let's name a couple of states. georgia, texas. north dakota. yeah. we are still9 dealing with this issue on dr. king's birthday. >> on american history tv on c-span3 on "real america," the 1970 -- 1957 film "the time for freedom," documenting the civil rights rally at the washington memorial. plead toll no longer the federal government for passage of an anti-lynching law. of,ell, by the power of our write the law on the statute , the of the fountain disasters -- the definitely accept perpetrators of violence. >> watch this monday on martin luther king did -- martin luther

king jr. day. susan: our guest on "newsmakers" is tim chapman. he took over the lead role of the advocacy arm of the heritage foundation. we are pleased to welcome him. we are asking questions to our returning reporters. scott wong, who covers for the hill. mr. chapman, i want to ask you to describe to people watching what it is like in this town and how you would characterize the state of affairs in our national government. tim: it is discombobulated, it is tense, everything is high-stakes, and i think the great frustration for myself and many people in the conservative policy world is the politics are overwhelming the conversation about policy. we are certainly engaged in politics.

we live here and are part of this, but would like to find a way to peel back some political layers and get to the bottom of what the policy issue should be. >> there has been a ton of news this week. buzzfeed had a bombshell report that president trump directed his former attorney and fixer, michael cohen, to lie to congress, regarding a trump tower project that was being planned in moscow. democrats say this is a clear case of obstruction of justice. some are calling for resignation. how serious do you think this latest report is? tim: we will have to wait and see. it is a buzzfeed report. i saw it this morning. i think there is some question as to -- one of the authors has had some misstatements in the past and questions about

his sourcing, but if it is accurate, it will be significant. i would rather wait to see and verify that it is accurate. >> talking to your sources at the white house, and in the administration, and members of congress, where do you think the mueller case is headed right now? do you think it is about to wrap up? the you have any indication it will wrap up? tim: we have no indication it is about to wrap up. there is an exceedingly higher level of frustration amongst republicans because of that issue. at what point is there and ending on this thing? they have a lot of people that they have been able to pin down on certain charges, but the frustration for republicans is the original purpose of the investigation seems to be secondary to the direction it is going now.

if it heads back towards the original purpose, that would make more sense to people. >> i want to touch on the other big news this week. the ongoing shutdown will hit the mark of the longest shutdown d.c. has ever experienced. where do you see this heading? where does heritage fall on the president's strategy on this? he really wants that $5.7 billion in border security. is he making the right play here? tim: i will leave the strategy to the president. what he is trying to achieve is a worthy objective. what i referenced at the beginning is the problem we see right now. we have a fight over $5 billion, and we know why neither side will give in. at this point, we know this is symbolic.

it has become a political fight, not a policy fight. that is not a great thing for the country. the country is in a stalemate because neither side will blink. even if you are predisposed to think that building a $5 billion wall is not good policy, it is such a small thing. the president feels like he has to at some point get a political win on this issue, and the democrats feel like they are ascendant, that there is no political incentive, so i don't know when this thing breaks. i honestly do not. to the extent that it is getting harder, it is impacting the economy, people are missing paychecks. there is more pressure now to end it than two weeks ago, and that pressure will build. i completely, i really wish that you could find some way to get everybody in the room and settle

on some number for wall funding or whatever it is, or how they want to characterize it, between what the president wants and the number that the democrats want. >> i am curious, back in 2013, heritage action was instrumental in supporting the government shutdown at the time. the ted cruz conservatives were in support of that. given that, what do you make of where we are at and all that stuff? >> the 13th shutdown was interesting. at that time, we felt strongly because the obamacare exchanges were about to come online, there was one moment, if you could divert funding from those exchanges coming online, you could stop the law from metastasizing. the argument we were making back then was that really, this is probably the best chance to stop obamacare. because if and when the exchanges come online, it can be hard to repeal it.

it turns out we were right. we weren't able to repeal it, as hard as we tried at the beginning of this congress. that was a clear policy fight. we were engaged in that, trying to strategically put the democrats on the defensive. there are reasons it didn't work out as well as we wanted. >> was it a worthwhile policy fight? tim: i think the border security issue is worthwhile. it is now symbolic. i think that the president has to get the democratic party to a position where they feel like it is a political loser for them to oppose a small part of border security. i think that is important. >> it seems right now we are at this stage in this shutdown where it is just posturing, political games are being played. you described it as a political fight. this week we saw nancy pelosi

resend her invitation to president trump to do the state of the union on the 29th. president trump in kind canceled her trip abroad to afghanistan and other countries. how do you see -- is it going to take some external event, a catastrophe, a disaster of some sort, or long lines at the airport, tsa agents walking off the job, to end the shutdown? catastrophe, a disaster of some from our vantage point, we don't see how this ends. tim: i hope and pray it doesn't take that kind of event. i see your point. if tsa agents walked off the job tomorrow, the shutdown would be done in two days. the fact that so many tsa agents are showing up and being patriotic and doing their job is a credit to them. an external event like that could put pressure on it. there is no doubt.

to the point earlier about what the president did in terms of canceling nancy pelosi's trip, i think that merits some applause. i think it is important for everyone to not just go about business as usual when we are one month into a shutdown. i think the business as usual should stop and people should be trying as hard as they can to find some sort of compromise here. the tough thing is, the left does not feel like they need politically to compromise. so that is the problem. right now they feel like they have seen polling numbers that are not threatening to them and could be threatening to the president and his coalition, and so that emboldens them to do business as usual, and not come to the table. but you need some leader on the

left to come out and say, ok, let's end this thing. i'm pretty certain the president would agree to some sort of compromise. i don't know that as a fact, but i think he would agree to some sort of compromise south of what he has asked for. it could be over tomorrow if that were to happen. >> i want to ask about heritage the role in government affairs. the republicans lost the majority in november. it does take a lot of power away from republicans. what type of impact does that have on heritage action. obviously, your main vehicle is the house freedom caucus? how do you see carving out your niche as far as being a minority and in the situation we are in right now? tim: the most important work for the next two years for republicans is to figure out how to rebuild the governing

coalition that arrived in our laps in 2016. whatever you may feel about the president, he showed the republican party what a future governing coalition could look like. states like wisconsin, ohio pennsylvania, michigan came on line for the party because the president was not necessarily running an orthodox, conservative republican campaign. that allowed the party to bring working-class voters in. the base of the party was still excited. suburban republicans were on board. that coalition fell apart in 2018. we saw some strain on that. to my mind, the most critically important thing we do in the minority is to start taking very seriously the question of what specific policies would be needed to be the glue that holds

a coalition like that together going into 2020. the president, when he was a candidate, tapped into the anxiety that those parts of the coalition felt. i don't think he fleshed out a clear governing agenda. i think some of it was there. it is not holistic. our role in the minority is to help the administration figure out what that governing agenda could look like. so what we want to do at heritage action is going into these districts that were lost in 2018, and a lot have a combination of suburban republican voters who did not want to vote for the president's party because they were disaffected, and working-class voters, who we lost in these midterms. go into those districts and figure out how our policies can work in those districts come and

then highlight in those districts what the policies are. for example, you would find the president's idea of a middle class tax cut that he floated before the midterm election, you would find a straight tax cut to middle-class and working-class americans would be popular in one particular district. if you find that is indeed the case, and work hard in the house to begin to put a lot of energy behind that -- say you introduce a discharge petition in the house and say, if we get 218 votes on this discharge petition that allows the minority to put a piece of legislation on the floor, then we could have a vote on this. you could put enormous pressure on moderates who ran as moderates and ran saying they were not vote for nancy pelosi and ran saying they would be amenable to moderate-type

policies, you could put pressure on those moderates to sign the discharge petition. many will not, and it is because it is a sign of party disloyalty. it would anger the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi, and put them in a tough spot with their party, but then that shows in the district what is happening there, so that is the work we need to do at heritage action with our friends on the hill, we need to figure out what policies are drivers like that in those districts and begin to formulate strategies on capitol hill to either make this bipartisan, if they want to sign on to it, great, we have made a bipartisan piece of legislation going in a conservative direction, but if not, we talk to her constituents and say she is behaving this way. >> what did you think of the

republican from new york who criticized the leadership of the nrcc for not recruiting women aggressively enough and not playing in primaries to help women candidates who could succeed in these suburban districts you are talking about? tim: if she can bring more women in the party, that is all the better for us. 100% support that effort and hope she is successful. we are a policy organization that does get involved in politics, but our focus would be let's get women in the party and start pushing the conservative solutions we care most about. it is an interesting time to be thinking about this stuff. there is a whole the debate on the right right now. the tucker carlson monologue heard round the world last week, lots of debates about economic policy and what is happening to families, and a lot of these issues are issues that would be very valuable issues to bringing women into the party.

marco rubio is talking about a paid family leave program. aside of the merits of that, those are the kinds of issues we need to take seriously as a party. susan: 10 minutes left. >> looking towards 2020, how do see heritage action playing in that election? you guys mainly focused on the house this past cycle with mixed results. some of your candidates lost. some one. won.me any plan to get involved in senate race this time around? tim: we are formulating those plans as a team to figure out -- in the last cycle, we spent $2.5 million on 13 candidates. we had a split, 6-6, one to be decided. we felt good, given that all

those races were polling in the democrats' favor when we got in those races. being able to win in kentucky, representative barr, that was a hard race, we felt good about that. i think what we are trying to figure out is how much should we be doing leading up to the election and how much in the election? right now, my focus in the near term, our team is focused on figuring out how to till the soil in these districts on the policies we care about. we desperately want an election where we can look back on it and not just say the republican party won and flip to the house back, but they won because of this. you have to have members coming into congress saying this issue played a role in my campaign, and that is the only way we can build consensus around a policy agenda. that is our goal.

to build a consensus around apology -- policy agenda, to have a referendum election, then to have a mandate coming out of it. it is not good enough just to have the majority. that is one of the things we saw. we had the majority for two years and could have done more than we did if we had spent time going into 2016 being explicit about what specific policy issues we were running on. >> i want to follow up on scott's question. do you anticipate going for more than 13 candidates this time around? is that the goal? tim: i would like to. i'm not saying exactly because we are in the planning stages, but i would like to do more. i think you need to do more. like i said, it is repetitive, but the conservative movement has got to play in enough places and make their policies matter in enough places to come out

of elections, saying they have a mandate for policy. it is not good enough to just get a majority. you have to have the majority with the will to do something. this is what gives members of congress the confidence to be leaders on the issue. it is that the issue mattered in their election. >> one policy question, you guys the last couple of years, a lot made about the fiscal situation in the country. the tax bill, that adds a lot to the deficit, spending agreements, something conservatives have been critical of republicans for, they don't care about the debt, the deficit. was that a missed opportunity for the party the last two years? tim: yes, it is disappointing to us, but to be completely candid, the country is not there. there is not a consensus across the country for fiscal sanity right now.

especially when you start to say, you can say in general, do you think the government should be bigger or smaller? you get some consensus there. you can say in general, do you think the government should spend less money? but when you specifically weigh that against specific programs, you run into serious headwinds. you can say it was a missed opportunity, but it means the conservative groups in washington and conservative leaders in congress have to do a better job of persuading the american people this is indeed an issue. it is something we are giving a lot of thought to rigth now. how can you do something that captures people's attention on the spending issue that begins to put them in your camp? right now it is a tremendous challenge. >> you mentioned it was a challenge and a headwinds you face there. is that they lost cause at this

-- is that a lost cause at this point? tim: at some point it will become such a threat for the country economically that we will not have any choice, right? i don't want to throw in the towel on it. i want to be part of a group of people saying this is something that is important. if you give up on it, if we give up on it as a conservative movement, then at that point when crisis hits, we don't have a lot of credibility to say what to do. so it is important we don't give up on it. this is something we have pushed our friends in the administration on, too. they do present budgets that are fiscally responsible. the problem is we have to present a budget and rally the country around it. that second part is what is lacking. susan: just a few minutes left.

>> someone else in the headlines was steve king, the hardliner from iowa. he received a stern rebuke from leadership. he has been an ally of heritage for a number of years, but he was rebuked. kevin mccarthy stripped him of assignments for remarks about white supremacy and white nationalism. do you think that was an appropriate step for the leadership to remove him from all of his committee assignments? tim: i would say the remarks were very serious and it was appropriate they were addressed inside the conference. from what i know, they were addressed in a holistic way, so that is good. that is good. representative king has been a leader on conservative issues. remarks like that are serious and you have to address them. i would leave it up to the internal politics of the conference to figure out if they did the exact right thing. >> i think liz cheney went so far as to suggest he should find

another line of work, effectively saying he should resign and leave congress. do you think that is appropriate? tim: i think that is between steve king and his constituents. i think it is perfectly appropriate for liz cheney to have a strong opinion about that. i support her right to have a strong opinion about that. it is something representative king has to talk to his constituents about. susan: what do you think of the early days of kevin mccarthy's leadership? tim: it is early days. here's what i would say about leader mccarthy. leader mccarthy, in my interactions with him and his interactions with our organization, he is always good at telling you where he is at. he doesn't pretend to be a heritage conservative, and i don't pretend he is a heritage conservative, but he is a straight shooter. i appreciate that about him. i feel that i can go and tell

him where we are going to be, and he will be straight about where he is going to be on something. honestly, i think that is the honestly, i think that is the kind of leadership you need at times, because the problem, and and especially it is a great frustration for grassroots conservatives, grassroots conservatives have seen the republican party over the last few years have the house, the senate, and presidency, and there is this feeling that conservatives were now in power, but it is not true. this is a coalition government at best when you look at the house of representatives. you have all kinds of different republicans in the party. you have your freedom caucus republicans, we see the world closely to them.

you have your republican study committee type republicans, leadership republicans, your appropriators, your tuesday groups, this is not a conservative majority or minority at this point. i do think it takes the leadership of the conference and they need to recognize they are putting together a coalition government, and that means you have to be a straight shooter with the different parts of your coalition. that is what i hope we see under leader mccarthy, that he recognizes he has a significant group of his conference that are conservative republicans and they should be represented fairly and listened to, but he also has to do with all the different factions. susan: we have two minutes. final question from either? >> any doubt in your mind the president will not run for president in 2020? tim: i have no ability to predict what the president will or will not do. if i had to bet, i will bet he is running and would be shocked if he didn't. >> will he have challengers in the primary?

tim: that is a good question. i think a couple of people are thinking about challenging him. i think those challenges would be unsuccessful and would largely be to prove a point or have a message heard, but i would not be surprised to see one or two people do that. >> which candidate on the democratic side keeps republicans up late at night? tim: there is a fair amount. look, in terms of winning, if they nominate somebody who is more moderate, but can also, like a joe biden keeps me up at night. the reason is because he is perceived as moderate, but has credibility with working-class voters. i think the entire game in 2020 is whether the republicans can re-create that coalition of 2016 or not, and losing the

working-class voters in a 2020 election would make it hard for republicans to win. susan: we can end with a quick question. you are fine. that is it for our time. thank you for being our guest on "newsmakers." >> newsmakers is back with scott wong and al weaver. the ideological soulmates on the house republicans of the heritage foundation are the freedom caucus. they are now the minority of the minority. what kind of power will they have from a policy perspective and a new congress? >> you're talking about mark meadows, jim jordan, and these guys, the most ultraconservative members of the house, the republican caucus. they have a very small percentage at this point of the entire house of representatives.

they don't wield as much power in the minority because they can't block their party any more from passing spending bills and things like that, just simple legislation, but where they do wield power is they have the ear of the president. jim jordan and mark meadows are very close to the president, are very close to the president, they speak almost on a daily basis, if not definitely a weekly basis, and so they are the ones who have orchestrated this shutdown by convincing the president to stand firm on his border wall. that is the predicament we are currently in. in some sense, they are still very influential in the congress. susan: tim chapman talked about in the new congress with the democrats in power looking for a way to involve the moderates in the coalition building.

nancy pelosi has already demonstrated herself to wield a heavy gavel. she has taken away assignments from people who opposed her speakership, for example. won't that be a disincentive for moderates to sign onto any initiatives from the republican side? >> i agree. nancy pelosi holds a lot of power in this town, especially over house democrats. you saw what happened in the fight. only a handful bucked her on that. she skated pretty well through that speaker's fight. she holds considerable power, especially over these young, new, energetic house democrats even though they still think they have a lot of power. nancy pelosi has a lot of control, so i don't see these folks bucking her on many issues. i don't see it happening very often. susan: a new majority would want

to come in with a big agenda and get off to a rousing start. >> normally in a divided government, you would see more bipartisan negotiations, more bipartisan talk. before the election, we heard about a big infrastructure bill, some kind of bipartisan deal on lowering restriction drug prices. right now in this shutdown with the partisanship and acrimony, it doesn't seem like those bipartisan conversations are happening, so the expectations are low that we will see any big legislation moving through this congress. as the day goes on and the shutdown continues, we are now at that one month mark, the window is quickly closing. susan: for people who are watching c-span and watch this stuff closely, is there anything you can tell them about what is happening behind the scenes that isn't being reported? >> everything being reported is happening at this point. we are in an intractable impasse

at this point. no one sees any tunneling out of this at this point. the leaders will have to come together and figure something out. democrats don't feel they have a reliable negotiator in the president, and the president has not exactly made himself a -- the most reliable negotiator. nancy pelosi has democrats in an intractable position, going down from the $1.6 billion for the wall, to not offering anything at this point. right now there is a major gulf between the two sides. susan: last question. we were all talking about your question, the latest story involving michael cohen. how much is this town consumed with the stories around, coming out of, and about the white

house, which puts everything else off the table? >> it is in the backdrop of this government shutdown is the fact democrats are ramping up their investigation, newly empowered democrats in the house of representatives. they have subpoena powers. new powers that come with the majority. so they are ramping up investigations. that is also creating additional partisanship on these two sides, they are trying to come together. i think that in part is why this shutdown is lasting so long. susan: do not know what to say to close it. it has been an amazing month. we are going to keep going. thank you for being here and for your questions for our guests. >> thank you. >> the government, now in its 30th day of the shutdown. the president yesterday offered to extend daca protections three years for current recipients.

for $5.7 billion in border wall funding. house speaker nancy pelosi said in a statement that it was unlikely that any of the provisions would pass the house. assistant senate democratic leader dick durbin also sated he does not support the offer. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell also issued a statement after the speech, saying, the president's plan is the path forward. he will try to bring up a bill next week that would need 60 votes to advance. the house and senate return for the martin luther king holiday on tuesday, with the house expected to vote wednesday to extend the government funding through february 28. follow this story on the c-span network, c-span.org, and already out -- radio at. yesterday on the senate floor, several members spoke about the government shutdown. here are senators tim kaine of virginia, who represents many furloughed government workers, sa