mother-in-law among the victims? she was not. i m sorry? was he fired? we know he was released from the army. and we d have to refer to the air force on that. it was the air force. where was the self-inflicted gunshot wound? turkey, the head. thank you. there have been unconfirmed reports that the suspect may have taken a hostage in the car. it s been floating around cnn and other outlets. any truth to that? that is not confirmed. mentioned. apparently he thought the shooter might have attended the same church. not true? i m not aware of the shooter attending this church. he had family members that attended. his spouse attended this church. i m sorry, commander, did you say that the grandmother-in-law was not a victim? oh, the grandmother-in-law? we re not aware of that at this time. earlier you told us the suspect had called his father. you expand on that conversation a little bit, tells us if the family has been cooperative, if you re interviewing them? they have been cooperative. and i really can t expand on that because of that cooperation and communications and out of respect for them. one of the victims was reported pregnant. be that change the number of murder counts charged? that number was included. one of the victims was pregnant. i m sorry? was this intended to be a revenge shooting? that attended the church regularly? i can t comment further on that. we know there was conflict between the families. and whether that was revenge or not, it would be speculation on my part. did you say that the grandmother we re not aware we re unaware if she is one of the victims. but you can t say no for sure? i can t say no. sir, could you speak to the messages that the shooter sent to his mother-in-law? i can t. the phones are being explored at this time. and i don t have that information. officer, officer, if the crime was not racial, not, you know, religious motivated, if we say right now that he came to kill the mother-in-law? there are many ways that he could have taken care of the mother-in-law without coming with 15 loaded magazines and an assault rifle to a church. i think he came here with a purpose and a mission. and that s my how many magazines. i m sorry? how many magazines? you said 15 earlier? there were 15 magazines collected here at the crime scene. and how many of those magazines were empty? all of them. thank you for coming out, ladies and gentlemen. this will be the last question. we ll we will have a briefing for you tomorrow. continue to follow us on twitter, and also through e-mail as well. what time? we ll announce that on e-mail and twitter as well. what is the name of the gentleman speaking? can i ask you a question? a joint federal and state law enforcement briefing in sutherland springs, texas on the shooting there. as we mentioned, we ll continue to bring live updates when warranted. we return now to an edition of hardball already in progress. offer you something and get you to do a favor. what we re seeing and what is so consistent about all the players here is that they were all eager to take the bait, so to speak. these dangles that were put out in front of them about information and access to russia. you notice that there are no financial connections here other than turkey, which we may understand flynn may have actually had turkey s connection was through a russian. but this isn t like they have lots of south african financial contracts or brazilian. they re all consistently russian. the russians put a lot of emphasis on this election, and they clearly decided this was their super bowl. and they were going to go after as many people as possible. and every one of them may have bitten. and we re going to find out from the mueller investigation if in fact some of these people are just unwitting assets or if some of these people might be actual agents working for russia in their employee, knowing what they were doing. is that what you see? what i see is i see many people who just see russia as this financial pot. and that all of them may have had some stake in future financial holdings whether it s michael cohen s e-mails about the future trump towers, whether it was just about getting hillary clinton. but all of them seem to understand that raising the sanctions and getting rid of the magnitsky act would make these oligarchs in russia very rich. and that s an inducement for them to be rewarded. and if that s the case, then it clearly spells out why everybody took on all of these meetings, from sessions to these low level guys. there was going to be something financial in their future for it. and it wasn t just for good relations with the united states and russia. but it s all very, very suspicious, you know. especially when you consider the amount of effort they did. that s when i begin to think rico. a rico charge. running a criminal operation, that they re all doing it together. despite being portrayed as a low level volunteer, nbc news is reporting now that george papadopoulos, who has pleaded guilty in connection with the russian probe had a more public role on behalf of the campaign. those activities include a panel discussion at the republican national convention, along with foreign senate relations chair bob corker and others. he also spoke on behalf of the campaign to the russian news agency interfax in december. and met with israeli leaders as a foreign policy adviser. what do we make of that, tom hamburger? what do we make of this guy, this nobody being presented as a somebody throughout the campaign? well, george, there is that seeming contradiction. the president and the campaign staff, the trump campaign staff tell us george papadopoulos was a nobody, had no influence on the campaign. and that may in fact by the case. he wasn t paid. he was named by then candidate donald trump as one of his foreign policy advisers. but the fact is he was not paid by the campaign. he wasn t active in the campaign, and wasn t well-known. at least in trump tower. but what we do know as you just suggested is he led some senators both at the time of the republican convention, led some in europe and in israel, and would discuss when doing these seminars, would represent himself as an adviser to the trump campaign. did the same when he met with some governor government leaders. and some of those meetings we think set off some alarms and may have led the fbi, the justice department to become interested in george. and i just wonder whether we shouldn t all be buffaloed by this nonsensical distinction between unpaid and paid. i don t think henry kissinger gets paid. it s all about influence and getting in close to somebody who may be president of the united states. that s a tremendous asset for people in their business. anyway, we have learned now, as we have learned now, the attempts to downplay papadopoulos s role in trump s orbit fits the same pattern we ve seen from trump s defenders in the case of michael flynn. paul manafort. let s take a look back sat@some hoff those moments. it was such a minor part. i think the one person i don t think i ve ever spoken to him. even general flynn was a volunteer of the campaign. and then obviously there has been discussion of paul manafort who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time. in the case of mr. page, mr. gordon, some others, that they really have very attenuated contacts to the campaign that i managed for the last three months. i know mr. manafort. i haven t spoken to him in a long time. but i know him. he was with the campaign for a very short period of time. i never heard of papadopoulos. he never showed up at trump tower, never had any interaction with any of the campaign leaders around me. do you remember george papadopoulos during that march meeting? i don t remember much about that meeting. it was a very unimportant meeting. it took place a long time ago. don t remember much about it. paul was not there for very long. what people don t mention, paul was not there for a very long period of tile. what was it that convince you d he had to be let go? i think we found out he may be involved with certain nations. and i don t know exactly what it was in particular. anyway, he headed up the campaign the entire summer. let me go back to julia. what do you make of this i don t know nothing approach to all these people? of course it makes since that the trump administration would want to be distancing themselves from this. but it also makes sense that the russians would want to go after people who might be at a low level, who might be able to exert who might block to exert their influence like a george papadopoulos, knowing that they could pinpoint these people. it is a way for them to sort of cozy up to the boss. yeah, make their bones. its pattern, right. and of course that s a pattern that mueller wants to show. even people who may not have been directed by the boss, if it was understood within this campaign or this administration that this is how you please your boss, that shows something there. and so i think it makes sense that both the russians would start with lower level and the mueller investigation would start with lower level. but when we get to someone like michael flynn who was appointed to be the national security adviser, i think it s a hard argument to make that he was some low level person that had no contact with the president. julia ainsley, we rely on you so much day to day. thank you so much for your great reporting. and malcolm nance as well. coming up, the president says the gunman who killed 26 people at a texas church was deranged. and the issue he says isn t guns but mental health. he says predictably, it s too soon to talk about guns, even though americans once again, including children were gunned down by a man with a military-style rifle. plus, new polling shows a very tight race. democrat ralph northam has a slightly, i mean slight. but will gillespie s campaign using trump tactics pay off in a state that trump lost? and trump is not backing off his fire and fury talk against kim jong un. he is over in asia right now we know, and he says weak rhetoric has gotten us nowhere with north korea. it s now been revealed that the pentagon has determined that the one sure way to destroy all of north korea s nuclear sites would be by a ground invasion. and that is scary. finally, let me finish tonight with the right and wrong way of dealing with a possibly nuclear conflict. this is hardball where the action. i just got my cashback match, is this for real? yep. we match all the cash back new cardmembers earn at the end of their first year, automatically. whoo! i got my money! hard to contain yourself, isn t it? uh huh! let it go! whoo! get a dollar-for-dollar match at the end of your first year. only from discover. senator rand paul is recovering right now after being physically assaulted by a neighbor at his home in kentucky on friday afternoon. according to the criminal complaint, the neighbor, dr. renee boucher, walked on to senator paul s property and tackled him to the ground. the senator suffered five broken ribs and bruises to his lungs. given the severity of his injuries, it s unclear when senator paul will be able to return to work. dr. boucher was arrested and charged with assault. his lawyer released this statement today saying that the altercation had, quote, absolutely nothing to do with threatening texts. the church s pastor frank pomeroy and his wife scheherri e away yesterday but their 14-year-old daughter annabelle was killed in the attack. today they spoke to reporters. let s listen. we ve had a long night with our children and grand babies we have left. she is going to share this with you. our church was not comprised of members or parishioners. we were a very close family. we ate together. we laugh together. we cried together. and we worshipped together. now most of our church family is gone. our building is probably beyond repair. and the few of us that are left behind lost tragically yesterday. as senseless as this tragedy was, our sweet belle would not have been able to deal with losing so much family yesterday. for more i m joined by nbc s steve patterson who is in sutherland springs. steve, these children, do we have any idea what it seemed like, the horrible incident? was it just a guy going into the church with a semiautomatic weapon, an ar-15 or whatever and just spraying the room, including the children? was he targeting the children? keep in mind he was clad in all black as he entered there. it must have been a tear fight situation for the parishioners that were inside the church. we what we do know, being on the ground here in sutherland springs, the homesteads and the mom and pop shops and the farm steads are the lifeblood of this community, that church was the beating heart here of that community. community members dealing with the fact that if it s not broken, it has at least fractured this sense of community because of the terror that was inside that church. what we do have is a seemingly clearer portrait of the shooter. and as you mentioned, the motivations here which are becoming apparent. we ve been speaking to authority figures who have been telling us the threatening text messages were sent almost as early as sunday morning to that mother-in-law who is believed to be a member of that congregation. ironically, not in the church at the time of the shooting. so we know immediately right off the bat here that this was not a shooting based on radicalization, on racial motivations, on religious motivations. that this may have been a targeted shooting based on an ongoing domestic situation from family members. that s the word that we re getting from authorities. that s who we believe he may have been targeting inside that church. we re also getting a clearer portrait of kelly himself who is a member of the air force, was on an air force base in new mexico from 2010 to 2014 with his wife and infant son. court martialed in 2012 for assaulting his wife and step-son, fracturing his skull. court martialed for that violent incident. investigators are trying to piece together how he was able to buy that weaponry that was on him seemingly almost every year up until the shooting, including the piece of weaponry they believe he used to bring inside the church and commit mass murder. 20 as you mentioned injured from the gunfire. 10 of them still in critical condition, clinging to life after that shooting. chris? thank you so much. nbc s steve patterson in texas. well, president trump, who was in japan today, called the shooting an act of evil. he blamed, quote, mental illness, not guns. he said that let s watch. i think that mental health is your problem here. this was a very based on preliminary report, very deranged individual. a lot of problems over a long period of time. we have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. but this isn t a guns situation. i mean, we could go into it. but it s a little bit soon to go into it. fortunately, somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction. otherwise it would have been as bad as it was, it would have been much worse. but this is a mental health problem at the highest level. it s a very, very sad event. it s these are great people and a very, very sad event. but that s the way i view it. i m joined right now by u.s. congressman joaquin castro of texas. mexico and canada don t visit like this. they don t have mass shootings regularly or assassination attempts throughout their history. what makes us different? why do we allow it? well, most of all, the government s unwillingness and congress s unwillingness to do anything about it at this point. and, you know, it was an incredibly sad and tragic event yesterday. but unfortunately, one that we re not unfamiliar with at this point in the united states. and for me to think that the gunman bought that weapon in my hometown of san antonio is very sickening and sad. it s also for texas another haunting episode of mass violence. you know, in 1966, we had the shooting at the ut tower. sure. when i was in high school, we had the 1991 luby s killing in killeen. and lee harvey oswald got his rifle by mail order. why not? it s easy. let me ask you about president trump and his position. didn t he oppose efforts to make it difficult for someone who has mental problems from getting guns? and now he says this is just a mental incapacitation issue. it s not a gun issue. well, they re related. the guy had a semiautomatic and ar-15 that is capable of shooting all those rounds in a matter of a couple of moments. if you had an old musket from the times when the second amendment was passed, he would be able to maybe fire off one round, not very accurately every half hour or so. i mean, weapons were we ve got the right to carry arms back when they weren t that dangerous. now we re talking about weapons that can fire and spray basically killing 7 months old and 77-year-olds all in the same minute. yeah, there is no question that the founders never accounted for idea that you would have a ghun that could kil 26 people in a matter of seconds. we keep being presented with this false choice that the issue is either one of mental health or of guns. and in fact it s a combination of both. what we need to do is two things. first, do everything that we can to prevent guns getting into the hands of the wrong people. so that includes things like background checks, universal background checks that are supported by 90% of americans. but also congressman, i think this guy got through one despite his military record and dishonorable service and beating up his wife and hurting his child very grievously. and still he managed to swim right through it. well, that s why you need the second part. it s a fact that some people are going to be able to get guns illegally or even legally and still go out and try to kill people. the second part of this is you have to do something to limit the damage that these weapons can impose. that means either banning assault rifles or limiting the number of bullets in a cartridge. i think it requires both of those strategies to be successful. you know, maybe we need licenses of certain kinds of weapons for certain kinds of people. maybe if you live out in the boonies and you re shooting up old cars or your totally safe. but it ought to be highly restricted to have certain kinds of weapons, i think. u.s. congressman joaquin castro. we re still watching your career, sir. we re rooting for you. thank you. a lot of career up there maybe in a fews years. we re down to the final hours for the race in the virginia governor. and gillespie has adopted the donald trump playbook by turning the election into a culture war is. but this tactic really going to pay off? i don t think so. i don t. this is hardball, where the action. [don t stop me now by queen] hello, i m milissa rehberger. new information coming out of a news conference on the texas gunman. the autopsy is now complete. he sustained three gunshot wounds, two from an armed citizen, one was self-inflicted. the air force says it failed to enter the gunman s domestic assault charge into a federal database that would have prevented him from buying the gun he used to massacre 26 people. florida state university has banned all greek life following the death of a 20-year-old pledge in an unrelated case of a fraternity member charged with the sale and trafficking of cocaine. back to hardball. welcome back to hardball. it s election evening in virginia. as voters choose their next governor, the race is very close. northam and gillespie have been rung neck and neck for week news. five polls out give northam the edge, but indicate the race is still up for grabs. a poll by the new york times has northam lead big 3. christopher newport university shows a 6-point advantage. quinnipiac has northam on top by 9 while fox news shows the democrat lead big just 5 points. the very latest poll from monmouth university out just this morning shows a 2 point race. for more i m joined by the great larry sabato and former oklahoma republican congressman jc watts. larry, tell what s you think of this race overall, the color of it, the nastiness of it, what the cultural messages should be to the country so far on election eve. chris, it s not been a thing of beauty, that s for sure. first of all, there have been a lot of mistakes by both sides. and lately by the democrat. and then you have those vicious negative advertises, again, on both sides. but most of the recent ones have been on the republican side. so it s not a campaign i would recommend for a course in campaigns and elections. it s not a model campaign. having said that, look, virginia, as you know well, has been spending more and more democratic. that s in presidential years. when you have a turnout of mid 70s in the registered population. that s going to drop tomorrow to somewhere in the 40s. and democrats disproportionately drop out of the electorate in these off off year races. that s where gillespie has upset potential. i d still say northam is the leader and the most likely winner. but gillespie has put it in a position where he can win. he can upset northam. what s the smart move by gillespie? is it not diagnose trumpesque, but not bringing trump in? is that the smart move if he wins? oh, absolutely. he kept trump at arm s length in person. but he took all of trump s issues and put them into some vicious television ads that were saturated throughout the state. and sure enough, the trump voters have responded, and it s almost like trump had appeared. in a political sense, forget morality or history or any values, was it smart for northam to come out for bringing down all the statues? no, it was not. i understand, as you said, the morality of it. and of course i m here in charlottesville. i get it. but from a political standpoint, that was not a wise move. he backed off of it. but of course he stuck with the original position, as politicians always are. yeah, let me bring in jc watts, my friend jc. thank you for this. i know you re from oklahoma, and that s your home and pride. looking at this virginia race, what do you make of this problem. the democratic side on an ethnic front where they basically say as we say in philly cut somebody from some promotional material, some leaflets. the african american running mate was dropped from his name and face weren t even mentioned in this county there in this leaflet distribution. what do you make of that as a political issue that republicans and some african american republicans are trying to exploit? well, chris, i ve seen that happen for the last 20 plus years. when i first ran for congress, you know, my democrat opponent took a picture of me and my high school senior picture with the big afro that was so big you couldn t have gotten it in your frame here and put it in a commercial and basically said is that who you want as your congress person? and i know that those kinds of things happen. that northam took his black lieutenant governor off of his mail pieces. that happens. and my thing is, as i ve said for the last 20 years, it s going to happen. but when it does happen, just be consistent. if it s a republican that is doing it, you need to beat him up. if it s a democrat that s doing it, you need to beat him up. and i think northam over the last few days, i understand from talking to your producer that, you know, there has been some highlighting of what has happened. and i saw an article over the weekend where governor wilder was consistent, as i said, that he came out. the former governor, black democrat governor of virginia came out and was critical of that. and kudos to him. i hope that when it happens on the republican side, you know, black republicans, white republicans ought to be consistent and do the same thing. and doug, water matters in that state. a digital advertisement being run on facebook now is imploring black voters of virginia to oppose northam, the democrat, over his treatment of his running mate for lieutenant governor justin fairfax. let s watch. ralph northam s campaign deliberately took justin fairfax, the only black statewide candidate off his campaign flyers to appease other supporters. if northam can t support his black lieutenant governor, why should black people support him? send a message to northam loud and clear. we won t be thrown under the bus. decode the results tomorrow night. let s say gillespie pulls an upset. what would that tell the country? it would tell the country until republicans running in 2018 that they can do what gillespie did. hold trump at arm s length, that they re in a purple competitive state or a blue state, but adopt some of the trump issues. it will cut even in suburbs that normally vote liberal. i think northam is going to squeak it. i think you do too, larry. let s see what happens tomorrow night. i hope you re around. larry sabato, the great professor at the university of virginia. and former congressman jc watts, a great friend of our program. we re going to have all the results tomorrow on hardball at 7:00 eastern. and then our whole program is coming back at midnight for an hour. the assembly votes could tell us in virginia how the rest of the country is going to vote for congress in 2018. up next, ahead of his trip to south korea, president trump ramps up the rhetoric against kim jong un. it comes amid a scary assessment from the pentagon that the only way for us to destroy north korea s nuclear sites is through a ground invasion. a second korean war. you re watching hardball. lower premiums? 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i m tom steyer, and like you, i m a citizen who knows it s up to us to do something. it s why i m funding this effort to raise our voices together and demand that elected officials take a stand on impeachment. a republican congress once impeached a president for far less. yet today people in congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger who s mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons. and they do nothing. join us and tell your member of congress that they have a moral responsibility to stop doing what s political and start doing what s right. our country depends on it. welcome back to hardball. president trump s in the middle of a 12-day, five-country trip through asia where along with navigating diplomatic relationships, he is focusing on the threat that north korea poses, of course. here is what he said yesterday about that in japan. the era of strategic patience is over. some people said that my rhetoric is very strong, but look what s happened with very weak rhetoric over the last 25 years. look where we are right now. well, this comes as the pentagon said in a letter to congress that, quote, the only way to locate and destroy with complete certainty all components of north korea s nuclear weapons programs is through a ground invasion. well, democratic congressman ted lieu and ruben gallego had asked the pentagon for that hypothetical assessment. let s bring in the round table, susan page, washington bureau chief for usa today. eli stokols, wall street reporter for the wall street journal. and msnbc political analyst darlene suberville. what do we make of the fact that this document, the assessment of the need to go in on the ground to get those nuclear weapons knocked out has gotten out into the papers, has reached pyongyang? is that provocative in itself? you know, i think it might have calm effect on some of the provocative rhetoric we ve heard from the president. believe me, americans do not want to see a ground war in korea. that s for sure. with u.s. troops going into north korea to secure nuclear weapons. that would require not only ground troops, but north korea might respond with chemical and biological weapons. so this strikes me as being something that underscores how very costly the military option would be in north korea. eli, do you think that maybe you know more about the trade craft of reporters involved. do you think that was leaked in an attempt to do what susan just said, to forestall such an option being taken? perhaps. but aside from that, the military option, again, there doesn t seem to be public support for a prolonged ground war. the consequences of any sort of military action against north korea would be probably immediately felt and devastatingly felt by the 20 million people in seoul, south korea. yeah. so what you re left with in this situation is what you ve had all along, and that is diplomatic efforts. and it s hard to see this administration engaging real seriously in that. about a month ago, the president undercut his own secretary of state saying, rex, don t waste your time talking to north korea, secretly back channeling and trying to work something out with the north koreans. and you heard his rhetoric this morning, talking about my rhetoric. my rhetoric. some people say it s tough. but weak rhetoric hasn t gotten us very far. it s not about rhetoric. strong or weak, that s not a plan. that s not true diplomacy. it seems like the consensus among foreign policy folks that i speak to is that this administration has not really engaged seriously enough in the really detailed conversations with the chinese, with other allies in terms of pushing a more unified, a more intense diplomatic effort in this area. darlene, what does the associated press, and what do you know about the possibility of russia helping, of putin and our president sitting down perhaps in hanoi or saigon and trying to work out some deal whereby the russians really help put the pressure? because the russians under the leadership of joseph stalin, were the ones who approved the korean war in 1950. well, it s possible. president trump on his way to japan told reporters on the airplane that he wanted putin s help on the north korea issue. they re supposed to meet when they get to vietnam later this week. and we ll see what comes out of that meeting. what about the whole question of the president? do you normally i don t mind i don t like politicians who kick the can down the road. but sometimes kicking the can down the road avoid as nuclear war. you kicked that can down the road during the entire cold war from 47 to 91 and avoided a conflict between the united states and russia, a direct conflict. i just wonder does trump have a point here? to say you know, we ve kicked the can down the road in terms of nuclear development in north korea, and look what it s gotten us? a country on the verge of having all that it wants and we re sitting there watching it happen. we better move. that s certainly true. and it is true that the policy that his several of his predecessors have followed did not succeed in forestalling the continued development of north korea s nuclear program. but some people do look at the cold war as a kind of example of what can work in keeping the peace in a positive way. because urge the administration to consider a policy of containment, to try to contain it the way we contained the soviet union for decades that is not a policy that president trump has been willing to embrace. he continues to say that a weaponized a north korea that has nuclear weapons is unacceptable to us. well, that s a position he is going to have to fight for. your last word from you, eli. how it is going to end up in the next few days do you think in the trip? is this trip going to have a salutory effect, advantage of having at least move this towards some sort of alliance with russia against kim jong un? i think it will be pretty tough to get russia to move on. this i don t see what leverage the trump administration really has in getting vladimir putin to stop some of the economic relationships and deals that he has made with north korea. but i think to susan s point, you know, it s not emotionally satisfying for this president to accept and to publicly state that containment may be the smartest policy here. yeah. he likes it makes him feel good to talk about how this is the people who came before him. it s their fault, and we can do it better. it just doesn t portray a fully nuanced understanding of a really complex situation that really, you know, if you talk to foreign policy experts, folks who were involved in the last set of talks with north carolina. that will tell you there are no good options here in dealing with the north koreans. i think politically, trump would like to tell people we ll handle it. but at this point, beyond rhetoric, i don t really see a plan to do that. when we come back, the roundtable is sticking with us. all three will give me scoops you ll be talking about tomorrow. this is hardball, where the action is. (burke) at farmers, we ve seen almost everything so we know how to cover almost anything. even a swing set standoff. and we covered it, july first, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. also in kids chewables. i m up here in boston on my tear for bobby kennedy. i ll be speaking to what i m told will be a sold-out crowd at the john f. kennedy presidential library. the book has definitely tapped into something. i ll be back in washington, d.c. tomorrow for coverage of the virginia governor s race. as i said, i ll be on hardball at 7:00, the usual time as the polls close. and then back again for a special hour of coverage starting at midnight eastern. and we ll be right back. what is your nationality and i would always answer hispanic. so when i got my ancestry dna results it was a shocker. i m everything. i m from all nations. i would look at forms now and wonder what do i mark? because i m everything. and i marked other. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. darlene, tell me something i don t know. well, this is something you probably do know. but i think it s something that s not getting the attention that it deserves. and it s the fact that almost seven weeks after hurricane maria slammed into puerto rico, significant numbers of people there are still without electricity and without drinkable water. i think we all should know that in spades. anyway, eli? well, today on capitol hill, some people caught this, but the house republicans began the markup of their tax reform plan. and we got started to get a sense of some of the deductions and cuts that are not going to exist anymore if this bill is signed into law. the tax policy center also released an interesting study today saying by 2018, if this bill goes forward, 12% of americans would actually see their taxes go up. and in 10 years out, nearly 30% of americans would see their taxes actually rise as a result of some of the deductions and things that this bill threatens to take away. that s why they re rushing it through. anyway, susan? so we ve been keeping touch with a panel of trump voters for the past year. since we re coming up on the one-year anniversary of trump s election, we asked them to name the best thing and the worst thing trump has done over the last year. no consensus on the best all over the map. the worst thing, more than half say it s his tweets and provocative behavior. they say trump s mouth is undermining the president from being able to get things done. the one thing that will never change. thank you. good to have you on, dar lee superville. the right and wrong way of dealing with possibly a nuclear conflict. you re watching hardball. infusion and serious allergic reactions can happen during or after treatment. entyvio may increase risk of infection, which can be serious. while not reported with entyvio, pml, a rare, serious brain infection caused by a virus may be possible. tell your doctor if you have an infection, experience frequent infections, or have flu-like symptoms, or sores. liver problems can occur with entyvio. if your uc or crohn s medication isn t working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio. entyvio. relief and remission within reach. another day of work. why do you do it? it s not just a pay check, you actually like what you do. even love it. and today, you can do things you never could before. you re developing ai applications on the cloud. finding insights hidden in decades of medical documents. and securing millions of iot sensors. so get back to it. and do the best work of your life. anyone who calls it a hobby wordoesn t understand. we know that a person s passion is what drives them. [ clapping ] and that s why every memorial we create is a true reflection of the individual. only a dignity memorial professional can celebrate a life like no other. find out how at sanfranciscodignity.com. let me finish tonight with this north korean danger. i m up here in boston speaking tonight, as i said, at the john f. kennedy presidential library on the topic of robert kennedy. with president trump in asia visiting korea on the trip, it s important to recall america s past success in avoiding a nuclear war. we are obviously getting close, far too close to that kind of nuclear standoff this country faced in the early 1960s. the main thing we learned that time when the soviet union was caught placing intermediate range nuclear missiles in cuba was to give the other side a way out. a nuclear standoff is no time for a test of testosterone to battle over who is more macho, who has the biggest hands. the trick in the case of kim jong un of north korea is probably not to make fun of him, to make him feel diminished, to make him feel he needs to prove his whatever. the trick is probably to give the north korean dictator a sense of having achieved what he needs, enough stature and importance to his people to hold on the power. the trick i would think is to get through this episode and hope we have a more stable situation in the years ahead. in 1962, a couple of steps got us through. first the kennedy brothers, president bobby decided not to launch an attack on the missile sites. for one thing it might for another thing, bobby kennedy argued we americans don t launch sneak attacks. we don t do pearl harbors. what the kennedys did do is cut an under the table deal to pull our outmoded missiles out of turkey in exchange for the russians pulling theirs out of cuba. it worked. when you re looking at the prospect of nuclear war, it s good to have cool hands at the table, people who can imagine consequences, who act on those consequences and not on their gut. the gut can be an extremely dangerous guide when dealing in weapons that can destroy
in wisconsin, 22-vote margin, and she got 31,000 votes. those are states that decided the election. that s why investigators are looking at jill stein. it s no surprise the reaction to the russian meddling is polarizing but it doesn t matter whether the investigation goes right or left. these leads need to be run down. so if the committee s doing it, maybe that s a good thing. that s our show. hardball starts now. bad santa. let s play hardball. good evening. i m chris matthews in washington where it was a day of high drama at the capitol. at this hour, we re awaiting a senate vote on the republican tax bill that could come at any time. the house voted this afternoon, passing the bill despite every democrat opposing it, along with 12 republicans. late today there was a wrinkle. house republicans said they will slightly alter the bill and revote tomorrow to ensure it fits with senate rules that allow it to pass with a simple majority. the senate parliamentarian had rejected several provisions snuck into the bill that aren t budget related. they included, catch this, something on home schooling from ted cruz. and a tax benefit for a college, guess where, in mitch mcconnell s home state of kentucky, earmarked just for that college. it is expected to pass the senate tonight. the tax bill slashes corporate tax rates. it kits have you had tax rates though the wealthy will disproportionately benefit. republicans celebrated in what amounts to the most sweeping tax overhaul in a generation. this is a day i ve been looking forward to for a long time. we br to achieve some really big things. things that the cynics have scoffed at for years, decades that that seems to be shrouded in the way that trump s people understand this so far? yes, it s bizarre in that almost every talking point that republicans have made about this legislation is false is. it s not going to primary benefit the mill class. it s not going to raise taxes on the rich. it s not going to pay for itself. it s not going to super charge growth. and so on. so the question becomes, if in fact this is such a great idea, why not sell it on the merits? why not say, you know what? we think that rich people deserve to have fatter paychecks, deserve to be able to keep more of their investment earnings, their passive income, and just sell it on those measures alone? and instead they re just trying to hoodwink america. i think for that i think because americans are following this bill more closely than they might have otherwise, they are learning that a lot of these talking points are false, possibly all of them are false, and that s part of the reason they don t like the legislation. the polls show the republican tax bill is extremely unpopular in the country. the brand-new nbc news/ wall street journal poll out tonight shows 41% disapprove, only 24%, less than one-quarter, like this bill. a monmouth poll shows an even bigger gap, 47% approve, 26% disapprove. i think that s wrong. i think the other one s wrong, the middle one. those were opposed as well. look at that, disapprove 47%, approve 26%. all three polls, michael, say that your party s tax bill is against their interests. yeah, and that s a problem. and i don t know how you go out there the to middle america and make the case remember, particularly with the last poll, 55% that includes republicans. that s not just democrats and independents in that number. so clearly there are enough people out there to the senator s point who have been paying attention to this and trying to decide whether or not this does exactly what the leadership says it does, for me. and their conclusion so far is, it does not. and i think that s going to be a problem when it comes to selling the bill. here s a problem i have. i grew up with republican parents, modern republicans, they weren t well off. they didn t benefit from this republican bounty for the rich. why do regular republicans who are not rich, including the rural people who voted for trump, cheering for a tax cut which goes to people that will they ll never meet, maybe see in a movie or hear about on wall street, they ll never meet these people, why do they say, great work, donald trump, keep giving money to the top 1% of 1%, people i will never be invited to their hopes, never meet them on the street because they re not on the street. why did they vote this way? explain. i m not sure i can explain that. i can tell you consistent with your polling, the republicans in colorado, a lot of them hate this bill. and they re still going to vote for trump. maybe not again. because what he s saying is completely conflicts with what he said on the campaign trail. let me give you one example i bet your mom and dad, it would have driven them crazy. in this bill, the top 572,000 households, people that make more than $1 million, they re getting $37 billion. in this bill. year after year after year. and we re not paying for it, we re borrowing that money. so your parents would look at that and say, wait a minute. where s the fiscal responsibility of the republican party? right. since i was born i heard the republican party looked out for debts, it wasn t crazy in spending the democrats were the ba guys, they didn t care about the deficit. i was on the campaign trail for almost 18 months in 2009-10 talking about that very point, finding a lot of people who wanted to come to congress on that very point, to cut the nation s debt. to cut the nation s deficit spending. remember the language. we weren t we re going to come to washington, not spend one dollar more than we take in, we re not going to put a further burden on the backs of our kids and grandkids. and yet this is what this bill does. they had this trigger in here, they re staying in year 2025 when all these great tax cuts that middle class is getting goes away, that that future congress and president is going to no we re going to make it permanent. well, that s going to add further money to the nation s debt. billy bob thornton is in the white house, bad santa has taken over. i was going to say, remember you were asking about don t republicans care about deficit? this goes back over 30 years, the idea of the two santa clauss. democrats were the santa claus for spending. giving out goodies to their constituents through the spending side. and republicans were the santa claus of tax cuts. both parties had their own form of give-aways to their own consit wents. except for one modest difference. democrats idea of a goody was health care for kids. yes. they didn t it s called c.h.i.p., a program the republicans are trying to kill. if you add up $1.4 trillion, the projected deficit here, that s a huge amount of money if you going to deficit spend that you could treat people for opioids, where we re losing 50,000 americans a year. you could fully train the 1,100 pilots that the air force how about trains that go over 35 miles an hour. how about that. that would be a start. blame the engineer but the trains ought to be able to go faster than 35 miles an hour. and the roads and bridges that your mom and dad and my parents built for us. our pioneer parents. i don t know if i have any. not that far back. immigrants from ireland somewhere. donald trump ran as a populist, promising to fight for the forgotten man. let s watch. we are fighting for every american who believes government should serve the people, not the donors and not the special interests. i want to save the middle class. the middle class, the hedge fund guys didn t build this country, these are guys that shift paper around and they get lucky. the hedge fund guys are getting away with murder, making a tremendous amount of money, they have to pay taxes. i want to lower the rates for the middle class. i will never stop fighting for you against the washington establishment. i m an outsider fighting for you. that s what i m doing. the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. tax reform will broeprotect low income and middle income households, not the wealthy and well connected. they can call me all they want, it s not going to help. i m doing the right thing. and it s not good for me, believe me. katherine, you write a column, you have to write the truth, how does a guy get away by telling the not-truth? everything he said, i m going after wall street, everything s about the top, reducing it from 39 to 37, huge amounts of money at the top. bringing the corporate rate down from 35 to 21. basically getting rid of the estate tax altogether. getting rid of the tax that made companies pay at least something, at least 21%, and now everything he promised he lied about. i shouldn t say lied. he mispromised about. it s going the opposite direction. the people are still cheering him. the people that were promised what he s not doing are cheering that he s not doing it. why are they cheering? why are they cheering? i think it s more of a performtive thing, expressive thing. they feel like his demeanor, his affect, is simpatico, right? with them. with his voters. it doesn t really matter what he does, it doesn t matter what his policy actually looks like. it s not only on taxes, if you want to talk about ways in which he has forsaken the forgotten man, he has forgotten the forgotten man. it s on knee-capping the consumer financial protection bureau. it s on rolling back protections for students who have been defrauded on student loans. it s rolling back protections for people who might get black lung, for crying out loud. he s supposed to be looking out for coal miners. even in that case he s deregulating. so there are so many policy frontiers on which he has let down his public. but you know what these policies are complicated. and beyond that, again, i think that they just feel like he gets them, he speaks for them, they don t really care what he actually does in office, so long as he makes liberals angry. he does not only make liberals angry, talking about me here. he also makes your crowd, michael, your crowd, you take this, right? yeah. why does every damn every darn republican in the senate say yes, sir? they have a different value system than trump. because they look back at their states and see where the president is polling in their neighborhoods and they ve got to go to over the christmas break and next year and campaign. right now despite everything else that we may think and feel about what s good, bad or ugly about this bill, those members know that that is polling 60%. 70%. back in their states. or in their districts it could be higher. so that s a political pressure that s been brought to bear for a lot of these members as well. which makes this much harder for them. if the pressure back at home was a lot less, if the numbers at home reflected what the national number is for trump at 30%, trust me this would not be the bill you would see. i don t trust it. let me ask you, it seems you ve got to trust me. the bill is to give money to the rich, who will give him back money to run tv, they ll pay for the ads to tell the regular people that he s on their side. in other words the money will come from the people who gave them a big tax cut, the money will be used to bamboozle the regular people. seems like a perfect system that works for trump. and it has worked. for some reason, whenever he s out there telling his tales, like he was in missouri the other day, he gets away with it. the rest of us need to be explaining what s actually in this bill. and somebody asked me the other day, how could these guys vote against it? i think michael your explanation s a very good one. i m looking forward to going back to counties in colorado where the president won 70%, 80%, and explaining why i voted against. i d like to say i voted twice against this bill because it is so inconsistent with the fundamental promises that they made during his campaign. i hope your lyon like schumer and pelosi get the word out that this is a bank robbery of the average person. nuances are important here. this is the time for populist democrats to make their noise. senator michael bennet, i don t have to teach you guys. sometimes i think i do. michael steele and katherine, beautiful, thank you. what s going to happen when white house attorneys who want the russia investigation wrapped and up quashed meet mueller s prosecutors who look like they ve got a year or more so go? mueller s work is nowhere near done, we can tell that, that s going to enrage trump and his allies who have been bamboozled into thinking this is over. the former director of national intelligence says putin is using trump as an intelligence asset, an asset of the russians. that s ahead. trump pushing back against a report he nearly pulled the nomination of snowstorm justice neil gorsuch because gorsuch criticized the president for attacking federal judges. not the first time we ve seen trump test the loyalty of his nominees but it might be one of the most damning. the trump tower tax cut hands democrats a silver plate issue to run on next november. can they do it? can they win, can they capitalize on a bad santa tax cut? how can republicans defend a tax plan that helps the rich while hurting nearly everyone else? the hardball roundtable with three big scoops you ll be talking about for a while. when you book a flight then add a hotel you can save. three waves later, i think it was the other way around. davidiancy by one vote. it proves your votes matter. a three-judge panel must certify the results, that s questioned for tomorrow. this is moving with this victory democrats have flipped 16 seats in the virginia house of delegates. two districts are awaiting recounts. i feel like fire ( ) the 2018 cadillac xt5. worship me beauty, greater than the sum of its parts. come in for our season s best offers and drive out with the perfect 2018 cadillac xt5. get a low-mileage lease on this cadillac xt5 from around $379 per month. they expect to be working through much of 2018 at a minimum. that s how i see it. this meeting comes after dozens of conservative lawmakers and tv personalities have escalated their attacks on the mueller probe. new reporting shows their strategy of discrediting the special counsel appears to have the blessing of trump himself. a white house adviser said the president has enjoyed the attacks on mueller, in recent weeks he has spoken to a number of fox news hosts, republican lawmakers and others who have cast gated mueller s team. i m joined by coauthor of that report in the post, carol lennig, joyce transa forge federal prosecutor, malcolm nance is msnbc terrorism and national security analyst. thank you all. carol, thank you for joining us. when this is going to happen? first of all, tell us how you put together this story. a little bit about trade craft. how do we know is trump being told, don t worry, be happy, you ll be through this by christmas, they re folding their tents? are they telling this to keep him calm? do they really believe it? is this strategic? so that the country will feel, especially the trump folks, that, oh, they re just overdoing it, they re on a fishing expedition, how do you see the whole situation here? so without revealing too much tradecraft, i ll just say that we ve talked to people who have spoken with the president very recently. and he has, in their mind, described himself as very sure that he will be exonerated. as you know from your own coverage and ours, he has said for the last several months there was no collusion, i had no participation with russia, i did no business with russia, i don t know what this probe is about, it s a terrible shadow over my presidency. and indeed, very, very recently within the last few days, people who are with him were surprised that even now, after one of his most senior advisers has pled guilty and is cooperating with mueller s probe, even now the president has said he has no worries, his lawyers have told him he s in the clear, and he should learn of some confirmation of that soon. we obviously have different reporting that suggests, as is natural with a very large criminal probe, that this is going to go on for a long while. let me go to joyce on that. seems to me, i m not a prosecutor or attorney, but seems to me they ve got their star witness, michael flynn, beginning to put him under the microscope of testimony, public testimony. if they re going to do that. in terms of indictments of top people, they ve really not gotten near the president yet. i don t know why anyone would honestly believe this thing s coming to a head right now. i don t know why anyone would think that either, chris. this investigation looks like it s still fairly early. prosecutors have only just finished their first round of interviews of key white house players. witnesses like hope hicks whose interviews will probably lead to a lot more questions, a lot more lines of investigation. we ve learned this week prosecutors have this treasure trove of documents from gsa, transition team e-mails, we know they have financial records. that s the lengthy core part of any investigation. it takes awhile to follow that paper trail. and then as you say there s the witnesses, either to testify or defendants who will go to trial. a lot more work comes in that stage. and finally, key witnesses at the top of the food chain. people like attorney general jeff sessions and vice president pence yet to be interviewed. the president himself, it s unlikely that this investigation closes without an interview of him. so these same lawyers who have been saying, it will be over by thanksgiving, it will be over by christmas, i think it s equally likely they re wrong when they say it will be over end of the year. this will go for at least an additional year. malcolm, seems like we ve got a baghdad bob situation, people saying we re winning, it s over, the fying s over. saddam hussein s not going to fall. why are they saying something that churchill said, don t say something that s going to be disproven later or you re going to lose all your credibility. the question is what they actually believe. they live in sort of a hermetically sealed bubble. in which they actually believe this information. i mean, the president doesn t consume information that is negative to him. he only consumes information which comes from trusted sources that he believes. and if his lawyers are telling him that this is going to be secured by the end of the year, it s possible he s waiting for the house intelligence committee to do some cursory wrap-up and call it all a victory. i don t think the mueller investigation is going to finish, certainly not within a year. but some of the biggest hits of what could come potentially out of the mueller investigation are going to come in the middle of next year, and it s going to if that s going to blind side the president, then he s in very serious trouble. carol, that s a great question. looks to me like if the president truly believes they ve exhausted all evidence, that they re basically done, then he gets the word, oh by the way, mueller s on this for another year, he s only begun to fight, is that going to intensify the chance he tries to dump muler? there s been a drumbeat of concern, the idea of a saturday night massacre or in this case a christmas eve massacre. there s been some significant uptick in the furor of criticism of mueller s team, more importantly, of the fbi agent that is were involved. the fbi honestly had a very bad week recently, revelations about internal e-mails, affairs, pro-hillary, anti-trump commentary in teches. and you see all of these opinion naters coming out in the conservative world saying that this is just terrible, we re going to have to get rid of this team because this whole process is tainted. it may be this is just a way to soften the ground for that moment. if mueller doesn t give the president the answer and his legal team the answer he wants, look, we re going to wrap this up, your client has no problem, clean bill of health if he doesn t get that answer, we may see a different kind of communication from some of this group, this campaign that is pushing to end this probe. the former director of national intelligence, we know him, james clapper, had sharp criticism for the president after trump said vladimir putin thanks him for the u.s. intelligence that diverted a terrorist attack in st. petersburg. here s what clapper had to say of putin s relationship with trump. i think this past weekend is illustrative of what a great case officer vladimir putin is. he knows how to handle an asset. and that s what he s doing with the president. i m saying this figuratively. i think we have to remember, putin s background, he s a kgb officer. that s what they do. they recruit assets. and i think some of that experience and instincts of putin has come into play here in his managing a pretty important account for him, if i could use that term, with our president. joyce, what does that do to a prosecution case, so much like if you can claim everything adds up, all the communications with kushner and the president s son and all his people and flynn and carter page, all of them, all that stuff constitutes a rico charge that what in effect they re doing is operating altogether under the leadership of the president. james clapper is saying he s basically operating like he s been taken in by the brilliant kgb guy, and somehow trump is orchestrating something on behalf of putin. is that criminal? you know, this is a question that the mueller team will have to decide. and they ll decide it based strictly on the evidence. the question will be, was the president a knowing participant in russian efforts? and one suspects that they ll reach a bright line decision on that based on evidence of meetings, knowledge, what they re hearing from witnesses, and they ll either decide, no, he was an unwitting participant in this with no criminal culpability, or perhaps they ll decide that they have to push harder, look further, to see if in fact the president did have knowledge, did willingly participate in some sort of a scheme. malcolm, your thoughts about that term asset, one of putin s assets, being trump. to be generous to director clapper, i think that what he was saying was just being illustrative from the intelligence community perspective of how a former human intelligence officer like vladimir putin, a former officer of the kgb, then-director of russian intelligence, would see everybody and certainly a character like donald trump as easily manipulatable entity. and the word that we would use in the intelligence community, when you become a positive force once manipulated, is an asset. i ve been saying for almost 17 months now that donald trump was an unwitting asset of russian intelligence, and vladimir putin. but it s quite possible, you could argue that he became a witting asset on the day that he asked russia to hack or release hillary clinton s hacked e-mails and knew that russia was doing efforts in his favor. it s quite possible based on some of the cursory information we ve seen that he also knew that his son and others were out looking for russian information. so, you know, you can use it that way. but i think clapper was trying to be coy. i don t think mueller s going to be coy at all. i think he s going to come up with a case whether he was actually a puppet or a puppeteer. well said. thank you, carol, great reporting for the washington post, joyce vance, and malcolm nance. up next, president trump reportedly talked about pulling neil gorsuch s nomination not supreme court over his concerns that he wouldn t be loyal. trump s pushing back on the news but it does fit into a pattern we ve seen from this president, he wanted loyalty from everybody. fbi director comey and his supreme court nominees. this is hardball, where the action is. some air fresheners are so overwhelming, they can. send you and your family running. introducing febreze one for fabric and air. no aerosols. no dyes. no heavy perfumes. it cleans away odors for a pure light freshness. so you can spray and stay. febreze one, breathe happy. derailment in washington state. three people were killed. investigators are also waiting to interview the hospitalized engineer and crew members. the train was going 80 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an-hour zone when it crashed on its inaugural trip from seattle to portland. at least a dozen tourists are dead and 18 injured after a tour bus flipped on a mexican highway. americans were on board that bus, carrying cruise ship passengers to the mayan ruins. nationalities have not been disclosed yet. the tour bus was carrying 27 passengers when it crashed. back to hardball. i have no difficulty ruling against or for any party. other than based on what the law and the facts and the particular case require. and i m heartened by the support i have received from people who recognize that there s no such thing as a republican judge or a democratic judge. we just have judges. in this country. welcome back to hardball. supreme court justice neil gorsuch asserting his independence from president trump during the confirmation hearing. his confirmation was one of the president s biggest accomplishments, almost a lone accomplishment besides the tax bill. the washington post reports the president worried gorsuch would not be loyal and told aides he was tempted to pull gorsuch s nomination, upset by what he viewed as gorsuch s insufficient gratitude for a lifetime appointment to the country s highest court and told republican leaders he s probably going to end up being a liberal like the rest of them. this after senator richard blumenthal said gorsuch called the president s attack on federal judges disheartening and demoralizing. today the president tweeted the story is fake news, i never wavered, i am very proud of him and the job he is doing as a justice of the supreme court. the unnamed sources don t exist. the washington post says their account is based on interviews with 11 people familiar with the episode. i m joined by one of the writers, one of the reporters for that article, ashley parker, who writes for the washington post. and is an msnbc political analyst. great insight here. and i have so many questions about gorsuch. one is, well, first of all, the thing about trump having second thoughts. was this sort of like popeye in the cartoons, always mumbling and talking out of his brain and things bugging him? or did he really assert that he made a mistake with this guy, in a serious conversation? so that s a fair question and a good question. and the way it has told us that the nomination was never in actual jeopardy. but what we understand is that the president did what he often does, or what you say popeye does, which he sort of vents his frustrations aloud and asks questions and expresses his anger to advisers and he was basically saying he was very frustrated with gorsuch, he believed he was being disloyal, he felt there would be a lot of other judges who would want that position on the supreme court, he s certainly right about that, who would be perhaps more grateful and more loyal. so these were all things he was saying to aides. as with the president, often it was unclear if the nomination was ever in actual jeopardy or if this was a president angry and blowing off steam. one question, it may not be in your reporting, i got the sense when gorsuch was going before the senators, going door to door to the senators, making courtesy calls, then testifying, that he came across as a moderate, modest sort of conservative, not some further than scalia type, antonin scalia type. now i think the image is just that he s a very hard-right justice. yeah, his tenure is quite young but i think that s a fair assessment for now. that s sort of one of the central ironies was the president was very worried about him early on when he was going through the process. but if there s been a single knock on him, it s not what the president feared that he would be a liberal like the rest of them, it s that he s actually been quite conservative and maybe almost overly paying deference to the president and the republican senators who pushed him through. also the washington post reports that a source familiar with the incident largely faults the white house for failing to explain supreme court nominees asserting their independence from the president who appointed them is a natural part of the confirmation process. this isn t the only time the president asserted a right to loyalty from an independent member of his government. former fbi director james comey on that point. he asked specifically of loyalty in the contectixt of asg me to stay. this is a profound question. does the president know that being the president doesn t mean the acquiring of an asset, that he doesn t own the united states government, it s a republican form of government, it has branches and checks on power and depositions that are natural tensions are natural. sometimes the nominee is different than you thought he was and that s part of the game, they don t have to stay how they looked when you picked them. that s right and the president s frustrations seem to be rooted in a little bit of a misunderstanding of how this process works. and how the supreme court works. which is the president gets to choose his nominee, he or she tries to choose someone who s in line with their judicial philosophy. then the justices of course, an independent justice, he or she is beholden not to the president who appointed them but to the law and to the constitution. and that s how it should work. and that s exactly what gorsuch was saying when the president got so frustrated. you re right, so much great reporting, arly parker on the washington post. people vote for trump next time, they re voting for a very different constitutional order in this country, from a president who doesn t recognize the need to understand limited government and limited powers of the presidency. up next the trump tower tax cuts a christmas president for the very wltdsy, maybe an electoral gift to democrats, perhaps, they have to have a key issue to run on, they ve got one in 2018. can they capitalize on this very unfair tax bill? it all starts with a wish. the final days of wish list are here. hurry in and sign and drive off in a new lincoln with zero down and a complementary first months payment. ltry align probiotic.n your digestive system? for a non-stop, sweet treat goodness, hold on to your tiara kind of day. get 24/7 digestive support, with align. the #1 doctor recommended probiotic brand. also in kids chewables. replace the full value of your totaled new car. the guy says, you picked the wrong insurance plan. no, i picked the wrong insurance company. with new car replacement™, we ll replace the full value of your car plus depreciation. liberty mutual insurance. they re going to learn it next november. welcome back to hardball. directional republicans are on the verge of passing a major tax overhaul despite polling that shows roughly half the country disapproves. only 10% of the bill s tax cuts would go to the middle class according to the joint committee on taxation, a government committee. the milwaukee journal sentinel warns the bill does little to generate xipt in june know, wisconsin, trump country. one republican voters told the newspaper, we re not going to feel any tax relief, if anything it will get a little worse. the tax bill s also the republican party s only legislative accomplishment in 2017. and they re desperate for something that looks like a win. but will a win on this issue mean losses for republicans in next year s midterm elections? for more i m joined by the roundtable, anita kumar with me right now, white house correspondent john fearry, gop strategist and cornell belcher, democratic strategist for msnbc. let me go with this pollster, mr. belcher. i have a hunch. it s not positive tial it, it s i m looking at things. who s ever voted against a politician for cutting taxes, even if their tax cut is smaller than somebody else s? you have a plurality of american voters who think they re going to be worse off because of this tax bill. and that s the real difference. it s not like it s neutral. like in 1993, 94, when they voted against clinton. when you think you re going to be worse off. when you look at the economy, what most people s grievances, rich aren t paying their fair share, there s a lot of inequality. the polls, they think this increases the inequality, they think most of it s going to the wealthy people, from nbc s polling which by the way most of the fact-finders agree with. i m looking at this. if you re a rich republican, this is great. no more regulation on the environment. just rape the land, strip mine the country, in wyoming they can t wait to get into those government lands. let s get that land back, bears ears and all that stuff. a huge tax cut on corporate, a huge tax cut on individual, a huge advantage on exclusions for estate taxes, elimination basically of the corporate minimum tax. it s all great. it s all great, and how does the average stiff out there, doesn t get a raise? people are not getting raises in the middle income level. whatever the unions are doing, nobody s getting a raise. the republicans and the people at the white house i talk to feel really good about it. of course they do. they think that americans will col around. john can probably talk more about this. next year when they start to see their paychecks being a little bit bigger, when the economy gets better, they think they have a good leg to stand on, that it s going to sell well. john fearry, the defense. 80% of the american people are going to get a tax cut, 9% are going to get a tax credit. those 9% live in new york city or san francisco. too bad, they deserve a tax increase. remember horse and rabbit stew? who s getting the horse, who s getting the rabbit? the number one keystone of this whole thing is the corporate tax cut. and that is going to grow the economy substantially. much more than 3%. up to 4% the corporate tax rate, what are they going to do with the money? it s going to bring about $3 trillion coming in from overseas, repatriated. the rest is going to make america more competitive. i think the republicans are betting that they re going to be able to hitch their wagon to a growing economy, 3% or 4%, wages are going to go up, and that s going to be really good. democrats are betting this won t happen. i think the republicans are right. we ll see what happens. if the money doesn t come back from overseas it will. are you up for resetting this thing? it s going to come back. the fundamental problem is we ve seen this. this is not theory. go to kansas. we know that these things don t pay for themselves. take billionaire miami bloomberg who said, you know what, in the end what s going to happen, these corporations, sitting on as much cash as they ve ever sat on before in history, what they re going to do is they re going to buy stocks and go to dividends. look, if we want to help the middle class, let s help the middle class. we ll see what happens. we ve already seen what s happened ronald reagan had to raise taxes because they didn t pay for themselves. a new study out by the tax policy center shows people making between $50,000 and $90,000 a year will see $900 in their bank account. the middle class might not notice, in 2009 obama in his economic stimulus package gave married couples $800 and 12% of the voters noticed. yoenth. i don t understand. $1,000 is shoes for every kid or a couple nights out with your wife i had not heard that statistic and that is unbelievable. by that calculation, the less than $1,000 a year that the average family gets out of this will not look significant politically. i think it s going to look significant. but look, the polls show it s not doing well. obviously the republicans have some selling to do. maybe they don t like trump. nothing looks good to them. i think that s a big part. i think a lot of people don t like trump. i think democrats have really successfully messaged on this. but to anita s point, this is not only going to cut taxes of $900 per person in that range what the obama tax cuts didn t do is rapidly grow the economy. but the longest peacetime increase in our economic [ cross talk ] i have to tell you, i don t think it s absurd. you think the democrats message machine is really good? they are on this one. hah! that s laughable. okay, thank you. you know what the reality is, nobody knows what s in this bill. both sides are being saying thins that aren t true. and so no one really knows what to do with it, no one knows what to think. thank you. the roundtable, the big thought coming up next, you re first, you re watching hardball. right. but you want to fix it. right. so who sent you? new guy. what new guy? watson. my analysis of sensor and maintenance data indicates elevator 3 will malfunction in 2 days. there you go. you still need a pass. job on the economy, only 30% of americans think the republicans do a better job. these are close numbers but it s the first time the democrats have been on top, first time the democrats lead in this question since 2013. until. it. wasn t. don t let type 2 diabetes get between you and your heart. because your risk of heart attack or stroke is up to four times greater. but there are steps you can take to lower your cardiovascular risk. talk to your health care provider today about diabetic heart disease. and find out more at heartoftype2.com. your heart and type 2 diabetes. make the connection. is he going to retire? i don t think he will. why would he want that job? mine s from nbc plus four. on taxes. it s a historic moment when democrats have an advantage on taxes, it s a fundamental pillar of the republican party. hit the panic button when democrats are pulling ahead on the party best dealing with taxes. thank you to the panel. anita kumar, john fieri, cornell belcher.
qu quote, deutsch banks takes its legal obligations seriously. here s an interview with the new york times a couple of months ago, answering questions as to whether his businesses and finances were fair gain. if mueller was looking at your finances and your family finances unrelated to russia, is that a red line? i would say yes. let s get to all of this with our reporters and guests, white house bureau chief phil rucker, with me on set, national security reporter ken delaney. and chuck rosenberg, a former u.s. attorney who worked on the staff of robert mueller and james comb koecomey of the fbi. let me start with those financial headlines. there s a dispute about the facts, but would you surmise that donald trump s taxes are something that bob mueller either has or will seek to which the president and james comey have very different accounts of what happened there. and finally to the deutsch bank discussion that you re having. jay sekulow is another one of the president s outside counsel, who says, look, deutsch bank has not turned over any records. and yet, nicole, it is possible, and i ll leave it to your legal team to dig into this more deeply. but the president s legal team wouldn t be advised by that. so a lot of unanswered questions and of course shadowing over all of that the fact that you do have this dispute with the president s legal team, over whether the president can commit obstructio obstruction, and say they that he can t. i heard from three senior republicans closely aligned with this white house, firmly behind the president and his agenda. who all have been in contact with people who are of interest to bob mueller, not necessarily subjects of the investigation, but witnesses in the investigation. who say that it is abundantly clear to them that bob mueller is building an obstruction of jugs case. yeah, i think that s right and i think that s why securing the cooperation from former national security advisor michael flynn was so critical to mueller and his investigative team. they hope that flynn will be able to tell a lot of stories about what the president knew, when he knew it, what he might have said in private meetings and so forth. but the dispute and tension within the president s legal team is really important right now, just in the last few days, i have been reporting on this and hearing a great deal of tension from people close to the president inside the white house and outside the white house who feel like he s not being well served by dowd in particular with his evolving stories publicly over the last few days and a real befuddlement if you will, with a comment that dowd made yesterday that he doesn t believe, it s his assessment that the president cannot obstruct justice on his reading of the constitution, which many legal sclholars and experts disagree with. i want to ask you about something i picked up from these senior republicans. they suggested that once someone like mike flynn has flipped and has joined team america as the source put it, it is unknowable what bob mueller knows. so he may only know what mike flynn knows, but he may also know more than the white house sort of can imagine. that this becomes sort of an investigation that is impossible to imagine if you re being investigated. and that s always the advantage that a prosecutor has over his sort of the subjects and the witnesses. because the white house doesn t have any way of knowing who s already helped fill in different pieces and one of the chief concerns is that on just the simple things that someone could be wearing a wire. i mean no one had heard of george popadopoulos but now he s a household name, but there could be other people that mike flynn interacted with a whole bur bunch of people on the campaign, and it is a known unknown that the white house can not function as though it s business as usual. i think that s exactly right, nicole, there s a lot that mueller s doing that we don t know either. wh trying to keep tabs on the investigation, trying to read the tea leaves, find out who s been interviewed by mueller and piecing to some guesses some assumptions so that the president can stay ahead of this and know what s going on. but a lot of things are not knowable at this point, and mueller has been very stealth about his investigate and he hasn t spoken about it nor have the people working for him. a lot of trump lawyers are concerned about it. they see a team of 16 to 17 killers who are out to get the president somehow send it s unclear what he might know. i worked with bob mueller when he was in the white house and i know a lot about what president bush thought about him in his job. he was the consummate professional. he had no patience, no tolera e tolerance, no appetite, no interest in the media circus. it was not a game he played. one of the people i talked to last night suggested that that put the trump team at a significant disadvantage because of the president s obsession with the immediamedia coverage and this investigation and of bob mueller. his team has spent two news cycles swallowed up by a debate about what john dershowitz said. could you talk about the strategic advantage that a man like bob mueller has over someone who is obsessed with small, petty, vain things? it s what you said, nicole, he is absolutely focused on two things, and one of them is not the media or the debate about what s happening. two things. the facts and the law. he s gathering facts, he s applying the fact to the law. and so that s what drives the investigation. i have to differ a little bit with something someone said. bob mueller is not out to get anyone. bob mueller isn t out to make an obstruction case. bob mueller is out to gather facts and apply them to the law. if that turns out to get someone or it results in an obstruction case, so be it. it but that s the way good prosecutors think and he s a good prosecutor. can you speak to the discrepancy, what i picked up is that the kinds of questions he s asking suggests that he s as interested in everything that went down at the white house from the moment sally yates walked in and warned them about mike flynn until the moment he left, including the firing of jim comey. so could that sort of could we all be right here? yes, the 18-day period that mike flynn remained in office after the white house was warned that there was a problem, that s figuring very large in robert mueller s investigation. the theory out there, it s just a theory. but bob bare, the former prosecutor said that if we are to accept the white house twitter feet, we have been told that the white house the quitter feed represents official presidential statements so that is at the moment our operational understanding of what s happening now. wouldn t it make sense that the day after flynn left the white house, that trump pulls comey aside and says, couldn t you let that go? james comey declined that request and then was fired. i saw you nodding at some of that, can you speak to sort of the ptsd that both the flynn revelation from sally yates has brought from this white house senior staff and the comey firing has brought about for this white house staff? i get a lot of, you know, oh, gods and, y0uou know, pray for from the people i know on the inside. reporter: the inside and those who are close to the president in his inner circle, nicole. i think that a number of people felt blind sided on friday when mike flynn entered that plea agreement with the fbi. some of these legal counsel did think it was coming eventually, but they didn t know it was coming on friday. so there was a lot of scrambling behind the scenes to respond to it. and then i think there s a concern, on two fronts, one that this is getting closer to the oval office, getting closer to the president himself, concern about what mike flynn is going to say, of course the white house and white house attorneys have said, look, mike flynn doesn t have any damaging information about the president, so we re not concerned. that s the official line. but privately, officials will acknowledge that they re concerned about mike flynn, will he for example build up some of the story that he has to tell for investigators? that s an unknowable fact at this point in time. and then the second part to this and the second part to the consternation which you can think of is the concern about the legal deal and the fact that they haven t been on the same page, there s some concern that he s not tough enough. then there s been some push back from ty cobb on some of that criticism. he said it s time to release documents and he said it will be tied up in a timely fashion. you heard sarah sanders reiterate that. let me give you the last word and ask you to string together three things and tell me if your expertise is incompetence or something more sinister. paul manafort, after he s been indicted pens an op-ed with someone who has ties to, you can guess, russian intelligence and the trump legal team is in their 47th hour fighting about whether a president can or cannot on instruct justice. would you paint all of these acts as potentially criminal and sinister, or is it just an epic chapter of the incompetence of the american presidency? i don t know that i can answer that, nicole. i m not a lawyer. i don t know if it s criminal or not. it takes a lawyer to decide? their best defense is that they re incompetent. i don t know, there are always these sort of missing pieces of information or things that officials are forgetting when it comes to russia and it s been this cloud that s been hanging over the presidency of donald trump since before he even took office and it s going to be there for a while and we re going to have to see what happens and whether any of these other figures are going to get charged. kristen welker, phil rucker, ken delaney and ken rosenberg. when we come back, we ll be talking about whether it s a good strategy to say that a president can t obstruct justice, instead of maintaining that your client, the president didn t obstruct justice. also ahead, roy moore rising, fresh off the endor endorsement from the president, the accuse ed molester tap into the rnc bank account to fund his campaign. a young woman steaming the president s pants while he s wearing them. fast food orders that will split your stomach. stay with us. my wife loves style, my son is all about technology and my daughter? she just loves horses. is get up to 20% below msrp on most 2017 luxury suv models. that s over $7,100 on this buick envision essence. experience the new buick this holiday season. experience the new buick your body was made for better things than rheumatiod arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. it can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections, lymphoma and other cancers have happened. don t start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. tears in the stomach or intestines, low blood cell counts and higher liver tests and cholesterol levels have happened. your doctor should perform blood tests before you start and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you were in a region where fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. xeljanz xr can reduce the symptoms of ra, even without methotrexate. ask your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr. technical defenses such as the one arctticulated by dershowitz and others. let s bring in democratic congressman harold ford, and john, how are we already getting into trouble. and brett stevens, new york times op-ed columnist and msnbc contributor, and former aid of the george w. bush white house. ty cobb knows that donald trump s legal team is going to be he s made himself a witness, he can t represent cobb will need to leave trump s legal team because he s made himself a potential part to dowd will have to leave trump s legal team because he has now made himself a party to this crime. the question of whether or not he wrote that tweet for trump is now a material fact in the obstruction of justice case, so he will now be brought before mueller as a witness and so you can t represent a client in a case to which you are a party. that s an inevitable chain of events and i think ty cobb is saying i need to create some distance. this is because of the nature of what was tweeted from the president s feed suggests that donald trump knew this mike flynn had lied to the fbi. a source close to don mcgahn confirms what salliate y atyate testified to that mike flyshe d that mike flynn had lied to the fbi, what she said was that he could be vulnerable to a blackmail attempt from the russians. they re in a vulnerable position, how do they undo this scramble that they re in, john? i don t know that it s undoable. they re certainly in a bad position of their own making? of their own making. the question of whether don mcgahn knew or not, as you suggest, mcgahn is sticking to his story that he did not know. but the question is there s been a lot of days since the days that sally yates came forward to today. and the question that how sar sarah so when did donald trump know? at what point was it made clear to the president? was it that day that sally yates spoke to don mcgahn? or was it someday between then and now in the many months since? we don t know the answer to that question and we don t know what happened on the day that that tweet was sent. but i think most people reading that tweet is that no lawyer dictated or wrote a tweet that included the word pled. right, because he said pleaded. let me ask you, this is also surreal. it feels like only donald trump would have a legal team that implicates him as someone who gives us more proof points to the potential case that he obstructed justice in his effort to defend his own client. there s something in axios that i thought was pretty apt. the donald trump survival plan, the trump fog machine blows daily, the idea is to taint the critics. trump is playing not for a court per se, but the court of public opinion. do you think they really see an impeachment proceedings a foregone conclusion? i don t know. what i do know is everything that s been said here and all that has transpired you could also interpret mr. dowd s comments in some ways as an admission that the president did engage in an act that could be legally construed and proven to be obstruction of justice, but i ll let his lawyers sort it out. harold is a lawyer, let s be clear. one of the things you have to wonder, john, you are articulate, you have to wonder, does this stop the tweets? if it doesn t, does he now offer some plausible events where he s saying that someone else dictated these tweets. i listen to kellyanne conway whose husband is one of the great litigators in this country. she says she has seen other people help the president write tweets. but she doesn t have a record of telling the truth on television. it s different, don t get me wrong, i don t go on television and not tell the truth. but it s different when you re on television and whether you re talking to bob mueller. john dowd became a witness, is kellyanne conway i mean does bob mueller not want to know who writes the president s tweet sngs. from press reports, he s asked that question, he s asked about tweets and if the president now has some sort of defense that hess n is not the author of the originator of all these tweets, i have no idea which tweets he s looking at. but even politically, the president may say that others are writing his tweets. every day we get these big, big helpings of things that are happening, and it s hard to remember them all. and at some point, you have to wonder if roy moore is elected, do republicans at some point and step back and wonder, i m voting with the person who has a mountain of allegations against him around pedophilia or rape and other matters, is this what i want to be a part of. it s no longer just want to be a part of trump. you now have another element of this, and i don t know if he s going to win or not, but if he does, that has to be a tipping point for the flakes and corkers, that they can t work with him. i watched jeff flake sit next to the president today, when is enough enough? there is no tipping point, that s what we have learned about the republican party, when people tip, they leave, whether it s bob corker or jeff flake or other republicans who have become disgusted, the lesson they have drawn is that the trump machine is fundamentally unstoppable and that lesson will be more strongly held in the event that roy moore wins the special election in alabama. so the tipping point comes when democrats take control of both houses of congress, and there are impeachment proceedings under their leadership and a conviction under their leadership. because i don t see any republican congress, even with the most visible evidence of obstruction or other mall or misfeasance by the president or the administration voting for impeachment, voting against the president, republican party simply isn t capable of doing it. once you have endorsed an allegedor an accused pedestriop to join you in your ranks as a senator, nothing else is going to compare to that. just think how terrible this past month has been for roy moore and he hasn t even opened his mouth. he hasn t been speaking to the press, he has been involved in a debate. when he every republican is going to asked to be constantly answer for roy moore and they re going to be constantly asked if senate pages are safe in the senate with roy moore serving. not just pages, but their daughters. when we come back, a democratic congressman retires today in the wake of sexual harassment scandals, but alabama candidate roy moore, as we have been discu discussing, an accused molester has had the rnc for funds for his campaign. digital id cards, they can even pay their bill- (beep) bill has joined the call. hey bill, we re just- phone: hi guys, bill here. do we have julia on the line too? k, well we ll just- phone: hey sorry. i had you muted. well yea let s just- phone: so what i was thinking- ok well we ll- phone: yeah- let s just go ahead- phone: oh alright- the award-winning geico app. download it today. we re on a mission to show drip coffee drinkers, it s time to wake up to keurig. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that s it. so rich. i love it. that s why you should be a keurig man! full-bodied. are you sure you re describing the coffee and not me? i think he s going to do real well. we don t want to have a liberal democrat in alabama. we want strong borders, we stand stopping crime, we want to have the things we represent and we certainly don t want to have a liberal democrat that s controlled by nancy pelosi and controlled by chuck schumer, question donwe don t want to have that for alabama. going, going, gone. that was the republican party s soul, what s left of it after the president gave roy moore his full endorsement and the rnc candidacy. hitting on them in courthouses and stalking them in malls. moore isn t the only politician accused of sexual misconduct. watch this. he basically laid out some blankets on the floor of his living room and proceeded to, um, seduce me, i guess you would say. and during the course of that, he removed by clothing. it was sexual harassment, violating violating my body, propositioning me, inviting me to hotels with the guise of discussing business, and then propositioning me to, you know, for sex. he just put his hand on the back of my head and, he mashed his face against it mean it happened so fast. he was all over the place, if he had stuck with the upper part of the body, i might not have gotten i might not have gotten that upset. but it was when he started putting his hand up my skirt and that was it. those were the women who have accused judge roy moore, democratic congressman john ck n conyers and president trump, all of them accused of sexual harassment and worst. most of them have resigned or apologized. i would argue that the democrats slow response helped put roy moore in a stronger position. you know what, i would normally agree with you, but al franken as they re not fighting the same way, conniers is gone. he went to the hospital and now today has retired. roy moore is about to start his senate career and donald trump is politically untapt inted. but they did have the opportunity to have the more high ground, and nancy pelosi had chosen to that just re-enforcess what alabama voter see as media hypocrisy, and roy moore has benefitted in the polls since nancy pelosi made that appearance. roy moore is in a totally different category, as bad as conyers is, it s a different category. for a number of reasons. number one, taking someone like al franken. al franken has apologized. number two, what al franken did pales, compared to what s alleged of roy moore. so to have the entire republican party accomplishment get behind something like this, something that is criminal. i was saying this earlier today. any of us who are parents of teenagers know exactly what we would do to a 30-something-year-old man who tried to proposition any of our children, i don t have to spell it out. so we re i meaning it s just not these aren t equivalent situations, even with the case of bill clinton and his abuses in the oval office, they re not that s not the same sport. let me put up your tweet. i understand what she s saying, she s saying that he s got voters that view us as hypocrites in the press and the media and up here. i was saying democrats did have a time to have more high ground on this issue and they completely enter they still do. but i do think that voters in alabama saying you re not treating us all the same and roy moore, this is disgusting, i know what you re talking about, i have a 3-year-old daughter and i can only imagine if she was 13 or 14 and something like this happened how i might react. the reality is you have a republican party now, including the head of the party, who has endorsed the guy because they want a tax bill passed. if there was a surplus of votes with mcconnell and the president be supportive of roy moore? but because they need that one vote, they re willing to i happen to like most of the tax bill. i happen to be generally in favor of tax cuts, i think it would be stimulative for the economy. but to ask me do you want a party who s going to hold the line against certain kinds of behavior, even when i ll take the high taxes. ultimately the party is destroying itself. when you said there goes the soul of the republican party, gone. the stories are all horrible, for most women who are victims of sexual assault, their lives are never the same from that moment on, so when a woman goes on to tv and describes it they retraumatized, john conyers, roy moore and al franken have all had women who have told their stories. al franken may or may not survive. nancy pelosi may or may not have stepped into it. the parties are not treating sexual abusers the same way. roy moore is about to win and donald trump is flying high. the president of the united states, accused all of the women who accused him of being liars, said he was going to sue all of them. and in the case i believe of the woman that we showed on that tape is the woman that trump mocked a couple days later as being not good looking enough, like no one could believe i could harass her, i mean come on, you can t be serious, i would never attack her. he was the one that denied it, he called them all liars, said he was going to sue them and then made fun of some of them to not being up to his standards of beauty, that would fall into the category of someone he might harass. i agree, john conyers should have resigned, al franken should resign. the things they have admitted to do are different that were roy moore, and their response to it is just in a different league from what donald trump s response has been, is to go on and retraumatize them in the most horrific way possible. mitch mcconnell did say there would be an ethics probe, i think we have that. there s been no change of heart. i had hoped earlier he would withdraw as a candidate, that obviously is not going to happen. if he were to be elected, he would immediately have an ethics committee case and the committee would take a look at the situation and give us advice. it so let s play this forward, i appreciate that mitch mcconnell said from the outset, i believe the women. i was disappointed to see him cave and yesterday his line on this was that the people of alabama should decide. this was his response today. if he proceeds with an ethics investigation, do you have any idea whether the ethics committee would vote to expel roy moore? no. after a half minute of consideration. why? because the party is now the party of steve bannon and they all live any republican who s not stepping down or doesn t plan to run for re-election, all lives in fear of being primary ed, all lives in fear of that particular shadow. so do i see a kind of bob packwood treatment to expel him. i see that as unlikely. again it would have to wait for a democratically controlled senate. this is illume nattive of a broader thing. jeff flake when he gave his retirement speech said i will not be complicit or silent and i don t want to be too hard on jeff flake. say what you said in a text or i ll read it. what is jeff flake doing at the white house? is he just clueless? does he not know that there s a chance he s going to be used as a political prop? the cameras are there the, dude, if you want to say you re not with roy moore, all those reporters would take statement from jeff flake at that moment or walk away, or not go in the first place, but jeff flake has been relatively courageous, compared to a lot of republicans on capitol hill related to donald trump. yet in this moment, donald trump ropes him in, brings him to the white house and he sits there like a bump on a log while the president talks about why roy moore belongs in the senate. you said this picture is everything you need to know about the debasement of the gop. i hate to pay you two complements in one hour. but it was perfectly said. when we come back, what would you do if your boss with who has a violent temper asks you to steam his pants while he was wearing them. hope hicks placed a chair in front of the president and did just that. when sundown pales the sky i want to hide a while behind your smile ah, but i may as well try and catch the wind our mission is to make off-shore wind one of the principle new sources of energy. not every bank is willing to get involved in a first of its kind project. citi saw the promise of clean energy. we re polluting the air less. businesses and homes can rely on a steady source of power. this will be the first of many off-shore wind farms in the u.s. for standing in your heart is where i want to be and long to be ah, but i may as well try and catch the wind . especially a version of the republican party that was about free trade, enterprise, openness, democracy, human rights and so on. all of that pales compared to the moral health of the party. can i say to my children, you ought to be republicans because of x? how can i belong to a party that includes a pedophile. that s going to haunt the rent party for decades. david bossy paints a bigger picture of david management style. one of the duties assigned to hope hicks, the campaign spokeswoman. get the machine, he d yell and hope would take out the steamer and start steaming mr. trump s suit while he was wearing it. yeah. one time hope forgot to bring the steamer on the jet. i don t think we have time sir, she said, when he yelled for the machine. we ll just get you pressed at the machine, but when hope finally admitted she forgot the steamer. it was a mistake she would never make. but this idea in this picture of a man who screams at his staff is one that i have heard is ongoing. she doesn t have very much experience, but at least she s good looking. and that s in the book too. it s a weird book, and there s a lot of it that s meant to make trump look noble and valiant and making great sacrifices and paint a hero s portrait. if you strip out all of that, and there s moments that are meant to look great and leaderly, if you strip out the this particular portrait, forget about the steaming of the pants while on, i don t know how you do that. i would like to see it. it sounds painful. it reminds me of the mitt romney moment of that movie where she s ironing the suit jacket while it s on him and he s burning himself. just the whole tone of it. where s the machine, you know, the profancitprofanity, the ins the abuse, they re painting a portrait of trump, man, i would never want to work for this guy. everybody knows he could be dreadful towards his secretaries and kind of vain, authoritarian at least he was churchill. western europe from nazi tyranny. i have to show everybody a few more nuggets from the book. it s about his diet and lowering the plane to an altitude where he could get a cell signal. we ll have to sneak in break, we ll be right back. them all to and how, i can t explain oh yeah, well well well youuuu you make my dreams come true well, well, well youuuu topped steak & twisted potatoes at applebee s. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. victoza® may help you lose some weight. (avo) victoza® is not for people with type 1 diabetes or diabetic ketoacidosis. do not take victoza® if you have a personal or family history of medullary thyroid cancer, multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2, or if you are allergic to victoza® or any of its ingredients. stop taking victoza® and get medical help right away if you get symptoms of a serious allergic reaction such as rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing. serious side effects may happen, including pancreatitis. so, stop taking victoza® and call your doctor right away if you have severe pain in your stomach area. tell your doctor your medical history. gallbladder problems have happened in some people. tell your doctor right away if you get symptoms. taking victoza® with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. common side effects are nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite, indigestion, and constipation. side effects can lead to dehydration, which may cause kidney problems. ask your doctor about victoza®. there s more from this book by people who claim they know the president and his diet. there were also ancillary groups including vienna fingers and the oreo. the reason the package of oreos was unopened waus because trump wouldn t eat from a previously opened package. he also had the pilot to lower the phone to get a signal. did you say i shouldn t be on tv on sunday and paul was like he couldn t hear him because of the helicopter motor. i said i ll going on tv anytime time i bleep want. tone it down? i want to tone it up. i don t want to play anything down. i ve had enough. this certainly rings true. throughout those excerpts he is very harsh on the way that paul maf paul manafort was treated by trump. i think that s cory lieuewando i lewandowski s portrait. hey, let s not do the sunday show and donald trump lashing out at that. one thing that he does point out consistently is donald trump complimenting people s hair and skin and saying they re good looking. cory lieuewandowski said he did to him. i do not get how that plays into a campaign operative. i disagree. i have to say monafoone thing ts to be acknowledged. trump had a political animal genius for what the electrorate wanted. the idea he had to turn it up when those of us around the table were saying that s outrageous, you can t say that, mr. trump. he always took it like in that movie 211. that s effective. can i just say, you know, i have a lot of quarrels with this president. the mcdonald s i don t. i don t have a problem with pop eye s. there s a lot to quarrel with him, i m not going to quarrel him are you a germophobe. when i m on with you, absolutely. i love fast food, there s nothing wrong with fast food. we have to sneak in one more break. my wife is going to kill me. back to taxpayers. who could possibly be against that? well, the national debt is $20 trillion. as we keep adding to it, guess who pays the bill? him. and her. and her. congress, we should grow the economy. not the debt.
after months of speculation the news that every take that had been dreading the most successful band of the decade that splitting up. as it was really terrible i had a friend who was also a big take that fan and we cried. then we sat in front of the radio and recorded it on tape because there was this big interview. and great he said it is going to be a last album from today. is no will. be on but we even set up an emergency hotline at bravo magazine because kids were calling and saying they were going to kill themselves that there really were two or three girls who killed themselves because tate got it split down. take that in the ninety s they were at the top of a gigantic wave of boy and girl plans the man just a bass group of five had a massive teenage following turned over tiny profits and kept the press on their and their diehard fans of remain true to this day. but remember this. as i ve got photos from every american scene and every country i could get them from. at some point tide connected so much my mother gave me a big bag and said that if i didn t sort it out she threw it all away. from my you of course you daydream when you. take that knew that too and sat down to develop a fan base by performing at schools in one thousand nine hundred another boy band still ruled the world s big stages. i. was. new kids on the block from the united states they were enjoying huge commercial success and operating a carefully managed merchandising machine. they even surpassed the superstars of the eighty s like madonna whitney houston prince. and michael jackson michael. michael jackson was the biggest influence on the boy bands since they all combined music singing and choreographed dance routines but for all five of them would be on stage doing what michael jackson did as a one man show. there wouldn t be boy bands if it weren t for michael jackson. the king of pop first achieved success himself as part of a point band the jackson five as a solo artist he laid the foundation for the ultimate entertainment experience challenge conventional ideas about masculinity and femininity as did many of his fellow pop artists by the end of the eighty s gen. bending gave way to cute boys in the saloon. with a sort of new wave of boy bands starting with new kids on the block and going forward there was a lot more kind of sexual directness. it s been taken off bodies being shown i think the big influence you know generally that culture had got more and more explicit about sharing back flash people like bobby brown these new much more raunchy kind of r. and b. styles and rap styles did show off they re so well muscled kind of physiques offered up for the enjoyment of female fans and also i found as well. i. definitely trained as sex symbols you know tops coming off you know i m painting all that kind of stuff and while so it was a whole show it was the dancing it was. it was the looks it was the clothing it was the moves and the songs that. you. love in every way is a very gay video because we got purple it somewhere in cut off top scene stuff. when you look back on some of those boy bands in the ninety s like they look really gay right but that was a time where. people didn t know you know people didn t think boy george was gay in the eighty s people didn t think george michael was gay. and you look at well now you re like what those obviously gay you know you have you know take that you know looking very effeminate doing. thing is that people didn t translate that as being . in one nine hundred ninety three boys appeared on islands biggest late night show without a song all record deal but plenty of hot moves and no shortage of sex appeal. i was going to go forward to hearing from you when you re famous. but it wasn t done skills that made them famous lead singer ronan keating voices what catapulted boys own to the top of the chops. but there was one fact that they weren t allowed to mention at the beginning. stephen gately was gay. and yet it was the gay and lesbian clubs in large cities that provided the pethick springboard full fledgling boy bands and girl groups what went over well then i would also catch on with the mainstream london s legend. posted them all. dressed in leather perform for an adult audience with at this time . zone and westlife did shows that. we used to perform quite regularly it s just a great night it s a really full day it was the one night we could perform and let our hair down because you know most games you re taking taking it seriously. you know you re kind of conscious of what s going on but the something about why it s such a part of the audience is just everybody s drinking everybody s having fault. but the gay community was any targeted on officially the official target group was a completely different one. girls lose their minds coming this way paolo and that scream is deafening you just you know stop and you know and it will just be screaming i remember some of the reviews from some of our shows the reviewer used to get upset because they would say you know we re going to give the show a bad review because the screaming was so loud we couldn t hear the music to actually review it. we got to perform with take that and they were huge at the time i remember traveling from our hotel we were going to do a show manchester and they had to travel in up trucks and we were. like these limousine cars and their fans thought that we were them because you couldn t see inside they were shaking how come we were a group. so for the next show as we said we were riding mc trucks like take back the kids they re going to kill us. screaming and swinging girls we re already doing that in the beatles era. the teeny boppers could integrate the boys on stage into their dream worlds which are free of sexual marital obligations a place where fantasies can run wild. from the middle of the sixty s you still get these groups there s a sort of calm of the man there particularly with the teen age and pre-teen the audience for these sort of bands like somewhere between. pets and sex objects you know it s like an early experimentation with ideas of love and romance and sex but a very sort of sorry for a girl who may not be allowed to have a boyfriend could have her imaginary bravery in dealy it s from all one and have posters up and hearts around his face and you know and go see him in concert and parents don t feel weird about it because he s there and she s hearing or you scream as loud as you want. but for many fans the boys represent more than just pin ups on the walls they are companions who accompanied them through a tumultuous time in their lives. a lot of our fans and especially now as they are adults and they come to our shows and they tell us about how they felt when i would sing and dance we may not be you know you to music doesn t sort of change the world but the one thing we do team and we did was that when they have really difficult times and when they got into their teenage years and those years can be very emotional and very difficult. i think we can give them a lot. you can really get brows now you know the whole study was for us and why i have even today from dallas they say you re my first love i ve got a fall memories of the toil of the band i would come home from school. i had a boring day or something is troubling me i would put your music on the fly my bad the song it just it was almost like hearing some of it wash over me and it made me just put in some more of. my goodness first on that many didn t understand why young girls like us were wild about it even some of the girls didn t understand what he originally forced on me to hear that it was a hat thing in contrast to boys their age girls are more bound to the household that s true today but even more so in the ninety s girls have to help out around the house they can t stay out as late in the evening aren t even allowed to go out on their own as much as their male counterparts and generally have less access to the potential sources that could allow them to acquire a certain amount of self-confidence and even toward society and when young girls do go out often they re not taken very seriously or given much attention groups gather to let off emotional steam boys want to play football and girls go to a backstreet boys concert i think girls is and should be taken more seriously they shouldn t be dismissed as swoon as who obsess over pop stars we don t do that to male soccer fans and no one laughs at them when they sing their fan songs and yell and scream because they want. the entertainment industry didn t mind the kids had money to spend and it offered them for. empty of ways to spend it. boy bands are perfect bait they spring up like mushrooms or even join forces with the competition like the french band and the irish band boys earn twice the fun and twice the profits boy bands are an international money making machine and their fans will following with purchasing power. things about once was it was. a relatively prosperous time the world s economy did recover it did boom it was filtering down and so everyone has a lot more money and including teens and preteens you know they ve actually got a lot spending power has a huge potential to make money not just with selling the records but with all the merchandise or color spinoffs movies d.v.d. s thing much and dice has always been around just to hit new levels in the heights in the ninety s when when people knew that they could release one song and have three different versions of it just by changing the cover you know you go five if you want five boys in the band you got a single with five different faces the show five i mean that that s taking it to the extreme yeah i think then you have people jump on the bandwagon that like the dolls and we had our most wins we had kept resounding while the pop played on the bed sheets on the way and sunglasses and none is was that was a massive explosion to really capitalize on need as much as you could to make money in. the ninety s are high on the new economy the digital age made room for new markets internet startups have the stock market booming multimedia products are created for a child s play be it video games or tamagotchi is and the entertainment industry turned its attention to girls. america i ve heard of there was a noticeable push of products onto the market especially targeted to girls if you take girls magazines for example there were all sorts of new publications in the ninety s like brigade to young miss magazines with a lot of content related to the cosmetics and fashion industries consumerism was promoted as a lifestyle in those magazines then there were also t.v. shows that revolved around the software lies ation of women. yet as with female protagonists were in the foreground on shows like clueless. then there were novels like bridget jones diary these characters were incredibly independent had jobs usually in the media industry had lots of friends money and could look after themselves but there was one thing missing prince charming. and this prince charming should be of their own age if possible whether in t.v. shows films or advertisement the boy band style was everywhere the metrosexual man with youthful looks and well groomed appearance became the new ideal of beauty. well for the girls the guys were very good looking all of the girls were to it it was a great looking cast to want to have some pretty people on their literary who s still gorgeous to this day so it was a group of pretty kids we did not have heart that episode. got to perform every day of the week. a time when men were the primary marketing target in the ninety s it opened back up to the wider masses of the city but i think. when you look at issues of gravel from the sixty s seventy s and the early eighty s there were also a fair number of adults on the covers so that s just alone for example in the seventy s there was but spencer wearing a full beard you know it again and then they you thought began in the ninety s and there were more and more boys on the covers. and many of the female figures on t.v. were also girlies now plats past slides and sneakers the style of dress is colorful and diverse there s rest for life palpable their motto youthful freedom instead of half it super woman despite the fact that top models were also experiencing a boom. and i think the ninety s were an era of supermodels with big names like cloudier chef erin cindy crawford the ideal with ninety sixty ninety i really believe that the girl is. are already that unconventional they were worried whether men like it or not that was very extravagant. and the different fashion styles were put together completely crazily i think it wasn t targeted so much at the men s views of the funny the wiki of them picked them at all of. the girl next door she defined music television of the ninety s established channels like v h one n m.t.v. catered to cool kids but things changed to a new music channel shook up the market and drove the youth culture to an absolute peak. television became a cuddle program happy babbling with slip ups and breakdowns but close to the action provided there was satellite reception or cable in the house in the ninety s private programs entered the living rooms throughout europe. who took sick you go perceptive and when satellite television became available i got the chance to see a little more of what was going on out there suddenly i could choose between all sorts of programs and music channels i discovered fever fever one and the other two that was incredible i became aware of all sorts of countless artists on the just the european youth programs provided the main showcase for boy and girl bands in europe even american bands like the backstreet boys and n sync were aware of their importance and took advantage of them because by the mid one nine hundred ninety s. interest in singing and dancing boys in white pop culture had dropped significantly in the united states. the white boy band couldn t get arrested america s enough we just came up a whole new kids on the block maybe three years earlier four years or. when their popularity soared when the old and everybody had moved on to grunge and it wasn t about you know nobody wants to watch a boy band or europe celebrated synth pop in the one nine hundred eighty s. it was heading for a big dance wave in the one nine hundred ninety s. but grunge and hip hop dominated the american pop charts. hard times there was no room for sweet dreams of love. from the eighty s you had a crack epidemic we had the h.i.b. aids epidemic we had the failure of trickle down economics so the non threatening fun hip hop of the sugarhill gang or run d.m.c. that would change in the ninety eight people were suffering people were angry police brutality poverty ronald reagan ruining the country george bush sr coming in it was time to talk about what s going on in your community in the ninety s. and for all of the criticism of cornhole gangsta rap it really was a reaction to what people were going through women to found new possibilities of expression in this music like mc lyte. the ninety s definitely opened the door for women s rights again through music because of hip hop. and all of these people who are screaming about their status with women. open the doors for the r. and b. singers in the soul singers to have an opinion. vogue storm the stage with found us vocal and plenty to say and songs that took on racism sexism and discrimination they were clear and then to moms. in the ninety s i think women were definitely thinking more about their own sexuality you know are there some of the lyrics were pretty racy the lyrics were definitely forward thinking in terms of what we want we re not just you know an object we have feelings and desires and we wanted to be right. afro american girl bands like jade didn t mind calling things as they were that texts were adult as was their audience however another band became the voice of a whole generation t.l.c. . i m not. going to go out. on. t.l.c. determine the whole nine hundred ninety s. wrote him for young women with their songs whether it s contraception sexual exploitation all sick beauty ideals all these issues were mentioned. in the late lisa left eye lopez stood for. a concept which still had to find its way into mainstream. go power the spice girls became the power bottom and of the movement. from england s working class and they brought feminism to the masses and their message the struggle is now let s have. as melanie c. says you know you don t have to burn a bra to be a feminist i think it means that you don t have to you know protest and believe in everything all the feminists did in the suffragettes did you just have to be confident and biggest self and not be. told what to do by anyone it s a very it s a very simple version of feminism but a very effective one they formed a counterpoint to the many boy bands and gave girls new models with which to identify. spice girls had so much energy they had five different personalities which is great because it meant that you could decide which one you liked best i never had a favorite actually changed because i changed so my favorite spice girl depended on where i was in my development so one point i was really. into my mom when i was particularly young so it was baby spice who on the side identified that in her . and as i got older i really enjoyed margaery costume sequins sparkle so jerry was mad and favorite and so it just changed like that and now victoria because i think she sets a great role model for young businesswoman and top an aerial spirit. to. see. dramatic outfits and cheeky behavior were also part of the spice girls schtick whenever they appeared they created a scene and substantially rattled much oh man she can do it let me make sally you know right now i m just a little we are your theories flapping about the politics around the globe and i think that was made by the us. public well you know they were very very. com for the quiet irreverent generally they just made a spectacle of themselves they just loved showing off and that was the whole thing that s what they existed to do they seem to have this kind of tremendous. confidence gang mentality and they had all this girl power philosophy to have a good time be themselves stick by their friends i think those things are important what message is that that got through. the five women where the greatest girl band in the world they stood for cool britannia transformed the union jack into a fashion statement wrote a girl power manifesto gave girls self confidence and they made profit with it. the kind of guy power you could always buy girl power and they sold plenty of it the spice girls had up to twenty advertising contracts going on at once there was for example the spice girls deodorant girls thought ok if i use this storage and i have girl power to do that was fantastic and also affordable there was even a spice girls polaroid camera to record your girl palin moments and there were spice girls bobby s typical girl culture which was then transferred to go power would be that off guy power but yet because the power message i think was all about marketing i recognize that even as a little girl i thought that it was a marketing man s dream it was a way to sell records and merchandise and that dolls and. even though they believed in feminism. in spite of the hype they were never taken very seriously that was a problem for all boy and girl bands they re seen as products of the casting industry bands constantly have to combat this image problem not even the fact that many of them write their own songs seems to help. wanted to get the attention at the girls it was important that all the band members stand side by side on stage they were equal no more important than another that allowed every goal to choose their favorite star. it s not. looking good dancing and singing in harmony well driving girls wild rather than strumming it in white music culture that contradicts the ideal of real masculinity the rock up. the. so in the. country as well a lot of people sing songs written by other people by sort of professional songwriters by hit factories. the rock is my dears you have any meaningful if you write your own lyrics they come from you a tend to be a sort of. belief that image and clothes are a glamour a kind of not that important somebody frivolous trivial my looks sort of helped in that area and i think i thought he looks great as a man does he have the voice not sure we can welcome back a lot of people just love just about the boy band you know it was that period where everyone at boy bands you know we need to prove ourselves every time we were anywhere same for us that was i think it was like one show us you you not just pretty boys have no talent my hair on. her back you. know as it was in about proving we could sing everybody knew that we could sing it was more of a thing of them to say you know we really want to hear you sing it wasn t like we don t believe you can sing are proving. that. african-american artists face fewer of the stereotypes generally associated with caste bands but they do struggle against the cliche of being considered natural talent this skill is greatly influenced by experiences with church choirs and longstanding music to dish and. singing gospel requires technique that only comes with years of training. coming from gospel you know to sing in a black church here you have to be saying to sing jazz you have to understand certain movements you you know certain notes you need to know more than just opening your mouth and. singing you have to understand control inflection you know proud of the gotta learn the language it s not like you just get up and saying we you know at least our group j didn t come from that we came from serious musical histories. the first boy bands descended from this history doo wop even before rock n roll a lively style of music based on harmony developed in the african-american communities in large cities in the u.s. this tradition celebrated a revival in the ninety s. and the next level down and you had a group like and vote and vote truly a throwback to the supreme right truly a throwback to the girl groups and for ya graffiti and all these kinds of things. our first single in the states and worldwide was a do up song so our introduction as a group was the do up sound of the fifty s and sixty s so yeah we were you know part of that revival i think if i came out again one of the first credits of a kind of swing this back around was boys to man i believe. drive. the backstreet boys were aware of that and seized opportunities on stage to show what they were capable of and to counter the conventional image of a boy band. those who wanted to earn money had to fill arenas the ninety s with a decade of huge stage shows pyrotechnics video screens backup dances and elaborate stage designs have been standing ever since in a crowd of fifty thousand fans even those in the very last row should be entertained. i mean at the time for the money we spent on that and we didn t do anything cheaply with the stage design and twenty changes of clothes and. it s a big production. one hundred people or more. months. in order to keep the machinery going manages wanted band members who did what they were told drill methods like we use. the idea of. nothing new really. preparing getting the boys ready. play ready. for public consumption the dance moves and they re rehearsing them rehearsing them rehearsing them rehearsing them and it s all to keep them out of trouble. and then there was the image based on illusions designed to foster the loyalty of lovesick fans. having a girlfriend all being gay is to do number one rule of you re single. that was kind of like the management s rule we have to change our ages too but of course the fans in holland knew. and they were like it s not twenty ten we twenty five you know and it was just i m twenty two and i m single. and i was friends with benjamin and we met and the story oh yeah and and then we made him and then. i mean. the compressor friend. while male friendships had to be invented a number of things had to be kept in the dark like those of elijah young from cold in the yanks and the late stephen gately from boys a. month really from westlife and lance bass remained single also had to wait a long time before they could reveal that they are gay. lance bass of course and saying there was no way you could have an openly gay back that. no way that could have happened it was a dangerous time to do that and if they did even acknowledging they had a gay following in the early part of their career because you know. the boy bands girl bands they had no say so for the most part they were very controlled by the record label. whether it was. whether was lou pearlman. lou perlman was considered one of the most colorful music manages of the nineteen ninety s bands like the backstreet boys and same cool well under his management the ninety s were the golden decade for production companies the new economy was the fertile soil for the entertainment industry who perlman is going to. be a chef. is a tough business make a lot of money with trans continental and. he had a pizzeria chain somewhere in america he gave me his business cup once there were eight companies listed on it and he wrote a book that then called benz brands and billions and not the smartest on it. i mean he was primarily a businessman. and only than a music fan was a fan. these days he s in prison because of investment fraud his pyramid scheme didn t work out the new economy bubble burst and even boy and girl bands don t go on forever many break up after a few years they can t stand the pressure or they become adults find other interests or internal conflicts break them. out of the challenge and. robbie williams drowned his frustration in alcohol and drugs thereby provoking his exit from the band and sealing the end of take that. robbie leaving the band was more or less the beginning of the end of take that at first everyone thought they d carry on as a foursome but at some point it was all over and that was a disaster of course. as much as well yes it was bad it was really bad because they had determined our youth they had been our hobby had marked us and suddenly they were gone now one of them i suspect in let s close this race despite the big shock the fans didn t have to mourn for long gary barlow and mark owen embarked on solo careers as did robbie williams who enjoyed the most success and ten years later the big reunion even if only in a band of four. i find it nice that they exist again i thought the reunion was brilliant it was so great i couldn t believe it at first just as i couldn t believe the separation i thought it was simply great and we should get the posters out again no i didn t think that. and other bands are following suit boy and girl bands of the ninety s are making comebacks much to that fact still a little i didn t really think about at the time. you re still a great they re a fabulous that by step that kind of a concept that scream in there you know fantastic but to sort of look back and think. a lot of them say we missed the ninety s you know it s like a real important nostalgic memory for them yeah yes this was al use these a nice memories this is what made it so special it was great little. little . for sarah willis playing the horn is a passion. and profession joined her on a journey as a musical discovery. this time she made some new some long humbard. the female quartet moves with ease among john was. fifteen minutes d.w. . high up in the snowy owl going. forward through a lot of adventures. outraise enter lucas to go works up a sweat. a winter vacation close to nature. the other way region in winter. in thirty minutes on w. w s program guide to the highlights of the whole. dot com highlights. i shot maggie has no children which makes her feel worthless and incomplete.
everybody welcome to the show there s lots to look forward to as we kick off another week on your next here s what s coming up today. golden globes in the fade is named best foreign language film in los angeles. holiday on ice the world s best known ice skating show turns seventy five. and canine work is how dogs help boost sales in british shops. the award season is upon us and the first major event for film and t.v. fans was the seventy fifth golden globes which is my personal favorite because the films and series i enjoyed tend to get recognized that and there was plenty of recognition for european artists with winners from france scotland and germany will bring you up to date on how europe s finest did at the awards ceremony but first a look at how fashion was used to deliver a strong message to. the red carpet was full of. alack at the golden globe awards on sunday the stars wore somber outfits to show solidarity with victims of sexual assault and harassment in the film industry. but the mood of the winners was anything but black german director fatty cockiness pictured in the face one best foreign language film it was a moving occasion for the director and lead actors deonna clear thank you monique my wife my kids without you. because you are the dollar thank you so much i feel privileged today to do what i think is the elevating the foreign language thing. in the fayed tells the story of a right wing terror attack in germany the film is based on a real series of murders committed by a neo nazi terrorist group called the n.s.u. its members systematically killed at least nine people of foreign backgrounds director hakim is himself the son of turkish immigrants. people could have killed room i could be one of those targets of little or nothing which separates me from the targets and i was kind of like we are the people like kill me just because i don t car look south cal castro i crack him this year three of the five best foreign language film nominees came from europe film was up against swedish satire the square winner of the palme d or at cannes this year. this little golden globe jury voted for in the fate it likely helped that the film s theme proved topical as discrimination is currently a big issue in tinseltown and beyond and european cinema is contributing to the debate. last year dance director power fan who founded won the golden globe with alan the wonderful isabel. before it was hungary and last low nam ish with son of saul so european cinema is very present. present. sees her go plays a woman who loses her husband and child in a right when terror attack she gave a heart rending portrayal of paying film by those left behind. because of the. within the fade you can clearly sense the influence of american independent cinema since martin scorsese is fatty hawkins big role model woods and naturally lead actress deana kluger has enjoyed international success for years and worked with hollywood directors like quentin tarantino and vault and pages of. that are so i think that contributed greatly to in the faith winning the golden globe. going global. hunger made her acting debut with a hollywood blockbuster in two thousand and four she played helen involved on paper since troy alongside orlando bloom and brad pitt. in two thousand and nine she appeared in quentin tarantino s inglourious basterds. in the fade was her first german language film and it s now a golden globe winner in the fade is also nominated for an academy award will it take home the best foreign language film oscar as well the golden globes often predict the oscar winners but we ll just have to wait till march to find out. well we keep things current with our express up next which begins with a fantastic charity event that helps homeless people all over germany. seventeen head dresses from the baba angels brotherhood association have given more than two hundred homeless and needy people in ballin free haircuts. the association was founded in stuttgart in twenty six days. ever since the charitable baba s have travelled around germany to draw attention to the un s usual idea. that goal is to give a face to the homeless and the needy and to put a smile on. their says aisha now has one hundred eleven members throughout germany the offer for people in their respective cities free headcounts once a month. in twenty seven thousand more than three hundred thousand pilgrims followed the way of st james to santiago de compostela in spain that s a new record ninety three percent made their way in classic style on foot while seven percent rode bicycles in one thousand nine hundred seventy the council of europe declared the way of saying change its first ever european cultural route ever since the tradition of the pilgrimage has undergone an impressive revival with more and more people making this spiritual journey. last weekend the annual hack c. hood rugby match took place in northern england the event is held every january between the villages of hexie and west woodside. its route stay back to a legend from the fourteenth century. according to the tale the winds blew away a lady s silky riding hood thirteen farmers tried to chase it down and when they succeeded the lady gave them thirteen acres of land. bought on the condition that the chase for the herd be reenacted every year. right now it s freezing cold here in berlin one of the best ways to get through the long and cold winter is to embrace the elements and enjoy some seasonal and to time and a great example is holiday on ice one of the world s most famous ice shows twenty eighteen marks an important milestone for the touring company they ve now been going to seventy five years of course a lot has changed since the show s humble beginnings in the u.s. state of ohio in the one nine hundred forty s. my colleague meghan lee took a look at the latest installment cold atlantis. this is one of the world s longest running shows holiday on ice now entering its seventy fifth year it s an acrobatic adventure of sorts some thirty five skaters take to the ice in a program that changes every year one of the principle stars of the show is twenty five year old mighty long graf he s already had a long and successful skating career and this is yet another feather in his cap to do and i am no it s just the world s largest ice show you can hear the audience tonight right off to the number of people and that keeps you motivated to go out to get. this year s story centered around the legend of atlantis monte plays one of its richest inhabitants a man who seduces dozens of women before atlantis sinks underwater. legend has it the ancient utah big city suddenly disappeared due to the god s anger at the population to greet. the costume story ideas and choreography have come a long way in seventy five years holiday on ice began in one thousand and forty three in the united states over the years it has grown as a production introducing new characters and attracting many stars its audience has also grown steady over the years the show s signature opulence has remained consistent throughout. even after seventy five years holiday on ice still remains one of the most successful shows of its kind thanks in no small part to the theatrical performances its creative directors are always on the lookout for the most modern concepts to keep the audiences in awe . i m a big fan of game of thrones and i love the opulence and the beauty and the slight feel of of history but i wanted to give it a modern edge so if if we thought atlantis was alive now. artois this is how i would i would think it would look holiday and i says chalked up a number of records it s the most visited i show in the world with over three hundred twenty nine million audience members it s also appeared in the guinness book of world records five times. skaters who want to participate must have experience like julie sherry from switzerland another principal skater in the show up till two years ago she was competing on an international level. by the invade to be bad but the mules petitions you feel more into pressure on the atmosphere is tense. now i notice that the show is how we can all enjoy it because we have put a show together all of this can be socially orientated so this larry family and we show that to the outside weld deep in the in the house and. aside from the skating acrobatics n.p.r. trickle performances the costumes also play a central role created by international designer michael sharpe they were a major endeavor with many a lot just sticks. of a number of different worlds always thought. so how it once was in the trees bright pure moment and then when you have the place sinking on the go below the water it s a lot more surreal a video to inspire it. because it s essentially a sports everything has to be super flexible and really do your both durable enough to last at least six months many of the skaters have no less than seven costume changes per show and as the show progresses so does the opulence of each outfit. great costumes very impressive and. lovingly designed great music you know it s great fun it s fantastic i m upset me thrilled i didn t it was beautiful inside me i liked it when the fire came spouting out. how they are nice where seventy five years of history behind it the extravaganza is still as popular as ever. now to an artist who combines two of life s greatest joys art and food and it s not healthy ingredients that take her fancy. uses chocolate as a pan and margarine to mold her sculptures so apart from looking good some of the pieces probably taste quite nice to what happens when she suddenly fancies a snack. a sculpture made from marjorie created and modeled by artist sun you re on a poison. and what other minds you go by my mother always baked a lot so it was a normal material for me dough and margarine and it s easy to shape and to make sculptures with. plastic this is a special margarine it s in the it s keeps its shape well and it s very high lastic a bit like a modeling clay lasts business almost like touching a living thing. i ve been these. piece called just also made from archery in. their part of a performance held at the proms five university of out west on your isle why is it was a lecture and. that it taught us to us here something is destroyed when we eat them edible things are also destroyed we consume something and it s gone up. here it s a sculpture i just made that s being destroyed when it loses half of its shape through the impact but i think that s incredibly beautiful. the artist has won many accolades for her work including her drawings which revolve around the theme of cooking this one shows how to bake rye bread from sourdough. that s until she had misread us in the end i m interested in how things intermingle and how things are created and you can show that nicely in a drawing those individual stamps and then use it in a recipe. just looking at her drawings is enough to make your mouth water and leave you longing to share a meal with good friends. this time isn t the same guy we had last the spirit of sharing on that s where i m coming from. you set the table invite guests and share something. that s got a bit lost with old cuisine where everyone has his own plate and must make do with what s on it it s so restricting. a chocolate bar with another installations added that stuff mart the specialty ought to be allowed to depict this kind of decadence i have to use a lot of chocolate to show that i mean a lot of chad it s an overabundance i work with that and sometimes it can be wasteful but there s also positive wastefulness and for me using this much chocolate is positively wasteful and i simply wanted to see it. doesn t use that much chocolate while working in her own kitchen yet it remains a sweet temptation. markoff i miss i love milk chocolate although i discipline myself while i m working otherwise you just end up nibbling presence nasty. massy pans another sweet treat she s pressed it into a silicon mold to form a head is farms that moment i m happy when the head emerges and it s all shiny when it s been well pressed and then the almond oil settles around the edges and it looks like it s been freshly lacquered i really like that. sonia tops off her works of art with a chocolate coating their sweet but much too good to eat. let s continue now with another trip for your remarks extra tour that s our segment where you are audience can send us your dream travel destinations and we ll take you there. this time we got a request from the city of dia in costa rica dixie. wants to know more about austria a country that s almost ten thousand kilometers away one of the most beautiful corners of the alpine country is a town called time it s often referred to as the poem of to roll and it certainly looks the part. hoof stein is a feast for the eyes especially on a lovely day like this one with a dusting of snow and clear blue skies. the old market square is home to the town s and loveliest buildings luckily they were spared when a fire destroyed much of course in the eighteenth century. this is where visitors can also begin their ascent to the fortress many come just before twelve noon each day and there s a special treat in store. as the bell finishes tolling a concert begins it can be heard through much of. the music is coming from the so-called citizens tower. it s home to the world s largest freestanding organ locals call it the hero s organ each day the song the good comrade is played to honor all those who have fallen in wars throughout the world. the organ pipes are located at the top of the tower but the organist sits down below it s not an easy job since you can never practice without thousands of people listening in. so in the afternoon belongs to the heroes but the night. belongs to an entirely different kind of character. he s armed with a lantern and a weapon called a how bird. he s stein s nightwatchman household level these days the night watchman is a tourist attraction but he used to serve an important function he d warn the population if a fire broke out and keep an eye open for thieves not a job for the faint hearted. at the off best of all night watchmen were pretty special people and they weren t much loved by the townspeople because they were always on the go after dark. in the towns ordinary citizens were rather scared of the dark fact that there were no street lights no lanterns it was really dark quiet time gray so the night watchman was the only one who really dead to go out at night. that is apart from the people who wanted to stay out drinking. people still like to do that here in the remote hope. it s the quaintest street in kuta but also its most infamous. and is also the hour for example has been around for six hundred years or so and then there s a guest house there s also alcohol the local was known for its good beer back then today it s more of a wine bar. of course there were people who drank a lot and got into fights but in some towns the night watchman was more of a night police missed out and he kept peace and order this sort. of night is quite a sight during the winter season visitors can accompany the night watchman on his rounds at least once a week it s a chance to visit some of the town s lesser known corners as well as here scary stories and interesting anecdotes and see could shine from a completely different perspective. the saying goes you can t teach an old dog new tricks but it turns out that all four legged friends are marketing geniuses and recent is marketing executives have come up with all sorts of innovative and crazy concepts to boost businesses but a recent study shows that dogs may hold the onset apparently canines keep the customer coming in fact they spend an average of eight euros more in shops that have a hairy help. this is bertie outwork. from notting hill spends the entire day at the house alone that belongs to his mistress crystal and christe. roller if you like. people that s what he loves doing all day long so i generally sit by the door and when the salon is busy with clients then he just walks around to each chair sort of gives everyone a bit of a cuddle. crystal s customers don t only drop by to get their hair done many enjoy as well. so the dog helps build her customer base that can be an advantage for a small business. a recent study by american express shows that having dogs in britain is places of business increased turnover by the equivalent of some sixty eight million euros a year. i come here to see firstly anyway even if i don t have my hair cut so i go past and say hello to. bertie s career is just getting started bulldog has become an instagram influence. the remote business people in britain are using dogs to improve their image on social media. he also appears as a must for the new book shop. people following you for for his personality for what he s up to and then by that. they end up becoming interested in his business where he lives what he dos eventually walk through the door. honey one cost to james is a business psychologist she s not surprised by the study s findings. the research by american express looking at the effects of having a pet in a small shop i think is really interesting because it confirms what we probably in charitably know. which is that pets are not only good for our health but they can be good for all wealth particularly if you have them in a small business environment where customers are going to be drawn in to interact with the dollar goal come in and it s a really good icebreaker sometimes yes sometimes no florist cari cooks loves having her dogs at work but not all of her customers are as happy as she is about getting an enthusiastic greeting from a four legged friend. when they come in here we always say we ve got two dogs and a few will run and greet you which probably isn t the best big if you are afraid that if i come with you cannot be hopefully overcome some people face some people will just run out the show but it s very. talks and not just for one best friend that also find work colleagues. of p.t. and fandom happiness for attention. this is allowed them to generate free advertising the study says the likelihood that customers will post something about a shop on social media goes up twenty two percent if there s a dog in the place. dogs like huxley are definitely good for business. before we go we just have time to introduce this week s prize draw as it s a new year we d like to know which resolutions you ve made for twenty eighteen just head to our website d.w. dot com slash lifestyle to share what you intend to achieve in the coming twelve months and you could get the year off to a great start by winning a euro max wristwatch like this one. for today about for now. next time on your own max speed writer really casting holtz races down mt. hundred kilometers an hour speed riding is a cross between snowboarding and power and requires a lot of skill. and spectacular images that speed riding. a common european solution is nowhere in sight meanwhile thousands of asylum seekers are enduring inhumane conditions why can t the e.u. get the refugee crisis under control the limits of europe the e.u. and the refugee crisis. in fifteen minutes on. the fast paced life. shift as the web showing new developments and providing useful information. and interviews with the makers. of shifts in forty five minutes. and i think. it s certainly all citizens of ukraine every man woman and child the only friend their homeland is the enemy invades. no one wants russia here which is the. global news that matters. d.w. made for mines. it s all about the moments that life before. it s all about the stories inside. it s all about george chance to discover the world from different perspectives. join us and be inspired by distinctive instagram or hers at g.w. stories the two topics each week on instagram. are you up to speed on the latest technology. no then it may be time for an upgrade becoming part of the future. become a cyborg i m a safeword so i ve created a new sense and a new organ and design my perception of reality implants that make every day life easier. i use my you can t on a daily basis that optimize the human body and connect people more effectively. i hope that this will make us more ethical persons what would life be like as a cyborg. to at the end of the day these technologies can be used against us and what effect will it have been society does the human race really need an upgrade i think it s only the beginning of this cyborgs human machines starting february first t w. activists of protested at the white house against