we're out of time. "hardball" is up next. case for collusion. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. a potentially explosive new report today could show a crucial new link between the trump campaign and the russian conspiracy to subvert the 2016 election. it's raising serious questions now about two primary figures in the collusion probe. trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort and wikileaks

founder julian assange who released russian-hacked e-mails to wreak havoc on the clinton campaign in 2016. today the british newspaper "the guardian" reported that according to their sources, paul manafort held secret talks with julian assange inside the ecuadorian embassy in london where assange has been living in asylum since 2010. according to this report the meetings took place during three separate visits in 2013, 2015, and in the spring of 2016 reportedly around march. that's the same month manafort officially joined the trump campaign. nbc news has not independently verified "the guardian"'s story, however, if true, the report would link manafort to this key intermediary in the russia conspiracy during a crucial time frame. russia had already hacked the dnc by the time manafort met with assange in 2016. russia was also in the process of hacking the e-mail account of

clinton campaign chairman john podesta. three months later in june of 2016, wikileaks communicated with russian hackers and began releasing stolen e-mails in july. manafort released a statement today through his spokesman saying this story is totally false and deliberately libelous. i have never met julian assange or anyone connected to him. i have reached out to assange or wikileaks on any matter. we are considering all legal options. likewise wikileaks tweeted they are, quote, willing to bet "the guardian" $1 million and the editor's head that manafort never met assange. well, this comes on the heels of last night's bombshell news that manafort's deal with the special counsel is kaput. incorporates say that despite agreeing to cooperate in change for a lighter sentence, manafort violated his plea grammy by lying to the fbi on a variety of subject matters. i'm joined by betsy woodruff.

white house correspondent with pbs news hour, ellie williams, and justice department official. and tom winter in new york. i want to start with elliott on this. what is the potential damage here. we've been trailing this. i'm one of those who believe if mueller gets collusion, that's the home run. that's where he has to go. nice to get obstruction, but that's the one people that might turn the republicans even. >> signs are increasingly pointed to it. what these guys all have in common is they seem to not tell the truth and they seem to have doek connections to assange. manafort has gotten himself in a heap of trouble with a much bigger sentence and potentially things that could come up against him in court. so yes, this is definitely pointing there, and this is a lot of liability for all these folks. >> tom, give us a sense from this. put the jigsaw puzzle together. if you can show a connection

between manafort, the chairman of the campaign, when he went to work for trump, bringing this russian connection with him, i mean, looked like i got my bag here candidate, mr. candidate, i have something that's going to blow hillary out of the water here. go ahead. >> yeah, i think, chris, the timing of this is going to be very power of attorney. to your point, we haven't verified it. same with julian assange. but we're in a bit -- feels like we're coming to a point, chris, with respect to the wikileaks business. you have jerome correspondsy doing interviews with my colleague, we've seen draft documents shared with him as far as what he would be charged with and what he allegedly did. we have obviously a lot of news about roger stone and associates of him, and it's really the one thing that robert mueller in his indictment so far hasn't touched on, which is wikileaks specifically, and specifically john podesta's e-mails. a lot of people are forgetting here, chris, that they were several hacks that occurred. there was the hack of the dnc and everything that happened with bernie sanders and debbie

wasserman schultz and things you talked about extensively at the time. but there's an entirely separate hack. the john podesta hack was not tied to dnc. it was a hack of his gmail account. you pointed this out smartly in the time line, that happened around the time this alleged meeting occurred between manafort and assange in london. so you have a lot of smoke here and we're going to have to follow what comes out in court documents and comes out after last night, mueller's team promised us they would be filing some sort of an update to the court as far as those crimes and lies. that was the quote in those documents last night that you showed earlier, that manafort is alleged to have committed as far as this cooperation phase so we're going to find out exactly what it is that he may have been untruthful about. and then we'll really get a sense of what this is all about, chris. >> we're going to put this all together. as tom mentioned, jerome corsi who walked away from a plea deal facing potentially imminent

indictment for lying to prosecutors about his own involvement with assange and wikileaks. today he provided nbc news with draft documents from the special counsel's office that summarize some of the evidence mueller has gathered against jerome corsi. former trump adviser told stone in a july 2016 e-mail to, quote, get to assange and get the wikileaks e-mails whach. what more do you want? he made it clear to stone that an attempt to contact wikileaks could put them in investigators' cross hair but mueller's team said that was a lie. i'm going to start with betsy, all of you. i know roger stone a long time. he specializes in the dark arts. he's really good at getting it. here he is with his friend jerome corsi, and you have manafort. he was a business partner with

stone for years in washington. all this connected with with a guys are good at digging up dirt. and then we find out they're dealing with assange and wikileaks and the russians ultimately, and all this got to us as voters and as commentators, as news reporters, during the campaign. we were hearing about podesta, we were hearing about, you know, the commentators and little notes and embarrassments and stuff. why are we hearing about it? why was it making hillary's campaign look bad? because these guys were all involved with doing it. we're getting to the belly of the beast here, i think. >> podesta's e-mails didn't just come out during the campaign. they came out a mere few hours after the "access hollywood" tape that caught donald trump on camera talking about allegedly sexually assaulting women was released. >> not alleging. claiming to. >> exactly. commenting about it. >> more about that at the ended of show, by the way. >> and the timing of the e-mails could not have been more helpful for the trump campaign. as soon as that tape dropped,

somebody in wikileaks knew that this bombshell, this collection of bombshells or bombs they were setting on needed to get injected into the news. >> gist to remind everybody and pleist, trump was not winning this campaign through the summer. it looked like really close, until election night that hillary was going to win. so he needed a long ball, a hail mary pass. he needed some really good dirt. looks like he got some. >> what's telling about some of these e-mails we're talking about is there's literally -- i want to read it because it's one shortly-timed for after i come back and one timed for october 2nd, planned to be very damaging. we don't have to really ask whether or not they were doing this because they wanted to have the timing. it's literally in the e-mail that robert mueller has. it's a red flag that says, hey, this is when we're going to drop this. we're going to do this right now and make sure hillary looks weak and we're going to hurt her campaign. i mean, as a reporter, i remember going through these

wikileaks dumps and thinking now they're going to be in trouble because some of the stuff was normal political banter, but it looked so bad because we only got it from the hillary clinton side. >> we're looking at this big wall and trying to figure out a sentence like wheel of fortune. we're seeing the meeting with manafort and hearing about corsi and they knew ahead of time about what the russian dump was going to look like from our friend at the ambassadembassy. we are getting a picture here. so the question of the hour. >> let's hear it. this isn't wheel of fortune, this is wheels of guys who can't get their stories straight. >> no, this is the kinds of e-mails and the kinds of evidence that makes prosecutors salivate when they see guys talking about their friend in

the embassy and literally -- >> talking in that language. >> talking in that skplalanguag the day in which they're going to take an e-mail dump. mueller has over evidence to corroborate it too. last time, i was sort of i don't know, this is getting more and more obvious as to how clear what the evidence has. >> i love how they say i figured it out. anyway, according to the documents that jerome corsi provided to nbc news today, the special counsel can show that corsi wrote stone in early august predicting what wikileaks would do next, referring to assange. of course he wrote, word is friend in embassy plans the only two more dumps, one shortly after i'm back, 2nd in october. what more do you want? the e-mail suggests that corsi was familiar with the timing and the content of the russian hacked e-mails that assange would eventually release. they knew it all ahead of time. guess how.

however, he's how corsi explained to nbc news how he came to have advanced knowledge of assange's plan. >> it was speculation. it was deduction. i just happened to be right. i said to myself, if i had these e-mails i'd use them as the october surprise. why did i think they were going to come out serially, drip by drip, because assange is very strategic. he understands the news cycle. and he had some 50,000 e-mails. >> the oracle of delphi. he sees the future. tom, what do you make of this defense based on my alternatebi tell the future? >> i saved all of my e-mails from all these various leagues as they came out from that summer in 2016. in going back and looking at those today, i remember we were all surprised. the fact that the dnc was hacked and then eventually we saw that information, we knew the dnc was hacked because of their own disclosures ahead of that

information becoming public in july of 2016. what we did not know, what nobody knew, was that john podesta was hacked at that point. maybe u.s. intelligence, maybe u.s. government knew at that time, but publicly none of us knew that, chris. so for them to all of a sudden just come out and say, well, podesta is going to be the guy in the barrel to say he's the next one that's going to be next, who would have thought john podesta was going to be the next person that was going to come up? another thing i want to point out, they were talking a lot in these e-mails. you talked about one on screen. i can they talk about how bad it's going to be for the foundation. some people are trying to say clearly they didn't know it was podesta because they're talking about the foundation. not so fast. going back and looking at those e-mails from john podesta, he was the chairman of the clinton foundation at that point. and his e-mails go back to 2008. i remember going through and reading a lot of them.

one of the reasons why i read through them because i thought we would get information on the foundation and get a bit of a better understanding of it. so it's very possible it was communicated to these guys whether it was by assange or by somebody else saying, hey, we've got podesta's e-mails, but remember, this was while he was chairman of the clinton foundation. there's going to be some stuff in there. those are two really important things we need to keep in mind as we go forward in the next couple of days and start to report this out. >> i want to go ahead. this is the long ball here. if we're getting this information through a polaroid and the whole thing with wikileaks and the russian hacking and the dnc, all this dirt on hillary being filtered out by the trump campaign, how does whitaker hide this? how does he deep six a report like this from american history? it has happened and it will be clear to us by the time they decide the report has happened there was collusion.

how can he bury it? >> i don't think he can not only because we have this out in the public. we have these specific e-mails out in the public, you also have the democrats who are now in control of the house who will be happy to pull bob mueller for any reason if he's fired and say give us all the stuff you have. >> they can grab anything they know exists. >> essentially you can start subpoenaing people, what do you know and what what can you tell us. >> there's is no burp bag at whitaker's office? >> i don't think they're going to be able to do that. >> thank you, betsy woodruff, elliott whims. more on this particular question. the mueller investigation deepens. trump continues to lash out on twitter u calling ate phony witch-hunt. what's the president afraid of? probably what we were gist talking about. plus foreman hud secretary

and potential 2020 candidate julian castro talks about the speculating situation at the border. we're less than one hour away from the polls closing in good ole mississippi. will trump's last-minute efforts help push the republican to victory? this is the tough one for you, mr. president. mississippi. democrats have got to learn how to brag. are you listening, al gore? this is "hardball" where the action is. check out the united explorer card. savin' on this! savin' on this! savin' in here. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. she pretty much lives in her favorite princess dress. but once a week i let her play sheriff so i can wash it. i use tide to get out those week old stains and downy to get it fresh and soft. you are free to go. tide and downy together.

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this, to discredit the special counsel's probe. he tweeted, quote, the phony witch-hunt continues, but mueller and his gang of angry dems are only looking at one side, not the other. wait until it comes out how horribly and viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer, i guess, told reporters that there was a joint defense agreement with paul manafort that allowed lawyers access to confidential information. since the beginning of his investigation, robert mueller, a decorated vietnam veteran has delivered charges against 32 people, including 26 russians now. four of those charged have direct ties to the 2016 campaign. they are, of course, michael flynn, paul manafort, george papadopoulos, and rick gates who pled guilty to various charges. jackie speier, member of the house intelligence committee, and daniel goldman for the

southern district of new york. let me go to the congresswoman. we just spent about 15 minutes talking about the latest developments, the "guardian" newspaper reports that be mafrpt pet with julian assange three times, including a critical meeting apparently in march of 2016 about the time he went to work for the trump campaign at about the time we were getting the podesta stuff that came out and the hacking by the russians, and right before the dnc stuff was coming out from the russians. it's all starting to paint a picture of collusion between the people around trump, including roger stone and jerome corsi and paul manafort, et cetera, et cetera, and the russians. your thoughts. >> i think it's also suggesting that manafort may have even committed treason when all is said and done. i mean, this is all becoming very clear. the president became manic with his tweets after he submitted

his answers to questions by the special counsel, and i'm beginning to wonder if there were answers that he gave that now would suggest that maybe he wasn't being as truthful as he should have been. clearly manafort has been not at all reluctant to continue to lie after he cut a deal with the special counsel, and he's seeking a pardon. what he doesn't appreciate is that he still has state court to deal with as well. >> let's talk about the federal issue. the congresswoman is right, of course. susan page is a top reporter. she said if you accept life in prisonment, at his age, that's no way to end your life, 15, 20 years behind bars with the wrong people you don't want to hang out with. why would you take that, which he seems to have chosen by choosing to lie rather than tell the truth and get out in two or

three years? unless he's facing horrible danger from abroad or he's hoping for a pardon. either extreme it seems to me at this point? >> i think you're assuming he's a rational actor, and that may be a mistake. someone like paul manafort who came in lied for so long, thinks he can pull one on everyone, including prosecutors. the most likely scenario is paul manafort wanted to minimize his own conduct. the congresswoman just referenced treason. we don't quite know exactly the extent of paul manafort's international connections, what he was doing during the campaign, but bob mueller certainly has a good indication of it, and paul manafort would have to admit to all of his additional criminal conduct as part of cooperating, and he may have to plead guilty to more conduct. he might be trying to avoid that by minimizing his conduct. so i understand the pardon rationale, which i don't buy.

if he wanted a pardon, he shouldn't have. >> let me start with the congresswoman. everything trump's been saying lately and his surrogate, rudy giuliani, suggest they're intended to discredit. it's a witch-hunt. so he's trying to set the backfie battlefield. so i'm going to pardon the guy. why does he keep doing this, trump? >> his whole goal is to discredit everyone. that's his anti-social behavior in full display all the time because he gets great pleasure out of discrediting people. what he doesn't realize here is that unlike the kevin starr special counsel that went on for six months and cost over $55 million, this has gone on

for a year and cost $17 million. people are behind bars now, people have pled guilty and people have been convicted. there's something to show for the special counsel and the way that he has conducted himself, which is truly not taking the bait, not taking any interviews, not responding to any of this. >> here's rudy giuliani, the president's lawyer. he was asked by nbc news tonight if the president will offer paul manafort or jerome corsi a pardon. in the giuliani. is it conceivable that paul manafort and jerome corsi, who is saying mueller's people are pressuring him to lie, are telling the truth and the special counsel in their zeal to get the president may be going too far. and just moments ago, giuliani told "the wall street journal" it's my job as his private lawyer to tell him you should not even consider it now because it will be misunderstood.

in march "the new york times" reported trump's team broached the idea of pardoning both manafort and michael flynn. dan, there's no chance of pardons right now? that's my nonlawyer view because i believe trump always shoots the moon. he always does what he's not supposed -- supposed to do. >> i would never say donald trump is not going to pardon anyone. i'm just saying that i'm not sure paul manafort lied as part of his cooperation to get a pardon. but i think that what rudy giuliani -- he's playing with fire because if he wants to say the special counsel is pressuring corsi into lying and maybe they're telling the truth, the special counsel is going to lay out his case in court. he is going to show why he believes they lied, and it is not going to be a close call. >> congresswoman, i'm going to ask you a big-picture question

for one minute. this is really big picture. in trump's defense is worse than anything he did in the campaign. i read about zimbabwe today. everything's rigged, nothing's on the level, there's no such thing as objective truth, everything is tribal. our side is always right, your side is always wrong. that's my judgment. what do you make of this guy? is what he's doing to cover up worse than the crime or equal or what? >> i would say that vladimir putin couldn't have dreamed of a better mouthpiece for undermining the democracy. i think we haven't even uncovered much of what donald trump, the entrepreneur, was

doing in these failed hotels in toronto, soho, and panama. that's going to start to come out, i think, and we're going to find out the foreign corrupt practices act was violated over and over again by donald trump and that he was in bed with a lot of mafia from russia. >> we'll find out when we get the tax returns we get from the house democrats when you take over january 3rd. jackie speier a friend of this show. thank you, dan goldman. up next, president trump's using flatout false and misleading claims to justify his administration's treatment of migrants. former obama administration secretary coors will joining me next. this is "hardball" where the action is the. for strength and energy! whoo-hoo! great-tasting ensure. with nine grams of protein and twenty-six vitamins and minerals. ensure. now up to 30 grams of protein for strength and energy!

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. we've had some very violent people, and we don't want those people in our society. we don't want those people in our country. we had tremendous violence, three border patrol people questioned were very badly hurt through getting hit with rocks and stones. >> apparently not very badly hurt. anyway, welcome back to "hardball." that was president trump on his administration's use of tear gas against tral american migrants at the border over this weekend. but trump's verification that agents were injured when some migrants protesting asylum process sunday contradicted the

account of border protection itself. the commissioner said agents managed the situation safely without any reported serious injuries on either side of the border. trump was also asked to respond to imaging of women and children fleeing pepper spray and the ensuing chaos. let's watch. >> i do say why are they there? first of all, the tear gas a very minor form of the tear gas itself. it's very safe. but you really say why is a parent running up into an area where they know the tear gas is forming and it's going to be formed and they're running up with a child? in some cases you know they're not the parents. these are people, they call them grabbers. they think they're going to have to be a certain status by having a child. >> homeland security secretary kirstyn nielsen said the children were being used as

human shields. sarah sanders was asked if the white house regretted those well-pictured, well-photographed incidents. >> certainly no one wants women or children or any individuals to have this happen, which is why we've encouraged them to actually follow the law and go to ports of entry. >> i'm joined by giuliani castro, secretary of hud under president obama. that was a long time ago. i don't know if anybody's got a clear-cut alternative to either open borders or this horrible treatment of people. but i'd love to hear it if you have it. >> you know, we had five years ago now a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that got 68 votes until the senate and would have passed in the house if it had been put on the floor. i think that one message from the american people a couple

weeks ago was that they want folks to work together again on things like that. and so, yeah -- >> who's going to lead. can nancy pelosi lead if she's speaker? >> i believe she can. whether you take health care or other issues, she has shown that one of her strengths is the ability to marshal that caucus and get things done. >> here's a general question like asking an african-american how does the african-american community look at anything because obviously not everyone can speak for a monolith. you grew up in southern texas. >> san antonio, yeah. >> like bet toe. >> el paso. >> what does the community think of the ultimately goal. what should our country be like in terms of the border ideally? >> i saw this research the other day that was fascinating because it said that all of the fear among hearing the trump did right before the election with the caravan that was coming to

stride, they had the least impact on those border states, new mexico, texas, california, and arizona. folks understand that we have been able to deal with this issue and that folks -- >> through assimilation. >> you have cultures that have mixed there for generations and folks that have found a way of life where, you know, that families are often blended. there's a bicultural, binational sense to that border area. trade happens, people go legally every day to work or go to school on both sides of the border. my hope is that we can have leadership that tries to forge a compromise and a solution that's based on the facts. r0b is that we have too many leaders like the president that are dead set on using this issue to fearmonger. >> it works in the industrial states up north in pennsylvania,

ohio, wisconsin because of the unknown and sometimes it's fear of the unknown. >> it is, and that's why it's incumbent on all of us to keep reaching out and to keep stating what the facts are. >> i have a guess. 2020 is coming. that's one thing that's sure. you're probably going to run. you don't have to tell me. i think you're going to run. >> i probably am, yeah. >> what is it going to be like? it's going to be a diverse crowd. we're going to have probably have cory booker, kamala harris, john kerry. what's it going to be like? >> it's going to be good for the party. wherever you were in 2016, there was a good amount of bitterness after that campaign. i think it's going to be cathartic for the democratic party to go through this process where a lot of talented people with great ideas are going to run.

they're probably going to be able to a lot of debates this time. >> four tiers of debates. what would stop you from running? >> you know, what would stop me -- >> that's a general question. >> i'm very likely to run for president and i've said that. you know, if i decide to do it, then i'm going to -- >> when are you making the jump? >> as much as i would love to break the news tonight here, i'll do that in texas. i'm going to decide before the end of the year. so i'm going to decide during december, yeah. >> what do you think will be your unique selling point as we say in business? what will be the castro case? >> that i've shown at the local and federal level that i can get things done whether it's expanding things and a strong vision for the future of this country. >> let me stop you because i'm

getting pushed. would a mexico-american have a better chance of leading the fight for a good american-style immigration policy we're all proud of? >> i would just say that in my family's experience, my grandmother coming over from mexico, we've been able to live our american dream, i think that represents the history and experience of so many people, whether they're irish or italian americans or chinese americans. >> did you research me? >> i think that my experience speaks to the experience of so many americans. and so apart from where i specifically am coming from, i think that i can relate to what we want this country to be and what we aspire to. >> my grandmother spoke with a strong foreign scent, by the way. thank you, julian castro. the polls and the senate runoff in mississippi closing in less than half an hour now. we're going to see how mike espy is doing down there. will trump's support send cindy

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. welcome back to "hardball." the final contest of the 2018 midterm election is still under way as we speak, and racially charged mississippi in that runoff between incumbent cindy hyde-smith and democrat mike espy, the former secretary of agriculture. the candidates made their final pitches last night. let's listen up. >> what's on the ballot tomorrow is not just my name, cindy hyde-smith. it is your conservative values. that's what's on the ballot tomorrow. [ cheers ] >> this is a campaign that goes to the color line and reaches across color line. we should try to rise up.

above all the dysfunction and if we're going to rise, we're going to rise together. >> president trump campaigned for hide smith yesterday hoping to give her a boost in a deep red state that he carried by 18 points. anyway, former president barack obama released a robocall in support of mike espy. he's facing an uphill climb where white voters outvote african-american voters 2 to 1 and identity is tied to ethnicity, let's face it. espy would have to win 30% or more of white votes. let's bring in tonight's round table. adrienne elrod, director of strategic communications for hillary clinton. i emphasized that word. chris wilson, and an opinion writer for "the washington post." jonathan, she didn't say the worst stuff in history, but

there's a dog whistle there. >> dog whistle. in a midterm election campaign where the president was bull horning racism as the closing argument for why the american people should vote for republicans, he did it in red states and basically did it to pull the republican senators over the line. but cindy hyde-smith, having her closing argument standing next to the president saying, if you're for conservative values, vote for me, campaigning with the president with that kind of closing argument, she's not talking to all of mississippi. she's talking to -- >> you know some of this history. down there there were conservative issues for the white citizens council. they used to call them white citizens councils and then conservative councils. that word has certain value there. >> i doubt cindy hyde-smith is aware of that. >> i think you guys seriously underestimate her rhetoric.

>> that's unbelievable offensive, chris. >> that you equate those two is offensive to me. >> she said she didn't understand the rhetoric she's saying. >> she's not putting the two together. do you know her as a person? then don't make those comments about her. >> she talked about hangings. >> those are two very different things. >> look, mike espy ran a above the board campaign while hide smith has been focusing on dog whistles, like if there was a public hanging i would show up. companies line walmart, this rarely happens. walmart, corporate america will give donations to incumbent candidates because she's been an incumbent seat for the last year

or so. but a lot of corporations wanted their money returned. >> because of what she said? >> because of what she said. >> what do you think of that, chris? >> i'm not going to defend what she said in that situation. i'm saying she has the tendency to put her foot in her mouth. i don't know her either, to be clear. >> you don't know her either? >> i don't know her as a person. >> thanks for that lecture. you don't even know her. so i would not jump to conclusions about her. >> i'm not judging her heart, i'm judging the words that came out of her mouth. she's running for senate in a state with that kind of history. >> meanwhile nancy pelosi faces a real fight in her first test in reclaiming the title as speaker with house democrats scheduled to vote tomorrow. that's going to be a private vote. no one has stepped up to challenge pelosi, which is significant. but she's still facing opposition from within her party as members continue to position themselves. they want something from her.

they're all squeezing her from the center and left. there are 22 incoming members of the house who said they will vote against her. not enough to keep her from winning the nomination tomorrow but enough to keep her from getting the necessary votes on the house floor come january 3rd when it's all on public vote, all on c-span. adrian, any indication, say she gets 60 votes against her tomorrow like the past, does that tell us anything how she has to turn the screw to get the 218 on january 3rd? >> she's not going to get 60 or 70 against her. she might get 15, 16, maybe 20 votes. of course it's important to remember this is not publicly known to your foal caucus members. >> you do possibly know how many voted against her? >> you do, but look, seth multien has been talking about challenging pelosi. he hasn't been able to pull anything together.

it's been a fiasco. she's very strong, there's nobody more effective than nancy pelosi when it comes to knowing her caucus, knowing where they stand, knowing where the votes are. especially right now when we have so much turmoil going on in washington. we need an experienced leader in that position and that's what her caucus knows. >> what's the case against pelosi, chris, except for san francisco and she's a liberal? she looks swank, looks wealthy. but i'm not knocked for any of that stuff, but some people do. you look too -- whatever. >> to be clear, if republicans were smart -- it was interesting to see she was able to quash any challenge to the left immediately. she's a challenge to the middle right now. the only candidate that could have challenged her lost in the primary. if you have a moderate try and bring in republican votes, they might be successful. but that hasn't happened at all. there's nobody trying to do that and if republicans are support, they will support her for

re-election anyway. >> why do they trash her? >> because she's effective, because she's the leader. if it weren't nancy pelosi, if it was congressmen molten, they would be attacking him. >> i know what you guys and the republican party do. go ahead. >> but the number one issue is she's effective. one of the things she proudly told me as minority leader, does speaker boehner have the votes, she said you have to ask him. she said, yes, but i'll say this, i passed the affordable care act without a single republican vote. that's effectiveness. >> right. >> round table is sticking with us. up next, these three will tell me something i don't know. you're watching "hardball." that skills like teamwork, attention to detail, and customer service are critical to business success. like the ones we teach here, every day.

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. back with the round table. adrian, tell me something i don't know. >> there's one more unresolved house seat in the country, california e 21st congressional district. >> going for democrats. 400 votes right now. >> if democrats win the seat, we will have flipped 40 seats. >> who predicted the democrats would win 30 or 40 seats before the election? >> you. >> legislation has moving its presidential primary up to february, one of the first. and incredibly foiled vote counting system, we might know who the democratic nominee is. with this system they have --

>> did you say i was right in my prediction, adrian? >> thank you. >> the democratic caucus vote on speaker isn't the only big vote tomorrow, it's also who's going to be the chair of the congressional black caucus. if all goes according to plan congresswoman karen bass of california will be the next chair of the congressional black caucus, the former speaker of the california assembly, someone to keep an eye on. >> are we going to have a new speaker in the next two years? any thoughts about that? will nancy pelosi win on january 3rd, floor of the house, become speaker and yet at some point in those two years give it up? >> i don't think she'll give it up. she's going to win resoundingly. we need her experienced leadership right now. >> resoundingly? >> resoundingly. >> i was thinking she might pull out sometime without notice in 2020 to allow the more moderate democrats not to have to deal with the issue.

i think she should be speaker, but just my thinking because i'm a political animal. >> i'll ask. >> thank you to my panel. i'll finish tonight with the democrats big victory last month. still november, this month. why don't the democrats learn how to brag? they had a huge wave, all blue. your brain changes as you get older. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life.

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let me finish tonight with the democrats' big victory this

month of november of 2018. the party now stands as we just heard from adrian on the verge of winning 40 seats in the u.s. house of representatives, 40. that's if california 21 comes in for the party and that looks very good out there, up 4400 points, the democrat. but i've been tripredicting thi since the spring. this is hardball, april 35th. >> i believe the democrats will carry the house. history suggests and the level of this president's popularity suggests they will pick up more than the average 29 seats the party opposing the president gets in the first midterm election. i believe they'll do better, somewhere comfortably between 30 and 40 seats picked up. comfortably. and on september 12th, watch this. >> i think the democrats have picked up 30 to 40 seats in the house. >> then again when the election drew closer on october 9th, a month out from the election. well, tonight that prediction is stronger than ever, 30 to 40 seats, the democrats will pick up in the house of representatives. my prediction was not based on

the whimsy of the weak, but on two key factors, one history, the party of power gains average of 29 seats in the presidential midterm. no surprise. two, and this one is big, trump. this president never got past that "access" hollywood tape. people, most notably, heard it, and have spent the last two years watching trump live up to it. that's "hardball" for now. tonight on "all in". >> wikileaks, i love wikileaks. >> new reporting that paul manafort met secretly with julian assange. >> if that's what he said, that's obviously what the opposition is. >> as robert mueller appears to enter a final phase. >> obviously we don't know who's behind the leaks. >> tonight the new thinking about what the special counsel is planning, new incriminating e-mails from jerome corsi and

roger stone and