>> brennan: welcome back to "face the nation." it is time for some political analysis. ramesh ponnuru is a senior editor at "national review" and a columnist for "bloomberg review." molly ball is national political correspondent for "time" magazi david sanger is aationalntnd senior writer for "the neyo and sh shington bureau chief for vice news. good to have you all here. you know, there is such a real impact economically of this shutdown on communities. we're going to talk about that. i don't want to minimize its. we are going to talk about the political winners and losers here, because in washington ultimately that is what determines who has the upper hand in a lot of this. molly, the impression is that nancy pelosi, the speaker, won this round. what did she actually win here? >> well, she won on the substance. she got what she asked for basically at the beginning, which was to reopen the government and not to have any funding for the wall. i think she also wonton politics. we saw in public opinion polls

that the downward. turn the pelosi took a turn upward. and you wouldn't necessarily have known that at the beginning, right? i think the white house gambled that the democrats would eventually feel that they had a political interest in not seeping to be stonewalling, but it really went the other way. the democratic base and the democratic caucus was very solidly in line with speaker pelosi's strategy and minority leader schumer's strategy of not giving an inch really. and that was... that turned out to be a miscalculation by the white house that the democrats might eventually give in. and the result i think politically is that the president was damaged, and democrats are now hoping he won't want to go through that again, that he did on some level learn something from this. >> brennan: you head mick mulvaney, the chief of staff, say they see splits among democrats. you're saying that's not real? >> i don't think it is. you have seen democrats, as he

said, expressing some openness to some border funding, potentially even wall funding. what they haven't said is they disapproved of the strategy of the democratic leaders, that they wouldn't have done it that way and they won't be behind that strategy again. >> and one of our correspondents talked to the virginia congresswoman, jennifer wexton. we also looked at town halls. these are moderates that flipped districts. we thought we would start the hear a little bit of, well, maybe we should come to the table with president trump, maybe we should do this, and there were these people who sent these letters to nancy pelosi, these moderate dems saying, once the president reopens the government, we should have a conversation about the walsh but these people were not talking to us like people who were worried about losing trump voters. nancy pelosi kept them in line, and she kept moderates in line. >> brennan: is the table set, though, for democrats to now come forward with some kind of proposal? it seems to be what the white house is saying, there is a moment of opportunity in these

next three weeks. >> i think there is a moment of opportunity. they have set these conferees. the senate conferee, none of them come from actual border states, but i think we will see and we'll see how these moderate dems as well as some of these really liberal people deal with that now that they are actually dealing with something that resembles governing. >> shawna mentioned, the most important thing is the white house isn't part of this negotiation. the president set up a committee between lead centers congress to work this out. the hope i think among democrats and republicans is that if the white house stays out of this, they can work something out among themselves. >> brennan: ramesh, you know, you hear the speculation, though, that in the next three weeks the president may revisit his decision not to declare an emergency or, you know, not to shut the government down again because he's going to get hit so hard by conservative commentators. is he going to pay a cost? >> think he look, ever

weakness and has begotten more weakness. he went to the shutdown in the first place because he was getting criticized by part of his base, from ann coulter. so he picks this fight, and then he lost it. is he going to be willing to sit through several weeks of coverage of how he's lost and how he's showed himself to be weak, or is he -- is that going to motivate him to shut the government down again? i think that it would be a totallier ral gnash decision that would not achieve his objective. that doesn't mean he won't do it. >> brennan: david, you know, you hear the president who campaigned on this idea of the forgotten man and women, the everyday people. he's been champion of them, but they are the people paying the cost, not the elected fireworks who still get their paycheck. does this branding-wise hurt the president? can he still say he's the champion for these folks? >> i think it hurts him on two levels. the first is his cabinet appeared to be completely tone deaf when it came to the price

that was being paid by ordinary federal workers.hen his commerce secretary, wilbur ross, suggested that people go out and get payday loans basically because the government wasn't paying them. so what have they missed in this? first, the human cost, which i think has been documented pretty remarkably. secondly, the government cost. we're now paying people, right, we have the pay them, for work that wasn't done while 40%, 50% of the government was shot. and third, and i think perhaps the most important, was the strategic cost. it really revealed, aparted from the president's sort of uselessness of the exercise, it revealed an inability by this administration to prioritize about what our true security threats. think of what mick mulvaney said to you. the president takes seriously -- takes security of the nation as his highest priority. well, on tuesday his

intelligence chiefs are going to do an annual exercise of laying out the security threats to the country, rights, in an unclassified briefing. if it's like the past five years, you know, cyber is number one, terrorism is number two, nuclear proliferation, rise of china, aggressiveness by vladimir putin, you get to border issues around page 14 of last year's, and yet he has spoken very little about the others. >> there's also a point about political prioritization and the failure of the administration to make a strategic plan. i do think the prominence of the border wall promise in trump's 2016 campaign means he really does have to show that he's made progress on it. he had a chance to do that. last year when theenat democrats offered him legalization of illegal immigrants who came here as minors in return for some progress on the wall. he threw that chance away because he overreached. he wanted too much. and it's not clear that he's going to get that chance again.

i don't know if i'm a congressional democrat looking at these negotiation i'm going to say, i need to give this president anything now that he's lost. >> brennan: molly, we are in the 2020 campaign season now. ignore the calendar that says 2019. both sides, democrats and republicans, seem to like campaigning around the issue of immigration. does this -- is there an incentive in if you're ultimately cynical, is there an incentive not to solve it? >> that's an interesting question. i mean, this has been a persistent accusation by both sides is that it means more to politicians as a live political issue that they can arguably demagog than as something, a means to get their voters out, as something they want to do. i think that's not the primary thing standing in the way of broader immigration reform deal. it's been a decade and more that a lot of politicians in both partys have been trying to forge a grand bargain on immigration and have failed to do so. there are all kinds of obstacles

to it that i don't think are just related to this particular political season. i do think, though, that the 2018 midterms were very eye opening for both sides about the resonance of the immigration issue. you had republicans wanting to make that election about the economy. the white house overruled them. the president was much more interested in the issue of the caravan and in talking about immigration and in talking about the wall, and in talking about crime. and the republicans lost big, except in some of those rural state senate races. and so i think what both parties took away from that, and the shutdown was the same way. you had a lot of opinion polls showing that people cared much more about kitchen table issues than about this idea of a dangerous caravan approaching the border, even if that were true, even if believed that was a serious problem that needed to be solved, they didn't think it was as important as their salary, their local economy, the things that affect them on an

everyday level. so i think politicians on both sides are seeing that lesson. >> brennan: but the question i think we're all sort of dancing around is if the democrats had made this idea of a wall or parts of a wall or whatever i'm supposed to be saying now a moral issue and that it is immoral, how do they give in on some parts of, that and can nancy pelosi kind of get herself out of that issue? because i don't think the president of the united states is going to back down on having some parts of the wall funded. >> manchin pointed to that direction. and so did susan collins. it's the president himself, who needs to call it a wall, as he's told his own aides. >> brennan: we will take a break and talk about everything else that happened here in washington in just a moment. dr.nleymemberhis:

cannot change the laws of god. when he has visited you in some form of adversity and he brings

you through that, that's like he has increased the strength of the foundation of your life and your faith in him. [music] >> brennan: we're back now with more from our political panel. david, i want to start with you. speaking of national security issues, a broader question of this probe into russian interference in the 2016 election and the mueller investigation. i think people often get overwhelmed by the number of headlines that they see about it. how should we understand the indictment of roger stone this week? >> first, there's just a stunning number of people around the campaign, some of whom worked in the white house, most of who didn't, who have been indicted or plead guilty. we ran a big graphic in the

"times" that showed basically over 100 contacts between people in the campaign and russian, which is a big change from what the white house was saying early in in time, which was that no one in the ceah anyone in russia period. the second thing that came out of the roger stone indictment was in one pregnant paragraph buried away in the indictment, written in the very passive tense in which special counsel muller said that a trump campaign official contacted someone else in the campaign, didn't say who, to ask mr. stone about any additional releases and damaging information that would come out from wikileaks. what does that tell you? they didn't name who these campaign officials were. clearly mueller has in mind who they are or he wouldn't have put them there. and that is the closest they've gotten to describing something that they could charge was a conspiracy. and that, of course, is the charge that the pre is

most worried about along with obstruction of justice. what we don't know, did the president himself know about these requests to get information from wikileaks. >> brennan: will we find out who those senior campaign officials are? i know roger stone has said steve bannon is at least one of them. >> yes. >> brennan: but there are a lot of questions about who was i was struck by the fact that trump campaign officials -- bannon has been identified, when you tart to connect the dot, oh, one is steve bannon, but that is the question everyone else has. who are the other officials who were having some kind of conversations with rsq) stone to try to get wikileaks to do something. i think the thing that is clear, and susan collins said this to you, as well, everyone who has talked to the house intelligence committee, everyone who has talked to the nat intelligence committee is now thinking, maybe lying to congress is a bad idea since mueller is really using, that and he's used it with cohen, he's used witted stone.

that is putting pressure on people, and if you are onethe ov talked to th committee, you hroughour testimony and woingse t num me's harderwi s t.thbar kl, there's in proof of criminal collusion by trump, by his campaign, and russia, whereas previously there was no cooperation at all, and that line keeps shifting. one question that i think is raised by this, it's interesting, is why is there no campaign finance charge against roger stone? earlier phases of the scandal have seen speculation that perhaps donald trump, jr., might be vulnerable to a legal charge that he solicited political useful information from russia and is this illegal some the question is, are they holding that in reserve against him? have they decided that that charge doesn't legally stand up, because there are first amendment issues that come into play? but i have to imagine that donald trump, jr.'s, lawyers are pouring over this pretty

carefully. >> brennan: or is that so monumental that mueller isn't going to do that until the very end? charging the president's son, i know we're all thinking, that but charging the president's son would be a really huge deal. >> and i think the other thing that's notable too is that nancy pelosi tweeted about roger stone, but she waited until right after the president had signed the deal the reopen the government. that was obviously done on purpose, and she took a very strong line, much stronger than i think she's taken in the past, taking the administration to task for all of this stuff. and i think that's really a sign of things to come as much as the shutdown battle was, right, in this battle between trump and the newly empowered speaker, the democratic speaker, the shutdown was kind of a distraction from what we were all expecting the democratic congress to start doing, which is start using their power not just for subpoenas but to especially hold public hearings and really try to put these pieces together for the public and get to the bottom of a lot of the same things that mueller is investigationing. >> brennan: david, i want to

make sure we explain what's going on with the trump administration's decision to pick a side in venezuela. >> yes. >> brennan: people often say, if you pick a side, make sure that side wins. the interim president now, who the u.s. is putting its weight behind, how does this all get resolved? does maduro actually step down? >> well, we're right at the precipice right now where maduro's only supporters are china, russia, and cuba. not a great collection. the europeans have indicated that if maduro does not call for a true and fair election, because he fixed the last one, within eight day, they too will go with juan guaidoó, who is the interim president as declared by parliament and the one the united states has backed. i think the interesting news here is there has been bipartisan support behind the president's decision to support juan guaidoó. i think the problem here is bot. our history in latin america of intervening is a pretty ugly one, and the inconsistency of

not applying the same standards to places like saudi arabia and egypt, where the president has embraceed the king may come back the make the united states look hypocritical, not for the first time. >> brennan: and potentially some political cost in florida. >> the other question is the anti-interventionist base of this president in particular among republicans is how do they react to this role we're now playing in venezuela. abrams was black balled. now he's a special envoy. >> brennan: interesting to watch. we'll be back in a moment to have a a conversation with two mayors, both from cities very shutdo.fte

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you. let's start with mayor passero. how has this shutdown impacted your local economy, and do you expect it to snap back now that the shutdown is over? >> welk we're not standing at ease with just a three-week reprieve. so we are still going full force with our mitigation efforts. it has hit the community very, very hard. our connection with the coast guard is significant. we host the united states coast guard academy, which is training the next generation of officers for the coast guard. with over 1,000 cadets there and over 600 employees, both civilian and active duty, we also host the united states coast guard research and development. we host the international ice patrol, and coast guard station new london patrols the waters of long island sound serving the eastern end of new york, rhode island, and new london harbor.

>> brennan: and none of them were paid? >> no. unfortunately, you look at the situation at the coast guard academy, i wonder how they managed to do it, because all the maintenance employees, the secretaries have been furloughed and are not reporting to work. and the enlisted men and the professors are working without pay. the active duty and the coast guard station are working without pay. these are people who are serving the nation and have not been paid for over a month. >> brennan: mayor margo, you have a number of border enforcement agencies, et cetera, people who work in security who were unpaid during all of this. what is the impact on your community? >> we have about 13,000 plus federal and civilian employees, so, yeah, it was pretty significant with c.b.p. and ice. last tuesday at our regular city council meeting, the head of our food bank talked about the fact

that they were not receiving the food they need for distribution. so it's had an impact on us for sure. >> brennan: you have in your city,ing which is on the mexico border, a barrier. the president shut down the government because he wants one of those in other places in your state of texas. is a shutdown worth it? >> well, i was listening to your pundits a little bit earlier. i don't think there were any winners in this shutdown. i don't know how you can talk about winners and losers. we are by way of description, we're the nexus of three states, new mexico, and texas, two countries, the u.s. and mexico, and region of 2.5 million people. we have 23,000 legal pedestrians who cross north every day, and on an annual basis over 21 million private passenger vehicles. we're the second largest port. the fence we have was put in in

2008 as a directive under president george w. bush when he was president. it works to stop criminal activity. my position is that a fence is a part of the process, but i'm still waiting to hear what homeland security wants as opposed to what the political leadership wants. what does homeland security need? texas is a geography that's totally different from a lot of other states. >> brennan: is there a crisis? >> well, i'm not... el paso is the safest city in the united states with a population above 500,000. we're not having any of those issues. now, i've got issues related to the migration coming north every day and the n.g.o. that we have here overseeing that. i get numbers every day, this ery we had 250.0 are going to b. the day before 420. i'm concerned about that.

but those are those seeking asylum. >> brennan: mayor passero, you described the presence of the coast guard in your town, and we should say that the only branch of the military that remain unpaid during the shutdown. there is a bill proposing that they would continue to be paid in the event of a future shutdown. what is your message? how needed is that kind of protection? >> oh, absolutely. i mean, the inequity of it, having our coast guard military personnel unpaid while the other branches of the military are not affected by this is patently unfair. and it's unpatriotic. but the community has really stepped up. we also have subbase new london here, and also general dynamics electric boats. so this is a very strong military community, and the military does take care of their own. so mayor margo mentioned the food bank. we are -- being the urban city,

we have -- the united way has a very strong established food bank in the city, but because of the greater need now with all the personnel and families that have not been paid, the community is just providing food and donating food at an incredible rate, both replenishing our food bank. we never thought we'd see the day, but on the grounds of the united states coast guard academy, in the hall they had to set up a pop-up food pantry, and the need is enormous. it's really disheartening that the secretary of commerce cannot seem to recognize that these are working families that are living on the edge, and they cannot be left without pay for other a month. >> brennan: thank you, both, for joining us and telling us about that real-world impact.

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>> brennan: that's it for us today. thank you all for watching. next week we'll come to you live from the home of super bowl liii in atlanta, georgia. for "face the nation," i'm margaret brennan. captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org when you humble yourself under the mighty hand of god, in due time he will exalt you. hi, i'm joel osteen. i'm excited about being with you every week. i hope you'll tune in. you'll be inspired, you'll be encouraged. i'm looking forward to seeing you right here. you are fully loaded and completely equipped for the race that's been designed for you. new

york city, i'm elaine quijano. ♪ bundling up. bitter cold invades the midwest. and brace yourself even more frigid and dacherous air is about to plunge into the east. also tonight capture. a louisiana man accused of killing five people arrested more than 1,000 miles away after a multi-state man hntd. the government reopen but the future still uncertain. >> is the president really prepared to shut down the government again in three weeks? >> yeah, i thin he acheal is. >> reporter: how risky is the ride? ango