not waiting, they are requesting documents and evidence from 81 different companies and people tied to trump. count us as officially jealous of our colleague rachel maddow, who will have chairman jerry nadler tonight. don't go anywhere, "hardball" with chris matthews starts now. did i miss anything? let's play "hardbal"hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews, back from two weeks in beautiful new zealand. getting up at 5:00 in the morning 8,000 miles away to hear michael cohen was well worth it because it gave me a clearer picture of this president. cohen testified what it was like being in the room with trump, taking orders from him, feeling his attitude toward those women he had been with. it's different than just hearing

he had paid some women off. or catching his flippant attitude toward the country and the vietnam war he was fighting at the time. cohen told us how he, rich donald trump, said anyone who accepted the call to duty was a chump. he said, quote, "do you have think i'm stupid? i'm not going to vietnam." so let me go to where the investigation of donald trump is clearly headed. the committee to launch articles of impeachment house judiciary has started a new investigation, obstruction of justice, public description and abuses of power. congressman jerry nadler demanded documentary evidence from over 80 people and organizations associated with trump. nadler's committee wants info about the trump tower meeting to get dirt on hillary clinton, trump's intervention with the

fbi on behalf of michael flynn, the firing of james comey, efforts to build a trump tower in moscow, possible russian financing and the hush money payments that michael cohen testified about last week. chairman nadler says the president's payoff before the election could prove to be a basis for impeachment. >> you said in the past there could be crimes that are not impeachable offenses. is a campaign finance like the one outlined against president trump one of those? >> a violation -- seeking to sabotage a fair election would be an impeachable offense. >> is that what you saw? >> well, we'll see. >> president trump tweeted today, "i am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad and conflicted corrupt people." here's what he said to the north dakota state football team.

>> are you going to cooperate with mr. nadler? >> i cooperate all the time with everybody. and you know the beautiful thing, no collusion. it's all a hoax. you're going to learn about that as you grow older. it's a political hoax. there's no collusion. there's no anything. folks, go and eat up. >> the little guy in the back was mike pence, by the way. i'm joined by democratic congressman frank deutsch, ben rhodes, national security adviser under president obama and barbara wade is a former federal prosecutor. congressman deutsch, you have a sense of where the judiciary is headed in terms of this vast new probe that you democrats now control. where you going? >> yeah, i sure do. we definitely do. chris, democrats are just doing our job in the committee that is charged withboro describedi pro oversight, a check on this

administration. our announcement is to make clear we are embarking upon a careful and methodical approach to get to the truth. we don't have to rely on what's in the headlines, we don't have to rely on anything that the president says. we're going to start by getting all of these documents. those will inform the decisions that we make, the people who will be called to testify before us but all of this to look at the president's potential abuse of power, the corruption we have seen in this administration and the obstruction of justice. in each of these case, we've been governed thus far by whatever the most -- the biggest headline is of the day. that's not the approach. we've got to be careful, methodical and get to the truth so the american people will be clear about what's needs to happen next. >> here's a headline from today, congressman, your chairman, jerry nadler is talking about the fact for trump to cover up through payments to women, information the public would normally have gotten from nem

duri -- them during the course of a campaign sabotaged a fair election. do you have see it that way, in other words, something that's impeachable? >> the president committed a felony in order to become president of the united states. that's what the chairman was referring to today. and we even have his signature on checks showing the effort that he went to -- >> is that sabotaging a fair election? to use the words of your chair? >> sure. it certainly looks like it is. but what we've started today is a process to gather all of the information. the reason we reached out, chris, to so many people is because we don't want to have to just rely upon what michael cohen said. we don't want to just rely upon what we read in newspaper stories. we need the input from everyone who has information that can contribute to, in this case, what certainly looks like a serious case of an attempt to commit a felony in order to win

the presidency and then obstruction of justice to cover it up. >> barbara, thank you for joining us tonight. i'm just back from two weeks away and i've been missing so much of this. i did watch mr. cohen back there at 5:00 in the morning in new zealand. let me ask you about being tethered or teased with this guy. what do you make of that, certainly as a question of basically something that would be a basis clearly in itself an impeachable offense for people on behalf of the president, did they offer him, if you shut up right now after we gathered all that information from your office, all those e-mails and everything else and tapes, if you shut up now and keep quiet, if you stonewall, we'll get you out of this. what do you make of that? >> of course the facts matter whether that happened would have to be confirmed. but if it did, there are some who say that the president's power to pardon is absolute and he can pardon anyone he wants but -- >> even to cover his own trail,

to cover up evidence on his own criminality. can you do that legally? >> no, i don't think so. just as he has powers to appoint others and issue executive orders and other kinds of things. if he did so for a corrupt purpose, say he was being paid a million dollar bribe, that would be abuse and if he did something to cover up his impeachable offense, that would be in itself an impeachable offense. >> yesterday the president tweeted for the democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster at the same time as the very important nuclear summit in north korea is perhaps a new low in american politics that may have contributed to the "walk." never done when a president is

overseas. shame!" . >> when the republican senate caucus sent a letter to iranian leaders during the nuclear demonstrations, the president said something. and reason the summit failed is they didn't prepare for it. you don't put the head of state in the room with the other head of state without teeing up the agreement first. they thought they could wind trump up, have him in and flatter kim and they failed and now they're seeking to deflect blame. >> and trump thought that kim jong un, the tyrant over there is flatterable, look trump is flatterable. >> by the way, you don't need to flatter people you want to negotiate with. when trump says he takes this

murderous dictator's word for it, that he had nothing to do with the killing of an american in custody, we know that kim jong un knows everything that goes on there. >> let me go to the congressman on that. what do you make that this overlay that the president suggests during the elijah cummings committee, it was really damning, does that cause kim jong un to have cold stefee? >> that's nonsense from the president. it doesn't really matter what the president says as we embark upon this investigation. we know -- the president knows it not just a mueller

investigation. he knows there are investigations in federal court in new york, in federal court in virginia, that there are investigations in state court. there are so many people who are looking at all of the potential areas where there were vie la violations of law. what we have to be careful about, chris, is not allowing the justice department department to say on the one hand our policy is not to indict sitting presidents and on the other to say and we don't put out information about people who are unindicted, therefore permitting a coverup of anything that the president may have done. that's another reason why what we're doing today and what we announced today what we'll be doing over the coming months is so important. >> i agree with you. that makes so much sense. >> during his more than two-hour speech at cpac this weekend, the president said his call for rush for hillary's e-mails was just a joke. >> if you tell a joke, if you're

sarcastic, if you're having fun with the audience, if you're in live television with millions of people and 25,000 people in an arena and if you say something like, "russia, please, if you can, get us hillary clinton's e-mails, please, russia, please!" i'm laughing and i'm having fun and then that fake cnn and others say he asked russia to go get the e-mails. horrible. >> you've heard of the twinkie defense, this is the pinky-d defense. here's what trump said in 2016. >> russia, if you're listening, i hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. >> do you have any qualms about asking a foreign government to interfere, to hack into a system of anybody in this --

>> let the president talk to him. >> reporter: you said i welcome them to find those 30,000 e-mails. >> they probably have them. >> does that not give you pause? >> no, that does not give me pause. to be honest with you, i'd love to see them. >> here he's saying it wasn't a joke, it was a serious proposition. on a larger question, so much of what we think might well be abuse of power, obstruction of justice, the president going to the fbi director comey at the time and saying can you let my friend michael flynn off on this russia thing, can you get him out of this thing? and the other question of firing comey because he wouldn't do it, he wouldn't show allegiance to the president, there's so much right there like that. it's right there looking at us. >> the statement about russia, if you have the e-mails look a lot different now that we know

some of the other things going on in that time frame, like the trump tower meeting, this testimony by michael cohen that president trump had heard from roger stone about the release of e-mails, the allegation in stone's indictment about coordination with wikileaks. all of those things look more nefarious. but i think you have to look at it in light of the very thing president trump said once, i could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it. it seems like that's the way he does his business and his presidency. if you do it out in the open, it harder to say what you're doing is illegal. but maybe that is his best defense, i'm doing it in plain sight. >> ben, you worked for presidents. i long ago did. we have a norm in our head of what's decent. you treat our allies pretty well, you treat our adversaries appropriately, you don't start a new cold war. this president is so dizzying how many rules he's broken of what we consider american behavior. >> every now and then, chris,

you have to step back. of the 44 people who came before him, there is not one who would do anything remotely like this. and the other thing, chris, is these guys through the campaign and through the first two years just acted like the rules didn't apply to them whatsoever. they're breaking laws, they're violating forms, they're covering their track, they're trying to obstruct justice. what's happened now in our system is because of the midterm leb elections, for the first time, what i see on the list from nadler is being being held to account. they acted like that was never going to happen. now there's real power in someone else's hands and that picture can be put together. he knew that what they were up to, right? if you assemble this whole picture, it looks much more damning than any one isolation. >> congressman deutch, to you.

the american people picked this president a guy who said he could do anything physical he wanted to do with women, he could do it and get away with it, they voted for him. he said can i shoot somebody on 5th avenue, they voted for him. a lot of this behavior has been in broad daylight, a broad daylight hold up of american values. here we are saying should we or not, should we impeach, wait for mueller to give us some informing to help us out here. where are you on impeachment, sir? >> ben makes a really important point, chris, which is, yeah, that's what happened in the last president deial election. two years later the people decided they needed a check on president trump and voted a democratic house. the way that you get to impeachment, if we ever get to it, is to lay out in a very

careful way all of the facts for the american people to see, not just to rely on what we've seen. there is plenty there in broad daylight, you are right. just because he talks about the things donesn't mean they don't matter. they do. >> let me not be crude about it but present, who was a mixed bag like a lot of people in politics, me, everybody, was impeached because he lied about a relationship with a woman. this president we now know with documentary evidence last week he paid off a woman about a relationship while president. what's the difference? paying off or lying? marley? >> no, chris, the paying off -- it not just that he paid off a woman and wrote the check when he was president, he did it in order to become president. there is plenty there that leads us to believe that the president in this case violated the law, did it to become president and

then tried to cover it up over the coming weeks and months. you will see because of what we're doing so much more laid out clearly for the american people and they be we're goin w take that wherever the ultimate decision is in order to ensure that no one, especially the president of the united states, is deemed to be above the law. >> thank you. this is a very important cause for our country, sir. ben rhodes, he's worked with a real president, a good one, thank you, barbara mcquaid. amy klobuchar, we'll talk to her about the trump investigation and the race for the white house, which she's in and the showdown about the national emergency. and coming off a bad week, trump unloads about his presidency.

fidel castro didn't unload this much. >> they leave people for a long time that shouldn't be there and all of a sudden they're trying to take you out with bullshit, okay? >> that was presidential language. hugging the flag, there he is attacking his enemies, he says, and still talking about crowd size, strange fascination with size. stay with us for amy. size stay with us for amy hear those words...

breast cancer. we thought that we would travel to cancer treatment centers of america. we left on day one feeling like we're gonna beat this and that feeling is priceless... visit cancercenter.com. if you want to get the most details about your family history. my pie chart showed that i'm from all over europe, but then it got super specific. i learned my people came from a small region in poland and even a little bit of the history about why they might have migrated during that time. those migration patterns are more than just lines on a map, they're really your family's story. i can't wait to see what i'm going to discover next. 20 million members have connected to a deeper family story. order your kit at ancestry.com.

to a deeper family story. at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your manufacturing business. & so this won't happen. because you've made sure this sensor and this machine are integrated. & she can talk to him, & yes... atta, boy. some people assign genders to machines. and you can be sure you won't have any problems. except for the daily theft of your danish. not cool! at&t provides edge to edge intelligence. it can do so much for your business, the list goes on and on. that's the power of &. & this shipment will be delivered...

the house judiciary committee's sweeping demand for evidence marks a major escalation by democrats investigating president trump's administration, husband businisd family members. they will focus on three areas

of interest, obstruction of justice, public corruption, abuse of power. among the 80 targets, don jr., al i don't know weisselberg and former white house counsel don mcgahn. it's also signature because the judiciary committee also has control over impeachment. i'm joined by senator amy klobuchar of minnesota and democratic presidential candidate. i nope let me ask you about the approach of jerry nadler, the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, and others that the smart move and right move for dems, right now and the next year perhaps, look into real investigations and find out the facts, doesn't be talking impeachment. your thoughts. >> they have an obligation, the american people in 2018 said

that they wanted to see a check and balance on this white house, as well as an optimistic economic agenda. so what i see is two things happening. you have to allow the mueller investigation to be completed, we want to see that report public. that has been a major focus of my work on the judiciary committee. we have a new attorney general who is not 100% committed to making that report public. and then of course you're going to see investigations about some of these potential campaign finance issues. you have a foreign power that's been trying to not just meddle, i hate that word, that's what i use when i call my daughter on a saturday night to ask her what she's doing but invade our democracy. i think you can have both things going on but in the end, we also have to be a check on this administration when it comes to really worsening income inequality, to not doing anything about pharmaceutical prices, to not really moving an infrastructure package forward. >> i'm with you on all that.

let me ask you a question about deutch. he said basically you can't rely on mueller's investigation because mueller might feel restricted. you shouldn't be talking about people's guilt or innocence unless you're willing to indict them. when whole problem with the president being involved could fall between the cracks. how do you respond to that? >> the mueller investigation is so important. it's looking at the whole picture. you've had dozens of people investigated and indicted and we've learned more and more about what russia has done and hopefully will learn a lot more. as investigations go forward in the house, there's other things that have looked into. but as you know, you've had other senators on your show, chris, we're the jury when it comes to those kind of issues, so we're not going to opine on what the facts show at this

moment. butch but i think you can do two things at once. we're democrats, we can do that. >> the president's national security has enough republicans, your party, to stop it from happening. today senator paul said there will likely be more defections from the president. >> i do believe that there is at least ten republicans no votes. we'll see. possibly more. my reason for speaking out now is that i think we all need to think this through before we get too far down the road. >> if you can't override the president with your rejection of a national emergency, what good is accomplished here? >> chris, this is very significant, though, because you have a number of republicans now saying what i believe, that this is unconstitutional. there was an agreement made in congress, hard-fought agreement

on how much money should go toward border security, not paying for this wall that he's been talking about for years and chanting about at rallies, but just smart security measures. instead he goes forward with something that is unconstitutional, is going to create all kind of eminent domain issues, takes something out of military housing and puts it into his campaign promise. the fact that we have a republican saying the same thing we are saying is significant for our democracy. b b >> you've shaped up a position that makes sense for a lot of people, which is the idea, where are we right now? we've got obamacare that has to be improved, fixed. this is a good system, at least try for a number of years to see if it works. >> we have to get to universal health care and of course i support a public option moving

forward with medicare/medicaid expansion but prescription drugs has been overlooked for years, over the past decade. huge increases in prices for simple drugs like insulin. that is why i have led the effort on medicare negotiation to unleash the power of 43 million seniors and something i'm going to be talking about tomorrow with robert reich. we are doing a series of meetings tomorrow and we're doing a hearing in the senate on anti-trust. and i know that sounds like kind of an esoteric topic but it's not. big pharmaceuticals are literally paying off generics to keep their competitors off the market. and the ones that lose are consumers to the tune of $2.9 billion just over a few years. online travel agencies, over 90% of the market that is owned in that range, i want to get the exact number for you, owned by actually two companies. rail, class one rail, down to

four companies. the exact number on the monopoly board. and this consolidation that we're seeing in our country cries out for tougher action on anti-trust. and if they're not going to do it because the judges are too conservative, i have a bill that makes our laws as sophisticated as the kind of mergers that we're seeing now with companies that literally are now billion, multi-billion dollar mergers. the american people have stood up to this in the past. it's time to stand up to it again. >> it sounds like you're for true free enterprise. >> that is what this is about. you can't have capitalism and innovation if you have monopolies. that is something adam smith recognized. i'm going to come out with a book on this, something i've been working on for the past year, a book on the history of this going back to teddy roosevelt when, as you know, in the midwest the farmers and the workers stood up and said enough is enough and we've been gliding

toward the gilded age again. we need to get back to the true capital spirit of entrepreneurship. that's what this hearing is about tomorrow. >> amy klobuchar, trust buster. >> there you go! >> thanks so much for joining us tonight. >> just how much influence does the president's favorite tv network, you know which one it is, have in the west wing. who is calling the shots, them or him? we have a great new report from the yorker" magazine about what makes fox news tick at the white house. stay with us. e white house. stay with us with roundup sure shot wand you don't need to stoop to their level. draw the line. the sure shot wand extends with a protective shield to pinpoint those pesky bedfellows. it lets you kill what's bad right down to the root while comfortably guarding the good. draw the line with the roundup sure shot wand. roundup brand. trusted for over 40 years.

what do you look for i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything? hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. no hidden fees. no platform fees. no trade minimums. and yes, it's all at one low price. td ameritrade. ♪ the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand new way for you to sell your car. whether it's a few years old or dinosaur old, we want to buy your car. so go to carvana and enter your license plate,

answer a few questions, and our techno-wizardry calculates your car's value and gives you a real offer in seconds. when you're ready, we'll come to you, pay you on the spot, and pick up your car. that's it. so ditch the old way of selling your car and say hello to the new way... at carvana. (danny) after a long day of hard work... ...you have to do more work? every day you're nearly fried to a crisp, professionally! can someone turn on the ac?! no? oh right... ...'cause there isn't any. here- (vo) automatically sort your expenses and save over 40 hours a month. without you, we wouldn't have electricity. our hobby would be going to bed early. (vo) you earned it, we're here to make sure you get it. (danny) it's time to get yours! (vo) quickbooks. backing you.

so why not bundle them with esurance and save up to 10%? which you can spend on things you really want to buy, like... well, i don't know what you'd wanna buy because i'm just a guy on your tv. esurance. it's surprisingly painless.

she's my friend and she's your friend, justice janine. do we love sean hannity, by the way? i love him. thank to you my very good friend rupert murdoch. there's only one rupert that we know. >> roger ailes is one of the great men in television. >> no question that trump benefited from a let's say symbiotic relationship. aides say the relationship is so key to this president, the one with fox, they're calling the

shots. president trump has told confidantes that he ranks the network reporters loyal to him on a scale of one to ten, like in a beauty contest. sean hannity gets a 10, while steve doocy gets a 12. fox says it important for the base. in return, the new yorker finds a troubling pattern in which the president himself works on behalf of foxnews's economic interests. he ordered gary cohn to pressure the justice department to intervene in a lawsuit.

i first want to go to dylan. without getting into details of anti-trust and all this, why is the president of the united states working for fox? >> well, you have to almost reverse engineer this, okay? fox news has from its inception been a business, and it is focused on bottom line. the business that rupert murdoch saw in the united states was that he could capitalize on the anxieties and resentment of conservatives who feel like they didn't have a voice in the media. >> just what he did in britain and australia, go down market and to the right. down market and to the right. >> that was a huge business opportunity. and for 20 years that built up over time to a place where its ultimate realization was president trump. that was the ultimate realization of the fox news business model. now -- >> who's the toy here?

the president or fox? >> well, look, fox is doing great from the bottom line perspective. i think trump has ensured that he has a core base that he can reach through fox news. like you said, it's a symbiotic relationship. i think it's mutually beneficial, they're both doing quite well because of it. to me the saline detail from the article in "the new yorker," how can a liberal organization do this in america? that's beside the point. to me the key detail is trump ordering gary cohn and chief of staff john kelly to block the at&t/time warner merger. that's when it becomes the president doing something for his friends in business and that's rupert murdoch.

>> it seems to me in this media world, it's one thing to agree with a point of view of a political interest of a party. it's another one to feel like you're working with them. and you're working for them. that's a huge difference. can you walk down the street and find people who say i agree with reagan on this and not on that but i'm not working for him. there's a big difference. your thoughts. >> yeah. and also when it's editorial control, chris. look, back in the 80s george will liked reagan. there have always been individual writers and reporters and columnists who have had close personal relationships or even wanted to advocate on behalf of a president, but that was not an editorial mandate. that was not from on high. and that's what you have happening with fox news. >> and you don't go to meetings, you don't sit down with them. i can't imagine anybody on the center left or middle left or wherever on the left even that i know of sitting down and talking turkey with nancy pelosi and how to get the agenda sold. it's unimaginable. but you see sean showing up at

rallies. that's different. >> showing up at rallies, you know, promoting anything the president wants. showing up in campaign commercials. but, chris, i would say the most disturbing thing about this article for me was basically fox engaging in their own catch and kill. it's one thing if you don't want to cover a story because maybe you have a bit of an editorial bias in favor of a candidate, but you have a reporter who found out about illegal activity. >> talk about it. it's in the article, the payoff to the women. go ahead. >> the payoff to women. cohen using campaign funds, breaking the law in order to pay off stormy damage yel ey daniele keys of the story and fox news said, hey, we're not going with that story. when you have a network willing to hide crimes on behalf of a candidate, that's no longer news, that's just state tv. >> in all fairness, fox has denied that, the person who was accused, that person over at fox

saying we're not running that story. >> they denied that. we reached out to fox and fox news, we haven't heard from anybody. >> what did you learn from this piece? >> i think this piece outside of the sort of silver bullet of trying to stop the at&t/time warner deal, the karen water for fox, it offends liberal sensibilities but i think it highlights we are so far away from a 20th century model of media, wherein there's in notion in a media has to meet certain standards, not just editorial standards but almost moral standards, standards of integrity. this shows into sharp relief that the media business is a business, particularly on cable news and very often decisions are made that don't have anything to do with, you know, being impartial, not carrying

water, holding up both sides of an argument. that is just not the world we live in anymore. cuff mark you can market integrity to your viewers. fo fox news is marketing we are the advice for the disenfranchised largely white, lower middle class in this country and in that trump world, that 30-plus percent that identifies with trump and sean hannity, they're never going to leave. >> if you want to get your story covered in local politics, in the local newspaper, you got to buy ads. it reminds me of that, guys. thank you so much. after a bad week of listening to michael cohen, president trump spent the weekend in the tender embrace of the true believers and, boy, did he enjoy it. for two straight hours he talked. raight hours he talked that's not a bug, that's not a bug!

(burke) hit and drone. seen it, covered it. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

(gasp) (singsong) budget meeting! sweet. if you compare last quarter to this quarter... various: mmm. it's no wonder everything seems a little better with the creamy taste of philly, made with fresh milk and real cream.

ed gets copays as lowlily go to as zero dollars on with the creamy taste of philly, medicare part d prescriptions. ed gets labels clear as day. and, lily.... lily gets anything she wants. ed knows he could just have us deliver his prescriptions. but what's the fun in that? switch to cvs pharmacy.

welcome back to "hardball." following the president's very rough week that included a failed second summit with north korea and a blistering testimony from his former fixer, the president spent this weekend at his happy place. for more than two hours on saturday he spoke to the annual gathering of conservative voters where he unleashed an unfiltered scream of consciousness, taking on the mueller investigation, his former attorney general, the democrats and others. usually you have to go to the new york port authority to hear something like this. anyway, here it is. >> you know i'm totally off script right now. >> please get us the e-mails! >> you put the wrong people in a couple of positions and they leave people for a long time that shouldn't be there and all of a sudden they're trying to take you out with bullshift. >> then that fake cnn and others

say he asked russia to go get the e-mails. >> the attorney general says i'm going to recuse michael cohen. right now we have people in congress that hate our country. >> i see senators that are there in 20 years, white hair. i don't have white hair. i'm in the white house, i said i was lonely. let's go to iraq! i have one of the great inventions in history. it's called tivo. i met generals i don't know. general one, general two, general through. i said what's your name? sir, my name is raisin. i said what the hell kind of a name? i said, raisin like the fruit? >> as trump walked on stage, he stopped to embrace the american flag, something he's done on three other occasions. and during his rambling speech the president once again aired

one of his favorite grievances. you'll not be surprised, it was about size. size. he just won't let it go. being a usaa member, because of my service in the military, you pass that on to my kids. something that makes me happy. being able to pass down usaa to my girls means a lot to both of us. he's passing part of his heritage of being in the military. we're the edsons. my name is roger zapata. we're the tinch family, and we are usaa members for life. to begin your legacy, get an insurance quote today.

(danny)'s voice) of course you don'te because you didn't!? your job isn't doing hard work... ...it's making them do hard work... ...and getting paid for it. (vo) snap and sort your expenses to save over $4,600 at tax time. quickbooks. backing you. donald trump has just been implicated in multiple crimes, including while serving as president of the united states. individual #1 is president donald j. trump. crime. corruption. cover-ups. impeachment is the only way to air the full truth and make sure no one is above the law. demand impeachment now.

need to impeach is responsible for the content of this advertising.

we humans are strange creatures. other species avoid pain and struggle. we actually... seek it out. other species do difficult things because they have to. we do difficult things. because we like to. we think it's... fun. introducing the all-new 2019 ford ranger built for the strangest of all creatures. they did the same thing at our big inauguration speech. you take a look at those crowds. nobody's ever seen it. the capitol down to the

washington monument, people. but i saw pictures that there were no people. we had a crowd, i've never seen anything like it, and i have to live -- i have to live with cro. it's all a phony deal, folks. >> welcome back to "hardball." to president trump crowd size still matters two years after his inauguration. he still can't get over it. speaking to cpac this weekend, he laid out all his grievances. joining me now is ron reagan. i do believe you have to go back to my days at community college and go to the port authority and seeing those guys speaking to no one with long orations that are not necessarily connected to reality. this speech this weekend, what do you make of him? >> well, i mean it's true that if you ran into somebody on the street who sounded like donald trump did this last speech, and has really for quite some time

now, you'd be moved to call the authorities. you know, you'd want them kind of taken inside somewhere, you know, out of the public. his whole id was on display there. his rage at jeff sessions, his contempt for the press and the media, his obsession with, yes, crowd size and things like that. of course his fear of robert mueller and the, quote, bullshit investigation. always projecting, as usual, the use of the "b" word if you translate that from trumpese into english, it's that i'm a bullshitter. >> it's about him. he's a showoff. the kids we had in class seventh grade, eighth grade, middle school, you had a kid in the class who basically is bored and thinks let's focus on me for a

little while. starts making jokes or a wise-ass comment. i guess this kid wants to talk about himself. this is trump. he's the showoff. >> and of course he gets so much affirmation from these crowds that eat this stuff up. it's the 30% of the country that's really a problem for the rest of us. but they just eat this stuff up. >> bad news, 46 today. >> yeah, yeah, well. >> 46 job approval in a d.c. poll, "wall street journal" poll. they are hard as a rock. "washington post" reporter robert acosta described the relationship between the president and the republican party. acquiescence to trump is now the defining trait of the republican party. more than two years into his presidency, overwhelming and at times erasing prips that conservatives viewed as the foundation of the party for more than half a century. they allowed the guy to declare a national emergency. >> imagine if barack obama declared a national emergency

for anything basically. they'd have been going out of their minds here. but look, they know what donald trump is just the way we know what donald trump is. but they have decided they don't care. it's -- you know, it's well past time now for us to be kind of marveling at whatever new atrocity trump comes up with here. we know what he is and we know he poses a danger to the nation. so do most members of the republican party, but they have decided to do nothing about it. they have decided they don't want to defend their country against this individual. and when he goes down, those people, they're going with him. they ought to consider that. >> well, under the heading of i can shoot somebody on fifth avenue or is nothing sacred, one of the speakers at the conference this weekend at cpac criticized, quote, the ghost of the late senator john mccain. when she spoke on immigration, leading to a standing ovation from some in the audience. here goes. >> sanctuary cities of

metastasized and both parties are to blame. and yes, i'm looking at you, retired paul ryan, and yes, i'm looking at you, mitch mcconnell. and yes, i'm looking at you, bush family. and yes, i'm looking at you, the ghost of john mccain. >> well, john mccain's widow, cindy, responded in a tweet. you never knew senator john mccain. you should be so lucky. well, that's a family -- a spouse's response to a ridiculous insult. >> yeah. when may a angelou said when somebody tells you who they are, believe them. when somebody shows you they have no human decency, believe them. these people do that over and over again. really they have no sense of self-reflection whatsoever apparently, and no shame. was that necessary? >> lindsey graham, sir, please

speak up. it's your time. i'm sorry, i'll still hopeful. thank you, ron reagan, my buddy, thanks for coming on. up next what i saw as important in the michael cohen hearing. i heard a lot in that hearing. i got up, i watched it all and i was struck by a new sense of donald trump. you're watching "hardball." naldp you're watching "hardball. month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion. humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. vo: humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections,

or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. woman: help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira.

right here. right now. ♪ just hold on, i'm comin' ♪ hold on, i'm comin' ♪ hold on ♪ don't you worry, i'm comin' ♪ here i come

watching michael cohen from afar, i sensed what it was like to be taking orders from this

president, what it must have been like being that long-ago doctor who was told to provide a medical deferment for his young, wealthy patient to get him out of the draft, or paying women to not say something. president kennedy said the reason we read biographies or history is to answer the simple question, what was he like? michael cohen spent seven hours telling us what donald trump is like when he wants something done. what trump is like when he wants his relations with women erased. what trump is like when he talks about service to his country. what it's like to hear trump talk about african-americans living in poor neighborhoods. all of this reinforces the picture he gave us through all those months of claiming that barack obama could not possibly be who he is, a successful african-american with a quality education, a natural born american to boot. i've always believed that trump's original political sin was saying the first black president of the united states was somehow fraudulent. do we want a person described here as so vividly and

passionate by michael cohen last week sitting in the oval office? that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. "all in with chris hayes" starts right now. tonight on "all in" -- >> we've seen abuses of power and obstruction of justice, threats to the mueller investigation. >> brand new allegations of presidential abuse of power, as democrats begin to lay groundwork for impeachment. >> we can't depend on the mueller investigation for this. >> tonight, the trump orders to block a media merger. >> i'm going regret this speech. >> and the vast probe democrats are launching into corruption, obstruction and abuse of power by the president. then -- >> do we love sean hannity, by the way? >> blockbuster new reporting on the cable new channel running america. >> sean hannity and trump speak regularly, almost every night after his show. >> gabe sherman on the president's symbiotic relationship to trump