said when he got it in 2007. >> a great honor. an honor i thought i would never get. this is something special. this is great. >> something special and still under debate. we will be back tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. eastern. "hardball" with chris matthews starts now. >> enemy at the gate. let's play "hardball." >> good evening, i am steve kornacki in for chris matthews. two big stories ton tight and y can be sure president trump is paying close to both of them. minutes away from that ohio election. republicans fearing an embarrassing loss in a district that trump won by 11 points. polls showing it in a dead heat.

we will begin with also a dramatic day at the trial of paul manafort. long time business part rick gates was back on the stand and didn't hold anything back. turning what had been a dry case about tax and bank records into a political soap opera. today even challenging gates about an affair he had in london. focusing on the financial details. describing how under manafort's direction he falsified multiple documents about manafort's income. the prosecution also presented various documents including e-mails with manafort's own words showing he had knowledge of the fraudulent activity. complaining about the taxes

quote i just saw this wtf, this is a disaster. wasting no time to undercut his credibility. for the first time in the trial we heard donald trump's nation in front of the jury. when prosecutors presented evidence that manafort tried to use his leverage in the trump campaign to get one of his lenders a job in the white house. i am joined by ken dylanian back in the courtroom today. and joyce vance. thank you to all of you. ken, let me go to you. just give us the scene from inside the court report. last night we had you on. the defense is going to get a. >> they did make him sweat and did take a crack at him.

and he was a bit wobbly. he did not come across as the most confident witness on cross examination. right off the back tried to get him to talk about lies. he was wishy-washy. in a methodical and slow cross examination, they went at him. gates was not even sure how much he embezzled. he admitted embezzling money from manafort and padding the expense account. there was no documentation for that. so i really do think the defense scored points but didn't get to the heart of gate's testimony from this morning which was corroborated by documents and e-mails. some of them were from paul

manafort. paul manafort was aware of thighs bank accounts. of course he was. he had control of them and secondly showed his involvement in alleged bank fraud and by the end, in 2016 when manafort was scrambling for money, over stated the income to get a loan from the bank. cross examination did not impeach that testimony. i have a feeling the prosecutor will say we don't like gates, but we didn't pick gates, manafort picked gates. we have other evidence. >> joyce, what are you thinking about that. what ken is describing, the prosecution has a star witness there. he has to admit to all of these things as we went through yesterday just to sort of have his testimony stand maybe he looks uneasy today.

maybe he is hesitant to admit to certain things, lying like that so bluntly. does that have an affect on the jury. >> ken is right about the hits, the damage. but as a prosecutor putting a cooperating codefendant on the stand, you hope he is not openly bleeding. gates is somewhere between those two. he stumbled between the two. gates stumbled on the details. also the disclosure on cross examination that he had an affair in london during this time period. and typically prosecutors would bring that out on direct examination but the judge didn't give them a ruling on whether that would be admissible.

as ken said, the heart of gate's testimony backed up by e-mails and documents was not impeached and prosecutors when they close they will have the chance to remind the jury that gates was manafort's pick not theirs. >> in terms of the political world, the court of public opinion, where does this one land right now? of course this is officially about manafort's business conduct, consulting business, all of his dealing in ukraine and russia. the campaign is peripheral to this. in politics how is this land something. >> because this is the first actual trial of the mueller era, a presumption that this is going to come out as a litmus test on

mueller's investigation. critics of mueller will seize upon it and mueller didn't do his due diligence. that will be how it is received. it is important to step back and recognize that we are talking about a specific trial and specific standards. that reasonable doubt has to apply to laws. i think the important things that came out today were first of all, that revelation that manafort had tried to hook up a favor for this banker who had given him a loan. but i think also important to note the broader context, the "new york times" reporting that manafort and gates did additional work for ukraine after they helped the president get elected. they kept doing work for him. that is the bigger picture. manafort, gates and ukraine and broadly russia. that is important to keep in

mind. >> as ken was describing for us, tensions running high at times in the courtroom. an exchange that one of the prosecutors was crying. the judge said quote, i understand how frustrated you are, in fact there are tears in your eyes right now. and prosecutor said there are not tears in my eyes, judge. the judge replied, well, they are watery. >> i have not been through enough trials to why he would be picking on the prosecutor. >> no secret that the prosecution is annoyed with the judge. at the end of the day, ellis made a remarkable comment that

struck observers that is openly in favor. essentially, adopting the defense view of gates. gates is admitting that he embezzled the money. raising questions about the prosecution and a lot of people remarked on that. it seems that ellis is openly skeptical. >> what is your experience with that in a trial where the judge is giving off clues or potential clues with body language and comments. is it reliable in how the judge is thinking about this? >> judges can influence juries. and sometimes the juries will bond with the judge and read the signals like that in essence. the incident that ken is describing is difficult to contemplate why a federal judge

would do this. on cross examination, the judge interjects to make a comment that manafort can't have been looking at his finances carefully if gates managed to embezzle this money from him as though to imply that manafort didn't know about the tax fraud or bank fraud. it is troubling. prosecutors have thick skin. they will shake it off and move on. >> when you take a step back and take a view of these, when manafort came into the trump campaign, before there was a mueller, before an investigation, there were revelations about manafort and his relationship. should a presidential candidate, potential president be bringing someone like this in the first place. >> we should remember that trump picked manafort.

no one foisted manafort upon him except of course trump at that time was continuing to have a problem with getting establishment republicans as a part of his team. but you are right, this is donald trump had insisted that he was going to hire only the best people at one time. paul manafort ran his campaign for a series of months and there is already enough out there brought to the public's attention to further impugn who he hires. there is no way this is possibly good for president trump. >> manafort had been a name at one point in republican politics for two decades and suddenly he was in the middle of things. thank you all for being with us. and coming up, rudy giuliani says the president's lawyers are reluctant to let their client sit down with mueller if there

are any questions on obstruction of justice. are we finally reaching the breaking points. in less than 20 minutes the polls are going to close out in ohio. can democrats flip a district that has been in republican hands for decades. a district that trump won by 11 points. campaigning for republican in the home stretch. we are going to bring you all of the early numbers as they come in. some election excitement, election drama. this is "hardball" where the election action is tonight. cars. making cars lighter, it's a good place to start, advanced oils for those hard-working parts. fuels that go further so drivers pump less. improving efficiency is what we do best.

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welcome back to "hardball." president trump continues to stew over mueller's investigation while his lawyers wrestle with a key question whether to provide testimony to the special counsel. rudy giuliani speaking with the "washington post" said they were likely to quote rebuff mueller's latest offer of a presidential interview that would include questions about possible obstruction of justice. president trump and his lawyers have been discussing what to say in a draft letter that they expect to send to mueller either today or tomorrow. lawyers are worried that prosecutors may set a perjury

trap for the president. giuliani has convinced trump that mueller doesn't have a case against him. for more, i am joined by jonathan swan, and correspondent for the pbs news hour. jonathan, what are you hearing here? >> they won't get the letter out to mueller today but likely tomorrow. there are two areas in which they have major concerns. they don't want trump to be asked questions about why he fired james comey and they don't want trump to be asked questions about the conversation he had with james comey regarding michael flynn. when trump told him if he could

find a way to see to not investigate flynn. rudy giuliani says trump has answered that in public and in other places and doesn't want to go under oath to answer them. and besides that, it sounds like they are not ruling out answering questions related to obstruction of justice. they are not putting a hard and fast rule about no questions surrounding obstruction of justice. but those are two of the substantial, when you talk about obstruction of justice, those are two fairly central stories that would have to be reconciled. anyway, we are still at an impasse, and still debating. but trump wants to do the interview. and whenever we have talked to people who have spoken to the president, they say he is eager to sit down with them. and the question is whether his lawyers can restrain him.

i don't know. >> in terms of what mueller, what his team might think of this. if the offer from the president's team is sure, go ahead and talk to him, don't talk to him about comey. do you think that is anything that mueller could work with? >> i talked to rudy giuliani myself, and he vacillated everyday. and that is because in his conversations with mueller's team, he is starting to feel as though, he is getting nervous, essentially. i have talked to people, and the president wants to clear his name. he feels he can get in the room and sit down and talk to mueller. this is a president who has gone with his gut and thinks he understands how to work a room. but rudy giuliani and the

president's other lawyers are worried about whether or not mueller is going to stick to those things. and it is a central question of whether or not he fired james comey to stop the mueller problem -- i'm sorry, stop the looking into russia and into the connection of russian and his campaign. so there is this idea if he says he is not going to ask him about why did you fire james comey, that is a key question. it is going to be hard for mueller to say no, i am not going to ask you that question. >> senator lindsey graham who golfed with the president over the weekend told a group of reporters saying he warned the mueller investigation would -- here is that exchange. >> why don't the two of you step up and stop the mueller

investigation? >> well, did trump ask that question? must have mentioned that about 20 times. i told the president, i know you don't like it, i know you feel put upon. you just got to ride it out. i want to win in november. if we stop the mueller probe tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else. >> jonathan, can you talk about this dynamic of the president, how much this is on his mind. how intent he is at least potentially sitting down and talking to mueller and sharing his side of the story. if giuliani were to craft some kind of a deal, you get the president but x is off limits. is giuliani worried. >> i haven't had that from rudy giuliani's mouth but it would be

irrational for him not to be worried about that. they all know that once you start talking to trump, once you get him rolling, anything can come out of his mouth. and as a reporter, some of the most effective interviewers of trump are the people who go in quite gently and throw him soft balls and get him rolling and then ask him questions. once he gets up ahead of steam, he doesn't respect guard rails and there is not a lot of discipline in terms of no, we have discussed before, this is off limits. if he is in a room with mueller, and gets asked a question, he will take the bait. i don't know for a fact if rudy giuliani is not worried about that, but irrational if he is not. >> bill clinton, he was so precise, so lawyerly, and so

discipline and some people say too precise. but he was ready to talk to lawyers. something jumped out at me in that clip with lindsey graham. when graham says hey, is that trump asking that question, it sounds like trump and the rhetoric, that is a room full of republicans there. it sounds like trump has reached the base of his party with the message. >> first, i talked to lawyers who were on the clinton legal team, and the number one thing they did was to make sure that president clinton wasn't worried about the investigation. and in this case, trump is obsessed with it. to your question on whether or not this go he is to republican ace goals and whether or not this might help them in the midterm, the president is giving his base this vocabulary to

motivate. witch hunt, words like crooked. they are out to get me. they are out to get our goals. out to get the person you put your trust in. republicans feel, as least the president does feel this might help them in the midterms. and when i talk to democrats out in the country, yes, they are worried about the russia investigation but worried about the economy and other things. so russia gets lost in the shuffle. so president trump could benefit from the idea that people can't keep up with all the stories that are coming out about russia every day. >> and that is interesting, the back lock, about another piece of the story. manafort and the trial that is going on right now. this is about manafort and his business dealings. trump's name has been mentioned but not much about the campaign. when you talk to giuliani, and

to trump's folks are they keeping a close eye on that? >> they are keeping a close on on that, but the key question that hasn't been answered and i think the ultimate question is why did paul manafort join the campaign. and i spoke to people who worked on the campaign and worked with manafort and they still some of them feel like they don't know the answer to that question and have seen that he came in and worked for no money and was in extreme amounts of debt beholden to oligarchs and i steal feel like we don't know the answer to that and don't know what conversations still that he had during at that campaign. so there is a nervousness about manafort but the michael cohen is higher on the anxiety level. i hear michael cohen's name far

more than paul manafort. >> and quickly, in terms of the political fallout, we have a special election with polls closing any minute now. >> to jonathan point, it has to be nerve-racking for the president to watch rick gates turn on manafort. and testify. idea that there is justification when they see somebody testifying about the old boss and crimes they committed together. >> thanks to both of you. and up next, we are minutes away from poll closing time in ohio. this is "hardball" where the action is. copd makes it hard to. so to breathe better, i go with anoro. ♪ go your own way copd tries to say, "go this way." i say, "i'll go my own way, with anoro." ♪ go your own way

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welcome back to "hardball." and let me finish the count down. three, two, one. seven:thir 7:30 in ohio and that means polls are now closed in the last major special election test. and this thing has turned into a doozy. you have troy balderson in a

dogfight with danny o'connor. the polls are now closed. the results will come in. we might have a few minutes delay. i am too excited maybe. but in the next two, two and a half hours, this will come into focus. if you think about to the pennsylvania district a few months ago, not really early voting. in ohio a different story and we expect the early vote that comes in and will be counted first is probably going to favor o'connor probably by a lot. if o'connor jumps out to what looks like to a massive voting, one thing to keep in mind. a sprawling district here. just here in these two counties a little bit of franklin county,

columbus suburb. delaware county, high income suburban area. at least 60% of the votes in the district are going to come out of here. a lot of rural areas, this is balderson's part of the district. balderson was talking to people in zanesville saying we don't want someone from franklin county. suburb divide. folks who weren't too impressed with trump in 2016. this is the one part where hillary clinton won big. complete opposite story in the rest of the district. trump improved on mitt romney between 15 and 20th district points. we are going to get clues about the trump surge areas.

we saw them in 2016. are they surging or are they receding at all. that area that rejected trump in franklin county. little bit in delaware. is there still that energy? is there more energy on the democratic side? we don't have -- i was hoping as i stood here we would get numbers. we don't have any numbers yet but will start coming in very soon and we will be here. we have garrett hake. >> not a lot of folks in the room yet, but to the questions you just asked, the question about excitement on the democratic side is the much easier one to answer. the excitement about danny

o'connor is real. his campaign has tried to take advantage of every little string, every door that is open. you mentioned the franklin county gaffe. the o'connor campaign sent out text messages trying to make sure they were aware of it. the other question that you raised about enthusiasm for donald trump, that is really, i think the bigger question here. does anything about donald trump's huge numbers in the outer parts of this district transfer to troy balderson. he is nobody's donald trump. having the rally here gave donald trump's voters an excuse to pay attention. how much of that enthusiasm for the president by his base is transferrable to this republican candidate who shares little in

common. >> it is fascinating and we will go to you quite a bit tonight. waiting for the first returns to trickle in here. we mentioned this a lot. just to put this in some perspective, the district, the history here, the last time democrat won an election from congress from this version of district was in 1980. it was the reagan landslide in 1980. but a democrat held the seat and one it in one term. this is the caskasich district.

not in yet, but we are going to be on top of it. we are going to be on all night. if not on the network, certainly on the twitter feed. stay with us again. the roundtable going to be joining us. thanks to garrett haake in ohio. the roundtable is going to be here. after this. ♪ bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens ♪ ♪ brown paper packages tied up with strings ♪ ♪ these are a few of my favorite things ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ these are a few of my favorite things ♪ oh! oh! ♪ ozempic®! ♪ (vo) people with type 2 diabetes are excited about the potential of once-weekly ozempic®.

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>> those three ohio voters saying they voted for o'connor. the result of tonight's race can be seen as an indicator whether the trump factor will do more harm than good. >> let's bring in the roundtable. director of programming. thanks to all of you for being with us. i stood there waiting for numbers to come and we get to the commercial and immediately numbers come in. i want to read these and get you guys reacting. we have the early vote coming from franklin county. now franklin county is a third of the district. this is columbus. we said the early votes is going to favor o'connor. he wins the early vote 80% to

19%. we believe that in 2016 in the early vote in franklin county, donald trump got about 32%. so the republican tonight running at 19%, this is an estimate. it might have been lower than that. but there is reason to look at that and suspect this is a reason that early, first number that we are getting that makes d democrats optimistic. >> this is the problem for republicans. it is a bank shot to get people to vote for you to support trump. if you are going to vote for trump, you vote for trump. going out on a hot august day to vote for some guy balderson that you never heard of in order to send a message to the world because you like trump.

that is a bank shot. and bank shots are not that successful. >> depending on how they angle. >> suburbs, however this shakes out. even if balderson wins elsewhere, the energy of the democrat base in the heart of the democratic portion of the district. >> that mirrors what you have seen in the past year and a half. a lot of work around registering new people to vote and so i think what you are seeing in terms of the early vote is just confirmation of what we knew in the sense that democrats are engaged and active and they want like john said to come out and vote for democrat and say i want you to go and stop trump. >> and anita, the message that john talks about the difficulty republicans have to match the energy and we will see, we will see as the results come in, we look at the rural part of the

district, balderson's home county, we may see a surge. but what is it? from a republican standpoint, how do they motivate voters? >> it is hard. and that is why you saw president trump there, why you see vice president pence there. at this point, he is a trump guy, so trump is putting himself all in. the trump tweets. he loves that he has the power to motivate people. he says if he tweets something, people go out and do it. and they might do it. >> between republicans, the idea that a trump tweet will drive a low intensity, low information voter who would vote republican if he were going to vote to the polls, that is not only untested and we have no reason to believe that he is different from any other president which is to say

when the midterms come, going out to say vote for this guy to support me is something that doesn't work. >> it is untested. a lot of what we have seen in the cycle are the primaries. so a few special elections and the republicans have held except for one so we don't know. there is a lot of enthusiasm and this will abe big test. the other thing that i am interested in seeing as the results come in is we talk about the energy of the democratic base. the other half of the district, the other story here, i wish i was at the map to show folks this. but this jumped out at me, zanesville, trump won it by thi30 points. this is a district that is chock-full of them. >> there is a lot of factors at play in terms of those folk who

is voted for president obama. putting a lot of stock in that hope and change method. but i think when you have sections of a district, precincts that are predominantly white and working class that is correct is going to have a different dynamic at the polls. we are talking specifically about these districts that are more rural but that also means in this specific case they are also more white. so a lot of talk about economic anxiety being the reason that people flipped from obama to trump. it wasn't economic anxiety, there is a lot of data that shows there is racial resentment at play and perhaps you had some anxiety that had to do with your pocketbooks. and the core of that was over anxiety over the browning and emerging majority of black and brown people in the country. >> in 2012, spent $100 million

in this state, in the summer of 2012 with one mention. bane capital screwing you, this hedge fund guy killing you. and a lot of those voters who voted for trump in 2016, that message rang a bell with them and they crossed the aisle and voted for obama a bunch of them and they returned to the fold in some ways in 2016. the problem is that trump is not on the ballot, romney is not on the ballot and obama is not on the ballot. it is a guy named balderson. balderson doesn't have the message. >> and that is the age old message that works in midterm election. it works until it doesn't work. you are the opposition party and

don't control everything and you say you know what, how about a check? >> and that is true and look at what is happening in washington with president trump. all over the place with a million things. he has no one cohesive message. he should be talking about one thing, the economy or health care. but you see him tweet about everything, and talking about ten different things. if you are saying i don't like politics anymore, you might say, okay, let me go with this new guy. >> and we mentioned this earlier in the hour, the republican candidate here, he tried to close out the race by ginning up enthusiasm in his hometown. zanesville is a small city, rural district. shown in this video circulated by the o'connor campaign. >> we don't want someone from

franklin county representing us. >> a third of the voters come from franklin county. balderson tried to explain his gaffe today. >> american pride last night did you say that you didn't want someone from franklin county. >> i am going to work for this whole district. >> do you want to elaborate on that? >> i am going to work for the whole district. >> early votes. so they hadn't heard this vote. franklin county not looking good right now. that said, my serious question is this. that is a gaffe you are not supposed to say as a candidate. but speaking about a reality of the republican party that this is a party that has gone much more toward the zanesville of the worlds. >> that is good if you are in a district that doesn't have the columbus suburbs. most districts, the country is polarizing. so getting more and more what

they were with less and less diverse views in them. this is a weird district in which it is a classic, it is structured. even though r plus ten or something like that. it is structured the way districts were when you could have a race on your hands if somebody made a big mistake like this may be 24 hours after. in a midterm like this and special like this, turnout is going to be low. i know we have had crazy high turnouts but, in the middle of august? >> yeah. see maybe we got a little more. you have seen them at the bottom of the screen. we will be over at the board in a couple of minutes. thank you all for joining us. and like i said, right back to the big board. there are the latest numbers. they will change by the time we come back from the break. and you are watching "hardball." 1z your spending too.

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seeing a lot of early vote. we expected o'connor aboto be ad sizably early. let me take you through what we know right now. start here in columbus. franklin county, a third of the vote is going to come out of here. we are seeing the early vote. so again, we knew democrats -- hillary clinton won this part of the county by 20 points overall. did much better in the early vote. i think this is if the early vote, if you had to guess this sort of thing, o'connor probably doing better than democrats hoped in the early vote. we will see what election day brings. getting returns, early votes from elsewhere. this is, this was a big trump county, you are looking at the early vote here. republicans did much better in

2016 than on election day. balderson leading the early vote. so you are seeing a big gap there between what you get in terms of o'connor doing great. get right outside of that in the area where trump was running up the skpocore and you get a differe different. we are probably looking at the early vote, i have to check, but early vote here. and again, balderson running 61-3 eigh 61-38. that is a good start. again, we remind you, this is a place obama won this pocket of the district back in 2012. this is a big one.

delaware county. trump won this by 16 in 2016. i believe this will be the early vote here. you got o'connor ahead in the early vote coming out of delaware. the republicans tend to do a lot better. take this with a grain of salt. you got o'connor here in a place that hillary clinton lost. we are just getting started. stay tune. we are going to be tracking the returns as they continue to come in. you are watching "hardball." ♪

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all right, folks basically, ten seconds to tell you this looks like the early vote. the same day vote is starting to come. all in with chris hays starts right now. >> tonight on all in, election night in america. >> we have to keep the house. >> the polls are closed in ohio. >> she goes around saying we will impeach him. >> in the last special election before november. >> we must elect more republicans and we must elect troy balderson. >> tonight, the stakes for the president, the stakes for democrats and all the results as they pour in. plus, another explosive day inside the