the question last night that forced the candidates to say something positive about one another. it was a shining moment in the midst of this dark campaign season. with that, this is our broadcast tonight. "ha "hardball with chris matthews" begins right now. to the bitter end. let's play hardball. good evening, i'm chris matthews in washington. with 29 days to go, donald trump is clearly going to tough it out, face ag ling a lot of defe and his campaign taking a negative turn just an hour before a debate with hillary clinton's former accusers. they also started a confrontation with the former

president which was diverted by the officials in the debate itself. in the debate itself, clinton called him a liar. he called her the devil at one point, saying if he had his way, she would be in jail. we know all that. a new poll shows the people know that, too. it shows that the bottom could be falling out of the trump campaign. catch these numbers. the latest nbc wall street journal poll finds that clinton has jumped to an 11-point lead, double digits over trump, likely voters in a four-way race. clinton with 46, trump with 35. johnson with just 9%. but trump today doubled down on his attacks of former president bill clinton, threatened to go even further if more damaging tapes on him are made public. let's watch. >> bill clinton sexually assaulted innocent women, and hillary clinton attacked those

women viciously. one of them said more viciously than he attacked them. if they want to release more tapes saying inappropriate things, we'll continue to talk about bill and hillary clinton doing inappropriate things. there are so many of them, folks. you probably saw yesterday we brought four wonderful women to st. louis. [ cheers ] >> and honestly, it was both very beautiful and very sad. >> wow. he's poetic. in a conference call with republican lawmakers today, house speaker paul ryan said he would no longer defend nor campaign for donald trump. a republican, instead ryan said he wants to focus on the republicans being the majority. trump today tweeted, paul ryan

should spend more time on balancing the budget, jobs and illegal immigration and not waste his time on fighting the republican nominee. well, the message for the trump campaign to the republican party itself today couldn't be clearer. you're either with us or against us, every man for himself. chairman of the american conservative union, and carl belcher is author of a new book "a black man in the white house." can you tell if these numbers are outlyers? an 11 hi-point spread for hilla. that's hard to come up with. >> if you look at it, chris, she's got the big advantage among women, but his lead among men is shrinking. he's always made this thing that he's the leader among men. his lead among men is now only two or three points. it's continuing to slide and head in the other direction. >> just to go by gender here

because of the sexual nature of all this stuff that's come out, is he doing even as well as mitt romney or john mccain? >> she's within two or three points with men. i'll tell you right now, if obama was within two or three points with men, it would have been a landslide. this is a problem for john kerry. right now the majority of voters say they're voting against her, not necessarily against him. they're voting for her. >> keep trashing the clintons is his strategy. keep trashing them through this rough patch if he's going to make it. >> yeah, the republicans have been trying to warn him all along, though, the one thing he had to do if he wanted to expand off that base, he had one goal, and that goal was to come in in light of this videotape and show total contrition. he didn't do it. >> do you think that would have

worked? >> i'm skeptical that it would have worked but it was the only way it would work. >> just apologize again, rudy giuliani is always apologizing in this business. but the bottom line the people he would have responded to, the suburbanites, should he have apologized for that video? >> he apologized for the tape before, he reiterated at the debate and he moved on. >> how do you do this? >> it's totally below the belt. >> did you actually hear him apologize? the sentiment. did you sense a sentiment of shame with him? or was it like the p.o.w. saying, okay, i've got my fingers crossed. >> he said he needs to be a better man, and i think that's the right way to take it. look, both these campaigns are doing the same thing. they're both attacking the other because their negatives are so

high. we can go through all these polls. the polls are going to be bad for trump for a while here. >> i'm not a huge believer in black and white in all these things, you're not going to get me on that one because i agree with you. in a rally today, hillary clinton slammed trump for things he said in that tape. she's not putting this all behind him. what did he say, move on? during lewinsky. totally ridiculous slip of the tongue. you're here. let's go. let's watch this thing. >> now, i tell you what. donald trump spent his time attacking when he should have been apologizing! last night when he was pressed about how he behaves, he just doubled down on his excuse that it's just locker room banter. well, i'll tell you what, women

and men across america know that is just a really weak excuse for behaving badly and mistreating people. >> well, in turn donald trump blamed the media, of course, for ignoring bill clinton's accusers, comparing clinton to ted and chap pa. >> they don't want to talk about what they've done to these other victims. they don't want to talk about what other political heroes have done to other innocent girls and women. people like kennedy, ch chappaquidick, driving his car into a pond instead of calling the police. possibly saving a life, most definitely saving a life. he went home and went to sleep, did not report the incident to the police for 10 hours, yet he

was hailed as a hero. >> that's about as far back and as deep as you can go in the cutting world, isn't it, matt? going back to 1969? >> yeah. i'm amazed how many people i talked to younger than me didn't even know bill clinton was i impeach impeached. >> how did it happen that bill clinton gets impeached, the only president besides andrews to get impeached? >> it's called employment and growing wages. >> we're not going to have a conversation about him abusing women when -- >> yeah, we are. that's what we're talking about. >> -- when we're moving away from what trump was doing. >> i'm not sure what you meant there, and i believe it has to be very carefully stated for decency and respect for women and misbehavior when you see it,

either party. i think people judge presidents -- watergate, for example, that was not necessarily a political misbehavior, which there was, breaking in examine coveriand c that's gone on before. it was because it was terrible economic times and people were so angry, they wanted to blame nixon a lot. >> it was also mitigated. he won an election around some of that. so the voters made a decision about this. >> they thought the republicans overdid it, that's right. if they had just moved on -- >> he did something serious, whether you're itmpeached or censored or whatnot. like paula jones. >> why is it okay to go along with some of the things that donald trump has said when what bill clinton did was so offensive that it even led to the investigation and led to his

impeachment? i just think there is a certain reckoning that people in the party -- >> first of all, i believe that every time hillary clinton gets attacked for this, and i've been through this in so many ways. every time hillary clinton gets attacked on that stuff, it's very hard to assign blame to her. you can argue that she helped in some way to cover it up, but you have to prove that, and nobody has ever proved that. nobody proved she had something to do with covering up bill clinton's behavior. >> the women said she called them and talked to them. >> i believe that she called juanita and said thank you for your support. i don't believe she threatened her. >> juanita said she threatened her. >> with what? >> the fact that if she went after her husband, there would be repercussions. >> it's the fact she made an allegation. it's the fact she made an allegation just like there is a lot of allegations against trump. bottom line is bill clinton is not on the ballot. >> i don't know how you win with

this. look, with all due respect to you, how do you win with this? how do you win talking about bill clinton over a decade ago -- >> this does not help, we've been through this before. in 1998 republicans threw the book at bill clinton and they went through fantastic advantages in the election of '98. hillary clinton goes into the senate in 1998 and she won. >> your party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this research on hillary clinton before, because they knew she was going to run. and the thing they learned from the hundreds of thousands of dollars of research is the one thing you didn't want to go after her on was this bill clinton stuff because it brought out great -- i don't understand that this is where we are in the campaign. >> it's the right kind of debate. let each person talk.

let's give an example to all debate moderators now. right? is this going to be the issue that brings donald trump back to life? >> no. donald trump can only win if he talks about the economy, defeating terrorism and ending up in washington. >> heidi, is this within the bounds of reasonable discussion? >> not within a few weeks of -- i think the american voters would think this is not what they want to hear, the discussion before the election, on either side. >> you can't resist, can you? >> no. listen, there is not a white woman college educated in the philadelphia suburbs who is going to say, you know what? you're right on this. i'm going to vote for you because of this. >> just explain to me because i think you're right, but why are you right? >> they voted for bill clinton. they're concerned about their pocketbook issues and they're concerned about gender equity issues. they're not concerned about mitigating bill clinton.

>> bill clinton is one of the most popular people in the world. james carville kept saying it over and over again that he's a popular man, but he is. i've been to places like ireland with him, and he's loved. why is he loved despite his public behavior. something is there. why does that not hurt bill clinton? >> it's partly because of who bill clinton is as a person which donald trump and hillary clinton couldn't do last night on the debate stage which is make a real connection with voters. bill clinton is the american dream. he came from nothing to become the highest office in the land, and i think also, secondly, people have fond memories of a better time in terms of the economy as well. the 1990s were undoubtedly -- in d disputably a growth era for blue collar voters. >> he kept coming back.

this idea that we all sin, we all fail, we all keep asking for forgiveness and we all keep coming back. he's catholic, too. the one thing that got to me last night, i'm a complete sentimentalist about politics when something nice happens. i thought what she said about his kids was very nice. and donald trump called her a fighter. i don't think he could have said something nicer. it's almost like something you say when you've lost. when you say something so profoundly good about your opponent after you've been pottymouth over the last few days, and out of that comes this wonderful accolade. >> bill clinton makes that mistake, but that mistake doesn't define bill clinton for millions of americans when he got impeached.

that's not all that sort of defines him. there is very little other than sort of scandal and demagaugery that defines donald trump. >> you just can't have it that way. >> when they've done stupid things and done terrible things to women, it's everything. >> i don't think it's anywhere equal to what bill clinton has done and done with his life than what donald trump has done with his life. >> everybody answer the same question. yes or no answer. when we like our president, we don't just like the head of government like a prime minister. we like the president because they represent the person of the country. you're not just there. that's why we give them a white house. that's why we respect the first family and the kids because it represents our country. does everything matter or just their public policy positions? so what happened on the bus matters? >> it played into the equation. >> does it play into the trump

matter inside and outside his marriage? >> it matters what they'll do for you. >> everything matters when you're running for president. >> that's what i think. i think it's unlike being a senator or a congressman. that's why the inspection and the terrible digging and the research is so intense, and we're getting to the end of this show. trump should have known this was coming, he should have known somebody knew about that tape, he should have made more friends on his way up. you know, don't you, what i'm saying? if you're not nice to people on the way up, they're going to kill you on the way down. heidi, interesting positions you're taking here. cornell, you're the pro. matt, you're to the bitter end, till the last dog died. a new poll has bad news for republicans hoping to hold onto the congress.

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election diary monday, october 10, 2016. with the election of president just a month from tomorrow, it's impossible to ignore the

shattering power of the new poll numbers. hillary clinton holds a lead at 46%, donald trump is down to 35% to hardly third of the voters. if that number holds until election day, trump will finish worst than barry goldwater in 196 1964. the greatest disasters in modern american history, trump isn't losing because of his ideas. he's losi negotiations and war deals are doing fine. it's he that finds himself in a freefall. what is obvious is the tape. didn't trump notice that the archives, the one that's chiseled for all to see, the past is prologue. didn't he know that elections are won and lost with personal resear research? didn't he know he needed to have

someone examine himself to know what people would see when the election got close. didn't trump see it coming? "hardball" in 1998 in the heat of the clinton scandal,. didn't he know that this would be part of the bitter end? this is hard ball for now and it really is hardball. thanks for being with us. join me tomorrow night at 7:00 eastern. see you then. ♪

what? is he gone?? finally, i thought he'dever leave... tv character: why are you texting my man at 2 a.m.? no... if you want someone to leave you alone, you pretend like you're sleeping. it's what you do. if you want to save fifteen percent or more on car insurance, you switch to geico. it's what you do. tv character: taking selfies in the kitchen does not make you a model. i spent many yea as a nuclear missile launch officer. if the president gave the order we had to launch the missiles, that would be it. i prayed that call would never come. [ radio chatter ] self control may be all that keeps these missiles from firing. [ sirens blearing ] i would bomb the [ beep] out of them.

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exact firmness and comfort you want - and so does your partner - for the best sep ever. don't miss the columbu day sale going on now! save $400 on the queen c4 mattress set, with 24 month financing and free home delivery. learn more at sleepnumber.com things that are awkward right now about being a true blue died in the wall donald trump supporter and they definitely are. they are all over the country and in all 50 states. you probably know some of them. if you weren't one yourself. you are definitely related to one of them at least by marriage. so em fa thiz -- or sympathize even if you can't empathize. say you are a donald trump supporter for real, say you live in virginia. you're a woman who supports donald trump and for whatever reason, your politics or your own, you really like donald trump. you fervently like donald trump and you want him to be presiden