Hardball

Last month, the movie Brink of War came out to little fanfare. It’s a fine movie about the 1986 Reykjavik Summit, where the United States and the Soviet Union began negotiating a nuclear agreement. It is not for everyone. Jeff Daniels plays Ronald Reagan, Jared Harris plays Mikhail Gorbachev, and JK Simmons plays George Shultz. It’s a bit boring unless you are really into historic events. When I was younger, this would have been a made-for-TV movie on ABC. But I’m glad it came out.

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Today, Sunday, August 23rd, 2026, many people will attend church. There are many baseball games today. The WNBA season is in full swing. There’s even preseason NFL football today. In Washington, D.C., a short metro ride for this author, there is an IndyCar race throughout the city, apparently funded by companies regulated by the government. President Donald Trump waved the green flag and rode in the presidential car.

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Generate transcript A transcript unlocks clips, previews, and editing. Thank you Frank Arriola, Stuart Cohen, Cathy Stein, Mary Leather, Toothpicker, and many others for tuning into my live video with Senator Chris Van Hollen and Sean McCann for Congress! Join me for my next live video in the app.

And Chris Peleo-Lazar. So let's play Hardball. Our first guest of the show is friend of the show, Cliff Shepter. You can find stuff on Blue Amp. You really should be subscribing. It's one of the few ones that I freely admit that I pay for. I subscribed. I don't subscribe to many, but I subscribe to all the Blue Amp people. And I learn something all the time. Also gets me into the mood to talk about politics. And because some days it's really hard to want to talk about this stuff. But you know what?

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across the street working the phones constantly he's not a bs or he's a reporter an amazing reporter and he got into the first term of the second administration of uh donald trump in a way that nobody else has he and maggie haberman of course she's the daughter of clyde haberman who i used to work with so i've been around a while let me ask you about a bunch of things here first of all the book is in backlog with uh with amazon it's doing you got to get at a local bookstore go to amazon or go...

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A recording by Chris Matthews