thank you to everyone, that does it for our hour, "mtp daily" starts right now. >> how are you doing, nicole? >> just another tuesday. >> head above water. if it is tuesday, we know that bob mueller is getting closer for a sit down with the president. tonight, are we nearing the end of the muler probeller probe. new reports indicates he wants to interview trump in the coming weeks. plus, did the entt d of the shut down start with senator mcconnell? >> this is "mtp daily" and it starts right now.

good even, welcome to "mtp daily." we have some breaking news on the social council investigation. the president could end up sitting down with bob mueller in weeks according to the washington post. mueller's team already shat down with a member of the president's cabinet and the president's top antagoni antagonist. we learned all of this today while he calls for changes in the fbi, the allegation tasked with investigating him. we have to follow all of this in the hour first. they claim that mueller wants to question the president in the coming weeks about his decisions to fire mike flynn and former mbi director james comey. that doesn't mean that's the only thing his investigation is about, but we know that is at least part of it. also new information about what a presidential interview could entail.

speaking of -- in at least the obstruction of justice part of things. muellers team has already interviewed comey, detailing his interactions with the president. the attorney general says the first member of the president's cabinet was interviewed just last week for hours. sessions was a campaign surrogate. that would make some sense. axios is reporting that they're pressuring christopher ray to fire andrew mccabe, and that ray threatened to resign if he was removed. >> did christopher ray threaten to resign? >> no. >> he did not threaten?

>> no, not even a little bit. >> thank you, everyone. >> are you concerned about leadership at the fbi. >> the white house is denying the story, but in their denial they released a statement calling comey and other fbi officials politically motivated and said they appointed director ray to "clean up the conduct at the highest level. that's what some might see as a conservation vailed in denial. if it is true, this is the president who is being investigated demanding changes to the fbi while the agency investigations his campaign. let's dig into this a little bit. i want to square in on this first. start me with the mueller interview news which is it says weeks.

but have been told if he sits down with the president, it is a sign that the investigating part of him is over. >> sorry, in december, doesn't it feel like a year ago? it was only a few wooks. when we first reported on this we were told by several legal experts that if the president is getting sbur viewed this is a sign it could be wrapping up. keep in mind that george hw bush was part of it, and this thing is moving really quickly. sessions was interviewed for hours last week and now we know that trump's lawyers have been squaring off with how to set parameters and hours for a

interview with the president of the united states. >> what are some of those parameters. i have gone through with others before, how bill clinton did it. he appeared before the grand jury on video, got to keep his lawyers. what are the different ways they're couching this? what are the ideas about making this interview happen? >> two of the things i heard in my reporting that both of the lawyers for the president are interested in, is figuring out when there is a lot of record already, meaning e-mails and documents and memorandum. when there are already a lot of documents available on a particular period of history. can the president please answer some questions about this in writing. can he make a written submission for some portion of the interview. and can he will interviewed face to face with the investigators for another portion that is maybe not as well documented and really goes to the heart of what president was thinking and

deciding. and which may not be rendered in an e-mail or record as you know the president doesn't use e-mail. >> what is your sense of what the special council side wants? i think we understand the motivation, but they don't want him walking into a perjury trap. >> absolutely, roger stone 208d me klieg today on the record that he would strongly advise president trump to not fall into a perjury trap. why were you planning on firing michael flynn.

micha was there something else with the story? was it publishing that same week that showed that flynn had not been hoppest with the fbi about this information. >> i want to put up a grapeic here. all of the folks around the president that talked to the special council, i think we have comby, sessions, in all of those cases, with the exception of kushner, the issue of flin's dismissile and the comey interactions there. i would assume the president's team wants to know what mike flynn said more than any of them. >> it strikes me what they told

bob mueller is very familiar. imagine a scenario are he explained the conversations he had with the president before he spoke to the russian ambassador and after, things that we don't know much about right now. >> all right, thank you very much. i know we have more leads to follow. i'll let you go do your job. >> thank you, chuck. >> joining me now, a senior fellow at brookings. and now an nbc and msnbc political analyst. let's start with significance, that we're closer on the -- is that part of the investigation

coming to a close. i think there is two possible, maybe more. one is to say you interview the pl at the end of an investigation. think of the obstruction investigation as a relatively discreet part of the muller investigation. we know he interviewed comey and jeff sessions that were other principals in these interactions and he wants to interview the president that the mueller investigation it wrapping up. the order way to look at it is that this is a mess of a investigation, and sometimes you do the interviews in the middle of things, get people on the record and see what opens up. >> is there possible that there are three or four separate sub parts of the investigation.

you have -- how many separate narrow investigations could there be under this umbrella of mule mueller. >> ken star had a similar issue, right? >> he had totally different discreet investigations. he had the under lying white water matter, the monica lewinsky matter -- >> he could close one out and still have others open? it is more sbe traited than that. there are three or four

investigations. the trance actions that we have they have clearly taken a look at. the transactions that involve large amounts of the investigation. they are presumably separate clusters of material. the bad acts by individuals that are associated with the campaign. paulman fort gets indicted. >> they found crimes, right. the other people that are prosecuted are both charged with lies to the investigators. the final element is the obstruction stuff. i think you can think of them as

four discreet baskets. >> we have the president denying that christopher ray threatened a resignation, but it is in the denial. a white house statement sort of reaffirmed this idea that the president does want to change the senior leadership. does that statement in itself reinforce the charge? like the analysis here? >> whether or not it is obstruction or not is a criminal question, and i think that is probably the wrong rubric. the right rubric is this is an unacceptable way for the president do be interacting with the senior law enforcement leadership. we know that the president is demanding andy mccabe's head because he tweets about it on a regular basis. he evidently hates andrew

mccabe, and the reason seems to be that it is because he is married to a democrat. i am also married to a democrat. >> who once stood next to terri mc, cauliff. >> i have never seen -- it is mccarthyism. >> it is appalling how the president reaches down in the bureaucracy to attack a career fbi agent. it is an astonishing thing. it is astonishing that it is not more scandalous. >> it's astonishing that more people are not astonishes. >> i think we learned something very important about chris ray last night when axios broke the

story. that is that this is someone who at the end of the day is working to protect the institutional indi integrity of the fbi. i'm not going to sit here and say i support everything he has done, but i think that was a very encouraging thing. >> how do you view these text messages that feel like they're becoming a mythical holy grail of missing information that some of the president's supporters are hoping it will prove that it's the clintons that creating this whole thing. >> i have no reason -- government documents do not always get preserved as they're supposed to be preserved. i have no doubt that, you know,

if messages disappeared that are supposed to be available, we should find out what happened there and verify there is no misconduct in those messages. the story here is not about peter and i will -- lisa. this is a moment to distract for what this is about. >> good to have you here, great to have you on board here. >> thank you. >> and we'll have you onset more. >> the other story we would have been focused on today. the democratic base is outraged on how their party's leadership is the cause of the shut down.

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welcome back, the senate's top democrat chuck schumer spoke today. they say he did not get much in return for stopping the shut down yesterday. one group called him "the worst negotiator in. washington." that is saying something these days, schumer had a message for his base. keep the faith. >> we have a commitment from senator mcconnell and we have renewed momentum. we're going to keep fighting and we think we'll have a great victory. >> we'll have more on the brewing we bellon in the party including "do some democrats fear the gop's base more than their own? we're come back with more on today's russia developments.

>> is the president saying that

james comey lied. >> the president has been public about this. i want to be clear. >> i understand he has been public about it and there is nothing else to ad. >> welcome back, let's bring in our panel and current cnbc reporter sarah fagan. and ruth marcus, all right, we have these days of the russia story where you're like this feels bigger than most and mueller being weeks away from having an interview with the president feels like a big deal, but we have been here before, and then we think probably another month or two months. >> a series of developments, and i think this is something that

mueller wants to get out of the way, check all of the evidence that he can for the obstruction of justice. because of things that the president has said. thinks the president tweeted that would raise the question of the question. it is an extremely difficult thing to prove. the law and there is a lot that needs to be collected. >> take me in the white house a little bit. i think in the scooty libby investigations and all of that. take us behind scenes. >> they say it is not distracting, there is an element that is true, you're so busy as you're going through your day you don't realize it is really very distracting.

it plays on people's stress, the attention that you experience on other issues, and that where you're seeing it. some of these things play out in the press, maybe that aid was question questioned about it, and no one knew about it, and they're under norm stes enormous stress. >> how did george w. bush deal with patrick fitzgerald. >> that is not one they was ber viewed in, but my superiors were. we tried to do as the trump team is trying to do, isolate, compartmentalize it. >> did you have someone in house in charge of it? >> yes, they are dealing with the outside investigators, but toward the end there was multiple negotiations and this

administration i think will face many more investigations before the end of their term. >> to me, today is the day that maybe president trump didn't know it was coming because he told us a few weeks ago saying there was no collusion, it would not make any sense. why would they need to interview him if there is nothing to talk about. anyone that watched one of these investigations, anyone that spent even a little bit of time, watching the cases on tv, would understand there is no way that bob mueller was going to conclude this investigation however it concludes without at least one interview with the president. a sworn interview. we knew this day was going to come aall long and yet it feels

momento momentous. it sets up this show down that is in itself perilous to the president. >> whether or not he is directly impacted or family members, the fact that you're being interviewed is a really bad day. >> he's not doing a particularly good jobcompartmentizing. lots of early morning tweets about this. mueller is getting closer and closer to his inner circle. we learned that last week they spoke at length with skoern general sessions. >> i'm astonished that people are not more outraged. >> to your earlier question about how president bush handled

it, he expressed no beens on anything. he didn't even say it in chitchat around the office. everyone has an opinion. trump telling the nation what he thinks, and that does, you know, allow an investigator many many opportunities to ask you questions from many different ang ms and i think that is where trump harms himself. >> i feel like mccabe is only confirming the obstruction charges. >> whether he is or not, i'm with you and them on the outrage of it all. it is part of a fphenomenon. there is so much -- >> a few weeks ago the president described this was an attack on

peter struck. he said he committed treason. he said it was a treasonous act. that is such a outrageous thing to say about someone that devoted his life to serving his country and it went by. >> think about the timeline here. perhaps bob mueller asked him about this, but now is a reason to get called back and asked more questions. again, the way this is being handled by dtop level officials in this government is stunning. this is one on one investigation. as a junior aide in the white house i learned very quickly, stay in your lane. don't say things, don't put things in e-mail. they're doing it in the most public fashion. >> in an forced ways the president has not helped himself in. >> recreated the obstruction question. in the nbc nightly news

interview he drew a correction between the investigation and firing james comey. i don't know if he is thinking strategically here. he is exacting on impulse, he is lashing out. >> whatever they did to him for 72 hours for the shut down, they should maybe do it again for the rest of the investigation. >> or perhaps they should have done that months ago. >> thank you, stick around we'll talk about the shut down story on the other side of the break. why so many democrats are angry about why their party handled the government shut down. nutrient-dense, protein-rich, real meat number one. this is a different breed of natural nutrition. purina one, true instinct.

any moment now the senate is expected to confirm jerome powell as the next chair of the federal reserve. he will replace janet yellin at the central bank. we'll be back with the backlash following the government shut down. whatever type of weekender you are, don't let another weekend pass you by.

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welcome back, they're slamming him as a bad lawmaker. folks, those are not progressive attacks of president trump, it is for senator schumer for

reopening it. red state democrats reportedly started getting boupounded by t base. either way groups are not happy that schumer reopened the government without a daca deal or anything other than a mcconnell progress. one group is slamming democratic leadership for making a "bod, outrageous deal." they say it is why people don't believe the democratic party stands for anything. one is saying that chuck schumer is the worst negotiator in washington. today it seems that schumer was in a damage kroel mode. saying he got a good deal and that he also withdrew the offer to give the president the money he wanted to build the wall. >> we wanted to come to an agreement that afternoon, the president would announce his

support and the senate and house would get it done and on the president's desk. he didn't do that, so we're going to have to start on a new basis, and the wall offer is off of the table. >> so what happens next? who is leading the democrats? schumer or the progressive base? let's bring in a couple voices for the democratic side. cornell belcher. and also ben wickler. all right, ben, you're on the side of i'm mad and i'm not going to take it any more. so do you concur with some of these progressive frustrations? >> i tweeted it felt like a kick in the stomach. it is not nothing, but a single proton floating through the inif i na

initie void. they have a poll in the red states where democrats are the senators. the public want this is and during the shut down they moved toward the democrat position. determi dems don't realize how strong it is been. >> why push schumer, it is as if he was pushing them into p this. why not accept the guy that idea that it could be trotted out. >> they do not provide protection for dreamers. they are showing they have to stand up and fight for what most

voters want. on the republican side they made a promise and they have to stand and deliver. the public knows how much they are falling down on the job. you're right that votes this way or that way are a tactics with been the strategy is to make a ov overwhelming course of -- >> there is part of the base panic i panicking too soon. >> i enjoyed booking you on this, because i know you also want claire mccaskill in the senate, right? i didn't come here this afternoon to bury shum chumer, came to praise him. for the first time you had senate democrats go to the mats, as it were for immigrants, but it has never been -- it never happened before. they say we'll shut it down because it is important.

it was a tactical move to reopen the government. chip is now all of the table for those millions of americans that were going to close their insurance, that's not nothing. we'll have to get to a political reform nap has to be turn overs in the senate and keeping the seats like missouri and turning over stuff, turning over house seats. >> let me ask you one other question, does it look -- answer that riddle, are democrats more afraid of the republican base than the democratic base? >> democrats in red areas have historically been afraid of riling up the republican base. that is a tough map through some trump territory, right? we have to hit the right notes, we cannot run up their base. if you look what happened in

virginia and alabama, they certainly have enthusiasm on their side. we don't want to give them anything to energize their base. does this make claire mccaskill weak sner. >> -- weaker? >> look at virginia, it makes perfect sense for them to fight and not cower. the trump campaign put out a add that looks like an ed gillespie ad. >> exactly. >> they suddenly feel more like connecticut and new york. >> in our polling, in states where trump won by an average of 100 points, 89% was protection for dreamers, it's as close as you get to a consensus issue.

>> i agree with ben on what the republican taxes are, but i say this is a tactic that he used to open up the government. this is an 80-20 proposition. i love that democrats can go into november, wedge republicans against this, and where independents are is overwhelming for this issue. >> let me ask you this. right now the republicans are painting the democrats as a party of open borders. this is what has the testers and the shared -- they're saying wait, we believe in sightenning the borders too, but it seems doesn't that undo this? >> that is why the wall is probably going to be back on the table. we think we have to be for security, but also for immigration reform. one quick thing, in the holing

survey monkey polling, republicans are more divided on daca, right? that is why it is more problematic, their base is not where the rest of the country is on this. >> this unites democrats and divides republicans. >> you're saying that's why they should fight this because in long term you're still splitting -- >> the republican party would be smart cocut a deal now. you know they will pass this without any concessions to republicans. >> that's the core, that rabid core trump base, they take them on in primaries, not elections. >> what does it mean, i see that schumer creates a false start. he jumped the gun, i think in

hi hindsight, so what does he owe the base? >> he owes the public and the young peel in the military treating patients of all parties as doctors asking for the protections they were guaranteed when they gave their contact information to the federal government. and then the president says we'll deport you. democrats need to stand and hold the line and republicans need to do the right thing and make a deal. >> what will they do, save daca but get the wall? >> i'm not here to prenegotiate the deal. we don't understand why it to should be -- >> it's not going to be about security. >> all right, i'm going to leave it there. fascinating conversation to my friends at survey monkey, we kid. we love the name. when we come back, why shutting down the government is not what it used to be.

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welcome back, tonight i'm obsessed with how easy it is to shut down the government. it should be a last result, and they are increasingly taking the shut out of shut down and changing it to slow downs. national parks, open, war

memorials, open, benefits are still paid, veteran checks still on the way, border patrolty still working, food aide programs still serving. hello it's not a shut down, no one wants to see school kids go without breakfast or the military sent home because of stupid politics. but when the government closes, a lot of it stays open, making it a little too easy to shut it down. now much of what remains open is stuff that conservatives love anyway. most of the other stakes get furloughed. they have been handing out this shirt today. the point is stop making it so easy to make this political point. make it harder, congress. we'll be right back. join us for exclusive stargazing with discovery at sea.

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the panel is back. ruth marcus, we were just joking that it is like being a spectator now for an intraparty panel. >> it's so nice to be at other people's holiday tables and watch other dysfunctional nam families. >> what do you make of what you heard there? >> i said in the last segment we knew this day was coming with the special county and they knew this day was coming also. you would have competing imperatives within the party, and this one, i think that democrats had to play the hand that they were dealt. so that they failed to, or decided in previous it rations of the continuing resolution not to push it to the max. they said move on, liberal groups. hispanic groups, they needed to just wait it out and they would

deal with daca. that wasn't going to play this time around, so they had to play what turned out to be not a very strong hand. >> over capitol hill. what would you say was schumer's biggest miscalculations here? >> in december, there were two continuing resolutions where the democrats said we're not going to find out, we're going to fight later. the democrats could have filibustered another kind of bill, but on something that like immigration, which is so divisive, they were never going to cave on this in the context of a shutdown, i think it made it less likely for them to do it. the only piece of leverage that democrats do have is that house republicans want higher military funding and democrats can block a deal on caps, on defense caps, a long-term budget deal unless

they get some sort of a daca solution, so we're going to see more brinkmanship coming up to that break. so we're goi. >> i don't think the tectonic plates shift that much in three weeks. in a funding argument, immigration is hard for many members in the rust belt and many of these democratic senators who live in these ruby red states, you know, to stand in the way of the government shutdown, to support it, for immigration. i think there are a lot of americans that don't like trump, don't like where he is on immigration and other issues, but say, you know what? we should not conflate these issues and i don't know how they block -- i don't know what changes between now and then. >> one thing that has strengthened the democrats' hand a little bit, it seems to me, is that the american people have, first of all been reintroduced

to this daca debate in a very intense way, and they have listened to mitch mcconnell say, i'm going to get this on the floor, they have listened to the president said i want a bill of love. they have concluded, of course, these innocent children brought here should be able to stay here. so the imperative to get -- i mean nobody wants to look like they're the obstreperous part. the democrats looked like they were being the obstreperous party demanding a shutdown. but i think all the other -- >> i think they need 70, 75 votes and put it on speaker ryan's plate and make it extremely difficult for him to say no. >> you think it almost needs to be in the 80s for ryan to have this much pressure? >> it's got to be 70.

>> 62 doesn't work. >> 68, i know 68 doesn't work. >> daca is the right thing to do. most republicans agree with that. and most even in the house agree with that. >> in principle. >> the politics are tough in some parts of the country, no doubt. but, you know, this in some ways is not that complicated, even though it's become very complicated, you have most people who agree that daca needs to be fixed, the majority of republicans, trump wants border security, wants the wall, wants the structure, call it whatever you want and the government needs to operate and we have to deal with the debt issue. these things should be able to come together. >> i want to drill down on something here. if you registered with daca, should you feel better than if you had never registered? or should you not? >> we know that the white house

is willing to fix 750,000 d.r.e.a.m.ers. what about all the d.r.e.a.m.ers. or they pledged to. seems like the biggest debate is i think the house republicans will do the most narrow protection. what do democrats do then? >> one of the key issues is of course what you do with the d.r.e.a.m.er population, they want maybe a path to citizenship. one of the biggest and thornyist issues that could derail is what to do with the parents of these d.r.e.a.m.ers. they must be part of this deal. house republicans, don't want that, to them that's just expanding it, that could end up being millions of people. big problem. >> defining the different groups of folks, and i'm told i have to go. up ahead, the oscar goes to our mtp film festival movies. we hope. stay tuned. and the wolf huffed and puffed...

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well, in case you missed it, the academy award nominations are out and three movies from our "meet the press" film festival made the cut for best short documentary. for your consideration, the first is "heroin" which explores how a small midwestern town is coping with opiod addiction. >> i'm not really sure what a plateau is going to look like. you know, i see this as a

country wide problem that has the potential to bankrupt the country. >> by the way, jane raider reports, last weekend they actually went 24 hours without an overdose, which is a big still there and "knife skills" about a restaurant staffed almost entirely by people from prison. >> we're going to be out of carrots. >> and the third nominee, "edith and eddie." it's about the oldest generational couple together. >> yes, it was love at first sight. it was. see that little old bird up there? little bird. >> uh-huh.

>> it flew away now. >> uh-huh. beautiful. >> that documentary took a twist, it was about one thing and it ended up being about elder rights. a fascinating documentary. you can find out all about it at academy awards.com/mtp films. we hope one of you will bring home that oscar. if there's any day to be watching ari, it is, russia, russia, russia. we do begin with breaking news in the russia probe. >> tonight i can report that this tuesday january 23 clearly marks an inflection point in bob mueller's russia investigation. we don't know why so many russian stories are leaking out right now, but here's what we do know, four big