the results will blow you away! hydro boost and our gentle exfoliating cleanser from neutrogena® trump's people. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. welcome to the "hardball" labor day show. for purposes of this holiday, we're calling it the real characters of trump world. president donald trump campaigned on his star factor as the host of the reality show "the apprentice." that mindset has followed him all the way into his presidency where there's never a slow news day and every action he takes falls somewhere under unprecedented. for the next hour, we're going to look at the cast of characters of trump's reality show presidency, the villains,

the flippers, and the would be celebrities, of course, and some of them are heading to prison. and others are helping to put former allies in prison. there's been back biting, social climbing, conspiracies and, yes, relentless drama. and one side show came full circle when am rosa manigault-newman played the apprentice and white house aide came out with a new tell-all book. her strategy was to mirror trump's own behavior. here she is on season 1. >> heidi was fantastic. and i will tell you that i haven't always been a fan of heidi. i haven't always thought that she was professional nor does she have much class or finesse. >> that's very nice. >> thank you. >> that's one of the worst compliments i've ever heard. >> but i have been very candid with heidi, have i not? >> yes, i appreciate that. >> i'm not so sure. that's the worst thing i've heard. >> off lot of class.

>> that's the worst thing i have ever heard. that's the worst compliment i have ever heard. >> omarosa made news by every interview. we asked you a couple hours ago if you have any other recordings. you wouldn't share them here. do you have them? >> i have plenty. >> anything mueller would like to see, mr. robert mueller? >> if his office calls again, anything they want, i'll share. anything they want, i will corroborate. >> do you think the president will be impeached? >> at this point, yes. >> you were instructed, according to your book, to bring up te mails at every point you could at the end of the 2016 campaign. >> yes, that was our talker. >> did donald trump know about those e-mails before it came out. >> absolutely. what is he trying to hide? it's interesting he's trying to silence me. donald trump is wrong. trevor, i will say this, if you see me in a fight with the bear, pray for the bear. >> everything in my book

unhinged in quotes is verifiable, it's documented and corroborated. >> when others tried to refute her, omarosa had the tapes to back up her claims. here is her recording of chief of staff john kelly firing her in the situation room. >> i think it's important to understand that if we make this a friendly departure we can all be -- you know, you can look at your time here in the white house as a year of service to the nation. and then you can go on without any time of difficulty in the future relative to your reputation. >> well, after former trump campaign aide katrina pearson said she was never a part of a conversation about whether trump used the n-word, on "the apprentice" omarosa released that very conversation with trump to "cbs this morning". >> i'm trying to find at least the context it was used in to help us maybe try to figure out

a way to spin it. >> she then described a conversation she had with then candidate trump about making the slur. >> i said, well, sir, can you think of any time that this might have happened, and he said no. >> well, that's not true, so. >> he goes, how do you think i should handle it. and i told him what you just said, om row sarks well, it depends on what scenario you're talking about. he said, why don't you just go ahead and put it to bed. >> well, omarosa released audio of laura trump, offering her, omarosa, a job on the 2020 campaign in exchange for her staying quiet about her time in the white house. >> it sounds a little like, obviously, that there are some things you've got in the back pocket to pull out. clearly, if you come on board the campaign, like, we can't have -- we got to -- >> oh, god no. >> everybody positive, right?

>> i'm shojoined by a white hou reporter for news, betsy woodriff, dana and jonathan allen, national political reporter for nbc news digital. what a cast to talk about what a cast. i must say that. shannon, she seems to be the first person to stride on to the stage, and i mean the stage, who has the same abilities for tv, the game that trump plays so well, that he has -- >> well, case in point, having audio. what makes for good tv, audio, tapes, visuals. she understood that. it's a basic thing, but president trump, the ultimate producer, she is also an ultimate producer. knows how to present herself on tv, knows how to get attention with a tape recording. and i think there's a lot that's been said about omarosa, but i think she has highlighted a very crucial flaw in trump that he has a hard time seeing who his friends are and who his enemies

are. she was obviously making these tape recordings for a long time. he obviously thought she was someone he could trust. and of course has been proven wrong. >> he built her up, jason. he stepped back and glowed at her performances on the apprentice. you can see that. >> kept bringing her through did the merger, he created this monster for lack of a better word. >> or a beckett, if you want to be literary. >> yes. here is the thing that's also fascinating, you could teach a masters class on her book rollout. i have never seen anyone -- and we've seen books come out of white houses before, who managed to do 72-straight hours of press and drop one little nugget of information on every single show she went on. this is dangerous for national security, but it's a brilliant rollout on her behalf. >> it's a fall rollout to come. i think it's still going. shannon? betsy. >> one thing that's important to remember with omarosa, she very much was pure showman.

during her time in the white house, white house officials told us repeatly she wasn't moving the ball forward on many important issues. in fact, there was nearly a crisis in the lead justify to the first african-american history month because omarosa was supposed to set up events, making things happen. and the night before certain white house officials realized there were a number of people who hadn't been invited who hadn't been looped in. it was almost a minor crisis. there's a host of examples of situations like that where omarosa instead of accomplishing jobs she was supposed to get done with seems to be focussed more on being in the room for certain meetings and of course the fallout is she had recordings for being in the room with the tech tonic consequences. >> she was perceived by aides as being incompetent and i was told that trump always trusted her. >> what her job was. i literally asked her that job in a conference last year and she couldn't explain it. that's part of how you get in trouble. >> the president might have the

same answer when asked about his job and moving the ball forward. there's a certain cosmic justice in the whole thing here. the president came in and who is he going to staff his administration with, the usual suspects, absolutely no interest in it. what he did is built his staff in his own model. may not be trustworthy, may be a little fast and loose with the truth, questions about loyalty, but brilliant showman. this works to an extent when they're all rowing in the same direction. what you're seeing now with a michael cohen, with an omarosa, they have prodigious talents if they're used against you. >> michael cohen took center stage this year after he implicated the president paying hush money to adult film actress stormy daniels and playboy model karen mcdougal during the 2016 election. like those references to adult actress and -- any way, playboy, the whole thing, this is so trumpian. cohen released a secret recording of himself and the president discussing a possible

payment to mcdougal. let's listen to this tape recording. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david, you know, so that i'm going to do that right away. >> give it to me. >> i've spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> so what are we going to pay? >> funding, yes. and it's all the stuff, all the stuff. because here you never know where that company, never know where he's going to be. >> get hit by a truck. >> correct. i'm all over it. i spoke to allen when it comes time for the financing -- >> listen, what financing? >> well, i have to pay. >> don't pay with cash. >> no, no, no, no. >> how are you? >> well, cohen isn't a new figure in trump world. of course, a tape from 2015 that was released by npr this year, he made an astonishing claim to a reporter asking about allegations by trump's first wife i vanna in a 1989

deposition that trump raped her. let's listen. >> you're talking about donald trump. you're talking about the front-runner for the gop, presidential candidate, as well as private individual who never raped anybody, and of course, understand that by the very definition, you can't rape your spouse. >> well, ivana said in 2015 the story is totally without merit. cohen then threatened the reporter. >> mark my words for it. i will make sure that you and i meet one day while we're in the courthouse. and i will take you for every penny you still don't have. and i will come after you daily beast and everybody else that you possibly know. do not even think about going to where i know you're planning on going. so i'm warning you, tread very,

[ bleep ] lightly because what i'm going to do to you is going to be [ bleep ] disgusting. do you understand me? don't think you're going to hide behind your pen because it's not going to happen. >> jonathan, do you understand me? do you understand me? that is mob talk. and that is definitely back room with the rubber hose, don't mess with me stuff. that's not the somewhat sympathetic figure we see walking to and from the courthouse these days? >> he's a lovely calm gentleman. i think hollywood actors will be fighting each other to play michael cohen in the movie version of all this some day. the character is unbelievable. you see shame and ka trigs in the courtroom the other day talking like a mob enforcer, not a fixer or a lawyer, but like an enforcer. what's fascinating, though, about the recording of trump, which seems to implicate a lot of other people, you know, or at least bring them in, david pecker, other lawyers of the trump operation, what's amazing

about that tape is that is what you expect the fbi and this is michael cohen taping it itself. you have to wonder about two things, number one, how little he trusts donald trump to begin with. and number two, sort of how dumb he is to do that in terms of the potential for that to become a huge legal liability for himself in the future as we have seen it did. >> how many mob movies have we seen? i've seen a lot, where they check to see if you're wired. trump never checked to see if these guys were wired. they they're wired when they go to see him. >> it does have that sort of a mob feel to it like they should all have certain nicknames that should be passed around. >> mikey the rat. >> right. and everybody has their price for a certain amount. appears to be loyalty. you have the president, you know, talking about john dean the rat. you have him talking about flipping. flipping should be a crime.

>> alfonso capone. >> it's all fitting in here, jason. >> i don't understand -- see, this is why i don't understand why anybody wants a gofund me for this guy. >> i want to see more of it. >> when he's clearly that aggressor. this speaks to this culture of the administration in general. his logic is, oh, you can't do this to your wife. that speaks to this overall misogamy. >> cohen. your definition you can't rape your wife. you can. it speaks to not only the violence, the misogamy but also the rage that seems to flow through every member of this administration. >> meanwhile, former campaign manager paul manafort has been a major targ of the mueller investigation. though manafort was in charge of trump's campaign during the pivotal months spend at the end

of the primary season through the convention, the president attempted to diminish that role. let's watch this. >> i think the whole manafort trial is very sad. when you look at what's going on there, i think it's a very sad day for our country. he worked for me for a very short period of time, but you know what, he happens to be a very good person. and i think it's very sad what they've done to paul manafort. thank you very much. >> before joining the trump campaign, manafort had extensive political and financial ties to russia, of course. we know that. he also attended that trump tower meeting with the russian lawyer to get dirt on hillary clinton and played a role in softening the republican party platform on aiding ukraine against russia. all helpful to moscow. during the campaign, however, manafort denied that the trump campaign had any relationship with russia. let's watch. >> are there any ties between mr. trump, you or your campaign and putin and his regime?

>> no, there are not. that's absurd and there's no basis to that. >> this is an absurd attempt by the clinton campaign to try to get the focus off of what the real issue is. >> they're pretty desperate pretty quickly is all i have to say on that. >> what do you make of this guy? >> lately trump is going back to him and showing tremendous empathy. >> like most things with trump, you don't have to say anything. you could just be quiet. you know, you don't have to step into this. trump goes out of his way even on twitter to defend paul manafort. there seems to be a pretty growing consensus, i don't have any fact that this is the case, but an assumption of a paul manafort pardon coming at some point, it is a growing assumption of that. yeah, he also likes to portray paul manafort as not big in the campaign. that's a move. >> he did that with flynn for a while. he was sort of teasing him,

offering him, well, i'm really sad for the guy. then he sort of stopped that stuff. he's still working on manafort. >> what's interesting about the flynn situation is that he has been working with mueller's team for months and months now. the date of his sentencing keeps getting moved forward. there isn't any public reporting but it's generated a ton of speculation and i imagine some stress in the white house that this person who is deeply involved in the president's campaign, deeply involved in those consequential early few days has been quietly talking with mueller for months. the panel is staying with us for this hour. up next, this guy -- >> you know, you're really beautiful. >> this may be the best of all. >> oh, you dirty boy you. oh. donald, i thought you were a gentleman. >> you know, he is an actor, and we're watching that today.

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stay with their families until their 40's. ♪ welcome back to "hardball." rudy giuliani was once known as america's mayor. america's mayor. but this year he took on a different role as trump's tv defense lawyer. he started off his public campaign in defense of the lawyer by openly admitting that trump repaid that money that was funneled through a law firm to stormy daniels. >> having something to do with paying some stormy daniels woman 130,000, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. that one was not campaign money. sorry. i'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. it's not campaign money. no campaign finance violation. >> they funneled it through a law firm. >> funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it.

>> well, giuliani's defense of michael cohen involved, of course, talk of cohen turning against the president grew louder. >> imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016. cohen didn't even ask. cohen didn't ask. cohen made it go away. he did his job. >> michael cohen, i think, would tell you he has nothing incriminating with the president and really shea should stop going after him. they're torturing the guy. >> this is basically if you have a trial you would say, which lie do you want to pick? there's nobody that hasn't warned me that if his back is up against the wall he'll lie like crazy because he lied all his life. >> rudy's defense shifted from first saying there was no collusion to arguing that collusion isn't a crime. >> this started as collusion with the russians. no. >> right. >> now they go to obstruction of justice, collusion among the players. what they're really trying to do

is trap them in perjury. we're not suckers. the whole information is totally legitima legitimate. he believes if he gets the chance to explain it, people will understand no collusion with the russians, no obstruction of justice. they have to just come to grips with the fact they are investigating an innocent man. and you can do that forever because you're never going to find any evidence. somebody has to put an end to this. he did not collude. there's no evidence he colluded. but in the alternative, collusion is not a crime. when you tell me that he should testify because he's going to tell the truth and he shouldn't worry, that's so silly because it's somebody's version of the truth, not the truth. he didn't have a conversation -- >> truth is truth. i don't mean to go like -- >> no, it isn't truth. truth isn't truth. >> we're back with our panel. jonathan, i hate to say this, but i think he gives criminal law a bad name. i don't think i can think of the worse criminal lawyers that will say anything in defense of a guilty defendant, anything. and this guy has proven he can outdo any of them. >> chris, i think we should stop

considering rudy giuliani as a lawyer for purposes of defending donald trump or really any other purposes. this is somebody who has done as much to make the case that donald trump could be implicated in crimes as he has to take away from it. he goes and says this isn't campaign money. well, that's not actually good for donald trump's case here. rudy giuliani has, you know, done the job he's been asked to, much like many other trump aides has, go out and say things for the president that are not true, absurd, things that can be disproven immediately and sometimes things that evolve and can be later disproven. we've seen between the president and giuliani and all the other people who represented the president the story about the hush money payments just change from there were no hush money payments, the president did didn't know about the hush money payments, he didn't know about them until later on, all of a sudden he knows about them beforehand. i mean, it is basically a distraction, a p.r. distraction

from what's actually going on here which is that there's serious legal jeopardy for a lot of people around the president of the united states. we don't know whether or not the president can be indicted. we may find out. >> shannon? >> well, i think rudy is intentionally making this a distraction of public relations campaign because he believes this is not going to be a criminal case, an impeachment. >> therefore truth isn't truth. >> and muddy the waters. if he can confuse people at home who don't follow this all the time, can create confusion, create a shadow of a doubt and solidify trump's base and give them talking points to help defend the president, that's his job. that's what he is here to do. you can say a lot of things about rudy giuliani, through his career, he has known thousand manipulate the media, how to set a public relations trap for people so the people who know him, say don't count him out on that count of managing a public relations crisis. >> does this mean that they need a tape like they needed a tape

against nixon? because i get the sense that if you can say truth isn't truth what you're really arguing is if you're willing to believe my side of the argument i'll say anything. >> they'll need a lot more evidence than what we know of now. that's probably why they're taking as long as they need to take. unless you get a direct e-mail that says trump for sure we can prove he knew about the meeting, unless you get some direct commentary from the president, yeah, that's what mueller is going to need. the problem politically that you hear from giuliani this argument that first it was collusion. collusion is not a crime. in the fugitive, i didn't kill my wife, but if i did, it was an accident. that doesn't work. >> but he didn't kill his wife. >> of course. of course. >> that's critical. >> but that's the critical thing. we don't know if that is the case. california republican representative devin nunes, i love this guy's name. known for his midnight run to the white house to view reports that he said unmasked members of

the trump transition team. he then went back to the same white house the next day with the news he got from the white house the night before and he announced his findings and briefed the president from what he got from his own white house. this is incredible. >> i have seen intelligence reports that clearly show that the president-elect and his team were i guess at least monitor and disseminated out intelligence. what i saw has nothing to do with russia and nothing to do with the russia investigation, has everything to do with possible surveillance activities and the president needs to know these intelligence reports are out there and i have a duty to tell him that. i felt like i had a duty and obligation to tell him because as you know he's been taking a lot of heat in the news media. >> well, this year nunes continues to do whatever he could to discredit the russian investigation himself. he attacked the intelligence community and falsely claimed that the russia investigation started solely because of the

christopher steele dossier and threatened to impeach rod rosenstein and christopher wray for not turning over documents he wanted from the mueller probe. >> i think the american people understand that the fbi should not go to secret courts, using information that was paid for by the democrats to open up investigations and get warrants by people of the other political party. that's the type of stuff that happens in banana republics. there's clear evidence of collusion with the russians, it just happens to be with the hillary clinton campaign and the democratic national committee that the news media fails to talk about or fails to investigate. >> the more they throw at you, the more you know to keep digging because you're getting really, really close. our committee continues to look at conspiracy, looking at obstruction, looking at misleading congress. we will have a plan to hold and impeach. >> i'm not worried about vindication because i sleep well at night because i've been telling the truth the entire time. >> this guy talks like one of

the old soviets during the missile crisis. they will serve anything that serves the purpose of the political cause. >> he's leader of the intelligence committee. and then he has to recuse himself because of that performance on the white house lawn but he continues to meddle in the investigation and throwing himself at it. i mean, in a way it's nice -- we paired him here with giuliani. have giuliani doing the crazy uncle routine, none es being the inspector and it is all to throw up a whole lot of dust so that nobody can keep track. >> nobody thinks this guy will get defeated for re-election. he has 90% of his people behind him. >> he is unlikely to be going anywhere. one piece of the nunes saga that

is especially eye popping is that he spent weeks and weeks sort of bashing the justice department for not turning over a certain stack of documents that he really wanted to see. he said these documents are going to blow wide open, hillary clinton conspiracies that were going on, absolutely essential that the american people saw these documents. and then when the doj turned over these documents, made them available to nunes, he didn't actually read them. he had his staff read them. despite making a host of television cable appearances, talking how intrigued he was by the material of these documents, when he got the documents didn't look at them. just bizarre. >> we never heard about them again. >> john, your thought? >> i was going to say if nunes was not protected by the speech or debate clause in the constitution as a member of congress, you would be looking at him as a potential koe conspirator in any washington collusion. this is crazy the lengths that he has gone to, including his little midnight run to the white house that we've been talking about to grab their stuff and

then report back to him. all of this stuff has been in furtherance of an effort to help the president. i don't think it's a distraction. to some extent there's a conspiracy theory that's going on within the members of the congress who are like super trump supporters where i think they really, truly at some level believe and have to believe that what you saw in action, law enforcement in action, where you have coordinated agencies working together on an investigation of certain members of the trump orbit, they look at that and think that there's a conspiracy, but that's actually just how law enforcement works. >> it's an embarrassment. the guy is an embarrassment. up next the trump reality character whose media blitz earlier this year was so strange one anchor asked him if he had been drinking. he really did. i mean, she really did. this is "hardball" where the action is. here the action is. whoa. this looks worse than i thought.

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welcome back to "hardball." roger stone, former trump adviser, a self-proclaimed dirty trickster could be under scrutiny in the russia investigation particularly for his august, 2016, tweet warning that it would soon be podesta's time in the barrel. a couple weeks later, wikileaks published john podesta's e-mails. stone spent the past year discrediting the probe, of course. let's watch. >> i never had any advanced knowledge of the content, the source, or the exact timing of

the wikileaks disclosures. i never predicted that john podesta's e-mails would be hacked. i predicted that his business activities could come under scrutiny. this narrative is base on a false premise from our politicized intelligence agencies that julian assange is a russian agent. he is a courageous journalist who has an incredible track record for accuracy and authenticity. >> i'm not involved in any collusion, coordination or conspiracy with the russians or anyone else. and there's no evidence to the contrary. i received nothing from wikileaks or from the russians. i pass nothing on to donald trump or the trump campaign. we've been through this ad nauseam. it is a wild goose chase. i think if they bring a case against me, it would be a fabricated case and there's no circumstances whatsoever which i will testify against the president. >> of course, when he came out with that little teaser that john podesta with the dnc was about to be facing his time in a

barrel, he'll have his unpleasantness coming upon him. couple weeks later all the hacking came out. then he tried to be -- i think it's cute there, jason, in his denials. i didn't have an exact time. i didn't do this. if you listen to him the way he assembled there, he didn't deny he knew something. >> he's dancing, soft shoeing around everything. if and when he gets dragged in, he will, he can say, well, i never said that i didn't know anything. i just said i didn't know what 4:15 p.m. on this particular day. >> bill clinton said i didn't have sexual relations. >> exactly. all of this dissembling, it's what makes your regular people look at this clown car of people that trump has brought into the white house and say, why don't any of these people sound honest to me? none of them do. >> there's a real sense that roger is in legal trouble. there's a grand jury that has heard from not just a interview

with mueller, a grand jury who heard from a number everyone from ronnger's former assistant driver, his friends. i don't think anyone knows what the legal jeopardy could be and maybe the grand jury will not vote to charge him with anything, but the fact that they have a grand jury who has been interviewing a number of people all over roger's universe shows that there is definitely something that investigators are focussing in on, some sort of criminal activity they're focussing in on and maybe they won't find anything, but there's some jeopardy right now. >> it's like driving around in a red sports car past a state trooper. you're inviting being stopped. >> i think so. >> roger stone behaves. he calls himself a dirty trickster. he dances. he sar naerenades you with trou >> he's been a policeman buoyant character for decades. it may have nothing to do with what we're saying in these

remarks. this is a guy regular on alex jones, even more than people typically in the trump orbit. he is too explosive to be brought into the white house or any official role there, but i think to a greater extent than other officials, he's on a whole different level. i wouldn't try to parse this. sam nunberg spent his day defying mueller. on live cable television, telling reporters he didn't want to cooperate with mueller as to implicate roger stone. he didn't want to get in trouble with stone. the situation quickly deinvolvo. let's watch. >> i'm not going to cooperate when they want me to come into a grand jury for them to insennuate that roger stone was colluding with julian assange. roger is my mentor, he's like

family to me. it's a witch hunt, the president is right. i'm not going to cooperate. why do i have to spend 80 hours going over my e-mails. >> do you have higher legal bills? >> it would be funny if they wanted to arrest me because i don't want to spend 80 hours going over e-mails i had with steve bannon and roger stone. trump very may well have done something during the election. i don't know what it is. i could be wrong, by the way. carter page? >> i'm guessing -- >> carter page is a scum bag. he was colluding with the russians. >> i'm not going to jail, come on. all right? do you think i'm going to jail? >> talking to you, i have smelled alcohol on your breath. >> well, i have not had a drink. >> well, at the end of the day, nunberg decided to cooperate with the subpoena. being accused of having a few pops before air time, that's a new one. >> it was maybe the trumpiest 24 hours of cable news when nunberg took all three networks by

storm, basically spent the entire day bouncing from studio to studio to studio talking how he wasn't going to comply. thanks to one of our guests he changed his mind. and within about 48 hours he was telling mueller all sorts of information and finding e-mails and, you know, had sort of cleaned up his act. what's interesting is that since then, at least based on roger stone's instagram, it appears the two men had a falling out. roger stone recently posted a picture of a pile of exskramt and revealed a new photo of sam nunberg. >> i think pat moynihan has been proven right. we're defining dooef yensy downward. the coffee boy and the pop star both become key figures in the russia investigation. you're watching "hardball." is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying.

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♪ welcome back to "hardball." former trump campaign adviser

george papadopoulos was once dismissed by another campaign aide as nothing more than a coffee boy. well, last year papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the special counsel about contact he had with a suspected russian agent who allegedly told him the russians had dirt on hillary clinton. papadopoulos didn't provide substantial assistance to the russia investigation, in fact, much of the information he did provide came only after the government confronted him with information it had obtained already on its own. we're back with our panel. this guy papadopoulos, who is -- jonathan, take over for me on papadopoulos. he is one of the minor characters, but certainly part of this story. >> to some extent he's a fly in trum trump orbit. all the folks that donald trump tried to distance himself from, it's probably truest of george papadopoulos. obviously not true of cohen or manafort or some of the others. >> we saw his picture at the big meeting.

he does exist. he was in the room. he was more than a cay toe kaylan character. he wasn't just hanging around. he had some role. >> this is the key, chris, any good reporter knows and any good investigator knows, talk to the assistants. talk to the coffee boys. everybody has some piece of information. in this case, george papadopoulos had pretty important information for robert mueller. >> another unlikely character in the russia investigation is russia pop star agularof. emin music video while in moscow for the miss universe pagt. what's he doing over there? earlier this summer, emin released a satirical music video releasing, quote, surveillance video of a look alike pageants in a hotel room. it features emin slipping cash to stormy daniels.

and set up that infamous meeting in trump tower in 2016. emin addressed that meeting in his interview with vice news. >> i said listen, there's some people that want to meet you. they obviously want something that could potentially help them resolve things that you could be interested in. or maybe not. if you can spare five minutes of your time, i would be grateful. if not, don jr. being don jr. said of course i'll do it if you're asking me. >> oh my god. how did he get so russia-filed. why is this president so intrigued and interlocked and messed up with so many russian characters. >> not just russians, it's characters full stock. we were talking about earlier the notion that the usual suspects haven't come in here. you have the russian pop star, the playboy model, you have the porn star. you've got the lawyer who is dealing with cab medallions in new york, crazy uncle rudy, the guy from the muffler shop with

an important job in the administration. >> there's a cabana boy at hud, department of agriculture. they're interchangeable. one will pop up and fade away. michael cohen is back. it's a reality show cast of characters that are ever interchangeable. >> these are the people that trump are of. he comes from that world. >> he brought this with him. it's clue. did they do it in trump tower with a candle stick and a russian mobster porn car, whatever. that's where these people were involved. this guy in particular, this goes to omarosa and this whole administration, he is not careful with who he spends time with. he is like a michael buble mixed with jersey shore pop star maniac running around the country and spending money like crazy. who knows what he could be talking about. when your friends make joke videos about kim jong-un erasing your image from hanging around with prostitutes, those aren't the good friend to have. >> imagine if you're robert mueller and these are your witnesses. these are the people who are going to help you put your case

together. and when people attack the president, they say well sam nunberg is not a very trustworthy witness or michael cohen is not. well, there aren't really any trustworthy witnesses. there is no pope in the cast of characters. >> is that trump's game, only hang out with fleas or sleaze? >> by choice or circumstance i don't know. the reality star of the year. you might be surprised. you're watching "hardball." you're watching "hardball. , use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we're fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. and these are the specialists we're proud to call our own. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now.

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are president trump's tweets considered official white house statements? >> the president is the president of the united states, so they're considered official statements by the president of the united states. >> welcome back to "hardball" that was former, former white house press secretary sean spicer tells reporters last year that president trump's tweets are, in fact, presidential statements. in the past few weeks alone, the president made official statements on topics that even he admits are not presidential, such as calling omarosa a crazed, crying low life and a dog. and openly saying that he doesn't care what the political ramifications of a government shutdown are. trump told football players to be happy, be cool instead of protesting. attacked one of the most respected athletes in the country, lebron james, and incorrectly blamed the california wild fires on bad environmental laws. he's targeted the news media multiple times, noting that the problem is when you complain you just give them more publicity.

but i'll complain any way, he says. and he spent a lot of time attempting to diminish the credibility of the russia investigation writing the good news is that your favorite president did nothing wrong. well, we're back with our panel. i want to start right at the end with betsy and work all the way through. what do we make of the big guy? what do you make of his ability to stay out there doing this stuff? >> what's really interesting is that these tweets sometimes come in waves depending on both the time of day, of course. we know early in the morning as he's gotten further into the presidency, his aides have done less to reign in his twitter habits. we see more of these early morning tweet storms the result of him having unstructured time. >> that's when he reads the paper in the morning, when he gets the headlines. >> that could be it. >> jason, we have to move. you're up. >> yeah, it's amazing why no one has taken this phone from him at this particular point because we've stopped worrying a ing abm starting a war with twitter and he damages our economy and damaging investigations and could harm elections. the market is fine for now, but

the market is not fine in south africa. market is not fine in other countries. >> he is worried about the white settlers getting paid. the things he worries about. >> a former trump adviser told me that it's like a jealous mistress, a way for him to get everything out that he has. the aides feel like he can get it out in the morning and then go to work productively and focus on what he needs to do. but even his supporters, the number one thing they say is i love him, i love him, but i wish he would stop tweeting. >> jonathan next. your thoughts about the big guy. >> the president so much prioritizes being able to drive news cycles, that's what he wants. the end result is historians will look back on the collected papers of donald j. trump will be a lot more interesting news. >> dan? >> i heard a defender of the president say he's part 10-year-old and part statesman and the problem is the 10-year-old wakes up early. >> i will tell you what he does that seems to be new and i'm not

sure it's good, he dominates the moment. any moment is king to him. there is no past. there is no future. there is no consequence. listen to me. >> this goes back to his time as a new york real estate developer when he invested a huge amount of energy in courting the tabloids. he learned early on, if he was commenting on the story of the day, he would be make headlines and be in the news. he did that on his 6:00 a.m. regular appearance on "fox&friends." he just sounded off on whatever the day's shiny only was and carried that into his time at the white house. >> except it's starting to feel like that burden is overwhelming a bit. you can only juggle so many chain saws. >> really? i thought you could wear out your welcome, but i don't know if he's in that business. >> i don't think that will ever happen. politics, disgust or rage can ever be exhausted. as long as he keeps tweeting, he'll have people to like him and democrats who hate him. >> i bet grow to new press secretaries and new members of

congress who die for any publicity they can get. they can't get on their local television affiliate or radio play with their little beepers. they're dieing to be noticed. this guy is constantly noticed. >> right. and to betsy's point, he'll comment on the news of the day but he also becomes the news of the day by whatever he tweets. we all have reporters working at 6:00 a.m. now who are there to write the tweet of the day. >> he is president. the panel is sticking with us, you're watching "hardball." wat. there's nothing small about your business. with dell small business technology advisors, you get the one-on-one partnership to grow your business. the dell vostro 14 laptop.

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♪ thank you, shannon pettypiece, jason johnson, betsy woodriff, dana millbank and jonathan allen. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. happy labor everyone. "all in" with chris hayes starts right now. good morning. it's monday, september 3rd, happy labor day. we're on tape this morning, as we unofficially close out the summer, but we have a packed two hours ahead of our recent interviews with top news makers from former cabinet officials to retired leaders of the intel community. we sat down with michael hayden, leon panetta, john brennan, jay johnson and madeleine albright. >> and the russian investigation, the u.s. relationship with nato and the trump administration's threat to pull security clearances from some of those people we just mentioned. first