happy holidays and let's play hardball. good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington with a big hour ahead for you. i'll be joined by some highly influential people in politics and in the media. in a little while former secretary of state john kerry shares his thoughts on president trump and the greatest crisis facing the planet. and former national security advisor susan rice talks about donald trump and the predecessor he can't get past, barack obama. and later in this show i'll ta to filmmaker michael moore about the candidate he says is the

democrats' best chance of beating trump in 2020. and at the end of the hour i'll ask recent british prime minister david cameron, he'll be here, his thoughts on president trump. but we begin with msnbc's very own rachel maddow. i recently talked to her about her new book, blowout. in 2019 robert mueller released his report on russian interference in the 2016 american election and the role president trump and those around him played in all that. understanding what motivated trump is only half the story. why was it that russian president vladimir putin was so intent on messing with our election? why were there more than a hundred contacts between trump associates and russians during the campaign? those are some of the questions that led rachel maddow to write her new new york times best selling book, blow out, corrupted democracy, rogue state

russia and the richest most destructive industry on earth, where she reports putin's actions were an act of desperation as his country's sole economic industry of oil and gas was being strangled by u.s. sanctions. as she puts it the russian federation ultimately embarked on a deliberate and aggressive campaign to tear apart western alliances, to rot democracy and piss on or piss into the punch bowl of free elections all over the civilized world. that desperation was seen by german chancellor angela merkel as a psychological need on putin's part. quote, i understand why he has to do this to prove he's a man. he's afraid of his own weakness. russia has nothing. no successful politics or economy. all they have is this. well, i began my interview by asking rachel about putin's drive to do anything to get relief from u.s. sanctions. rachel maddow is back with me.

that is a delicious set of paragraphs, rachel. you have nailed it. the key here i get to a couple of things. one is sanctions. they needed western technology to explore the arctic circle. if they couldn't get more oil and gas they were going to go broke. they needed those sanctions broke. that explains all those goddamn meetings. >> basically it explains their desperation. russia's only got one game to play, he didn't in part because he likes what he can do with oil and gas. he likes the way he can use it as a weapon around the world. but he also wanted to have complete control of it, so he consolidated all the power and the oil and gas industry in his own country under his own control. he's got his henchman running the russian gas and oil industry and they're terrible at it. geologically russia is running out of the easy to get oil and gas. they now need to be doing this more hi-tech stuff but they've got these terribly, terribly run

companies and they need to be able to use western expertise and they can't get it because of the sanctions on them because of putin's gangster behavior. and that just -- i mean putin is strategic but he's short-term strategic and in the long run his short-term behavior that all made sense in terms of grabbing up that industry and wielding influence around the world in such a maligned way, those things got to be on a collision course, and he threw a total hail mary with us when it came to 2016 to try to get hillary clinton out of there and specifically get those sanctions undone. and all of those meetings you just described all of them during the campaign had something to do with sanctions. >> and this gigantic country if you look on the map which includes europe and asia all the way from one ocean to another practically, that gigantic country has a gdp smaller today than italy's because of that awful decision he said let's

just do oil and gas, let's not have a real modern economy. that was his decision to choose personal interests where he could be a dictator over one sector over the interests of his country. just like trump. >> well, you know, the thing about a diversified economy is that in order to have one, in order to have a growing vital economy you need a few things. you need the rule of law, you need property rights. you need a relative lack of corruption so that people can, you know, get permits and hire people and businesses can grow and compete on the basis of their merit. putin wasn't willing to concede any of that because all of that would have meant him giving up some power and him being susceptible to democratic pressures within russia's bounds. he could not take that because he was so personally weak and paranoid about his own stature. and so instead of allowing russia to grow within that way, which they could have done, they could absolutely be a super power once again in the world instead of having their exports

in the world. they could be a big deal in the world except for putin keeping his foot on the neck of his own country. and it's come to roost for him. >> did you think about the parallel between oil and gas and gold and silver in the days of the colonizers when the spanish never did trade and they've just got to get the gold and silver and destroyed economies through the speechy flow mechanism -- destroyed it because it inflated the economy. and it's doing the same thing as russia. they committed the old crime of going after, you know, subterranean minerals as opposed to developing a modern economy like the brits did and we did. >> right, and in the modern era the way you see this writ large is the resource curse. which is countries that have the natural resources that need to be tracted and sold on the international market, those countries no matter how

repneumerative that is, it always makes your country more poor. it almost always hurts the rule of law. it almost always results in a worse society and your citizens end up worse off. even as the elites get rich and corrupt. that resource curse is an academic thing people have talked about for years. i think we should see russia as suffering from that sort of on its own terms, and i think that's part of how we got ourselves into their sights in 2016. >> there's so much of this book. i kept thinking about the octopus, i was thinking of the great ruck makers -- you're smiling because you're on the same terrain. you pointed out there's something malevolent about oil in these economies, not just in destroying economies, but destroying culture, the corruption that comes from it. you talk about these oil guys like tillerson and their coziness with russia. the fact russia had given this guy a medal before he got to be secretary of state.

what is it about the malevolence of oil? i mean i don't know what to say -- by the way extractive industries are not particularly good to women over the years but commercial ports like seattle, new york, boston, women can get ahead in those places because of commerce. women can rise quickly in those companies. but extractive industries are particularly deleterious to women. did you give any thought to that? i gave a lot to it. your thoughts. >> it's part of the reason why micro-finance initiatives are so good for women because they promote diversified lower level economic growth where people can write their own plot. when you've got industries like oil and gas coming into a place what you get is billions of dollars of up front capitalization, so that means they are in there, and they have to make a pay off for decades to make it worth that up front capital investment. you get construction jobs for a minute, you get a few jobs associated with the ongoing

production of the oil once the oil is drilled, but really you end up with a ton of environmental damage, very few jobs for a very few people and a revenue stream that comes from outside the country to the elites, and that benefits when the rule of law favors the outside industry rather than the people who live in that country. and you see it over and over again. >> i'm so excited about the book. the first action of the trump administration in your back was to get rid of the public disclosure requirements in oil business doing business with countries like africa. it was meant that law to expose the pay offs, the corruption that allowed these government leaders to have houses in malibu and london and everywhere else in south africa while their people were starving to death, and they got rid of that transparency law as the first act of congress under trump. >> and never talked about it. we didn't have big national fights about it. they just quietly got that done. that's the pow of the industry

and our own government that they got that done as the first order of business with the republican house, a republican senate and a new republican in the white house. literally a provision that singally and only allows oil companies to bribe other countries and get away with it was the first thing they did, and the power of the oil and gas industry to get that done tells you something about how big a deal they are in our own politics and around the world. >> read this book, everybody. this is an education right here. this is your -- at least a year of good college right here. it is fantastic. because it ties together all the things we've been talking about here, all the things. all the scandal. i'm not a marxist, richard nixon went down because the economy sucked when he was in trouble. bill clinton survived because the economy was good. watch the economy follow the money, rachel maddow has done just that "blowout."

coming up former secretary of state john kerry joins me to talk about his vitally new initiative on climate change, plus my interview with susan rice on what it was like to work in the obama administration especially after trump's election victory. also i'm going to talk to activist michael moore about his endorsement of bernie sanders and the overall state of the 2020 presidential campaign. and coming here also david cameron will be here about the turmoil both of our countries have gone through since 2016. it'll be all back here right after this. e 2016 it'll be all back here right after this what do we want for dinner?

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and the point of no return is no longer over the horizon. it is in sight and hurtling towards us. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was the united nations

secretary-general speaking to head of the u.n. climate change conference earlier this month in madrid. his dire warning follows the release of a u.n. report that indicated, quote, rapid unprecedented cuts in greenhouse gas emissions are for the only hope of averting an ever intensifying cascade of consequences. well, here in the united states there's a new coalition of former presidents, military generals and celebrities who will begin holding town hall meetings across the country urging americans to combat climate change. the group is called world war 0. i talked to one of the founding members of that group, former secretary of state john kerry and started by asking him about the current state of the climate movement. mr. secretary, why -- let me just ask you the question, how's it going in the argument about climate? who's winning? >> well, earth isn't winning that's for sure. and that's the problem, chris. emissions are going to go up in

major countries around the world. the united states emissions are rising. they weren't a few years ago. the european emissions are rising. china's rising, india's rising. no country on the planet that has a major obligation to try to get things done is getting it done. so this is an urgent moment and that's why world war zero, and i urge people to go to world war 0.com, there's only one way to solve the problem and that's globally. the world has to be involved. it is a war now because there are people who have declared war on science and war on facts and war on the health and safety and welfare of their fellow citizens. people are dying in the united states today from mud slides, from fires, from floods. an amazing amount of storm damage. $265 billion spent to cleanup after just three storms two years ago, so the facts speak to us loud and clear, what we're

going to try and do is mobilize americans as much as we mobilize many years ago when we passed the clear act and save drinking water and created the environmental protection agency. people have to be involved, no one gets a free pass, democracy only works when citizens take part in it, and we are have to make this one of the primary issues. >> how do you uperate a bipartisan effort on the war to deal with the climate when you have a republican party completely hijacked by this president? you had kasich there, shwarzenegger, but the republican party is 100% against climate concerns, 100%. >> we have elections in the united states. we have to create ultimately accountability because the american people mobilize and demand it. we're not going to get involved in a specific election.

we're not supporting one canned dd over another, but we are going to be clear about making climate change a primary -- climate crisis really today a primary issue america has to confront around the rest of the world. if a party decides they want to stay on the sidelines, i suspect the american people are going to find a way to hold them accountable for that. but we're not trying to -- we're not trying to emphasize the differences here, we're trying to emphasize the common things that bring us together. we do have, you know, important republicans who like chuck hagel who was secretary of defense, and a senator from maine, hank paulson who was the former secretary of treasury. these are smart people. these are people who stake their lives on defending our country and on patriotism. and their sense of patriotism

now is to try and come together, democratic, republican across ideologies to recognize this is a national security crisis for our country, it's a health crisis for our country, and in the solution, chris, there are millions of jobs to be created. building out an adequate energy grid for our nation, beginning to retrofit and put efficiencies into companies and appliances. there are enormous job benefits. i mean, the fastest growing job in america today already is in fact solar powered technician, solar panelled technician. the second fastest job is wind turbine technician. so there are many, many more of those jobs than there are people working in cole industry. for example, now we're not trying to -- what we want to do is organize around the best possibilities of the future. but one thing is clear, chris. if we don't treat this like a

war, if we don't organize ourselves much in the way the presser at yale, the professor paul kennedy has written a book called engineers of victory, which highlights the chi decisions that were made in order to win world war ii, it wasn't automatic that it was going to happen, and it's not far from automatic that we're going to win this right now. but if we make key decisions about how to decarbonize electricity, how to build the infrastructure necessary for an electric fleet in america, an electric vehicle fleet, how do we begin to change what's happening and our agriculture or industry which is producing an enormous amount of the emissions? there are many, many things available to us as solutions to this. and moreover if we invest the way america invested to go to the moon, to win the race that john kennedy set us out on, if

were to begin to invest in the alternative possibilities of different fuels whether it's hydrogen or fusion or, you know, something nobody's talked about yet, america has an extraordinary record of breaking through, of setting the pace and that's what we have to do right now, but we don't have the leadership calling us to that challenge. >> mr. secretary, if you were a member of the united states senate where you worked for so long would you vote to convict and remove this president from office? >> first of all, when i was a senator i never dealt with hypotheticals, and i'm not a senator now. so let me say this about where we are. excuse me. i used to be a prosecutor and i prosecuted a lot of different kinds of cases, and i think that one of the things we were taught as lawyers and as litigators is if you have the facts on your side, you argue the facts. if you have the law on your side

you argue the law. and if you don't have either on your side you just argue. and that is what we're seeing today regrettably is a lack of respect for the constitution, and the constitution has been pushed i think into a second position to party and to president and to power. and that is not what the founding fathers of our nation intended, this is serious business. and i will say as a former prosecutor and just as an american citizen looking at the facts, facts are facts. as john adams once said facts are stubborn things. and obviously people are sort of circling the wagons here, but they ought to be circling them for constitution and for country. and wherever i have traveled in recent days around the world and i've made a number of journeys, i find people absolutely credulous, and they ask you not where are we going but what has happened to the united states, what has happened to your

politics, what's happened to your leadership? people expect us to be in a position to lead. and right now unfortunately we're just far from that. one other point, it's sad to see people who choose public service as a lifetime effort commitment and who care enormously about country being attacked for not supporting the president but what they're doing is supporting the law, and they're supporting the constitution, and they're supporting most of all their department, the place they've chosen in the state department's case to put their lives on the line in order to represent our nation in very difficult places around the world. i knew marie yovanovitch, our ambassador, i worked with her. and i think it's very sad and i applaud those who have stood up for what they believe and are telling the facts as they understand them. and they're certainly capable of being challenged on them if they want to be, but they're not being.

they're being vilified and personally attacked, and that's a sad moment for all of us. >> you and i have talked a lot about our country. i know how big you think about it. and i want to ask you to deal with one big hypothetical. what will america look like the next 5, 10 years if trump is re-elected? >> look, every american is going to make the judgment on that, chris. i came here to talk about the things that can bring us together, not the things that divide us. one of the problems we have in america today we haven't been able to focus enough on this. and in several presidential debates there wasn't one question about climate change. you afforded an opportunity tonight to talk about it, but this is something that ought to unite all americans. it's based on science, based on evidence, based on facts. and the generals and admirals and former defense secretaries who come together, what we call the top roots of politics are joining together with the grassroots and we're in sync with a lot of the groups out

there, particularly the young kids who are saying to you, hey, you adults, you've got to get this right. those kids don't have a vote in congress, chris. they don't have a vote in boardrooms. they are relying on adults to be adults, and i think it's critical for us to have a new discussion about health which is being affected by climate change, about our national security which will be hugely affected and finally about jobs and the possibilities of a very different future if we make the decisions we need to make. >> secretary john kerry, well stated. thank you so much. this conversation is just beginning again. up next president obama's national security advisor susan rice joins me to discuss her thinking back then that trump could win the 2016 republican nomination. and what it was like to meet with her successor, michael flynn. you're watching "hardball." "hare actions speak louder than words. she was a school teacher. my dad joined the navy and helped prosecute the nazis in nuremberg.

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welcome back to "hardball." and her new book "tough love my story of the things worth fighting for" former national security advisor to president obama susan rice writes about how she recognized the very real prospect of a trump presidency back in august 2015. quote, during a small dinner with president obama and a couple of senior political aides i said i could see a way for trump to gain the nomination. i persisted saying, quote, there's a lot of hate out there. you know, some people can't get

over where we are now. i was not suggesting trump then would be president but i didn't think the nomination was out of reach. i sat down with susan rice and began by asking her about her thinking back 2016 that donald trump could win the republican presidential nomination. so you thought it was do-able that he might just pull that thing off? >> i certainly thought it was possible he could win the nomination. now, this is august of 2015, so we still had quite a ways to go to the nomination, but i saw a path. >> you wrote a book -- i've asked 1,000 times on this show and i believe in it that barack obama was a sterling character, his family was such a sterling perfect family, they are perfect by any standards of traditional american values. they obeyed all the rules. they weren't money grubbers, public service from the beginning of his career. he didn't even go into private money. he went into helping the country with community

development, the whole works, public service. and it drives some people who don't like the success of anybody who's a minority crazy. you suggest that was one of the reasons you thought trump might win. >> i think it was that and more. i think there was a vein of discontent that i sensed that trump had the potential to tap into. parts of it may have been of course the fact we had an african-american president who was elected twice and quite successful in office. but i think it was broader than that. and, you know, at that time the field was very large, and it seemed almost inconceivable to most people that it wouldn't be, you know, a bush or a rubio or something like that. but trump had a particular brand of tapping into visceral negative views of, you know, many americans -- >> demagogues, too. >> and tried to divide us. >> you write the day after

trump's election i felt like a stinging rebuke of all we believed in, the more i thought about it the worse i felt. you had early dealings with michael flynn who was going to be your successor and national security -- >> he was my successor for 24 days. >> and you predicted -- well, in the book you say you predicted this guy ain't going to last. what was in him that you saw fragile, putting it that way? >> he seemed to me out of his depth. actually interestingly not the man we all saw at the republican convention shouting lock her up, but rather quite subdued, quite humbled it seemed by the weight of the job as he should have been. but substantively, strategically he didn't seem that well prepared and interested in learning what he needed to learn to get prepared. >> that grabbed me, the fact that a man or woman is about to

take over the world and has to cover every continent wraevery political issue and he spent like ten hours with you total. >> i chased him for each of those four meetings. he was busy meeting with foreigners as well as i think doing with whatever he thought president-elect trump wanted him to do. i was trying to get him to understand what he needed to do to hit the ground running in terms of substance, the issues he was going to face on day one and as well as how to run the nsc, how to staff it, basic stuff. >> so i want to talk about the nats. i watched all the games. why would it seem only win on the road and win every single game on the road and lose all the home games? >> god bless them. i'm old enough, chris as, you are born and raised in washington, d.c. as i write about in the book to remember the senators and how heart breaking it was when they left. and here we finally, finally have world series champions.

you must have been thrilled last night. i was whooping and hollering in my hotel room in boston. >> you threw out a pitch and i loved the honesty about it because no one could throw 60'6" without trying or practicing. >> hell yeah i didn't want to be looped on fox of throwing a dirt ball. >> and you're throwing a nice overhand and throwing it damn well so it's going to reach the plate. >> and it was a strike. and i swear to god of all the things i've had to do, performing in front of crowds, that was the most nervous i've ever been. >> because the one thing you don't want to do when you get to throw that ball is -- there's a phrase for it. >> a dirt ball. >> i did that in a double a team up once. i practiced so hard for the nats one time and i got that one a little bit outside, but definitely credible but not a strike. thank you for you. susan rice with another strike,

author of "tough love." coming up while some establishment democrats are getting nervous about beating trump next year michael moore argues he's already found the winning candidate. michael moore joins me next. you're watching "hardball." you're watching "hardball. we made usaa insurance for members like kate.

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welcome back to "hardball." with just one month to go before the first ballots are cast in the 2020 democratic primaries the contest seems to be open as ever. in this cycle it seems the largest presidential field in modern times and the race is to win. confusion rather than clarity continues to be the story of the contest for the 2020 nomination. what continues to define the democratic race is the absence of a candidate that's truly captured the imagination of voters. writes that democratic voters appear torn between heart and head. many are looking for a candidate who will inspire them while also being somewhat risk averse. well, those conflicting impulses could be one reason the race seems to be shifting and

shifting and the answer to the question of what and whom it will take to beat trump still lies at the center of it all, but not all voters are torn. oscar winning filmmaker michael moore says we have a winning candidate in bernie sanders. i spoke to him about his endorsement for sanders. and started by asking him if he thought that sanders at 78 years old could go the distance. let me ask you about this because i don't think you're a man of strong ideology or strong progressive views. that's why you're famous and you're iconic. but there's a personal endorsement of a guy, a human being at 78, can he go the distance all the way through four years of the presidency? do you think from what you know? >> absolutely. what i saw on saturday i saw him give a speech that went an hour and a half. he didn't use that lectern as a crutch or anything. he stood there. if you'd been there i'll tell you, it wasn't the old bernie stump speech.

he talked about love and compassion and decency. but at the end he said i want everybody to find somebody in the crowd that doesn't look like you, and i want you to look at that person and ask yourself the question would you fight for them as hard as you would fight for yourself? because if you would, that's the america that's going to survive. that's the america going to succeed. >> that's a great new york message, too. >> it's so powerful. >> i like when he gets off ideology, just talks about humanity. >> i've known this guy for 30 years, and he -- >> let's talk about how politics works. politics is about opportunity. every election is not the same. there are elections you can't win. nobody is going to knock off reagan in the second term but nobody's going to knock off nixon in the second term. but there are opportunities that come along not just open seat presidencies but when a president's weak. i worked for jimmy carter but i accept the fact he was politically weak.

reagan comes along, a man of the hard right. is this a year when someone progressive left normally wouldn't win can actually win this presidency because the weakness of this president and the horrors. >> and the fact that bernie as you say from the hard left, he is perceived as the real deal. he's outside the box the way trump was. he's an independent. he's still not a member of the democratic party. >> i noticed. >> so he -- but people like that. >> the personal character, he is a man to himself. >> everybody knows whether you agree with him or not that this is somebody who will not sellout. this is not somebody you can buy off. if he would have cashed in -- >> i've realized since the '60s that bernie was there. i know. >> he was there in the early 60s in chicago getting arrested for civil rights -- >> you're right.

i just want to talk to you about that because you're a man of the people. ever since roger and me and flint, michigan, and everything else you were looking out for people like yourself. your father worked in the factories, your mother was working out there trying to make it. you're a real person. who -- why do people like you except for your politics stick with this guy? who are these people? i've got a brother like this. i love my brother but he talks to me like trump is triumphant right now. grew up in the same background you had stick with trump, working class white people, working class people generally? >> well, you said the keyword, white. sadly i think it is a racial thing on some level with a lot of people.

but let me say it in a different way. i think that white guys, the lunch bucket joes from -- they can see the writing on the wall, that women are coming, they've arrived last november. we are now this is the 8th september in a row where a majority of first graders in this country last month were not white. >> majority. >> majority were not white. >> either hispanic or african-american or asian. >> correct. we now see the shift by the 2040s white people will be the minority. i think there's some level of fear about that probably in the way white people in south africa were afraid what's going to happen with a black majority? but of course what happens is -- >> but the people of south africa really earned the trouble they got. really bad. >> but here we have african-americans who are still on the bottom rung of the ladder after all these years, and those of us who are white especially white guys still having that door open just a little bit easier for us and we know it. we know we're not followed

around when we go to the department store. >> nobody's look at you in the restaurant. nobody's looking at you. >> yes, that's correct. so black americans still have it pretty damn rough -- >> and that spreads fear in a white voter and he votes white -- >> yes, because some white voters are afraid that -- when you're in power you don't want to lose what you have, and let's face it white guys -- >> working class guys who are struggling along, they don't think they're elite -- >> but they've been told to fear the other. >> let's be positive. i agree with you because i'd like to hear from you on this because i think this culture is so powerful and not just economics. pelosi, i have a new hero in life and i resisted her because she resisted, but i get the feeling she has her eye on the prize.

your thoughts. >> absolutely. there should be a statue already made to her because regardless to say what my political differences might be with her, she has played this masterfully and even her opponents have to admit that. >> michael moore. coming up, both the united nations and the united kingdom went through big changes in 2016 with the election of president trump and the vote for the u.k. to leave the european union. up next i talk to the leader who announced that vote, former british prime minister david cameron. you're watching "hardball." ♪ oh, oh, oh, ozempic®! ♪ (announcer) once-weekly ozempic® is helping many people with type 2 diabetes like james lower their blood sugar. a majority of adults who took ozempic® reached an a1c under 7 and maintained it. here's your a1c. oh! my a1c is under 7! (announcer) and you may lose weight. adults who took ozempic® lost on average up to 12 pounds. i lost almost 12 pounds! oh! (announcer) ozempic® does not increase the risk of major cardiovascular events

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we are approaching one of the biggest decisions this country will face in our lifetimes, whether to remain in a reformed european union or to leave. the choice goes to the heart of the kind of country we want to be and the future that we want for our children. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was former british prime minister david cameron back in 2016 announcing his decision to call a referendum on brexit, whether the united kingdom should stay in the european union or leave it. months later the united kingdom voted to leave the eu, a decision that "the washington post" described at the time as a crippling blow to cameron who had campaigned vigorously for britain to stay in the eu and had cast the referendum between a choice between an insular

little england and an outward looking pluralistic great britain. and cameron resigned shortly after the lead vote was announced and now writes in his book the referendums on britain's membership not a day has passed i haven't thought about my decision to hold that vote and the consequences of doing so. i do not regret holding a referendum but i deeply regret the result and i think brexit is the wrong path for our country. i had the opportunity to speak with the former prime minister of u.k., david cameron, and i started asking him how our countries ended up with leaders like donald trump and boris johnson. what happened to our two countries? how did we get donald trump and boris johnson? what is in the water between the two countries? >> i think there's some background we share on both these issues which is the 2007, 2008 economic crash and crisis, we have both had the biggest banking collapses, the deepest

recessions. i think from that came a lot of economic insecurity and also perhaps quite a lot of cultural insecurity with very high levels of immigration and people looking for different answers. and i think that's one of the things that perhaps lies behind the brexit vote and perhaps president trump's election. and what we have to do now in politics is try and address those underlying causes. >> we both have constitutions so what would happen in britain if prime minister, the role you played for example was caught going to another country and saying we'll condition foreign military assistance on you giving me some dirt on my political opponents? what would happen in your constitution? >> i think the next prime ministers questions would be pretty tough possibly even terminal i suspect. it's not a conversation i ever had or ever would have, but i'm probably going to leave it there because i think one of the strengths is whoever is the president, whoever's the prime

minister, we want them to get along. and so we shouldn't spend too much time getting involved in each other's domestic politics. >> let me try it again for your book, david cameron, for the record. for the record, here's my question. we all know what happened in 1940 when britain was under attack by the nazis and all alone and churchill went after our president and said i need 50 destroyers and suppose roosevelt had said i'll give you 50 if you give me dirt on the guy running against me? you see how i'm zeroing in here? >> i've said what i've said. >> let me ask you a philosophical question because donald trump is a lifelong democrat and pro-choice, all the democratic positions and decided to run as a republican and posed himself as a conservative. do you see trump as fellow conservative? you're a tory. >> i don't see the economic

policy as particularly conservative. when i was elected prime minister in 2010 we had the biggest budget deficit forecast for the entire world, and we had reduced that. that meant cutting spending, even putting up some taxes. we were fiscal conservatives, and to me a real conservative is someone who recognizes that if you rack up big deficits and you rack up big debts you put that on your children and grandchildren, and that's not a conservative thing to do. >> and another conservative position in modern times has been free trade. >> indeed and i'm convinced free trade. >> trump's not. >> there are many areas where we don't agree. climate change would be another one. the future of nato and the vital importance of nato might be another one. but the point i'll make is we have to work together. we did work together. >> well, let's talk about that because most americans are anglo files. we do like the special relationship. we love the fact the brits are with us when we have to face the world in troubling times. we do appreciate that friendship.

is it still there? >> i think it is still there. i'm a romantic believer in a special relationship when i became prime minister seeing our military worked together, our intelligence worked together, i think it is there. it's always going to be more difficult when you have a president who takes these positions on trade and climate change and what have you. but even with that going on we've been working very effectively on combating isis and perhaps the president has turned out to be more of a supporter of nato than we thought he was going to be. even on ukraine a country i didn't entirely want to get into. the relationship is still there. >> former prime minister david cameron your book is "for the record" and available in bookstores. great book. coming up a message for the holiday season. you're watching "hardball." you try hard, you eat right...

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we aren't failing. our politicians are failing. that's why i'm running for president. to end the corporate takeover of the government. and give more power to the american people. that's how we'll win healthcare, fair wages, and clean air and water as a right. i'm tom steyer and i approve this message. we were paying an arm and a leg for postage. i remember setting up shipstation. one or two clicks and everything was up and running. i was printing out labels and saving money.

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♪ tonight on "all in." >> i'm asking our chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment. >> from michael cohen's testimony -- >> i am no longer your fixer, mr. trump. >> to the mueller report. >> the mueller report was great. >> to the impeachment hearings. >> they got caught. >> a year of damning evidence against a lawless president. >> impeachment for that? >> plus the henchman convicted. >> oh, my god, i'm busted. >> sent to prison. >> that's what he said and that's what i said. that is what our position is. >> and facing federal investigation. >> oh, wow. >> then a brand new house takes office amid the longest government shutdown in history. >> i am proud to shutdown the