over the weekend and see what next week brings. thank you so much. appreciate it. i'm chris jansing. i'll see you in the new year. "deadline white house" starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. i'm elise jordan in for nicolle. we saw it when donald trump gets desperate, he revives his greatest hit, the wall. trump is fear mongering while 2,000 low-wage employees, grandmothers who work as a janitor at the state department, worry about keeping their electricity kept on in the winter cold. it's irrelevant if democrats or trump or many in the government shutdown because the reality is the american people are the losers when elected leaders can't fulfill one of the most basic elements of their jobs. funding the government. this morning, trump tried to keep the focus on the border,

threatening in three separate tweets to completely shut it down. as if that didn't whip up adequate frenzy, trump said word is a new caravan is forming in honduras. though trump and congressman and women hyping imaginary border threats want to get paychecks and worry about losing their heat, it would do them some good to face the immediate reality of their own ineptitude. maybe instead of threats and chaos, they'd come up with a plan to reform our nation's broken immigration system. instead of harming workers who did their jobs. trump and congress need to start doing theirs. here to help us, eli stokols, white house reporter for the "l.a. times." at the table, reverend al sharpton, host of "politics nation" and president of the national action network, former dnc senior adviser doug thornell and jonathan lemire, white house reporter for the associated press. so at this stage in the game, it almost seems like donald trump

is reveling in the dysfunction that he's causing. and this report in the daily beast that said that team trump is actually gleeful and they think that politically, this is to their benefit to have this shutdown. >> that remains to be seen. i think that there are some people around the president who think that he is looking strong here. that he is doubling down on his core values. the wall was his central campaign promise. it was the theme we heard night after night at every rally, although at the time the chant from the crowd as to who was going to pay for it was mexico, not this new formulation where it will be done over new trade deals. it will be paid eventually in installments is the new phrase coming from the white house. but we've seen him time and time again. he's mostly concerned with his core base. that 35, 38, whatever percentage might be, of people who have stuck with him from the beginning. he's told people around him that's where he feels if he can cater to them, there's still a

path for him in 2020. as bleak as other polls may look it's a chance to thread the needle. if he can keep his base, look strong to them and then pick off just a few undecideds and he believes people the polls aren't capturing. he feels that's how he won. he thinks he can do it again. in this case, the polling -- other polls suggest he is taking the lion's share of the blame for the shutdown but he's not willing to blink. >> i want to go to eli on this. you have a democratic caucus that for the last couple of months has seemed fractured. is this helping to actually solidify nancy pelosi's position within the democratic -- within -- among democrats? >> well, it's interesting. what we've been hearing from the white house over the last 24 hours, i've been hearing conversations with people today is that they are trying to sort of pin a lot of the blame on nancy pelosi and say he's not going to deal until she gets the speaker vote so she's the obstructionist here, even more

so than senator schumer. the leader for the democrats in the senate. but the reality, as you point out is that nancy pelosi was strengthened by that meeting that she and schumer had in the oval office a couple weeks ago when she took the president's lunch, ate it right in front of him in front of the tv cameras, walk eed out, became an interne meme. she's been elevated and strengthened by that and this president who has been forced to stay in washington for the most part over the holidays has been consuming a lot of news. he's sensitive to that. sensitive to the narrative that the president got played. he got taken. he lost his own leverage in that meeting and they're trying to get it back. the people telling him that he's in a strong position are the people who have always remained in the president's orbit by telling him what he wants to hear. the reality is these are negotiations that they are trying to have. they are blaming the democrats for not coming to the table over the break but, really, this is somewhere between $1.3 billion

in border funding and somewhere in the $2 billion range that ultimately is the reason the government is shut down. the white house not giving an indication what it's going to take for them to sign something. but a lot of this, this is a big show of, you know, determination from the president to fight for this border wall, even though people will tell you privately they know the amount of funding they'll be getting isn't going to be that much. >> rev, you look at some of the polling on this, and it just doesn't match up with donald trump's reality that this issue is a win for him. donald trump is getting the blame for the shutdown. >> you have to be careful on how he defines win. in the decades i've had battles with him here in new york, donald trump is not as smart as we give him credit for. what he was reacting to was rush limbaugh and many that talk to his base had started saying

things that were negative, which is why he panicked about his base. there is a direct correlation between lombard and ann coulter and all of them saying you're not getting anything done. even tucker carlson. now he comes back with the wall. now we've got migrants again marching. he does the move to go to visit the troops in iraq. and then, again, opens his mouth and jams himself again. he is the first presidential kind of thing that we've seen him do until he started talking. and then he brings in politics. he attacks pelosi, starts talking about syria and talking about a fantasy 10% raise. a fish wouldn't get caught if he kept his mouth shut. they need to try and tell him to shut up because he gets in the way of his own messaging. i think he's trying to hold a 30%. he's trying to hold his 33%, but

the reason he's panicking is because they started flipping because he wasn't doing a lot of this. >> doug, next week does nancy pelosi get to take credit for re-opening the government? >> well, i think it's likely to happen next week, maybe -- it might go into the week after, but, look, the government could be open today. there's a bill that passed the senate overwhelmingly with funding for border security that would pass the house if paul ryan brought it up. the votes are there. the president is making a decision not to sign it. i agree a lot began with this pushback he was feeling from the right because the white house did give some indications they would support less funding and then he felt the wrath of ann coulter and rush limbaugh and had to look like a tough guy. frg we're seeing this morning is john sense. it's all nonsense. democrats need to be focused on the end game here and that's not

following around these shiny objects. the president has shut the government down three times. he's shutting it down right now because he said he would in that meet with chuck schumer and nancey pelosi. he took credit for it. and mexico isn't paying for the wall. this was a core promise of his, and they are not going to pay for it. now he wants taxpayers to pay for this pasteful spending project. a lot of people are being hurt by this. it's wreckness and you are seeing this president isolated in making these crazy statements. >> he just ten days ago, the u.s. government said that we're going to join with mexico in a marshall plan for central america. and then today, by tweet, he is threatening to cut off all aid. so you wrote this week about how these tweets are so disruptive. i, for one, have started to pay less attention to them because half the time they are literally

meaningless and just sound and fury and nothing backed up with no substance. what is the u.s. policy here? and how -- what tweets have been the most destructive over the past two weeks? what's really unnerved white house advisers? >> there are two parts here. first the tweets trying to justify this need for the wall. inventing another caravan. threatening to cut off aid which he's done before and not followed through. there is a broader point that with the white house losing a lot of its credibility, the press briefings, virtually nonexistent. they are coming from donald trump tweets. and many of them can't be believed or taken at face value. almost all of them are at least slightly exaggerated, and we're seeing that again today as part of this leveraging position. we've seen him all over the place. yesterday was a good example where he suggested that the

wall -- everyone agrees on the wall. the democrats want the wall. the reason it's not happening is because they can't give me a win and the border security would be a central issue for his 2020 re-election campaign. none of that is true except for the fact that he'll try to make it a signature issue for him. we'll have this brinksmanship and it's clear when nancy pelosi and the democrat comes to power and that is, to answer your question, a big part of this. people are unnerved because the other team is about to have the ability to issue subpoenas and make the administration's life that much more difficult. >> so is this just symbolism as jonah goldberg argues in the national review saying this is just about a symbolic wall that a lot of people know is never going to happen but donald trump just has to make this final push? >> i think it's definitely bollic. there have been any number of experts that say the wall wouldn't even really add to border security. you've had some border patrol people saying if it's a wall that he first described, they

couldn't see what was going on on the other side. then he changed it like it's a scenic wall that you could see through. i think now nancy pelosi described it as a hanging beads or something. we don't even know what we're talking about here in terms of the wall. it's all symbolism because it's not serious. it's about playing to the base. he's playing politics. and trying to keep the mueller report off of people's minds. and he's getting ready for what may happen when the house begains next week when they're sworn in to start talking about what they want to investigate and look into his personal business as well as his businesses. >> i'm going to go to eli now. so at this point, is donald trump hostage to the base? is that what this is all about? and he isn't going to consider the 800,000 employees who have done honest work and they've done their job and want their paycheck as expected. it is really about the symbolism

of the base as his political strategy? >> he's always been hostage to the base, elise. from the beginning of this presidency. every time he thought he had a meet with pelosi and schumer in the first year of the administration. made a compromise. and then went back on it because he got backlash from the base. he's always been most afraid of losing his closest and strongest supporters. and very susceptible to manipulation by people who tell him if you don't do this, you're going to lose them. he hears that. it freaks him out and he tends to behave accordingly. i think in terms of assessing what he's doing now, what his tweets are telling us, whether you pay attention to them or not. as everyone has pointed out, this is a president at the midpoint of his term who is under investigation, facing an incoming democratic majority in the house. he's cornered. his behavior has been erratic throughout the last two years but increasingly so, unnerving a lot of people over the last month, really since the election

setback. we saw him whip up a lot of hysteria. we saw him spend 70 or so million to send troops to the border to police the border against the caravan that was 1,000 miles away in the run-up to the election. it didn't save republicans in the election but he did it anyway. we've seen mattis resign just before the holiday. there are not a lot of people in this white house right now who can control this president. if he puts his mind to do something, if he tweets something, there will be more reverse engineering that takes place. and that's what we're all watching heading into the new year is what this president is going to do and whether or not he can be restrained at all. >> and eli, before you leave us, are you hearing anything about president trump's weekend plans in the white house? is it alone time, more time watching television? should we be prepared for more tweet storms? >> i think we should always be prepared for more television watching and more tweeting. as far as the folks i've talked to, the first lady is down in

florida. sarah sanders told me earlier today, at this point, the president has no plans to join her. he's not planning to go down to florida during the new year's eve/new year's day holiday. he's planning to be here even though they don't believe any real negotiating on reopening the government will happen until the 3rd or 4th. at this point, the president is here. he's supposedly talking with staff, meeting with staff, making calls. we haven't seen him today but that's what we're told from white house advisers. i've seen jared kushner around the west wing. so there are people who are here but as far as what he's doing, we haven't really gotten much word. you can expect, though, certainly there will be more tweets before the weekend is out. >> i think reince priebus put it best when he called those early morning tweeting hours the devil's workshop. we have that to look forward to over this new year's weekend. we're going to take our first break. when we come back, it's been a busy year for special counsel robert mueller. racking up plea deals,

indictments and evidence that now apparently includes a nude selfie. the latest on his investigation and where it's expected to go in the new year. plus, is the president's attorney still bracing for a subpoena fight? the answer seems to change by the hour. and nicolle takes a look back at the most consequential stories this year. ear. ♪ hi. this is peggy. (vo) you do more than rescue pets when you share the love. you build families. get a new subaru, like the all new forester, and charities like the aspca can receive two hundred and fifty dollars from subaru. (avo) get zero percent during the subaru share the love event. i but i can tell you i liberty mutual customized my car insurance so i only pay for what i need. oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no... only pay for what you need.

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do you expect the president -- obviously you do represent the president. do you expect that he's going to have to answer more questions in writing? >> well, i think i announced about ten days ago, over my dead body, and i'm not dead yet. >> rudy giuliani, the

president's lawyer, sounding adamant that his client will not answer more questions from the special counsel. with just hours later, he didn't seem so sure. asked by the daily beast if it is his understanding that mueller is still looking to interview trump over the phone or in person, giuliani reiterated that it hasn't been formally closed yet, and that the loop hasn't been closed. so which one is it? as we head into the new year and try to make sense of the president's lawyer's contradicting statements, the big question still looms. will the special counsel end up subpoenaing the president? joining us, former u.s. attorney joyce vance, cynthia, a former federal prosecutor and clint watts, a former special agent with the fbi. all are msnbc contributors. cynthia, i'm going to start with you. will there be a subpoena for donald trump? >> well, that's an interesting question. because we make this determination, this differentiation between a subject and a target. if the president is a target of

the investigation, he'll not receive a subpoena. that's doj policy. if he is a subject of the investigation, he will receive a subpoena. but let me just say this. once he receives the subpoena, what will happen is that through some political machinations that you'll probably have more knowledge about than i, do he'll end up taking the fifth amendment. on no occasion in 2019, will the president of the united states speak with robert mueller. >> that's interesting. joyce, you've made an interesting point about the acting attorney general matt whitaker and his role in this subpoena question. can you walk us through that? >> you know, it's an interesting point that we have to deal with, elise, because the subpoena isn't issued solely at robert mueller's discretion. assuming he decides he needs to follow up to the written questions by putting the president under oath in front of a grand jury, he needs to obtain approval from doj.

that means going to the deputy attorney general, but for a subpoena like this, inevitably it will get kicked up to the acting attorney general matt whitaker, who we learned last week has decided he will just ignore the vase given to him at doj, continue to supervise this investigation, even though they advise he should recuse. and that means pretty much the president's fate rests in matt whitaker's hand and matt whitaker can make that decision about whether or not to issue a subpoena to the president. no one will have confidence in that decision so it's a terrible thing for the wall of integrity that doj builds separating its criminal prosecutions from political influence. this will always be tarnished by that political context. >> and on this point of matt whitaker and his role in the russia investigation, we -- two of our msnbc legal analysts have a great column out. and they say that in pressuring

whitaker who is acting attorney general oversees the investigation, the president was unquestionably trying to coerce him into blocking prosecutors in new york from either looking at or implicating him or his family members in criminal conduct. in our view that action constituted a criminal attempt by the president to obstruct justice, one that is even more clear cut than the president's prior attempts to thwart the federal investigation into russia's 2016 election interference. cynthia, which investigation poses a more extenseiial threato president trump at this time? the robert mueller or the southern district of new york? >> it's hard to know that because robert mueller's investigation is like a big black box. and we just -- it's dark. we don't know what's in it. the southern district of new york definitely poses a huge threat. not only to him but to members of his family. remember in the cohen plea

agreements and allocution, it says that executive number two approved those payments. in the campaign finance case. well, and the question is who is executive number two. most people speculate executive number two is don junior. so that means that don junior is approaching target status. the president has loyalty to almost no one in the united states with exception of his family. if his family is implicated, he is likely to blow up and all kinds of things are about to happen. so i do think something in 2019, regarding don junior and the southern district of new york, is going to turn out to be a bombshell news story. the other thing about whitaker -- this is sort of the flip side of the whitaker. let's just say whitaker does a great job and does everything right. let's give him that. still, because he's done all

these -- the obstruction and because his appointment was so improper, no one will ever have confidence in what he does and what happens at the doj. and that's the great tragedy. if you look at it from defending trump or believing trump has done something wrong, once you get to whitaker, now nobody can trust what's happened. and that's the great tragedy of the whitaker and also the bar appointments. >> cynthia, that's actually joyce's argument in a new piece she has up to slate about william barr, the president's nominee for attorney general. and, joyce, you say that the integrity of the justice department is indeed at stake with the appointment of william barr. and this is a view that i have heard from some former bush 41 individuals who served alongside william barr saying that it was actually a master stroke for donald trump to appoint barr at the moment he did right after

h.w.'s funeral, and he managed to creep in some of the good publicity and good will that was more -- should more be towards h.w. than barr himself. and so can you talk us through that argument? >> i think cynthia captures it just right when she says it's a tragedy. and the problem that we face is that, you know, barr had a great reputation as an attorney general. he's someone who democrats could have got behind. but now there's a cloud over him because he's written this 20-page memo saying that trump can't be subjected to obstruction of justice charges. it somehow found its way into the justice department and even into the white house. and so even if he has the purest of motives, even if his actions as attorney general are to be above reproach, there will always be lingering questions. and we are at a point in this country where we can't afford to have those kind of questions about the justice department, its independence and its

integrity. we need someone who can rise above. we need some form of just unquestionable integrity in all of the further decision-making process surrounding the mueller investigation, the southern district of new york case, and all of the other work that the justice department does. so meaning no disrespect to former attorney general barr, unfortunately, he needs to take himself out of the running in this case for the good of the institution. >> in separate news and i can't believe i'm going to bring this up, but it's news. we must discuss it. there is talk of this mysterious nude selfie floating around in a recent filing and that robert mueller has everything, as of just yesterday, michael cohen tweeted that robert mueller has everything. what do you make of this argument that mueller collected a nude selfie in a way that was inappropriate? >> does it make you want to see the nude selfie more or less?

>> not at all. >> what's interesting about it is part of being a troll farm operator is you are really playing to two parties. you are part of a state apparatus trying to look like somebody you aren't. they're trying to look like real americans. what tends to happen is they are using their personal e-mail, personal cell phone and they are using what might be a work account but trying to make sure it's not a work account because you don't want it tied back to the state. this mauks kes it such you're g after everything because you have to decide where personal life starts and business life ends. that means everything gets sucked up in the investigation. this is part of the dangers i'm sure no one really thought about. they probably have a massive trove of information. what the russians are trying to do is to push the u.s. justice system to say, tell us what you have. tell us what you got. because this is critical for them in counterintelligence now. we need to know what mueller has so we know where we've been

penetrated, how we've been penetrated, what we need to seal up, where are the gaps at and they're trying to use the u.s. covert system to do it which is a strategic, smart approach for them. >> okay. we're going to hope that doesn't see the light of day. cynthia, thank you for spending time with us. we're going to take another break. still ahead -- more on robert mueller and a look back at his very busy year and why it's expected to be even busier next year.

this year, you could barely go a day without hearing his name on tv or in the papers. never speaking in public, only showing us glimpses of his work through filings and indictments. robert mueller has had quite the year. to remind you of everything the special counsel's uncovered, here's a look back. >> we begin with breaking news. bob mueller issuing the first indictments of the russians interfering in the 2016 election. >> special counsel unsealing an additional 32 counts against former trump campaign chairman

paul manafort and his aide rick gates. >> the fbi has raided the office of donald trump's longtime lawyer michael cohen. >> trump's former campaign chief paul manafort has been hit with new charges involving witness tampering and obstruction of justice. >> robert mueller charged 12 russian military officers with a sustained wide-ranging cyberattack on this country's democratic process. >> one-two punch. the president's men guilty. a jury convicts his former campaign chairman paul manafort and michael cohen, the president's once closest aide pleads guilty. >> president trump has followed through on his promise to fire attorney general jeff sessions. >> president trump's former personal attorney and self-proclaimed fixer michael cohen entering a new plea deal with the special counsel robert mueller. >> prosecutors from the president's own justice department today straight up accused him of engaging in a felony. >> michael cohen, the president's former attorney and personal fixer was sentenced to

36 months. >> a federal judge just shut down michael flynn's attacks on the fbi. >> and by the looks of it, there will be no slowing down for mueller and his team in 2019. in the first couple of months of the year, we'll hear from manafort's team on whether or not they will fight mueller's assessment the former trump campaign chairman broke his plea agreement. that's due january 7th. michael cohen has to report to prison by march 6th. and a judge ordered a status report on flynn's further cooperation with federal prosecutors by march 13th. those are just developments of the legal battles we already know about. there could be many more revelations ahead. joirks rev, clint, doug and jonathan are still here to help break it down. did you ever think that donald trump would be in this much legal trouble? >> i think the one who never thought it was donald trump. i mean, he's operating in a way that he's always been operating in his businesses. autocratic and all. and i think that he had gotten

beyond the point he felt he'd ever be held accountable. i think what is really interesting to me is we're not hearing a lot about the cfo who really could probably connect a lot of these dots. we're hearing a lot about cohen and about flynn and manafort. but what about the cfo who had to know a little about or a lot about all of this. >> allen weisselberg hasn't spoken to mueller yet. >> there's been no leaking, no information. and you really watch the one that nobody is talking about because he may be the one that everybody is going to be unraveled by. >> and let's put up the list of all the mueller witnesses so far from donald trump's orbit. it's quite a list. you can go through the inner circle of everyone who has spoken and cooperated with the investigation. jonathan, at this point, how

panicked is donald trump? >> i think there is certainly concern. it's a number of fronts at once, which is compounding it. there's the ongoing investigation with the sdny. there's the ongoing robert mueller probe. at this point it's six or seven trump entities who are all being investigated. the business, the inaugural committee, the campaign, the administration. so there is obviously a sustained amount of legal pressure. there's going to be a new attorney general in the state of new york. already alleged to ramp up investigations there. the democratic house is going to start their own investigations. the president and people around him are concerned. they feel like they have survived to this point. and i will say there are people around him that say that their argument is, what has happened so far, it's touched the president, the allegation, he is individual one, perhaps co-conspired on campaign finance. they believe that's a charge they can survive. that is at the end of the day,

it will be a political decision while the president is in office and, therefore, that is not something that he is going to be impeached and removed over. obviously, that can change depending on what mueller may find out and release down the road. he, of course, is going to continue working in secrecy. >> and we have eight members of trump's inner circle who have pled guilty. we can put those up on the screen. we've got ranging from michael cohen to george papadopoulos and paul manafort. joyce, what do you see on the horizon in 2019? do you have any predictions as to who might be the next individuals to be indicted? we have, you know, if we look at players to watch, we've got, you know, donald trump jr. roger stone. jared kushner. what do you see on the horizon? >> so i think it's dangerous to try to crystal ball the mueller investigation because they've been full of surprises. and i think one thing that we can be certain of in 2019 is

that they will continue to connect the dots and try to bring the truth to the american people, but i think it's, in many ways, dangerous to speculate on where they will ultimately end up. it seems clear that roger stone and jerome corsi are both targets for prosecution. corsi has told us he is and has even shared a draft indictment. but beyond the mueller investigation, the president has a serious press coming from the southern district of new york. he was so rattled by prosecutors in the southern district of new york tagging him as a criminal co-conspirator and uncharged co-conspirator with michael cohen that he took this horrific step of talking to his acting attorney general about it. identifying those prosecutors as rogue and saying they needed to be reined in. that's a president who is rattled. and then there's this challenge from the new york attorney general's office which has been full-court press on wilbur ross, his commerce secretary, but is

also now looking at the trump foundation which is tightly commingled with trump mergs. organization. >> joyce outlined the southern district and some of what they are looking into and we went through mueller's very full plate but this week it's a game changer in congress when democrats take over some key committees. you no longer have devin nunes doing trump's bidding and also the judiciary committee. what do you for see as democrats start really investigating donald trump? >> yeah, so we talked earlier about immigration and the wall. that was a big thing that trump ran on. but he also ran on cleaning up the swamp. going after corruption. he talked about locking hillary clinton up and we're actually locking up all of his guys. and i think what is becoming clearer and clearer, there was a criminal enterprise in and around the campaign and probably in this administration. and trump is going to have, you know, i think what he's worried most about is that he is in the

middle of the swamp. highs t he's the captain of the boat in the swamp, and democrats are going to look at some of his business dealings. i wouldn't be surprised if they ask for his tax returns. and then a whole bunch of people in cabinet agencies they'll want to look at as well. so trump has -- he has failed on immigration. failed on building the wall. failed on getting mexico to build the wall. and he's not only not cleaned up washington, he's made it worse. that's not such a great record to run on when you're heading into 2020. >> do you see any political risk for democrats pushing too hard on the investigation front and not enough legislatively? >> i don't think so. i think oversight is something that congress should be doing. they talked about deal with corruption on the campaign trail. they'll do a lot of other things. but, no, i think it's their responsibility. >> chew and walk gum at the same time. >> you got it. >> joyce, thank you so much. we're going to let you go but thanks for being here.

robert mueller's investigation dominated headlines in 2018. but there were several others that were incredibly impactful this year. we'll take a look at those stories, next. gentle means everything, so we improved everything. we used 50% fewer ingredients added one handed pumps and beat the top safety standards the new johnson's® choose gentle

10, 20, 50 years down the road, imagine trying to describe what the year 2018 was really like. in a few days, we'll turn the calendar. before that, nicolle wallace and brian williams attempted to name the top ten stories of the year. >> the men we're calling good fellas. >> we should probably point out to our more sincere viewers, you mean the opposite. you mean the scorzesian ideal. >> donald trump say great unifier. >> michael cohen pled guilty to eight felony charges.

>> michael flynn who served as president trump's national security adviser walked into court too plead guilty to a charge of making false statements to the fbi. >> but you know what? he happens to be a very good person. >> number nine -- our planet. >> it felt like every week there was another story on tv and in the newspapers about another calamity. a typhoon. record rainfalls. floods. i'm from california. the worst fires that that state has ever seen. >> number eight -- child separation. >> when you prosecute the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away. >> it's so hard to really explain how that story was different, but there were babies. there were children. there were young people whose lives will never be the same. >> number seven -- legal eagles. >> these are the people on our

shows every night. the people we cover outside of courthouses. the lawyers. >> baeusy season for them. number six -- mohammad bin salman and vladimir putin. individuals we are calling the rogues. >> british prime minister theresa may officially accusing russia of attempting to murder a former russian spy and his daughter living in england with a banned nerve agent. >> this is not the first time the russian state has acted against our country. >> as soon as we get the facts straight, if we agree with them, we will condemn russia or whoever it may be. >> i keep asking you and all of our other guests this question on the air. how far is this from the normal conventions of how the united states used to behave in the world? >> number five -- the new wave. >> if democrats wanted any chance of flipping congressional seats in a deep red state like kansas, they were going to need a fighter. they found one.

>> they have elected a lesbian native american mma fighter with a cornell law school degree. those aren't four people. that's one person. congresswoman-elect sharise davids. number four on the list -- parkland. >> it's happened again. another deadly mass shooting at an american high school. this time in florida. >> 17 people are confirmed dead. >> we want change! we want change! >> they say a good guy with a gun stops a bad guy with a gun. we call bs. >> these young adults change the gun debate in america. >> number three -- >> the hearing. >> brett kavanaugh is one of the finest human beings you will ever have the privilege of knowing or meeting. >> the nation got to meet dr. bb

blasey-ford who says brett kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in a room. >> number two on our list, a category we are calling farewells. >> and we're talking specifically about the public farewells for three towering americans. >> this year's list of the most is topped by -- >> bob mueller. >> robert mueller. >> mueller. >> robert s. mueller. >> and he still holds all the cards. and he still, for a lot of americans, represents all the hope that we'll get the truth about how our election shook out. who chose this president. if there was any influence from another foreign power. >> there you have it. robert mueller takes their number one spot. after the break, it's our turn. we're going to go around the table, next.

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what do you look for i want free access to research. yep, td ameritrade's got that. free access to every platform. yeah, that too. i don't want any trade minimums. yeah, i totally agree, they don't have any of those. i want to know what i'm paying upfront. yes, absolutely. do you just say yes to everything?

hm. well i say no to kale. mm. yeah, they say if you blanch it it's better, but that seems like a lot of work. no hidden fees. no platform fees. no trade minimums. and yes, it's all at one low price. td ameritrade. ♪ before the break, we showed you some of the biggest stories we covered in 2018. i'm sitting here with a table of experts, and i'm curious what everyone thinks the biggest story actually was in 2018. let's start with you, rev. >> i think the biggest story was voter suppression, voter rights. when you look at one of the most attention-grabbing races in the midterms, georgia, where you actually had the secretary of state supervise an election he was in, who had closed voting sites and who had purged voters. and then you look at north

carolina where you still have a congressional district going through recounts. all over the country, i think a glaring issue that came to the fore that many of us have been pushing a long time happened in realtime, and that was people's votes being suppressed and people really knowing we've got to do something about voting rights in this country. and i think this new congress is going to be hard pressed to do something. >> what about you? >> it's courtesy of jonathan, which i didn't even realize when i sent in trump and helsinki was a defining moment for i think people outside the united states, that america is no longer the world leader. i mean to watch him go on that stage and get owned by vladimir putin that way, take vladimir putin's side over his own intel community, repeat nonsense conspiracies in front of vladimir putin, and watch putin just have his way, my phone blew up from doubters. you know, people that didn't really believe the russia stuff, they immediately engaged me and were like, okay, i get it now.

like i never would have thought i was seeing that. i thought trump was just playing to the crowd. i watched that session right there with vladimir putin, and i was scared. and i think for other countries, our allies, they saw that moment after jonathan asked that question. they were like what just happened? i never saw i would see the united states in that position. that's the worst performance by a president in the history of u.s. foreign policy, at least in the modern era. >> you know what's so bizarre about that episode too? we still don't know what actually was said in the private meeting. there wasn't a government readout. congress wasn't debriefed on it. the director of national intelligence wasn't debriefed. it still remains a looming mystery. >> and the administration came right back and said, oh, he just misspoke on one word. if you watch that whole segment, he did not misspeak on any one word. he doubled down, tripled down two or three times. just to see the president on a world stage like that, it was, i felt -- i just was -- i had fear in my body. like i cannot believe this is happening. >> doug, let's go to you.

>> it occurred on february 14th. it was when 17 individuals were murdered at parkland high school, at stoneman douglas high school in parkland, florida. that was the worst high school shooting in the history of this country. and then afterwards, you know, the question was, is anything going to change, right, or is this going to be like the other school shootings in the past? and i think what we saw from those young people at stoneman douglas is they said yes. they looked at the people in washington and leaders around the country and said, you're not doing your job, and we're going to do it. and they stood up. they registered voters. they put together massive marches. they turned out in the election. and you know what a lot of laws actually did change in states across the country. not a lot at the federal law, but we did. >> well, bump stocks were quietly banned. >> that's obviously a good thing. but we saw, i think, 67 new gun laws passed in states across the country. that's a testament to these kids

and how hard they worked and how courageous they were. >> jonathan, how about you? >> clint, thanks. but for me, it's a name we've mentioned several times on the show already, and that's robert mueller and sort of the steady drum beat growing louder as it approaches the oval office. you know, you mentioned helsinki. let's also remember a couple days before that summit, he dropped the indictment on the russian intelligence agents about the election hacking in 2016. we have seen him -- which, of course, also help ward off criticism that it was a witch hunt. look, there was election interference. not only that, it was done to help donald trump. since then we've seen him extract guilty pleas from a number of key trump allies. we have seen the president wrestle with what to do with this. i think as much as mueller was sort of the defining story of 2018, he certainly stands to be a good chance to be the defining one of 2019. there's no indication he's

working on any sort of timetable. it could be months from now, but there is a believe that sometime this year, he will produce what he has, and that's going to go to a long way to defining how history remembers donald trump. >> it was indeed a year of mind-blowing stories. we have to take our final break. we'll be right back.

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they were too loose. it's getting in the way of our camping trips. but with a range of sizes, depend fit-flex is made for me. with a range of sizes for all body types, depend fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. my thanks to reverend al sharpton, clint watts, doug thornle and jonathan lemire. i'm elise jordan in for nicolle wallace. "mtp daily" starts right now with hallie jackson in for chuck. it's so good to see you on this holiday week. thank you. if it's friday, it's a shut storm.

i'm hallie jackson in washington, in for chuck todd tonight. welcome to "mtp daily." you want a taste of what 2019 is going to be like in washington? you got it because right now democratic leaders appear hellbent on inflicting maximum pain on the president after he so publicly declared, i will proudly take the mantle on a shutdown. the white house appears hellbent on finding a way to blame nancy pelosi and drive a wedge through her party. and the president appears hellbent on making maximum threats, maybe to play to his base. today multiple times on twitter promising a different kind of shutdown, shutting down the southern border entirely if he does not get the money for his wall that he wants. now, the white house has backed off that initial number, that dollar amount it wants for the wall. it's not $5 billion anymore. but to some democrats, it kind of doesn't matter. $5 billion, $5, 5 gazillion

dollars, it's all the same