define who you are and express yourself. that does it for me. thanks for watching. i'll see you back here tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern. and to keep the conversation going, like us at facebook.com/politicsnation and follow us on twitter @politicsnation. up next, "deadline: white house" with my friend nicolle wallace. ♪ hi, everyone. happy new year. it is 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 sheningans. what do you think he did? he set up the rose garden and held court for a full hour desperate to change the conversation about keeping the government closed for a full

year with the threat to build the wall without congress if he need be. >> this is him quoting you, i want to check. that the shutdown could go on for months or even a year or longer. did you say that. >> i did. >> and that's your -- >> i did. >> is that your assessment of where we are? >> absolutely i said that. i don't think it will, but i'm still prepared. >> are you still proud to own the shutdown? >> i appreciate the way you say that. but once -- i am very proud of doing what i'm doing. i don't call it a shutdown. so you can call it whatever you want. you can call it the schumer or the pelosi or the trump shutdown, doesn't make any difference to me. just words. prepared -- >> sir, cabinet members are set to get raises tomorrow. how is that fair? >> we'll have to talk to the cabinet members then. i'm sure they don't know that. >> have you considered using emergency powers to grant yourself authority to build the wall without congressional approval? >> yes, i have. >> and second, on mexico -- 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 greater existential threat to presume's presidency is this on russia. 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 offender comments the "wall street journal" was responding to on russia. >> 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 being the soviet union. you know, a lot of -- 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 speech writer david fromm writes this in the atlantic.

putin's-style glorrive indication of the soviet regime is entering the mind of the president, 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. but 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 it is safe to assume that donald trump's bizarre defenses of russian foreign policy are under scrutiny as we speak. joining us on another day of extraordinary developments, some of our favorite reporters and friends. former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfaul. chuck rosenberg, a former u.s. attorney and former senior fbi official. joyce vance, also a former u.s. attorney. with us at the table, charlie sykes, now editor and chief of the new website bulwark. and political reporter for "the washington post".

let me start with you and what i heard from a former u.s. intelligence official today that donald trump's compilation of seemingly bizarre, seemingly random, seemingly -- let me just be blunt, stupid comments about russia are probably at this point likely under scrutiny by people investigating his relationship, his contacts, his coordination, if you will, with russia. >> my goodness, nicole, i think they would have to be. we were wondering why michael flynn was debriefed 19 times. it struck us all as an extraordinary number. maybe now we have a bit more insight into what the mueller team and the department of justice are looking at. this is extraordinarily serious, if not because it is the part of mueller's initial remit, it is at least part of the counterintelligence investigation. why is the president speaking about russian interests with respect to montenegro and poland and belaruse and that is sort of

a revisionist history of why the soviets invaded afghanistan. it is extraordinary. >> chuck, you just blew my mind as you often do. let me press farther with you. you are saying that 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 papadopolous who was mouthing off at a bar, could by this point extend to an examination of donald trump's foreign policy utterances and conduct? >> oh, i think they have to, nicole. i don't mean to be an alarmist but i think they have to and here is 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 is 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 is saying? is he just wrong? does he actually believe it?

or is something being fed to him with the intent of sort 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. >> okay. sometimes things happen that make me hit pause and rip up the script and one just did, so bear with me. i want to dig into this with you, michael mcfaul. what has he done -- what other possible explanation is there for towieing -- it is not even modern russia, it is the soviet line. this was part of the putin machine, that they would try to rewrite their own history about afghanistan. what ultimate explanation could possibly exist for doing that? >> i can't think of any. i think it is important to underscore what you just said. this is even radical revisionist history for russia.

for many decades it was discredited, the soviet invasion of afghanistan. by the way, it is not because there were terrorists coming into the soviet union. that's completely false as well. it is very obscure, as you quoted rachel maddow. where does it exist in nature? it 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 alternative hypothesis. >> all right. let me ask you then to speak as sort of a student of russia. how would they be -- i mean donald trump has proven he can't be managed. he has also proven that guardrails can't hold in the american presidential model. how are the rurcssians holding m so tightly and specifically

around these messages? >> think it is bigger than russia. i think the withhold world has found out that the way to flip trump to get him in your interest is to get him in a one--on-one meeting and feed him these things. if you speak loudly -- not loudly, strongly. that's the word the president likes. if you speak strongly, you will flip him. there are lots of instances of that. one i know well is what putin did in helsinki when he met one-on-one with president trump and right before then mr. mueller indicted 12 gru military officers. so putin came to helsinki with this crazy, cockamamie idea that a bunch of americans are 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 remember it so well. crazy stuff said one-on-one, and the president, if you speak strongly enough, he seems to tend 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 meeting with russians revealed classified information. "the 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 has proved critical insight into the islamic state they said, could hinder the united states and its allies ability to detect future threats. the president also on crimea telling g7 leaders crimea is russian because everyone speaks russian in crimea. so if you are an investigator or a prosecutor or you look at the cockamamie defense of the war in

afghanistan in 1979, you look at the defense of annexing crimea because, in trump's words, it is russian because everyone speaks russian there, you look at the helsinki presser which ambassador mcfaul pointed out, you look at sharing classified information and saying, i'm so relieved now that that nut job comey is out of the picture, so much pressure relieved from me, what do you see? >> this really goes back to the point that chuck made early on, which is that if you are investigating this situation and looking at it big picture, you're trying to figure out as an investigator is this president just extraordinary malleable? does he listen to whoever he hears from the most strongly and the most recently? or is there perhaps something more sinister here? we all know at this point mueller knows a lot that's not publicly known. if there's, in fact, 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 of the possibilities. as chuck says, 19 interviews with mike flynn seemed really inexplicable early on. we are starting to understand a little bit more why they might have had so much to discuss with him. >> and, joyce, let me hit you with this. 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 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 is typical to extend the grand jury for a period, as here of six months. it does strongly signal that mueller is not ready to finish up in the next month or two and has a little bit more work to do. >> chuck, same question to you. this 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 is easier to extend the one you have. and it doesn't just mean witnesses, nicole. it means that the mueller team can also use the grand jury, the existing grand jury to subpoena documents and records. so i don't think joyce is surprised, although i shouldn't talk for her. she is a lot smarter than me. i can tell you that 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 is going on. this is fairly normal in a remarkably abnormal investigation. >> chuck, let me press in on this grand jury. i mean 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 come -- 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 scrutiny as his 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 kbeimpulses and instincts on russia with russians and others, could you see mueller wanting to hear from

them how foreign policy was crafted? >> oh, absolutely nicole. look, just because flynn was interviewed 19 times doesn't mean flynn was the only person interviewed. in fact, far from it. i assume all of the people who were in those meetings whether it is dina powell or h.r. mcmaster or others have been interviewed. it doesn't mean every single one of them has to go in front of the grand jury. obviously you can talk to investigators outside of the 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 of data as you can. you want to talk to as many people as you can, and that's why these investigations take longer than you expect. he's talking -- he, mueller, is talking to a whole bunch of people. >> ambassador mcfaul, i made a list of all of the people who lied about their contacts with russians, mike flynn, george sessions, george papadopolous, rick gates, jared kushner,

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 was his answer. i want to ask you about it. >> do you think the russians have something on donald trump? >> i think it is possible. i don't know. these are more words i never thought i would utter about the president of the united states, but it is possible. >> that was the far better interview with george stephanopoulos asking probably a smarter question of jim comey, but basically what former director comey said to me was that he couldn't answer the question. do you think there is 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 is possible and we need to get to the bottom of it.

that's why mr. mueller needs to do his work, but it is extraordinary. i just 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 is 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 demand a full-throated explanation. >> well, we didn't get to and i haven't seen you since secretary mattis resigned over the syria decision. >> yes. >> 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 as ancient history even for putin. but your thoughts on maybe why more people haven't followed in secretary mattis's courageous path for the exact reason you just articulated? >> well, you're right. that was a giant gift to putin. it was exactly what he wants and that's exactly the way it is

being described in russia, by the way. to your other point, you know, i still know some people that work in the government. h.r. mcmaster is here now, by the way. bret mcgirt is on his way. he will be here at stanford in the spring. we should have a little seminar out here in the spring and sit down with all of them. maybe mattis will be back, too, by the way. i don't have a serious answer. i think people get in the bubble and they 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 the 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. >> that's as good a play as any

to hit pause. ambassador mcfaul, thank you so much. chuck rosenberg, thank you for spending time with us. >> sure. >> when we come back, hypocrisy alert as donald trump threatens to have the government shutdown go on for year. years over illegal immigration. new reporting reveal his golf courses have been hiding illegal immigrants that work at his properties from the secret service. we will go inside donald trump's shutdown mania. also ahead, donald trump's twitter feed is a window into his impeachment angst. we will show you how he is softening the ground for the possibility of his own impeachment. it turns out donald trump's sons are a flop in the hotel business. new reporting reveals how some of the trump hotel business planned for last year ground to a halt under the cloud of investigation and scandal hovering over donald trump's president and tarnishing the brand. all of that still coming up. stay with us. l coming up. stay with us especially these days.

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you know, i talk about human traffickers. i talk about drug goes. i talk about drugs, i talk about gangs. a lot of people don't say we have terrorists coming through the southern border because they find it is probably the easiest place to come through. they drive right in and 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 -- it didn't make a lot of sense. for better or worse, republicans, that is the man leading discussions to end the government shutdown, and 14 days in cracks are starting to show in the gop's united front. most notably cory gardner and susan colins are backing off the demand for border wall funding to end the shutdown.

every step of the process is trump and his scatter shot approach to deal making. during the last meeting on wednesday, "the washington post" reported vice president pence leveled an accusation against schumer. trump said he wouldn't accept less than the $5.6 billion in wall funding approved by house republicans late last year, far more than the $2.5 billion pence was proposing. 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. joining us at the table, reverend al sharp ton host of "politics nation" and jackie alameni, author of the

washington power up newsletter. let's start with you. what is this moment, charlie? >> the moment comes down to whether or not donald trump wants to give up on his assertion that he wants to see the wall built. the point that was just made -- >> it is down to slats, right? >> yes, the artistically designed steel slats. >> and then we alternate concrete wall like obama. >> today he said he never said concrete. >> correct. we're back to slats. >> to the point just made, the only person that can negotiate and have sign-off authorization is trump when he has something in front of him. we thought we had a deal prior to the holidays where there would be government funding. donald trump after having watched "fox news" decided it is not what his base wanted and decided everything changed. i think senate minority leader chuck schumer said, yes, whatever mike pence brings to me is nice but at the end if donald

trump says he as not moving forward with it, there's no point. the part of america holding donald trump's feet to the wall, either he gives up on trying to appease them or lets it go on for months or years. >> right before the holidays a source close to the president -- i called them after the mattis resignation and i said basically, wtf is going on with your friend? he said, he's scared. he's scared of mueller. he's terrified of his base. i don't see that happening. >> no, he is terrified of his base, and essentially ann coulter and rush limbaugh have veto power over this. he is in a fight with his own generals, which is a place he doesn't want to do. but i think donald trump likes this particular fight. he is talking about something he likes to talk about. he likes to talk about something that plays well in his rallies, he has a foil he can blame with nancy pelosi, but he has no exit strategy. at some point we have seen

donald trump declare victory but he has to do it in such a way he can save face. >> but there won't be a wall. >> there won't be a wall. >> and shutdowns are never popular, so he will not run the first year's long popular shutdown. >> yeah, but, i mean he's the guy that could have the pile of you know what in the driveway and say there's a pony buried in there. this is donald trump. there are two things that was reckless about what he said today, his threat to keep the government shutdown for years, imagine the ceo of a major corporation with thousands of stockholders saying i'm going to shut down the court if i don't get what i want. number two, this idea he might invoke a national emergency powers to have the military build this, this should be a fire belt 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, look, you know, 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 that are concerned about the separation of powers. >> let me put you on that. we only have two defections in republican ranks, senator collins and senator gardner. do you expect more? do you hear reporting more are behind them? >> no, not at the moment. but, again, you know, we have asked this question for how long? when are republicans going to break with donald trump? when are they going to speak out? we have general mattis who resigned from the administration. >> for two years, 11 months and seven day. >> hey, better late than never. mitt romney comes out and basically says out loud what republicans are saying in private. so, you know, you still have that solid front, but you get the sense that it is eroding inside. you know, 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 grandpa simpson moments and think, well, you know, do we really want to go down into the tenth circle of hell with this president on this issue? >> a good name for a -- where we are now, the tenth circle of hell. i think it is 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're 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 ostensibly. he has illegal immigrants working at his own properties. he doesn't even believe his own bs. >> no, the reports about what he is 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 there are terrorists, the boogie man is coming, nobody has seen him but me, the boogie man is coming and i could do an emergency act but i'm not going to do it, and 800,000 workers furloughed or getting late pay, they really want it because they understand getting the boogie man that 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 do it. >> i'm desperate to know how putin gets him to stay on script, but that's for another conversation. let me just read you some of this reporting about undocumented workers at his properties because it feels like the kind of story everyone will be able to get. any small business owner understands sort of the extra

hurdle of workplace verification. it is not something trump talks about a lot. obviously we know why now, it is not something he does. a former employee of the trump national golf club in new jersey said that her name was removed from a list of workers to be vetted by the secret service after she reminded management that she was unlawfully in the united states. the latest worker to assert that supervisors at the elite resort were aware, were aware that some members of their workforce were undocumented. this is just -- this is just mind bending, that he should down the whole government, that workers are furloughed. i understand he doesn't have the capacity for empathy, but the capacity for hi poche rhys ypoc staggering. >> it speaks to the fact that the president is playing politics and it is only a matter of time before public opinion turns against him. if there currently is a national security crisis on the border, but trump has the potential of

manufacturing one himself with 800,000 furloughed workers in our government. i think charlie hit the nail on the head, that president trump is thinking about his base, what hannity and brightbart are saying to his base. we saw hannity last night say that the president was potentially considering a daca deal, potentially giving him an out. as you stated right off the bat, even the president's intermediaries have sort of been neutered in this process. what -- you know, i don't think anyone necessarily believes 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 even think the president has the power to strike a deal, because if he turned on the television, which drives everything -- it is not state-run media, it is the media-run state, and they didn't like it he would go back and undercut himself. >> i think also what the president is really keeping in mind is something that lindsey graham explicitly said this

weekend on "fox news", which if the president doesn't get a wall there goes 2019 and there goes 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 will tell you about it next. ] janice, mom told me you bought a house. okay. [ buttons clicking ] [ camera shutter clicks ] so, now that you have a house, you can use homequote explorer. quiet. i'm blasting my quads. janice, look. i'm in a meeting. -janice, look. -[ chuckles ] -look, look. -i'm looking. it's easy. you just answer some simple questions online, and you get coverage options to choose from. you're ruining my workout. cycling is my passion.

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♪ it took less than one day after the democrats regained the majority in the house for the president to address the possibility 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. 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 know what? you don't impeach people when they're doing a good job and you don't impeach people when there was no collusion, because there was no collusion. you know russians better than i do, kevin, okay. there 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 i 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, was doing a very good job and he got impeached. can you be impeached for 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 is about accountability. 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, you know, we have video of you walking in and you come out with money and it is not yours, and we're looking into this. and the would-be bank robber says, oh, no, no, no, i didn't commit a bank robbery. in president trump's world, the fbi is supposed to standdown, that ends it. 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 am popular or i won wisconsin -- >> which he is not, by the way. >> if that was the case, he would already be gone. to say that because i've won these states and because i'm saying i have done the best of any president in two years, is somebody that is afraid of dealing with the facts, someone that is confident of their innocence or really thinks even bringing it up that it is absurd would say, come on with the facts, let's lay 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 has been more than a month since trump even played golf, the longest stretch of his

presidency. it has been more than a month since he held a rally. there are only sporadic public meetings. he is not even tweeting that of. since july 1, 2018, he has tweeted on average 11.1 times a day. over the past week, he's tweeted an average of 8.4 times a day. what is your theory? >> my theory essentially is that donald trump didn't know why he didn't go to maur-a-lago and he was sitting around doing nothing but watching "fox news". the moment it was written was it was focused on the time when he owned washington. he could have done any number of things, walked down to the department of justice and said, let's reopen the doors, could have done all of these things and he just sat in the white house and watched tv which is remarkable. i think he is starting to get back on track. we saw this event today. i think it is ironic he was standing in front of kevin mccarty, a guy reported during the campaign to have said there

are two people on putin's payroll, one being donald trump. mccarty has to sort of stand there. his argument today made little sense for a lot of reasons but it plays back to what we were talking about with his base. as long as his base loves him he knows the republican senators are not going to remove him from office. it comes back to keeping the core base of people happy, 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. you noticknow, he walked in andd nancy if she was going to impeach him. i worked with a president that had to legislate with nancy pelosi and she is good. you know, the president started off thinking 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 people than the republican party. i think trump has, you know, a little bit of a point here, rep

to live comments, her profanity-laced comments about impeaching the president are not particularly welcomed even in the democrat party at this point in time. yes, speaker pelosi said she is open to, you know, impeaching the president, but it is not popular with voters and a lot of democrats are reticent to do it. if you talk to newt gingrich, who had to resign after failing to successfully impeach president bill clinton, i think he says he probably wouldn't have done it again either. harvard "politico" survey that came out this morning said of 21 possible priorities for the new congress, impeaching trump was the lowest out of their priorities. >> okay. so assume all of that to be true. why is he so pathetic on the topic? i mean assume all of that is spot on, why is trump tweeting about it first thing when he wakes up? why is he going to nancy with open arms saying, please don't impeach me, and telling us in the rose garden she said she wouldn't. what is wrong with him? >> it is humiliating and he is concerned about indictments with his own family.

there are other threats he is facing. going back to the point about the democrats, i heard an interview with jerry nadler, the incoming chairman of the house judiciary committee on this. he was essentially saying we will 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. i think he is very, very conscious over the lessons of the previous impeachments. the name people ought to remember is peter rodino, who was chairman of the house judiciary committee during the nixon impeachment. one of the things he understood was how essential it was that this not be perceived as a partisan hit job. he made sure that everything involving nixon was bipartisan. he kept the southern democrats in line. you will remember that this didn't really break until you actually had the smoking gun tapes. so we've had other impeachments that were perceived to be excessively political or excessively partisan and there is a high potential for backlash. i think that nancy pelosi and jerry nadler and the other leaders really seem to understand that, at least that's

my sense. now, whether they can hold their base is another thing. >> go ahead and i want to give -- >> think it goes to something deeper in donald trump's psyche. i think, yes, he is 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. >> right. >> you are 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 has been fighting for all of his life. >> he should have thought of that before he, you know, you know, mulgded aroudmuddled arou

russians. let me ask you, joyce, 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 have heard adam schiff and eric swalwell and everyone on the investigative committees talk like you talk, like prosecutors pursuing a fact pattern. are you hearing anything from the committees with sort of the authority and responsibility of investigating whether or not 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 is why this is frightening to trump. it is not just for the philosophical reason that rev identifies, although think it is 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 is not just the threat of indicting his children. impeachment poses the threat that donald trump himself could be indicted. that i think is what is driving the madness. >> that's a really important point. let me just 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 just explain it a little 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 is 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. if he is impeached within, say, the next 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 will 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.

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from capital one.nd i switched to the spark cash card i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy. and last year, i earned $36,000 in cash back. which i used to offer health insurance to my employees. what's in your wallet? 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 let's just call it an empire at risk. >> and god bless your colleague david fahrenthold for reporting on the emoluments.

i said to him at the beginning of the trump presidency, if emoluments had a different name, -- you said once 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, philanthropy must be protected from the american president. >> he cannot be trusted to engage in philanthropy but he still has his finger on the nuclear button. remember when he was saying -- >> that's incredible. >> going after the family business, that was crossing a red line. well, that red line has been

obliterated. and this has always been kind of a flimflam operation and he's never had transparency and he never thought he would have transparency. so you wonder -- 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 it 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. as you just said. anyone that really loved him would worry about his screen time. but now the boys are getting him terrible press around the thing he cares about best, the so-called business empire. >> well, i think that it says that in many ways trump is now looking at who's a liability to him. >> correct.

>> 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 on the foundation, brought all that stuff. the problem is it's just not as interesting as -- >> 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 on 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. we're going to sneak in our last break. we'll be right back. ♪and shakin' me up so ♪that all i really know ♪is here you come again, and here i go, here i go♪ here we come again. applebee's all you can eat is back. now that's eatin' good in the neighborhood. now's the really fun part:m car. choosing the color, the wheels, the interior. everything exactly how i want it. here's the thing, just because i configured this car online doesn't mean it really exists at a dealership. but with truecar, i get real pricing on actual cars in my area, i see what others paid for them and they show me the ones that match the car i want, so i know i can go to a truecar certified dealer

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now that you know the truth, are you in good hands? it's so nice to be back. thanks for watching. my thanks to joyce vance, charlie sykes, the rev. i'm nicolle wallace. i'll see you back here monday for "deadline white house" at 4:00 p.m. no end in sight. let's play "hardball." good evening. i'm steve kornacki in for chris matthews. president trump and congressional democrats are no closer to a deal to reopen the government as that partial shutdown barreled today into its 14th day, emerging from a nearly two-hour meeting from t