rig? >> look, let me just say this. the former chair tried to schedule these debates, similar

to what was going -- what happened in a previous cycle to get a maximum audience. we know that that was not the case. as vice chair of what i saw to do, and many, many others, including a few other officers was to expand the number of debates so that in addition to having them on weekends, that we could go to other networks and we could have them during the week so that people could watch our communities. >> that's right. like a night that everybody's home. so let me ask you this. so they did rig it to have them when nobody would be watching? >> i don't know if the actual word is "rigged," but i do know what debbie was doing was following a prescription from a previous time, and not understanding that there was a great hunger inside the democratic party to have more debates, down halls, and forums. >> what do you make about bernie sanders and joe biden? they're both pretty long in the tooth, as you used to say. do you think it's wrong for them to take a serious bid in 2020. i know you have to be 35 pto be president. should there be an outer age

where you're just too old to run? >> chris, i predict tonight that there will be literally 25 people who will consider running for the president. perhaps joe biden, bernie sanders, i don't know all of the other individuals -- >> but should they run? should the older guys run zb? >> the last thing i'm going to do at the age of 57 is to kick somebody who's 65 or 70 and tell them their days are over. >> donna, they're way over 70. why are you dodging this? >> chris, we have a big bench. i'm not asking anybody to leave the room. i think the democratic party should allow everybody to run, everybody who wants to run. let's not dog people because of their age. >> you have no problem of uncle joe running or bernie running? >> if they have fresh ideas. if they can reinvigorate our democracy, they should run. and hillary, if she wants to run again, elizabeth warren, if she wants to give it a try. run. we, as a country and as a party, i think we can afford to have as many voices on the stage as possible. >> if you were hillary clinton,

would you run again? >> you know, when al gore left the stage in 2000, people said, should he run again? that was his decision, and i think this is a decision that hillary clinton should make herself. >> okay, let me ask you about hillary clinton's statement recently that the 2016 election wasn't legitimate. now, that is very confounding to me. does that mean it shouldn't count? what does it mean to say it's not legitimate? you might not like a lot of things done in it. a lot of things get bad done. there's dirty campaign fund-raisering and people break the rules all the time. there's prejudice, racial prejudice, all kinds of prejudice. but the election still counts. do you think she's saying it was not a legitimate election? what do you say to that? >> i think she was saying that this was a disruptive political season and what we are learning, chris, every day, is that the russian interference went beyond the stolen -- >> sure, i know that. >> and the weaponization of information. >> yes, with ci know. but just to the point, you think it was a legitimate election,

right? >> look, donald trump cracked the blue wall. we know that. he was able to win votes in pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin. but, yes, i do believe secretary clinton is making a very important point. the role of social media. this coordination between wikileaks and possibly the trump campaign. we need to get to the bottom of it and i hope that director mueller can get to the bottom of it. >> we do it all the time, donna. my question is, was it a legitimate election? does it count? >> my personal view is that it was not a legitimate election. >> so it doesn't count? >> chris, remember, i am the campaign manager of al gore in 2000, where, as you well know, the supreme court decided. this election will always have an asterisk by it. and that's why i think donald trump should take steps as president to clean up our system so that no more foreign governments no foreign meddling occur in the future. >> we have a definition of problem. because what's his name, trump is out there. he's said for years that barack obama wasn't a legitimate president, because he was an

illegal immigrant. and that's what illegitimate means, is that an legitimate election or not and you're saying it was not a legitimate election. it doesn't count. that's a strong statement. >> chris, chris, i have worked on more campaigns than many americans and i can tell you something. when you see all of the evidence that it's a mountain of how the russians interfered in our election -- >> i know! >> which is why i wrote the booked "hacked," when you see on social media with what they did with facebook and twitter -- >> so it doesn't count. >> we need to get to the bottom of it. >> we're going in different directions. i think the world illegitimate is third world, fourth world, should have never used it. >> chris, i agree on that point, but you're arguing semantics when i want to argue that there was some big issues, big problems, and she faced a significant headwind in 2016. and i think what she means when she talks about legitimacy,

she's talking about the foreign interference and meddling and what i describe in my book, "hacked." the corruption of our files and what they did to try to destroy the democratic national committee and discredit our nominee, hillary clinton. >> okay. well said. let me ask you one last question. i know you've been running this over in your head ever since. you're a pro. maybe the best pro in the party. what is it, if you could think of a sentence or two, what would have won it for hillary? how would she have won the electoral college? if she would have done something else? what would it have been? >> i describe in the book, i think the campaign was really overconfident. they believe they had the election in the bag. they did not put sufficient resources that were needed in those three states. and look at minnesota. look at the states that we barely eked by. no question she won the popular vote. no question that on election day, there were people, more people prefer her to donald trump. but the electoral college is the electoral college. the democrats have been comfortable with the 18 states

in d.c. that provides 242 electoral votes. so comfortable that at times, we don't spend money in those states. i was criticized, criss, because i sent money for robo calls for tammy duckworth in illinois. i sent robo calls for kamala harris in california. i wanted to win. and yes, i got tim kaine to also do robo calls in the state of virginia, because i was worried. you can never take the voters for granted. me voters decide to either stay home because they say, well, she's going to win, or they voted for a third party candidate, because they thought, well, what matters? why does it matter? >> my question is, and i'm so hard to get you, i've been waiting for you so long, donna. i have to ask you one more k question. i thought sherrod brown could have been a stronger candidate. could have sent a message into wisconsin and midchigan and pennsylvania where i'm from that hillary clinton cared about the working people of those manufacturing areas, where they've been hit so hard. and he's also a tough guy on trade. would that have been a better

pick than tim kaine for a running mate? >> i'm a big fan of tim kaine. i became schchair the first tim after he stepped down the rung for united states senate. i don't want to get into what ifs, but i can tell you what i do believe. and that is hillary clinton did her very best, despite so many odds against her, including the fact that she was a woman. she did a very -- she ran a tough campaign, but in the end, i don't want to speculate in terms of what if sherrod brown, what if cory booker. we could have got more youth, millennial, et cetera. what if she had tina turner or diana ross. we could have gotten more black women. chris, all i know is that she won the popular vote. we fell short in the electoral college. and i would like the democratic party to become stronger, our democracy to also become stronger so that we can prevent the kind of foreign melding that we saw -- >> all right -- >> that's why i wrote the book "hacked." >> okay, "hacke"hacked" is the f

the book. >> former dnc chair, donna april. still a perfect politician. up next, trump and putin spoke for over an hour today. it comes amid reporting in the russian investigation that trump's twitter habit could help build an obstruction of justice case against him, donald trump. you're watching "hardball." things than rheumatiod arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. it can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections, lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don't start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests before you start

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danger the investigation still poses. as a source close to the administration told "the post," the president says this is all just an annoyance, i did nothing. he is somewhat arrogant about it. but this investigation is a classic gambino-style rollup. you have to anticipate this rollup will reach everyone in this administration. anyway, so is president trump whistling past the graveyard here? i'm joined by the roundtable, joy ioffe is a staff writer at the atlantic, josh beecham at vox and khalil kapoor with bloomberg news. what do we make of the president's almost comicry re assurance, arrogance that he's as clean as a whistle, has nothing to worry about. is that posing or what he idi idiotically believes? >> i haven't been inside his mind, but it is a part of his approach to politics. he's teflon don. he's said himself, if he shoots

somebody in the middle of fifth avenue, it's going to roll off his back, and so far, everything has. even the "access hollywood" tapes. everyone's talking about sexual harassment and assault right now, donald trump is still president. i think he probably believes. i think it's more hubris than everything. he believes that even if mueller finds something, he'll be able to kind of bluster his way through it. >> so, zach, here's his lawyer making him feel really warm and fuzzy about the outlook. it's all blue skies ahead. nothing's going to happen, mueller doesn't have anything, never will have anything. but suppose we get to march or april or may next spring and this thing's still rolling ahead, witnesses are still being called, people are called in before grand juries, documents are being demanded and received and this thing keeps creeping toward him. won't he begin to wonder whether ty cobb, his lawyer, let him down and betrayed him? >> that's very possible. the president has a long history of getting angry with people

when they aren't performing to his expectations and firing them. think of how many campaign managers he went through. and this is a notorious problem at his businesses. i think the issue here is that the president doesn't follow the policy details here. it's actually quite a complicated investigation when you look at all of the different moving parts. and it takes a lot of knowledge about it to understand just how dangerous it is. and the truth is, it is quite, quite dangerous. >> if i were trump wib, i would think, wait a minute. he's already got manafort with the jail problem, flynn probably headed that way. flynn's son headed that way. he may be ready to get jared. my question is, what makes him think it's going to stop until it gets to him. >> chris, the president seems to be getting talked down by his lawyer, as you mentioned, with assurances that this will be over by thanksgiving or maybe over by christmas and the end o. year. and the real question to me is how the president is going to react once he realized that this could go deep into 2018. it could become a campaign issue. imagine democrats running attack ads, saying we need to take back the house, take back the senate,

and the entirety of president trump's administration is under threat, as a result of that. we have seen indications that bob mueller is moving closer and closer into his inner circle. we saw the kushner back and forth, you know, on this investigation. and we've seen that mueller's going to be interviewing hope hicks, who is probably the closest aide to president trump, dating back all the way before the campaign began. so things do seem to be moving closer and closer to him, toward a reckoning. >> and i don't think he can do what governor christie did in new jersey saying, i don't really know bridget kelly. i don't think he can say that about jared or hope hicks. they're him. anyway, the roundtable is sticking with us. we're going to come back and get some scoops from these people. you're watching "hardball." nice. now i'm turning into my dad. i text in full sentences. i refer to every child as chief. this hat was free. what am i supposed to do, not wear it? next thing you know, i'm telling strangers defense wins championships. -well, it does. -right? why is the door open? are we trying to air condition the whole neighborhood? at least i bundled home and auto

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my congestion's gone. i can breathe again! i can breathe again! vicks sinex... breathe on. julia, tell me something i don't know. >> so you can now buy trump wine at the sen an doha national park. hopefully it will extend to other national parks. >> hopefully for him. thank you, zach? >> back in 1990, president trump previewed his electoral strategy by saying the campaign of then-klansman david duke for louisiana was tapping into the anger going on in that state. >> a preview of coming attractions. sahil? >> the house and senate republican tax bills that are quickly moving through congress

have a little-known provision that has personhood language, in other words tax breaks for unborn children so their parents can set unsafings account forth them, reproductive rights advocates fear this could lead to a rolling-back of abortion rights for women if unborn children are perceived as persons. >> another angle. when we return, let me finish with a troubling "trump watch." david. what's going on? oh hey! ♪ that's it? yeah. ♪ everybody two seconds!

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"trump watch" tuesday,

november 21st, 2017. he denies it. he denies it. that was the president late today repeating roy moore's denials, repeating them again and again, as if that counters all the credible charges against him. he denies it. i think we have come to where we americans or many of us take our stands on one side or the other and ignore any fact that might bring that loyalty into question. why accept more information once your decision's been made? we do this in police situations where we hear of a policing shooting we immediately oppose the police or back them up. why look for evidence when you know who's wrong already? yet it is the duty of journalists to deliver those facts, to assemble such evidence, to give the reader or the viewer the information necessary to make a judgment, to discern the unique elements of each particular case. not throw them all into one, the way the war hawks connected the attack on 9/11 to its push for our attack on iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. conflation. that's the word i've come to

fear now in every discussion, whether it be about war or the conduct of police or this current discussion over sexual misconduct. it's the tendency usually pushed by one side or the other to tro everything into one box. what comes through about charlie rose and ongoing headlines about judge moore or the recent accounts of senator franken's behavior is the need for all of us to get the fakes. get them clear in our head. not all the cases that come along fit neatly into the same category or order of misconduct. one size does not fit all. we're not out there somewhere buying socks. finally, we're young judging those accused on our side of the political divide the same way those on the other. are we doing that? would we have been as lenient with richard nixon and a young staffer as we were on bill clinton? when they commit necessarily to enforcement with the same ferocity, will they or punish

him knowing his misdeeds are not his alone that they've let similar conduct by others go by the board. if this is a time of reckoning let us try to make it a good one. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. he kdenies it. by the way, he totally denies it. >> the president appears to endorse roy moore. >> he says it didn't hive. you have to listen to him also. >> despite the nine women who have already come forward. >> the women are trump voters, most of them are trump voters. you have to do what you have to do. he denies it. >> why does the president support an accused child molester for u.s. senate? >> we don't need a liberal person in there, a democrat, jones, i've looked at his record, it's terrible on crime. then, the president and vladimir putin.