i'm sure the president is doing the same. right now the dow is in positive territory, up about 130 points after we learned the deal in the senate to end the government shutdown. that does it for me. i am kasie hunts. we have been live here on capitol hill. thank you for watching. deadline white house with my friend nicolle wallace starts right now. >> hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. the great government shutdown of 2018 has ended with the president cast as an extra in the drama that gripped d.c. for the better part of three days. while democrats ultimately gave republicans enough votes to reopen the government, new reporting illustrates that it was only possible if the president relegated to the side lines instead of the center of washington deal making. the washington post reporting that, quote, his closest advisors and allies would like this hide and tweet strategy to continue. privately, some of his closest advisors admit the president is an erratic deal maker who can

unexpectedly overturn negotiations like a flimsey coffee table. the vacillateliing positions on immigration, in a piece titled, quote, the a president not sure of what he wants complicates the shutdown impasse. quote, one thing was clear to both sides of the negotiations to end it. the president was either unwilling or unable to articulate the immigration policy he wanted. much less, understand the nuances of what it would involve. here's the enduring image of the president during the shutdown. no notes, no details, no staff, hat on. all of this said, the white house took a victory lap this afternoon. >> democrats realized that the position that they had taken frankly was indefensible and that they had to focus on first funding our military, protecting border patrol agents, funding

vulnerable children through the c.h.i.p. program. these were things that they didn't disagree with. they agreed with everything that was in the c.r.. the president stayed firm. republicans stayed firm. and democrats i think realized that they had to move past that piece of legislation and so that they could focus on the conversation they are desperate to have. >> let's get right to our reporters and friends. with us from the washington post, ashley parker who has 574 by lines for the weekend. from axios national political reporter jonathan swan who is in the race there, too. republican strategist and msnbc contributor, steve schmidt joins us. and with us at the table kimberly atkins, chief washington reporter for the boston herald who hasn't slept since thursday, msnbc contributor sykes, and politics reporter for the daily beast. ashley, i have to start with just one of your pieces. but i want to read you this. because i'll never unsee this. whether trump remains in his -- this is from your piece from your reporting over the weekend.

whether trump remains in his behind the scenes role is unclear. he's itching to be involved and constantly watching tv according to a white house official. as trump has watched the nonstop television coverage of the shutdown, he has bounced from aides that he will be blamed for the shutdown from asking allowed if he should try to end it to say republicans are in a better position than the democrats. this is how i watch football games. i don't really know how to help. i'm not always sure what i'm rooting for, but i cheer when my side wins. is the president any more involved than what you're reporting from the weekend depicted? >> well, what's interesting is this president was, by all accounts in some reporting we're picking up today, involved behind the scenes. he was making calls and sort of cheering on his staff. but this was a very deliberate strategy by his team to kind of put the president, as we wrote,

in a hide and tweet scenario, which is that he weighed in on twitter, which in this case was actually a more disciplined medium for him. but you didn't see him publicly. and on some level, he is a self-proclaimed deal maker. he was itching for a deal and that's what his staff feared, that he would take any deal, even if it was a deal with, say, the democrats. so, this was an effort by the white house. they had actually -- they exhibited quite good message discipline on this. they had surrogates out there. they had republican leadership saying what they were saying. and one of the parts of that message discipline was keeping the president sort of under the cover of night. >> jonathan swan, how did they sell this to the president? this is really one of his -- there are more than two. tell me. but this is the second big legislative accomplishment for this president. this is the second time his staff has basically had to trick him into watching tv and tweeting instead of being hands on after he bungeled it by being

hands on. who sold this strategy to the president, and who is going to sell it to him now when the verdict is sort of that it worked out for republicans because the president sat in his room and watched tv? >> well, i don't know that we could call this much of an achievement. i mean, they're putting up quite a process to get to another round of negotiations. >> very good point. you know what? very good point. and it's worth pointing out. what happened today basically is that the government stays open. >> right. >> but they achieved nothing. the party who runs everything managed to keep the government open. good point. >> right. and i think the real question that they're asking internally is will they get away with, in the next round of negotiations in three weeks, trump giving amnesty, which he's going to have to give, in exchange for a certain amount of funding to build a partial wall/drone/other

things on the border. forget about all the other stuff. they're not going to get chain migration and all these other things that trump wants. they're hoping that the base, trump voters, will see the wall, hear the wall, trump will call it a wall, and they will be delighted and satisfied by that. but i think that's a very risky strategy. i think, you know, people are smart and they can see what's happening and it just really depends on what that number is the democrats agree with and who kind of wins that p.r. battle. >> steve schmidt, before i get your thoughts on this, i want to tell our viewers the senate is voting now on what jonathan swan correctly fact checks us on, it's not much of an accomplishment. the republican-led senate voting to keep the government open and washington run by republicans from top to bottom. but, steve schmidt, i want to show you something. you and i spent a lot of time with lindsey graham in 2008. and i want to play something that he said about the president on immigration, about what's in his heart, and ask you if you

know what's in the president's heart. let's listen. >> talked with the president, his heart is right on this issue. i think he's got a good understanding of what will sell. and every time we have proposal, it is all yanked back by staff members. as long as stephen miller is in charge negotiating immigration, we're going nowhere. >> do you agree with lindsey graham that donald trump has something different in his heart on immigration than stephen miller? >> i think we've made a big mistake in recent years, nicole, trying to analyze what's in people's hearts. frankly, i don't care what's in donald trump's heart. i care about the outcome. i care what comes out of his mouth. and for somebody who began his campaign talking about the rapists and the murderers coming across the border, saying someone was disqualified from service on the federal bench because they were of mexican descent. from the muslim ban to the moral travesty of charlottesville,

over and over again including the release this weekend of an ad where team trump has fully embraced and embodied the spirit of georgeu wallace from 1968 wih the race baiting anti-mexican ad. republicans would be well to study the races we're familiar with earlier in our careers from california, where the republican party went from the majority party on the minority party on the basis of a race baiting proposition 187 in the anti-immigrant campaign. 187. so, now these many years later the republican party in the state of california is smaller than decline to state registrations. democr demographically what we have led to a embacilic, including the republicans who conceived of the

children's health insurance program say let's pass that, too. why is the government shutting down on two issues that 90% of the american people all support? and on both of them have bipartisan support? just incredible ineptitude by the majority party. it makes us look like a banana republic from abroad, and not for nothing. it does bear mentioning that the defense secretary said in this madness, i can't run the defense department like this. our force readiness is being hurt in a very dangerous world. >> yeah, hans nichols was at the pentagon parking lot watching it empty out this morning which was a troubling thought for a country with so many threats here and around the world. charlie, steve used the word race baiting. you used a different word for this ad. we're not going to play it. we made an editorial decision the ad is too offensive. you called the ad something else. you compared it to what? >> it really is a flash bag to

the willie horton type ads. i think goes beyond the willie horton type ad. this was the republican message, the trump message over the weekend. and that pivot from talking about dreamers, they stopped talking about dreamers and they began talking about illegals and then they began talking about illegals who committed crime and then it's illegals who murder people. then this is the way they frame this issue. and, yes, they did have that kind of message discipline. so, they really did put the democrats in the box here, you know, when they said you are siding with illegal immigrants who might kill people versus, you know, the american government, the american people, the american military. that is exactly the way steve bannon would like to frame this. this is exactly the way trump has framed this immigration issue going back to that original speech where he launched his campaign by talking about mexican rapists. >> how do, donna, democrats -- how do democrats win a public

relations battle without controlling any of the branches of government against what is, as steve and charlie have just described, blatant flagrant racism? >> i think democrats win by continuing to call it out. i mean, there was almost no outcry coming from democrats about the ad that went up as offensive and racist as it was. >> why do you think that was? >> i'm not really sure, to be quite honest. i do think that democrats allowed their message of protecting dreamers and daca recipients who are not that crowd that the republicans keep talking about, and they allowed the conversation to be switched. and i think that for democrats to win on this issue and, quite frankly, it's really difficult for me now to see how it is that our strategy changes so that we win come three weeks from now because, one, we got c.h.i.p., but c.h.i.p. should have been done in october. and so it's really getting very,

very hard to see how we have a message that inspires and motivates our basin stead of ceding to the trump base. >> and, ashley parker, just because you did all this incredible reporting on stephen miller's role in all this, let me ask you to speak directly to stephen miller's role, which you detail a bit in your piece about his relationship to the base, about how contentious things got when steve -- stephen miller tried to take some sort of comprehensive approach where all of donald trump's hard line immigration policies are represented. but it also includes something on daca. talk about stephen miller's role and talk about -- speak to sort of what donna is laying out, which is that this is just as intractable three weeks from today as it was three days ago. >> that's absolutely right. stephen miller has kind of been the man of the moment for should shutdown and the man of the moment when it comes to anything immigration related. and depending on which side of the political spectrum you're on, some people think he's this

villainous darth vader type. people think he's saving us from illegal immigrants. it's complicated. stephen miller is someone who came up in the hard line restrictionist trenches. that's who he is. that's what he did when he worked for jeff sessions in the senate. that's the issue he is devoted to. it's what he cares most about. and it's where his true ideology is. that said, in president trump's white house, he has also proven himself to be a team player and is trying to get this sort of deal the president wants. the image of sort of stephen miller pulling the president to a place where president trump is uncomfortable is not true and overstated. it certainly is true trump has these gut nativist impulses when it comes to immigration and he's also tempted by a deal. and he's sort of conflicting on dreamers. so, whenever he moves to the left, moves to deal with chuck and nancy, it is stephen miller who sort of pulls him back and

reminds him of where the president is and where the president's base is. but it's not quite master puppeteer pulling strings. it is someone more being trump's id and channeling his brain. >> nothing could have sealed stephen miller's fate, as in with donald trump, as stephen miller staying silent as trump annihilated the reputation of jeff sessions on twitter. stephen miller is only in this orbit because jeff sessions brought him into the trump orbit. and when donald trump took to twitter and smeared and slandered jeff sessions, the sitting attorney general, to such a degree that democrats came to his defense, stephen miller was staggeringly stunningly silent. >> he was, he was. he was protecting his own place in the white house in that circle of trust within the president. and i think just seeing how stephen miller is influencing -- and i agree with ashley that he is not a puppeteer, ehe is not

president miller. he is reminding trump what trump wanted to do in the first place. given this fall out with attorney general sessions, who by all accounts in the justice department is carrying out the very nationalistic hard line immigration policies that steve miller and everyone in the white house is pushing, yet they have this personal spat. he's sort of showing that and he's a part of that within the white house. >> bannon, too. >> and bannon, too. but this is all the buck stops with president trump. this is what he campaigned on. this is what he promised and this is what he's delivering. he's not being puppeted here. this is what he wants. >> betsy, how about the cold hard fax about immigration getting lost in all this? you look at crimes committed by the kinds of immigrants that democrats and republicans -- the people that jeff flake and lindsey graham and susan collins and dick durbin are talking about keeping here are 690,000 dreamers brought here as infants or very young children through no act of their own, i believe any statistics available show they commit far fewer crimes,

they get into college at far higher rates. we're not talking about a pool of immigrants that commit violent crimes. the obama administration deported them at record numbers. >> and if you get daca, it means you haven't been convicted of a crime. if you commit a crime, you lose your daca status. by definition, there aren't any dreamers that are convicted criminals, which is why the way that this past weekend played out is so fascinating. and i would imagine heartening for the stephen millers of the world. because over the course of the last three days, we saw national democrats fail to effectively push back against this ad that came out of the white house that was extraordinarily inflammatory. and then spend the weekend talking about how delighted they would be to pay for the wall. that's what stephen miller would have wanted. that's how this has played out. of course you have the reality of fact that daca recipients aren't criminals was totally lost. >> ashley parker, let me give you the last word because you had so much stunning reporting. what do you think is going on in the white house now, mr. president, see what great things can happen when we leave you alone in the bedroom with

the clicker? [ laughter ] >> that is a very good question. it's one i'm trying to figure out. but i do think you're right in that one of the things we heard is they went out in public and on tv so that when the president turned on tv, he saw that things were going well and he didn't feel compelled to go and get a deal with chuck schumer. so, i think, again, as much as the white house is spinning this externally, there is going to be some amount of internal spin about what a good job and how crucial president trump was on ending the shutdown even if he was not really that much in public view. >> you're bursting, charlie. >> obviously that is the irony of all this, the president provided no leadership whatsoever and it actually worked from their point of view. you know, but i think it worked because chuck schumer and the democrats realized they had borrowed ted cruz's play book on all of this. >> from 2013? >> right, that there really was no path for them to win and i know this is not popular in the democratic base, but i do think that chuck schumer made a very, very prudent call here.

a great column in "the new york times" this morning by david leonard who points out, you know what, the republicans -- when the trump republicans decided to racial ize this, they understood they were appealing to the voters who will control congress in the midterm elections. that by making this the military versus illegal immigrants, they were going back to the base, encouraging those trump voters to come back. so, they were arguing this exactly on the grounds they did. and i think the democrats probably had a sense that this was not going to end well. that if they want to win on daca, they need to separate it from the government shutdown just like the republicans realized that shutdown politics generally don't work. >> jonathan swan, you want to get in a last word just on that idea of democrats as borrowing the ted cruz handbook? >> it has, it's become a much hard line party, not just with this. but we saw the 2020 class of democrats come out late last year and say we're not going to fund the gofrmt vernment if it

doesn't have protection for dreamers. we talked about the republican party becoming a more hard line party. the facts are the facts and the democratic party is becoming a much more hard line party with a much more energized base. and, you know, in three weeks' time we're going to see what happens. this is far from resolved, and it's going to get very ugly in about three weeks' time. >> if it takes that long. all right. ashley parker, thank you for joining us. thank you for all of your incredible reporting over the weekend. we're all grateful for it. when we come back, never before have so many russians appeared at so many inaugural events. stunning new reporting about v.i.p. access at trump's inauguration for, you guessed it, russians. and micro managing the fbi, exclusive new reporting about jeff sessions' advice to incoming fbi director chris wray about a purge. also ahead, women rising. they have taken to the streets to march and now they're running for office in record numbers. but despite the changing landscape, news of a republican lawmaker using taxpayer money to settle his own misconduct

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breaking news, the u.s. senate voting now on the final measure to end the government shutdown. all indications are that it will pass. the house of representatives will then vote on ending the shutdown. that is also expected later today. all of this, though, steve schmidt, simply a temporary measure. >> of course, the fighting continues. and at the end of the day, the republicans, nicole, have substantial majorities. they control the house, they control the senate, they control the white house.

and republicans have tied their brand over recent years to shutting the government down. it's always been the case the democrats have wanted to keep it open. so, i think the flip-flop here to all of a sudden the democrats are going to get the blame, i'm not sure that i buy that. but at the end of the day, i think anybody who says from an inside washington, d.c. paradigm, zero sum who won, who lost, who lost is the american people who see another chapter of our dysfunctional government laying out in front of their eyes. and at the end of the day they don't much care for either political party. but the one they detest much more is the one that's in charge. and this does nothing to change the dynamics that i think are building in what looks increasingly like a wave election ahead in 2008. >> what steve describes is a three-prong approach from the weekend white house communications department that goes like this. attack, attack, attack.

here's sarah huckabee sanders questioning the intellect of democratic senator chuck schumer. >> i don't know what's confusing like that. sometimes senator schumer needs help getting through big policy negotiations like that. but the president's laid out what he wants and if they need help understanding that, we'd be happy to send some people over there to explain it to him. >> do you really want to be questioning senator schumer's knowledge of this legislation? >> look, if he's unclear about what the president has laid out, then possibly. >> steve schmidt, can you possibly imagine any scenario where either one of us wouldn't have been fired for calling a sitting senator or reporter for that matter as sarah huckabee sanders did last week with nbc's hallie jackson, stupid? >> just the toxicity of it, the venom, the nastiness, no restraint, no respect for the institutions. she is an assistant to the president of the united states speaking from the white house, with the white house logo in the

background, speaking of the leader of the democratic minority in the united states senate. democracies, republican democracies like ours, they don't function, nicole, so much on rules as they do on norms. it's just another violation of the norms. the norms of decency. politics has always been tough, but that type of nastiness, the derision heaped on a co-equal branch of government from that podium, it's not normal. and we shouldn't treat it as such. this is not something that you saw in the obama administrations or the clinton or the bush administrations. just completely uncalled for, and you would have been run out of there on a rail if you tried that in the george w. bush administration for sure. >> and let me just say, bush was called a lot of tough things. he was called a liar by harry reid. it's than staff doesn't sometimes want to fight back for their boss. we just worked in a place, as

did jim and josh and everyone that's worked in previous administrations and white houses where you knew that the person in the office wouldn't want you to. sanders attack on schumer was one as the nation faced the reality of a shutdown. another one of their strategies, trotting out the troops for political gain. >> despite bipartisan support for budget resolution, a minority in the senate has decided to play politics with military pay. but you deserve better. we're going to demand that they reopen the government. in fact, we're not going to reopen negotiations on illegal immigration until they reopen the government and give you, our soldiers and your families, the benefits and wages you've earned. >> now, wars are political and there is history in this country of the vietnam war was very political, funding for the iraq war which became very unpopular, was very political. but that tactic, i've never seen that before. >> i grew up in the military and i mean, my dad wasn't very

supportive of the vietnam war. but he stood for the commander in chief. and i think that for the white house to use this circumstance and to use our troops as props in their propaganda -- >> standing in front of them. >> requiring them to applaud vice-president pence. i keep describing low moments of this administration. i mean, that was a real low. but sarah sanders talking about the minority leader of the united states senate one of the co-equal branches of government, was just completely unacceptable. i don't know how that begins to set the tone for the negotiations that actually need to take place. >> not helpful. >> over this next -- >> that is not going to be helpful. i thought what vice-president pence did was far more offensive in terms of violating the norms because there is a reason why we separate partisan politics from the military. there is a deep constitutional historical reasons to do that. i actually had to laugh at sarah huckabee sanders, though. you want to talk about the

ultimate projection, questioning chuck schumer -- i mean, her boss is the guy who manifestly is clueless about the details, who has to be basically locked into his bedroom to stay away from all of this. >> and who the staff describes -- >> staff describes as never reading it. mitch mcconnell says publicly we're trying to figure out what the president's position is on this. once again, we have this trumpian projection when you have your own boss as the guy who is not doing it, but again, you know, talk about the way it is not setting the stage for these guys to negotiate in good faith going forward. >> kimberly? >> i think that's absolutely right. i was going to make the point about, you know, mitch mcconnell, sarah huckabee sanders offering to send someone over to the senate to explain it. i think maybe a lot of people on both sides of the aisle wanted somebody to come over and explain exactly what the white house's position was because they didn't know. that's why they made the decisions, we're going to have to do this ourselves. we're going to put a bill forward. we'll see once we send it to the

white house. if it passes, whether it passes or not. really, the president took himself out of this process entirely and nothing for nothing. people in congress don't mind that he took himself out of the process entirely because he has a tendency to foul things up when he's in the process. >> and, jonathan, you're still with us, right? the original sin was donald trump saying in that televised meeting meant to project to the world, how good at governing and legislating donald trump really is, to dianne feinstein's face when she said, you're okay with a clean daca fix? he said, yeah, uh-huh, i am. in that meeting republicans had to reel him back in as fast as they could. so the confusion while sarah huckabee sanders in the clip we showed, would like to place it at schumer's feet, the confusion started with the president, didn't it? >> well, there was a description, i think it was the washington post piece that schumer's people described negotiating with trump as

negotiating with jello. >> it's fantastic, yeah. >> there is truth to that. he says yes often in the room to things that he has a completely different conception of than the people who are saying it. so, yet trump says, yeah, yeah, sure, we'll do the clean daca thing. but in his mind clean meant the wall. he has never relinquished the wall. in 3r50i6private conversations d we have to have the wall, the wall. these people are killers. his core beliefs haven't changed. he's not across the policy as one would need to be to have those kind of conversations. >> especially on television, because we all know they happened and it's not even a he said, she said. becky, i want to ask you about the idea of sarah huckabee sanders performing for an audience of one. that was one thing when it was sean spicer fighting about the size of the crowd. but there is now -- i know you spent the weekend covering what is really a hot war inside the fbi, an agency with nothing less than all of our security, our

children's security in their hands and their ability to focus and not be distracted or made to feel weary by their political fights is at stake. sarah huckabee sanders speaks for the entire administration. every political appointee that donald trump has placed in power, but she also speaks for the u.s. government. and i'm hearing increasingly from other places outside of 1600 pennsylvania avenue that there is not a lot of comfort for the way she uses that podium. >> absolutely. i think a piece of this is important to remember when we talk about the fbi in particular, since 9/11, its main central role has been counterterrorism. that's what the fbi does. so, when we see folks in the white house in the upper echelons of this administration try to essentially work overtime to undermine the fbi to criticize it, whether it's the president himself or devin nunez who heads the house intelligence committee, going gang busters, not only is it a radical break in norms, but something that would be i think difficult for the trump administration ever to

go back on. and this increased radically increased friction between the fbi and the capitol hill and the white house is something that's only going to get worse. >> this is a radical break than what we had planned. i had to pull you into this, jonathan swan. it was your fantastic reporting. you broke the news it was jeff sessions who told chris wray shortly after he was confirmed to essentially purge the comey era leadership from the fbi. these aren't household names, but long trusted people on this mission betsy mentioned. telemundo us who they are and what jeff sessions urged christopher wray to do. >> shortly after christopher wray took over as director, jeff sessions told him, in fairly strong terms i'm told, that he should have a fresh start, which involved getting rid of his deputy director andrew mccabe and the top lawyer at the fbi, james a. baker, among others. basically, get your own people in there. the reason that's important is because andrew mccabe has become

a bit of a lightning rod in this discussion. republicans and the president have turned on him. the president has been tweeting for months now that sessions should get rid of him. largely because he -- well, there are some questionable optics at a very minimum -- >> let's lay it out there. this is a man assassinating his character is one of the grave crimes of the trump presidency. let's say what they are. his wife got involved in domestic politics, which is her first amendment right to do. >> right. >> and is had some political donation. take your time. this is an important one to get right. don't feel rushed. >> no, look, his wife took i think it was half a million from one of the clinton's top allies, terry mcauliffe, while her husband was overseeing the clinton e-mail investigation. it's not great, okay. but -- >> it's not great optics, but there was never -- >> not great optics. i'm not saying that there was a direct -- even people inside the

february fib recognized it was not great optics. putting that aside, the president has been calling for this for months. what we haven't found out, until i reported it, is that sessions has privately been urging christopher wray to clear him out. he's actually quite well respected and liked within the fbi, i'm told. and there's no suggestion that there is any wrongdoing there, but this has been happening for months. >> you've covered him and i know people that have sat in the room with him and describe him as the consummate professional, someone wholly focused on the mission you described, protecting the homeland from threats of terrorism. >> to be fair, that is not necessarily a consensus view within the bureau. right after mccabe became the interim director when comey was fired, colleagues and i spoke with a number of bureau insiders who shared a variety of opinions about him. one person described him to be as cunning, as someone who is very good political sense. so, i have also heard a number of criticisms especially about that half million dollars

donation his wife received for folks in the bureau, for veterans, for a lot of ways with many people that was troubling. the funny thing about this, the trump administration put mccabe in place as acting director and then wray who became director again is somebody from that whole cohort. with comey, close with mueller. in that kmunlt. community. the trump administration has trouble understanding the way folks in the fbi work. >> and how interconnected they all -- some served as u.s. attorneys while others were in d.o.j., in the bureau, others took jobs at the u.s. attorney's office. we'll keep an eye on that story. we appreciate your reporting. we'll keep an eye on the senate floor for the vote to end the shutdown for now. meanwhile, when we come back, more on the russia investigation. eat emperor penguin migration. trekking a hundred miles inland to their breeding grounds. except for these two fellows. this time next year, we're gonna be sitting on an egg. i think we're getting close! make a u-turn... u-turn? recalculating... man, we are never gonna breed. just give it a second.

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we're continuing to follow that breaking news on capitol hill. the senate voting right now on the final measure to end the government shutdown. we're learning just this hour that democratic senators joe

manchin and doug jones went to the white house to discuss the path forward on immigration with the president. that meeting has ended and the senators have departed. if they make any remarks, we'll bring you to them -- bring them to you. but a year ago today the two-day old trump white house was in the middle of a scorched earth mission to convince the country, despite evidence to the contrary, that the crowd at their inauguration was the largest crowd ever. fast forward to this afternoon, and the questions about that day no longer revolve around how many people were there, but who. who was there in particular? the washington post reporting, quot quote, as questions about russia's interference in the 2016 election were beginning to percolate publicly, prominent business leaders and activists from the country attended inaugural festivities mingling at balls and receptions, at times in proximity to key u.s. political officials. their presence caught the attention of counter intelligence officials at the fbi according to u.s. officials, although it is not clear which

attendees drew u.s. government interest. let me start with you, betsy. what about this story seems weird? >> it's just weird to see so many extraordinarily powerful russian nationals close to the kremlin be welcomed with open arms to republican party. >> we've got some pictures. let's start putting them up. tell us who some of -- because some of these names are people we've come to know. i think we have a picture of natalia veselnitskaya. i've worked hard to learn how to say her name. who are they? >> dana rohrbacher is inauguration -- >> the congressman, our moscow. very close with folks in putin's orbit. the fact that he and natalia veselnitskaya were at his event is almost too perfect. if you wrote this in like a fiction people would say this goes too far. >> because? >> because these are the two russians or two russian nationals who were in the june 2016 trump tower meeting where

don junior, paul manafort and jared kushner talked about potentially getting dirt on hillary clinton. at least that's how the meeting was pitched. and now we see this odd couple pop up again, celebrating trump's inauguration. >> steve schmidt, you and i were two of the more senior people in the 2004 reelect. i didn't get good tickets. i think i stood on a press riser and i don't remember going to any balls. what do you make of this story? >> i was just saying if only sean spicer had said back a year ago that it was the largest crowd of russians that had ever been gathered for a presidential inaugural, we could have stayed out of the whole controversy. it's remarkable. >> we'd still be there. >> we have the secretary of defense. we have the secretary of defense this past week saying the united states will continue to be engaged in the anti-terror operations that are taking place all over the world. but our number one national security challenge or great power challenges, meaning russia

and china. and part of that challenge is the information war underway. the information war launched by the russians against this country during the election to undermine the american people's faith in essential democratic institutions. certainly cyber war. when we look at the intelligence activities of our great power competitors, china and russia, we have large parts of the republican party complicit with a television network of conspiracy theorizing alleging that there is a conspiracy afoot against the country in the intelligence services in our law enforcement agencies, subverting the constitution of the united states. and, of course, those dedicated professionals, in fact, are investigating the untoward influence of one of those competitors, one of those great powers, perhaps both of them, russia and china. and what they're doing in the

united states. so, there are very, very serious national security implications. and again, we don't know what robert mueller knows, but we know there's a lot more smoke. there is now a handful of indictments. and there is more and more evidence every day that suggests something is very, very wrong when it comes to the relationships that exist between russians in close proximity to power in the kremlin and senior leaders of this campaign, some of whom are now in the white house. >> some of them are under investigation by robert mueller, as steve said. steve also mentioned china in there. there is some new reporting in the new yorker about jared kushner's role with china. let me put up one of these quotes. i'm going to butcher another name. i never thought i'd have to learn to speak chinese and russian to cover the trump white house. the new yorker writing, jared kushner's china's trump card. frequent encounters with kushner made some people uncomfortable.

on one occasion they metta loan which they considered risky. they excluded the top investigations with cui. he went in utterly unflanked by anyone who could find beijing on a map, a former member of the national security council said. i made some calls about jared kushner. i said, is he stupid? is he malevolent? they said it is a toxic mix of all three that will ensnare him in mueller's web for one of these actions or another. the fact you have the counter intelligence operations of the united states of america dealing with the incoming staff of the white house is just stunning. >> yeah. in any other administration, you would have people in the room taking notes, being very careful -- >> for their own protection. >> exactly, the protection of the united states in these kind of meetings. and so you have this new administration, which granted wants to shake things up and do

things differently. but you have the overconfidence, arrogance, all the things that you mention, of jared kushner to think, oh, i'm meeting with these officials and this is a great thing, and really not having a firm understanding of the risks of doing something like that with a country like china who is a strategic partner, but somebody a country the united states has to keep a careful watch on for counter intelligence. >> jared kushner seems to be at the center of this corruption and cluelessness. we don't know how significant it is, those russians showed up at the inauguration. we don't know if there was active collusion. >> we don't know it's significant -- it's significantly weird. >> what we do know is how aggressively the russians attacked this democracy. we do know how aggressively they tried to penetrate the trump campaign. and we do know that so many people in the trump orbit have lied about their contact and we also know that -- it's been one

year and there has been no concerted push back from this administration in defense of the united states against these ongoing attacks from the russians and the cyberattacks from the chinese. at least at baseline, if this is a serious attack on this country, you would like to see a commitment from the president of the united states and his administration to say, this will never happen again. and the fact that you have the president who denies this, who downplays this, who calls this a hoax, you know, that is a fact. that's incontrovertible. >> general michael hayden, the former cia director calls it the political version of 9/11. it is one of the mysteries. >> exactly. >> jonathan swan, your tease last night had some good nuggets. i'm not going to let you go without telling me about this one. mueller's interest in a mysterious white house visitor, a well connected middle east hands in washington told me they never heard of george nader. i could only find a few people who met him. nobody is quite clear what he does for a living yet he's

someone that bob mueller has chatted with, we think, right? tell us about it. >> yes. so, he's a very curious character, and i have had some contacts from people, some very senior people today in the middle east policy dmunt wcommuo do know him. he's a sort of -- from what i can tell, he's a very strange presence in the white house in the early months, and he was continually going into steve bannon's office. >> of course he was. >> he was constantly talking about all of his high-level connections in the middle east. it's unclear to me how real those connections are, although i am told he does have some connections to nbz. he was sort of constant figure in the white house. people were sort of raising their eyes when they saw him and he became very close to steve bannon. my sources tell me -- two sources familiar with the investigation that he's been to

see mueller twice already. i'm not clear why mueller is interested in him, but both of those meetings with mueller have happened in the last week. but he's been on the scene for quite a long time. apparently he was involved -- he was the publisher of a fairly niche middle eastern magazine in the early '90s and was sort of fliting around the middle east, but had very good access, was interviewing leaders over there. so, he's a very mysterious figure. and when i asked people who were around at the time, they said, oh, yeah, a lot of us were sort of uneasy about this guy. we didn't really know why he was there and what he was doing. >> so, between michael wolff and mr. nader -- [ laughter ] >> steve bannon had a lot of guests hanging out. jonathan swan, awesome weekend of reporting from you, my friend. thank you for sending time with us today. >> that was good. thank you. >> as women take to the streets, questions persist about whether the resistance can be turned into an effective campaign strategy for record numbers of

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and we are still keeping an eye on breaking news from capitol hill. the senate voting now on the final measure to end the three-day government shutdown. it is expected to pass but we'll monitor that for you. women and men marched in huge numbers across the country this weekend. second time since trump's inauguration. protesting the president and his policies. propertiers in austin broke the record for the largest gathering in texas history. and 600,000 people took to the streets in los angeles and now a record number of women are planning to run for seats in congress according to reporting by new york magazine, 390 women say they are running for seats in the house of representatives sh the most at any point in history. the panel here, donna edwards. i don't care if you are a man or a woman or a son or a daughter,

black or -- that is great news. there is our big desperately needed silver lining of the trump presidency. >> it is. and it is enormous. and not just running for congress, but all of these local and state offices. we saw that happen in virginia and new jersey down ballot and we'll see it across the country. an the marches didn't take place on the coast. you pointed out austin and kansas city and montana. and all through the country. and i think this is the sleeping giant of the 2018 election. it wasn't just marching, it is registering voters and finding candidates, it is finding a message and this is really what is going to draw the agenda for 2018. >> and let me just -- let me go there. because there is this sort of debate on social media about whether the women's movement is being covered with the respect it deserves when you care it to the tea party movement. there was wall to wall coverage -- nobody wondered if people could take pink hats and

turn it into senate seats. from the moment the tea party rolled into town, they were a threat note only to obama and the health care bill but a threat to incumbent republicans. why isn't the women's movement taken as seriously as the tea party movement. >> this administration is taking a lot of oxygen out of the bandwidth of coverage possible. there are more reporters here in washington than in the past but there are only so many places we can be at one time. buff at this point, as donna said, the point in this movement with women is the point of action. this isn't just people marching in the streets. these are people registering people to vote. these are people holding the line to their -- in their local and regional elections about the issues that they care about. these are people who are going to end up on the ballot and then once that happens, i think we'll see a shift there. from the beginning with the tea party you had at least some people in congress who could bang that drum. >> latched onto it. >> right. it was stronger to start with. the more you see this build up

and become a part of the political landscape you will see more. >> you saw that in wisconsin in the special election in the senate seat in northwestern wisconsin, the republicans held for a long time in a senate district that donald trump won by 17 points. the democrats took it. and from the republicans that i've talked to and by the way they are pretty upset about it, they say that what they are seeing is a really significant loss of support, particularly among educated suburban women and particularly independent women and that is really got them concerned. particularly in metropolitan areas and the suburban areas. so the women's vote is already gotten the attention of a lot of folks. and it is actually did flip that one key legislative race. >> it flips -- you could call them security moms in 2004, the campaign steve and i worked on but you can't win a presidential election without them. let me ask you about this idea that republicans think they have any way of not losing this vote while they are still

revelations -- gop lawmaker removes from edge mcs panel after settlement. and a pennsylvania republican is taken a leading role in fighting sexual harassment in congress. using thousands of dollars in taxpayer money after a former aide accused him last year of making unwanted romantic overtures to her. so the hypocrisy aside -- well, let's not and that and plus unlike what kristen gillibrand what -- forcing al franken to resign. but they still have problems. >> there are still a lot of outstanding problems. and those issues are a bipartisan one. it is not just republicans with that issue. when we talk about the women's vote, it is important to remember that trends are not just about gender, white women still significantly in sizable majority support the republican party. a majority of white women in alabama voted for roy moore and

voted for donald trump despite what we learned about him over the campaign. that is an important piece. and the democrat party historically gets demolished in midterms. in 2014 they lost of the senate and in 2016 they lost the house. and part of the reason for some it has been challenging for cover is we don't know how it will play out for the midterms. then enthusiasm would make you think it will make a difference. but it is an open question. >> it already has. >> on the meehan thing, democrats called for and got the resignation for con con jers as represent meehan. he needs to be out of congress. >> steve, schmidt, the last word on a big broad question, trust. >> well, we live in an era, nicolle, where trust is completely collapsed. i'm the vice chairman of adelman p.r. firm and we do the largest study in the world, 33,000

interviews over 28 countries and what we've seen this year is a cataclysmic drop in trust in the united states in the eyes of the american people about their ins tul -- institution and government and business and globally the eyes of the world on america. brand america now falls between spain and italy and when we look at people from around the world we rank slightly higher than russia and just below china as we see trust in america decreasing, we see trust in china rising as a global proposition. so when we talk about who is winning and losing at the shutdown, it is the american people who are losing. and when we evaluation what is going on in the country in these marches, at the one year mark you have a president mired at 32% approval levels. hundreds of thousands if not millions of people marching in the streets. and the government shutdown. that is not a recipe for a win.

it may be in washington, d.c., but not out in the real country. >> and right now as you are speaking the senate voted 81-18 to end this three-day shutdown. my thanks to kimberly atkins and charlie psychs donna edwards and betsy woodward and steve schmidt. i'm noke ole wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now with katy tur in for chuck. >> congratulations on the new york times interview, it was wonderful. great to be your colleague. >> if it is monday, the shutdown is ending. but for how long? >> tonight america is opening for business once again. >> the aye's is 81, the noes are 81. >> the democrats give in ending the government shutdown but only temporarily. >> you don't do that unless you have an emergency. and this wasn't an emergency. >> now can lawmakers get past their trouble with trust and resolve the daca dilemma? >> t