nothing is guaranteed. >> our thanks to garrett haake, to michael steele, to eli stokels. and thank you for joining us for our broadcast this even. up next, our live coverage of your government at work or not, this pending government shutdown at the very moment, it tibs. a live edition of the rachel maddow show. rachel it's all yours. >> thank you brian. it seems we either meet on dramatic nights or bad nights. >> where this one stands is now entirely up to you. >> thank you my friend. appreciated. much thanks to you at home joining us this hour. at midnight on the east coast for the second time in two weeks the government of the united states is shut down. we of course have had government shutdowns before. before three weeks ago, we had never had a government shutdown while the same political party controlled the white house and both house of congress. but now we have two of those in quick succession.

we made history and then made history again. mossel to have been. this is what we've got for a live view of the senate right now. that's a slate that they are broadcasting basically. the senate stand in recess until 12:01. they are scheduled to gavel back into session right now, basically, at 12:01. they have been recessed for just over an hour because even though the government funding was set to run out at midnight and almost all u.s. senators were eager to pass a bill to avert a shutdown, despite plenty of senators willing ready to did that they could not pass that bill because the junior senator from kentucky would not let them. he used rules to single handedlition shut down the government. he did that by personally delaying the foft from taking their vote past midnight. he did it by playing around with

the senator rules. he did not plan a filibuster. he has not been talking all night. he got to leave. he did tv interviews and did some tweeting. when it became clear to his colleagues that he was not going to allow them to vote before midnight they decided they would recess and come back just after midnight. which is now. we are watching the slate. watching the senate floor. right now we are in our second government shutdown in less than three weeks. is that a live shot right there of the chaplain? is it possible we can deep into that sound? >> nothing into the world and will take nothing from it. remind us all that time is fleeting and our hearts, though stout and brave, continue to beat funeral marches to the grave.

and so, lord, where do we put our trust, our hope is in you. we pray in your mighty name. amen. >> join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance. >> that is the chaplain of the senate barry black who has that tremendous, tremendous base voice giving a prayer as the senate comes back into session. says the prayer from the chaplain, and now the pledge of allegiance. just to take you through what happened this even and why the senate coming back into session right now after this hour long recess -- this is really -- this is different than the earlier shut down, which was a fight between the parties, which was a fight over the substance of what was in the bill. it was a democratic strategy for better or worse.

what happened tonight is really about one man. senator rand paul personally really wanted the senate to vote on an amendment that he had to the budget bill. the amendment was not going to pass even if it passed, it was dead in the water. but rand paul want it. his colleagues told you listen if we let you have vote on your amendment everyone is going the want a vote on their amendment. we don't have time for that because the money is going to run out in a few hours. and senator paul responded if we don't get a vote on this amendment then i'm going to delay the vote on the bill as long as i can under the uls radio. under the rules the senator can push back the vote on the funding bill, until about 3:00 a.m. even if the senate is allowed at 3:00 a.m. to sometime earlier to vote and they do pass the funding bill then it goes to the house and the house still has to vote on the bill thereafter.

we think, depending how this spools out over the course of the even we think the house won't be able to do that until potentially close to 6:00 a.m. senator rand paul of condition ken when all is said and done, he will have succeeded in triggering a government shutdown for a few hours. he will not have secured a vote on his amendment. after he keeps everybody up all night and goes through the motions of a shutdown and a reopening, then the budget bill will become law anyway, the government will be funded anyway, at least provided the house can pass it, too. so that's what is happening. congratulations, your tax dollars at work. i can't stress enough that what is happening tonight really is a one-man show. and the government is shut down right now. this is the kind of governing fiasco that can only happen when

you are running this close to the margin, when you are running the government crisis to crisis, when you are funding the government a couple week at a time, when you are never putting more than a tea spoon of gas in the gas tank as you set out on your road trip. when you run it this close to the margin, it turns out the u.s. government is vulnerable to whatever stunt any one senator wants to pull at the last minute for any reason and the government flails trying to open government agencies are open in the morning. let's see how the night goes. frank thorpe joins us. thanks for being with us. i know it is a difficult and hng night for you. >> thank for having me. >> let me ask you about technicalities. as far as i understand it senator paul can delay any progress until 1:00 a.m. and if he chooses to stretch it out even further he could talk for another hour, which would maybe push thing to 3:00.

is 3:00 the outside lymph how far he could push this? >> that's the expectation. that's the hope for the senator who are trying to get out of here tonight. we are expecting that that key procedural couture vote to happen at 3:00. that's going to need 60 votes to pass. after that rand paul could potentially speak for up to an hour. after that hour passes we will have potentially a point of order vote to make his point yet again. and then they will have a final passage vote, which -- but then that's not the end of this. the government is not going to reopen once the senate pass this is bill. as you noted this has to go back to the house. it's going to take a couple of hours. the government shutdown is not going to end here at 3:00 in the morning. it's probably going to be ending more around 6:00 or 7:00 when the house is actually able to finish this. >> frank, can you tell if what has happened in the senate and this delay and this now overnight experience, is this affecting the chances of whether or not the funding bill can pass

the house? obviously we are talking about what is going on in the senate here. the house has to pass it thereafter. and people have been observing this process haven't been super definitive that the house has the votes. do you think that the house has the votes? and has tonight's mishi goss affected the likelihood of it passing in the house tonight when it finally gets to them. >> that's a good question. dirg this debate and during the speeches by rand paul we saw house democrats meeting on that subject, whether they actually had the votes to actually pass this in the house. i think it is an open question. all the indications are that there are the votes they will end up delivering the votes. as you noted the easy part of this entire process was supposed to be the senate. the senate had the votes to pass this bill much earlier today. they could have finished this -- or way earlier today so that this shutdown would never have happened and then sent it to the house for what's going to be the difficult vote. i mean, there is very high level

of frustration here on the senate side. it is a diplomat frustration. rand paul has brought together republicans and democrats in being really frustrated with the fact that they are having this vote so late that the government shutdown is happening. they are pinning it on rand palm of as you noted there is a difference between this shutdown and the ones in the past. in 2013 that shutdown was because they were trying to add a priovision on to a piece of legislation. 21 days ago they were trying to help dreamers, the daca provision. in this legislation, rand paul is trying to make a point of the hypocrisy of republicans increasing spending when they are supposed to be deficit hawks. but republican leadership is very upset and don't want to reward what they are calling bad behavior. i talked to john cornan, the majority whip and i asked is there any way you would have given him this vote? he was like why would we give in

to bad behavior here? it is frustrating all the way around. i think it gives house democrats a little bit of time to look at this. and at the same time it allows democrats to say listen f we pass this funding bill, this shutdown is still going to be on rand paul. if house democrats vote against this budget bill tomorrow morning, this is going to be a whole different conversation. right now, the story we wake up to tomorrow is the headline that rand paul shut the government down because he wanted to make a point on deficits. >> and the congress was running so close to the mother-in-law that one senator, any one senator on any one issue was in a position to shut down the government single handily with these kinds of tactics. >> that's right. >> it is a remarkable night. frank thorpe, nbc reporter and producer. frank appreciate it. >> thanks very much, enjoyed it. i would like to have senator jeff merkley from the great state of oregon join us now. senator merkley i have lost my ability to speak coherently, but

we are happy to have you with us now as we keep an eye on the live shot in the senate and as we head toward what he expect to be a 1:00ome couture vote, that would be a 60-vote threshold vote for the senate to be able to move ahead into the next few stages this process that rand paul has started which hopefully at some point tonight will result in a government funding bill. senator, thank you for your time tonight. senator merkley, have you got me? >> hello there. greetings. yes, i have you now. i should say good morning. >> exactly. i'm sorry, i have half turned into a pumpkin. some of my engineering stopped working once i turned into squash that's full of seeds. >> it's interesting to see that countdown clock suddenly start becoming a count-up clock. >> senator, what do you think is going to happen tonight? how do you foresee the next few hours? and what do you make of senator paul's tactics here?

>> listen, he's making a very important point. when clinton was in office, we were in route to wiping out the federal debt. and people started to say we have to have a way to have treasury bonds without a debt, how do we do that. that was a nice conversation to have. pass on debt free america. republicans come into office, go to war in afghanistan, they don't pay for it. don't pay for war in iraq, don't way for medicare or tax cuts. democrats come back into office, debt starts to go back down. republicans come back in and spend like druchken sailors. >> does the senator have any friends in terms of the tactics he is taking here? obviously he has some sympathy from you and i heard it from other senators as well in terms of the overall point he is making about fiscal hypocrisy. but in terms of the way he is

doing this with the delay tactics which have now shut down the government, does he have allies? >> on the republican side he has no friends. not only has he interrupted all of their plane schedules but he pointed out something importantly about the hypocrisy of the republican party. no friend on this side. certainly there was no reason for this shutdown just as there was no reason for the shutdown three week ago when the democrats said let's do a three day continuing resolution and keep the government open so that people's feet are held to the fire in negotiations. i said back then they won't negotiate seriously until the last 48 hours. that's exactly what happened. here we are up against the deadline. >> senator, there have been reports that the lights in the white house residence and the oval office are off. we certainly haven't heard anything from the white house. obviously the white house is distracted by the scandal surrounding the staff secretary who was forced out today amid

some disturbing revelations. is there any indication at all that the president is working the phone into the wee hours, that the white house, the president himself are involved in trying to address this, treating this like it's a problem? >> no. i don't think the white house is engaged at all. and we certainly know that in terms of a piece of this puzzle, which is the issue of the d.r.e.a.m. act, the president had a choice. he could be the deal maker. or he could be the deal breaker. he chose to be the latter, that is the person who said i'm going the inflame immigration. i'm going to talk about ms-13 gangs, we are going to demonize all immigrants coming into america. that president that we saw emerge after an initial deal maker conference at the white house is the one that we seem to have. and he seems to be determined if you will to make this into a campaign issue rather than to

resolve the legal status of our dreamers. and we don't see him engaged in any way. >> senator jeff merkley of oregon burning the midnight oil as is the rest of our house and senate tonight. thank you for joining us sir. >> good to be here. still ahead tonight we have got the shutdown two step, the shutdown double dip. the shutdown here we go again. it turns out this whole thing about having a shutdown, just getting back up on our feet and having another shutdown, turns out that's not that weird. stay with us. more ahead tonight. to not just accept what you see, but imagine something new. at invisalign®, we use the most advanced teeth straightening technology to help you find the next amazing version of yourself. it's time to unleash your secret weapon. it's there, right under your nose. get to your best smile up to 50% faster. visit invisalign.com to get started today.

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on november 14th, 1995, owe

midway through bill clinton's first term, the government shut down. november '95. they closed down the monuments, furloughed government workers, shutdown went on for five days. and then less than a month later, deja vu all over again. >> good evening. just in time for the holidays, the president and congress teamed up to present the nation with the political equivalent of a hole in the christmas stocking. the government shut down again because the two sides cannot agree on a seven-year plan to balance the budge. >> like a recurring bad dream, more than a quarter million federal workers reported for work only to be send home again for the second time in a month. and for the second time national tourist attractions normally swarming with visitors were like ghost towns. and also again, everyone was playing the blame game. >> did you see the banner on the bottom of the screen for the

news report. shut down roman numeral two. actually looks like shut down 11. shut down two. it happened again. weeks after they shut down the government, they ran out of hundred again and shut it down all over again. we are living through a remarkably stupid second scoop of government shut down this evening, as we speak. but it suspect the first time. it's not even the second time that we have had a two scoop shutdown. 1984, ron reagan was president. they had a double one there. reagan had a republican controlled senate, a democratic house. it led to the government shutting down on a monday. on wednesday it reopened. then on thursday they shut it back down again. at least they didn't do it at midnight like we do. the "new york times" reports that in 1984 government workers were sent home in the middle of the workday on thursday for the second shut down. everyone had to pack up their

lunches and go home for the afternoon. by friday they were welcomed back at their desks because in that second scoop n 1984, they ended it in less than a day. so this feels absolutely bizarre that we are having a second you shutdown in a couple of weeks. but we have seen this before. like lovebirds and like pants, these things do sometimes come in pairs. it still feels acutely relick douse. joining us, michael beschloss. i hereby declare you get time and a half for doing live mystery after midnight. >> it's rare that i get to say good morning rachel, but i get i get to tonight -- or this morning. >> you get to say good morning this morning. >> hard to figure out which it is. >> historically, have there been way more government shutdowns than we think? just because we don't remember most of them because a lot of them are ephemeral and pointless? >> yeah. you know, there have been a lot

of times in american history when the president and the congress do not agree on funding the budget and there is a gap. but the question really arises, why have we seen it so much especially in the last 30 or 40 years or so? what happened was 1980 jimmy carter was president. his second attorney general was ben sieve letty. and he had a ruling which was that if there is funding gap even though it's brief you are going to violate the law if you keep agencies open. you are got to furlough employ he is yao. that's why we started seeing these in the 1980s. tv in the house and senate. came to the house in 1979, came to the senate in 1986. itity made it almost a theater sponsor someone like newt gingrich rich during the clinton shutdown or rand paul this morning to go on in his case the senate floor and make a big speech in favor of his views on taxes and spending saying that

the senate republicans should be more like deficit hawks. >> if that's the transmit mode in terms of why a showboating member of the house or showboating senator might want to get up in front of the cameras and make a case and hut down the government in order to get attention for their cause, that's the transmit mode. what about the receive mode? it's my sense that the public generally hates a shutdown and when a shut down happens they want blame and not -- they want a bad guy not a good phi, not a hero. >> yeah. it is a sign of government dysfunction. rumor has it that we americans have an election about nine months from this week. and i think one of the thing that voters will say in november is, who is responsible for government not doing what it should? one of the ways that they answer that question is to look back to the shutdowns and say who was to blame? >> in terms of what is evolving over the course of now this very early morning with the

government shut down, one of the thing that we are watching for is to see if this -- in the senate by senator paul and him as a one-man band bringing about this shutdown whether that might radicalize the house. people expected there might be a harder time in the house getting this funding bill passed even before all of this happened. >> right. >> is it likely? is there historical precedent for somebody taking a stand like this and it radicalizing other members of their party. >> if you look at this in history there is a way that you can look at this that speaks well for rand paul is this is someone who says the republican party art stands for low deficits and if the possible a balanced budget. if a martian came to earth in 2018 and heard some of the peaches from senate republicans they would have a hard time realizing they were traditionally the party of the balanced budget. it could be that by making this

case on the senate floor it may give power to members of the house to sort of come out and say gee he's absolutely right. we should go back to our roots. >> uh-huh. had they all not just voted for the $1.5 trillion tax cut bill. >> right. exactly. small exception. >> michael beschloss, nbc presidential historian. thank you for your time. >> my pleasure. >> we'll be right back. tment pr, fisher investments avoids them. some advisers have hidden and layered fees. fisher investments never does. and while some advisers are happy to earn commissions from you whether you do well or not, fisher investments fees are structured so we do better when you do better. maybe that's why most of our clients come from other money managers. fisher investments. clearly better money management. i had severe fatigue, became diagnosed with hodgkin's lymphoma. he was a good candidate for immune therapy, which is allowing his immune system to attack the tumor.

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staff secretary would normally need, we think a top secrets sensitive compartmented information clearance, which has a lot of words in it because it's supposed to be intimidating. so very high level security clearance. we now know that rob porter was not able to get that clearance, not able to get a permanent security clearance of any kind. we now know that's because of what his two ex-wives told special agents who contacted them in their investigations. both told the fbi that rob was violent towards them during their marriages. there was a protective order in virginia in 2010, plus photographs, plus a what his second wife says was a contact with local police who she called to their home because of his behavior. a third woman who was also involved with porter though not married to him is also

reportedly working for the trump administration. she hasn't been name publicly but many described her going to white house counsel don mcgahn directly to discuss these concerns about porter, her own concerns about porter and what she knew about porter's exwives and their accusations against them. rob porter denies the allegations. he calls them simply not true. this is not just a salacious and dark story about the departure of yet another high level trump white house employee. this is also a security story that matters to all of us because this is a security story of how donald trump is running this government. white house employees don't get handed security clearances as perks, right, the fbi has to clear you for one, after this rigor outside background check process. there are all sorts of ways to fail that process. doesn't mean you are a criminal. some are dramatic, you can fail

because you have undisclosed foreign contacts that you have been covering up or lying about. those could ruin your chances of obtaining a security clearance because it shows you are in cahoots with a foreign government or a foreign government knows something about their contacts with you that you can't be trait about and they can use that to blackmail you. that's the stuff that we worry about about jared kushner not disclosing his foreign ties. it would be more pedestrian ties. you could be deeply in debt. that's not a crime but it might prevent you from getting a security clearance because it might give a bad actor a way at you. they could conceivably offer you a lot of money to hand over information that you shun and you might be more vulnerable to that approach than if you weren't in a lot of debt of the. it could be something like that, or something in your past or from your personal life that you

don't want people to know whether or not it is a criminal act. so white house staff secretary rob porter with credible corroborated allegations of domestic violence against him, and police record to back it up, he doesn't get a clearance. now, once the fbi makes that determination that he is not going to get a clearance because of those republicans they reportedly alert the white house to that fact. we know separately that white house counsel don mcgahn was also alerted to the problem here but the white house counsel and the white house chief of staff done mcgahn and john kelly apparently sat on that information and did nothing about it. they certainly did nothing the get rob porter out of that job or away from classified information that he was explicitly not cleared to see. when president trump decided to ignore the fact that jared kushner couldn't get a security clearance presumably that decision was made on the basis of the president thinking he knows everything there is to know about kushner and his family and he felt comfortable

blowing off the fbi's concerns about him and cleared him to see everything. with rob porter the white house is letting us know explicitly that the president had no idea there was any sort of problem with him. and yet, he put him in this job. he allowed him to continue in this job where he saw and handled every single piece of information that crossed the president's tesk, including classified materials. did the president not know? did the president not know in a rob porter couldn't get a security clearance? did the president think that he had one? the white house chief of staff and the white house counsel knew rob porter couldn't get a security clearance. and they knew why. the white house tonight is putting out word that the president had no idea. so that's legally important. who cleared this young man to see all this stuff that you need a top secret security clearance to see? who cleared him to do it? fbi did not grant him a clearance, did not provide information to the white house that said he deserves a

clearance. who cleared him to see all this stuff? it is disturbing and unprecedented enough that this president decided to have blind faith in his son-in-law and agreed to give him access to classified information. it was his judgment call. but here this is not clear that this was the president's judgment call. this is a systemic problem. if the president didn't know there was a problem with this guy's clearance, that means somebody provided that guy with classified information without him being cleeshd to see it and without the president waving the clearance process. isn't that illegal? joining us now is congressman shawn patrick maloney, a democrat of new york. he once served in the clinton administration in the job that rob porter served in until yesterday. congressman glad to have you here. >> good to be with you. >> being staff secretary means you routinely handle highly

classified information? >> spot on. there is not a day that goes back that there are not a stack of red folders on the staff secretary's desk marked top secret. top secret is the bottom of the top secret items. and there is a burn bag under the desk because when you discard the materials it will be collected by a special team and incinerated that made to. the staff secretary sees everything. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff don't give memos to the president. they give them to the staff secretary and he manages those documents as they go into the oval officements you see everything. >> in terms of mr. porter, it eearn inned, the part of his story, about his personal difficulties. things to was conveyed to the fbi and that information was conveyed to the white house. aside from these allegations,

how unusual is it that someone would be in the staff secretary position without a security clearance of any kind? >> that blows my mind. let me give you one example. when i was going through this background check the fbi sent agent from mont individualio your guy from their office there to the small pa pa pruvianian vil -- peruvian village where i did my residency. it's nuts that you would work this job with no security clearance. normally you start and it is an it retive process. they assume you are going to pass when you start the job. that's normal. in this case we know they knew as early as january of 2017. up front, this guy has issues in his background, wife beating,

credible allegations of it that would have permanently disqualified him from holding this job. why they even gave him an initial clearance is beyond me because they must have known he would never have cleared the full background check. >> as far as i understand how the security clearance world works, there is the fbi background check process. if you are in the military or in some other part of the national security world you may get your clearance through some other agency. when you are a civilian like rob porter was and you are working for the white house it's actually the white house who grants you your clearance ace on the background information from the ib if. therefore it's sort of the president's decision whether or not to disregard the advice from the fbi and clear someone anyway is that the case? >> yes, in an extreme case. and maybe we would expect that from the trump white house. but if the president didn't do this, it's nobody else's call. i can't imagine the chief of staff making this call without

informing the president. and there is no way in the world someone said we are going to let him do the job without a security clearance and not tell the chief of staff. the chief of staff was up to his neck in this. and he and the white house counsel would have been the first people to review this. it blows my mind they would take on to themselves the decision to let a staff secretary work without a security clearance. there is going to be an fbi investigative rt that should come out because we should know exactly what the fbi told white house counsel and chief of staff, when, and what they said about it and did about it. >> if there is a potential criminal matter in terms of mishandling classified information, if the president never made the call to wave the -- basically wave the process and clear this young man despite the fbi's counter-indications, if that never happened, if the president believed he was operating with a security clearance and that's why he could see this stuff, if somebody else cleared and put

this information into this guy's hands, would the fbi investigate on their own initiative? would there be a congressional committee? who looks into that. >> i looked written to chairman gowdy to ask for an investigation into this. that's what the committee exists for. we know there is concern in the republican party about handling secret information because we were lectured about it all of 2016. you asked whether someone broke the law in extending the job to somebody who failed their security clearance check. they knew they had a person in this position who was creditably accused of beating both of husband ex-wives, those people had come forward. there were police reports, and they made the decision to keep that person on the job, knowing those allegations, and knowing he couldn't have a security

clearance. what the hell is going on? what does that say about the value system this white house and of these officials? and that would be terrible. and then you add -- even if you didn't have to add on to it, as we must, the fact that you then have someone who is eminently blackmailible seeing our nation's top secrets. and then as you point out, you may be breaking the law in the process. remember, the fbi would have asked him about these allegations and i would like to know what rob porter said to the fbi. that's why we need to see the investigative report. >> congress shawn patrick maloney. represents new york, served as staff secretary under bill clinton. invaluable perspective given your experience. thank you. >> my pleasure. much more tonight, including another government shutdown before you go to bed. sorry. stay with us.

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made for particularly bracing headlines when the director of one pentagon agency said quote i have got murderers who have access to classified information, i have rapists. i have pedophiles, i have people involved in child porn. i have all these things at the interim clearance level, and i'm pulling their clearances on a weekly basis. january of this year, nbc news obtained a report from the defense department showing that 165 contractors to the department of defense had had interim security clearances revoked because of illicit activity at some time, thing like questionable financial transactions or being influenced by a foreign government or, one person who got an interim security clearance clearance in 2015 was discovered in 2017 to have been found guilty of raping a child. he was found guilty of raping a child before he ever applied for that clearance. think of that. guilty, on record, as guilty of

child rape, nevertheless sailing right through to an interim security clearance. seems like getting an interim security clearance isn't that hard. for the past several months democrats in the house oversight committee have been trying to get answers about the machinery of security clearances inside the defense department and beyond. the top democrat on that committee is elijah cummings. he wrote to the republican chair of the committee. quote, i have asked you repeatedly to join me in investigating critical failings in our nation's security clearance processes and troubling irregular layeritieses with the clearances of senior aide to donald trump. today n light of the news going on right now. congressman cummings sent another letter, this time asking again for an investigation into the white house's practices around security clearances and now particularly asking for information about former staff secretary rob porter. quote, if you had agreed to any of our previous questiorequests

we would find out why he was allowed to remain in his position. instead because of your multiple refusals we did not find out about any of these issues billion they were reported in the press. mr. porter, the white house staff secretary announced he was stepping down yesterday after allegations of abuse from his two former wives. he denies those allegations. but the white house reportedly knew about them for months and knew they were stopping him from getting a permanent security clearance and they kept him on, handling the flow of documents to the president including super sensitive material while there were active concerns he was a potential target for blackmail and that he was unsuitable for the type of clearance that would allow him to see that type of material. white house maintains tonight that the president had had no idea that he was denied security

clearance. raising the question whether or not the president waved the process so he could see the documents without cruelly handling classified information. joining us, congressman connolly. i appreciate you being with us tonight. i know it is a busy night in washington. >> actually not much going on right thousand. it's great to be with you, rachel. >> let me ask you about the shutdown situation tonight. we were just told that members of congress and the house have been advised maybe there will be a vote between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. depending on rand paul's mood? >> yes. that was a notice sent out by the majority whip, steve scalise to his members, we got a copy of it, saying be prepared to vote sometime between 3:00 and 6:00 possibly. >> at that point we expect that a government funding bill will pass and the government will be reopened after a few hours of being shut. is that your expectation? >> that's certainly my expectation and hope. but a word of caution.

the republicans in the house do not have the votes to pass that bill. we think they need 60, maybe 70 democrats. given the mood of the democratic caucus with respect to the dreamer issue and the amount of additional debt being added by this budget agreement, i'm not at all sure that those 60 or 70 votes are going to be there. >> is it your sense that either your party or the republican party is whipping votes right now trying to line up the numbers that they will need for that predawn vote? >> actually in our party the minority whip is whipping against the bill. >> do you know how you are going to vote? >> i am going to vote yes. i think it's wrong to shutdown government. i think the linkage between the dreamers whom i fully support and keeping the government open and functioning isn't there. i think it is a mistake strategically to link the two. >> congressman, let me ask you about this other matter that is

roiling washington now, and obviously a source of great consternation on capitol hill, these revelations about the staff secretary. a very high-ranking white house aide, somebody who had access to every piece of paper that crossed the president's desk. it's now emerging not only that there were credible domestic violence allegations against rob porter, that the white house was aware of while he was in this senior role, allegations he denies, but also those allegations were sufficient to deny him a security clearance. as a member of the oversight committee what exactly are your concerns here? what do you think should happen next j one of the biggest concerns i have rachel is a deliberate conspiracy, if you can put it that way, between the republicans in the house, especially on our committee, and the white house to make sure nothing is investigated, nothing is pursued. no subpoenas are issued. now, we are now chaired by trey gotti, who was the torqua motta of benghazi. his hand got tired of writing

subpoenas. he got millions of pages of documents, millions of dollars of taxpayer money that was spent to found nothing that ultimately went nowhere. they claimed to be worried about the compromise of hillary clinton's materials with classified material. weir here we now have a known wife abuser, violent abuse, as the secretary of the white house staff given some kind of clearance status, protected and harbored. we wrote the white house, as you pointed out earlier, in june, asking about information about security clearances provided to people like michael flynn and jared kushner who had issues that had been flagged. we wrote in june about interim security clearances being granted to people of questionable character. we followed up asking the chairman of the committee to

issue subpoenas seasons we got no white house response. contradicts, nothing. on vacation, doesn't care, or isn't interested. and now this. this is a very serious business. we need to get to the bottom of this. we need in the only mr. porter's testimony, we need john kelly under oath explaining himself. we need hope hicks who was reportedly dating him. and maybe the white house counsel who apparently was given this information weeks ago. we don't know what he did with it. there is a lot here going on, and this is inside the oval office. >> congressman, thank you both for the update in terms of tonight's shut down, and also on this story. >> thank you rachel. any time. >> we'll be right back. stay with us. new dueling lobster tails has two tails that'll fight to be your favorite.

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timing is everything. on monday of this week, the house intelligence committee voted unanimously to release a democratic memo. demo memo that rebuts republican claims that the fbi and the justice department abused their powers when they got a surveillance warrant for former trump campaign aide carter page. once they sent it they agreed to vote on it out of committee. that memo went to the white house. that starts a clock ticking. the president has five days to review the memo and determine whether or not he will block its

release to the public. that clock started ticking monday night. tuesday chief of staff john kelly said the president had the memo on his desk but hadn't yet read it because quote it's lengthy. it's tn pages. but countdown clock keeps ticking. what if he doesn't get to the end by the end of five days? it's ten pages long. there is concern the president will block the memo or redact it beyond the brink of meaning. looks like we shall see. the "wall street journal" is indicating that the white house is inclining to release the memo. the decision is expected to come tomorrow, on friday. they are haggling over which parts to redact. you think about the timing here. you know how things get crazy on friday it is. >>. we get biblical news dumps on friday night. tomorrow we could have the government shutdown, and the opening ceremonies of the

olympics, and the democratic memo unleashed. timing is everything.

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government shut down but we are all working late. lawrence o'donnell is up next, live. government shut down number two in 2018. you were here. get the t-shirt.. thanks, rachel. the second government shutdown of the trump presidency is now entering its second hour. you're looking at live coverage of the senate floor where a procedural vote -- there it is. i knew there was live coverage of the senate floor. a procedure vote on the bill to end the government shutdown is expected at any minute now. senate rules allowed any senator to block that vote until 1:00 a.m. and only an unreasonable senator pulling a hollow stunt would do that. that, of course, meant rand paw blocked the vote for what he knew would be only a few hours, just long enough to create a government shutdown which might not last