democratic response delivered by bernie sanders right afterwards. thank you for watching. "deadline white house with nicolle wallace" starts right now. hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in new york. two developing stories in the russia investigation. both pertaining to individuals who participated in the now-infamous trump tower meeting. the one in which donald trump junior was promised dirt on hillary clinton and giddily accepted the offer to meet with russians. one of the participants, russian natalia vesenletskaia, charged with obstructing a money laundering investigation by the justice department. the indictment references documents first reported exclusively in an nbc news report in april of 2018. we're going to get to that story in a moment. but we start with donald trump's former campaign chairman paul manafort and brand-new information about just what he lied about to special counsel robert mueller.

paul manafort who awaits sentencing allegedly lied to special counsel robert mueller's investigators about sharing polling data related to the 2016 presidential campaign with a russian operative. if this is the case and donald trump's campaign chairman was sharing polling data which can contain state by state or demographic information about how a candidate is polling at a moment in a campaign, then robert mueller just might have an important piece of information about the intersection of the trump political machine and russian efforts to aide donald trump's campaign. the significance of these developments on a day that donald trump is being aided by every television network that has agreed to air his immigration speech is that the more information we learn about what the justice department knows the more we see ties between trump's campaign and russians. here to discuss some solve our favorite reporters and friends, from "the new york times," reporter ken vogel.

former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence, frank figliuzzi and chuck rosenberg, former senior fbi official. frank figliuzzi, let me start with you. i'd like to get you all on the record with these stories. let's talk paul manafort. we've talked so much, you and chuck have taken me to school on how a conspiracy is investigated and charged. we know robert mueller has charged the russian part of the conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 election. could paul manafort sharing polling data from the trump campaign with a russian operative be that link between the conspiracy and the trump orbit? >> got a significant revelation today and it's the result of an apparent error and inability of manafort's lawyers to cut and paste properly or use black magic marker because now we know precisely what manafort is accused of lying about. remember, it's one thing to be forgetful, if we read the story painted by manafort's attorneys,

then he's an impressive multitasker who's trying to run a presidential campaign and we shouldn't be so harsh on him because he can't remember things, but forgetfulness is one thing, nicolle, he chose, and lying is a choice, he chose to lie about whether or not he shared the president's polling numbers with a known russian intelligence operative. a gru guy. that guy's nickname, kalimnik, is a gru guy. mueller knows, again, far more than we know. he knows what they might have done with those polling numbers. how the russians might have tried to assist the presidential campaign with the precise polling data and demographics manafort may have provided them and what's the problem with that? the problem that legally is the emoluments clause, is what might have been done regarding hacking or other social media propaganda attempts in those districts or polling places that manaford needed beefed up. we don't know. but likely, mueller does.

>> chuck rosenberg, let me ask you to pull back the lens a little bit and explain what this development, that the president's former campaign chairman, let's forget for a moment that he lied about it, let's just deal with the fact of it. he handed polling data and i worked on presidential campaigns. polling data is pretty tightly held, if it's the kind that we call overnight tracks that you get overnight. i don't know if that's what it was. but polling data is considered something pretty secret and kept to the highest levels of the campaign. if that was handed from donald trump's campaign chairman to a russian operative, what does that look like from a standpoint of an investigation into russian meddling? >> i guess you're saying, n nicolle, we don't ordinarily share polling data with russian intelligence officials. >> right. >> taking that as a given. right. what it immediately made me think of, frank touched on this, s was the mueller team's indictment of the russian troll farm. you recall a number of russians

i believe in st. petersburg, russia, were targeting americans using our own social media against us. trying to incite people in one way or another to vote in a certain way. we know that was against clinton and for trump. with that polling data, assuming it's broken down by counties and states and, you know, districts, that would be a very powerful tool in the hands of somebody or some entity that would do us harm. that would do us ill. and so that strikes me as very, very interesting. i think frank's right. this requires us to trust that the mueller folks, and i do, know about this, have been looking at it, take this very seriously and it's part of a counterintelligence investigation, no doubt. >> ken vogel, frank alluded to how he learned this new information about paul manafort and it was through a badly redacted filing. just take us through the event of the day, and you've covered

kalimnik, you've been on this beat for months. talk about how today's news advances the story. >> i think it advances it significantly. as far as the tactics of it, you get these alerts, media alerts through the automated filing system of the federal courts called pacer. they come in, they say there's a document, this document came in. i immediately downloaded it, started reading it. even with the redactions, i found it quite interesting and telling as to what paul manafort allegedly lied to mueller's team about but then it became apparent that the redactions had not fully worked because they refiled the same filing with the actual redactions where you could not access the blacked out text, so immediately we went and copied and pasted and were able to easily circumvent the redaction on the first document and saw two things. it wasn't just the polling data thing, which is interesting and certainly is sort of an offering of something that could potentially help the russians in their effort to meddle in the

election, but also you saw that he had lied about conversations with kalimnik about a peace plan. now, we don't know the specifics here, but certainly around this time during the campaign, you saw russians and sort of russia-aligned ukrainians offering various solutions to reach a resolution between ukraine and russia to settle the hostilities and some of those proposals included dropping, the u.s. dropping of sanctions against russia in exchange for russia making some concessions to ukraine, not necessarily everything that ukraine want. so you see here, i'm not saying we have the conspiracy, but certainly the building blocks for a conspiracy case. you have the manafort during his time in h the trump campaign offering the russians something that could help them affect the outcome of the election then you see the makings of a possible payoff. the conversations about what could be done to russia's liking, potentially, to resolve

the hostilities in ukraine. >> frank figliuzzi, just pick up this thread that ken has laid out and talk about what exposure donald trump could have if it is revealed that he had any knowledge of any piece of this. >> well, we're talking about the president's chairman of his campaign, so it's literally one step away from the candidate, himself. the question becomes, how much of this got briefed up to the candidate? this is going to be conjecture, nicolle, but i cannot believe that manafort would be meeting with a russian intelligence operative in madrid, passing polling data and numbers, discussing a ukrainian peace strategy and none of this would get to the candidate, himself. it's likely it did, and that's where you're going to see this conspiracy, this criminal conspiracy, that we call collusion, being levied upon the president and this is how this is going to play out. and now the light bulb is going on as to why manafort is

choosing not to fully cooperate. this is just too explosive and too close to the president, himself. >> chuck rosenberg, i want to read you a tweet from our friend here, evan mcmullin, his organization tweeted, "trump campaign chairman paul manafort gave internal polling date to a kremlin agent as the kremlin was executing a political attack on our elections. that is collusion." can you just speak to the russian side of this, what they were engaged in at this time was an attack on our democracy. this seems to me to get to john brennan's testimony, chilling testimony, that either wittingly or unwittingly members of the trump campaign may have acted as agents of that russian effort. >> yeah, that's why i would make one change or one fix to the tweet. i don't know that it's collusion. i know it's evidence of collusion. and what we need to find out, nicolle, it's the most important thing, and franks knows this, is what was the intent behind it? but to frank's point as well, really interesting to me that

this is the thing he lied about. this is the thing he minimized. right? so whether you're looking at it from a russian perfective or from manafort's perspective, he wasn't minimizing, you know, what the president liked to have for dinner, where he liked to spend weekends or what his golf score was. what he was minimizing are direct contacts with the russians about polling data that arguably tied to russian trolling efforts so collusion, maybe. evidence of collusion, absolutely. >> let me turn all of you to the other development in the russia front. natalia veselnitskaya, i studied, practiced her name, i thought she might stay in the news for a while. i'm glad i did. it paid off. ken vogel, take us flu whthroug we learned today, she's in the cross hairs, how it brings into focus her role in the trump tower meeting known to be a flashpoint in the collusion conspiracy, whatever you want to call it, investigation by robert

mueller. >> yeah, so it's really a totally separate case involving allegations against a russian company, but what she has allegedly done here, according to prosecutors, is that she has worked with the russian prosecutors, essentially the russian attorney general's office, to assist in an effort to obstruct this justice department investigation into this russian company that has ties to the kremlin. so the most significant thing here in this revelation is that it shows that natalia veselnitskaya was in some ways acting if not a was in some ways acting as an agent of the russian government if not , in close coordination with the russian government. the reason why that's significant, we have reported on this previously, but is that the dirt, so to speak, that she dangled, that she tried to give to the trump campaign, donald trump junior, jared kushner, paul manafort during this june 2016 meeting at trump tower was a sort of dossier of research on

this enemy of the kremlin that very closely resembled a dossier of research that we know was circulated by this russian essentially attorney general's office. so we see yet another building block suggesting she's not acting independently in this other case and likely not acting totally independently in the case of her outreach to the trump campaign in june of 2016. >> joining us right now from capitol hill, democratic congressman eric swalwell, a member of the house judiciary and intel committees and i believe you and i on this show have had multiple conversations about ms. veselnitskaya. your committee has looked into her role in that now-infamous trump tower meeting. we understand that meeting to be at the beating heart of the mueller probe. i know it was of interest to you. talk about the significance in your mind to the revelation today that she's now been charged in a separate case by the doj. >> good afternoon, nicolle. i think we've all gotten a ph.d.

in russian studies that none of us signed up for. but stated plainly, the president's son met with a russian spy. we now have the best evidence of that in our minority report the democrats put out that miss veselnitskaya was going all over the world and bumping into dana rohrabacher which is a sign of a spy, someone who tries to create, you know, a coincidence encounter and now we know that she was working at the behest of the russian government. the president's son, nicolle, met with a russian spy, but also at that meeting was paul manafort. so paul manafort knows he's in a meeting where he knows the premise is dirt is being offered on the campaign's opponent and he has this side relationship with a former gru officer, a russian military officer, and now we know is sharing internal campaign polling data. so you see from all individuals here, from the president's son, to his son-in-law, to his campaign chairman, an eagerness

and willingness to work with the russians. what that materialized to i think at this point only special counsel knows but thankfully democrats on the intelligence committee in very short order are going to be in a better position to understand as well. >> let me turn you to the other development today, the revelation in badly redacted court filings that paul manafort shared trump campaign data with russian operative. you run for office every two years. i'm sure your polling information is tightly held. the internal polls, at least. what do you make of the fact that we now have information that paul manafort not only shared polling data with a russian operative then lied about it to special counsel robert mueller? >> yeah, nicolle, just for your viewers' sake, yeah, polling data, that's some of the most treasured information closely held because it shows not only your strengths, but also your vulnerabilities and your weaknesses and knowing that russia starting early on in 2016 was weaponizing social media, the fact that they could have in their hands data about what the

president's -- what candidate trump's strengths were, and where those strengths, you know, could be used if it was amplified, you know, that is very, very concerning and, again, that shows an eagerness to collude. now, just, you know, how it linked up, that's something we're going to find out now on the house intelligence committee. >> congressman, how important is paul manafort to the question of whether or not donald trump's campaign was aided and abetted by the russians? >> highly. what's interesting about manafort, he can tell us if he wanted to cooperate what candidate trump's knowledge was. did candidate trump know about his relationship with the russian military officer? did candidate trump know about the june 9th meeting? did candidate trump know about these other wikileaks efforts that paul manafort's former partner, roger stone, was involved in? but let's just, something else that i think is peculiar about paul manafort, every person that bob mueller and his team have put the screws to have folded

and cooperated. manafort is the only one who has not and he has, i think, the most evidence against him which suggests to me that he is more fearful not of bob mueller, but he's more fearful of what folding would mean for his russian and ukrainian connections. >> i've -- i just want to jump to frank figliuzzi and chuck and ask your thoughts about the congressman's assessment, that paul manafort is acting like a russian who may be more afraid of russians than robert mueller. frank? >> yeah, so it's clear -- you want to go to chuck first? >> no, no, go ahead, frank. >> so it's becoming more and more clear, nicolle, that manafort's fear is the revelations that will not only do him in, but rather do in the president and he's not fearful so much of the president but he's fearful of thugs, the o.c.,

organized crime guys, former gru, svr guys, and the damage they can do to him and his family. it this is a guy who's lost all of his assets. mueller seized his assets. yet he continues to lie and not fully cooperate. the only explanation for that is there's worse that could happen to manafort and he knows it and it's not worse from the u.s. government, it's worse from the russian side. >> chuck rosenberg, i'm going to ask you to do something that it's always false to you, but to put this story in some sort of frame that includes these two dynamics. donald trump more easily scripted to adhere to the language of kremlin putinesque propaganda, paul manafort, as frank figliuzzi and the congressman just detailed, more afraid of russians than robert mueller working for the united states of america. what is this picture that's coming into focus look like to you? >> it looks very russian to me, nicolle. we talked about this before. the fact that all of the folks who have pled guilty to lying so

far in the mueller investigation have lied about russia. that when manafort has minimized or not fully cooperated with the mueller team, it regarded russia. and that the president's attempts to obstruct justice including at the trump tower meeting have involved russia. and so there's a commonality. a common thread to all of this. what's really interesting to me here about the latest manafort filing, by the way, i wouldn't make too much of the fact he made a mistake. i recall eastern district prosecutors accidentally revealing the fact assange had been indicted and that was under seal, by accident. what we see in the manafort pleading is on one hand, he's minimizing his conduct. i didn't mean to lie. i was confused. this stuff was hard. i wasn't feeling well. on the other hand, at sentencing, he's not asking for the opportunity to contest it. meaning the mueller team is going to establish for the judge's satisfaction, i predict, that manafort lied. he doesn't get the benefit of his cooperation.

and regardless of who he's scared of, he's going to go to jail for a long time. >> congressman, i got one more for you and it's about blocked calls. it's about blocked calls that chairman schiff has been talking about. you've talked about it on this show before. what are the questions, what's the information you're seeking and who should be worried about those calls getting unblocked? >> again, nicolle, it all goes to candidate trump's knowledge. did he know these efforts were taking place on his behalf and if he did, why didn't he stop it? was it because he welcomed it? so my fear, nicolle, is we know that donald trump junior took a call from russia where dirt was offered and they wanted to set up a meeting. then he talked to this blocked number and then called back to russia. we know that candidate trump has a blocked number. my biggest fear, though, is that because the republicans blocked us from obtaining this, is that in the orderly course of business, that they may have been destroyed because most cell phone providers destroy their records six to nine to 12 months i found as a former prosecutor.

so they may have successfully fr prevented us from getting that. i hope the mueller team has that. it's all about candidate trump's knowledge, did he do the right thing or welcome all the help he could get from the russians? >> just as someone who's worked on a lot of presidential campaigns, there is never any normal reason to have a call blocked or otherwise with a russian. congressman, thank you for spending some time. >> my pleasure. >> ken vogel, thank you, frank figliuzzi and chuck rosenberg, thank you, both. still ahead, when donald trump wags the dog tonight, he'll do so in front of a huge television audience. every single network agreeing to air his speech on a topic he lies about on a daily basis. also ahead, all the president's imaginary friends. we'll go inside the cleanup effort on donald trump's lie about former presidents approving of his wall shutdown. and steve schmidt weighs in on the shutdown, the showdown in donald trump's pro-putin programming. stay with us. th my bladder leak, th my bladder leak, the products i've tried just didn't fit right. they were too loose. it's getting in the way of our camping trips. but with a range of sizes,

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we're back with our panel on the twin developments in the russia investigation today. paul manafort, donald trump's one-time campaign chairman, allegedly sharing presidential campaign polling data with a russian operative, and one of the russians in the trump tower meeting with donald trump junior, and other senior trump campaign officials, charged today by the justice department for on instructing a money laundering case. another day, another story or two about trump associates and russians. joining us at the table, elise jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state department. and msnbc analyst. and fabulous anchor of the 4:00 p.m. hour during the holidays. >> thank you.

>> thank you for doing that. john heilemann, equally fabulous anchor of the 4:00 p.m. hour but he was on vacation. >> she was the talk of morocco. i'm telling you. >> she was the -- >> in the sahara, they were talking about how great elise was. it was like, oh my god, did you see elise jordan on "deadline white house"? oh my gosh, she's incredible. >> i love all the love for both of you. thank you, both, for doing it. john heilemann sheer. you have a ton of titles these days. mns news -- >> whatever. >> whatever. whatever. the circus is coming back soon. politics editor for "the root" and msnbc contributor and donny is here. >> donny has no titles. >> like madonna -- >> or gaga. gaga blue is like a thing. sorry. we're off topic here, badly. talk about, i mean, you have an interesting sort of key hole into this world through your relationship with michael cohen. but i'm guessing you're not surprised by news that today we learned that the president's one-time campaign chairman handed polling data to russians. that one of the russians who was inside, deep inside trump tower with donald trump junior and everyone else running the trump campaign was charged by the

justice department, related to another case. just talk about the culture and why there were so many russians everywhere. >> you know, so many russians everywhere because as i said dating back from the early '90s, donald trump couldn't get money from any place else other than russia. michael cohen, without specifically going into these allegations. after spending 70 hours with special prosecutor, he thinks it's check mate for trump. without these specific things, all of the above, i had had many discussions about where i would ask him about the meeting at trump tower, the famous meeting, did donald know? and his answer would be, without specifically answering, he knew everything that was going on everywhere. so i don't think this would be a surprise to anybody. >> none of these things are a smoking gun because the armory has been on fire from the very beginning, but when you get to something as clear as campaign data, like, actual -- there is no other explanations.

plenty of these meetings, they could say it was about pollicy r discussion. you're giving polling date to a foreign agent. there's no reason to do that unless they're assisting you. polling data is extremely important for how you target, it's the exact kind of information could you needs if you wanted a misinformation campaign through facebook or social media. so it's no question. if the campaign manager, if there's one person we believe trump probably worked with and maybe occasionally listened to, doesn't listen to his son, doesn't listen to other people, he was probably listening to manafort and no way we can't say this doesn't go directly to the desk of the president of the united states. >> my first point would be, do we have any idea of what the timeline of this madrid visit, because for anyone working on a presidential campaign, to be able to -- >> it was ride off to madrid. >> i think it was right around the time that he started. nbc's -- >> so still right around the beginning, just, you know, getting -- >> i'm on my way to cleveland by way of madrid where i'm going to go lock down some, you know, something-something with the russians. it doesn't add up. >> that's very curious to me that anyone would just immediately head off on that kind of trip taking such an

important position. to your point about the data, i spoke to a source who was also a pro-democracy activist in ukraine and timeline of konstantin ki l limnik and paul manafort, maybe it wasn't about passing on info to the russian government, maybe it's just about the oligarchs, olek darapaska that paul manafort was indebted to. that's an interesting theory, i thought. >> look, paul manafort's a crook. he's now -- like, that's not even -- >> a felon now. >> that's not invective now, that's a fact. he's someone who over the course of his career, especially in the latter phase of it, has spent a lot of time dealing with oligarchs and ukrainians and russians who are all dirty, mobbed up and part of various criminal enterprises that in that part of the world merge close to politics in a very direct way, even more direct than they seem to in our world here. this question of, you know, how does donald trump, we've talked about this on the show many

times, but i'll say it again, donald trump threads the needle. he wins. how does h e win? he wins by 80,000 votes in the states. particularly michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. we know there is, as jason pointed out, there are these very sophisticated disinformation campaigns that took place run by russians through social media. one of the missing links throughout this whole time has been were the russians figuring that out? where did that data come from? they'd been theorizing about the possibility that the hack at the dnc, we don't know all the e-mail that got stolen. voter files, the voter file is the thing that talks about the precise granular data about neighborhood by neighborhood in america, were voter files stolen? if you stole a voter file, would you be able to figure it out on your own? would you need intelligence to help you with that? we are going to get to a place, i'm confident, where we're going to find out that this wasn't a bunch of really smart russians who stole a voter file and figured it out on their own. >> right. >> there was a guiding intelligence and paul manafort may be only the first, i

suspect, of multiple trump administration or trump campaign officials who in one way or the other were providing either data or other forms of intelligence to allow a campaign of that level of sophistication, because we know how sophisticated the campaign was. russians are smart. they understand data. a lot of them are great with computers and computer modeling. but in the end, to win a campaign that you were supposed to lose, to win it by 80,000 votes in states that the have been traditionally democratic for a long time, where suppression of democratic base voters was crucial, where disinformation about hillary clinton's health was crucial. how did those campaigns get fomented? it probably, almost certainly, didn't get done just by smart russians. it got done with help. and this is the first sign that we have of a direct thing that points to that. there's a lot of reporting and a lot of investigating on other fronts but this is the first time we've seen, ah, okay -- >> let me ask you -- >> exhibit "a." >> paul manafort would have handed the polling data. we don't fknow exactly what it

was. >> we don't. >> what does the next step -- brad pascal went on "60 minutes." bragged about their facebook program. cambridge analytica in the cross hairs. talk about it. >> more importantly, jared kushner, people forget when the campaign ended jared kushner gave sbrir interviews where he about the things they did with facebook, things they did with twitter, other social media platforms, google, youtube, a number of them. he boasted about how they built -- that was his purview and he and parscale -- he was parscale's patron at the campaign. to really make those kinds of campaigns -- the kinds of disinformation campaigns work, manafort was gone by then. that's why i think this is not the end of the story or even the beginning of the end of the story. this is the beginning of the beginning of the story where he's going to spain in the summer period. what you would need is you would need state-by-state demographic, the kind of polling that's not top-line numbers, not horse race

numbers and need them toward the end which is when the race was really close and when small media efforts could make a big difference at the end. so that's why i think we're seeing, this is not going to be last of these revelations. >> for all my critique of the trump campaign and operationally how they proceeded, they had fantastic polling. they had one of the best pollsters in the business. they modeled incredibly for the race. and their polling was certainly the most valuable commodity that the campaign had. >> and you can't just drop, like, this isn't just an excel spreadsheet. right? this is campaign presidential-level data. so they would have impressions. they would probably have some of the demographic information, but here's the other thing. it's like giving -- it's like giving your grandparents an instruction booklet for a dvr, they're not going to figure it out the first time. they're going to need to keep calling. >> alexa. >> has to be somebody else, they were like, okay, we got to page 12, what does this mean? manafort didn't just leave that data. he must have had a backdoor channel where they could follow-up and find out the best way to apply it. >> all right. >> remember the words, always

remember the words, alphabank and that story that was written at the time about this open communication link that was set up between trump tower and alphabank in the former soviet union. there was -- there's still more to that story, i am confident. >> and the stories during the transition of jared kushner seeking to open a back channel with russians. something every transition needs. not. up next, will tonight be a breaking point for republicans willing to put up with the president's assault on the truth? >> tech: at safelite autoglass we know that when you're spending time with the grandkids... ♪ music >> tech: ...every minute counts. and you don't have time for a cracked windshield. that's why at safelite, we'll show you exactly when we'll be there. with a replacement you can trust. all done sir. >> grandpa: looks great! >> tech: thanks for choosing safelite. >> grandpa: thank you! >> child: bye! >> tech: bye! saving you time... so you can keep saving the world. >> kids: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ at humana, we believe great

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donald trump asked for network time and he's getting it. every single television network granted his request for network coverage, including this one. tonight at 9:00 p.m., he will address the nation from the oval office on immigration. an issue he's demagogued since he first descended the escalator of trump tower and announced his candidacy. >> when mexico sends its people,

they're not sending their best. they're not sending you. they're not sending you. they're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems with us. they're bringing drugs. they're bringing crime. they're rapists. >> not so much. but his lies about the border and immigration are well documented and we expect them to be repeated in tonight's road block live coverage. "washington post" reporting the last couple hour the, "president trump will make a case to a national television audience tuesday night for long-sought border wall funding, but he's not expected to declare a national emergency that could empower him to move forward with construction without congressional consent." joining the conversation now is the "washington post's" bureau chief, phil rucker. everyone else is still here. phil rucker, you and your colleagues have done some amazing reporting including a scary piece that dropped last night and i heard you all talking about it, but what has this calculation been like

inside the white house? the declaration of a national emergency seemed to be fraught with perhaps losing some political support among republicans so they seem, and i guess anything could always change with trump, to have settled on trying to garner or rally some support for the wall. is that right? >> that is right, nicollnicolle. my sources in the white house and inside trump's orbit say the president increasingly likes this idea of calling a national emergency because he sees unilateral action, unilateral presidential action as his only out here to build the wall. he's clearly not getting the buy-in from congressional democrats for the funding that he desires for that wall. and sees this national emergency as an option for him. it's not something he's likely to announce tonight, necessarily, but i think tonight's speech is part of a series of events that is happening at the white house that the president's doing, that the vice president's doing to lay a predicate to build a foundation for a crisis atmosphere to be able to declare

that emergency, perhaps, later this week. the vice president's on capitol hill talking to house republicans this afternoon. he spoke to a lot of reporters including me last week and hallie jackson this morning on tv. and then the president's going to be going down to the border on thursday to lay eyes on the situation. he'll probably get some sort of a briefing down there from border officials and declare, again, for the public that he sees this as a security crisis and that would all build a foundation for his lawyers then to be able to defend any sort of presidential declaration of a national emergency if it lands in court, which everyone expects it would. >> it's a losing proposition. you know, the numbers are out there already. you know, it's been well documented, there's been 41 people on the watch list coming in from canada versus six from mexico in the last 34 years, there have been three terrorists, albanians who came in as children and they were apprehended. it was 34 years with 3. there's no crisis. their numbers point to it. look, this is also a strategy

that's been proven a losing one eight weeks ago by a popular vote of 9%. the caravan is the same as the wall. it's a simple thing. >> right, right. >> and the 8% or 9% that -- that's an overwhelming majority in this country to vote in favor of one party versus the other one. there are four prongs of failure right now. there's the last election he lost, there's the stock market falling apart, there's the pe pending russian investigation and there's syria. he's got nothing to point to. i don't think, though, that he's going to do an emergency -- i think maybe i'm giving him too much credit, i think instead of it making about -- this is about not even a wall. it's about how do we find funding of $5 billion? which is nothing in the government. so how do i turn up $5 billion? what if i say, instead of making the democrats say yes, i have to make them no to something else. so, for instance, something crazy. this wall is so important to me, i'm going to give a tax cut to the middle class. you know, say no to that. something -- because he doesn't care about the deficit. >> you think he has a surprise up his sleeve.

>> i'm opening up the government. turn it around. make the democrats say no. this is a losing strategy. as ignorant as he is in these moments, he's so media savvy that he is going to, i believe, somehow turn the game tonight. or say -- >> all right. >> say -- >> i want whatever you're popping -- >> my friends -- >> i don't think he has ten friends. just imaginary ones. >> am i crazy? >> yeah. >> thank you. i just wanted validation. >> even if he declares this an emergency, even if he says this is -- it's a military crisis, it's dangerous, national security, et cetera, et cetera, he still has to go through congress. he still has to get the money through congress. he still has to go through -- look, the military construction, veterans affairs, you know who's in charge of that subcommittee? debbie wasserman-schultz. she's not giving you anything. she's not going to -- there's absolutely no democrat in any congressional committee from nancy pelosi, down to debbie wasserman-schultz or anybody else who will give him a dime for this project. >> because it's manufactured. not for the reasons -- phil ruck

e let me bring you back in. your colleague, robert costa, was on this show yesterday talking about cracks widening in the gop sort of tolerance. i won't even call it support for this. they're tolerating this shutdown. this shutdown is bad news. it's always bad news for the party blamed with it. the republicans and donald trump shouldering all of the blame because donald trump announced in the oval office in front of you guys that he'd be proud to own the shutdown. so how's that going today? >> it's not going well. there's a lot of anxiety, you know, within the republican leadership and at the white house that there could be more defections than they would like to see from republican lawmakers. some of the first votes on these piecemeal appropriations bills that house speaker nancy pelosi is putting forward are going to be tomorrow. and i would keep an eye on how many republicans end up voting with the democrats to start passing funding for specific departments like treasury. you know, there's an effort at the white house to try to convince all these republicans to stay in line, to stand strong

with the president, as they word it. vice president pence is up there along with secretary nielsen today and there may be more outreach tomorrow as well. but there is concern that if you start to see a splintering in the republican coalition, if a dozen, two dozen, republican house members vote with the democrats tomorrow, if more republican senators start to say, you know what, it's gone on long enough, let's get the government re-opened and deal with the wall later, then that could be a really big political problem for president trump. >> so, john, i heard from a former senior intelligence official who said that when he was working in the intelligence agencies, it was his job to know where all the terrorists are. none of them were on the southern border. surely -- >> apparently six -- six, maybe six. >> chris wray would have testified to -- i mean, there are oversight committees that monitor our nation's counterterror -- i mean, this is serious stuff. we laugh and lampoon donald trump because he's moronic in his talk about immigration and

the wall. it's become so cartoon we don't treat it seriously. it's deadly serious to say you're going to declare an emergency because terrorists are flowing through the border when your own heads of the intel committees could be hauled in front of congress the next morning and have to testify under oath. no, they're not. >> well, certainly, it would be very dangerous on a million levels, not just that level, but on a million levels, if trump were actually to declare an emergency. so let's at least -- that's one scenario, right? he actually doesn't. do donny's point, the question is whether he does that or not. there's another set of harms that are caused by even floating the notion. the further debasement of the president. the authority that he has. the crying wolf problem. all of that stuff. but, and that's bad enough on its own, but the kind of damage that you're talking about will only come, it's one of many reasons why, if he actually goes through with that threat, which, again, phil's team and others' reporting suggest he's not going to, why it would so cat

statistic catastrophic and go that direction. >> spending $5.7 million for the wall. >> we're not going to spend that for the wall. the question is all of this is rhetorical. it's all kabuki on his part, right? >> it's kabuki unless you're a federal worker who can't pay your mortgage. >> yes, i mean on his part, what he's doing here is theatrics, right? the impacts are negative, devastating, increasingly bad on a variety of fronts, but what he's doing here is he must know or else he's -- that he's not going to get his $5.7 billion. >> it's a jujitsu move tonight. >> hope springs eternal. >> i think that's still wishful thinking. >> okay. >> he's playing from the edge of his feet. >> don't change donny, we like him -- >> yesterday, and on "morning joe" he was saying how he supports having a wall at certain points of the border. >> there's already a wall at certain points. i've been there six times. >> they won't even say it, they have no plans. >> it's ridiculous, we're debating lunacy. phil, thank you -- >> we do it so well. >> every day at 4:00. thanks for your time with us.

when we come back, mike pence put on the spot asked to explain one of his boss' big, silly loser lies. steve schmidt joins us. [leaf blower] you should be mad at leaf blowers. [beep] you should be mad your neighbor always wants to hang out. and you should be mad your smart fridge is unnecessarily complicated. but you're not mad, because you have e*trade which isn't complicated.

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this should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me and they all know it. some of them have told me that we should have done it. so we're not playing games. we have to do it. >> none of them told you that. none of them. there's no shortage of trump lies and misleading claims about immigration, but that one, that one on friday reached a new level of stupidity because of how easy it was to prove him wrong. none. no. not a single former living president, and i'm going to bet not a dead one, either, told trump they wanted to build a wall. it was a comment so ridiculous even vice president pence couldn't defend it. >> which former presidents told president trump as he said that he should have built a wall?

all their representatives have denied that that was the case. >> well, you -- you -- i know the president has said that that was his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents. i know -- i know know i've seen previous presidents talking about the importance of border security and the importance of addressing the issue of illegal immigration. >> that's different from telling the president. >> the american people want us to address this issue. >> so if i wasn't dying to talk to steve schmidt, i would watch that again. he didn't say impression. he said, steve schmidt, go. >> when i watch pence, i think about his previous career as a shill for the tobacco industry. he began his public career in politics, telling the american people cigarettes were good for you.

no problem. he did it with the same sincerity and the squinty eyes and head caulk and take down another camel, no problem. we have the most prolific liar in the rose garden spewing nonsense and an emergency that doesn't exist. the abuse of the u.s. military that existed to combat the division known as the caravan before the election that miraculously dissipated the coverage and the action and the talking about it the day after the election. we see the spectacle with the president of the united states lying nonstop to the american people and gaslighting the american people. we will see him tonight to begin the lay the predicate for the declaration of a national emergency which comes on the back of both lies and the scapegoating of minority populations in this country. it's dangerous. john heilman was right. it's dangerous in a democracy

and the american republic for a political leader to try to seize power by the declaration of an emergency on made up facts. you can look through history for the other fascists and dictator who is tried to do and have and declared such things. it's disturbing. >> talk about the weakness that it detrays as well. only's weak executive throws up his hands and says i'm so imp at the present time, i cannot rally support in congress. they are all laughing at impotent. >> i was the first one to use imp at the present time on msnbc. >> talk about the small headedness. the type tiny headedness. >> i'm so excited to be here for the live address.

talk about the political impetus of having to do things and having to do things like this. he is so weak politically, he can't even bring republican who is literally apologize for everything and the party we were once both a part of has been a party of nothing. he can't bring them along? sad. >> well, we see the power of the republican freedom caucus. 27 members or so dictates policy to this president. and vice-versa. and the republican party long ago cost them a devastating defeat in the election and the party is going to double down, no doubt. most republicans will look at this and understand the idiocy of it and the stupidity of it and they will remain as they have been too timid to speak out about it and continue to pay a political price until we have a handful of elected republicans

left in the country. as we see today with turkey and president erdogan. he is taken seriously by exactly nobody. not by the speaker and not by the minority leader in the senate. not by foreign heads of state, he is a joke. he is a clown. he is incompetent. he is full of malice and meanness. the one thing he will never be is taken seriously. he has no ability to forward a domestic agenda of any type. he is reckless on the international stage. we see here the conman being exposed. people have come to see the wizard and the wizard has promised them the great wall of trump paid for by the mexicans, but at the moment for the unveiling of the wall, it appears to be an invisible one. where are the pesos? where are the mexican pesos that the american people were

promised lwould pay for this wall. there are no pesos. the man from this first hour coming down the escalator is being held to account and we are going to watch this farce play out tonight and it will be a historic occasion because there has never been a president who appeared from the oval office of the white house for the express and explicit purposes of gaslighting the american people about bs. >> along those lines and i think this network should do it, there is an obligation to provide faxes along the way. the last time obama spoke in the oval office, we didn't cover it. when we give him seven minutes, i believe the networks should be in the most dispassionate way, not the afterwards and not when you break it down, but during the speech for the factually

impaired, when he said there are 7,000 people, there should be a banner. it's really this number and that number. news has an obligation to do that. >> we have to think about how horrendous it is that we have to do a colbert report with the president. we have to talk about how much he is lying. that is problematic that we have a problem that when we have a humanitarian crisis, but we can't expect him to speak on it because all he is going to do is lie and promote racial nonsense. i am about to start a garage band. my garage band is going to be me and steve schmidt called impotent wizard. >> i thought you were going to call it where are the pesos? >> next time someone sits in a maga hat in front of you, we will have where are the pesos. we have to gather ourselves.

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impotence. where are the pesos. everything else you didn't need to know. thank you for watching anyway. new thanks to steve schmidt. >> where are the pesos? >> force me to get through this. go. go ahead. >> where are the pesos? >> i'm trying to get through one sentence without crying. the trouble makers, every last one of them. that does it for the hour. "mtp daily" mercyfully starts right now. >> chuck, where are the pesos? >> stop. >> heilman is the trouble maker. it's john. >> political impotence is a real thing. the giggle monster is here. the three men are like tee he. we never recovered. that was