a shutdown showdown. both sides dig in, ahead of 2019. >> whatever it takes, i'm going to have a wall. >> it's tough to deal with a president who changes his mind on an hourly basis. >> plus this message for the troops. >> america shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on earth. and tis the season, for possible presidential runs. >> during the holidays, family, friends and advisers decide.

>> inside politics, sourced by the best reporters, now. welcome to "inside politics." i'm nia malika henderson in for john king. we are now nine days into the partial government shutdown and there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no signs of substantial negotiations, no signs that either side will back down in the fight for funding for a border wall. the president tweeting he's in the white house waiting for the democrats to come over and make a deal. because of the shutdown, will he skip his new year's eve party at mar-a-lago to stay in washington but still doesn't sound like a man ready to compromise. >> how long do you think the shutdown will take, mr. president? >> whatever it takes. we're going to have a wall. we need safety. we need safetyfor our ountry. we need a wall.

how long is it going to take? when are they going to say we need border security? when are the democrats going to say? don't forget, the democrats all agreed you need a wall until i wanted it. once i wanted it, they didn't agree. >> as for the democrats, their leadership left town for the holidays. they say they're willing to pay for border security but won't vote for any money to build a wall. >> what he has done is shut down the government and tried to stick the american taxpayer with a $5 billion ransom note to build a medieval border wall. it's like a fifth century solution to a 21st century problem, and it's not going anywhere. we're willing to take a look at enhancing border security through technology, through satellites, through drones, through enhanced fencing, through a variety of things that the experts have said will actually enhance border security. >> caught in the middle, 800,000 federal workers who have been

furloughed or working without pay. this is the third longest shutdown since 1980. if it isn't resolved soon, they'll miss their next paycheck. office of personnel management offered them with advice on how to hold off creditors while waiting for their next paycheck. one idea, offer your landlord your services as a handyman in exchange for rent reduction, another rather tone-deaf suggestion, contact your personal attorney because, of course, everyone has a personal attorney. opium later said that the information was posted inadvertently. cnn's phil mattingly and rachel bade from politico. welcome, everyone. happy new year. phil, i'm going to start with you on this. you have been on capitol hill. it's been a ghost town, as i've seen you reporting. there's no signs of any movement

at this point. how do you see this ending? look into your crystal ball. >> it's very lonely. rachel and i will start interviewing one another. >> yeah. >> there's no one else up there. the way to thread this needle is not a secret. there's a way to give border security funding that both sides can semantically say achieves their goals. democrats can say it's no wall. republicans can say it's wallish, it has fence, things they're looking for. someone will have to budge for it to actually happen. the president has maintained his position and maintained the belief, according to people close to him, this is a winning issue for him politically, this is the time to have this fight. he has basically telegraphed that this fight was coming for months now. now he's in it. how does he get out of it, without having to blink? when you talk to lawmakers and aides on capitol hill from home, via text message, they acknowledge at this moment it's going to take time and it's probably going to take -- we're more in the weeks category than

we are days at this point. >> we heard from the president friday on twitter, of course. he tweeted we'll be forced to close the southern border entirely if democrats do not give us the money to change the ridiculous immigration laws that our country is saddled with. hard to believe there was a congress and president who would approve. the president isn't out there front and center in front of the cameras, giving a press conference or anything like that. he is on twitter. some aides say that's great he's not on twitter, and giving interviews, others say why isn't he taking advantage of this vacuum here? >> congress has not been around. the president has not gone on his traditional trip to florida over the holidays. he has been here but mostly with the exception of his trip to iraq on christmas, mostly, he has just been tweeting from the white house. and that has been a mix of threats, of complaints. but there is a feeling among some people that he could have,

perhaps, used this time more effectively and in holding meetings, public events or showing that he's working. that has not been a choice. the flip side of that is that he gets in front of cameras, does he go off script and say other things? there is legitimately a push/pull there among his advisers on the best way to do this. >> we heard this warning, josh, from john kelly, giving a pretty lengthy exit interview in the l.a. times. this is what he had to say. of course, he is the outgoing chief of staff. to be honest, it's not a wall. the president still says wall. often times, frankly, he'll say barrier or fencing. now he has tended toward steel slats. but we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it. >> kelly was obviously at dhs,

department of homeland security, cabinet secretary before he became chief of staff, has often criticized the president on the wall. he said earlier this year on an interview on fox that the president was uninformedn on the wall and the president shouted at him so loudly that people would hear it outside the oval office. john kelly has tried to convince the president there are different mechanisms that can be used at the border besides the wall that would be more effective and the president ferociously pushed back saying no, i promised a wall and my supporters want a wall. what was interesting in the l.a. times, he said i should be judged essentially on what i stop from happening. that's what you hear from advisers around the president, former chief of staff frequently made that argument. essentially, look at all the things you didn't see. and then you say, what are those? what did he want to do that we

didn't see? they can never quite delineate what those are. john kelly leaves wednesday, chief of staff. and there seems to be some effort, chief of staff that he didn't bring the management that was needed. >> incoming chief of staff mick mulvaney, here is what he had to say about a possible compromise. >> if you're at $5 billion and i'm at $1.3 and we're talking about money, maybe there say place in between where we can compromise. you can get a little bit of what you want, we can get a little bit of what we want. it strikes us as unusual that the democrats did not provide a counter offer, they simply left town. the president is here. the president canceled his plans. where are chuck schumer and nancy pelosi? they're not even talking right now. >> what does compromise look like at this point? >> mulvaney and the white house trying to get the democrats to come up from this $1.3 billion

from border security, whatever you want to call it, the wall. when it comes to shutdowns, the party that makes the demand usually loses. when democrats shut the government down last year to get a fix for daca and bring certainty for dreamers, whose legal status was suddenly in jeopardy, they got nothing for it. democrats don't feel like they have to give anything to the white house. they are digging in. they're just going to keep doing this. as soon as pelosi takes over on january 3rd, she'll put a bill on the floor and she'll do it over and over again to make a statement to put that pressure on mcconnell. we have to find a way out of this. i think the president knows privately that his leverage is decreasing. i think that's why you're seeing him lash out on twitter. it's tough for him. >> and pelosi sort of digging at him in usa today, mocking trump's wall. first of all, the fact that he says we're going to build a wall with cement and mexico is going to pay for it, while he has

already backed off the cement, he's down to a beaded curtain or something. i'm not sure where he is. and then you have the president shooting back at nancy pelosi, having this to say. >> we have a problem with the democrats because nancy pelosi is calling the shots, not chuck. chuck wants to have this done. i really believe that. he wants to have this done. she's calling the shots. she's calling them, because she wants the votes and probably if they do something, she's not going to get the votes. she's not going to be speaker of the house and that would be not so good for her. >> yeah. so to tell you how worried the pelosi team is whether or not they have the votes for her to become speaker when i was wandering through the capital friday night, people were moving pelosi's office into the speaker's office. the speaker-designate, they're

confident, will become the speaker. there's been no daylight between them publicly in their position. they believe they hold the cards, they hold the leverage. they'll start making legislative moves when nancy pelosi becomes speaker of the house. try to jam mcconnell and the president on that. she does not have a problem with votes for her speakership. she doesn't have a problem with her base. chuck schumer doesn't have a problem with his base. they feel like their respective caucuses and rank and file, while most of them don't want to be in a shutdown are behind them in this strategy because they feel they're in a good place. >> trying to peel nancy pelosi and chuck schumer apart, i've been told by white house advisers that that's something that he is going to try to do and will fixate on. i think we'll see that time and time again. i don't know that he will be effective in that.

>> they were pretty united. >> you'll see that for months to come, a month out, trying to crow ate distance between pelosi and schumer and see if they can force a wedge there. >> trump knows schumer, going back to his days in new york. we'll have to end it there. a second migrant child dies in u.s. custody and president trump blames the democrats. first a look back at 2018 midterms and a big victory in the house where women led the way. >> women led the way to victory with at least 30 new women coming to the congress. is that not exciting? >> tonight, with this win comes opportunity. tonight, we celebrate an historic moment, a moment we should all be proud of. >> we should never be scared. there is never any fight that is too big for us to pick. we proved that this year. we proved that this year. are you taking the tissue test?

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president trump says democrats are to blame after a second migrant child died while being held by customs and border control. any deaths on the border are strictly the fault of the democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make a long trip thinking they can enter our country illegally. they can't. if we had a wall, they wouldn't even try. >> the first reaction to the news of the death of a child in our custody ought to be empathy for the family and, frankly, enormous distress that that happened at all. and instead our president, who apparently lacks any capacity for human empathy, decides to use the death of two children as a political tool. i think it's really yet another new low in a president filled with new lows.

>> the latest migrant child to die in u.s. custody is 8-year-old felipe gomez alonso. he had influenza b. the department of homeland security says all children in custody will get a more hands-on medical assessment. dhs also asked the coast guard's medical team for assistance. head of u.s. customs and border protection says the agency needs help from congress to prevent more deaths. >> our stations are not built for that group that's crossing today. they were built 30, 40 years ago for single adult males and we need a different approach. we need help from congress. we need to budget for medical care, mental health care, children in our custody. it's been more than a decade since we've had a child pass

away anywhere in a cbp process. >> we saw this blame game break out with trump's tweets and democrats responding doesn't necessarily, obviously, address the issue at hand, but certainly both sides seem to be engaged in this blame game. >> yeah. obviously it is pretty stunning. the president's first comments on these deaths, facing a lot of criticisms. it is to deflect blame, to blame democrats. it speaks, in some ways, to his fixation and focus on immigration and the wall, that everything is coming back to that. that's where he is. that's where he keeps returning to, argument he keeps coming back to. it is interesting because we've seen in the past that at other points in time, images of children and issues around children and children suffering or children's deaths have moved him. in this case that's certainly not happening. i think we'll see what unfolds in the coming weeks, if the

white house faces more pressure, if they have to make more policy changes, if they have to do more on this. >> speaking of the blame game, in this john kelly interview, he said in this interview that it was sessions that answered to this zero tolerance policy, a process on the border that resulted in both people being detained and family separation, he said. he surprised us. so again, pointing fingers elsewhere. >> remember the day that ke kerstjen nielsen went to the podium? it's the fault of the democrats who do not control the government right now that someone died in the custody of the united states government. it's somewhat insplikable, how

you can get to a point where you blame another political party for a child's death that's in your government's custody. if they were tougher on the border, supported him in his wall, people wouldn't even come, that's the argument he makes. it's a pretty far-flung accusation tonight. now that said, at the border the president wants to make this a food fight. even the death of a child, the blame game started immediately. there was no empathy there for the family. there was no words of i'm so sorry that this kid died in our custody. we're trying to fix it. democrats are strictly to blame for the death of a child. >> certainly a huge uptick, at least recently, in terms of border crossings and apprehensions, going back to john kelly and now under kirstjen nielsen. what do you make of how this white house has approached immigration more broadly? >> via the president's gut and

not necessarily with a coherent or cohesive plan. there are people in the white house, and john kelly would certainly fall under hardliners on immigration. democrats made a mistake early on, thinking he would be somebody who would help them on this case. that wasn't the case at all. and in ways that they feel like they can stem the tide in crossing the border and policywise that they can put together something that basically can address what the president wants to do. the difficulty is, if you do them ad hoc, in a vacuum or a one-off, it creates major, major problems. the most interesting element to me, from a policy perfect pektive, is what you heard from the cbp chief. there is a problem at cbp, at i.c.e., to deal with family units coming in at a very large scale. they're simply not built for that. there is a policy response to

this that the administration and congress should work on and that people are asking for. it doesn't connect what officials on the ground say they need doesn't connect with the broader goals that the administration has had. >> this is what kirsjen nielsen had to say about this. our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open border, put these minors at risk in embarking on the arduous journey north, causing a flood of humanity to travel north and place children at risk. i once again to call on you to do your job. >> i think democrats, they've said over and over again, we are fine with border security. we are willing to vote for a bill that would increase the number of drones, the number of border patrol agents. when it comes to the president's wall, it's become such a political hot potato that

they're not even going to touch it. it's interesting, too, politics is very much in play. they voted for the secure fence act and this is similar legislation, steel slats, whatever you want to call it. trump calls it the wall. they want nothing to do with it. immigration has divided the parties like the grand canyon, right? next year what we're going to see is democrats highlighting policies they believe show a heartless administration, whether it was family separation, stopping asylum, ending daca for dreamers and trying to blame democrats for this death at the border wall. >> we're already seeing beto o'rourke, who some think will run for president on 2020. they said the southern border already has over 600 miles of wall or fence since 2007, undocumented immigrant population has grown more, visa

overstays, we need realistic immigration reform not symbolic. you'll see activity at least rhetoric in the senate and the house over this. >> no question about it. a number of immigration and investigations. they've sent letters talking about saving documents and any documentation related to the deaths of these two children. they're going to look into the family separation policy. rachel hit on a key point here. politics on both sides, if there's any opening or space whatsoever that would do things to try to assuage or address what's happening on the border. the two polls and the two issues are so polarized right now that there's really no space, no oxygen for anybody to say on a smaller scale, can we do this, this and this? and i don't see any space for this right now. >> as 2020 gets closer. >> hard to imagine the gang of eight coming together over

something like this, at this time. next, working through the holidays, trump's mind-set heading into 2019. and as we go to break, the president made quite a stir on the world stage in 2018, chastising allies and embracing two of america's biggest adversaries. >> i would actually say it worked out for both of us, far better than anybody could have expected. i think far better. we've been tremendously successful. it's my honor. and we will have a terrific relationship. i have no doubt. >> my people came to me, dan coates came to me and some others. they said they think it's russia. i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be. gentle means everything, so we improved everything. we used 50% fewer ingredients added one handed pumps and beat the top safety standards the new johnson's®

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everybody hated comey, they thought he did a horrible job. the democrats hated him. literally the day before i fired him, they said he should have been fired. as soon as i fired him, they said why did you fire him? that was a terrible thing to do. it's a disgrace what's happening in our country but other than that, i wish everybody a very merry christmas. >> that was president trump on christmas day, former fbi director wasn't the only target of trump's holiday ire. a lot of his tweets were targeted at congress. i am all alone, poor me, the president tweeted on monday, waiting for the democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed border security. nearly a week later, the president is still waiting.

the government is still closed and the president is still alone and still venting on twitter, lobbying atta lobbing attacks. the president had to go silent to preserve secrecy in security but even in the middle of a war zone, the president playing defense, justifying a snap decision to leave syria against the advice of his soon-to-be former pentagon chief. >> one year ago, i gave our generals six more months in syria, said go ahead and get them. it turns out it was really a year and a half ago. i said go get them. we need six months. go get them. they said give us another six months. i said go get them. then they said can we have one more period of six months? i said nope. nope. i said i gave you lot of six months and now we're doing it a different way. we're not the suckers of the

world. we're no longer the suckers, folks. and people aren't looking at us as suckers. >> i imagine, josh, that we're not the suckers of the world wasn't in the script in his talking points that his staff prepared for him. and there, talking about the syria decision, basically saying folks offered me advice, military leaders offered me guidance and he refused. that's what he's publicly saying, that this president keeps his own counsel and trusts his gut. >> he has a point here, he repeatedly asked for military advisers for a plan to pull out of syria. he said on a rally on a stage that we're pulling out of syria. essentially he was slow walked, slow walked, slow walked. when people in the white house don't like what he's doing something, they try to postpone, try to get him to change a little bit. when the president gets tired of being postponed or delayed, sometimes he just says it.

i think what he said there was a pretty accurate into his thinking. he said the generals privately -- he calls them the fellows. i gave these fellows all these months to give me a plan. they didn't give one. it led to mattis resigning and lots of turmoil in the military but the president seems more convinced than ever on military issues that he's right, that the american people want the troops to be pulled out, that they need to be pulled out, on economic issues that he's right to attack fed chair jerome powell. the fed chair has previously not been touched by the president, not seen as a political institution. he's in his own advice, own counsel. seems more comfortable in his own head of doing the job without listening to others. that's what you're seeing on the military decisions, economic policy decisions. it's a president who is doing it his way. >> we saw this a lot when he was over in iraq. here is what he had to say there about borders.

>> i don't know if you folks are aware of what's happening. we want to have strong borders in the united states. democrats don't want us to have strong borders only for one reason, because i want it. that's what you're fighting for. when you think about it, you're fighting for borders in other countries. and they koent want to fight the democrats for the border of our country. doesn't make a lot of sense. >> critics, katherine, said he should have kept politics out of his speech there to the troops. at the same time, was anybody surprised that this is where he went? >> it's hard to believe anyone was surprised. because one of the things we've seen two years in with president trump is that politics is injected into basically every moment. there aren't a lot of times where he puts on an official presidential hat and does something in a big, neutral way. that's just not his style. >> right. >> if something is on his mind he's going to keep talking about it, as he did.

and not just this event where he used it to bash democrats but his rallies, music often played at his political rallies. he did his usual material. that is the way he's going to treat a lot of events. remember during the campaign, for example, when there was the mass shooting at the synagogue in pittsburgh, the president was traveling, doing a series of events, including rallies. there was a lot of talk should he cancel the rally that night. he chose not to. he chose to continue to go on to do a rally and previous presidents might have taken that moment and paused and he argued that his supporters were there, they wanted him to do and he was going to keep doing it. >> he argued as a candidate that he would change washington. many candidates argue that they're going to change. there's an article here in the associated press that argues he really has. this is from jonathan lemier. facts are less relevant. insults and highly personal

attacks are increasingly employed by members of both parties. the white house press briefing is all but gone. these are the ways in which he has changed washington. you've covered this town for years, phil. what do you make of the way he has been able to shake this town up? >> we talked about this, the presidency has bent toward him, not the other way around, anybody who predicted over the first 18 to 24 months that he would eventually be confined and change and shift his approach was dead wrong. you disassociate yourself with everything that josh and katherine just said, things that he talked about that he wanted to do n on the campaign, advisers that were incapable of slow walking him are fading away or no longer have a voice in the white house. it's our split screen. the president in the white house doing his own thing, his own way, in ways we've never seen before, and that he believes are successful. at least on the economic side, you could back that up. and on capitol hill, you have republicans that claim not to

have seen his tweets and have no idea what he's doing and then things at the agencies where you have conservative bureaucrats who are doing the types of things that republicans on capitol hill are thrilled about and that's all in combination with the president, who is doing his own thing. i think now more than ever is exerting his own unilateral power. >> one thing that people are arguing is that this rough and tumble of the trmp presideump p might change. not much has changed. december 2017, probably vote for trump. 36%. 2018, about 38%. it hasn't really changed and people also say will 2019 be different? we've been saying that many, many months now. >> two thoughts. one on the past, one on the future. to see how he's totally neutered gop leaders on the hill. it used to be if you were the

speaker of the house, the senate majority leader, you made the decisions with the president, in collaboration with the president. he has run all over them that they are afraid to do anything with the president's blessing. even when they get the president's blessing, they're worried that they'll change his mind. they're afraid to make a decision, even though they wanted to avert a shutdown and make a deal with the democrats, they were afraid to do it. democrats have taken over the house and will hold him accountable for anything he says. he is loose with the facts, tries to spin things a little too much, obviously, but the democrats on the hill will have hearing after hearing, very dogged oversight on everything from russia, obstruction, how foreign leaders have stated the trump -- >> his finances. >> exactly. it will be a totally differe ll him. he's already so combative. he will be even more combative. >> if you can imagine that. >> looking at coming year, what

happens with the economy? if the economy really does slow down, that could affect those numbers and the president is well aware of that. that's part of the reason he's so concerned. up next, who is the best democrat to take on president trump? it's still early, but voters already have some pretty strong opinions. and as we go to break, trump's take on all things russia probe related. >> i have this witch hunt constantly going on. it's a disgrace. frankly, it's a real disgrace. it's an attack on our country in a true sense. mr. mueller is highly conflicted. in fact, comey is like his best friend. i could go into conflict after conflict. but sadly, mr. mueller is conflicted. >> i haven't spoken to mike anyway long time. >> is he still your lawyer? >> no, he's not my lawyer, not anymore. >> your personal lawyer? >> i always liked michael. he's a good person. he's a weak person.

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we're just 400 days away from the next contest for a presidential election and there's a new poll out on which candidates excites voters the most. the answer, someone entirely new, 59% of republicans and democrats say they're excited about a candidate they haven't heard of yet. number two, perhaps ironically, vice president joe biden.

take a broader look at the numbers and you can draw other conclusions, too. 36% said they would be excited about another bernie sanders candidacy but even more say they don't want him to run at all. same goes for elizabeth warren. as for presidential candidates, kamala harris, cory booker, 33% of democrats haven't even heard of them, which means they are someone new and have room to grow. this isn't good news if you're elizabeth warren, bernie sanders. this idea that they want somebody new, seems like maybe they would like joe biden but this is mixed at this point at least. >> democrats in general around the country are sort of sick of seeing the same people stick around over and over again. there was a lot of frustration with hillary clinton. people were not energized. democrats have a fired-up base and want to use it to take out trump in 2020. they have to make this decision.

do they want to stick with the energy of the base, very much on the progressive side, or do they want to find someone who is sort of in the middle that can appeal to voters that trump won before? it's interesting. you look at these polls. you see joe biden and bernie sanders, totally opposite types of democrats. bernie sanders, while he has totally changed the party and very much energized the base and helped them in the midterm elections, there were just as many people who said he shouldn't run. how does somebody who say he's a socialist win the presidency? democrats have choices. >> and in some ways maybe they're thinking more practically. you covered the iowa caucuses and ap has a story out from iowa. one democratic activist had to say the innocence in us wants to fall in love said niki neems, an

iowa city democratic activist who pledged herself to obama before he even announced his candidacy. but whoever we amll think stand a chance then let's get out there and start door knocking. so for me it's okay to just fall in like. >> what is the old saying? democrats fall in love and republicans fall in line? there is enthusiasm and they want to take trump out. they're not committing too early. they want to see their options and they want someone who can actually go the distance. they seem more prepared. although it's hard to tell. there's always the chance that someone catches fire and it does become a love match. for now they're trying to sort of bide their time. >> kamala harris as an op-ed who talks about supporting medicare for all and why she supports it. what's her angle?

is she trying to personalize herself? she talks about her mother's death, for instance, in this och-ed. >> you talk about bernie sanders' effect on the party and medicare for all is a standard bearer for anyone who wants to run right now. very sponsored medicare for all in the senate and now telling this story to maybe differentiate. i'm not just in on this because bernie sanders made it popular. i have a very personal reason for caring about this. we've all covered campaigns. those are the stories that resonate with voters not just i support this because it's the right thing to do or because polls say it. i support this because president obama did it on health care with his mother as well. and maybe there's more of that as well. with kamala harris, cory booker, number of senators that are considering, they've all put out in-depth policy proposals for

this all very progressive policy proposals and what effect this has, if any, or could this become a love fest or popularity contest? and how they try to sell and talk about proposals. >> one of the things that trump proved in some ways, it's often about personality and charisma and not necessarily policy. >> yeah. in 2014, 2015, the headlines work and people crack into jeb bush taking on chris christie. it's a lifetime in politics. >> sure. >> who knows what the nominee will be at this point and what the base wants. what does 2019 bring? >> long way to go. >> what oversight is done? what is the president's policy proposals? is there any sort of bipartisan deal on infrastructure, anything else? you're seeing a lot of people jump out of the gate right now

and the president starting to gauge who would be a tough contender. >> we've got a long, long -- >> we need answers now, josh. >> yeah. >> internal drama in the house, up next. democratic caucus. the knives may be out for freshman alexandria ocasio-cortez. or here. kick your antacid habit with prilosec otc. one pill a day, 24 hours, zero heartburn. and if you get lost, just hit me on the old horn. man: tom's my best friend, but ever since he bought a new house... tom: it's a $10 cover? oh, okay. didn't see that on the website. he's been acting more and more like his dad. come on, guys! jump in! the water's fine! tom pritchard. how we doin'? hi, there. tom pritchard. can we get a round of jalapeño poppers for me and the boys, please? i've been saving a lot of money with progressive lately, so... progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents.

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this sunday, a special inside politics forecast where reporters give us the biggest story they're watching.

josh, we'll start with you. >> thanks, nia. on the economic front, much of the president's cabinet advisers are focused on china. this president has had an economic boom in the first two years, low unemployment. the stock market has risen for the most part. some of that has changed recently. stock market is volatile, some indicators for 2019 are not looking good. whether that can turn around or stay positive for the president hinges on china. so for the trade agenda, which for the president is obviously one of his biggest priorities, we'll be closely watching whether any sort of deal can be struck. this is the president who watches the stock market every day, who is obsessed with the economic metrics. he sees them as posing an existential threat to his presidency if they go down. >> and not only that, can he get the renegotiated nafta through congress? a lot to look for. katherine? >> a lot of the things we're looking for the first part of

the year, will there be a second summit between president trump and north korea's kim jong-un? nearly six months ago where they famously shook hands in singapore and got huge attention but that meeting yielded a vaguely worded commitment on a nuclear-free korean peninsula and it has yielded little so far. could a second sitdown push that process forward? whatever we see out of a potential meeting, one thing you can be sure of is that the president will treat this with similar fanfare. there was a lot of on again, off again, lot of drama, showmanship. he is already trying to build excitement and spence. he tweeted christmas eve meeting with with his advisers and looking forward to sitting down again. >> it could be another big deal. we'll see. >>. phil in? >> senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and nancy pelosi, they

led their caucus for more tan a decade. they're pragmatic when they need to be. they have an inate sense of counting votes. after the election, there was talk between the two of them but after that, they didn't have anything to talk about. they're not friendly. the only time they're in the same room together is because there's a big deadline or someone being honored. they did work together as appropriators back in the day. keep in mind, these two people will have to strike deals to keep the government open or reopen, extend the debt limit. all these types of big things coming forward. there won't be a ton of policy that will get done in the next two years but those crucial deadlines will come down to those two leaders, their relationship, how it grows or doesn't grow. >> we'll see this start -- >> right away. >> yeah, right away. rachel? >> house democrats have set their target on donald trump for 2019. behind the scenes there's internal division threatening to

undercut the caucus next year. case in point, progressive superstar alexandria ocasio-cortez is talking about primarying a fellow new york democrat and as seen as the heir apparent for pelosi, the first black speaker in american history. aoc thinks he's not progressive enough and has been doing this whisper campaign that has house democrats really concerned. i was talking to a few before they left for the holidays and didn't know whether they should approach her, try to get her to back down. they thought maybe that would have the reverse effect. it speaks to this identity crisis we're seeing in the democratic party. how far left should they go to rally the base? is that too far? will that turn off independent voters? that's something that the party has to grapple with as they face 2020. >> what does this new guard of democrats look like in the house? >> right. i'll close with this. with the death of john mccain

and the retirements jeff flake and bob corker, those willing to speak out against donald trump got a lot smaller. mccain famously broke with trump on health care and foreign policy and flake often expressed concern over trump's tone and corker dubbed trump's white house as an adult daycare center. what about the incoming congress? will they have a caucus of concern? utah's senator, mitt romney, one of trump's harshest critics in 2018. he also considered joining his administration and said he was more hawkish than trump on immigration. he also criticized the policy on family separations who will mitt romney, former governor and failed presidential candidate be in the senate? and if he takes up even a small part of the mccain/flake/corker mantle, will he have much company? that's one of the questions floating around washington, particularly around establishment gopers as the new

congress is set to be sworn in. thanks for sharing your sunday morning. hope you can catch us weekdays as well. state of the union is next with dana bash interviewing counselor to the president, kelly anne conway. stay with us.

no end in sight. the president is now blaming democr democrats for the death of two migrant children at the border and backing away from his vow to own the shutdown. >> nancy pelosi is calling the shots. >> is anyone trying to make a deal to reopen the government? counselor to the president, kellyanne conway and republican senator lindsey graham are here to respond next. and decision time. all eyes are on democrats considering a presidential run. >> i have to make my