ed knows he could just have us deliver his prescriptions. but what's the fun in that? switch to cvs pharmacy. it is 2:00 p.m. here in the east, 11:00 a.m. out west. president trump began 2019 by tweeting new year's greetings in all caps, naturally. he said it would be a, quote, fantastic year for anyone sufno suffering from trump derangement syndrome and urged people to, quote, just calm down and enjoy the ride. while the calendar may have changed, the problems are still the same. the president is locked in a stalemate with house democrats over funding for his promised border wall. however, there may be some movement. political reports that the president has invited congressional leaders to a white house briefing tomorrow afternoon, even though he continues to dig in on his

demands during an interview with fox news. >> we have to have border security, and a wall is part of border security. i hear so much about the wall is old fashioned. no, the wall is 100% foolproof. you look at a wheel, well, i guess they'd say the wheel is old fashioned, but it's been a around for a long time. the wall is the only way to do it. >> joining me now, jeff bennett, rick tyler, pbs news hour white house correspondent, and politico's senior writer and playbook co-author jake sherman. there's reporting out there that there will be congressional leaders invited to the white house soon. jake, what does politico have on that? and will the president be involved? >> yeah, i mean, the president needs to very quickly come to terms with what's going to happen in the next week, which is that the house is going to

pass a bill that funds most of the closed government for the rest of the year and funds the department of homeland security through february. that is the final hurrah, as we might say, for democrats who are going to then move on and move on to governance. the senate republicans are going to have to figure out what to do with that. the president is foremost going to have to figure out whether he's going to sign that. this is going to be a decision he needs to come to terms with quite quickly because the government has now been shut down for 11 days, which is a long time. this is becoming one of the longer government shutdowns in our history, and it doesn't look like the president or his allies want to move. >> jeff, where's the president's head? >> yeah, a source familiar now confirms to me what politico reported, that there is this briefing happening tomorrow here at the white house. the source is careful to say it's a briefing, not a meeting. it's not entirely clear if president trump will attend, but you have the top two leaders in both parties, in both chambers invited. so eight people total.

we can imagine there would be some representatives from the department of homeland security leading this meeting, but so far the president has put out this message that he's here in washington, here at the white house, ready, willing, and able to do a deal, but his actions haven't matched the talk. our understanding is that there's been no significant outreach between this president and congressional democrats in some ten days. really, we've only seen him active on twitter. he's been out of public view for the last few days. on twitter, he's vacillated between being an immigration hardliner and a would-be deal maker. it appears he's back to being a hardliner. in the tweet you just mentioned, he's now saying you can't have border security without having this border wall, even though we've seen aides and top surrogates do their level best to give this president some political cover. they've been trying to fudge the difference between border security and a border wall. the president, it appears, wants none of it. >> yeah, and his outgoing chief of staff even said the idea of a

cement wall was given up a long time ago, that they talked to people in border patrol and they said what they needed was drones, more drones, and more people. the idea of a wall across the entire southern border was just not feasible or didn't make any sense. jake, in hitting on jeff's last point, you've mentioned this as well, the president was going to stay in washington for these past two weeks. why wasn't he more vocal and more public than he was? he was just on twitter complaining, why didn't we see public events? why didn't he visit a federal worker's home? i don't know, something. >> yeah, it's been shocking. the president has decided that he would stay home from mar-a-lago but has not been public this entire shutdown. it's been -- washington has been empty. the press corps has been looking for things to cover, and the president has decided he would stay home and not take advantage of this huge media vacuum, which if you take his allies -- what

his allies say is he should have been out there, owning the media narrative, having an empty take with placards with nuancy pelosi's name and chuck schumer's name. he's not done that, which is surprising to me. some of his aides said, well, he went to iraq and he went to germany. that has nothing to do with the shutdown. he's not made the case. he wants people to come to his side on this, which is that the southern border needs a border wall. but he's not been able to make the case, make the rhetorical or substantive case that this is something necessary. he's losing leverage every single day because democrats are now just two days away from having the majority in the house for the first time in his presidency. >> why didn't he got to the border wall? what's going to happen come tomorrow or come thursday when democrats take over? are we going to see the president more out there? the fact there will be a divided

congress and he will officially have a foil that has some political power in congress, will that wake him up? >> one of the president's tweets from 2019 sets the tone for where the president is. he said happy new year to everyone, including the haters. this is a president who's happy to fight with people, who's happy to call himself almost a victim of people not understanding border security like he does. what we know is he's not making the case for why a wall is needed, in part because there isn't that strong of a case. i've talked to sources at the department of homeland security all week, all last week, and they're saying over and over again, a wall is just a little part of the problem. yes, you can have a barrier where people might have a hard time getting in, but there are ramps to get over the wall. there are tunnels where people get under the wall. then there's the elephant in the room, which is that a lot of people come legally on visas and then overstay their visas and become undocumented that way. so the majority of the problem isn't just people crossing the southern border. it's also people coming from the northern border in canada.

add to that the fact that the president is really building what you called it at the beginning of the show, a border movement. it was maybe the slip of a tongue, but what the president is trying to do is add to this idea that everyone needs to be involved in this. he's raising money for his 2020 campaign saying that there's going to be a border wall membership club. just a couple days ago, i got a text message from the trump campaign as part of the people following the campaign, saying we need more money, we're up to $65,000. that's all we need left. but it's like, what do you mean $65,000? what you really want is $5 billion. the president simply isn't going to get that when democrats take control of the house in a couple days. nancy pelosi is not going to hand over $5 billion. she's going to make the point that not only can she talk about the shutdown, they're also going to be launching all these investigations into the president's finances, into whether or not he can hire his children to work at the white house. so there's going to be a lot of problems that president trump is going to face in 2019, and the shutdown is just going to be one of them. >> so what are republicans going to do, rick? you're the republican of this

bunch. be our crystal ball. >> well, look, what i think will happen is nancy pelosi will send the cr over to the senate and mitch mcconnell. he's going to look at it, but i don't think he's going to do anything with it. then the burden will be on the republicans because the drr democrats will have acted. they'll have passed a cr to reopen the government, and the republicans are going to sit on it. i don't know how long they can sustain that, but let's put this wall in perspective a little bit. one is there is no wall at the southern border. there's exactly zero miles of wall. no wall. there's not a wall. there's never been a wall. and there's never going to be a wall. there's less than 800 miles of a physical barrier. half of that you can walk over because it's actually designed for cars. it's not designed for pedestrians. so less than 400 of those miles are pedestrian barriers. so when the president says he's going to take $5.7 billion and build a wall, where's he going to build a wall? all the barriers we have today

cost $7 billion. that covers less than 800 miles of the 1950 miles of border. so it's all just baloney. it's all just designed rhetorically to score points with the trump base. it has no basis in reality. and it is just a waste of time. it's a waste of talk. and we're going to lose that. >> i don't know what points he's scoring with the base, rick. we talked about this last hour. anybody who was on the campaign trail will know this. the border wall, while it was a big part of his rallies, you know, there was the call and response, there were a lot of folks who weren't necessarily tied to it. what they wanted to see donald trump do was fix the system, get something done, be a deal maker. this idea that he has to build a wall otherwise his presidency will have failed, that seems to come more from right-wing radio or those who just watch the campaign from their televisions,

not those who spoke to voters out there. >> i think that's exactly right. there's so many people who voted for president trump because they wanted someone who's going to just shake things up, who was going to be the wild card. he was going to be someone who was going to have some sort of immigration hardline stance. it didn't really have to be a wall. people understand that there's eminent domain and other issues. but there was one thing. there was this idea that the president is a showman. he's someone who made his name on reality tv, and as a result, he wants to have this wall as a prop for 2020. imagine if the president got at least part of the wall built. you could imagine that there would be rally after rally, pictures, twitter, all sorts of things. even now as the wall isn't built, no miles of the wall built, the president is already tweeting out prototypes. he's telling people, i'm going to a ground breaking before the state of the union.

all these things he's putting out there, hoping they can become true. but it's hard to go to a ground breaking when you don't have the money to build the wall. >> it's like having a chocolate bunny on easter. to you bite into it thinking it's entirely made of chocolate, and it's empty on the inside. jake sherman, we don't have a democratic strategist here, so what are the democrats thinking right now? any reason at all to give in to any of the president's demands? >> no, zero. and this is what space smells like to them. they have absolutely no incentive at all to give in. they, for the first time, control the house in donald trump's presidency. they're coming in with some moderates but also a huge progressive wing of the party, which these members ran to opposed president, not to compromise with them, certainly not to give him a border wall. so i think in the next coming days you're going to see efforts to reopen government, but i think a lot of new democrats are

going to get wise to the fact that why are we giving the president funding for the department of homeland security without trying to curb some of his immigration policies. so i think you're going to see huge pushback over the next couple days on the president's immigration policies, and i think that's going to become another huge fight, another front on this -- in this battle for immigration policies. >> because remember on thursday, the house will flip, flip, flip, flip. jeff, wrap it up for us. the president is in the white house. he's tweeting. not sure if he's working, but he's tweeting. when do his advisers come back, and does that really matter, frankly? >> on this issue, not really, because as we talked about before, this is all about the fight. you could make the argument, as we have, that this border wall is really about donald trump needing to have the optics, needing to have the appearance of putting up a fight about something that his base cares about. the reason why this shutdown is now stretched into its, what, tenth, going on 11th day, is

because this isn't about a substantive policy issue. it's about politics. the reward that donald trump wants in getting funding for this wall is just as intense as it is for democrats to block it. there was a great piece in "the washington post" by the former bush speech writer. he said that this wall would really just be a monument to donald trump's bigotry and his vanity. and that is why democrats are so intent on keeping him from having it. >> and remember, he promised mexico will pay for the wall. so it's not a campaign promise fulfillment unless mexico is actually doing that. jeff bennett, thank you. rick tyler, and jake sherman. happy new year, everyone. and we're following breaking news right now. an american has been arrested in russia accused of being a spy. he's a retired marine and was reportedly in russia for a wedding. that's what his family says. they say they thought he initially went missing but

learned through news reports he was arrested by the fsb, the russian state security agency, formerly known as the kgb. he was reportedly arrested during an espionage operation, but the kremlin has not elaborated on what exactly that means. for the latest, i'm joined by hans nichols at the white house. not a lot of information right now, but there are questions of whether his arrest is for political purposes more than anything else. >> that's the question on this. why was he apprehended when he apparently was acting like a tourist, according to his brother, showing a friend around the kremlin? why was he arrested? and in the past when spies have been arrested inside of russia, they've been immediately exported, immediately expelled. that isn't the case here. so there are a lot of questions that we still need to sort through. the family is concerned about his well being because they haven't heard from him. they do say he's well equipped to handle this situation because he had experience in law enforcement. he was a former marine. he got out as a staff sergeant.

listen to how his brother described his twin brother. >> helped on a tour around the kremlin. his friend had asked him to help because paul had been to russia before. he's traveled widely and his work takes him around the globe. so it was a surprise when that evening there were no more communications from paul, neither back to the states where he would have been worried about his dog and his family, or from people with the wedding. he didn't show up for the wedding. so that caused us some alarm. it wasn't until monday morning we understood that he had been detained by the russian government. >> another point his brother made when i was just speaking to him is that his brother is very aware of local laws and local customs. he's a seasoned traveler, and he wouldn't have made any sort of mistake. it would be out of character for him to make a mistake, for him to be mistakenly arrested for something. as for the geopolitics of it all, his brother says he doesn't

care, he just wants his brother on the next flight home. >> is the state department considering any actions or warnings for american tourists abroad who might be considering visiting russia? >> not that we know yet. we do know that there's only a lot of tourism between the u.s. and russia. it would be one way for the state department to increase pressure on russia were they to put out some sort of warning on this, some sort of statement. i suspect some diplomats lost one of their holidays here, working furiously on this. >> you're coming to us from the white house. has anybody at the white house responded? >> nothing out of the white house yet. there's not a whole lot of communication between the white house and the press corps right now. the main thing we're hearing from the president, the main way we're hearing from the president is through his thumbs and his twitter feed. katy? >> i'm just going to let that sink in for a second. hans nichols, thank you very much. coming up, new year, new laws, including a big change on how beer is sold in one state. not going to want to miss that. plus, she's the highest profile

democrat to take the first major step toward a potential 2020 run, so what do democrats think of elizabeth warren? and taking on trump, a major union is now suing the administration over the government shutdown. i am a family man.

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my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. an estimated 380,000 federal workers have been furloughed because of the shutdown, but another 420,000 have continued to work even though they're not going to be immediately paid for the job they're doing. and that has prompted a lawsuit

from one of the country's largest unions representing federal workers. the american federation says it's not just a violation of law, it's cruel. quote, our members put their lives on the line to keep our country safe, requiring them to work without pay is nothing short of inhumane. positions that are considered essential during a government shutdown are some of the most dangerous jobs in the federal government. joining me now is senior vice president for social justice at the new school and msnbc legal analyst mya wylie, and former u.s. attorney, former associate, independent counsel in the whitewater investigation, and law professor at the university of baltimore school of law, kim whaley. great to have you. is it illegal to make people work without pay? >> according to the federal court of claims under barack obama in 2013, they have to pay.

so there actually has been a lawsuit brought in 2013 when the government shut down. workers not only got their pay, they got liquidated damages, which means they got a lot of additional money just for the fact the government should have done it because the court essentially said, even if the law requires you not to spend money that hasn't been appropriated, that doesn't give you the right to ignore the federal labor standards act, which does require nonexempt -- i mean, just to be clear, it's not all federal workers, but if you're a wage-earning worker, if you're not a salaried worker, then yes. >> and it does stop people from doing part-time work potentially if they could where they would get a faster paycheck. kim, how quickly will we see this lawsuit in court? >> well, i don't think it's going to be resolved any time soon. that would actually have an impact on how this particular crisis is resolved. just because there isn't an

opportunity under the statute -- they sued under an act of congress, which as maya mentioned, gives workers rights to continue to get paid if they're forced to work, like this class of workers are forced to work. but the statute doesn't afford what's called an injunction. it doesn't give these workers the ability to say, listen, court, tell the federal government you got to pay me now. if they win their case and there is precedent, there's a prior case that says they should be paid, if they win, they can get money. but they can't necessarily force president trump's hand here in terms of allowing this shutdown to stop. he's essentially the person that in this moment is saying, listen, if i don't get my $5 billion, i'm not going to sign the statute or the legislation that would fund the government. so this is really a fight between congress and the president. the agency's argument is going to be, listen, we're not allowed to spend money unless congress gives us the thumbs up. as maya mentioned, the

counterargument is, well, there's a statute that mandates that you do at least pay your workers. that's the rub, that's the fight that i think we would have to see months down the line probably to get a ruling in this particular case. >> so opm, the office of personal management, has given a form letter to workers who need to send a letter to their bank for their mortgage or landlord or whoever else they might be needing to pay a bill to, a creditor. they can't pay because they're not getting their paycheck. that's remarkable. it does signal that we could be in this for the long haul. legally speaking, can workers use that in any way? >> well, they can use it. there's no legal obligation on the part of your bank to look beyond the fact that you haven't paid your mortgage, right. so it doesn't confer on the employee any protection, that is legal protection. as kim said, there is no

injunction so this can drag on. i think the other thing that has to be acknowledged here is there are a lot of folks who get paid because of the federal government, but they're contractors. they're not full employees. a lot of them are low income, like you might be a part-time janitorial worker, but you're on contract which means you're not even going to be protected by this, and you are struggling to pay your rent. >> let's go into that a bit, kim. these workers, they're not people who generally, or not all of them, have the luxury of missing out on a paycheck. not many of us do have the luxury of missing out on a paycheck. you have bills every month that don't go away just because the government has decided to shut down. >> yeah, i mean, i think the federal government and federal workers in the executive branch have gotten an unfair rap recently, particularly under this administration. these are people that are public servants. a lot of them could make more

money in the private sector. a lot of them have a tremendous amount of expertise and care a lot about doing what's right for the american public. as maya said, in addition, there are many, many more thousands of people that are contractors. that is, you know, they're not on the federal payroll, but they're serving functions of the federal government. they're not getting paid either. i think what's really sad here and what's missing is that regular families that happen to be employed by the federal government are the pawns in what is a political fight, in this stand-off. it's a tug of war between the president and the democrats that want reasonable border protection, not just what president trump says is mandated, the $5 billion. and what's the rope here? lives, human beings, families, kids that just happen to be employed by the federal government. i think people need to understand, these are not the bad guys. these are regular people like you and me that just want to provide for their families. >> donald trump calls them all democrats. on the other hand, he says

they're calling him and telling him to stand strong on the wall. unclear how they're getting in touch with the president. i don't know an easy way to just call the white house and say, can i talk to donald trump, please? but who knows. thank you, maya wylie. kim, stick around. coming up, the timeline for leaving syria is shifting. ing s. i didn't really know anything about my family history. went to ancestry, i put in the names of my grandparents first. ing s. i got a leaf right away. a leaf is a hint that is connected to each person in your family tree. i learned that my ten times great grandmother is george washington's aunt. within a few days i went from knowing almost nothing to holy crow, i'm related to george washington. this is my cousin george. discover your story. start searching for free now at ancestry.com

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the president is now backtracking from his vow to get out of syria in 30 days, and he's now agreed to give the military about four months to do it instead. that's according to reporting from "the new york times." but the withdrawal is also complicated by the departure of the president's secretary of defense. the acting secretary of defense, patrick shanahan, a former boeing executive, officially took over today. he has never served in the military, and he has only been working in government for the past year and a half. so no policy experience either until recently. joining me is four-star retired general barry mccaffery, also an msnbc military analyst. so the president wanted to get out of syria within 30 days, general. instead, he's doing it in four months. what's your take on that? >> well, i think the worst part of it was the lack of coordination of the elements of american national power.

you know, when you do a policy, do you include state, defense, cia, treasury, and other people engaged? you tell your allies what you're up to. in this case, the allies are not just the french and the brits, who are in syria with us, but also the kurds who have been fighting and dying to secure u.s. national security objectives. it was a very poorly done thing. four months, of course they can come out. i notice one of the questions now being teed up is, do we try and take away from the kurdish fighters the weapons we gave them? that will put the u.s. elements on the ground in syria in serious personal danger. just a badly done operation. >> more broadly speaking, donald trump won't have a secretary of defense who has all that much experience. he's only going to have an acting secretary of defense. patrick shanahan was a boeing executive for many years. donald trump, when he was asked about him the other day while he

was in iraq, said he's a good buyer of military equipment, and he wants a good buyer because he's giving a lot to the military. can you make sense of that statement and whether that's -- i just don't know how to interpret that. >> well, it's another impulsive act by the president of the united states to essentially fire mattis and then to tell him to get out of the pentagon in a week because he didn't like the positive press coverage coming from mattis' resignation letter. i think in the short run, we ought to be grateful that shanahan is where he is. look, he's an honest man. he's a smart guy. he's been an understudy to mattis for a couple years now. we don't need -- we meaning the jcs -- doesn't need help running the tactual armed forces. the secretary of defense and the

president are supposed to look out 5 to 15 years and decide policy and operational guidance. that's what's lacking until we get a permanent secretary of defense. >> who's going to be the permanent secretary of defense? who's out there that would be willing to take that role? mattis resigned and was very clear in his resignation about why he did so. he had real differences in how to treat allies, for one, with the president of the united states. there have been a number of people who have already said very publicly that they don't want to be a part of this administration because they don't think that donald trump is an honest broker. stanley mcchrystal said that just the other day. the president is already attacking him on twitter. who does that leave? as you said, it doesn't have to be a tactical person, doesn't have to be a former general, but who does that leave as a person who wants to get in and has the knowledge and the experience to run the defense department well? >> well, there's a lot of names floating around out there. i think shanahan may well

ultimately end up as secretary of defense. i think a lot of people that have political horizons that are out in front of them are not going to want to be associated with this administration. there are patriots who i'm sure will step forward if asked by the president of the united states and try and do the best they can. but look, we got some very good civilian service secretaries. air force, army, navy. they're first-rate people. there's a strong cadre of military personnel in the pentagon. in the short run, we're not in trouble. 2.1 million men and women globally deployed, active guard, reserve. they're going to do just fine. our problem is, is there some sense of strategic vision in the white house and in the inner agency process? i think that inner agency national security process is broken. >> but i wonder who is going to be willing and who's the

president going to accept as pushback? if the president's instinct, according to the reporting out there, and we heard this from john kelly's exit interview, we could glean is from general mattis' resignation letter, that they were two people who pulled the president back from some of his worst instincts. wanting to get troops out of korea, wanting to stop war exercises up, there wanting to pull out of syria, pull out of afghanistan, pull out of nato, those sorts of things. is there somebody the president is going to listen to, or do you think or worry that we're entering an era where whatever donald trump decides on a whim will happen? >> i'm not worried. i'm sure the president now is firmly in control. he doesn't believe he needs advisers. most senior people in government and business want very informed,

aggressive subordinates to shape their own thinking. this president doesn't. so, you know, i think we ought to be extremely concerned. bolton, who's a very knowledgeable, smart fellow, a lot of experience, is completely out of the loop as far as you can tell looking at it from the outside. the chairman of the jcs, dunn ford, four-star marine, tremendous experience, was totally left out of the loop in the final decision on syria. so i think we've got a very impulsive, erratic president of the united states in office who can pick up the phone and call any one of the nine combatant commanders and tell them what to do. if it isn't patently illegal, they're going to do it. that's who's in charge now. >> remember, there's a tenuous situation in syria, a tenuous situation in afghanistan, in iraq, in yemen, in north korea, in russia certainly, or with relations with russia. a lot of stuff going on right now. thank you, general barry

mccaffery. happy new year. we appreciate it. >> same to you, katy. and elizabeth warren is making moves after announcing a presidential exploratory committee. she's heading to a big state soon. i bet you can guess which one. stay with us. (in-store music) need a change of scenery? kayak searches hundreds of travel sites - even our competitors - so you can be confident you're getting the right flight at the best price. kayak. search one and done.

she's running, probably. massachusetts senator elizabeth warren has dipped a toe into the 2020 fray, announcing an

exploratory kmooit committ exploratory committee for a presidential run yesterday. she's holding a number of events in a state that starts with "i" and ends with "wa." you know, iowa. a long-time leader of the democratic party, warren can be a decisive leader, with "the washington post" calling her the kind of bogeywoman trump likes to attack. it's kind of a trope now. she's going to be divisive. is she too divisive to run for president? is that just the lazy characterization of her? >> i believe so. here's the thing, katy. we have to remember that -- look, during this very competitive, i think, healthy debate in this primary we're

going to see in the democratic primary for 2020, there's going to be some decisions, right, that need to be made. how does the democratic party move forward? not just the party but the country. i do believe elizabeth warren will have a big say and a big voice in that because of this. she has a track record. she's actually been an effective senator. she has fought against the big banks and wall street and corporations. let's not forget she helped create the consumer financial protection bureau. so she has been seen as somebody who fights for working class and the middle class. so i do think there's a lot of pluses there. and when she announced, we've already got a sense of her big ideas, which is investing in health care, investing in education. let's not forget, these are issues that are not just wildly popular but help some democrats win in this past election. so i do think it's a bit lazy. there's more nuance to it. there's more to her. she's been around. she's been -- she's incredibly honest. she's a different type of politician.

and i think she is one to watch. she will be competitive. >> there's something really odd about characterizing somebody as too polarizing to win when donald trump is president. >> yes, that's true. >> doesn't quite make sense to me. talk to me about who she's going to appeal to. donald trump won by a small margin and by voters in the upper midwest, which used to be democratic voters, democratic working class voters who decided to take a chance on him. is she going to have an appeal for them? >> i do believe that she will. i mean, like i said, she has been fighting for working class and middle class when it comes to financial protection for them. but let's not forget this. let's step back to 2016 for a minute. let's remember, elizabeth warren was one of those folks in 2016 that was one of the only people that got under donald trump's skin to the point that she was being talked about as being potentially the number two, a vp candidate for hillary clinton. so she does know how to tangle with him, get under his skin.

she did it before. that's something to remember. and now after 2018, we saw some historic turnouts. we saw historic turnouts we hadn't seen in decades. voters have been really clear about what they want. they want an alternative, a real alternative to donald trump. i think you can get that in someone like elizabeth warren. i don't think we should sleep on her. i think she will be competitive. i don't know who will win the democratic primary, but i do think that she will indeed be competitive. >> how much is the pocahontas nickname going to affect her? >> i think she's going to be tested on that. i think voters will decide. when she came out with the dna testing and the video, i think she thought she did what was best. the blowback, i totally understand the blowback. i think she thought she would put it behind her before she announced. now it's up to the voters. all of these candidates are going to be tested.

they're going to be challenged. so we're going to have to see what kind of campaign they build and how they're going to take up these tests and what they're going to do. so she's not going to be the only one. we'll see many others who are going to have to deal with their past, deal on votes they've made, to deal on things they've said in the past. >> i have one more question for you. when you look at the polling that's out there, and i guess it's still early on, but consistently the people in the top three spots it seems so far have been white men for the democratic party. is that what the democratic party still considers electable? should we glean that from that polling, or is that too easy of an assessment to make this early on? >> yeah, i do. first of all, it's really early. polls are a snapshot in time. that's where we are today. it's january 1st. this is how people are feeling. but they're also three people who have name i.d. you're talking about sanders, be beto o'rourke -- >> he has name i.d. over senator

warren? >> but think about it. he was incredibly popular. he was this young, fresh new face running in texas, a state that we were talking about a lot. >> we were talking about andrew gillum as well. >> i agree, but andrew gillum, we haven't heard a lot of talk about him running. i think beto o'rourke, clearly there's a ready for beto o'rourke initiative out there. and joe biden, a very popular vice president to barack obama. not surprising. so i think those are the reasons. they do have that name i.d. and time will tell. once people start jumping in, we'll have a better sense of who really is leading the pack. and we may not know for a while. it may go back and forth. in three months, it'll be a different field. in six months, it'll be a different field. >> can't wait. >> it's going to be a long time. get ready. >> we're in for it. thank you so much for being here. coming up, beer runs in one

state will never be the same again. ain.

prohibition sort of is no longer the case in colorado. folks can now purchase beers with a higher alcohol content at grocery stores and convenience stores. before today, coloradans had to go to a liquor store for the good stuff, if you like the higher alcohol content, or

settle for cruz, with just 3.2% alcohol. that's the stuff you could get they groesh stroir. some familiar faces showed up in denver to celebrate the change. a skeep right out of the beer commercial, bundles-up budweiser clydesdale saddled up for a ride around the state capitol. what's bud he'ser's alcohol content i wonder? and they have experience with this legislature, they delivered a case of beer to franklin roosevelt when prohibition ended in 1933. joining me former u.s. attorney kim waily and danny ceballos. my first question is, could you not get budweiser at a grocery store in colorado? i don't know. >> america has a bizarre relationship with booze. of all of the inventions, only one has been the source of two amendments, first loved it and then outlawed it and then

allowed again. in pennsylvania, government sells all of the booze. in other states they've adopted different systems. >> there are blue laws. >> there are still blue laws. after all, is anybody still drinking beer in colorado? that is so 2013. i thought they were getting high with weapons-grade cannabis over there in colorado only. what's going on? i thought it was just space cakes over there. >> i think it's both. >> you think it's both? they're still drinking beer. >> pick your poison on any given day. >> the near beer is something the rest of the country is just not familiar with because they get regular strength beer. >> near beer? is that what it's called, near beer? >> apparently, near beer. it's something that is half the strength of your regular beer. >> uh-huh. i don't know what to ask you, kim, what do you think of this? >> well, near beer still exists other people as in sweden this summer, i must admit, i was sad to only find near beer in the local convenience store. but i think what's interesting here is sort of the bigger question about who makes laws in this country, because we're

seeing at a national level the federal government breaking down, congress not doing anything, and the question will become, are the states going to pick up more of the slack. this is something that is, as danny mentioned, was illegal under the constitution. alcohol was illegal, and then it was lifted at the national level. that prohibition was lifted, it became legal and then the states kind of duked it out. what kind of alcohol could be bought during what times, et cetera. we're seeing the same thing play out with cannabis, marijuana. it's still illegal at the federal level. when jeff sessions came in as attorney general, he issued a memo that sort of watered down the obama administration's basically deference to the states. so essentially we see this battle playing out a little bit with marijuana as well. federal prosecutors can prosecute these crimes, even prosecute it at a crime if it's legal at the state level. so it raises kind of bigger questions as to how much are we

going to see the states pick up the slack with environmental regulation, transgender rights, with other questions, minimum wage questions. these things arguably could be done by the federal government but if congress is not going to do anything, we will see the states do more with it. >> it's a good argument to standardize the federal laws when it comes to excelling of alcohol. here in new york city you can't get hard alcohol, liquor, at a grocery store, i know that. but you can get it in california no problem. so is there going to be -- is there any push to make it standard across the board or is some something that's firmly going state rooted as a state's issue? >> to answer that question, i have to take you back to prohibition, back to the bossted came in anddace lou this across and that was a disaster. john rockefeller had to address the problem and came up giving

the rules back to the states. as we sit here today, alcohol is one of those rare area of laws ha has been given back not just to states but local municipalities and you can learn a lot about a particular region's culture about how strict or how loose their alcohol laws are today. >> go to utah, you will learn a lot about utah as well. it's hard to get liquor there on sundays. thank you, danny savilous and kim whaley. we appreciate it. happy new year. that will wrap things up for me on this new year's day. i'm katy tur. i will see you back here tomorrow. up next, the year's test most. have a good one, bye-bye. as a fitness junkie, i customize everything - bike, wheels, saddle. that's why i switched to liberty mutual. they customized my insurance, so i only pay for what i need. i insured my car, and my bike.

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