i want to talk to howard fineman whose global editorial director and malcolm nance, national security expert at msnbc analyst, and i thought, howard, that kristin asked the question a lot of people have been asking recently is why on sunday, after her statements about what was said i did fbi director comey did she -- given four pinoccios by the washington post why she repeated them essentially on a sunday talk show. i wonder what you thought of her explanation in this press conference overall. >> well, i thought you saw several stages of hillary clinton there. you saw the all the different types of hillary clinton. the first one an answer to kristin's very appropriate question, was the maddeningly hair splitting overly legalistic and fundamentally wrong hillary clinton that has led to her having the poll numbers that she has on trust and likability. the fact is, there were a lot of -- there was a lot of classified material going back and forth. and to pin it on the exact two or three e-mails that she's splitting hairs about is really to miss the point, but when the clintons get backed

joining me for tonight's roundtable, robert costa from "washington post" and jane newton small, and howard fineman, global editorial director for the huffington post. howard, i keep waiting for trump to sort of implode on certain issues. he's a nationalist and then he goes and asks putin to intervene or the soviet, the russian defense intelligence operation to intervene in the american political election by going after hillary clinton's e-mail. then he goes and trashes a gold star family. that's not comporting with nationalism which is gross patriotism. why is he doing these things? >> as a matter of fact, the khan family tonight on your show was the utter expression literally of american exceptionalism. >> this is the place you can -- >> you heard mr. khan saying there's no country on earth like this country. so ironically, donald trump has handed the flag of american exceptionalism to the democrats if they can take it. kiz khizr khan said it. he said you need tighter border checks, yes, we need to be careful about intervention. he gave actually the modulated, shrewd version of what trump has don

and howard fineman. fun late at night. >>> coming up, with donald trump's poll numbers sliding and members of his own party looking for the exit door, donald trump is launching a counteroffensive. it's attacking hillary clinton. he filled his economic speech today with a lot of red meat for his party, but he couldn't resist the personal attacks against his number one real rival out there and she's watching him and beating him right now. in just a few hours, voters will go to the polls in wisconsin where house speaker paul ryan is running for re-election. tonight his opponent is coming here to play "hardball." boy, does he sound a lot like donald trump? and trump's overheated rhetoric against hillary clinton tonight and clinton is hitting back. the "hardball" roundtable will tell us three things we don't know about the presidential race. this is shaving. blades here, blades there. some more over there... whoa! that's not a blade. this is gillette shielding. with lubrication before and after the blades. sh

. >> for more, i'm joined by howard fineman from the huffington post, and washington correspondent fortime" and national political reporter for politico. i want a deep dig on this. this is something strange. cory lewandowski has dredged up the craziest of birther theories that the harvard application that barack obama put in to become a student in the law school there somehow said that he was a foreigner, a foreign student, asking for a special break, as a foreign student. that takes it further than anybody -- in other words, he's not the son of his mother, he's actually an illegal immigrant. if he's the son of his mother, an american from kansas, he would be maybe not eligible for the presidency, but certainly an american. but now he's going further and saying he's not his mother's son. because when he applied to harvard, he said he's from kenya. this is brand-new, this one. >> i spent a lot of the last day reporting on what's going inside the trump camp, the turmoil, the frustration of the people running it, who areal actually running it. lewandowski was kicked out of the campaign an

me bring in boston globe political editor shira center and "huffington post" ed toshl director howard fineman who is also an nbc political analyst. howard, joe scarborough reported this morning that donald trump repeatedly asked an unnamed foreign policy expert why the u.s. couldn't use its nuclear stockpile during a national security briefing, that he repeatedly asked this question. joe was using this as an example with former cia director michael hayden as to whether or not donald trump has to temperament and even maybe, as some have floated out, the sanity to lead this country. what's your reaction to just that? >> well, if donald trump claims to be thinking outside the box, that's about as far outside the box as you can get. i think joe is right to cite it as something scary. what's more interesting to me and pertinent today is that it seems like a lot of people around him, even in his managerial inner circle -- if that isn't a contradiction in terms -- are wondering, if not about his sanity, about his ability to control himself. i'm told that one of the reasons he's got a problem here is

. >> i'm joined by msnbc political analyst howard fineman, global editorial director of the huffington post, msnbc terrorism analyst malcolm nance and conservative talk show host dana laesch. before we get into technical stuff, what did you make, howard, of trump's claim that hillary clinton lacks the physical or mental stamina to do the job of fighting terrorism? >> i think he's doing whatever he can to widen the gender gap even further. because the implication here is i think just under the table a little bit, you know, i'm a man, i can take on the bad guys, she's a woman, maybe she can't. >> what do you make of that, dana? >> i don't know necessarily if it has anything to do with the gender gap. >> what does it have to do with, then? >> i don't know. i don't know if he's going after -- i don't think you even need to bring in her health or stamina. i think you just look at her foreign policy record. >> why is he bringing in her stamina, lack of physical and mental stamina? why bring that up in a speech on foreign policy? a direct shot at her personal ability to do the job. >> i didn'

spokesman for the ted cruz campaign and global editorial director for the "huffington post," howard fineman, also a political analyst. howard, your piece is titled "the unhappy campaign of paul manafort." at least for now, he's still on the campaign. does he have any power in what happened? >> well, what happened is that donald trump was not very happy with the way the campaign was going over the last month. and he wanted to bring other people in. and donald trump has never had a firm, clear organization structure beneath or around him. he has a kind of floating, continuous game of people in his office trying to vie for influence. and as the numbers dropped and stories about paul manafort's operations in ukraine kept emerging, i think the other people who wanted to seize power used it as an opportunity to do so. chief among them, steve bannon and kelly ann conway. i think manafort will stay on as the kind of ambassador to the republican establishment, to the extent there are any people in the republican establishment willing to talk to donald trump. he says that he will focus on long-range

and howard fineman. fun late at night. >>> coming up, with donald trump's poll numbers sliding and members of his own party looking for the exit door, donald trump is launching a counteroffensive. it's attacking hillary clinton. he filled his economic speech today with a lot of red meat for his party, but he couldn't resist the personal attacks against his number one real rival out there and she's watching him and beating him right now. in just a few hours, voters will go to the polls in wisconsin where house speaker paul ryan is running for re-election. tonight his opponent is coming here to play "hardball." boy, does he sound a lot like donald trump? and trump's overheated rhetoric against hillary clinton tonight and clinton is hitting back. the "hardball" roundtable will tell us three things we don't know about the presidential race. to their jet carts, they automatically shrink the prices of millions of other products. very impressive. whoo, it's got a little kick to it. at jet.com, we're always look

resources to vulnerable senate and house races will prevent the gop from downing with a trump howard finemanhor around its neck. let's bring in the organizer of the letter. former spokesperson to house speaker newt gingrich. strong words, i think we can say n that letter that you wrote. are you and your colleagues worried about a shift in the house or the senate? >> absolutely. i think every conscious republican out there who is following this election should be worried about the same. the senate, i think, is literally a flipped coin right now and maybe worse. the house depending how things go if it's a trump landslide at the end of the day, the house may be at risk at well. that's why we had so many people come together who have worked in republican politics who have been republican elected officials including ten former members of congress signing this letter to the rnc pleading with them to stop focusing attention and resources on a candidate who is almost certainly going to lose and shift those resources to the winnable races we have in the house and senate so we can protect congress and