>> thank you. that is "all in" for this evening. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> thanks, my friend. appreciate it. >> absolutely. happy to have you here. so as you know, we are on shut down watch. we'll have the latest on this over the course of this hour, but right now as far as we know, we are headed toward a shutdown of the federal government as of 27 hours from right now, midnight tomorrow night. a bill, even a very, very short-term bill to keep the government funded for a little while longer, that needs to pass both the house and senate to avoid a shutdown. a short-term spending bill has already passed the house late tonight, but it's starting to become clear that was the easier of the two chambers. we're expecting maybe procedural votes in the senate but the senate, yeah, there is -- if you need something from your government after midnight tomorrow night, start making other plans. again, we'll have a fill up du

in the course of the hour. in addition to the shutdown countdown, there was a big, big story about the most powerful interest group in conservative politics over the past several decades. the n.r.a., there has always been something unexplained and intriguing about the huge spike in spending the n.r.a. had for the 2016 presidential race. they massively increased their political spending in the donald trump presidential race in 2016. it came from a very specific part of their organization. there is always a little inkreeg. mcclatchy breaks news the fbi is looking into that financial spike that benefitted the trump for president campaign, the fbi is reportedly investigating whether that may be linked to russia. the reporter who broke that

story will join us here live tonight. also, over the last few days, we have been somewhat uncomfortably rounding up the new flurry of reporting happening around women who claim to have had sexual relationships with president donald trump during his current marriage. the women that said they had affairs or sexual contact with him. several women have been paid significant sums of money right before the 2016 presidential election in an effort to stop them from talking about those alleged sexual relationships. now, whether or not you care about the president's sexual behaib behavior or marital fidelity, once people are being paid off immediately before elections to keep quiet about specific stories so as to not have those stories influence the election, that can be potentially a whole new type of legal scandal, separate and apart from any alleged sexual behavior. if these payments were made, what is particularly important

is to know the source of those funds, where did the money come from? well, tonight, there has been a breakthrough on that part of this otherwise story we've been watching closely. the question of who paid. tonight we have a lot more information about that and the reporter who broke the story, as well. >> last night we lead the show with former top white house advisor steve bannon who said the controversy over what exactly he was willing to tell congressional investigators on what basis he was refusing to answer questions. we reported that controversy might be a side show because new nbc reporting indicated that people familiar with the matter believe that special counsel robert mueller essentially stepped in to claim territory here, to stop steve bannon from testifying to congress on russia matters before robert mueller can obtain that testimony from

bannon first. the theory of the case here is that the special counsel robert mueller is basically trying to protect the secrecy and therefore the integrity of important evidence in his investigation. nobody accept steve bannon and his counsel know exactly what bannon has to say to investigators about russia involving the trump campaign or administration, but robert mueller and his prosecutors appear to have stepped in to make sure that they are the ones that will get access to that information before it ends up with members of congress. who presumably would then either leak it to the press or maybe even back to the white house to help the president's legal team prepare their defense for the president if steve bannon has anything important. so that was our reporting last night. special counsel effectively taking action to block steve bannon's congressional testimony. that was our reporting last night. today steve bannon's congressional testimony in fact was called off. we don't know when exactly he

will be called back to testify to congress. they do still want to speak with him but it appears to be a good bet at this point that steve bannon will end up speaking with robert mueller and his investigators and the special counsel's office before he is back on capitol hill talking to any members of congress. now the mueller interview does not have any announced date but we're told to expect it soon. you know, in all of that news, which unfolded over the course of the day today, that's all obviously enough for a whole tv show tonight and more but then boom, happened again. last week on tuesday, which is incidentally the same date we now know steve bannon got his subpoena from robert mueller, on tuesday diane feinstein dropped a bomb in washington. back in august, the founder of the firm that commissioned the trump, russia dossier, glenn

simpson, the founder of fusion gps testified for about ten hours at the senate judiciary committee about that dossier and origins and his firm's role in paying for that, how that information made its way to the fbi, et cetera. although senate republicans had initially said they would vote to release the transcript of those ten hours of testimony, they then changed their minds over a period of a few months when congressional republicans were starting to change course a little bit on the russia investigations and the last few months of last year, republicans and congress increasingly started to see the various russia investigations, not as a means of figuring out what russia did to influence the election and whether or not they had help from the trump campaign, over the last few months of last year, republicans in congress changed course. and they increasingly started to see those congressional investigations as just a way they could help the white house develop their events on this

scandal. they started increasingly to use the russia investigations in congress as ways to create new anti hillary clinton story lines to try to, you know, excite republicans about alternate scandals they might enjoy hearing about more than the real russia scandal. well, over that period of time, republicans on the judiciary committee appeared to change their mind about releasing the transcript of those ten hours of testimony from the head of fusion gps. last week, diane feinstein, top democrat on that committee just threw her hands in the air like she just didn't care. forget it, this should be out there. the witness wants it out there. we said before that we would put it out there, this is a great public interest here. she just released it on her own without permission from the rest of the committee. a transcript, that's how we learned why pufusion gps pelt i

w -- felt it was necessary and fusion hadn't just started looking at trump and latin american and that's how we learned the origin started. so that testimony was fascinating released last tuesday but that was one of three appearances and what fusion knew about the validity. the first time he testified was senate judiciary. the second round was before the house intelligence committee in november. as of today, we've got that one,

too. this one represents about seven hours of testimony. it didn't get leaked by anybody or released by anybody without her mission. they took a vote. if you go through the transcript diane feinstein released, there are two things you need to know about the new one that came out this afternoon. first thing you should know is honestly, reads like a spy novel. i read it in one sitting. you should totally read it. it's going to be cold this weekend. there is only football games on one day of the weekend, spend the other day reading this. it's totally worth it. the other interesting thing about this transcript or the hearing that resulted in that transcript is that the republicans mostly appeared to have not been there. they are definitely there at the

beginning. after that, it sort of seems like the republicans got board and bailed. just what seems like a couple hours into the testimony, the republicans just don't show up anymore. there is a republican staffer here and there that pops up to ask tiny bursts of questions about hillary clinton but other than that, this is the democrats eliciting information from fusion, from the firm that had the dossier and because democ t democrats don't have a mission that a scandal somehow involving uranium, because democrats want to talk about russia, he gets room to explain research. explain what christopher steele

found, what his firm found, what they think it meant. why they felt necessary to give it to the fbi. if you're looking for an overall theme, you get it, the best statement at the end of the transcript. the second to last page at which point glen simpson is exhausted. it's after 8:00 at night and because he's tired, he blurts out the big picture of how his little research firm ended up in the middle of the story. second to last page of the transcript he says quote, you know, we threw a line in the water. we just threw a line in the water askand moby dick came bac. we didn't know what to do with it. they were not expecting to find out what they found out when they started this investigation into donald trump. page 7 question, what were you asked to do? answer, it was an open-ended

look at the donald trump's business career, how much he was wo worth, how he ran his casinos. it was a broad unfocused look which is the way we do our business. page 23, at the very beginning of this project, one of the first things i pofocused on was his relationship with felix sater alleged to have ties to organized crime, an organized crime background. over the first phase we had information the company he was associated with was engaged in elicit financial business activity and had organized crime connections. we sort of more broadly learned that mr. trump had long-typeime associations and seemed as if during the early part of his career he had connections to italian mafia but during the

'90s became associated with the mafia. that developed to the point it wasn't a speculative piece of research. it was well-established. page 35. question, so during the period of time you were working for free beacon, the initial fusion gps work was paid for by free beacon and the later stages by a law firm associated with the dnc, right? question, during the period of time you were working for the free beacon, you came across some of the first information about candidate trump's business dies ties in russia. answer s answer, satyr, that's correct and loats of issues came up whether trump has connections with russia. among other things, paul ma that fo -- manafort was connected.

i wrote about the prorussia party and another. i wrote a story whether he should have registered as a foreign agent. a matter that appears later in paul manafort's indictment. when he suddenly sure vased in the -- surfaced in the trump campaign, i was struck by that. this is congressman adam schiff questioning glenn. he says quote, if you would, go through with us some of the russia related things that concerned you that you learned in the first phase of your research doing work for the free beacon. answer, the funding of bayrock had a funding source that was opaque. we spent a lot of time looking at the people around that and their backgrounds and why trump would be in business with them. that was one of the major issues.

bayrock developed the trump soho with donald trump and his business. another issue was the amazing number of people from the former soviet union that purchased properties including dimitri at an extreme mark up in florida. remember the fertilizer king? congressman jackie spear picks that up. she says thank you, mr. simpson, for being here. i would like to focus on the real estate. that was purchased for $41 million and sold for $95 million. since this have been few improvements made by mr. trump, what's your opinion on the big hike in sales price? >> simple sson, i never heard o that. it seems like an absurd accusation but the explanation for why he over spent is he was

hiding money from his wife. the depiction is a reckless big spender, thoroughly developed in the press. this guy was spending money like a drunken sailor. people were ripping him off in art deals. that was my original take. later, i began to learn more and that changed my view. i hadn't known he was closely linked to igor setchen. he's very closely linked to vladimir putin and controls the biggest oil and gas company in the world. so simpson says i didn't know rybolovlev was accused of essentially destroying an entire city environmentally with his mining operations. he was criminally accused and managed to get out of and it walk out of russia with billions of dollars with the apparent assistance of sechin.

we've seen a number of ohave le. they like to have an image of the someone with kremlin but when you look closely, they are not. he was going to moscow all the time and his legal problems went away and questions whether he did get ripped off in the art deals or whether he just said he got ripped off as a way of accounting for the money that's missing. so i'm now of the view that this florida transaction with donald trump is suspicious. congresswom congresswoman, the additional 50 plus million dollars that donald trump received was for what purpose? simpson, i don't know. i mean, you mean the profit from that? she says right. simpson says well, trump just claimed it was one of his great business deals. he just claimed he talked him into paying double, which was odd because the market was going south at this point.

again, i mentioned that for this hearing and for most of this transcript, the republicans appear to have just left. i don't know if they had other important stuff to do or didn't want to participate but democrats get to run the table. they get to ask simpson about what fusion found in the research. what they thought was important, why they believed it was true. simpson just gets to explain what he and his researchers found about trump's business career that led them to believe that it was a credible allegation when their subcontractor krichristopher ste reported that the russian government was involved in a yea years-long campaign and to make him blackmailble. page 95 quote, by 2003, 2004 donald trump was not able to get bank credit. if you're a real estate developer and you can't get bank loans, you got a problem.

there is a variety of alternative systems. one thing we know about how the condo projects were financed, you can get credit if you show you sold a certain number of units. this is true of the early overseas developments like toronto and panama. you can get credit if you can show you sold a secondcertain percentage of the units. that the where the russians are to be found is in some of those presales. that's how in panama they got the credit. they got sterns to issue a bond by saying they sold a bunch of units to a bunch of russian gangsters and of course, didn't put that in the under writing information. they sold a bunch of units and that's how they got the credit. that's an example of the alternate financing. page 41, what's well-known and well established in criminology is the russian mafia is under the russian government and

russian intelligence services. the russian mafia and u.s. is e believed to be under the influence of the russian security services. if people who seem to be associated with the russian mafia are buying trump properties or arranging for people to buy trump properties, it raises the question whether they are doing it on behalf of the russian government. it would be known if it was on a substantial scale? answer, certainly, yes. question, might that provide the russian government leverage now president trump? answer, yes. question, so if as the president's son boasted they were getting loats of financing from russia and elicit, that would be known to the kremlin? answer, yes, i think that the true and the stuff about the nra. that's next. when you've got...

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this is a spanish island south of the barcelona. it is obviously a very lovely place known for beaches, mountains, roman remains. i've never been. some day i'll get fired from this job and i'll go travel. honey, it will happen r, some d. back in the summer of 2013, this man who is the deputy governor of russia's central bank. a close ally of vladimir putin had plans to travel to the island of mallorca to attend a birthday party of a friend.

at the time spanish prosecutors have been putting together a story about what they believed. they pieced tailgate a web of covert, financial and money laundering dealings about torshin and his friend. the spanish police knew torshin was mplanning oncoming in for te birthday party and planned to arre arrest him on his arrival. he was apparently tipped off he would get arrested when he landed so he cancelled his trip. >> spanish judicial sources say they were investigating allegations in 2013 torchin was running a russian money laundering operation for the russian mob. they were readily to arrest him the second he stepped off plane. they had teams here at the airport and prosecutors were on stand by around the clock for days.

torchin never showed. the commander francisco martinez says the case was closed. >> we hope that he come here, but the end, no come here so. >> can't do anything. >> i call in. >> in the end, no come here. turns out to have been a very valuable tip that guy got, right? alexander torchin was a senator and now deputy governor of russia's central bank. he has substantial suspected ties to money laundering and considered to be a high-level russian organized crime figure. spain was ready to arrest him when he set foot in their country. he's a close ally of vladimir su putin and a lifetime member of the nra and during the 2016 presidential campaign, he tried on multiple occasions to arrange back channel meetings between

russia and donald trump. in may of 2016, a veteran operative who was a fundraiser for the nra and ties to torchin reached out to deputy chief of staff offering to arrange a back channel between donald trump and vladimir putin with the subject line, kremlin. that did not work but then that same month torchin himself sought a meeting with donald trump at an nra convention that he would speak on behalf of vladimir putin. that one did not pan out, either but he did get to spend some quality time with the president's son, with donald trump junior at a private gala hosted by the nra in congesti congestionmecongestion. he did line up a meeting with president trump at the national prayer breakfast in washington.

that meeting was reportedly only cancelled at the last minute. mr. torchin makes an appearance in the house intelligence fusion gps transcript just released this afternoon. towards the end on page 142 quote, there is a russian banker slash duma member/mafia leader named alexander torchin well-known to the ira and you probably seen the press articles. i think the spanish files on him should be available to you. he's one of the more important figures but another woman with whom he was working was also a big trump fan in russia. she suddenly showed up and started hanging around the trump transition and went to an apartment and enrolled herself at a.u. which i assume gets you a visa. question, she rented an apartment here? answer, went to american university and rented an

apartment up there. we just started seeing this when the russia stuff started bubbling up and the thing i found absurd, vladimir putin is not in favor of universal gun ownership by russians. it's a big charade. that excerpt about torchi nrn a money laundering and russian government and links to the nar got neatly knitted up today in a big scoop. here is the headline, fbi investigating whether russian money went to nra to help trump. quoting from the article, the fbi is investigating where a top russian banker illegally funneled money to help donald trump win the presidency. quote, fbi counter intelligence invest gigatioors focused on de governor known for the close relationships with russian president vladimir putin and

nra. he points out that the quote extent to which the fbi has evidence of money flowing to the nra could not be learned but to put things in perspective, the nra spent $30 million in this past presidential by that is real money triple what the nra spent on, say, the last presidential election before that when they tried to boost mitt romney in 2012. how come they tripled in 2012? most of this money was that funneled into the election was spent by an arm of the nra not required to disclose the dow narcot -- donors at all. what could possibly go wrong? mr. gordon, thank you for being with us. appreciate you being here to

talk about your work. >> rachel, thank you for having me. i have to say peter is the lead author but i was part of it and peter did great sleuthing for us. >> peter stone and greg gordon, got it. let me ask you first of all in explaining the importance of the reporting, did i get that right? >> perfect. >> why is this coming to light? that spanish investigation in the past, the big breakthrough that i'm seeing in the reporting is the news that the fbi is looking into this. do you know anything about the timing of the fbi's interest? >> not a lot. not a lot. it's a counter intelligence investigation. as you can imagine, it's really hard to find out about it. and it took us a long time. we've been trying to get to the bottom of this for quite sometime to determine if there

was a live investigation and the issue here is it goes to the whole question of how russia tried to influence our elections because we've seen it and it seems like at every turn when there is a revelation, take a step back and look at it again. you're very good at that, rachel. i watch and see how you peel back the layers. now we have the very first story that we wrote which was the first u.s. story about this investigation, about a year ago and it said that there was a working group of government agencies that was trying to get evidence of russia money possibly moving to the trump campaign. we haven't heard much about money movement since then.

we've heard about approaches by russians to trump campaign advisors, papadopoulos and later to trump junior, donald trump junior and we've also heard about bombardment of social media attacks on face, via facebook and twitter, fake news, harsh criticism of hillary clinton but we hadn't heard too much about money. now we're hearing about this and i think that given the citizens united ruling in 2010 which created the flood of dark money, money that doesn't have to be reported, donors don't have to disclose publicly and nra has an arm that accepts dark money. we don't know too much about

that obviously. so we're not saying that russian money identifiable russian money just flew into the nra's coffers but this does raise the question about whether money was maybe laundered or maybe decembe hidd someway or some form of assistance that enabled them to shift money around or maybe it didn't happen at all. what the outcome is because it's a counter intelligence investigation and they don't always report the findings. it will be interesting to see. >> it will be interesting to see if at the end we find out what they found but you being able to figure out, you and peter stone figuring out this investigation is underway is a heck of a

scoop. greg gordon, investigative reporter. thank you for helping us understand. >> thank you, rachel. good to be here. >> when the ex cia director testified about the russia matter last year, one of the things he said that's been dangling out there since is part of the reason that u.s. intelligence agencies started a counter intelligence investigation during the summer before the presidential election in 2016 to figure out what russia was doing to influence the election, they saw evidence of russian money flowing into the u.s. election. we still don't know what he meant by that, which money they saw, where it was going, how they know it was russian. that's a piece of it given to us at the very beginning of our public understanding of this scandal. we still don't have any explanation. this story is the first money piece of it we had in a very, very long time. hopefully we will learn this in

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magic number is 14. at midnight tomorrow the government runs out of money and shuts down. the they don't pass a spending bill by tomorrow, the government will shut down. the house passed a temporary bill to keep the lights on until mid february. if that passes the senate and the president signs it, this would kick this fight down the

road for another 30 days where we have this happen again in 30 days. meet you back here, we can have this chat again in 30 days for the rest of our lives. tonight, that prospect of that passing the senate is a giant if. that's why everybody in the d.c. metro area is counting to 14 over and over and over again tonight. republicans control the white hou house, house and senate that's why it's weird we might have a government shut down but to pass any spending bill, they need 60 votes. tonight senator john mccain is not there, he's in arizona recovering from cancer treatment so he can't vote. in addition, there are four republican senators that are a hard no. mike lee, lindsey graham. they have all told reporters they won't vote for this temp rare -- temporary spending bill. assuming those five republican

missing votes stay spending, republicans need 14 democratic senators to cross over. they need 14. right now they have one. democratic yes vote senator joe manchin. they bond vote for a bill that doesn't protect dreamers. the program of daca that lech kaczynski -- president trump tried to kill. it is not inconceivable enough republicans agrae with tee with democrats they could pass a stand alone bill but mitch mcconnell isn't doing that. the d.r.e.a.m.e.r.s. issue is this mixed issues to keep the

lights on. he's expecting democrats to cave and it really is not working. so let me tell you what is happening now. the senate is debating the short-term spending bill. there needs to be a vote to end that debate so the senate can vote on it. they have to end the debate and take the vote. that needs 60 votes. we don't know when exactly that 60 vote threshold will happen. we'll watch throughout the course of the night. we'll keep you posted. never in the history of this country have we had a true shut down when one controls the senate and white house. but keep making history almost every day it seems. we'll be right back. get ready for

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you want is secrecy. delaware is a great place to set up an anonymous shell corporation. here is another unlikely mega business hub in delaware, 160 green tree drive. today the wall street journal reports in 2016 just a few weaks before t -- weeks before the presidential election that became home of a private corporation established by donald trump's lawyer. that appears to be established for a very, very specific purpose and it's clear why he wanted to keep it secret. that bombshell story and the wall street journal reporter that broke it today, just ahead. the winter of '77. i first met james in 5th grade. we got married after college. and had twin boys. but then one night, a truck didn't stop. but thanks to our forester, neither did our story. and that's why we'll always drive a subaru.

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last friday, the wall street journal broke this story alleging one more before the election, the president's personal lawyer, arranged for a payment of $130,000 to be made to a woman named stephanie clifford, she has a stage name in the adult entertainment industry, stormy daniels, they allege that payment was to buy stormy daniels's silence in an agreement she would not talk about her extramarital affair with donald trump. when that story broke on monday, his attorney didn't deny the

money part of it. we have since tried to chase that down with michael cohen and found the same thing, denying the affair, but not the payment. that was interesting reporting on friday. left open a lot of questions, though. where did that money come from? who paid? and how did that money get from point a to point b? that was where we had the story as of friday. tonight that same reporting team from the wall street journal has started to figure it out. they started to find the money. the journal reports tonight this delaware registered company, essentials consultants llc is how the money moved. documents show that michael cohen established that in october 2016. cohen then used a bank account linked to the entity to send the payment to the client trust account of a lawyer representing

stormy daniels. registering the company in delaware offers privacy and complicity. the journal reports, quote, to further mask the identities of the people involved, the parties used pseudonyms with stormy daniels identified as peggy peterson. we once again asked michael cohen and also the white house for comment on the story, we haven't heard anything back. but joining us is one of the "wall street journal" reporters who broke the story on friday. i knew you would keep working on this where did the money come from thing. i didn't think we'd have you back so soon. you examined the record that is show cohen set up the llc right before the election and move it had money into stormy daniels's lawyer's accounts. if you're able to set up companies that shield your identity, how did you figure that out.

>> we thought michael cohen used an llc to pay stormy daniels before we wrote the first story. we had been looking for that llc for some time and through the reporting chain, we were able to learn he used this company, essential consultants, we looked at a lot of llcs and pulled the papers for this one and his name was on there. >> you also found another llc and there was an interesting timing on the dissolution between one llc and the creation of this one. >> he likes to name companies according to what he's going to do with them, based on his past companies he created. so resolution consultants we believed was a company to resolve a problem with stormy daniels and we found he created that on september 30th. he had been talking to stormy daniels, stephanie clifford, and

her lawyer for some time and had been late in making the payment. so during that period of time, he apparently for some reason couldn't use resolution consultants. so on october 17th he creates this new one, essential consultants and two minutes later he dissolves resolution consultants. >> two minutes. >> correct. >> so essential consultants was the vehicle by which payment was made to stormy daniels. >> that's correct. >> you say you've identified the bank account associated with the company that made the payment. can you figure out who put the money in the bank account? >> reporter: not at this point. we'd like to do that. we'd like to figure out if cohen used his own money, someone else's money, or was he reimburseder on for that. >> for people to understand the importance of the story, the concern here in part and we'll

know once we know more, that money may have been an in-kind campaign contribution or some other improper source until we know who was paying for that kind of dispute or conflict resolution for trump right before the election, there's a legal implication in terms of where the money came from. >> there are some lawyers who speculate if you made an undisclosed contribution in kind, it could be a violation of campaign finance law. ep john edwards was prosecuted on a theorily like thy like tha. he wasn't convicted. but you don't know what kind of case prosecutors could make. >> we've had communication with michael cohen about the story where he's given repeated denials about the underlying story, hasn't denied the payment. does that remain the same for you. >> same with us.

>> michael rothfeld. thank you for the story. leave the sex part aside. i'm telling you, the money part, it's a big deal. we'll be right back. in my freezer here. so check back for that follow-up vid. this is my cashew guy bruno. holler at 'em, brun. kicking it live and direct here at the fountain. should i go habanero or maui onion? should i buy a chinchilla? comment below. did i mention i save people $620 for switching? chinchilla update -- got that chinchilla after all. say what up, rocco. ♪ say what up, rocco. one laugh, and hello so i tried always discreet. i didn't think protection this thin could work. but the super absorbent core turns liquid to gel. snap! so it's out of sight... ...and out of mind. always discreet. for bladder leaks. people are fighting type 2 diabetes... with fitness... food... and the pill that starts with f. farxiga, along with diet and exercise, helps lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes.

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our government shoutdown watch is 26 hours and a few seconds. what's going on, the house has passed a short term funding bill and the senate is still talking it out. there continue to be discussions between the two sides.

the democrats essentially have the cards here. the republicans need democrats to cross over and vote for this. the democrats said, among other things the d.r.e.a.m.ers need to be taken care of for them to do that. one thing to watch, if there is going to be a federal government shutdown tomorrow, we just learned that the president is going to florida. he's going to mar-a-lago tomorrow. apparently he's not that concerned. and we also believe the vice president mike pence is leaving tomorrow to go to the middle east. so that means he's not that concerned. and it also implies they're not going to need mike pence to be an extra vote as a tie breaker in the united states senate. depends on whether this stuff keeps you up at nights, whether this stuff worries you. but the president is going back to his florida club. now it's tim