>> come over. >> before you go there, let's go here. president trump is about to leave to capitol hill for a bilge meeting on tax reform. now the possibility of a government shut down just got a lot more real. inside politics with john king starts right now. welcome to inside politics. i'm john king. a busy breaking news day in the nation's capital. the president heading to capitol hill and without a doubt, this is a defining day for the first year in office. the senate tax cut plan is short votes. challenge number two was supposed to be a year end spending deal, something the president will discuss back at the white house with bipartisan congressional leaders. they switched the rsvp to not

attending. nancy pelosi releasing a statement that said if the president who already said that our country needs a good shut down is not interested in addressing the agenda, we will work with those republicans who are. a dramatic development at the white house for us. how does this change things on what was supposed to be a huge day for the president? >> potentially changes the next coming weeks of december. they of course are going to be dominated first by the tax plan of now, but later on by the year end spending bill. with democrats refusing to come to the white house to negotiate, it changes everything potenti potentially in terms of how the white house deals with it. democrats have quite a bit of leverage on the spending plans. this could be an example of how tweets have consequences. this response from nancy pelosi and chuck schumer came two hours or so after the president sent

on out a tweet. he said meeting about keeping our government open and, wooing. they are weak on crime and want to raise taxes. i don't see a deal. by the president throwing this out to his base, he has good conversations with these leaders one on one, it dhanchls the dynamic here. now the fact that they are not coming today puts all the eggs in the republican basket and the leaders will have to negotiate on the hill. this changes the dynamic. what was going to be a testy and tough december, suddenly could be a tougher one. >> at the white house, jeff, keep working your sources. let's get straight up to capitol hill. you have been up there tracking the votes and the challenge for the president is to get in the room. many of whom, let's be honest, don't think much of the president or his leadership style and worried about him having a hands on role.

as he comes up with the news that the summit has been canceled, let's focus on challenge one -- tax reform. you have been tracking some of the hold outs without making changes that cross the line for other republicans. >> they are in a rubiks cube situation. the immediate concern right now is the senate budget committee mark up whether it is supposed to push it to the senate floor. two senators have differing issues that have them as a no on the bill. they sit on the committee and the problem is the republicans hold a 12 to 11 advantage. lose and the bill stalls out. here's the issue right now. ron johnson wants the rate for businesses that pass through the income to be more generous and expand. that costs a lot of money and is problematic for people like bob corker. he doesn't want the $1.5 trillion plan to add over the long-term. how do they manage that?

there has been a lot of talks and a lot of frustrations last night. a lot of senate aides saying let's call his bluff and make the vote happen. if they want to sink it, they can sink it themselves. the question is they are cognizant of the fact that that would create bad optics and continue to work throughout the morning and address the concerns. will they get there? this mark upstarts in a couple of hours and they are not there yet. >> tracking the votes on capitol hill. back here to share their reporting and insights. the "new york times" and the daily beast and bloomberg. chaos in donald trump's washington. what a surprise. this was supposed to be a defining day. the president tries to settle a family fut in teud in the repub family. now this. the other part of the busy agenda was get a deal to keep the government up and running

and decide defense level spending. can he with chuck and nancy get a deal on dreamers and education and decide we are not coming because he tweets out i'm not going to give you a deal unless you give me more than you are willing to give. now what? >> they pointed out this is an example of tweets having consequences, but not just from this morning. when the president tweeted months ago after the last go around with democrats on a budget deal that maybe we needed a good shut down to confront some of these debates between the two parties, he set the train in motion and a lot of his advisers and a lot of republicans on capitol hill recognize it. he has been going to own a shut down at the end of the year. democrats seeing him put this out saying he didn't really see room for a deal. on the president's part, it was a posturing tactic and he was playing to his base.

he said he is reviving this narrative and he's the one pushing us towards a confrontation and they don't have skin in the game to want to deal in that environment. >> democrats who already think the landscape tilted dramatically in their favor heading into 2018, putting the president on the spot. >> right. months ago when the president of the united states was basking in the positive media glow of his deal framework, he kept having the bipartisan deal with chuck and nancy. there was a brief time when democrats thought there was a window to get some of what we want. that has since evaporated completely. according to inside and outside the white house and close to the president, not only has he sort of gotten over that moment, but people who are advising him closely told him that this is not a good play for the base. there is no way forward for you

as a republican cutting deals with so-called chuck and nancy. any hopes of a revival of that is as completely pounded in. >> they called it leader mcconnell and speaker ryan. when paul and mitch were in the room and he tried to cut the deal with chuck and nancy, that started to further unravel whether republicans can trust him. he is on his way up there in about 30 minutes to get in a room. they don't have the votes to pass the tax cut plan. they won't repeal and replace obamacare. it's only words. he never sent a plan. this is the one chance to do something big in the first year of all republican washington. what does this further year end dynamic do to what was already an international environment. >> these two things were linked. the president was taken to the cleaners by democrats. he wanted to show them before they got up there this afternoon, i'm going to stand

tough in the spending debates. look at this tweet. it blew up and senator schumer and leader pelosi have been around the block a few times and said we don't have to deliver one vote on the spending bill. the republicans in the house and the senate and the white house, let them fund the government which they can't do because many republicans won't vote for the spending bills. as far as a tax deal, i know there is a lot of votes hanging out there and people are undecided, but every republican said the tax bill is going to pass. this is the last stage of the negotiation. it's going through. the big question to me is, is there a conference committee? the tax bill is moving along. the spending deal is how is this going to work? >> the tax bill is the political imperative. you may not like this or this or

this, but we are going down the chute fist we don't pass the plan. on the spending bill, to carl's point, i remember a campaign saying everyone in washington was stupid and you needed to send a businessman to cut the great deals. he seemed to blow up a meeting that was supposed to get him a smooth year end. >> on both of the issues on trying to avert a shut down and tax plan, this is the enemy within. the divisions in the republican party can do it without the democrats. they just can't do it right now. although i would say the two issues are side issues, the president's treatment on the roy moore issue and on the latest with elizabeth warren and the native americans and the pocohontas moment yesterday, added color in a qualitative way. it's given democrats who don't want to help him more cover to

do so and republicans who are uncomfortable more pressure not to make deals with him and that shifted into the democratic basket and another lever they can use. >> someone unexpected. you go back to one of the questions. would the democrats stick together and emulate what they did when obama took the presidency. if you say it's monday, we say it's tuesday. >> back to what you said about the tax reform, there is a political element to what they are doing in terms of -- they know that the polling for the republican tax legislation is nearing catastrophically low standards set by the obamacare repeal efforts. the white house and republicans have gotten through the geronimo point where they need to get it

done. how can they bring this to republican voters in the mid-term. what is the point of having us in office if we are not going to do taxes and kill obamacare. what is the point? >> i get the logic and the rational approach of that argument that they are at this point where they have to do something. in the 10 plus months we lived through, for seven years, they said repeal and replace. these are the republican senators who have questions about this. if negotiations are still open, you said you are undecided. you waited until you were forced to vote. the math of this year, it only takes two to take it down. are we to place your bet on republicans to figure out the imperative to get this done or look at the obamacare debate and the new mess that said no? >> should i phone it in? i bet that it gets done. i will call my bookie.

the republicans who were in the mix right now, steve danz and ron johnson are not people who are going to stop a republican tax bill from going through at the end. ron johnson threatened this in the health care bill. i think they will come around, but it will be messy. these are the way the things work out. they have to get it done. it's a parallel with health care. democrats knew it had big problems. they are the health care part. they pushed that through. republicans are the tax cut party. this is their thing. if they don't get this. this is a debacle. >> it's easier. you talk to republicans and a lot of them were not enthused about the debate at all. it was undoing something. this is not their party's big issue. they would rather be talking about tax cuts and growth and all of the things they will argue this tax plan will

deliver. the problem is that donald trump is really coming into this last sort of stage of the negotiation from a place of weakness rather than strength. when you look at that array of republicans you had up on the screen before, huh people with concerns about the deficit. people with concerns that there are not enough or not steep enough tax cuts for the wealthy business owners and the math of that deal is difficult to make work. you have to have a president who has the trust of members who are wavering and the leaders and we do not have that right now. >> i would argue that is getting worse, not better as we go through the years. the roy moore adds to the republican doubts. they want nothing to do with this president right now. on cnn, you top the see a good debate, bernie sanders and maria cant well debate ted cruz and tim scott at 9:00 p.m. eastern. they will debate the details for voter who is have concerns. for the president, advice not

taken. >> what do you do in a situation like that? this is what i think. see that? that's what you do.

welcome back. oblivious, insensitive or trump being trump? you make the call. here's the president of the united states in a white house event honoring native american code talkers or world war two heros to sign the indian removal act that had native americans removed from their land at gunpoint. >> you were here long before any of us were here. although we have a represe representative in congress who they say was here a long time ago. they call her pocohontas. but you know what, i like you because you are special. >> that of course was the president's favorite nickname for elizabeth warren of

massachusetts. they are insisting it's not a slur. native americans don't agree. >> i think it was a kond descending racial slur. he knew what he was doing. >> the question about his sensitivities and creating drama when republicans as we were discussing are begging for discipline and pushing for tax reform. a familiar face reminding us the president hasn't changed and don't expect him to. >> listen, that's the president's style. it's a little shock jockey. listen, i think it's the style that got him elected. i don't think he would be in the oval office if he didn't have that style. >> that's the mooch's view of how he got where he is. when you watched that event even without the use of pocohontas, bringing in native american

heroes into a room and standing in front of a portrait of andrew jackson, they had the building for almost 11 months now, are they oblivious? is there no grown up in that room or is it deliberate insensitivity and i'm being way polite in saying insensitivity. >> if you wrote this into an episode of "veep," you would have been laughed out of the writer's room and they said this is not even good sat ire. this is the kind of moment and pr opportunity that the president of the united states is actually become very accustomed to. in fact i'm surprised it did go a little bit forward. >> i don't know what to say about it. when you look at it and if you don't know your history, they had this thing called the internet. andrew jackson is not the right image. these guys are heroes. john mccain saying the nation

owes a debt of gratitude. part of it is just that room. that spot in that room. then there is the slap at elizabeth warren. >> the viewers not steeped in works. whenever there is an announcement, there is a team of people who figures out what room to do it in and the angle and the picture in the background and should there are a teleprompter. the positioning would be well thought out by staff in advance. if something like that were an accident and were not the message that was trying to be sent for an administration that doesn't apologize, there would be a backgrounding on it by now. somebody would have come out and told a handful of reporters on ia background that's not what they were trying to do. we regret the error. the fact that none of that happened only validates what seems like is the case. the camera shot and the position

that was chosen. >> we sometimes get caught up in the blur of donald trump's presidency. think about what you said. if it was not an accident and a kid didn't mess up and is not writing letters of apology to the code talkers and every one of the families and organizations and saying i'm sorry, i had no idea. i'm x teen years old and i didn't know the history and i'm sorry and i didn't mean to embarrass you or the president. if that's not happening, the president of the united states stood in the white house, a national american treasure, and slighted native american heroes deliberately? >> i don't think you from to believe this is deliberate to understand why they are not apologizing. the president doesn't apologize. it may well be he said several times this event and sarah huckabee sanders said there is nobody we honor more, their

contributions to the country. we wanted them in the oval office. this president chose to put the portrait of andrew jack in tson the oval office. he considers him to be a populist. they don't talk about this ugly history of andrew jackson's history on native americans and what he did. i don't think it's that far fetched to believe that they didn't actually think about the imagery of having him behind this photo op. be that as it may, the fact that he would use this nickname in an insulting way in the presence of these heroes was remarkable. i wasn't in the room physically, but i was just outside and you could see the body language and the veterans were stone faced. afterwards i talked to several leader who is said they worked hard to organize this event and they were proud of it and couldn't believe this was unfolding at what was supposed

to be an uplifting occasion. >> it was a handful of weeks ago that the president of the united states drove a recent war widow to tears, be it inadvertently. this insensitivity is professionally baked into the equation with this white house and this presidency. it would be nice if that weren't the case, but people are outrage and i understand. to be surprised about it, that's another story. >> also when you get time to talk about it, he elevates elizabeth warren every time. >> she has been able to push back in a way she wasn't before. i like the first shock jock president. i haven't heard that before. the first no filter president. this was a totally inappropriate and insensitive thing to say. in that setting, this is mind blowing it happened at all. >> if you are a conservative who thinks elizabeth warren should

be held to account, if she runs for president, she will go through all this. >> it's not that she is off limits. >> the issue with the heroes in what is supposed to be a sacred building. you get my point. a new candidate comes forward as the new contenders hone in for the final stretch. if he'd taken tylenol, he'd be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong.

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congress instead rather than going to the white house for a show meeting that won't result in an agreement from a period who didn't see a deal. we asked leader connell and speaker ryan to meet with us this afternoon. we don't have any time to waste addressing the issues that confront us. so we are going to negotiate with republican leaders who may actually be interested in reaching a bipartisan agreement. if the president who already earlier this year said "our country needs a good shut down," if the president is not interested in making an agenda

and wants to make the government shut down, we will work with the republicans who are interested in funding the government as we did in april. we have so many things to do. we have to fund the government. we have daca and the children's health insurance program. we must reenstate health premiums and out of pocket costs and deal with disasters and fund the defense and the nondefense sides of the government in a reasonable way. there is so much to do. we are eager to get it done. the president isn't, but hopefully leader connell and speaker ryan are. we look forward to sitting down with them to resolve this in an amicable way as we did in april when the president wasn't involve and we got it done. now on the tax bill, mr. president. republican tax bill. we are only a few days away from

a final vote. but from all reports, the republicans are still debating significant changes to the text of the bill. some are angling for a change to the pass through provisions, feeling a gargantuan bill from high income individuals need to be widened even further. right now it's reported that 70% of these pass throughs go to the top 1%. the changes that are being proposed make it even worse. help small business, yes. don't open a loophole for wealthy hedge funds and law firms and lobbyists. we don't need that. others are rightly worried of the bill they would have on the debt. what i remind my republican colleagues is with any more

changes, it's virtually certain they will be voting on a bill without expert analysis of its impacts. we will be voting without an estimate of whether it will grow or shrink the economy and you will be voting without a good sense of the long-term impacts of the changes they are making to the tax code. certainly one week of mark up in the finance committee with one expert witness is not a satisfactory process. particularly changing the nature of this bill. changing the tax code in broad brush is a difficult thing. there are so many unintended consequences if our republican colleagues should pass this bill and it becomes law, and i hope it won't, week after week we will find new things. some intend and some not. the people will regret it. the public will ask why department you know?

in a tax bill it's impossible to know unless you let it sit out there in the sun and bake. so people, experts from around the country, there are tens of thousands of tax lawyers paid to figure out ways around our tax code and help the wealthy who are their clients. and unless you examine the bill carefully in sun light and have a lot of hearings and hear from all kinds of witnesses, the result is usually quite bad for americans with so many unintended consequences. our republican colleagues in their rush to get a bill done are legislating it in an irresponsible way, especially when it comes to coming to something as important and complex as the tax code. if the product were a great one, we all know this is not a great product. we don't even hear republican colleagues bragging about this product with a few exception.

everyone said this could be better or that could be better. every independent analysis has shown that the tax code will raise taxes on millions of middle class families despite early intentions of the republican leaders. the tax policy center estimates that 60% of families will see a tax increase. 60% of little class families will see a tax increase by the time the bill is fully implemented while folks making over a million dollars a year will get a tax cut of over $40,000. they are making more money, they should get a bigger tax break. no. i would like to take every dollar of that $40,000 and give it to the middle class. they are thes who need the help. not the wealthy people. they buy the products, keep the economy humming. they are the ones throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s created the best economy america has ever

had. not just the few millionaires. it's astounding. if the president and republicans in congress set out to pass a middle class tax cut as they claim and that's where this set out, this bill completely misses the mark. meanwhile the big winners are big corporations and the wealthy are doing great already. estimates estates worth over $11 million get a tax break. why is that? why is that? average middle class people are struggling. corporations get a permanent reduction in their rates while individual tax breaks expire after a few years. the bill would even open up drilling in the atlantic wildlife refuge because this tax bill wouldn't be complete unless it helped big oil too. all of this to saddle the next

generation of americans and the larger deficits and larger debt. something many of my friends on the other side of the isle labored against their whole careers. we heard so many speeches from the other side about deficit reduction. i think my colleagues were sincere. why are they abandoning it now? they all know every one of our colleagues knows that we can do a lot better job in a tax bill at reducing the deficit than we have here. the democrats have from the very beginning told our republican colleagues we want to work with them on tax reform. we want to lower taxes on the middle class. we want to reduce burdens on small businesses. we want to erase the incentives that send jobs overseas and bring jobs back home and we want to do all these things in a way

that doesn't add to the deficit. republicans from the very beginning said to us we are not interested in working with you. we are going to draft it ourselves, use reconciliation so we don't need your votes. you can count for our bill. you can vote for our bill if you want. that's not bipartisanship with the republican leadership has done. i know there are republicans on the other side who wish we could work together. well, we can. today at 11:00, i think more than a dozen, certainly a large number of democrats went to the press gallery and said we want to work with our republican colleagues to create a better bill. they came and visited me last night. i encouraged them to do it. this leader, this leader is not going to stand in the way of bipartisan reform. that meets the goals we talked about. helping the middle class and reducing the deficit.

not unduly or in any way aiding the 1%. bipartisanship and compromise, mr. president, are possible on tax reform. it's an issue crying out for a bipartisan solution. there are a lot of areas we agree. we have to work to find a middle ground that is acceptable to both parties. i dare say it would be a better bill for the american middle class than the one we are looking at right there. finally mr. president and i know my colleagues are waiting on the nomination. the d.c. circuit is called the second most powerful court in the nation because it adjudicates so many highly charged political issues including cases that deal with the limits of executive power. >> you are listening to chuck schumer and moving on to a judicial nomination, but he is railing against the tax cut plan. the president is on capitol hill

trying to sell the senate republican tax cut plan. coming up with a weekly luncheon of republicans and saying republicans keep calling it a middle class tax cut bill and he calls it a boom to big corporations that will hurt the middle class. the president up there to sell this bill in a closed door meeting. they want to have the vote and they are short the votes at the moment. before he discussed the tax bill, senator schumer explaining his reason to bow out with the house democratic leader, nancy pelosi, of a scheduled white house meeting to sit down with the top two republicans and democrats to meet with the president about very big year end decisions about spending levels. could they get a deal on the dreamers? that meeting now canceled. we will keep it up there to wait for the president of the united states. always posturing in politics and always showmanship, but at this moment, if you listen to the leader, he seems to think this is good for the democrats to end

the year in terms of a negotiating position and let's not forget as we are in late november of 2017, next year is the mid-term elections and everything that is done in the final weeks of 2017 is about framing for 2018. >> this got out because he would much prefer to negotiate with republicans on the hill as they did on the president. democrats out in the country don't like it when they are cutting deals with trump. he wants to make a deal with the o proep ria o appropriates on are and others noted this as well. democrats feel no pressure to vote for this bill. in the past, one party comes out with the tax bill and democrats in republican states would go well, we will have to find a way to vote for this. democrats -- >> that happened with the push

tax cuts. just got a statement from the white house press secretary. we continue to watch for the president. it's disappointing that the senator said refusing to come to the table. he encourages them to stop the political grand standing and show up to work. they are to report the meeting that will proceed as scheduled. speaker ryan and leader mcconnell and officials who are committed to getting things done. he said there are critical year end issues. the senator and leader said we are not coming. sarah sanders said we are having the meeting and we expect you to be there. leader mcconnell and speaker ryan putting out a joint statement and listening to senator schumer said they will be there too. they said we have important work to do. leaders found new excuses not to meet to discuss the issues. democrats are putting government operations and resources for men

and women in the battlefield at great risk. if democrats want to reach agreement, we will be there. i often say that one of the problems in washington is that life is the fifth grade. we have a fifth grade standoff. >> you were mentioning how there is so much posturing. the back breaking level here is a little bit funny. the degree to which these white house statements are written, sounding as if they were written by people with no capacity for self awareness is stunning, but all too common. when the white house and in this case sarah huckabee sanders calls out the president and formically referred to as chuck and nancy for prolonged pettiness on the matter, it's as if they are operating in a world where they are ignoring so much of what starts with the president's rage tweeting his political enemies.

>> the president through various means and twitter is a big one lowered the price for democrats of this tactic. he lowered the price for them not cooperating. as carl said, it's good politics to be open to a deal, but not with president trump if he is going to behave this way. mitch mcconnell and paul ryan understood in april as they no doubt understand today they have to get a spending deal and can't have a government shut down. they don't want it even if the president tweeted in the past that we would like to see that. they are going to do what they need to do to get a deal. that is what enraged president trump last spring when they actually succeeded in getting a deal that didn't include wall funding he want and a lot of other priorities he laid out. they have done without the president. they cut him out and he doesn't want that to happen again.

they understand the majority is at risk. the president is not on the ballot and has shown no affinity for being the leader of the republican party and making the choices that it's necessary to take one for the team. we are in this remarkable moment going forward. we are watching the developments earlier and we are about to end the first year of the trump presidency. any american history going back a long time tells us the most important year in terms of getting things done is year number one. they will not repeal and replace obamacare. we will see if they can cut taxes and even if they do, it won't be the sweeping reform. if they get that, the president promised infrastructure and that's not going to happen. he is getting nominations and there is a regulatory roll back and there are non-led legislatl things they will rack up the successes and him being up on capitol hill today and the break

down in this meeting, does he understand how important they are to him and how he will be remembered? >> it's a political hot potato over whose fault it will be a shut down. that's the only way to look at what's happening in this exact moment right now. it is really ryan and mcconnell stuck in the middle over this. democrats wanted to do all kinds of stuff he can't do on immigration. therefore there is not a deal. the democrats said that's fine. we are not going to come. don't worry about it. you have a much more immediate implication in both chambers and this confers on the president. to a number one ultimate eventual presidential election in a few years. in the meantime, the continued

marginal good will of enough republican members so that it affects everything from the course of legislation whether you gragree to an amendment of which there are active ones. there are implications. >> the open question of whether you will lose a republican senator when alabama votes and whether you will have a democrat in that seat. we will not discussing the specifics that was right now, but i'm fascinated by the moment. speaker ryan and leader mcconnell doing the right republican thing saying we are still going to the white house democrats and how dare you. you better discuss this with the president. let's be honest with anyone who watches or pays attention. they don't trust the president. >> this meeting was planned for days. it's just another thing where they look at president trump and

say why did you have to go and do that for? >> he made hard things harder as opposed to being a businessman and how we get together and do deals. >> they know who will be blamed for this. mitch mcconnell said they own the shut down brand and they know it will come to him. mcconnell promised no shutdowns while republicans control congress. they got bailed out of the last shut down in 2013 by the terrible roll out of the obamacare program. these things are deadly politically. there is nothing down the road that will save them from this if they do go ahead with it. that's my take. >> to your point about the deal making, the one instance that we saw of president trump trying to play the role he said he would in the campaign was the chuck and nancy moment where he got in a room with them and they made

headway. the democrats said we have a deal, but there is no doubt if you talk to the people in the room on both sides. there was headway made and the politics of it were so toxic for the president and the way he played it was so many republicans that he swung the pendulum to the other end that he is blowing up whatever hope he had had having a deal and whoiwho i he is blowing up. >> he does have a loyal base. approval ratings are in the 30s, but his base is solid. they were afraid of the deal with chuck and nancy. legislation to protect the dreamers to stay in the united states and give them status and the president was not. list leader mcconnell heading into the luncheon. interesting time to be leader mcconnell. you are not happy with the president on a number of fronts,

but you have a shared promise. the republicans don't trust the president, most of them. they have an issue to cut taxes. back to the point that that deal, i will sign legislation that protects the dreamers and the initial framework did not give the president his border wall money and the base revolted saying how care and you there was the optics with chuck and nancy in the oval office with mitch and paul and leader mcconnell there as well. the president blindsided them. >> the way he got his glowing media coverage for striking that deal framework, whatever you want to call it was stabbing his own guys back. the only reason he stuck by it for the period of time he did was because he was within the white house and he was loving the plot he was getting on cable

news. that's a hell of a reason. >> getting to the finish line is a challenge. let's try to take our viewers inside this room. 52 republican senators at the end of a frustrating year and at the end of a continuing getting to know you feeling out, not great respect with the leader of their party, the president of the united states. for all the reasons we have discussed has built up a fair amount of distrust. they don't know he is a real conservative and he will have their backs in the 2018 election year. priority number one, let's circle back to it. today, tomorrow, by the end of the week, if they are going to deliver a tax cut bill by christmas, the senate has to act in the next five to 10 days at a maximum, right? >> right. they will start out with a standing ovation because that usually works with the president. the big question for me is if

the senate passes this, can they make it in a way the house would accept it and avoid the negotiations that could be problematic. there is a path to getting this done in the next week. on president trump's desk. whether they are going follow that path and get there, i don't know. these meetings to me are not going to be a lot of policy details. this is great for the economy and we need to act on this and it puts points on the board. >> underneath that, you see the discussions as they moved to pace in the senate and go to the idea of a trigger and the presumption is that you won't get the growth they are supposed to get out of the tax reform plan. the group of lawmakers that continue to be key continue to be those with nothing to lose because they are retiring anyway or who are framing their life leg ead in a different way and

don't care as much. >> you see the president of the united states with leader connell. the senator on the left of your screen was the top strategist and they threatened in a primary challenge. let's see if he talks. passing on an opportunity there to speak to reporters. that is again if you just look at that shot, the president of the united states with the republican leader, now majority letter mitch mcconnell and you say there is the leadership of your party, that's one way to look at it. the other way is perhaps is there a more dysfunctional relationship in this town of many dysfunctional relationships than donald trump and mitch mcconnell who the president blamed for the failure of obamacare and by name singled out in speeches and tweets saying he's the problem? >> not only that, but they have a big disagreement on roy moore

and what to do about him. that's in the news right now. i think mitch mcconnell has shown clearly he is willing to put up with some of this to keep republicans in the majority and to get this tax bill through. he kind of lets the rest of it slide off of his back. it is not a relationship. >> it is odd, but i think it's for both of them their lanes. president trump is up there to rally the troops. i'm sure he will get a standing ovation and a speech about why tax cuts are good and we love tax cuts and we will deliver. mitch mcconnell and warren hatch and other republicans have to get over the finish line and are in the mode of cutting deals and having talks. they know by now having been through health care and many iterations of this debate with the white house and the president they can't really count on him for a lot of detailed policy back and forth.

a lot of cutting of deals with wavering and giving of comfort to waiving senators who are not sure if he is going to pull the rut out from under them. that's what they need is the cheerleading. i think this canceled meeting this afternoon introduces another element into the luncheon which is interesting. i wouldn't be surprised if president trump is angry about what democrats have done in interesting ways. >> you talk about behind the door. >> it's a punch and counter punch moments. the democrats know what they are doing. >> something that they don't 100% realize, if this goes south, the leader is not going to be gracious in that defeat and all of that will be shovelled on to them faster than they can say it. >> the argument they try to make

is mr. president, would you like a speaker pelosi or leader schumer? the interesting question there, you make a key point. can they convince the president to discipline himself in the sense that if they don't have -- if the senate passes a bill and the house has to reconsider it, the house passed a bill and the president celebrate and called it mean? >> you have bob corker who doesn't care and jeff flake to doesn't care and john mccain doesn't care. lisa murcowski and susan collins kind of care, but they have other -- >> they look for opportunities to send the president a signal. >> all the people that the president has gone after. the impacts of beating up on your own guys and democrats, leave him not very much maneuvering room and a very small foot.

that raises the stakes of the calend calendar. >> if anyone had a dysfunctional thanksgiving dinner, that's happening up on capitol hill. let's find out what happens inside the room. a lot of moving parts. see you back here tomorrow. wolf blitzer picks up the coverage after a quick break. have a great day. o do. so he took aleve. if he'd taken tylenol, he'd be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong.

>> 1:00 p.m. here in washington. from wherever you are watching, thanks for joining us. >> we begin with breaking news on two fronts. first, just 10 days before the deadline to avoid a government shut down here in washington and leaders in washington can't get in the same room, much less on the same page. president trump arriving on capitol hill moments ago. he is there to push the senate tax bill as his fate hangs in the balance. he was scheduled to meet with republican and democratic leaders at the white house, but the senate minority