my thanks to jennifer and mike murphy and reverend al sharpton. you guys are awesome for doing this. thank you for being here. have a great weekend. that does it for this hour. catching the wave, let's play hardball. good friday evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. it's been three days since tuesday's referendum on the president, and the blue wave keeps growing, swamping more and more republicans. house democrats needed only 23 new seats, and are now looking to win almost twice as many. meanwhile, they may be in on their way to another seat in the u.s. senate. there's surprising hope for senates in four contests where votes are still being counted. in arizona, kyrsten sinema, who was behind when we signed off

tuesday night has taken the lead over republican martha mcsally. in florida, governor rick scott's lead over senator bill nelson is down from 56,000 votes to just 15,000 votes, well within the margin that could force, would force a recount. the florida governor's race between democratic andrew gillum and republican ron desantis also now within the threshold for a recount. in georgia, democrat stacey abrams is also hoping to force a runoff, while republicans lashed out trying to spread doubt about the electoral counts by claiming fraud. here's governor scott accusing democrats of, you got it, stealing the election. >> we've all seen the incompetence and irregularities in broward and palm beach again. i will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the great people of florida. >> liberals. president trump on a flight to france today took shots at the

democrats advances tweeting nine times about the three states that are still in contention. for the very latest i'm joined by steve kornacki, nbc national political correspondent. i can't believe we're still on election night, but here we are election night friday. >> and chris, i'll tell you, it really does feel like an election night. as you were giving us that introduction, we just got a giant batch of new votes i can tell you about in that arizona senate race. about 80,000 just came in, and you can see what it's done to the race here. these are from maricopa county. this was just announced in the last two minutes. keir simmo kyrsten sinema. her lead was 10,000 votes, it is now 22,000 votes because of this new batch that just came in. they are from maricopa county, biggest county in the state by far, around phoenix. the margin, i'm just looking at the math to see exactly what happened. it was about 54,000 new votes

that came in for kyrsten sinema and about 32,000 new votes that came in for martha mcsally. what's happening here, chris, is arizona is a heavy mail in voting state. what they have been counting over the last couple of days in maricopa in particular are ballots that were mailed last weekend, you know, a couple days before the election, and the expectation had been that they would favor sinema a little. i think they're favoring her more than was expected. there are still, even with this batch of votes we just got, there are still probably about 375,000 votes in arizona yet to be counted. again, a lot of them from maricopa county. now, republicans are saying they hope that the final batch, which are going to be ballots people dropped off at the polling place on election day might favor mcsally, but she's starting to fall behind thin this race, andt might get to a place where there

aren't many votes that are favorable to her. >> what about florida? what's going on there? a lot of us have been trying to figure out what goes on with broward county and why it's friday night, and we're still counting? >> yeah, so this is the deal. in the senate race right heerre the margin is as you can see, nelson is a little less than 15,000 votes behind rick scott. you can see this is 2/10 of a point. if it's less than a quarter of a percent, it will automatically trigger not just a recount, but a manual recount. this means they're not running them through the machines. they're also going to take them out and examine them by hand. it's that close. we expect between now and tomorrow, tomorrow night the deadline for these counties to finalize their counts. we do expect there are provisional ballots from around the state that are going to be counted. expect them to favor nelson. probably going to net him a couple thousand more votes. that should shrink a little but may still be behind rick scott there going into the recount.

broward you mentioned, though, this is very interesting because obviously huge county, 2 million people live here. hugely democratic county. here's the thing they have found, in this senate race in florida, about 25,000 fewer votes were cast in the senate race than in the governor's race. people got the same ballot and on 25,000 ballots or so there was just no marking on the senate race, and what it appears happened here is that the design of the ballot in broward county essentially took that senate race and buried it in the lower left corner of the ballot. you had a big long instruction column. the senate race was down here. meanwhile, the governor's race is squarely in the middle, top of the page, widely spaced out, and so did about 25,000 people in this county of 2 million, this heavily democratic county at 2 million, did they just miss the senate race? that could potentially when you look at how nelson is winning broward here, if those 25,000 -- we didn't see any like this in

any other county in the state, if those 25,000 had voted at that rate, you're talking 8, 10,000 extra votes for nelson that he would net in a race where right now again statewide less than 15,000. >> it reminds me of those old days when people down in palm beach county who had no reason to like pat buchanan's politics voted for pat by accident because of the crazy ballot. >> that butterfly ballot. >> even buchanan said they were not votes for me. they were votes for gore. >> it's nice to hear honesty, even in the crudest form. thank you so much. amazing work this week. i'm joined now by an election law specialist who's associated with the bill nelson campaign in florida. and of course susan delpercio. thank you all. ron, you start. briefly, we could probably spend a year trying to figure out -- by the way my question, a real simple question, why can't the whole country have one measure of voting, one type of machine.

we can all be taught like mr. rogers when we're 8 years old, all taught how to vote, and everybody votes the same way. it's all counted the same way. it's all an paper, and there's no more of this crapola every election where we're trying to figure out what's going on on tuesday on friday? your thoughts is it ever going to happen? >> if only we could have one machine and one uniform system countrywide, it would certainly make things more efficient. look, the florida law gives supervisors of elections, 67 of them around the state until noon tomorrow to turn in their first unofficial votes. so the fact that we haven't yet got to a final vote point, it's disappointing to those of us who want instant gratification to know who is the winner and who is the loser, but the fact is the system allows for a deliberate counting process so that everybody's vote is counted. that's what's so important and

critical here. the delay isn't anything other than a desire by the supervisors to make sure that all votes are counted and counted properly. >> is there a category of votes that don't get counted on election day by nature because they're overseas or whatever? >> well, we have overseas ballots that come in later. we have a lot of ballots that are being contested as well. florida has a requirement in the law for signature matches for vote by mail ballots or for provisional ballots, and there are no standards for determining whether signatures match. so there are literally tens of thousands of ballots that have been rejected. we submit arbitrarily by supervisors of elections that need to be counted. these are people who voted properly and depending on where you live, your vote might be counted or it might not be counted. that's another source of the delay. we'll go into the recount

tomorrow when the first official, unofficial results are tendered. we're going to go into a machine recount, and that could very well further alter the results because all of the under votes and over votes will be segreg e segregated out by the tabulating equipment, and if was earlier mentioned we're less than a quarter of a percent difference between the two candidates, those over votes and under votes will then be physically examined by the canvassing teams to determine whether there's some voter intent that can be gleaned. this election is not over yet. the statutes contemplate a deliberate process to maximize the number of ballots that are counted. now, if you're ahead in the polling, obviously you don't want to do anything that might change that result. those are the kind of delay tactics and fear tactics we hear from the people such as governor scott who are right now marginally up in the election. he doesn't want these processes to unfold because it might result in a different result. >> of course we understand that.

thank you so much ron meyer for your expertise. i want to bring in jason and susan now. it is such a nostalgic moment in the negative say, because you know, 18 years ago and my favorite thing we ever covered around here was the recount in florida. you'd see people looking up at these ballots, and the person who was from al gore said that's a good one. the person who was for george w. said that's no good. >> you'd think we would have learned something since high school. we should be more advanced. part of the issue here is that there's no uniformity even within the states. within the states there should be some uniformity about how the ballots operate. >> the design of the ballots. >> even the design of the ballots or the language. >> why would they put the senate vote down at the left-hand corner. >> and hide it when those are the two races driving the top of the ticket. >> that's what bothers me about what rick scott is doing or what we see brian kemp is doing in georgia. we have got to find a way, i hope whatever people get into office find a way to keep these

elected officials from toying with and mocking with elections that they're on the line for. rick scott shouldn't be threatening to send in cops. >> speaking of which, even before the election last weekend, we're into this weekend, last weekend brian kemp, the secretary of state of georgia who wants the other job of being the candidate for governor was claiming fraud there. he was saying there was hacking into the system by the democrats, and now we have the governor of florida, also the candidate for the united states senate in florida claiming voter fraud down there because the democrats want the count to continue until it's done? >> well, here's the funny thing. just so you know on that recount, if they move to a hand count in florida, they have to be separate counts for governor and then a separate count for senate, so at least two hand counts may be in play, which is also mind boggling. i think what we see here is something that happens when elections are close. republicans have called for a

recount. democrats call for a recount. when it's this close because we know it can come down to a couple of hundred votes. we should not be -- as a country, we should be supporting everyone who voted. people took the time, people took the energy. we had a lot of new voters out there and we have systems that are changing as well. states are diameteriadapting tos and regulations as far as absentee ballots. here in new york we had more paper jams because our ballots were double sided and we had a third sheet that we had to look at. it's crazy. >> let me ask you about the week and how it looks now. mid evening tuesday night we had somebody come on the show and said no way. but then wait a minute, the democrats might get twice the votes they needed. they may get up to over 40 potentially now still, and of course they're still picking away at the senate. they got another senate seat, they look like they have a good shot at it in arizona. the two women out west, arizona

and nevada both won, that's potential and in florida even when it looked pretty dismal election night, the fight's going on. >> it's a slow moving wave. it's almost like a caravan. it's moving very slow. here's the thing i think -- >> you devil. >> the republicans need to understand, it's like this is why i said this is a wave, and this is why this is dangerous. all of this happened, all of these seats state houses flipped, the midwest, which i've been saying all along, these governor's races were so key. >> that was trump's victory area. >> exactly. people have to recognize this happened with great unemployment. this happened under a great economy. in 2020 if this economy is not doing as well as it is now, republicans are in trouble. >> did you notice that people are like we didn't even cover these races, they were such sweeps, way before we started counting election night, there were people like bobby casey in pennsylvania by like 10 points. sherrod brown another big victory, they all swept re-election in the states that had gone for trump, and nobody even talked about it because it was a foregone conclusion. then of course the marginal

cases came through. i'm wondering whether we miss add big part of the story in not counting all those democratic victories in the midwest and northeast. >> they certainly were tremendous. when we look at polls in the media, we see the horse race. when we look at polls in a campaign, we are continstantly looking for gettable votes. there were only the tried and true turnout model of midterm voters, base voters. that's all we could get. the democrats saw that if they could get their message out, they could reach new voters. they could reach nontraditional midterm voters, and that's where the energy went, and that's really where i think all of us kind of missed seeing this wave coming is the amount of increased participation with new and nontraditional midterm voters. >> also, i think that democrats being people that fall in love rather than fall in line, they

do work with their hearts and there was so much heart in those races that gillum would win, that abrams would win, that beto would win in texas. these were long shots. they were heavenly hopes, and because they didn't win with their heavenly hopes, at least not yet in florida and georgia, it wasn't a great night, but by any normal standard when you pick up twice the number of seats and take over the house of representatives and the power to set tax law and protect social security, medicaid, medicare and obamacare, all that power comes from controlling the pursestrings of the federal government, all won on tuesday night. thank you very much, ron meyer, jason johnson, and susan dellpercio. >> coming up, have we met? looks like donald trump knew matt whitaker before he didn't know matt whitaker. why is trump covering up his ties to the new acting attorney general? plus, the nra bashes the medical community for labeling firearms a public health risk. tell that to the shooting victims' families. president trump said he had nothing to do with those hush

money payments to those women who said he had affairs with him. federal prosecutors said he has evidence he was up to it to his neck. and michelle obama says she'll never forgive donald trump for putting her family at risk with all that crazy birther charge about her husband being born over in kenya. this is "hardball" where the action is. hey, no big deal. you've got a good record and liberty mutual won't hold a grudge by raising your rates over one mistake. you hear that, karen? liberty mutual doesn't hold grudges. how mature of them! for drivers with accident forgiveness, liberty mutual won't raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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that's it! this feud just went mobile. with xfinity xfi you get the best wifi experience at home. and with xfinity mobile, you get the best wireless coverage for your phone. ...you're about to find out! you don't even know where i live... hello! see the grinch in theaters by saying "get grinch tickets" into your xfinity x1 voice remote. a guy just dropped this off. he-he-he-he. there's no evidence of anything illegal happening in the 2016 election related to the trump campaign. >> the truth is there was no collusion with the russians and the trump campaign. >> i just don't see that there is a, you know, criminal or a political, you know, most likely an impeachment case to be made against the president. >> welcome back to "hardball."

that was matt whitaker in 2017 not too long ago defending a subject of the federal investigation that he now oversees as trump's acting attorney general saying that there's no case, criminal or otherwise to be made against this president. statements like those are fueling outrage over the president's decision to pick this obscure loyalist who's never been confirmed by the senate for any job to effectively hijack the special counsel's probe. now the president's trying to contain the damage. in a feeble attempt to distance himself from his hand picked attorney general, trump today claimed five times that he didn't know matt whitaker at all. >> i don't know matt whitaker. matt whitaker works for jeff sessions. i didn't know matt whitaker. now, in all fairness to matt whitaker, who, again, i didn't know. matt whitaker is a highly respected man, but i didn't know matt whitaker. >> he sure knows his name. anyway, the problem for trump is that less than a month ago he specifically said he did know

matt whitaker. >> i can tell you, matt whitaker's a great guy. i mean, i know matt whitaker. >> let's watch that again, trump today followed by trump last month. >> i don't know matt whitaker. >> but i can tell you matt whitaker is a great guy. i mean, i know matt whitaker. >> oh, those damn tapes. trump's attempt to cover up his relationship with whitaker was further undercut but by a new report breaking tonight. vox is reporting that during whitaker's time as chief of staff to sessions he privately provided advice to the president last year on how the white house might be able to pressure the justice department to investigate the president's political adversaries, and one story says whitaker committed to extract as much as he could from the justice department on the president's behalf. he was the president's wartime con sill area ree. joining me now is eric swalwell, heidi is the national political

correspondent for nbc news, glenn kirschner is a former federal prosecutor. what do you make of the president basically lying saying he didn't know the guy he just picked? why'd he just pick this guy? >> same reason he picked kavanaugh. >> so he did know him? >> yeah, he knew him. he knew what he wanted to do, what he had said in prior conversations. he hired a hitman to take out the mueller investigation. if this had happened on monday, we were powerless in the house. but this happened on wednesday. we're not powerless anymore. the voters sent a democratic majority to put a check on these abuses of power. >> so just like in the -- he waited for mom to die before he killed fredo. >> this is frightening what he's doing. this is broad daylight hijacking. he's taken over basically the supervision of the investigation of himself. >> none of us are surprised we see the president contradicting himself. i thought we were going to come

in here this evening and talk about how many conflicts whitaker has, whether it's representing sam clovis, whether it's the reckless statements he makes. when i look at this through the eyes of a career prosecutor, when somebody takes a position there is no evidence of russian collusion, he hasn't seen a shred of evidence. he wasn't embedded in the mueller investigation. i think all of those things he would have presented to the professional responsibility office to see whether he had conflicts that would mean he needed to be recused, and i think they would have recommended recusal. >> they're not going to recuse this guy. he's there to do it. >> now we have to move so far beyond that with this vox report that just broke that says according to multiple sources that whitaker is sneaking over basically two timing on the department of justice employees, sneaking over to the oval office and advising the president, whispering in his ear here is how we can go against your enemies and distract from the mueller investigation. well, guess what? with the president standing up and saying i don't even know

him, if this report is accurate and he was in the oval office a dozen times and he was on one on one phone calls with the president, guess what, whitaker is now at a minimum a witness in the mueller probe, maybe a subject, and you know what? maybe they're all conspiring. >> an old question -- >> that's covered everything. >> he covered everything. >> no, no, there's another part here. >> okay. >> where was sleepy jeff sessions during the time that his chief of staff was working to undercut and replace him? >> the question is if he knew. according to this vox report, he was actually two-timing to use the word a mole. working to pressure rosenstein and sessions in house and advising the president as to how to do it. so this is a step -- look, this is way beyond anything that jeff sessions did that, you know, demanded a recusal. this is actually trying to use -- showing that he was willing to use the justice department for the president's own political ends. >> the difference is they're all coming to congress now.

before they would have got a free pass. now they're going to have to come to congress and explain what their contacts were, what pledges they made to the president. it's not a free pass anymore. >> someone was calling me saying you're always dumping on democrats but not giving them any thoughts. i have a thought, can't you just ask whitaker under oath what has your contact been with the president? >> absolutely. that will happen if he lasts that long. >> all this comes as cnn reports that there's a growing sense of concern inside the white house over the negative reaction to matthew whitaker. senior officials say they were surprised by the criticism and believe it could potentially jeopardize whitaker's chance s s of remaining at the post. that part i don't believe. just knowing the media, you put this guy in there as the president's mole, and now he's going to be acting attorney general? >> the question at this point to the congressman's point is what are the levers right? i talked with some lawyers who are looking at their options right now.

they do believe this is unquestionably unconstitutional to circumvent the advice and powers of congress. the question is they're going to be all over him like glue. whatever his first move is that they can find some kind of a plaintiff or a person with cause, that's kind of the legalistic terms, they'll be going after him. it's not a question of if. was a question of when. >> the president now has 53, maybe 4 senators coming in in january, right? >> that's right. >> he doesn't need the two women that seem to have problems with him on issues of choice and other issues but he's got a little padding there. can he confirm a guy like chrisicalchris christ christie? >> no. >> a guy that will do what he wants. >> i don't think he can confirm someone who won't allow the mueller investigation to continue. >> what the republicans said is a condition, we'll make you a.g. at the president's request, we'll advise and consent, but you have to promise under oath now that you will not dump this

probe. >> the reason i think so is there were 900 protests yesterday. in the next election it's much worse for them. there's a lot of senators that are going to give real pause. >> they don't need a single democrat. that's a good question to ask. >> let me ask you about the legality. any way that the mechanics within the department of justice can throw out this presidential ri ringer? >> i don't know that they can throw him out. if the professional office of professional responsibility, the ethics officers say you are confli conflicted, you must recuse, i don't think he can survive that and continue to fumble forward, particularly given these revelations. look, we all know that the white house doesn't vet the background of anybody whether it's scaramucci or dr. ronny jackson. i predict, chris, that whitaker's tenure as the acting attorney general may be shorter as scaramuccis as communications

director. >> you keep fumbling the ball, losing the control of the ball and grabbing it further down field. trump's attempt to mislead reporters about his relationship with whitaker puts all his claims about whitaker in doubt including this claim about the russia probe. >> i didn't speak to matt whitaker about it. i don't know matt whitaker. >> does the president get in trouble for lying? >> eventually. >> trump also had this to say when asked if he expected whitaker to rein in mueller? >> do you expect matt whitaker to be involved in the russia probe? >> that's up to him. >> do you want him to rein in robert mueller? >> what a stupid question that is. what a stupid question. >> that's nice talk. >> a little defensive. >> the question was do you expect him to rein in mueller.

>> we're going to prevent that. again, the days of them just getting away with this stuff are over. it's not going to happen. >> starting january 3rd. >> we have a budget battle coming and we're going to insist on protecting miller if they want democratic votes. >> can you insist that he fund more? >> mueller is funded through next september, i believe. >> you didn't have to issue the comey oath of loyalty oath there because there was all of this, you know, footage of him on tv, whitaker on tv showing that he was loyal. >> he auditioned for this job. >> the vox reporting is that he not only met several times in the oval office but had one on one conversations, phone conversations with whitaker as well. >> and i think the answer to the question do you want the mueller investigation to be reined in, his answer, that's a stupid question. you're stupid. mueller is hearing that as consciousness of guilt. the answer is of course i want it reined in. why do you think i just appointed whitaker. >> i'm not sure that's what he

wanted us to hear, but you heard it and others will. thank you. up next, there's a battle brewing after the nra warnings doctors to stay in their lane over gun control. doctors, the ones that save lives when they come in with the shootings. this is "hardball" where the action is. n the last decade. n the last decade. allstate is adapting. with drones to assess home damage sooner. and if a flying object damages your car, you can snap a photo and get your claim processed in hours, not days. plus, allstate can pay your claim in minutes. now that you know the truth... are you in good hands?

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my son was in las vegas with a lot of his friends skp, and h came home. he didn't come home last night, and i don't want prayers. i don't want thoughts. i want gun control, and i hope to god nobody else sends me any more prayers. i want gun control. no more guns. >> that's powerful, and it's true and it's a mother. that was a call for gun control from the mother of a victim of wednesday's mass shooting at thousand oaks california. the united states has had 307 mass shootings, classified as more than four people shot since the start of 2018. we're on the 313th day of 2018. that's almost one a day.

earlier this year, the nra tweeted an article criticized the american college of physicians for publishing guidelines on gun violence, which they describe as a public health crisis. the nra wrote someone should tell self-important anti-gun doctors to stay in their lane. there's a swift response to that from doctors. one doctor, the director of emergency surgeries at johns hopkins university ask a survivor of gun violence tweeted, i cannot believe the audacity of the nra to make such ady visive statement. we take care of these patients every day. where are they when i'm having to tell families their loved ones died? >> luckily i've only been watching it on television over the years. you have to walk into that waiting room at the hospital. >> let me first say thank you very much for having me. you know, that communication and that rhetoric that we've heard from the nra is a clear

demonstration to myself, the medical community and frankly americans across this country that they are not serious about moving the needle forward on this issue. and the reality is i have to walk into that waiting room and sometimes when i look at the faces of those mothers, sisters, fathers, brothers, i realize that what i'm about to do is rock their world. i'm about to change their life, and i often think of my own experience and what my family must have thought as that surgeon came out to talk to them, and that's something -- >> you were shot? >> yes, sir, yeah. >> what was that circumstance? >> i was a 17-year-old high school student, and it was after a high school football game, and i got hit in the throat with a.38 caliber bullet, and you know, at the age of 17, i don't know how you were, but most 17-year-olds, they have no idea what they're going to do the rest of their life, and that really inspired me, inspired me

to go into medicine, inspired me to become a trauma surgeon and figure out how do we work at that intersection of medicine, public health and public policy. >> when i hear the politicians talk, some of the evangelicals, they're talking about your second amendment rights like as if it's somehow important to your life. you deal with the physical reality of taking bullets out of people brains right? >> as a surgeon you have to try to save the lives of the people whose lives are not saveable. >> chris, this is an important point. we are facing in this country a public health crisis, and frankly, this is not a democratic issue. it's it's not a republican issue. this is an american issue. >> other countries, japanese, the british, the french, they don't have 350 murders a year. >> that's exactly right. >> in their whole countries they don't have it. >> you're right, this is why this is a unique american problem. until we start dealing with this like a public health crisis,

we're still not going to be able to move the needle forward, and when you look at that statement by the nra, you know, the reality is is that no single individual organization can do this by themselves. this requires a multimodal approach requiring stakeholders from all walks of life. and i'm frankly surprised because medical organizations like the american college of surgeons have engaged the nra, so for them to say that we should stay in our lane, i think is a little bit off basis, and they really need to analyze how best to move this -- >> i wonder how the supreme court does this. we all think about this. the supreme court says the right to carry a gun has nothing to do with the militia. it has nothing to do with the language of the constitution. these are glocks, this guy just plugged everybody in that room. nobody knew of such an instrument when we wrote the constitution that could do that. >> chris, i agree with that

point, but let me bring it back to what i think is critical. this is not about taking away guns. you know, folks want to make it into that discussion and polarize it. when you talk to most gun owners, we actually have a lot more in common than we have that's dissimilar, and the reality is that there is a disparity that exists between the leadership of the gun lobby and the membership. >> i hope so. >> you know what? when they say this guy who did the shooting and then shot himself, the 13th victim of his own hand, they said he was known to local authorities. you know what that story is. >> yeah, right. >> he was dangerous. they knew the problem. nobody could do anything about it under the law. thank you doctor. >> thank you for everything you do. >> thanks for having me. up next, trump has said he had nothing to do with those hush money payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. new reporting out tonight shows he actually played a central -- of course he did. now it's reported. he was approving that spending by his buddy at that newspaper.

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and playboy model karen mcdougal. the journal found that mr. trump was involved in or briefed on nearly every step of the agreements. he directed deals and phone calls and meetings with his self-described fixer michael cohen and others. trump initially denied knowing anything about the hush money payments, but walked back this claim during the summer. >> later on i knew. later on, but you have to understand, what he did and they weren't taken out of campaign finance. that's the big thing, that's a much bigger thing: did they come out of the campaign? they didn't come out of the campaign. they came from me. >> michael cohen pleaded guilty in august to charges that included campaign finance law violations relating to those payments, and he said he did it at trump's direction. let's bring in tonight's hardball round table, political correspondent for reuters, pratt is a conservative commentator, and jamal simmons, the

democratic strategist. now we know he was directing it but not only directing it but the money was coming from the guy who owns "the national inquirer" which one could argue was a campaign contribution, said they picked up the bill for him. >> the president likes to make the point the money didn't come out of his campaign. what he seems to continue to miss is ththat had money come o his -- it's the fact that it didn't come from his campaign and it wasn't disclosed by his campaign as well as the fact that the national inquirer may have been paying out money to bury stories. >> catch and kill. >> catch and kill as they called it. we know about these. they had been possibly doing this for much longer. >> as a personal favor to a guy they've invested themselves to. he was their horse in this race, and they were going to make sure he won. >> right, and i believe it was pecker who came out and said to him in that meeting how can we help you in the campaign, very

clearly campaign oriented. looking at that reporting through and through, i don't know how trump really escapes this one and the connection and how he was so involved in it. plus, i mean, these reports now about his son saying that he's fearing a possible indictment. trump has to be super on edge this week with the midterm elections, this report coming out from "the wall street journa journal". this isn't the cnn, "new york times" that he calls fake news. this is "the wall street journal," one that should be in trump's corner. >> how soon this is happening, but it is getting bigger and bigger. the president's got a lot of stuff coming at him that could cause him big criminal charges and doing everything he can to prevent that. >> i just imagine the people in mueller's shop sitting there coming across all this evidence of wrongdoing, and they're like where does this one go? maybe to the guy in new york. what about this one, and you know, so what we're discovering is that trump, which we always thought, is involved with a lot of nefarious dealings and now

we're starting to get evidence about it that probably will lead to some sort of legal -- can they indict him? that's my question. i don't know what happens with this. >> the notoriety doesn't bother him. the people have already decided they're for or against him. i do argue he paid a price for access hollywood in this campaign. >> but he can't be embarrassed. >> he paid the price. he didn't pay the price in 2016 for access hollywood. he paid the price this week in 2018. there was this notion that president trump could just defy political gravity, and i think we saw this week it caught up with him, and can keep catching up with him. >> let's go to something we haven't talked about in a while. former first lady michelle obama's blasting her husband's successor, that would be donald trump, in her memoir that's coming out next week. according to "the washington post" which has a copy of the book, and the associated press, the book's called "becoming." the former first lady denouncing president trump's birther campaign questioning her husband's american birth as

putting her family's safety at risk. this is hot stuff. the whole birther thing was crazy and mean-spirited of course. its underlying bigotry and xenophobia was hardly concealed. it was also dangerous, deliberately made to stir up the wi wingnuts and kook,s as the trump's infamous 2005 access hollywood tape where he brags about women, her body buzzed with fury when she saw that. he criticizes trump for how he appeared to stalk hillary clinton in one of those 2016 election debates describing trump's message as quote, i can hurt you and get away with it. wow. when he comes in around behind her there, the really gruesome stuff here. ashley. that is a creepo. >> yeah, i think a lot of what he has done has been that word right there, creepo. when you look at these affairs, the scandals, how he talks about women, calling dr. christine

blasey ford uncredible and going out there and making fun of her, making fun of people with special needs at his rallies. the stuff that he does is not fitting of a president of the united states, and i think we've known that for a very long time, and michelle obama is highlighting things that i think the american people know and rebuked, obviously this past week by sending a democratic congress in and specifically female legislators. >> jamal, will he fight back? will he dare to take on michelle obama? >> it's very hard to take on michelle obama. most normal politicians you'd say absolutely not. even today, though, trump flipped. he started going after barack obama instead of michelle obama because it's a really tough thing. >> the military? >> he had to have something. he believes in always attacking. he found the thing he could attack on. >> she said she was worried about her family. >> she put a human face on this thing that was so -- it's so compassionate, and people love michelle obama. i think it's hurtful. >> round table team, and up next these three will tell me

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we're back with the "hardball" roundtable. tell me something i don't know. >> donald trump had $35 million in his re-election campaign and for comparison, barack obama started his re-election campaign at the same point in his administration with $2.3 million in his account. >> he's more -- >> he's got a lot of cash already squirreled away. >> ashley? >> being from the great state of new hampshire, i have heard a lot of rumblings that senator kelly ayotte is now being considered on the short list for attorney general. >> attorney general? >> along with pam bondy. two key states in elections and two states that trump very much cares about, new hampshire and florida -- >> i thought she was going to get u.n. ambassador. >> now there's a lot of discussion about her around ag and the operatives i've been talking to are saying she's been very closed off to media lately

so that could be something right there. >> i think she'll be very successful whatever she gets. jamal? >> a lot of democrats are upset or feeling a little down about what happened on tuesday to the two darling candidates for governor in georgia and florida, but what we haven't been hearing about are the two lieutenant governor candidates, african-americans, gilchrist in michigan and barnes in wisconsin who are now lieutenant governors -- >> they won. >> they won. so we got two african-american who are poised for state leadership and perhaps more than that -- and they're both young, 35 and 31. they're young guys. >> that's exactly what i want this segment to be about. just blow our minds with things we completely overlooked. thank you all. we'll be right back.

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trump watch friday november 9th, 2018. what a week it has been for the democrats. they went in to it hoping to win just 23 seats to control the house of representatives and they end up with winning almost twice that number, up to 40 seats they might win this week. think of how these victories changed the political reality in this country. instead of issuing orders to a congress marching in lock step, trump now faces a world in which he has no power to effect tax policy, no power to cut entitlements like social security, medicare and medicaid and thanks to what senator mitch mcconnell said yesterday, a total surrender on obamacare. trump himself is unlikely to admit defeat, he never does. the house of congress where tax and spending decisions originate, the holder of the country's purse strings, the people's house, the house of representatives is now in the secure hands of the democratic opposition. let's see how trump gets used to

that fact. its "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. tonight on all in. >> whoa! i didn't know what happened. >> bombshell reporting from the "the wall street journal." >> when it comes time for the financing which will be -- >> what financing? >> tonight, the new report that the president of the united states himself directed a criminal conspiracy to help get himself elected. >> we'll have to pay cash. >> no, no, no. >> then, i can tell you matt whitaker's a great guy. i know matt whitaker. >> the president caught pretending he doesn't know the man he appointed to oversee the mueller. >> matt whitaker, i don't know matt whitaker. >> and the growing bipartisan fears over what matt whitaker is up to. >> do you want him to rein in robert mueller? >> what a stupid question? >> all that and the fight to count all the votes