mcconnell is going to have any plans to make comments here at the stroke of midnight. here is your government, here is the united states senate as we come up on now five seconds to go until midnight and the government shutdown. when our digital clock clicks when the time elapses as soon as we get that running. the moment seems to have past without a sense of moment in the senate chamber, as it will affects some elements and employees of the federal government starting right now but it is not as an immediate matter affecting these lawmakers who are still in the middle of it. jonathan and i are sitting in new york craning our necks to see who's speaking now and who's in on all these conversations, john n jonathan. >> yes, i can read to you, the press secretary just put out a statement about what the events

we are seeing here in the senate. it reads, senate democrats own the schumer shut down. tonight they put politics above our national security, military families, vulnerable children and our country's abilities to serve all americans. we'll not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while immigrants hold our lawful citizens hostage over their demands. this is the behavior of obstructionist loosers. during this politically manufacturing the schumer shut down, the president and the administration will fight for and protect the american people. certainly that's a hard line and oppositional stance, they have been telegraphing for days and trying to blame democrats and particularly schumer for the shutdown. this was a statement by the press secretary, i will notice the obstructionist losers, sounds like a quote from the

president himself. we have not heard from him in a couple of hours since his last tweet, he noted the negotiations were not going well. i assure it is a matter of time whether it is later this evening or early tomorrow morning where he will weigh in with similarly tough language for democrats. >> again, we are making a sweeping assumption about our audience at this hour. we are just after midnight, you see john cornyn realizes the same thing and looking at his grass. chuck grassly on the far left have been on his iphone and here comes lyndsey graham emerging from his group of democratic friends and wanting to approach, it looked like mitch mcconnell who's standing, portman from ohio was walking with graham. he's going to reporter to his republican friends. the democrats now, who do you see there, jonathan? >> is that schumer leading in the middle?

i cannot quite make out. >> schumer is still seated and i cannot tell until they give us a better shot on senate tv who's making that point. but, the conversation has gone back and forth, you still see senator jeff flake in the blue suit with his back to us. republicans remain in the democratic tree house there. garret is our man outside in the hallway. what activity if you see outside? >> reporter: i was outside watching this whole thing of graham developing of this back and forth negotiations. there is a group of p ares who have been involved of immigration reform circling around that conversation, jeff flake that you mentioned, john cornyn was coming over at times

to listen in. graham's opponents over this week, tom cotton and david purdue across the while having their own miniature huddle with some other republican members as they try to work out what could be the goldielocks' deal today. this 30-day c.r. is just too long. that was too short. what the conversation has been about to the best that we can tell is the length of time to allow and try to keep the government open. it appears earlied earlier on f smoke signal that we used around here, when mitch mcconnell came to his desk, when we start to see movement that there would be an actual speaking on the senate

floor which has been stalled since this vote's stalled. now, you have schumer who's going to be the person giving the signals to democrats as to anything of lyndsey graham or their colleagues brought to them is something they can trust. schumer was the only room in with the president secretary of defense of their two men and their respected chief of staff. so much of the hang up is on the issue of trust of the threshold into the midnight

hour. the government is for all intents and purposes shut down right now. but the outlines of this conversation and i'm watching flake now talking to some of the more hardliner folks in his own caucus suggest that there is something in the works here. they're not leaving this vote open by accident. we're going to see some kind of action pretty soon here. >> garrett, that's what we noticed. v it was van hollen last speaking forcefully to chuck schumer. flake and corker, two of the other scouts who went over to the enemy camp are now joining graham. you have portman there but do cocker of arkansas has called more of this tune than most people probably would have liked in the past couple of days and he's been part of the problem

getting to a finish, getting to a solution. >> and graham and cotton were going back and forth at each other through the media. when i interviewed lindsey graham this morning, he said tom cotton was turning into the steve king member of the senate. he said his immigration views, cotton's immigration views were a nonstarter. and tom cotton does not talk to television cameras. today he sought out the cameras. back to the idea that cotton is more in line with what the president ran on, candidate trump's immigration policy and cotton intends to hold the president to these but if

lindsey graham and tom cotton or talking about the contours of anything that has to do with immigration, again, something is in the works. >> i think that's officially a mosey over to the republican side of the u.s. senate. this moment cries out for a learned, smart man. luckily we have one standing by to talk to us, an author and presidential historian john meacham. if you were writing a book, oh i don't know, "profiles in courage" tonight would there be anything after the foreward? >> kennedy used to say there's a reason why it was one volume in terms of the prevalence of courage. it occurred to me this is what a government would look like without a president. this is what a parliament system might look like. that might be too harsh on

parliamentary systems. here we are a year in, almost to the hour and there is this curious absence of presidential leadership in terms of bringing a couple of very fundamental issues in the life of the country to a head, to a decision. and i think this is a video -- i was thinking about walter badge et who was the founder of "the economist." he defined two sections of popular government, that there's a dignified element, which is the monarchy in britain but the presidency and its majesty here when we have that, and the efficient. england of course is the parliament and the government itself. one of our strengths as hauls

been that we've combined the two. i think heading into year two, if you look at dignified and efficient as two categories for leadership, i think we're 0 for 2. i think that's one of the reasons you're going to see public confidence numbers, isn't this what people hate about washington? >> bingo. that's exactly right. and it doesn't matter who has 51 and who has 49 seats. that's exactly right. the other irony here is this is the reason an unconventional candidate like donald trump became president. it was the sense that washington couldn't get its act together. there was one shutdown on president obama, there was the

but when you combine these fiscal cliffs, this kind of -- it's almost loony tunes, bugs bunny, road runner meets -- hard to believe it's been 22 years since that happened. but that was a real question. the newly empowered majored took the issue to the country. so speaker gingrich and the revolutionaries of that era said, okay, if you really don't want it, let's see if you can live without it. and the best blintd. >> they wasn't but they will --

this will be one more instance in a large pageant of inefficiency and ineffectiveness. >> pictures like this make it look about -- let's face it, we have groups of legislators who but for a few physical features kind of all look the same and they kind of all came up in the same way in this country. here we are deciding and i hate to keep referencing isn't it?

there's a disconnect in the popular mind. and i suspect almost everybody on that floor, almost everyone in that picture would make a compelling case that, oh, it's more complicated than you think. that's fair enough, most things are. but they're hired to go to washington and make the institution work. some of them are hide -- hired to reform it, some are hired to perpetuate it. >> we can argue all day and we will for the life of the republican about the extent of that saebment, whether that should bay pb we have ascented

to this notion that it's a vital part of the republic, to run to these cliffs and have deadline wisdom, you know, you would have told your kid, i would tell my kids if you wait until midnight to start your paper, it's probably not going to be a very good paper. that's what we're catching right now is a lot of term babies. >> give everything my best, john. we're stuck sfwrrn lindsey graham was just seen mouthing "what's going on?" so i ask the same question of you. >> i hope we find in a few mimms. charles schumer had been

stationed a few feet away for a long bpt. he is standing near mcmcconnell. >> listening is what is potentially to be discussed and then announced. turner has turned back and move away from his counter lek tern. >> now, manila folders are being old. this is a full-on scurry, sfrj i

guess here comes flake for another orbit. but it looks like bem mcconnell just voted no. the vote was open until the marriage leader et. >> any senators wishing to change their vote? the yeas are 50 and 49. three first of the centers not havesi build the green to. >> i had a social a part of the

statement of the white house press secretary tonight, presumably on behalf of the administration, simply says we will not negotiate the status of unlawful immigrants while democrats hold our lawful citizens hostage oaf their reckless demands. that appropriately represents the white house view where we are and, mr. president, what we have just witnessed on the floor was a cynical decision by senate grasp to the emment, all because senate democrats choice to filibuster a nonkert.

>> i need nothing they do, not support. perhaps across the aisle some of our b democratic colleagues are feeling proud of themselves. but what has their filibuster accomplished? what they're very own government shutdown. >> shutdown effects on the american people will come as no surprise. all week as we've stood on the floor, begged our colleagues to come to their senses, senate republicans have prescribed exactly what this elooj sflrks and for the families of fallen

heroes, it may wellmean a surprise on survivor death spch addition, the same is true. thanks to low-income families wi will, if i'm having trouble understanding which one of these jowl comes in my didn't comment in lore a time.

ing nor including seven democrats who wrote congress sfwrrnl sfwrrnl ignored the needs of the american money alll . it hostage over the completely unrelated issue of they held all of it who is hajj over the completely unrelated issue of little sfrks of we can pass it tonight if we go to the president for signature. these kids would be okay. well, we're going to continue to do all we can.

we'll vote again so the american people knows who stands for them and when our friend across the we'll be to to nonch. almost everybody on both sides doesn't staunt how we ended up here. because most of this stuff we agree on. well, there's only one reason respended up here. the shoe horning of illegal immigration end it's not like

nobody ased in that. we been ukingstwrrk sfchl this issue is the key to getting defense spending and help for kids and on and on and on. and i think most of american people believe that shutting down the government over this issue with, which doesn't even ripen until march, is her responsible. i've zwrus and the government may be heading into sh spchb

snrch sfrchl. >> the democratic leader. >> mr. president, very sadly we are on the precipse. it's not just republicans who opposed this c.r., several republicans did as well. all day we have endeavored to

reach an agreement with president trump and republicans that would have not only spared a government shutdown but cemented an agreement on spending caps, including those for our military, the health care issues, disaster relief and immigration issues. president trump reached out to me today, this morning, to invite me to the white house to talk all of these issues over. and i accepted. we had a lengthy and substantive discussion. during the meeting, in exchange for strong daca protections, i reluctantly put the border wall on the table for discussion. even that was not enough to entice the president to finish the deal. many democrats don't want to go that far on the border. many republicans don't either. but we were willing to compromise with the president to

got an agreement this afternoon in my heart, i felt we might have a deal tonight. that was how far we'd come. that's how positive our discussion felt. we had a good meeting. but what has transpired since that meeting in the oval office is indicative of the entire tumultuous and chaotic process republicans have engaged in in negotiations thus far. even though trum seemed to -- president trump seemed to like the idea of a party, he did not press his constituents to accept it. what happened to the president

trump who asked to us come up with a about he backed off at the first sign of pressure. we have the outline of a deal on caps, we have the outline of a deal on health care. we had the outline of a deal on immigrati immigration, the toughest issue. it was really, it was sfrrks but the dynamic of the past few weeks, during which the congressional republicans look to the president for guys and and prevailed nenthe same division and discord on the

republican side that's been in the background of these negotiations for months unfortunately appears endemic. it is standing in the way of bipartisan solutions. to all of the issue no before us. the it's their job to work with us on way to move things forward. but they didn't reach out once regard brshand it's their responsibility to govern and

here they have failed. several republicans voted against the c.r., as well as crash for the same we voted against it. one of the most serious consequences of having continuing resolution after continuing resolution is the damage it does to our military. as the pentagon spokesman said last night, another c.r. would be wasteful and destructive to our military. the navy secretary said that because of crs, the navy has put $4 billion in the trash can, lashed hull the republicans know it, democrats know it.

the morn people of this party is not capable. so where do we go from here? i know their hearts are in the right place. i know they la minutement the fax where brinksmanship is bi. >> now all of this problem is because republican leadership can't get to yes because president trump refuses to. mr. president, president trump, if you are listening, i am urging you please take yes for an answer. the way things went today, the

way you turned from a bipartisan deal, it's almost as if you were rooting for a shutdown. and now we'll have one. and the blam should. >> this will be called the trump sfrrnl the trump shutdown because there is no one -- no one who deserves the blame for the boggs so very quickly in which i even put the gorter wall on the table. >> what will it take to to team

snk of the chaos he's unleashed on our government. instead of pulling ut all together, he's pulled us apart. instead of governing from the middle, hoose outsourced his presidency of the state dreams. he's been the single drive and for the in scuttling in pr they're driving our government to a halt, a trump shutdown. democrats will continue to drive for a? i know there are men and women

of goodwill on the other side of the how, who is just as squup set as i am with the direction we headed in. i preed with them to see reason to give us this space to parkand eager to clinch it. there is a path forward. tomorrow. the president and the four leaders should immediately sit down and inish this deal so the entire government can get whack to work on monday. mr. mcconnell: i commend the

>> let's just see what's going to happen here. i believe there's rebuttal. >> that voted not to shut the government now. a news center out of. is he there were five kraj sfrchl the so i won't to particularly commend the five democrats to stand sfwrk in an

incredible predeckment pause as the without justnd kated, he's not go toso this particular strategy has illuminated on the thing that shut the government done hope. actually, you month flsks n ptd. >> how does this get them what

they're looking for? well, we'll continue to talk because when all the games stop, the issues are still there, every single one of them are still there. the american people expect us to act like adults, to get together and solve the problems. now, i'll be offering an amendment to change the date to february the 8th. we'll unfortunately not be able to get that vote tonight, but i'll be subsequently asking for a consent, but at some point here, we'll be voting on february the 8th, and that's the date that the senator from social security, senior senator from south carolina and have i been talking about, the democratic leader and i have been talking about, which begins to move a little bit closer to where our friends on the other side said they wanted to be but

a reasonable period of time it takes into account the state of the union, party conferences and just the amount of time it takes to tutsily write a bill and so a reasonable period to first degree and then write and get ready to pass, this negotiated settlement that we've been working on for months, february the 8th is a very reasonable time. and so i'm going to give -- i hear the sentiment o for that on both sides of the aisle. i hope so at some point. we'll vote on that option. i can't get that vote tonight but i'm going to ask consent to

get that vote tonight. i move, mr. president, to table the motion to refer. >> as for the yeas and nays? >> is there a sufficient second? >> there is. >> there is? >> the clerk will call the roll. >> mr. alexander. >> aye. ms. baldwin -- >> all right, so we're sitting here with jonathan la mere as we see some of the senators head to the cloak room. what just happened was mitch mcconnell said let's keep things running until february the he also suggested we allow the appropriate time for people to meet and going forward on the deal. certainly, though, there is not much in the way of bipartisanship on display it right now.

both senator mcconnell and senator schumer suggested that the american people deserve better. it certainly seems that iming. >> he sat down with president trump, he suggested he even put the border wall on the table, an idea that many democrats opposed. he seemed to indicate that he thought that president trump was willing to accept the deal to come up with a daca solution in exchange for that wall, in exchange for the funding to keep the government going. if that is indeed the scenario that occurred today, then this would be the second time that

only to get cold feet, to back away from that deal each time. the first was just john kelly and stephen miller and others suggested you can't do this proufr. he's time and time again prj. and that's kim berlin atkins, chief washington reporter for the "boston herald" and an msnbc contributor. well, kimberly, what do you make of your government at work right about now? >> yeah, i think it's really extraordinary. i think the fact that we got to the point of a shutdown was not that surprising, but for the white house to first immediately come out and declare that it would not negotiate at all during the duration of the shutdown, which really undercuts

efforts by democrats to sort of force the negotiation over the weekend if the government sh shutwas another deal in the making according to senator schumer that, again, fell apart after a period of time in which senator schumer left the office and sometimes later that the white house indicated there would be no deal, even with the wall being offered. it seemed pretty clear even from the beginning of all this that this is -- the ball is in donald trump's court. he is the one who is the negotiators, he's one who says that's his claim to famehe was in the position it grin prk, if it seems he's either walked away

from it or done something to torpedo it and now he's saying that the ball's in his court but he's not going to play at all. it's really an extraordinary series of events we seen their folds here. f we'll give food and cots but we're not leaving there until you make a deal for us. we sent you there after all. >> i think there is something to that sentiment. as long as the government stays shut down, it fuels the idea that there is a duel that stay your type here, that people need to be able to go to or go to

work and actually get paid for it. we don't want to see gold star families stop receiving benefits and all of these things would befall that. i think this is bad for everybody in congress with the republicans at the mel many and this anti-watch sentiment really going against mitch mcconnell, paul ryan and i think now the preside president. >> kim bert atkins, one of our friends around here and a veteran journalist. thanks so much for being with us. let's bring on jonathan allen, national political reporter. jonathan, what about the imagery of tonight? this was supposed to be a glittering evening in mar-a-lago. the president's departure time posted last night from today for the white house lawn was 4:10

p.m. that assumed this would all be done and dusted and he would have kind of a celebratory flight down to florida to celebrate the anniversary of his inauguration that was not to be. >> what's striking to me, brian, is we have a president who has been so good at telling us he was going to do things he's never seen before and he's fulfilled that promise and the senate was like, here, and all of this milling about, the set of senators that were um p huddled around lindsey graham as though he was moses bringing the tablets down to give law, i've never seen anything quite like that. you've got these conflicting interests but house republicans seemed to have a lot to lose here with a government shutdown.

the president seems to have a lot to lose here with the government shutdown and the senate's a little bit more of a mixed bag. you've got a lot of democratic incumbents up in states that trump won. the politics in the senate are just a little tougher to read. but it not good for anybody in washington, d.c. right now and then quibbling whether it's . what they're voting on right now is so far beyond my own comprehension. maybe that's part of the problem. it's mike lee, sindcy marco rubio. interesting cocktail party gathering. just off the floor. and that's one of several going on. none of it ever amounts to anything, but they're interesting conversations to

watch. >> must be nice to be a senator there at 12:45 in the morning with nothing better to do than joke around with your friends. the government has shut down now. it doesn't look like there will be any reprieve for that, at he has space said from so potential immigration tales deals. he's now saying he won't talk about -- that's a similar position that president obama took during the 2013 government shutdown, that the republicans were going to have to capitulate before he negotiated on initial else. that's not terribly usual to find that as an open position at the without. it does not.

>> procedural speaking what they've done is senator o'way deep in the procedural weeds. >> i see you did better than i could. and one last point, which requires from you the kind of what have we learned a year later answer. and that is this -- a year ago sean spicer was spitting angry at the press corps about it having been the largest audience for an inauguration ever snrnl with hats and shirts a different color, filling the streets of cities and towns in our country.

we're going to have more of that tomorrow. we had inaugural festivities under way in washington. what a long, strange trip it's been. >> brian, you tick off the days every night on the show and it seems like it's been a thousand more of them that we've actually had with each of these turns. president trump campaigned on cleaning up a dysfunctional washington and what we see right now is a dysfunctional and broken washington. >> i think that sadly should be your last word. while it's not jop david jolle remains with us. now that is kind of dusty and do the arei think what we're seeing

is -- they're orchestrating a three-week delay, ryan will have a snoon. the reality is what we heard from mcconnell and shum and john meacham -- donald trump might be the president of the united states who most quickly got to preside over a government shutdown in one year. the second thing that we also have to look at is snort kennedy, your colleague. i think that's we're watching tonight.

sometimes wisdom comes out of the state of louisiana. we'll end that on you. erika werner has surely chosen the night shift tonight for "the washington post." she's just off the floor. erika, what have you seen that kind of fills in the picture of what we've been covering on the floor tonight? >> well, as you heard senators schumer and mcconnell speak there just after the vote, this is be, and so how long it ends up lasting and maybe it will be just a couple of days and maybe it will be longer, but it will

depend largely on who is winning that public relations battle. >> and in that public relations battle, look at imagery. as i keep saying, the proposed imagery of the night was the president and this is the reality, this is the stone cold, late at night, grinding to a halt rgs of had. >> yeah, it's pretty amazing. and speaking of imagery, something that the administration is trying to folks on is to kind of play down images of the shutdown that they think that the obama administration exacerbated during the 2013 shutdown to make it kind of seem worse than it

actually was, having very visible barriers outside of washington parks, that sort of thing. it's not clear how successful they'll be at that sort of things because they don't seem to be particularly organized or well prepared for what is n nowwhat to you are the most major, visible aspects in would we see anything shutting down, grinding to a halt, other than not being able to visit the smithsonian a smithsonian what are we going to see tomorrow? that's the pair docks i kol that

can be a writ large, stay open. there's not much of anything you can point to what happened at midnight when the owe. >> that will be up to the trump administration to decide whether to do that, and given their attitudes toward the federal bureaucracy, we'll have to choose not to. >> and erika werner, she is congressional reporter, thank you for staying up with us and

reporting for us from the capitol building. something else that has happened tonight, highly unusual. here he we're and we're going to continue our conversation with jonathan just on the other side as we covering what is now 53 minutes into the first government shutdown of 2018 and the trump era.

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republican leadership can't get to yes because president trump refuses to. mr. president, president trump, if you are listening, i am urging you please take yes for an answer. the way things went today, the way you turned from a bipartisan deal, it's almost as if you were rooting for a shutdown and now we'll have one and the blame should crash entirely on president trump's shoulders. this will be called the trump shutdown because there is no one, no one who deserves the blame for the position we find ourselves in more than president trump. >> so the position we find ourselves in at this hour is this -- if you're a civilian contractor to the military, even

if you're in harm's way tonight, you're furloughed, you're not going to get paid and a lot of the folks in that room are sorry about that. as we've been saying, if you're a flu researcher at the cdc, we'd love to have you stay on the job but we just can't pay you. if you're waiting for disaster relief in puerto rico where 40% of the folks are still waiting for power, that's part of the funding we're waiting for as well. and if you're a daca kid, waiting for relief, the quote for you tonight from the minority leader, "it's not like nobody's interested." jonathan, we're the customer and bosses of these politicians are concerned, not a whole lot of satisfaction to send home to the folks. >> i can't imagine there are many factions tonight.

he will be in washington with no public event scheduled. could there be private negotiation? we will see. certainly this is a shutdown that the reprieve could come soon but they were dug in particularly over they could certainly stay there and as we've been noting all night, the remarkable timing this comes on the first year of this presidency, the first year of the trump administration, what a way to start season two of the trump in a few days time to give

the state of the union, that will be an interesting time as well. our live coverage continues here. ali velshi is standing by to pick up the next shift. ali? >> we been watching the senate floor where republican leader mitch mcconnell and democrat being leader chuck schumer have just spoken after a vote on a bill to continue funding the government failed. but it was held open for nearly two hours as senators appeared to continue negotiations. we saw mitch mcconnell and chuck shum a schumer leave the senate cham s chambers and then come back. and then