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tv   MTP Daily  MSNBC  December 27, 2018 1:00am-2:00am PST

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but at this point neither side appears eager to budge. nbc's pentagon correspondent hans nichols is at the white house and nbc's garrett haak sechlt on capitol hill. they join tonight's panelist "washington post" reporter eugene scott, "washington post" opinion writer jennifer rubin, and nbc news analyst howard fineman. hans, i do want to start with you. the president made this surprise visit to iraq, and when he got there he bragged about -- or
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admitted at the very least he completely ignored the advice of his generals. what does that mean going forward? >> well, that means that the process -- the normal process that we've come to expect with presidents in consulting their national security council, their apparatus, might not necessarily be as traditional with this president. which could be the understatement of the night. it was clear the president had long wanted to get out of syria. it was clear that some people were counseling him against getting out of syria, and when he made his decision it was precipitous. i think we should note what the president did do, though. he said the u.s. forces would stay in iraq. so a defense on syria, a recommitment to iraq. no meeting with iraqi political officials and no trip to afghanistan, a war where he's also withdrawing troops, withdrawing troops, about 7,000 of them. a war he inherited then escalated and now apparently also wants to draw down. one other note, katy, it looks like we'll have deputy secretary of defense, soon to be acting secretary of defense patrick shanahan, for some time. remember, this is a boeing
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executive, new to washington, not a lot of experience in world affairs. katy? >> hans, i want to stay with who donald trump is listening to right now. because when we were on the campaign trail we asked him who he gets advice from and he says he listens to the shows. he listens to generals talking on the shows. has that changed? or who is he listening to now if he's admitting that he's ignoring his generals today? >> yeah, it's a hard question. we know he listens to the president of turkey, who told him and the president apparently made assurances to reaccept erdogan, that erdogan made the assurances that they would finish off the fight on isis. it's clear the president's public statements on isis and their strength are at odds with what his officials are saying on the ground just this morning officials in iraq saying that they have continuing strikes, air strikes against forces in syria, isis, because of the
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enduring threat and it's clear he didn't listen to defense secretary jim mattis. who he is listening to i think as we start drawing circles and circles it gets closer to the president's listening to himself on this. we can't find anyone within the administration who is actively talking about withdrawing from troops in syria this quickly in the way the president did. and that's the new reality going forward. in a lot of ways, katy, it's similar to what happened with kim jong un. this is a president that wanted to have a summit. he wanted to go toward a deal. and he hurtled toward that deal. now, whether or not that deal's going to be final and lasting is an entirely different matter. katy? >> you know, howard, white house officials have been asked who the president is listening to. and they won't name somebody either. if he's not listening to his generals and he's not listening to advisers and congressmen and women aren't fans of this idea generally either but hans says listening to the president of turkey, what's going on here? with why does he want to pull out? >> why does he want to pull out? well, donald trump i think, if he's anything philosophical, he's an isolationist. he really is. for years and years if not decades, he's said they're not
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going to make suckers of us, we're going to withdraw from the world, we're going to build a wall, we're going to be america first, we're not going to use the old architecture of alliances we've had since world war ii. i think if he has a philosophy, and i'm not sure that he does, that would be it. but i think more than that his philosophy is personal survival. he views the other strong men in political positions around the world like erdogan and xi and even kim jong un as fellow heads of families in new york. i mean, his analogy is to the mob in new york. and he will talk to them. he will talk to his own personal family. i think if i were to tick off a list of the people on the inside right now it's stephen miller, it's brad pascal, who's going to be the campaign manager, it's jared kushner, it's ivanka trump, it may even be melania. it will be kellyanne conway, and that's pretty much it.
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otherwise it's outside people and fellow autocratic leaders he's talking to. >> eugene, how does that line up with the reporting you guys have been doing at the wshtd wsht? >> well, it seems true. the reality is the last individuals who will be standing in the white house when this administration ends, whenever it ends, will be family members. it won't be some of these experts and generals that trump listened to and became acquainted with on television news because he values loyalty and these aren't people who have proven loyalty to donald trump. and it's very fascinating. when he announced these new replacements, singing their praises i think voters are now hearing him and not believing them with the depth that they maybe did once because they don't have confidence that these people will remain in the white house long and that trump will still speak highly of them when they eventually exist. >> jennifer, it used to be you that didn't do any politicking while you were abroad. that used to be the norm. donald trump defied that when he was on the campaign trail. we're just taking it for granted now that he'll visit a war zone
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like he did today and trash his political opponents like he did with the shutdown. >> yeah. this has been a pattern through the campaign and into his presidency where he treats the troops like props. no president in my memory has ever made such political speeches, political slurs, attacks in front of the troops. and it's highly inappropriate, of course. it converts the troops into a partisan plaything. which is very dangerous and very unusual in american politics. i do want to go back to something that howard was saying. i do agree he's an isolationist. but the syria move makes sense if you think he wanted to give vladimir putin a big present before the end of the year or he had made a commitment to vladimir putin. because the powers that benefit from this are number one, iran, but number two russia. and i cannot help but think that that is related to his very weird, very uncertain relationship with vladimir putin, who is benefiting hugely from the chaos in our
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government, from trump's foreign policy, from his attacks on our allies. this is exactly what the russians have wanted for years. confusion, chaos, an america that is not willing to stick to its commitments, willing to turn on the kurds, willing to turn on those that they've made promises to. so i think part of this has to be his relationship with russia. >> hans, jennifer's not the only one who's brought that up, brought that idea up. but maybe the president said something in a closed-door meeting with vladimir putin back in heal sinki that no one has seen a transcript, nobody was there for, and maybe this is the culmination of that promise. has the white house been able to address that concern adequately? >> well, no, they haven't. but they have pointed out, and you hear this at the pentagon, that u.s. forces took out about
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200 russian mercenaries earlier this year. and when you look at the conflicted parties and the complicated space that is the syrian battlefield it's frankly been somewhat of a miracle that there haven't been more mishaps, there haven't been more u.s. casualties, the number of u.s. casualties in syria one or two a year and then as well in iraq, remember that helicopter went down and seven died earlier this year. so when you look at the actual u.s. position, again, run by the generals in syria, it's been pretty counter russia, up to the point where some 200 russian mercenaries, again, these weren't normal troops, were taken out by a whole array of american assets. that's what you hear from the pentagon on whether or not there is any sort of collusion happening inside of syria. there's actually conflict. you also do hear there's something that used to be called the hotline to make sure that russian and u.s. forces were not getting in each other's spaces. so normally when these forces would get close to each other they'd pick up the phone and talk to each other. but when they couldn't get through are there any miscommunications? u.s. forces were not afraid under the doctrine of
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self-defense to take out a lot of russian nationals. >> i want to get to the shutdown, but first quickly, howard. >> very quickly, what i think the president has done here is essentially sell the kurds down the river. nobody knows exactly where they fit in this except for the kurds themselves. it's a big favor to iran and russia and the iraqis as well -- excuse me, the syrians as well. to let -- let russia decide the fate of the kurds. that's exactly what's going to happen right now. >> garrett, in talking about the sthutdown, the president addressed it while he was overseas. it seems that no side is willing to back down from their positions. we're on day five. what does day six, seven, eight, nine, potentially ten look like? >> i think they're going to look very similar to what we've seen over the last 48 hours or so, katy. there have been no moving parts on the shutdown negotiations today. none. and really none since saturday when the vice president came to
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capitol hill and made chuck schumer an offer, a number, of what the administration might be willing to accept for border security money. today you saw the president digging in a little bit more. he said, again, mixing politics with that foreign travel, saying in iraq that he would wait essentially as long as it takes to get what he needs on border security. but i think the wrinkle in this that democrats see is the president has been almost negotiating with himself in public overt last few days in how he talks about the wall. we've heard him talk about the wall. we've heard him say steel slat. we've heard him talk on christmas day about a wall or a fence "or whatever you want to call it" so long as we get good border security. if you're democrats and the president is having these public negotiations with himself, there's no reason for you to interrupt. democrats say they want to spend money on border security but they don't want to spend it on the wall. and if the president gets to a point where he realizes that a wall is not something that he can actually get and claim victory for but perhaps he can get a few billion dollars for border security, that may be the way out of this. all of that said, neither house
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has been told they will be voting within the next 24 hours, which is the agreement that lawmakers were given when they left town for the holidays, that they would get 24 hours' notice on an agreement. so we're staring down at least another full day of this shutdown and sources in both parties tell me they think this thing goes all the way into january. >> garrett, what incentive do democrats believe they have to give the president any money for his wall? do they have any incentive? will there be any sort of compromise from them? 1.3 billion. the number that was being tossed around initially. is that ever going to come up again? or do they feel like hey listen, the voters spoke and they put us back in charge of the house and this is where they're going to leave it. >> a couple things going on here. democrats don't have any positive incentive to make a deal with donald trump on this. this isn't a deal. there's not a negotiation in which democrats would get a political priority of theirs like protections for the dreamers, for example. it's merely the baseline of
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keeping the government open. that's not a democratic priority. that should be a priority of the whole of government. to the degree democrats are getting pressured, it's from their left, from progressives, saying don't make this deal, we don't want this medieval wall. he i say there's perhaps one wrinkle. i heard from a democratic source of mine a long time ago that democrats can't help but try to good afternoon even when it's not their job expect and the argument here would be that in a republican-controlled washington which we are still in until the first week of january, this should by all accounts be republicans' problem to fix. but democrats have a tendency-a a constitutional tendency sometimes to try to insert themselves into problems that are not technically theirs to solve. and i think what you see right now is democratic leadership sitting back saying this is a problem generated by the president and we would like to hear his solutions to get out of it. come january that gets a little bit different. nancy pelosi has been saying for a long time the democrats will when they take control of the house very swiftly pass a clean
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bill to reopen the government at current funding levels. that will essentially dare senate republicans and the white house to act -- to do nothing and have democrats say we've done our part to reopen the government or come back to the bargaining table. that is the next thing here that can change the dynamic, which otherwise is going to stay pretty billion locked in. >> garrett, with no time off in sight, garrett haake, thank you very much. hans nichols, thank you as well. umgine, jennifer, and howard, you guys are staying with us. up next our breaking news coverage continues. the president is on defense over defense. have we really knocked isis silly? we'll talk to an expert who knows the region better than pretty much everyone. today is the day you're going to get motivated... get stronger... get closer. start listening today to the world's largest selection of audiobooks on audible. and now, get more. for just $14.95 a month, you'll get a credit a month good for any audiobook,
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within reach. welcome back. just days after president trump announced a withdrawal if syria that was denounced by his fellow republicans president trump today told u.s. troops serving in iraq is he is in no hurry to appoint a new secretary of defense, that the united states cannot continue to be the policeman of the world and that it is "ridiculous" how many countries the u.s. has troops serving in. he also said we've knocked isis syria, that turkey and saudi arabia will help defeat isis, which by the way he said last week were already defeated. with me now, ambassador christopher hill, former u.s. ambassador to among other countries iraq. he's also an msnbc diplomacy expert. ambassador, thank you for being here. the president is like most things all over the place on the topic of isis. he's in one breath saying they're not a threat any longer, don't need to worry about them, and then in the other breath saying don't worry, russia,
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saudi arabia, and turkey are going to take care of them. what is the reality on the ground there? and secondly, what does it mean not to have any push, any immediacy for a new secretary of defense? >> yeah. well, first of all, the reality is there's no question that isis has been really hit very hard. this started actually during the obama administration and continued seamlessly into the trump administration. but of course it doesn't mean that isis is done. isis represents sort of an extremist, very extremist view of sunni islam. the sunnis in iraq are the ones who feel they're left out. the sunnis in syria, the more religious sunnis, feel they deserve power. so there's no question they could come back. and they don't necessarily come back in the form of isis. they could bum back in some other form. there's a lot to be done. one thing that's really striking about this trip is normally when you have these kinds of trips,
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okay, you don't announce what you're going to do, where you're going to be, but you do get some people to come and meet at the airport. so the idea would normally be you would ask, for example, the kurdish president in the northern part of iraq, the kurdish regional government. you'd ask the president from there to come down to meet a senior american. he may be able to figure it out. you don't have to tell him. but then you reassure him and then you announce we've had a good discussion with the kurds. so you do something like that. or for example the president is not going to pull troops out of iraq. so why not have the iraqi prime minister come to the air base and tell him that? so you can show him you're kind of on top of the 2ki79ic game. and the only explanation i really have is this administration absolutely doesn't care. they don't care what these other people think and they certainly don't care that they have expectations from us. and finally, on the issue of a
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defense secretary, you know, unlike in the justice department where whitaker had never faced any confirmation process, in defense at least the deputy, the deputy taking over, has had a confirmation process. so you can argue, look, we're in no big hurry, he's very competent, et cetera, et cetera. but his job, shanahan's job is very different from the secretary of defense. and they ought to get going on it. and again, the only explanation is they really don't care. so if the president's trying to say i'm not going to be like my previous presidents, he certainly is in the fact he just doesn't seem to care about these issues. >> what about the kurds? there is reporting that suggests that pentagon officials are really concerned about the status of the kurds once the americans leave. to say that turkey's going to take care of things, many say is basically a death wish for the kurds. the turkish see the kurds as their enemy. >> yeah.
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you wouldn't say turkey's going to take care of things except in the sense of attack the kurds. that doesn't make a lot of sense. look, there are kurds in iran, there are kurds in iraq, there are kurds in turkey and there are kurds in circumstance syria. the concern is if the kurds somewhere in one of those places became independent then the other kurds would get the same message or even join with them. so it's a complex problem. it's a very tough problem. but what you try to do is calm it down and not spin it up. and to calm it down you need to reassure the kurds, we love them, we want to be with them but we don't support necessarily independence aspirations. and then you give a pretty tough message to the turks saying turks, we love you too but we need to have an understanding about where we're going to go with this. you know, what is striking about this president, whether it's saudi arabia or turkey or russia, he doesn't seem to understand that we, not them, we
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have a lot of the leverage. we can tell the turks look, this is going to be bad for you. and you get the sense from this president that he's always worried that saudi arabia will stop buying things from the united states, we'll be in trouble. we have the leverage with saudi arabia. not the other way around. so consistently this president talks tough but acts very weak. >> what's the alternative? and to push back, what is the -- what should be what we accept for how long troops stay overseas? should it just be an indefinite period of time? at what point does the president of the united states say and defy everybody and say we've been there long enough, i don't see an end in sight, i don't see this getting better, nothing is changing, we've got to bring our men and women home? >> you're absolutely right. and in the past you had people on the republican side known as neocons who seemed to believe in forever war. they wanted to keep our troops there forever without a sort of clear notion of where this was going. and certainly in syria the
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president can be forgiven in looking at the issues there and saying well, wait a minute, we're trying to get regime change, we're trying to get rid of bashar al assad, and at the same time we're trying to go after one of his main enemies that is isis. does this really make sense? are we really going to close this deal? let's work on isis and let's simply let others work on bashar al assad. that would have been a sensible issue. he could have said to his military commanders, look, i want a strategy that gets us out of there but does not create a situation where we somehow reinforce assad or something and then people get to work on papers -- >> is that possible? we've been in these wars -- not syria but afghanistan and iraq or for over a decade. is what you're saying we want to
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leave but we want to keep things stable? is that even possible? >> well, it's -- you know, there are no easy outcomes here. but certainly you can leave and leave behind more stability than you found. the idea of just precipitously leaving without any sort of iterative process either within your own government or with regional powers, without any effort to set up a diplomatic process going forward, is a recipe for creating more problems than there are now. so i hear the argument and a valid argument that look, we can't stay forever. people who say well, we stayed in germany for 50 years. that's not the point. the point is you've got to have some kind of end state. a lot of people have been concerned about this sort of thing for a long time. and so it's i think fair to raise that issue but not in this kind of precipitous one day you don't me anything about, it the next day the president's decided valid argument that look, we can't stay forever. people who say well, we stayed in germany for 50 years. that's not the point. the point is you've got to have some kind of end state. a lot of people have been concerned about this sort of thing for a long time. and so it's i think fair to raise that issue but not in this
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kind of precipitous one day you don't me anything about, it the next day the president's decided we're just going to pull up and run. when you run, bad things can happen. >> one last question for you. the president seemed to suggest that american troops overseas were doing the job of suckers today. listen to this. we don't have the sun but i've got the verbiage. "america shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. if they want to us do the fighting they also have to pay a price. and sometimes that's also a monetary price. so we're not the suckers of the world. we're no longer the suckers, folks. and people aren't looking at us as suckers." >> this is the extraordinary narrative that the president and others tell continuously. that is, the united states in creating a world in our own image, in creating the institutions, whether it's the united nations or nalto, in creating these lasting partnerships, has somehow created a world in which we're the suckers. and i think most of the world would beg to differ.
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we're not the suckers. we've created a world whose institutional framework has essentially enshrined our leadership. we have done very well because we created this structure. so this narrative that somehow we're losers and worse yet, we're victims is so antithetical to what is really going on out there. and again, it behooves the president now and again to crack a book on these subjects. the united states has done very well and will continue to do well not to get involved in every awful little civil war but rather to be aware of every awful civil war, to do what we can diplomatically and in some cases to work with others and sometimes even just by ourselves to deal with them. and we cannot allow things like isis to just be handed off to some regional countries that may or may not get the job done. so the real problem is we have a president who simply doesn't understand his brief. >> eem not sure you get him to
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open a book. he didn't even read defense secretary mattis's resignation letter, and that was only three pages long. ambassador chris hill. ambassador, thank you very much. happy new year. and ahead, the latest on the death of the 8-year-old guatemalan boy in u.s. custody. he's the second child to die this month. what the agency is doing now to prevent it from happening again.
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. this is an extraordinarily rare occurrence. it's been more than a decade since we've had a child pass away anywhere in a cbp process. this is just devastating for us. >> welcome back. that was the customs and border protection commissioner this morning after another child died while in the agency's custody. an 8-year-old guatemalan boy died of unknown causes on christmas eve. house democrats are now promising to hold hearings in the new year. and the secretary of homeland security says she has directed a "series of extraordinary protective measures" for children in border patrol custody while at the same time blaming congress for "inaction." joining me now, nbc national security and justice reporter julia ainsley. julia, i've got to say i was listening to the cbp commissioner this morning saying that, and i remembered yelling at my tv and saying how can it possibly be rare when two children have died in the past three weeks?
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and if it's not rare any longer, what has changed in the past three weeks or past month to make it so that this would happen in such quick succession? >> you're yelling the right things, katy. i mean, it was rare. he's right. there had been no deaths of children in cbp custody for more than a decade. there had been six adults that passed away in fiscal year 2018. so ending in october. but now we've seen two in a month. and what's changed here is actually something that shifted and started to change this summer under the family separation policy. we saw a backlog. we saw a lot of people who couldn't be transferred out of cbp custody to i.c.e. custody. and i.c.e. custody, it's designed for them to stay longer. children can stay up to 20 days. adults sometimes much longer. they have space. children have schooling. they have medical care. and cbp custody, they are not
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supposed to stay there for longer than 72 hours. sometimes they've had some backlogs, but usually what happens when they see those backlogs, is previous administrations have rushed resources to the border to make sure they alleviate that. we have not seen that same effort in this administration. part of it is they don't want to give up detention space they are reserving for families and immigrants who are arrested inside the united states, internally already living there undocumented. and then on their way to deportation they have to stay in this i.c.e. facility. they're taking up beds that could go to some of these children who need to be in a place where they get better care. remember, they're coming through some long and dangerous journeys. they need to be more properly supervised. some changes they're making right now are to have people go interview them and account for their medical ifrtd. but some are saying that's too little too late. >> julia ainsley. julia, i know we're going to keep talking about this story. it's a big one. >> absolutely. >> ahead the growing threat for the trump administration and far beyond as the president becomes more and more isolated.
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increasingly isolated even from republicans. and neither the president nor republicans in congress have outlined an end game to secure money for a border wall and end the partial government shutdown, which is now in its fifth day. as he unleashed his grievances, president trump even tweeted on christmas eve that he was "all alone, poor me, in the white house waiting for democrats to make a deal." i'm joined by mark lauder, former special assistant to president trump mark, so good to see you. >> good to see you, katy. >> i'm wondering what the end game is for the president. if there's a clean cr that's sent back to him, is he going to veto that? >> right now it would look like it. he's been very firm and committed for the past three years from the campaign trail all the way through his time in office. he wants to secure the border. that includes -- that includes a wall or fencing or whatever we're going to call it now.
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and he wants to see that included. >> so basically, until he gets his way? >> well, that's both ways. you've got democrats saying they won't pass any kind of cr if it has any money for the wall. they want their way. the president wants his way. hopefully, there will be a way to meet in the middle so far. but what we've heard is that anything over the 1.6 or 1.3 billion, that number keeps changing, is a non-starter for democrats and the president is trying to make a broader deal on -- and he's offered this on multiple occasions. we'll just have to see how it comes out. >> well, there was a deal to be made last year when he was being offered 20 billion in his wall
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in exchange for protections for daca. he threw that deal in the trash. and now it's two years later when the democrats are about to take control. and he had a republican-controlled house and a republican-controlled senate and he did have a deal on the table. it seems like the reason he's got no deal now has more to do with him than it does with anybody in congress. >> well, i'd also tell you there was a federal court ruling that reinstated daca which took the leverage off the table in terms of the fact that it needed to be done. if that gets overturned i think that deal comes back and there may be something long term in that respect. but also as you know while, yes, technically republicans do control the senate, when it comes to senate appropriations you're going to need 60 votes, so you have to have democrats on board. they're using that minority power to hold up the entire spending process.
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>> i do know that. but he did have 20 billion on the table and he decided to say no to it because he added some more components to a deal that he wanted that he wasn't going to get. he had a republican deal, a bipartisan deal on the table that was thrown in the trash after his more conservative allies he and more conservative advisers like stephen miller got in his ear and said no go without more border protections. >> well, and this is where the negotiations are going to continue. we're going to see if something can get done. i'm hoping they can get something done here. and in the next few weeks. it looks like both sides are going to have to give something. i've been in politics long enough to know that usually when neither side gets exactly what they want you probably have a good compromise. right now neither side appears willing to give on anything, although you do have the administration, i know the vice president is still working on capitol hill, at least making phone calls, trying to see if something can be done. the question is what -- are the dmtz going to meet anywhere close to the middle? >> there are 400,000 federal workers who are going to be furloughed. there are 400,000 other federal workers who are essential employees who will be working without pay. the president has now said multiple times that he's heard from a number of federal workers
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who say that they're all about this shutdown, that they want the wall. how exactly is he hearing from these federal workers? are they calling the white house? because i believe the switchboard is not on right now. how are they getting in touch with the president? >> well, i'm not exactly sure how he's reaching. but he hears from federal employees all the time. >> how? >> he hears from them before -- >> how does he hear from them? >> when they're coming in, whether he's going and visiting various agencies. >> when has he visited any agencies? when has he been traveling? he's been to iraq. >> well, this week since the shutdown has occurred. but even leading up to the shutdown this was not a -- this was not a surprise shutdown. we could see the tea leaves -- >> but he said he's been hearing from them presently, not in the past. >> well, and i'm not sure. i'm not in washington, d.c. i haven't talked to him in the last few days or so. so i don't know exactly how. but we do know that by and large and including a lot of border and customs patrol agents believe walls work. they know it works. and they want a secured border. so that could very well be something he is focused on and he is telling back when he says that the federal employees support what we're trying to do long term. >> the majority of this country does not support a wall, and that's just from all the polling that's out there. 54% do not support a wall.
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is the president comfortable digging in his heels on this when the majority of the country does not want it? >> well, i think what he's focused on is the majority of americans want secured borders. they want criminals and gangs -- >> but they don't want a wall. >> and immigration to come across -- how are we going to stop them? we need a combination of a lot of things to protect our neighborhoods, to protect workers, especially on the lower income scales from having their wages lowered. there are a lot of things. the president is focused on a lot of things as relates to border security but we also know there are certain areas where walls work. when you look at those four areas in the last few decades where they have expanded our border wall and barriers, illegal immigration has dropped 90%. it shows that it works. we just need to be targeted in how we do it. we need congress to give us the
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funding to help us do that in targeted areas along with better technology, more personnel, and the other things that many people are talking about. >> still the majority of americans say they do not want a wall. even if they want tighter border security they do not want a wall. marc lotter, thanks so much for being here. and happy new year, my friend. >> you too. thanks, katy. and ahead, 20-20 vision. democrats aiming to become the 46th president are focusing on the 44th. the 44th
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the first step forward begins by looking backward. ohio senator sherrod brown hasn't officially declared he's running for president. >> i don't know yet.
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we're seriously thinking about it. >> connie and i are still thinking about this. >> but he is looking for the go ahead from number 44. politico reports brown is working to arrange a meeting with president obama. the former president has already met with democratic up-and-comers like beto o'rourke and tallahassee, florida mayor andrew gillum. >> an outstanding mayor. one of the most inspiring, gifted candidates that are running this year. >> up and comers might just be the democrats' ticket to success in 2020. a new usa toid/suffolk poll says most democrats and independents, 59%, would be excited by someone entirely new. >> so someone entirely new is number one. coming in at number two, joe biden. we'll be back with more "mtp daily" right after this. it's important. >> it's a bit fascinating that so many of his supporters are still backing the idea. he told them mexico would pay for the wall. what the democrats are fighting against actually is trying to
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keep american taxpayers from
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it's important. >> it's a bit fascinating that so many of his supporters are still backing the idea. he told them mexico would pay for the wall. what the democrats are fighting against actually is trying to keep american taxpayers from paying for this wall that the president proposed that no democrat supported during the 2016 campaign or the year after. the reality is we have significant polling suggesting that the majority of americans do not want this wall. there's nothing that his been presented regarding research proving that this wall would do what trump says it will. and in fact, there are reports from brookings saying the exact opposite.
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>> there's all this talk about how donald trump is losing the support among republicans on capitol hill. there's all this wariness about donald trump because of secretary of defense mattis leaving. but at the same time, jennifer, even after that news came out republicans in the house voted for additional funding for this border wall. are there really any cracks in republican support? >> this is the conundrum that many republicans face, which is that they're becoming increasingly uneasy, whether it's saudi arabia, whether it's mattis, whether it's the shutdown. at the same time they're paralyzed with political fear
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that if they step away from him, the base will eat him alive or he'll send a nasty tweet or something. but their options are becoming limited. for starters she's needling trump that the so-called wall is becoming as she put it a beaded curtain meaning that he's now talking about a fence, or we can call it something else. she's right. he has moved his language. and what do republicans do in the senate when a bill comes, a clean cr from the house? they also passed a clean cr in the senate in the dim dark past like a week or so ago. are they going to say now forget it we don't want to vote now on the thing we just voted for? they're going to be in a corner in about a week or so when congress comes back. so the notion they're going to keep the government closed until nancy pelosi comes back and what, gets a big political win by reopening the government. this makes very little political sense. aside from the substantive issues. >> here's what nancy pelosi said. he says we're going to build a wall with cement and mexico's
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going to pay for it. while he's already backed off of the cement, now he's down to i think a beaded curtain or something, i'm not sure where he is. is the strategy to wait for nancy pelosi to become the speaker so they can rail against democrats and try to blame this on democrats? >> yeah, i think that's what they're going to try to do. donald trump is a terrible negotiator. i don't know when people are going to get that through their head. he is a bad negotiator. ask the farmers who are losing billions of dollars on soybeans, for example. in the very regions of the country where he won his biggest votes. yes, they will try to blame nancy pelosi. nancy pelosi will be willing to be blamed. to use donald trump's language she'll take the mantle and throw it back on him because as you were pointing out just a few minutes ago the polling clearly shows that by and large the american people don't want to spend, and it's not 5 billion. if you do everything donald trump wants to do, it's $25 billion. they don't want to do that. it's a ridiculous argument partly because there already is fencing or -- along a whole lot of the border. i think nancy pelosi is just as donald trump has trolled the entire political system has barely budged from the national spotlight. he spent this past week at home
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in el paso monitoring the government's handling of migrants at the border, but this week he published a sharply worded widely shared essay criticizing the president over the government shutdown. ted cruz's campaign manager responded to that piece by issuing this warning, quote, i have read every single word that o'rourke has uttered in public life. he has never and i mean never talked like this, pointing to other potential presidential
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the airing of grievances. i know one place that has plenty of those. ♪ >> the traditional of festivus begins with the airing of grievances. >> i like these people. i just don't like them that much. >> i don't like that we are rushing into this. >> i don't like the looks of that. >> i've got a lot of problems with you people! >> me, don't like you. >> i don't like it. >> there's a lot i don't like. >> today was a terrible day. >> terrible. >> terrible. >> terrible. >> awful. >> absolutely intolerable. >> unbelievable. >> unacceptable. >> stinks! >> stinks! >> it stinks. >> the worst is yet to come. >> please, somebody stop this. >> there's something wrong. >> we can do better. >> it's a festivus miracle! ♪ that could have been a whole lot better.
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happy belated festivus, everyone. the tree becomes a festivus pole for everybody who works in this building and curses all the crowds that come to rockefeller center. that's all for tonight. that's my grievance. ♪ president trump makes an unannounced trip to iraq while speaking to troops. he defended his decision to withdraw u.s. forces from syria and criticized democrats for not funding his border wall with mexico. plus, the secretary of homeland security reacts after a second migrant child dies in u.s. custody. what the government is saying about that today. and the stock market makes a major comeback. ♪

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