year. that brings this hour to a close for me. i'll see you back here monday with stephanie ruhle and 3:00 p.m. deadline white house with nicolle wallace starts right now. hi, everyone. happy new year. it's 4:00 in new york. donald trump woke up to a sharp rebuke from "the wall street journal" today and the defection of two republican senators on his shutdown shenanigans. soy what do you think he did? he set up the rose garden for a press event and held court there for a full hour, desperate to change the subject with a promise of keeping the government closed for years if he doesn't get his steel slats and a threat to build that wall or those slats without congress, if need be. >> this is him quoting you. i just want to check, that the shutdown could go on for months or even a year or longer. did you say that -- >> i did. i did. >> is that your assessment of where we are? >> absolutely, i said that. i don't think it will, but i'm

prepared. >> are you still proud to own this shutdown? >> well, you know, i appreciate the way you say that, but once -- i'm very proud of doing what i'm doing. you can call it the schumer or the pelosi or the trump shutdown, doesn't make any difference to me. just words. >> sir, cabinet members are set to get cabinet raises tomorrow. how is that fair? >> i'm sure they don't even know that. >> have you considered using emergency powers to grant yourself authorities to build this wall without congressional approval? and second -- >> yes, i have. >> you have? >> yes, i have, and i can do it, if i want. >> i can do it if i want. the president is dug in on this shutdown of his own making, but cracks are beginning to show from within his own party. the defections of republican senators susan collins of maine and cory gardner of colorado who already want a deal to reopen the government were among the headlines the president hoped to

distract from in his rose garden performance. perhaps the greatest existential threat is this today on russia. in a piece titled "trump's cracked afghan history," "the wall street journal" writes, we cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an american president. the soviet invasion of afghanistan was a defining event in the cold war making clear to all serious people the reality of the communist kremlin's threat. mr. trump's cracked history can't alter that reality. here are those offending comments "the wall street journal" was responding to. >> the reason russia was in afghanistan was because terrorists were going into russia. they were right to be there. the problem is, it was a tough fight. and literally, they went bankrupt. they went into being called russia again as opposed to the soviet union. you know, a lot of these places you are reading about now are no longer a part of russia because of afghanistan.

>> our colleague rachel maddow responded last night as only she can. >> and you may not care at all why the soviet union invaded afghanistan in 1979. that is fine. but the president randomly volunteering that analytical take on that matter yesterday ought to pique your interest. because that view does not exist in nature in this country. the only people in the whole world who were saying that was a potential problem, that people ought to look out for, the only people who were talking about that as a possibility were vladimir putin's government. >> and former george w. bush speechwriter david frum writes this in the atlantic. putin's style glorive kagss of the soviet regime is entering the mind of the prrkts inspiring his words and, who knows, perhaps shaping his actions. how that propaganda is reaching him by which channels, via which persons seems an important if not urgent question. maybe what happened yesterday

does not raise questions. maybe it inadvertently reveals answers. finally and perhaps most critically, a former senior u.s. intelligence official tells me today that it is safe to assume that donald trump's bizarre defenses of russian foreign policy are under scrutiny as we speak. joiningous another day of extraordinary development, some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. joyce vance, also a former u.s. attorney and here at the table, charlie sikes and philip bump, political reporter for "the washington post." chuck rosenberg, let me satart with you and what i heard today that donald trump's now compilation of seemingly bizarre, seemingly random, seemingly, let me be blunt, just stupid comments about russia, are probably, at this point, very likely under scrutiny by people investigating his

relationship, his contacts, his coordination, if you will, with russia. >> my goodness, nicolle, they would have to be. we've wonder idea michael flynn was debriefed 19 times. that struck us all as an extraordinary number. but maybe now we have a bit more insight into what the mueller team and department of justice are looking at. this is extraordinarily serious. if not because it's a part of mueller's initial remit. it's at least part of the counterintelligence investigation. why is the president speaking about russian interests with respect to montenegro and poland and belarus and sort of a revisionist -- and that's to use the term loosely. a revisionist history of why the soviets invaded afghanistan. it's extraordinary. >> chuck, you just blew my mind as you often do. let me just press a little farther with you. so you're saying the counterintelligence investigation that was opened, we were led to believe, because of the actions of individuals

like carter page, who seemed a little hapless, and george papadopoulos who was mouthing off at a bar, could, by this point, extend to an examination of trump's foreign policy utterances and conduct? >> i think they have to. i don't mean to be an alarmist, but i think they have to. here's why. the president of the united states is echoing directly the line of the kremlin. on a whole bunch of things. and so whether or not it results in an indictment, whether or not it's something we ultimately can see, touch, feel and hear, this is something that u.s. intelligence officials have to understand. why is the president saying what he's saying? is he just wrong? does he actually believe it? or is something being fed to him with the intent of shaping his conduct, shaping his words and shaping his actions? these are incredibly important questions. it doesn't mean you and i will ever know the answer to it, but these are incredibly important questions. >> sometimes things happen here that make me hit pause and rip

up the script and one just did. bear with me. i want to dig into this with you, michael mcfaul. what has he done? what other possible explanation is there for toeing the soviet -- it's not even modern russia's line. it's the soviet line and i believe there's a headline from december 4th that this was part of the putin pr machine that we're going to try to rewrite their own history about afghanistan. what alternate explanation could possibly exist for doing that? >> i can't think of any. and i think it's important to underscore what you just said. this is even radical revisionist history for russia. for many decade, it was discredited, the soviet invasion of afghanistan. and, by the way, it's not because there were terrorists coming into the soviet union. that's completely false as well. and it's very obscure as you've quoted rachel maddow. where does it exist in nature? most certainly doesn't exist in

the academy, either in russia or the united states. and the only place you can find it is with putin's party, united russia. they have this resolution to rewrite history. and then you have to ask the question, where else could president trump have gotten that information from but for the kremlin itself? i can't think of an alternate hypothesis. >> let me ask you then to speak as a student of russia. how would they be -- donald trump has proven that he can't be managed. he's also proven that guardrails can't hold in the american presidential model. how are the russians holding him so tightly and so specifically around these messages? >> well, i think it's bigger than russia, by the way. i think the whole world has found out that the way to flip trump for your interest is to get him in a one on one conversation without anybody else around, on the telephone or in a one on one meeting and to feed him these things. and if you speak loudly -- not loudly, strongly.

that's the word the president likes. if you speak strongly, you'll flip him. and there's lots of instances of that. one i know well, it's what putin did in helsinki when he met with president trump and right before then, mr. mueller had indicted 12 gru military officers are, so putin came to helsinki with this crazy idea that a bunch of americans had broken russian law and he said that to the president, and the president agreed with him and said it would be a wonderful idea to interrogate those people. one of those people was me. that's why i tomorrow so well. crazy stuff said one on one and the president if you speak strongly enough, he seems to agree. >> joyce, i have that. let's listen, and i want to ask you what investigators would think of this on the other side. >> i have great confidence in my intelligence people, but i will tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. >> joyce, let me just put a

couple other things in the pie that i want you to respond to. donald trump also in a meet with russians revealed classified information. "washington post" reporting that officials expressed concern about trump's handling of sensitive information as well as his grasp of the potential consequences, exposure of an intelligence stream that's proved critical into the islamic state. could hinder the united states and its ally's ability to detect future threats. the president also on crimea telling g7 leaders that crimea is russian because everyone speaks russian in crimea. so if you are an investigator or prosecutor and you look at the cocamamie defense of the war in afghanistan in 1979 and the defense of annexing crimea because it's russian because everyone speaks russia there. you look at the helsinki presser which ambassador mcfaul pointed out. look at sharing classified

information and saying i'm so relieved now that the nut jim comey is out of the picture. what do you see? >> this goes back to the point that chuck made early on which is that, if you're investigating this situation and looking at it big picture, you're trying to figure out as an investigator, is this president just extraordinarily malleable? does he listen to whoever he hears from the most strongly and most recently or is there something more sinister here? we all know at this point, mueller knows a lot that's not publicly known. if there is some sort of a conspiracy around the election, is there a quid pro quo here? and is the president repeating these sorts of fantasies not because he's been influenced to believe them but because this is him delivering on a deal? that's, of course, a conclusion that no one, i don't think, is ready to go quite that far, but if you are an investigator, you have to be looking at all the possibilities. as chuck says, 19 interviews

with mike flynn seemed really inexplicable early on. we're starting to understand a little bit more why they might have had so much to discuss with him. >> joyce, it was just handed to me, axios reporting that the grand jury being used by robert mueller has been extended an additional six months signaling the special counsel's investigation into the trump campaign's ties to russia may not be wrapping up any time soon. your thoughts, joyce? >> yeah, so this is a process that prosecutors use with some regularity. if you are working on a case and grand juries are established for a set number of months. if the grand jury is reaching the end of its term but prosecutors aren't quite done, rather than having to bring a new grand jury in install them and completely get them up to speed, it's typical to extend the grand jury for a period of six months. it does strongly suggest that mueller is not ready to finish up in the next month or two and

has more work to do. >> chuck, the extension of the grand jury means there are potentially more witnesses to appear before the grand jury. what else does it mean? >> absolutely. joyce is spot on in her analysis. first it is relatively routine. you could put the entire case in front of a new grand jury but it's easier to extend the one you have. and it doesn't just mean witnesses. it means that the mueller team can also use the grand jury, the existing grand jury, to subpoena documents and records. and so i don't think joyce is surprised, although i shouldn't talk for her, i'm not that surprised that this investigation is not over. every time something else happens, we find reason to want to have more questions that we need to answer. this is what's going on. this is fairly normal in a remarkably abnormal investigation. >> chuck, let me press then on this grand jury. if there is now sort of a

critical mass of foreign policy maneuvers that may recast the president's role in that counterintelligence investigation you talked about, could you imagine new people -- would h.r. mcmaster who was unceremoniously sacked from this white house many months ago and dina powell, his deputy, they were in the oval office with lavrov and kislyak. if this becomes a line of inquiry or under scrutiny as the former intelligence official suggested today, could you see some of the individuals who were part of the making of foreign policy or maybe around when donald trump shared his impulses and instincts on russia with russians and others? could you see them -- could you see mueller wanting to hear from them how foreign policy was crafted? >> oh, absolutely. just because flynn was interviewed 19 times doesn't mean flynn was the only person interviewed. far from it. i assume all of the people who were in those meetings, whether it's dina powell or h.r.

mcmaster or others have been interviewed. that doesn't mean every one of them has to go in front of a grand jury. obviously, you can talk to investigators outside of a grand jury and that's a reasonably common occurrence, too. but you bet they're talking to everybody because people have different and innocent recollections of meetings. you want to get as much data as you can. talk to as many people as you can and that's why these investigations take longer than you expect. he and mueller are talking to a whole bunch of people. >> i made a lot of all the people who lied about their contacts with russians. mike flynn, jeff sessions, george papadopoulos, rick manafort, rick gates, donald trump jr. and michael cohen. i asked jim comey, former fbi director, why donald trump with the new information from michael cohen that he actually was trying to do business with russia into the summer of '16, why he wouldn't represent the same threat for blackmail that

flynn would? and here is his answer. i want to ask you about it. >> do you think the russians have something on donald trump? >> i think it's possible. i don't know. these are more words i never thought i'd utter about a president of the united states, but it's possible. >> that was a far better interviewer george stephanopoulos asking perhaps a smarter question, but basically what former director comey said to me was that he couldn't answer the question. do you think there's a serious concern that donald trump was susceptible to blackmail or manipulation because the russians knew more than the american government? >> i would just echo what the former fbi director said. it's possible. and we need to get to the bottom of it. that's where mr. mueller needs to do his work. but it's extraordinary. i want to underscore where you started. it is just absolutely extraordinary what president trump says about russia and russian history and russian policy. and i want to also underscore it's separate from the entire

trump administration. i can't think of another time in history where you've had such a disconnect between the president and the rest of his administration. that demands a full-throated explanation. >> i haven't seen you since secretary mattis resigned over the syria decision. that had to be at the top of vladimir putin's current honey-do list for an american president. rewriting the history of the invasion of afghanistan is ancient history even for putin, but your thoughts on maybe why more people haven't followed in secretary mattis' courageous path for the exact reason you just articulated. >> well, you're right. that was a giant gift to putin. exactly what he wants and exactly the way it's being described in russia by the way. to your other point, you know, i still know some people who work in the government. h.r. mcmaster is here now, by the way. bret mcguirk is on his way. he'll be here at stanford in the spring. we should have a little seminar out here and sit down with all

of them. maybe mattis will be back, too. i don't have a serious answer. i think people get in the bubble and think, well, better to keep duking it out here than to go out, but when these crazy things happen, how do you justify it? does john bolton, for instance, think that the soviets were right to invade afghanistan? of course he doesn't. why is he not doing his job better? he's a national security adviser sitting just steps down from the oval office. that's his job to make sure that the president doesn't say stupid, ridiculous and, for me, as an educator, embarrassing things on behalf of the united states of america. >> it's as good a place as any to hit pause. ambassador mcfaul, chuck rosenberg, thank you. when we come back, hypocrisy alert as donald trump threatens to have the government shutdown go on for years, years, over illegal immigration. his golf courses have been

hiding illegal immigrants who work at those properties from the secret service. we'll go inside donald trump's shutdown mania. also donald trump's twitter feed is a window into his impeachment angst. we'll show you how he's softening the ground for the possibility of his own impeachment. in and it turns out donald trump's sons are a flop in the hotel business. new reporting reveals how some of the hotel business planned for last year ground to a halt under the cloud of investigation and scandal hovering over donald trump's presidency and tarnishing the trump brand. all that still coming up. stay with us. forcefully stimulate the nerves in your colon. miralax is different. it works with the water in your body to unblock your system naturally. and miralax doesn't cause bloating, cramping, gas, or sudden urgency. to enjoy the things i love, i choose #1 doctor-recommended miralax. miralax. look for the pink cap.

look for the coupon in sunday's paper and save up to $5 on miralax. better things than rheumatoid arthritis. before you and your rheumatologist move to another treatment, ask if xeljanz xr is right for you. xeljanz xr is a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough it can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections,

including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened. as have tears in the stomach or intestines, serious allergic reactions, low blood cell counts, higher liver tests and cholesterol levels. don't start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. your doctor should perform blood tests before and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you've been somewhere fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or are prone to infections. don't let another morning go by without talking to your rheumatologist about xeljanz xr.

don't let another morning go by without talking to i am a techie dad.n. i believe the best technology should feel effortless. like magic. at comcast, it's my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome.

you know, i talk about human traffickers. i talk about drugs. i talk about gangs, but a lot of people don't say, we have terrorists coming through the southern border because they find that's probably the easiest place to come through. they drive right in and they make a left. not going to happen. not going to happen. so we're not going to do that. we won't be doing pieces. we won't be doing it in drips and drabs. >> not only was that statement nearly devoid of facts, you might have noticed it also didn't make a lot of sense. for better or worse, republicans, that's the man leading discussions to end the government shutdown. and 14 days in, cracks are starting to show in the gop's united front. two big name gop senators, cory gardner and susan collins are backing off the demand for border wall funding to end the shutdown. but every step in the process is trump and his scattershot approach to deal making. during the last meeting on wednesday, "the washington post"

reported vice president pence leveled a sharp accusation at senate minority leader chuck schumer. he never bothered to respond to an offer to reopen the government pence mad days earlier. shoo schumer reminded him he wouldn't accept less than the $5.6 billion in wall funding approved by the house. george conway put it this way. ah, yes, how many times have we seen this now. undercut and contradict your representatives so no one will deal with them. nothing gets accomplished but at least you remain the center of focus because that's the only thing that matters. the narcissist's art of the deal. good one. rev al sharpton is joining us at the table. president of the national action network. and jackie, author of the "washington post" power up newsletter. charlie and philip are still here. where are we? what is this moment? >> i mean, this moment

essentially comes down to whether or not donald trump wants to give up on his assertion that he wants to see this wall built. this is a point that was just -- >> it's down to slats, right? >> right, exactly. the steel slats. the beautifully, artistically designed steel slats. >> he never said concrete. >> we're back to slats. >> to the point just made. the only person who can negotiate and have final sign-off and authorization of what trump wants to do is trump when he has something in front of him. we thought we had a deal prior to the holidays where there was going to be government funding. donald trump after apparently having heard conservative radio and watching fox news decided that's not what his base wanted. so everything changed. and so i think that this is -- senator minority leader schumer is correct in saying whatever mike pence brings to me, that's very nice but at the end of the day, if donald trump says he's not going to do anything with it, there's no point moving forward. the point at which the small part of america holding donald

trump's feet to the fire on the wall, either he gives up on trying to appease them or actually does let this go on for months. >> right before the holidays, a source close to the president, i called him after the mattis resignation, and i said basically wtf is going on with your friend. and he said he's scared. he's scared of mueller and terrified of his base. i don't see that happening. >> he is terrified of his base and ann coulter and rush limbaugh have a veto power over all of this. he's now in a fight with his own generals which, obviously, is some place he doesn't want to be. but at the moment, i think donald trump likes this particular fight. he's talking about something he likes to talk about. he likes to talk about something that plays well in his rallies. he now has a foil to blame with nancy pleas elosi, but no exit strategy. we'll declare victory in some way but has to do it in such a way he can save face. but there's two things more wreck ools. >> there won't be a wall. >> there won't be a wall.

>> and the shutdowns are never popular. he's not going to run the first years-long popular shutdown. >> he could have the pile of you know what in the driveway and say there's a pony buried in there. his threat which may be meaningless to keep the federal government shut down for years imagine the ceo of a major corporation saying i'm going to shut down the corporation if i don't get what i want. number two, this idea that he might invoke a national emergency powers to have the military build this. this should be a fire bell in the night in terms of constitutional division of power. this is the one thing that i would think on a bipartisan basis congress would say we can't go in this direction because there is no emergency at the border. the number of illegal crossings are actually down to levels we haven't seen since the 1970s. but the president unilaterally reserving to himself that power ought to alarm people in congress, if there are people in

congress concerned about the separation of powers. >> let me push you on that. only two defections in republican ranks. senator collins and senator gardner. do you expect more? hearing any reporting that more are behind them? >> no, not at the moment, but again, we've asked this question for how long? when are republicans going to break with donald trump and speak out? we have general mattis who has resigned. >> we've asked it for two years, 11 months -- >> better late than never. mitt romney comes out and says out loud what republicans are saying in private. so you still have that solid front but you get the sense it's eroding inside. and wait until we see the public opinion polls. who is getting the blame for this? as the pain becomes greater, how far are they willing to go? particularly given the president's behavior and performance over the last several days. how can you not be an elected official and watch some of these crazy moments and think, well, do we really want to go down

into the tenth circle half with the president on this issue? >> good name for a sitcom. where we are now, the tenth circle of hell. i think it's also a test of how much he can abuse his base because there's new reporting out in "the new york times" and "washington post" that his own properties, they are hiding the illegal immigrant status of workers. so he is shutting -- the whole federal government is closed. it is all shut down for illegal immigration osstensibly. he has illegal immigrants working at his own properties. he doesn't even believe his own bs. >> the reports about what he's doing at his own properties is a glaring display of how he just talks out of both sides of his mouth. and expects his base to just accept it because he said it. this is the man that said if i shoot somebody in the middle of the street on fifth avenue, they would still vote for me. but to stand up today and say, by the way, i can do this with

an emergency act, i'm not going to do it, even though they're terrorists. the boogieman is coming. nobody has seen him but me, but the boogieman is coming. i can do an emergency act but i'm not going to do it. and 800,000 federal workers furloughed or getting late pay, they really want this because they understand getting the boogieman who doesn't exist is more important than them being able to pay their bills. i mean, the arrogance of someone to say that and then say -- and i may do it for a year, by the way, but i don't have to, because i could do the emergency act, but i'm going to make you suffer anyway. but i don't have to. >> i'm desperate to know how putin gets him to stay on script but that's for another conversation. let me read you some of this reporting about undocumented workers at his property. this feels like the story everyone will be able to get. any small business owner understands sort of the extra hurdle of workplace verification. it's not something donald trump talks about a lot. it's not something he does.

a former employee of the trump national golf club in new jersey said her name was removed by a list of workers to be vetted by the secret service after she reminded management she was unlawfully in the united states. she asserted supervisors were aware, were aware that some members of their workforce were undocumented. this is just -- this just is mind bending that he shut down the whole government, that workers are furloughed. and i understand he doesn't have the capacity for empathy but the capacity for hypocrisy is staggering. >> and it speaks to the fact the president is playing politics here and it's only a matter of time before public opinion turns against him and, you know, if there currently isn't a national security crisis on the border but trump has the potential of manufacturing one himself with 800,000 furloughed workers, important parts of our government. and, you know, i think charlie hit the nail on the head here.

the president is thinking about his base. he's thinking about what sean hannity, anne coulter, breitbart are saying to his base. but, you know, last night we saw hannity even try to interject some sort of leeway and suggest the president was potentially considering a daca deal, giving him potentially some sort of out. but we'll see what comes out of this meeting over the weekend. as you stated right off the bat, the president's intermediaries have been neutered in this process. what -- i don't think anyone necessarily believes that mike pence, mitch mcconnell have the ability to make a deal. it is the president himself. >> and no deal would hold. at this point, i don't think the president has the power to strike a deal. if you turn on the television which drives everything, it's not state-run media. it's the media-run state and he would go back and undercut himself. >> i think also what the president is keeping in mind is something lindsey graham said on fox news is if the president doesn't get a wall there goes 2019 and 2020. imagine that. after the break, how can you

impeach a president who has won perhaps the greatest election of all time, said no president ever until this morning. we'll tell you about it, next. people tell me all the time i have the craziest job, the riskiest job. the consequences underwater can escalate quickly. the next thing i know, she swam off with the camera. it's like, hey, thats mine! i want to keep doing what i love. that's the retirement plan. with my annuity i know there's a guarantee. annuities can provide protected income for life. learn more at retireyourrisk.org

it took less than one day after the democrats regained the majority in the house for the president to address the possible threat of his own impeachment. he was on the defensive tweeting this morning and echoed those sentiments in the rose garden this afternoon. >> you can't impeach somebody that's doing a great job. that's the way i view it. i probably have done more in the first two years than any president, any administration in the history of our country. and we even talked about that today. i said why don't you use this for impeachment? and nancy said, we're not looking to impeach you. i said that's good, nancy, that's good. but you don't impeach people when they're doing a good job and you don't impeach people

when there was no collusion. you know russians better than i do, kevin. it was no collusion. i didn't need russians to help me win iowa. i didn't need russians to help me win the great state of wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania. i won them because i went there and campaigned hard. and my opponent didn't go there enough. >> joyce, i'm going to start with you. i got nothing. bill clinton had a 67% approval rating and was doing a very good job and he got impeached. can you be impeach forward being crazy? he just laid out the case right there. my god. >> you know, impeachment is not about a popularity contest, about who likes you. it's about accountability. and so i guess in president trump's world, the fbi can go and talk with somebody that they think robbed a bank. maybe the evidence isn't complete but they say we've got video of you walking in and you come out with money and it's not yours and we're looking into

this. and the would-be bank robber says, oh, no, i didn't commit a bank robbery. and in president trump's world, the fbi is just supposed to stand down. president trump says there was no collusion, nobody with any sort of additional authority should look into it. and that's just not how this works. congress is supposed to engage in oversight. >> rev, you know him. i say that with love. i don't want to get you in trouble with any of your friends by saying that. but impeachment seems to me to be the thing that we all know keeps him up at night because of the way he talks about impeachment and tweets about impeachment. what do you hear when you hear him talking about it in such a frantic, desperate, pathetic way? >> i think you hear him talking in a frantic way. he's fearful because he always comes back to defending himself. no matter what the subject matter is. to say and/or suggest that you

can't impeach me because i'm popular or i won -- >> which he's not, by the way. >> yeah, well, if that was the case, he'd already be gone. but to say because i won these states and because i'm saying that i'm the best of any president in two years is somebody that is afraid of dealing with the facts. somebody that is confident of their innocence or really thinks even bringing it up that it is absurd, come on with the facts. let's play it out. i'm going ahead and continue being president. he can't get away from that because he is really afraid which makes many of us feel there really is something there, and he knows it. >> you've got some great reporting in your piece about the weirdly quiet white house. you write it's been more than a month since trump even played golf. the longest stretch of his presidency. it's been more than a month since he held a rally. only sporadic public meetings.

he's not tweeting that much. on days he's unoccupied he tweets a lot. that's not really true. since july 1st, he's tweeted on average 11.1 times a way. over the past week, he's tweeted an average of 8.4 times a day. what's your theory? >> my theory essentially is donald trump didn't really know why he didn't go to mar-a-lago and was just sitting around the white house. he was just watching fox news and getting mad at things and tweeting on occasion. the moment that was written was focused on the fact he had all this time where he owned washington. he could have done whatever he wanted to and he could have walked down to the department of justice and said let's reopen these doors by calling -- he could have done all these things and he just sat in the white house and watched tv. which is remarkable. i think that he is sort of starting to get back on track. this event today. it's ironic he was in front of kevin mccarthy, reported during the campaign to say there are two people he thinks on putin's

payroll. made very sense for a lot of reasons but it plays back to what we were talking about with his base. as long as his base knows him he knows those republican senators aren't going anywhere. as long as they aren't willing to remove him from office. keeping them in love with him, that keeps the republicans in line and impeachment goes away. >> he also reveals in that comment that he doesn't understand nancy pelosi. that he walked in and asked nancy if she's going to impeach him. i worked for a president who had to legislate with nancy pelosi but also was a political adversary to nancy pelosi, and she's good. >> the president started off thinking that he would actually be able to cut a bunch of deals with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi and had more of a kinship and camaraderie with these two than the republican party. trump has a little bit of a point here. the profanity-laced comments about impeaching the president are not welcomed even in the

democratic party at the moment. yes, speaker pelosi said she's open to impeaching the president, but it's not popular with voters and a lot of democrats are reticent to do it. if you talk to newt ging rim rio had to resign, i think he probably wouldn't have done it again either. harvard political survey said out of 21 priorities for the congress, impeaching trump was the lowest of their priorities. >> why is he so pathetic on the top sni topic? why is he tweeting about it and going to nancy with open arms telling us not to impeach me and telling us in the rose garden, she said she wouldn't. >> he's concerned about indictments, including members of his own family. there's a lot of other threats he's facing. going back to the point about the democrats. i heard an interview with jerry nadler, incoming chairman of the

house judiciary committee on this, and he was essentially saying we're going to be very, very cautious about this. we are not going to do this unless we have the facts. don't get ahead of ourselves. we don't want to tear the country apart. he's conscious of the previous impeachments. peter rudino was the chairman of the house judiciary committee during the nixon impeachment. and one of the things hi s he understood was how essential this not be perceived as a political hit job and everything involving nixon was bipartisan. he kept the southern democrats in line. this didn't really break until you actually had the smoking gun tapes. we've had other impeachments perceived to be excessively political or partisan and there is a high potential for backlash. i think that nancy pelosi and jerry nadler, the other leaders, really seem to understand that. that's my sense. >> especially the -- >> can hold their bases. >> but i think it goes to

something deeper in donald trump's psyche. i think, yes, he's concerned about indictments of family members. but i think you've got to understand here is a man who all of his career was treated like he was not qualified to be who he was. he wasn't in the inner circles of power in the new york real estate world. he was not one of us. impeachment says you really are not good as president. you don't qualify to be sitting in that seat. and that speaks to the soul. that speaks to the deep insecurity in donald trump. he wants the validation that i proved to everybody i was legitimate and impeachment takes away that legitimacy, which is what he's been fighting for all of his life. >> he should have thought of that before he, you know, muddled around with the russians. i want to ask you the last question, joyce. let me ask you. i haven't heard any of the democrats on the committees investigating the trump campaign's ties to russia

potentially say anything about rushing to any sort of political process. i've heard adam schiff and eric swalwell and everyone on the investigative committees talk like you talk. like prosecutors pursuing a fact pattern. your hearing anything from the committees with the authority of investigating whether crimes took place, speaking in any way that gives you pause as a former prosecutor? >> no. in fact, just to the contrary. everything that i hear is very reassuring. there's a measured tone coming from the democratic party. it says let's wait and see what mueller has. let's wait until we know what all of the evidence is. we can complete our investigation because many parts of it were cut off by the republicans. so we need to go back and hear from witnesses and ask, for instance, donald trump jr., were you calling your dad in the middle of setting up the trump tower meeting in june of 2016? here's why this is frightening to trump. it's not just for the

philosophical reason that rev identifies, although i think that's incredibly important. pragmatically, impeachment is a terrible threat to this president. because if he is successfully impeached, if some bombshell drops in the mueller report that brings republicans to the table, once he's out of office, he's no longer immune from indictment. it's not just the threat of indicting his children. impeachment poses the threat that donald trump himself could be indicted. that, i think, is what's driving the madness. >> that's a really important point. let me ask you to underscore that. that is based on the statute of limitations for charging people for crimes out of the southern district, for example. can you explain that more for us, joyce. >> yeah, sure. so there's a five-year statute of limitations in the federal system for most crimes. it says you can only be prosecuted for five years from the time you committed a crime. so that can be a long statute with a conspiracy charge because it's five years from, for instance, the last act that

concealed a conspiracy. but if trump is worried about prosecutors in the southern district of new york, then that clock is running. and if he is impeached within the next, say, year, he would be out of office and fair game for prosecutors of the southern district of new york well within the statute of limitations. >> i feel like 2019 is going to be interesting, joyce. when we come back, the trump presidency is bad for business. we'll bring you new reporting on the hotel projects at a standstill under the direction of trump's two sons. stay with us. i don't keep track of regrets.

i never count the wrinkles. and i don't add up the years. but what i do count on... is staying happy and healthy. so, i add protein, vitamins and minerals to my diet with boost®. new boost® high protein nutritional drink now has 33% more high-quality protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals your body needs. all with guaranteed great taste. the upside- i'm just getting started. boost® high protein be up for life look for savings on boost® in your sunday paper.

plans by the president's company now headed by his two sons to expand its hotel business to more rural areas have come to a standstill. that's according to reporting by "the washington post." maybe the numerous probes into trump's businesses are taking their toll. quote, investigators are also

swarming the company, and that is putting it at risk of having to disclose private financial information in court cases and before congress now that democrats have taken over the house of representatives according to congressional staff. just how big is that swarm around the businesses? here's what we know. we know that mueller has subpoenaed the trump organization. we know former attorney michael cohen and cfo alan weisselberg have been cooperating with federal prosecutors. we know donald trump jr. testified before congress about his contact with russians and we know the entire organization is in the cross hairs of the southern district of new york as well as the new attorney general in new york state who said she will investigate anyone in trump's orbit who has violated the law. joyce and the panel are still here. joyce, this reality, this reality that what he probably views as an empire, what his own friends say was more like a

funky family office is very much under threat of being destroyed, demolished and becoming a criminal liability by his presidency. >> there are so many questions that so many different prosecutors are looking into involving the trump organization. there's even a threat from civil litigation from ethics groups that are challenging whether the president's continued involvement in these businesses, failure to put his assets into a blind trust is something that approaches a violation of the emoluments clause, so the irony for trump could be that by failing to set aside those businesses into a sort of a protocol where he wouldn't be able to influence the outcome in any way or do anything to encourage people to patronize his businesses he may have put the entire empire at risk. >> and god bless your colleague david farn gold for reporting on the emoluments. i said to him at the beginning of the trump presidency, if emoluments had a different name,

he said it sounded like lotion. if it wasn't a weird name, we would talk about it every day, but this does seem to be the less sexy, less dramatic, but perhaps graver threat to trump and his family? >> and probably scares him more because, you know, this is the heart of his self-image. look, donald trump has always been the scam artist. we found out that the foundations were a scam, and by the way, among stories that we've kind of lost track of, new york state forced him to shut down his foundations, and he's been banned from philanthropy. think about that for a moment. >> that's great, fiphilanthropy must be protected from the american present. >> he still has his finger on the nuclear button. >> that's incredible. >> going after the family business, that crosses red line. that red line has been oblitera obliterated, and this has always been a flimflam operation and he has never had transparency and never thought he would have

transparency, so you wonder -- you know, he knows or he has some idea what happens when they lift up that rock, when they find out all of these things that are going on that may have nothing to do with russia or may have a lot to do with russia. we just don't know. what we know is somebody who made up his own rules as he went along because he thought nobody was looking, nobody would ever find out, and they're finding out now. >> what does it say about the trump family dynamic that the sons are now earning bad press for the president? i think you don't have to know them at all to know that's all the president cares about, the headlines, the press, the coverage. he's a tv addict. anyone who loved him would worry about his screen time. now the boys are getting him terrible press around the thing he cares about best, the so-called business empire. >> i think it says in many ways trump is now looking at who's a liability to him, and i think that anybody that's a liability to him ought to be careful, and i don't think anyone's excluded

from that, maybe his daughter. i think, though, when you look at the fact that you have a president who now his new jersey business we are told has people that they knew were here illegally. you have a foundation closed down as charlie just talked about in the state of new york. what would make us think he's running his other businesses correctly? i mean, he'd have to be schizo to be doing something perfect here and everything else we know about was done in this manner. so if he is consistent, which we already know there's reason for them to have a lot to fear in terms of picking up that rock because all the ants we see around the rock are clearly in violation of many ethical questions. >> do you think we do a good enough job stretching our tentacles into these other investigations that aren't, perhaps, as sexy or dramatic as the mueller probe? >> i mean, i do think so, yeah.

the problems are not as dramatic or sexy. you mentioned david farenthold. he did remarkable work, it's just not as interesting. >> we had him here. we did it here. we love his reporting. >> do you think, joyce vance that we take our eye off of all of these sort of multiprong, multifaceted maybe civil lawsuits or investigations into the businesses, people that we don't hear about all the time, at our own peril, do you think these could be some of the shoes waiting to drop? >> there's no doubt that that's the case. i don't know, though, how you can keep your eye on the ball on a daily basis, what is it now, are we up to 19 investigations with the secretary of the interior zinke resigning with news that he's under criminal investigation inside the department of justice. so god bless people who can keep all of those balls in the air and be familiar with all of the details. i guess for the rest of us, we just have to spend a lot of time watching msnbc which does a great job of staying on top of

everything. >> and people like you explaining it to people like me. thank you. ♪ memories. what we deliver by delivering. red lobster's new weekday five days.s here: five deals. for fifteen dollars get a different deal every weekday til six pm like endless shrimp monday admiral's feast tuesday four course feast wednesday and more. five days. five deals. fifteen dollars. see you before six. if you have moderate to thsevere rheumatoid arthritis, month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness are signs of joint erosion.

humira can help stop the clock. prescribed for 15 years, humira targets and blocks a source of inflammation that contributes to joint pain and irreversible damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you've had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. help stop the clock on further irreversible joint damage. talk to your rheumatologist. right here. right now. humira. woteddy and i would love some tea!a? i'm having a tea party with my friends at st. jude children's research hospital. st. jude freely shares our research and discoveries to help save kids with cancer everywhere.

would you like a finger sandwich? of course whose fingers? give thanks for the healthy kids in your life, and give to those who are not. donate now at stjude.org or shop wherever you see the st. jude logo.

it's so nice to be back. thanks for watching. my thanks to joyce vance, charlie psy charlie sykes, the rev. i'm nicolle wallace. mpt daily starts right now. >> did anything change? >> we've been gone. >> i haven't seen you since last year, and yet everything changes and everything stays the same. >> from phillip bump, he gave up golf for now. >> good for him. baby steps. thank you nicole. if it's friday, it's all about that base. base. good evening, i'm chuck todd here in