those on the end. whether this is, real or not, i have to pay my bills. >> amen. i don't know about the simulations, but if they do get up on this cloning, i hope we can clone the professor and we'll clone some of your work, and we'll keep an eye on where all the godfathers past, present, and future are headed. my special thanks to chris brancato and michael eric dyson. >> you know what's not a simulation? "hardball," next. trader don. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. president trump is roiling financial markets today around the world, escalating his trade war with china and attacking the chair of the federal reserve. all this as he heads off to herald the strengths of the u.s. economy at the g-7 summit this

weekend in france. responding to a retaliatory move by china earlier today, the president tonight declared he's hiking tariffs on beijing, raising existing rates as well as those set to kick in next month. it comes after china announced this morning they're imposing a new round of tariffs on $75 billion worth of american goods. the news was met with outrage at the white house where the president took to twitter and attempted to order all american companies to cut their ties with china. all american companies. no more trade with china. of course, that's ridiculous. trump tweeted we don't need china and frankly we would be better off without them. our great american companies are hereby orders to immediately start looking for an alternative to china including bringing your companies home and making your products in the usa. that's the president this morning trumpeting powers he doesn't posz. however, "the washington post" points out the white house does not have the authority to force companies to follow such directives as that. according to the census bureau, the united states has $380

billion trade deficit with china in 2018. a deficit that appears to be increasing this year. trump's tweeting ignited a selloff on wall street. the dow that had been in positive territory, plunged and went down 623 points in one day. it remains near its average for the summer. earlier today, the president appeared to joke about the market's decline, saying the dow is down, perhaps on the news that representative seth moul n moulton, however that may be, has dropped out of the 2020 presidential race. what a card. all this comes after fed chair jerome powell said this morning the trade policy uncertainty seems to be playing a role in the global slowdown. his speech, which was intended to reassure markets, instead prompted an attack from the president. quote, as usual, the fed did nothing. it is incredible that they can speak without knowing or asking what i am doing. which will be announced shortly. we have a very strong dollar and

a very weak fed. and then in a stunning move, the president added, my only question is, who is our bigger enemy, jay powell or chairman xi of china? i'm joined by ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to president obama. jill corben, and michael froman, a former u.s. trade rep in the obama administration. this is going to be very powerful. let's talk about -- i'm a big believer that the trade deficit with china has to be dealt with because china keeps making money off us, which they do by selling us great goods, no doubt about it, we love their stuff. especially their cotton goods and all that stuff, but they use all that exchange they bet from us to buy the rest of the world, especially africa. i don't like it, ben. your thoughts about what should we be doing if not this? but let's start with trump. what's he doing? what's he up to? >> the problem is he doesn't really know what he's doing, chris. he's gotten into this, and the only play he's had is to escalate this trade war with the chinese. i don't think anybody knows

where this is leading. and the chinese have clearly decided to dig in and to match him move for move. and the risk is that he's not only raising prices on americans, hurting american sectors like the agricultural sector, but he's dragging down the entire global economy. the way to do this, if you wanted to stand up to china's unfair trade practices, if you wanted to stand up for american workers and businesses, is not to alienate the united states from the rest of the world and take on the chinese alone. it would be to rally all of our allies, the people he's seeing at the g mf 7, the countries we negotiated with, that mike froman negotiated with, so we have a united front with other countries to go to the chinese and say you need to cut out your theft of intellectual property. >> has -- ben, has anyone been able to do that, get the world to take on china, because they're the big monster? has any president, including obama, been able to do that? >> well, chris, unfortunately, we were building up to that type of capacity.

the trade agreement that we negotiated, the transpacific partnership, with a number of the leading asia pacific economies, was meant to give president of the united states greater leverage for that type of confrontation. i think what you need to do -- >> you're so right. but hillary wouldn't go along with it. >> that was a mistake by hillary. and frankly, i think the democrats have to learn, too, chris, look, it's not just about free trade. it's about trade agreements that can work for american businesses and workers. trade agreements that are more progressive. if voters are looking for someone who's going to tear up trade agreements, they that have in donald trump. i think democrats can afford a different alley. >> ben, you're the best. i'm not getting into the clinton war because there was an interesting war, because bill clinton, i was in tokyo when he said he thought it was a fabulous agreement, the ttp. and you know politics in this country. hillary came out against it. i know how politics work. let's go to you. you're with the associated press. tell me, does trump just get

petulant? or does he have a strategy to really take on china? somebody has to take on china. >> the president has been saying now for decades china has been ripping the u.s. off. >> they are. >> as he stood there as we saw on the south lawn and summoned the sky and said he had been appointed, he was the chosen one to take on china. he does feel like china is ripping us off. >> does anyone disagree with that premise that somebody has to do it? >> i think that's a pretty -- even as the tpp agreement was trying to address, absolutely. and so he believed he is the one to do this, and that it makes sense for him to risk some potential economic hardship in order to get that done, in order to seem strong, but the problem is the way he's been doing this has created the economic ripple effects across the globe that really are now threatening his re-election chances. >> earlier this morning, peter navarro said china's latest round of tariffs shouldn't affect financial markets. >> $75 billion worth of tariffs

in terms of, what, the combined $30 trillion economy is not something for the stock market to worry about. and we're cool here. >> how can you beat the chinese? it's a command economy. a command society. xi is the boss. he can do this stuff that trump thinks he can do. tell american companies they can't trade with china. how do you beat them? >> i think you organize all your like-minded companies. europe, japan, major emerging economies to put pressure on china on issues that are out there, including overcapacity. that's what we were doing at the end of the obama administration. you organize the countries in the region to set higher standards and rules for trade that china will be forced to compete with, and you use all the tools at your disposal to hold china for account. >> you think china can be beaten in this war? the way they're going, they will beat us. >> i think they have a strategy they're executing on well. i think it's important for us to also have a strategy, including a domestic strategy around investing and research and technology, lifelong learning,

all the things we need, whether it's trade or technology, that's going to affect the american worker. we have to make sure the amer a american worker can succeed. >> are we better than they in innovation? can we win that war? we can't win in population. they outpopulate us. >> we have great universities. >> most of the great universities are here. >> we're a leader in innovation, but they're also catching up quite a bit in a number of areas. according to some, ahead of us in some areas. we shouldn't be complacent about it. we haven't invested in the same way domestically as they have. >> why don't we buy anything from vietnam? >> we are buying a certain amount. >> wouldn't that screw the chinese if we said we're going to buy stuff from vietnam now? >> china is the second largest economy, the firste largest consumer economy. it's important for our workers and farmers to have access to that market. getting market access, leveling the playing field, having fair trade with them is important. i think the president has

created a certain amount of leverage in his initial threatening of putting tariffs on. you have to translate to actual agreements. that's the hard part. it's easy to impose tariffs. it's hard to take them off. once tariffs are in place for a while, people get used to them. >> let me get back to ben. i think we ought to fight with china. trump may be doing it the wrong way. the culture is so long term. their indifference curve is so long. they'll take eons to get what they want to get. let me ask you about a fight that seems to be stupid. why is he attacking his fed chairman so publicly? does he think he can get lower rates and help the economy get some more soup in it if he just bashes this guy every day on television? >> no, chris. here's what i think is going on. right. we are potentially heading into an economic downturn, potentially a recession because of the reckless leadership of donald trump. the tools you would have in place to try to stimulate an

economy, we don't have those in place because donald trump gave away a trillion dollars in his tax bill, largely in corporate tax cuts, tax cuts to the wealthy. the fed already has low rates. donald trump is looking for other people to blame if the recession comes, the downturn comes before his election. so he's set up the fed. he's set up xi jinping. going to set up the democrats in congress. anybody but himself, the chosen one, as he says. anyone but himself to blame. i think that's what this is all about. >> it sounds biblical. let me ask you about something i don't understand. i know keynesian economics. a big tax cuts means a lot more money to spend. you spend a certain percentage of it and get economic growth. you have increased growth. what happened this time, this zillion dollar tax cut, why didn't it work? is it money just being used to buy back stock by corporate leaders. where did it go to, all this money, or is it sitting somewhere?

ben, a tough question. why did it not work? >> well, because it wasn't designed, right, to -- it was designed to go to the wealthy and to corporations. it wasn't designed to get people, to put money in people's pockets. it wasn't designed for the middle class. it wasn't designed to boost consumer spending in this country. it was designed to reward, frankly, corporations and wealthy backers of this president who put that money away. >> they use sanders accent, what are the billionaires and millionaires doing with it all? they have it in their bank accounts? do you know where the money is? who got the money? >> i don't know. >> you're an economics guy. where did all those zillions of dollars we gave away from the federal treasury, basically, to soup up the economy so trump would get a good re-election, will, he's not the only loser here. the american people have lost with this money going out the door. >> i think we're very fortunate the economy is quite resilient and we're ten years into a

recovery and consumer spending continues to be fairly strong. >> yeah. >> an economist will generally say -- >> are we facing two quarters of declining gdp, which is a recession. >> we don't know yet. but the question will be what triggers it if it happens. and the kind of trade tensions we're seeing could be a factor. >> co-dependence between the countries who made up the global economy, the president gloated the u.s. economy is doing well. we're the only ones doing well, he says. he said on twitter the economy is strong and good whereas the rest of the world isn't doing so well. "the washington post" described despite signs of a home-grown slowdown, trump claims the u.s. is immune to the economic trends rallying in other countries and then the president accused them to conspire to break the economy. despite with their partner, the democrat party, that's partisan talk, are working overtime to convince people they are in or will soon be going into recession. they're willing to lose their wealth or a big part of it just for the possibility of winning the election. i don't know what to say about

that. you're not political, you're not political. i have to go back to ben on this. first of all, i think there's a point there that the press likes to be ahead on the story. nobody wants to be behind on the story. the erstory right now is could there be a recession? trump says that's beating down the economy. the press is beating down the economy. >> again, he's looking for someone to blame. what he's getting, some of this data, he's seeing the writing on the wall. his actions have brought this about. his erratic leadership, his trade war with china, the rattling of the markets. this tax bill that did nothing to really address the fundamental problems in the economy, whether that's wage stagnation or whether that's the investments that mike mentioned that should be made and the research and innovative base of this country. so he's just looking for scapegoats. he's looking for people to blame. for the democrats, it's a simple message. this guy didn't take care of you. he said he was going to look out for you, the people you're always talking about in pennsylvania. instead of looking out for you, he looked out for the wealthiest americans.

he looked out for corporations, and neernl, you're the one getting hit. your wages aren't going up. and your student loans are still going up. your retirement security is still elusive. the price of health care is going up. even though he spent a trillion dollars on this tax bill, things are not getting better for people struggling in the economy, and the democrats need to make that message forcefully. >> i wish he was making -- he ought to be pushing people who have the cash, if they're swirling in cash, the big guys, use it to build new equipment to be as optimistic on the economy as trump talks. as he talks. thank you, ambassador mike froman. ben, thank you as well. you and jill are sticking with us. >> coming up next, trump versus the world. he loves this fight. i'll fight anybody in the house for a dollar. remember this photo from the last year's g-7 summit? there he is, this is like one of those pictures you saw in bar windows, like one of the republican presidents fighting with all the democrats. he's sitting there with his arms

crossed defiantly in front of other world leaders. i put my money on merkel. anyway, here we go again. america's allies are bracing for another contentious summit, a stormy one over there in france, and trying to figure out how to keep trump from blowing it all up. that's their concern, and presidential contender beto o'rourke joins us live tonight. his strategy for winning the nomination, he's going after trump. we have much more to get to. stay with us. zempic®! ♪ (announcer) people with type 2 diabetes are excited about the potential of once-weekly ozempic®. in a study with ozempic®, a majority of adults lowered their blood sugar and reached an a1c of less than 7 and maintained it. oh! under 7? (announcer) and you may lose weight. in the same one-year study, adults lost on average up to 12 pounds. oh! up to 12 pounds? (announcer) a two-year study showed that ozempic® does not increase the risk of major cardiovascular events like heart attack, stroke, or death. oh! no increased risk? (announcer) ozempic® should not be the first medicine for treating diabetes, or for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not share needles or pens.

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welcome back to "hardball." after escalating the trade war with china and inciting chaos at home, president trump takes his road show across the atlantic. tonight, he departs for france. and the g-7, and our allies brace for stormy summit. french president emmanuel macron now wonders how to handle trump. "the washington post" reports france's main objectives as host of this weekend's group of seven

summit is to minimize the chances that president trump will blow it up. there may be troubles ahead as world leaders talk global trade, iran, and climate change. including the fires raging right now in the amazon rain forest, which is really scary. on top of all that, president trump is pushing for russia to be added back into the group. once again, acting as an agent for russia. does the conspiracy going on? you have to ask yourself, how did he get the job of lobbyist or ambassador for russia? he's still doing it. president trump, macron, by the way, says it's not going to happen unless russia gets its hands off ukraine, which is unlikely. russia was kicked out of the g-7 when it annexed crimea from the ukraine in 2014. the past is prologue. look at this picture from last year's summit in canada that displays the discord of the meeting wmeet meeti meeting. look at them. president trump visibly opposed by all the other world leaders. john bolton is there at his side. trump left that summit early. and announced in a tweet from

air force one he would not sign the official end of meeting communique because he was angry with prime minister trudeau. macron said there will not be an end of meeting communique this year for the first time ever, baza macron said, trump won't agree. it's pointless. back with ben, jill, and eugene robinson. i'm going to start with gene on this one. i'm just stunned. he's the bull in the china shop who hauls the china shop with him. why does he have to play john mcenroe everywhere he goes? >> number one, he thinks it's his brand. it's his brand to be a nationalist. his brand to be i am america against the world. we don't need the rest of the world. we don't need these cheese eaters. you know, and that picture that we showed, i mean, he's loving it. he's the center of attention. he's loving that moment. where they're all having to appeal to him to do something,

and he's saying no. he just eats that up. he gets, i think, a satisfaction out of that. >> except for one guy. he loves boris johnson. the other guy with the hair, the other story, the other wild picture. he wants the other wild man. >> he's not going to love boris quite as much as he thinks. they're going to get along, and boris is a performer like trump. i knew him a little bit when i was in london. he was a journalist then. >> boris. he was. >> a hack, actually, but he was -- >> he wasn't reliable on facts, was he? >> he was not reliable on facts. but you know, he's a performer. a politician performer, like trump. and so they will get that. he's also a nationalist. >> you know who else was a journalist and started that way? benito mussolini. >> but boris johnson is basically a european. he's not going to agree with trump on a lot of things. he doesn't agree with him on bringing russia back in, for example. he knows about this little

unpleasantness in ukraine. he's read history. >> he wrote history, a great book of churchill. yeah. >> if trump thinks he's coming, you know, to meet a mini me, boris isn't exactly going to be that. >> the guy down in brazil is. anyway, the rain forest. ben, here's this, your line. i have to tell you, trump acts like if they don't have the dossier on him, if they don't have video of the hotel scenes, why is he acting like this? why is he going over to france with a number one goal of getting russia back in? why has he got this lobbying job for russia? >> chris, it's absolutely mystifying. >> or not. >> well, yeah. i was there when we kicked russia out of the g-8, and i can tell you, that was a unanimous decision of all the other countries because they invaded and annexed cry mia from ukraine. the fact is you go to these summits, i went to eight of them, to meet with your allies and make strategies on the issues around the world that you

agree with these countries about, and you're trying to figure out how to solve problems. russia would be a spoiler in that mix. the only thing i can think of, chris, is obviously he's carrying putin's water, doing exactly what putin wants, which is trying to divide the west, trying to divide the democratic world so that russia can take advantage of that division. and it seems like he's just so eager to meet with putin. remember, he invited him to the white house. and he couldn't go through with that because he got so much political blowback. he's always happy to meet with him at the g-20. makes fun of reporters sitting next to vladimir putin even though vladimir putin had reporters killed. he'sege toor get russia in another meeting so he has another chance to meet with vladimir putin. we need this g-7 badly. look at the crises. the trade war with china, climate change, the amazon on fire. iran accumulating a staugpile of weapons. these are the things you want to talk to these countries about. our allies are thinking about how do we prevent the united states from blowing up the

summ summit. it's a sign of just how far the united states has fallen in terms of our standing in the world. >> president trump is again criticizing our allies he's planning to meet with. he said this about the european union. >> the european union is worse than china. just smaller. it treats us horribly. barriers, tariffs, taxes. and we let them come in. >> and last month, the president threatens to place tariffs on french wine in response to the country's new tax affecting technology companies. he tweeted, i have always said american wine is better than french wine. now, the question there, and it's a legitimate question, he doesn't drink. >> he said the labels on the bottles look prettier, and that's what makes it good. he happens to own a vineyard in virginia, okay, so there's a business interest. >> why does he make statements that don't mean anything? >> this is a fascinating pattern. in addition to the mic drop moment the president did in canada when he was leaving, he

just has this, i don't know why he does it. >> that's a generational thing you're doing, the mic drop. that's new. go ahead. >> he has this thing where every time he goes to visit one of these summits, he goes to an allied nation -- >> what does it mean? you covered this guy. >> he likes to create these moments of conflict. i think he thinks it generates attention. he doesn't like spending time at these summits. he finds it quite boring, so he creates all of this drama before he arrives. you saw just this week, he threatened to release isis prisoners into european nations. he had this spat with denmark, where he's furious about his inability to buy greenland. >> does he hate the very idea of equality, of him sitting at a table with six other leaders? does the very idea of that run against him? >> the president prefers trips where he's hailed as this glorious figure. countries like china that roll out the red carpet. >> he's scripting an episode. we should be used to that by

now. he approaches every day, every meeting, every encounter like an episode of a reality show. and that act is old. but we should expect that. >> to your point, jill, the g-7 also comes on the heels of the president's feud with denmark this week. the president pulled out of a state visit after denmark's prime minister called trump's desire to purchase greenland absurd. the other leaders have taken notice. according to "the new york times," quote, most of the other leaders of the group of seven powers will no doubt save their eye rolling for when he's not looking. but they have come to see the mercurial behavior as the new norm by the president. ben, greenland. i sometimes think, i'm not a trump hater. i know i disagree with most of what he does, but there's a part of him that is simply an 8-year-old. some people say an 11-year-old. gee whiz, i'm look at the board game, monopoly, and saw this big acquisition. i can buy park place or whatever

it is, i can buy this. i will buy greenland. they're never going to sell it. why does -- what do you make of this, this strange behavior? it's not going to happen. >> this one is particularly crazy. here the thing though, chris. as someone who had to work on foreign policy and think about our relationships around the world, we're kind of laughing at this stuff here. they're not around the world. they're thinking like, what happened to america? how did they elect this person? who is this person? and i should add, too, yes, it's true, he likes to create drama at the summits. not when he's going to see dictators, not when he's going to see kim young un. he tries to get along with vladimir putin. it's peculiary only around democratic allies. that's what's so worrying to me. he's a nationalist, a man with authoritarian tendencies. he's more comfortable with people who are also like that. xi jinping, vladimir putin, kim

jong-un. our closest allies, justin trudeau or shinzo abe, that's what's so distressing about this. >> gene, i want to let you answer this. because world war ii, with all its horror, 50 million dead, created something good called world order. before that, little countries didn't matter. germany could gobble up poland. just stalin and the ussr. germany, the japanese, us, and the big boys decided everything. and the little country husband to live with it. it seems like trump wants that back. >> right. he seems to want a sort of sphere of influence world of great powers, where you have the united states and you have china in a lesser role over there, and you have, you know, who cares about europe? it's tragic to say, i think the institutions and alliances that were created after the second world war were spectacularly successful, and you know, at keeping the peace, at generating

prosperity. it's a system that worked very well. not perfectly. >> bipartisan, too. >> it was bipartisan. donald trump doesn't understand any of that. he certainly doesn't believe in it. and ben is right. he's much more comfortable with kim jong-un. >> who would have believed at the end of all that hell, germany would be a great democracy, japan would be a great democracy, and europe would be united. thank you, ben rhodes, great to have you on. and thank you for your service too. jill colvin, thank you for the associated press, and eugene robinson. >> you're up next, 2020 presidential contender beto o'rourke is ready to play "hardball." >> still ahead, the massive wildfires destroying the amazon. the french president calls it a global crisis. trump doesn't even understand what this is, the lungs of our planet down there. don't go anywhere. we're back after this. when did you see the sign?

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welcome back to "hardball." today, the democratic field of 2020 candidates shrunk by one. as massachusetts congressman seth moulton ended his presidential campaign. moulton's the fourth candidate to drop out so far, following swalwell, hickenlooper, and inslee. many of the remaining candidates spend the day campaigning out in san francisco. former congressman beto o'rourke, however, was in texas with former congresswoman gabby giffords who was severely wounded in a mass shooting in tucson in 2011. visiting with victims of the

recent mass shooting in el paso. there they are in the hospital. in an interview with "the new york times" last week, o'rourke said he would detach his travel from the primary calendar and plan his political activities around confronting mr. trump in direct and personal terms. here he was today on the importance of connecting trump's rhetoric to hate crimes. >> if i don't connect the dots, then i am in part culpable for the next mass shooting animated by the president's racism. so we've got to call that out. and we've got to make those connections clear to our fellow americans who themselves may have not understood how the president's rhetoric, his language, his laughter when somebody at one of his rallies says shoot them, when talking about how we stop the invasion he's been warning us of when it comes to immigrants in this country. >> well, the president has been all over the place on gun control, of course. promising actionable background checks right after the shootings in el paso and dayton only to later retreat on that promise.

earlier this week, he seemed more focused on whether or not the el paso victims liked him than what they wanted from him on gun control. >> are you talking to victims of the mass shootings? >> i did. i went to the hospitals. i will tell you this. i went to the hospitals. it was totally falsely reported. and frankly, you want to know the truth? they love their president. and nobody wrote that. nobody wrote that. because you didn't write the truth. "new york times" doesn't like to write the truth. >> sir, what -- >> they love -- they totally love our country, and they do love our president. nobody -- not only did they meet with me, they were pouring out of the room. >> last night, trump tweeted, i am hopeful congress will engage with my team to pass meaningful legislation that will make a real difference, and most importantly, save lives. i'm joined by former texas congressman and presidential candidate beto o'rourke. thank you so much for joining us tonight. let's talk about what you have been saying. you said that the president's

words have animated this violence. explain the connection between words and shooting people. >> when he was making his case to the country, announcing his candidacy for the presidency, he talks about mexican immigrants as rapist and criminals, repeatedly warned of invasions from mexico and central america, called asylum seekers animals. called them killers, called them predators, put their children in cages, deported their parents back to the very countries from which they fled. and you talked about this a little bit in the run-up to this interview. at that rally in may in florida, when he's warning of this invasion and he says how do we stop these people, someone yells out shoot them, and the crowd roars their approval, and he smiles. he says this is okay. and in the face of gun violence that has claimed 40,000 lives just in the last year, he's done nothing. he's complicit, actually corrupted by the nra. so he's driving a lot of this

violence. i want to make clear, racism in america did not start with donald trump. but he's given it new life. he's welcomed it into the open, and along with that, the violence that drove somebody literally 600 miles from allen, texas, to el paso to kill 22 people in the city. so we have got to connect those dots or we're not going to stop the next mass shooting or the next act of domestic terrorism inspired by white supremacy. >> what do you think he's up to when he does this? because the president is not stupid. he knows how words work. he knows how to rev up a crowd, when he says hit them on the way out? remember that, any protester, he would yell at people rough them up. the police, he says don't worry about banging their heads on the roof of the car when you put them in the squad car. he almost prescribes violence. >> yeah. i mean, part of the genius of this country is more or less, we're able to resolve our differences peacefully. democratically. i got a lot of hell from going

to his inauguration in 2017, and i said, i go not to celebrate the man but the fact that we can still pull this off more than 240 years later. and yet, he's going to fundamentally destroy this ability for us to disagree in an agreeable manner. inviting that violence, telling people of color to go back to their own country, though they were born here, though they're u.s. citizens in america. the day he signs his ban on muslim travel to the u.s., the mosque in victoria, texas, burned to the ground. gunman walks into the tree of life synagogue in pittsburgh, raving about caravans financed by wealthy jewish americans. the president of the united states raving about caravans, and when asked if george soros is funding them, he says who knows, maybe he is. so you're right. this guy knows exactly what he's doing. what he's doing is ripping apart an already divided country and inviting violence into our

politics and into our communities. latinos here in el paso, throughout america, now feel like they have a target on their back in large part thanks to donald trump. >> let's talk about your fight in the primary. you moved up a bit. you're getting a break from the lower pack. you're in a category of your own, i think, in the third tier. you may not like to hear it, but you're moving up. my question is this, if this all ends at the end of next may, and the democrat -- because seth moulton just dropped out and said he's fearful this will happen, and the democratic party picks a nominee who appears very left, and the electorate, which is generally centrist, has to choose between trump and someone they're afraid of because they're so far left, do you worry about that? like seth moulton was worried when he quit the race today. >> chris, i'm so focused on being that nominee, on being able to carry texas and its 38 electoral college votes. revving up not just democrats

but bringing independents and republicans as well who no longer have a home in the party of donald trump. >> will you carry texas, if you get the nomination, will you carry texas? >> absolutely. >> thank you for joining me. >> go ahead. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. beto o'rourke. that's one hell of a plan. >> up next, the amazon rain forest, which has been called the lungs of the earth for all kinds of environmental reasons really is important to the whole globe, it's burning up. foreign leaders are calling it a global crisis, which it is, saying it should be a top priority at the g-7 this week, but the president of brazil, who is sort of mini trump, telled everybody to mind their own business. what happens next? you're watching "hardball." "har. so you only pay for what you need. i wish i could shake your hand. granted. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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tonight, in what looks like a scene from an apocalyptic movie, dozens of fires continue to rage throughout the amazon, ravaging thousands of acres of forest, charring a region regarded as

the lungs of the planet. the amazon is home to a tenth of all species of animals on the earth. also home to a million indigenous people. it also helps absorb massive amount of carbon dioxide. since january, almost 73,000 acres have been ravaged by fires. that's an 83% increase in damage compared to the same period last year. there were fires last year. on tuesday, the same institute said it registered a new fire in the amazon every minute. the cause of the fires is unclear, but the amazon environmental research institute has stated that a recent increase in the number of fires is directly related to deliberate deforestation. the intense fires sent smoke and soot thousands of miles away, plunging brazil's largest city -- there it is, midday darkness. if that's not climate change in your face, what is? brazil's president bolsonaro, a figure elected on the promise to

open the amazon to development, has rebuffed the public outcry over the fires. he's accused left-wing nongovernmental organizations of setting the fires, and claimed that the media is exploiting the situation to undermine his government. who does he sound like? french president emmanuel macron who is hosting the g-7 this week, calls the wildfires an international crisis, tweeting our house is burning literally. the amazon rain forest, the lungs which produce 20% of our planet's oxygen, is on fire. bolsonaro accused him of trying to seek personal gain from brazil's internal matters and accused macron of engaging in colonialest mentality, but scientists warn of dire consequences for brazil and the war if the government doesn't get control of the fires very soon. that's coming up next. you're watching "hardball." even a "three-ring fender bender."

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welcome back to "hardball." after initially telling reporters that the government lacked the resources to fight the fires in the amazon rain forest, and now under increasing international pressure, brazilian president bolsonaro late today signed an order deploying federal troops finally to battle the fires. this comes amid dire warnings from scientists that say losing just 20% of brazil's rain forest could accelerate global warming. as business insider reports, quote, these fires coupled with the deforestation losses could

detry so many trees that they trigger a dooms' day scenario for the rain forest. the process would turn the amazon into an african savannah type of landscape. the tropical trees and the disappear releasing up to 140 billion tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere and causing an uptick in already rising temperatures. with me, deputy editor at new york magazine, author of "the uninhabitable earth, life after warming". how bad is it to you. the american viewer wants to know why this is so dire? >> it undermines everything we want to do to stabilize the planet's climate. every tree that's on the planet sucks carbon out of the air and produces oxygen. it's our best tool in producing climate change, and the amazon is the biggest photosynthesis.

that means before we get to a dieback scenario where the amazon collapses into a savannah which is a ways away, all those trees which store carbon are releasing carbon into the atmosphere. it's as though we're having huge coal plants going out of control in the moinamazon in a place th used to absorb carbon. >> put it altogether. will we see the giant icebergs breaking off from the arctic and look at that in that part of the world and we look at the war fair going on in the horn of africa and we see it all, isn't this the sign of god or whoever that this is happening in fact it's all happening. it's not scientific theory. we're watching it? >> i think the last couple years showed us exactly that. every summer we're having record heat waves. europe is about to have the

third record heat wave this summer. they set records and a week later records again. and a month later records again. there are extreme heat records being set in china. in places like mozambique, historic storms just as bad later. unprecedented wildfires not just in the amazon. but in california in the arctic circle. in siberia there were fires that burned through the area the size of austria. a few years ago this was something we read about in projections. now it's every night on our tv screens because the world is now just 1.1 degrees of warming, hotter than it's ever been in all of human history. and we're almost certain to get almost twice as much warming as we have today, and if we don't do anything about it, perhaps three or four times as much warming which would produce catastrophic outcomes for the

planet. we could have a global gpd that was 30% smaller than it would be without climate change. that's an impact twice as deep as the great depression, and it would be permanent. the impacts are a century away, and there's a lot we can do to avoid them, but the closer impacts are just as scary. at 2 degrees, many cities will be unlivably hot in summer. you won't be able to go outside during summer without dying. that's why the u.n. thinks we could have 200 million climate refugees just by 2050. they think it's possible we could have a billion. that's as many people live in south and north america combined. i think the estimates are high, but even the low end figure in half is 100 times as big as the european refugee crisis produced by the syrian civil war which is totally scrambled the politics of that continent. that's one of the interesting

emerging stories we're seeing in the amazon rain forest news cycle but also more broadly. how global geopolitics is playing into that crisis, not just how well politics respond but how will climate force the hands of our leaders and perhaps push us in directions we never anticipated. the kinds of pressure that macron is talking about and is probably being applied at the g7. this is something no leaders contemplated a few years ago. suspending trade deals in order to push leaders into line on the climate. i think personally i think it's necessary. it's also a completely different world politically than we were living in even just a few years ago with the signing of the paris accords. >> let's talk about politics. we have so-called populist leaders in brazil, trump in the united states. we have nationalists right wing leaders in hungary and europe. they're exploiting anger of a cultural change and immigration

at the same time they're fanning the flames. literally the reason for the immigration. >> yeah. it's a really toxic issue. i think the phenomenon all around the world, it's especially tragic when you think about it in terms of climate change in the sense that if you had to imagine a global threat that was big enough all encompassing enough and serious enough to call the world into coordinated global action, climate change would be it. that's how big it is. that's how dangerous it is. and yet, we're facing this catastrophe, this crisis, pre siesly at the moment when so many of the world's leader are retreating from the arrangements and alliances, pulling back into nativism and xenophobia in self-interest. that's what the brazilian president is doing. his country can benefit by exploiting the resources out region. others are paying brazil to

deforest the amazon. but it's also the case that brazil is only going to have to shoulder a very small slice of the burden for what happens. the rest of the world will have to deal with most of it. and so we need a kind of a system, i think, to evolve in which we line up these incentives so each individual nation is not enkwucouraged to behave badly while the rest of the world suffers. >> thank you so much. the social calls are well beyond the cost of that country. you're a compelling spokesman for the need to act. thank you very much. you're watching "hardball." back after this. atching "hardba. back after this. maria ramirez! mom! maria! maria ramirez... mcdonald's is committing 150 million dollars in tuition assistance, education, and career advising programs... prof: maria ramirez mom and dad: maria ramirez!!!

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if it's connected, it's protected. call, click, or visit a store today. up next, a special edition of all in with chris hayes in front of a live studio audience. that starts right now. >> tonight, on a special edition of all in before a live studio audience. >> we have initiated our domestic terrorism hate crimes sale. >> the resurgence of america's original terror threat. once again, markets crater after a reckless trump tweet. and barack obama's white house photographer is here. >> i think at this point we're like an old couple. now, live, here's chris haste. -- chris hayes. >> good to see