central american gangs are a massive criminal threat in america. that doesn't have anything to do with the 11 million hardworking migrants here in this country growing our food and building our buildings. >> general barry mccaffrey, that's why it's always a pleasure to have you on the broadcast. that's going to be our last word for tonight. general, we thank you very much. we thank the folks at home. that's our broadcast on a tuesday night. thank you so much for being here with us. good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york. i want to thank all of you for joining us at home this hour. happy to have you with us. let me give you a sense how the next hour will go. president trump's first prime time address from the oval office will start momentarily. we expect it to be short, under ten minutes, then house speaker nancy pelosi and the senate leader chuck schumer will give a rebuttal on behalf of the democratic party. that should follow quickly after

the president's speech. after that, we'll have expert help sorting out the claims made in the various speeches and hear from freshman congresswoman alexandria cortez who will join us live for her first interview on this show. but we also tonight are going to be talking about the tons of news that broke today that i think the white house was hoping would be wiped out by this prime time speech. the russian lawyer that offered donald trump jr. dirt on hillary clinton and met with trump campaign officials in trump tower during the campaign, she was indicted today. lawyers for the president's campaign chair paul manafort today accidently revealed a spy novel's worth of new details about manafort's links to russia. there were two new plot twists in a mystery case that's been conducted under seal involving special counsel robert mueller, including one twist from the suspe supreme court today. we're going to be covering all of that over the course of the hour. that all happened just as today's news cycle is jammed up with his presidential first, his first prime time oval office address.

here is the president live from the oval office. again, we believe this will be about ten minutes. >> my fellow americans, tonight i am speaking to you because there is a growing humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. every day customs and border patrol agents encounter thousands of illegal immigrants trying to enter our country. we are out of space to hold them and we have no way to promptly return them back home to their country. america proudly welcomes millions of lawful immigrants who enrich our society and contribute to our nation, but all americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration. it strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. among those hardest hit are african-americans and hispanic americans. our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth,

heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. every week 300 of our citizens are killed by heroin alone, 90% of which floods across from our southern border. more americans will die from drugs this year than were killed in the entire vietnam war. in the last two years, i.c.e. officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 sex crimes and 4,000 violent killings. over the years, thousands of americans have been brutally killed by those who illegally entered our country and thousands more lives will be lowest if we don't act right now. this is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis

of the soul. last month 20,000 migrant children were illegally brought into the united states, a dramatic increase. these children are used as human pawns by vicious coyotes and ruthless gangs. 1 in 3 women are sexually assaulted on the dangerous trek up through mexico. women and children are the biggest victims, by far, of our broken system. this is the tragic reality of illegal immigration on our southern border. this is the cycle of human suffering that i am determined to end. my administration has presented congress with a detailed proposal to secure the border and stop the criminal gangs, drug smugglers and human traffickers. it's a tremendous problem. our proposal was developed by law enforcement professionals

and border agents at the department of homeland security. these are the resources they have requested to properly perform their mission and keep america safe. in fact, safer than ever before. the proposal from homeland security includes cutting edge technology for detecting drugs, weapons, illegal contraband and many other things. we have requested more agents, immigration judges and bed space to process the sharp rise in unlawful migration fueled by our very strong economy. our plan also contains an urgent request for humanitarian assistance and medical support. furthermore, we have asked congress to close border security loopholes so that illegal immigrant children can be safely and humanely returned back home.

finally, as part of an overall approach to border security, law enforcement professionals have requested $5.7 billion for a physical barrier. at the request of democrats, it will be a steel barrier, rather than a concrete wall. this barrier is absolutely critical to border security. it's also what our professionals at the border want and need. this is just common sense. the border wall would very quickly pay for itself. the cost of illegal drugs exceeds $500 billion a year. vastly more than the $5.7 billion we have requested from congress. the wall will also be paid for indirectly by the great new trade deal we have made with mexico. senator chuck schumer, who you will be hearing from later

tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other democrats. they changed their mind only after i was elected president. democrats in congress have refused to acknowledge the crisis. and they have refused to provide our brave border agents with the tools they desperately need to protect our families and our nation. the federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only, because democrats will not fund border security. my administration is doing everything in our power to help those impacted by the situation. but the only solution is for democrats to pass a spending bill that defends our borders and re-opens the government. this situation could be solved in a 45-minute meeting.

i have invited congressional leadership to the white house tomorrow to get this done. ho hopefully we can rise above partisan politics in order to support national security. some have suggested a barrier is immoral. then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? they don't build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside. the only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized. america's heart broke the day after christmas when a young police officer in california was savagely murdered in cold blood by an illegal alien. just came across the border.

the life of an american hero was stolen by someone who had no right to be in our country. day after day, precious lives are cut short by those who have violated our borders. in california, an air force veteran was raped, murdered and beaten to death with a hammer by an illegal alien with a long criminal history. in georgia, an illegal alien was recently charged with murder for killing, beheading and dismember his neighbor. in maryland, ms-13 gang members who arrived in the united states as unaccompanied minors were arrested and charged last year after viciously stabbing and beating a 16-year-old girl. over the last several years, i've met with dozens of families

whose loved ones were stolen by illegal immigration. i've held the hands of the weeping mothers and embraced the grief-stricken fathers. so sad. so terrible. i will never forget the pain in their eyes, the tremble in their voices and the sadness gripping their souls. how much more american blood must we shed before congress does its job? to those who refuse to compromise in the name of border security, i would ask, imagine if it was your child, your husband or your wife whose life was so cruelly shattered and totally broken. to every member of congress, pass a bill that ends this crisis. to every citizen, call congress

and tell them to finally, after all of these decades, secure our border. this is a choice between right and wrong. justice and injustice. this is about whether we fulfill our sacred duty to the american citizens we serve. when i took the oath of office, i swore to protect our country, and that is what i will always do, so help me god. thank you and good night. >> the president of the united states addressing the nation from the oval office in prime time for the first time in his presidency. the president not breaking new ground, repeating the various strains of argument that he has relied on since the earliest days of his campaign to claim that there is a wall that is needed on the southern border.

in this case, he did not explicitly say mexico will pay for it. he said the wall will pay for it. the wall will pay for wall. it will pay for itself. the president also asserting that the southern border, in his words, is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs. the president's own drug enforcement administration would say that is not the case. i would at least say the president's proposed solution, a wall, would not stop the vast majority of hard drugs coming in, even those coming in from mexican cartels. those come in through ports of entry and a wall would have nothing to do with whether or not those hard drugs stopped. mainly, though, the president's speech was a litany of scare stories about immigrants being terrible criminals who are coming into the united states to rape and murder americans, essentially in the president's telli telling, for pleasure because it's in their nature. it's the very same argument the

president made the first day he came down the escalator in trump tower and sort of shocked the republican world in announcing he would be running for the republican nomination for president in part because of the mexican rapists and criminals coming across the southern border. we're about to hear from the top democrats in congress, nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. briefly, chris hayes, you and i were talking about whether or not this might be new ground. i heard it as the same thing he's always said. >> yes. although there was a lot more emphasis on the first part of the speech on the sort of threat inflation and creating -- he never even said the word "wall." he said "barrier." there is a little bit of retreat from the wall thing and more of a focus on like, we've asked for this funding, can you give us this funding so we can move on? which i think is them signaling how they want this to end. >> that's about 3.0. steel slats ten days ago. i think we're a steel barrier. it changes every week. he doesn't seem to be able to keep track of what it is he's

proposing on the southern border. i think there are a half a dozen things that were wrong, falsehoods lies, and you talked about a lot of them before the speech and went through some of them now. but the big scam of the whole address was that there is a crisis. there is not a crisis. border crossings at the southern border are at a 45-year low. i spoke to a former senior intelligence official today who said that it was his job to know where all the terrorists were and there aren't any on the southern border. >> yeah. >> so crime is a great issue for him, and he should tout crime but he shouldn't lie about where it comes from. >> literally to your point, the first year of the trump presidency, the apprehensions at the southern border were at a 45-year low. the number of apprehensions and crossings at the southern border has been dropping since the year 2000. >> which is great. if he wants to win, maybe he should run on that. >> democratic response now is coming up from senator chuck schumer, the leader of the democrats in the senate and house speaker nancy pelosi. >> good evening. i appreciate the opportunity to speak directly to the american

people tonight about how we can end this shutdown and meet the needs of the american people. sadly, much of what we heard from president trump throughout this senseless shutdown has been full of misinformation and even malice. the president has chosen fear. we want to start with the facts. the fact is, on the very first day of this congress, house democrats passed senate republican legislation to re-open government and fund smart, effective border security solutions. but the president is rejecting these bipartisan bills which would re-open government over his obsession with forcing american taxpayers to waste billions of dollars on an expensive and ineffective wall, a wall he always promised mexico would pay for. the fact is president trump has chosen to hold hostage critical services for the health, safety and well-being of the american people, and withhold the paychecks of 800,000 innocent

workers across the nation, many of them veterans. he promised to keep government shut down for months or years, no matter whom it hurts. that's just plain wrong. the fact is we all agree we need to secure our borders while honoring our values. we can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry. we can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation. we can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border. we can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings. the fact is the women and children at the border are not a security threat, they are a humanitarian challenge, a challenge that president trump's own cruel and counterproductive policies have only deepened. and the fact is president trump must stop holding the american people hostage, must stop manufacturing a crisis and must re-open the government. thank you.

leader schumer? >> thank you, speaker pelosi. my fellow americans, we address you tonight for one reason only, the president of the united states, having failed to get mexico to pay for his ineffective, unnecessary border wall, and unable to convince the congress or the american people to foot the bill, has shut down the government. american democracy doesn't work that way. we don't govern by temper tantrum. no president should pound the table and demand he gets his way or else the government shuts down. hurting millions of americans who are treated as leverage. tonight and throughout this debate and throughout his presidency, president trump has appealed to fear, not facts. division, not unity. make no mistake, democrats and the president both want stronger border security. however, we sharply disagree with the president about the

most effective way to do it. so, how do we untangle this mess? well, there's an obvious solution, separate the shutdown from arguments over border security. there is bipartisan legislation supported by democrats and republicans to re-open government while allowing debate over border security to continue. there is no excuse for hurting millions of americans over a policy difference. federal workers are about to miss a paycheck. some families can't get a mortgage to buy a new home. farmers and small businesses won't get loans they desperately need. most presidents have used oval office addresses for noble purposes. this president just used the backdrop of the oval office to manufacture a crisis, stoke fear and divert attention from the turmoil in his administration. my fellow americans, there is no

challenge so great that our nation cannot rise to meet it. we can re-open the government and continue to work through disagreements over policy. we can secure our border without an ineffective, expensive wall and we can welcome legal immigrants and refugees without compromising safety and security. the symbol of america should be the statue of liberty, not a 30-foot wall. so our suggestion is a simple one, mr. president, re-open the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security but end this shutdown now. thank you. >> what amounts to a democratic rebuttal of the president this evening. again, the president's remarks tonight from the oval office are the first time he has addressed the nation from the oval office in prime time. presidents tend to reserve addresses like that for very

serious matters. he will be giving a state of the union address later on this month. this was not that. but like a state of the union, the democrats asked for essentially rebuttal time. democratic leader of the senate chuck schumer, the newly elected house speaker nancy pelosi standing side by side in a very serio -- not responding to the president point by point, but essentially trying to turn the focus from the president's claims that he needs a border wall to what he is holding hostage in order to try to get that, which is the shutdown of the federal government. senator schumer tonight closing by saying, "our suggestion is a simple one, mr. president, re-open the government and we can work to resolve our differences over border security." . he said earlier in his remarks, "there is an obvious solution, separate the shutdown from the arguments over border security. there is bipartisan legislation supported by democrats and republicans to re-open the government while allowing debate over border security to continue." nancy pelosi, the speaker of the house, echoing that same point

saying at the outset of her remarks, "the fact is on the very first day of this congress, house democrats passed senate republican legislation to re-open the government and fund smart, effective border security solutions." so from the democrats tonight we're hearing whatever you think about border security, mr. president, we can fight about that. let's re-open the government. both democrats and republicans want that. you are the sticking point here, not leaders from either party. nicolle wallace and chris hayes are here on set with me. nichole, let me ask your response to that. in some senses typical partisan staging with the remarks from the president and then the response from the opposite party, but two very different sets of remarks. >> yeah, and listen, if you want to go to the politics of what they both said tonight, they were on the ballot eight weeks ago. donald trump ran on that message in the midterms. he ran on the made up caravan. it was almost the same play. he doesn't have a lot of them so he reran it. it didn't work in the midterms. his party was thumped, lost control of the house, and nancy

pelosi and chuck schumer's message tonight was actually stronger than what they ran on in the midterms because now they can add, not only are you wrong but you've also, like an 8-year-old, taken your toys and gone home by closing the entire federal government. so i think if -- in politics, in washington, especially now, it's all zero sum. so if it's a seesaw, who went up and who went down, the power, the political potency of their message tonight is on the uprise. donald trump has already grabbed as many people as he can grab with those admittedly tragic stories of horrific crimes. >> chris hayes? >> yeah, i think sort of the difference in emphasis between the two is the most notable thing about the two addresses, right? like, donald trump went out there and read a stephen miller litany of horror stories, which he's been doing since day one. >> in a nicer voice. >> in a nicer voice. i watched him do it in cleveland. you know, beheadings and rape, it's awful stuff to hear. there is genuinely horrific things that have happened, but

to conflate them with the 12 million people living here is an incitement that is pretty ugly. we've heard that. >> it's a slightly different list of crimes that evolves over times. >> it updates. there are new crimes. >> but it is, you know, this office of immigrant crime stuff he has been trying to sell from the very beginning. the fact is, we've said it before we'll say it again, native-born americans commit crimes at a higher rate than non-native-born immigrants. >> all crimes. driving infractions. all crimes. >> it is a demagogic old saw to try to pick out horrific things you're trying to attribute to one minority group, particularly one powerless minority group in order to turn the majority against them. the president is singing that same song. it is exactly the same scripts. >> i felt like i was in cleveland. i remember watching that litany in cleveland and being somewhat horrified and shocked this is what was being delivered. to niccole's point here.

alexandria ocasio-cortez had a tweet about this. she's going to be a guest later. look, you want something, come and craft a bill and go through the process like everyone else. lots of people want lots of things from the government. we have debates about it and you work with the committee chairs and maybe you can work something out, but this is not the way you do it. >> here's the deal, he doesn't have public support. what he had as a candidate was the base of the republicans supported that strain of fearmongering about illegal immigrant. if he had public support, he'd have a bill because members of congress would support it. i worked for a republican president who addressed the nation over comprehensive immigration reform at the point where he had bipartisan support for it. president obama should have been allowed to do the same thing in 2014, in my opinion, but this is a president with no bill, he doesn't even have all the republicans on board. he doesn't have the public behind him. it boggles the mind. >> well, with each passing day, too, more republicans peel off and say let's get the government restarted. it should be noted, as those republicans peel off, both in the senate and in the house, they are lining up with what is

now the official democratic party position, which is, we'll talk about this in some rational way if you want to, but we have to re-open the government. >> right. >> the other thing is corey gardner, who is up in 2020 in the state of colorado, which is increasingly a blue state and has made some noises about wanting to re-open the government. will not be running for re-election in 2020 on the message that came from the oval office tonight. >> no. >> 100% he will get thumped if he tries. he knows that. >> here's my question, we're talking about how the president is singing the same song he's been singing all along. he probably has less support an this than he did before, particularly after the midterm elections. why did he just do this? he didn't announce a national emergency so that he could use some sort of authority that he doesn't think he has otherwise to go build this thing. why did this just happen? >> because my -- i've covered immigration politics since back mccain/kennedy. the bill that would make it a felony to be here illegally. i've before covering it since then. as long as i've been covering

it, there is a veto point, the steve kings and the stephen millers of the world have more intensity on the issue than anybody else. because of that intensity, even when president bush and mccain and kennedy got together to try to pass comprehensive immigration reform, they've been able to kill it. when it passed the gang of eight bill, they've been able to kill it. what he is relying on is the intensity of the sentiment. >> that's a constant. there is nothing that has caused that to spike now, right? >> but it's worked before. it's killed two bills. >> it's -- >> he doesn't even care about the bill, though. i don't disagree with any of that, but it's something simpler than that, more primal. i think it's because it's trump, right? before the holidays, a close trump ally said -- i said, what's he doing? the mattis debacle was spiraling out of control. what's he doing? he lives in abject terror of his base and robert mueller. >> mmm-hmm. >> so i think you can't control this one, right, you can control what robert mueller's doing, but the base he can keep -- the base

feels that way, feels exactly as chris just described. they feel that intensity. you so you can keep them ginned up. >> so then -- the base intensity on this, though, is something that doesn't always respond to the same amount of stimulus, right? you have to keep upping it a little bit. >> or activity, right? >> so there is no -- there's the shutdown but there's no new argument. there's no new evidence of support. there's no new -- >> right. >> i mean -- >> the shutdown may peel some of that off. there is also no data that i've seen that shows the base grows when you shut the government down. you may actually lose some. >> exactly right. >> there is a lot of cross-pressure with his base with the federal government shutdown. >> both anecdotally and in the public opinion data, i remember the last time i saw the republican base really engaged was in the kavanaugh fight. they were unquestionably engaged. there was all kinds of data that showed it. they were there. i heard anecdotal, you know, friends having fights with distant relatives they didn't

realize were republicans. that's not happening here. we are not seeing any of that level of actual mobilization engagement of people outside of the smallest core -- >> can i tell you what i think is -- explains why the president did this? so the democrats just won control of the house. >> bright. >> right. >> the democrats came back and it's like, whoa, the democrats are the new protagonists in the new washington story and everybody's covering the new members being sworn in and the swearing in of nancy pelosi and all the kids up there with her on the dais. what's their agenda. the president was not getting talked about. so the president summoned reporters to the white house to come see him do a white house press briefing, which he didn't take any questions from the press. >> yeah. >> then there's, you know, another day of coverage that's about the democrats and what they're going to be doing in washington and what they're demanding and their -- and this stuff and the president pulls another stunt and says no, no, no, i actually need you to pay attention to me now. i'm going to be giving remarks now. i'm going to -- and i honestly

wonder if he -- >> just attention. >> just occurred to him that he hadn't ever done an oval office address and that's yet another thing he could do to turn the spotlight to himself, regardless of having anything to say. >> a friend of his has said at other points of the presidency, he is the sun king. anything that obscures his access to the rays of sunlight drives him mad. soared of like a mad king, he was sort of watching everything you described -- it also shows how shallow his view of the presidency is. whatever other tricks do i have? >> yes. i know, i'll do one of those cabinet meetings. do we need to have a cabinet meeting about anything? no. is everyone around this table an activing secretary? can we -- not just for a spray but for the entire hour and a half? that i'd like them in here. how many more stunts are there? >> what's so nuts about this situation is a lot of times, you know, i always feel like he would rather be kind of a pundit it that people paid attention to than the actual president. >> he wants brian --

>> he doesn't love running the country. the thing is here all of that kind of weird theatrics he does. the government is shut down. >> that's exactly right. people are suffering. the thing with the cabinet room, it hurts us because we have to watch it and listen to it. it doesn't harm the country. those people say ridiculous things about the dear leader and they have to go face their wives or kids. no one is hurt in that exercise. people are hurting now the economy will take a hit now. this is not funny anymore. >> chris hayes, nicolle wallace, thank you, my friends, being with me here tonight. as you said, the best pundit point i've heard over the course of the entire day was, this is weird. actually truly weird. having you guys here makes it better. thank you. three days after the president was elected, the aclu wrote a letter to newly elected donald trump asking him to please reconsider basically every major campaign promise he made, from mass deportation to the muslim ban to banning abortion and greenlighting

torture. they all struck the folks at the aclu as being according to their letter, "not simply un-american and wrong-headed but also unlawful and unconstitutional." they sent him this letter just after he was elected three days after the election. of course donald trump didn't heed any of their advice. but the aclu considered him then essentially to be warned. after having asked him to rescind those policies and him refusing, the aclu proceeded to sue the pants off him. taking literally dozens and dozens of legal actions against trump and his administration, a huge number of which have involved immigration and immigration policy. they sued over the original muslim ban as well as the revised muslim ban. when the trump administration tried to force teen immigrant girls to give birth against their will, the aclu sued over that. when the "trump" administration started effectively kidnapping babies and kids from their parents the the southern border, taking them away forcibly, the aclu sued to stop that. when the trump administration

tried to remove asylum protections from immigrant victims of gang violence and domestic violence, the aclu sued them over that. since day one of the trump presidency, the aclu has been at the forefront in terms of challenging and fact checking the president's immigration policies. joining us now is omar, the director of the aclu's immigrants rights projects. he just saw the president's remarks. thank you for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> let me ask just your reaction to the content of the president's remarks but also his choice to do this from the oval office tonight. >> sure. i mean, well, you're not going to hear me say this very often, i think there was one kernel of truth in what the president said, that was when he said there is a humanitarian crisis at the border. >> yeah. >> not national security crisis. we've talked about, you've talked about all the ways in which that's transparently false, right? but there is a humanitarian crisis that he has created at the border. he's bottling up women and

children in refugee camps in mexico. he's continuing to run these shelters -- shelter is the wrong word, detention facility where people are kept in extremely cold ice boxes with nothing but an aluminum poil blanket. people are held out in the desert for hours and hours at a time with no medical attention. there is a huge range of things that this administration is not doing to address a real humanitarian crisis. when he gets up on tv and says there is a humanitarian crisis and the solution is a wall, the solution to women and children seeking safety in the united states is to close the doors to them wbeing able to find protection from abuse? that's -- it's -- you know, it's a backwards world that he's living. >> the president -- he used that phrase, which actually is a well-wrought phrase. he said it's a crisis of the

soul. >> right. >> what he was talking about is the crisis of the soul is the need to stop immigrant children. literally to stop the immigration of children. >> right. >> over the southern border. i wonder if you are relieved at all with the president's decision tonight to not announce some sort of emergency. there had been a lot of talk leading into this speech tonight that maybe the president was calling for an oval office address and doing this not just because he wanted to list the same complaints and horror stories he's been doing about immigrants for years now, he was going to claim new powers to address this you want the president's authority that could be ascribed under some emergency declaration. are you relieved that he did not do that? >> well, look, i'm certainly glad that he's not trying to, at least in this -- at this point in this way override congress, right? that's the essential problem with this whole emergency plan that he was talking about was the idea that he would try to --

because congress won't pass the law he wants them to pass, won't give him the funding for the wall he wants to build, he's just going to go and do it on his own. that's exactly what he tried to do with this asylum ban that we sued him over, right? congress passes a law says you can seek asylum anywhere, between points of entry, at points of entry. he said no, i'm going to ban you. again, women, kids, people seeking protection, people being persecuted, we're going to slam the door shut on you unless you wait in line for months at these refugee camps, right? he tried to do that. we stopped him. we sued him in court. we got a rule stopping him. it's the same problem with this emergency idea. the idea that you can just ignore what congress is doing and just go around them by enacting things by executive fiat. yeah, i'm glad that at least for now he hasn't tried yet again to kind of circumvent our

democratic process. >> i will tell you, the one -- the one contrary take i have on that is had the president tonight announced, i'm declaring an emergency and i under emergency powers that i declare myself to have, i'm going to get my wall built that way. >> mmm-hmm. >> and so while i do that, congress can do whatever they want in terms of opening up the government, but i will get this wall built. the reason i think that might have actually been a practical advance for the country is because i'm assuming that you would have sued the heck out of him for any sort of unconstitutional assertion the president might have made around those emergency powers. thought would have put that fight in the court where he presumably would lose and then the rest of the congress could get on with re-opening government and fighting out this or any other policy battle. >> i mean, i appreciate the practical, you know, kind of -- >> i count on -- >> advantage there -- >> i count on you to do these things. >> if we're at the point where we're hoping the president takes a hugely unconstitutional problematic illegal action -- >> because that ties them up.

>> -- in order to get them to just accept the fact that he's losing in congress, that's the wrong way to go. >> all right. i will -- i will recalibrate. omar jadwhat, thank you very much. >> thank you. it has not even been one week since the new congress was sworn in yet, but think about if you are a freshman lawmaker who has just been sworn in to this congress, right? it's got to feel like suddenly finding yourself on board a plane that is hitting really bad turbulence upon takeoff with the oxygen masks popping out of the ceiling. this is already the second longest government shutdown in u.s. history. if it makes it through to the weekend, there's no reason to think it might not, this will become the longest government shutdown ever. this is a painful thing for the u.s. economy and for a lot of people in this country, but it's also got to be just a spectacularly weird environment to start your new job in. if your new job is that you've been just elected a brand-new members of congress. joining us now is congresswoman

alexandria ocasio-cortez of new york. congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us tonight. i'm really happy to have you with us here on the show. >> of course. thanks for having me, rachel. >> let me just start by getting your top line reaction to the president's speech tonight. you have never been a member of congress while the government was shut down. >> yeah, absolutely. i cannot tell you the amount of dysfunction that this president is advancing. we now have over 100 new members of this freshman class. i cannot even get laptops to my case workers on the ground in the bronx and queens so they can process the needs of our constituents. we can't get mortgage -- we cannot get their case work started because we can't even get laptops in the hands of our district offices because the president has decided to hold the paychecks of everyday americans hostage so that he can fulfill a campaign -- i don't

even want to call it a promise, a campaign fantasy that the vast majority of americans disapprove of. and not only that, in the actual address there was falsehood after falsehood, and we have to make sure that we get our facts straight. every day immigrants commit crimes at a far lower rate than native-born americans. and not only that, but the women and children on that border that are trying to seek refuge and seek opportunity in the united states of america, with nothing but the shirt on their backs, are acting more american than any person who seeks to keep them out ever will be. >> are you at all dissuaded -- not dissuaded, i guess that's the wrong word, dismayed or discouraged by the fact that the president has been saying the same untrue things about immigrant crime, about the terrible character of immigrants coming into this country, about a false relationship that he has invented between violent crime and immigration. we heard him tell blatant

falsehoods tonight, contradicted by even his own administration this flood as he described it, a pipeline of drugs coming across the southern border. his own drug enforcement administration has said that the vast majority of drugs, even those coming from the south -- south from this country are coming through ports of entry and not over anything that would be stopped by a wall. are you discouraged or what's your sort of strategic take on the fact that the president's been telling these same lies for years now and not shying away from them at all? >> well, i think it's unsurprising because even before he was elected president of the united states, he has a proven track record of discrimination against anybody who is really nonwhite in the united states. he had been sued by the nixon administration back in the day for not renting to black americans. he has had controversy after controversy. so this is very consistent. it's not just the continued lies throughout his administration, but, frankly, it's part of a very consistent pattern of his entire life.

but i think it's extremely important, you know, i represent new york's 14th congressional district. we are 50% immigrant. i represent the bronx and queens, jackson heights. over 200 languages are spoken in my district alone. we enjoy some of the highest rates of economic activity, and the bronx itself has had some of the highest rates of economic growth in all of new york city, and that has been directly, directly correlated with our embrace of immigrants. new york city overall is an immigrant city, and we enjoy a very large amount of economic and cultural prosperity as a result. >> the president has been singing the same song that he did a different version of tonight in the oval office. since the very, very start of his campaign, he has made anti-immigrant rhetoric and often factually incorrect screeds demonizing immigrants more core to his presidency than any other form of his rhetoric. so in your district, in a district as you say that is not

just diverse, but is 50% immigrant and you're talking about that sort of economic relationship that you can see between immigrant economic activity and the overall performance of your district, what's the consequence of having somebody as president who has made this core to his message and what he wants his presidency to mean? what is the harm that's caused by him talking this way and using this sort of platform the way he has, even when he can't get his policies passed? >> i can -- i can tell you a very personal story. you know, as many people know, i was working in restaurants just a year ago, and when the president first assumed office with his -- with his racist and violent rhetoric, people started to send themselves home. and as we know in restaurants, hospitality, every american eats, if you can, if you're lucky enough, were able to eat three times a day. and that means that we interact with the people who prepare our food three times a day. when those people start to go

home, local -- rather, go back to the countries which they originated from. many of them consider the united states their home. those places, they grow into dysfunction. i remember one of our lead cooks brought himself back to mexico because he was so scared of the president's rhetoric. we had an insane amount of dysfunction. we're talking about local restaurants. we're talking about local businesses. we're talking about shuttering neighborhoods and we're talking about people feeling unsafe. no one should feel unsafe in the united states of america. and that includes our amazing and beautiful and productive immigrant community. and moreover, the one thing that the president has not talked about is the fact that he has systematically engaged in the vielgts of international human rights borders on human rights on our border. he has separated children from their families. he talked about what happened the day after christmas on the

day of christmas, a child died in i.c.e. custody. the president should not be asking for more money to an agency that has systematically violated human rights. the president should be really defending why we are funding such an agency at all. because right now what we are seeing is death. right now what we are seeing is the violation of human rights. these children and these families are being held in what are called -- basically freezing boxes that no person should be maintained in. for any amount of time, let alone the amount of time they are being kept on. and moreover, even if you are anti-immigrant anti-immigrant, in this country, the majority of immigrant overstays, the majority of reason that people are undocumented is visa overstay, it's not because people are crossing a border illegally. it is because of visa overstay, which mind you, he's talking about legal immigration. he's trying to restrict every form of legal immigration there is in the united states. he's fighting against family

reunification. he's fighting against the diversity visa lottery. he's fighting against almost every way that people can actually legally enter this country, forcing them to become undocumented, and then he's trying to attack their undocumented status. this is systematic. it is wrong. it is anti-american. and, again, those women and children trying to come here with nothing but the shirts on their back to create an opportunity and to provide for this nation are acting more in an american tradition than this president is right now. >> congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez of new york, thank you so much for being with us tonight. i know this is your first time being here on this show, and i know that you have been one of the highest profile members of this new -- this new congress, and you've got a lot of pressures on your time. thanks for making time to be here. i hope you'll come back. >> of course. thank you so much. >> all right. still to come, an avalanche of legal developments we saw develop today. there is still lots to get to today. do please stay with us. to today. do please stay with us ♪

[friend] i've never seen that before. ♪ ♪ i have... ♪

i have... i'm 85 years old in a job where. i have to wear a giant hot dog suit. what? where's that coming from? i don't know. i started my 401k early, i diversified... i'm not a big spender. sounds like you're doing a lot. but i still feel like i'm not gonna have enough for retirement. like there's something else i should be doing. with the right conversation, you might find you're doing okay. so, no hot dog suit? not unless you want to. no. schedule a complimentary goal planning session today with td ameritrade®.

busy day, right? i do not know why the president chose tonight to give an oval office version of the same speech he's been making against immigrants since 2015, but i to know what happened today in the news that the white house must be excited to try to push out of the headlines with that speech. all right. do you remember the trump tower moscow project? the president's longtime personal attorney michael cohen pled guilty a few weeks ago to lying to congress about the trump tower moscow project. now, in the course of those court proceedings about michael cohen, we learned that the president himself had repeatedly lied about that project to the public and had tried to keep it secret during the campaign, even though he and his organization were pursuing it during the campaign. well, that tower, that would-be trump tower moscow now looms as a fairly serious issue, both for the scandal about russia getting involved in the presidential election to benefit trump, but it also looms over the prospect that the president may have been

compromised by a foreign government, even during the time that he has been president, right? after all, when trump and the trump organization were working during the campaign to try to build trump tower moscow and they were working with the russian government to try to get that deal done, the russian government knew that those conversations and those negotiations were under way. they also knew that trump was publicly lying about it and trying to keep it secret. that alone means that russia had something on him. something they could use to pressure him. something they could use to blackmail him. something they could use as leverage over him, both during his campaign and during his time as president. during all of the time that they knew that that secret about him, that he for some reason didn't want let out. well, here's one important brand-new thing about that scandal. you'll recall that trump tower moscow was reportedly supposed to be financed by a russian bank that was under u.s. sanctions. it isn't as simple as it seems. bottom line, presumably in order for trump to get his trump tower

moscow deal, which we think would have been the biggest real estate deal of his life, u.s. sanctions against russian entities, including that bank, would have needed to be dropped or at least softened. two guys from the trump organization working on trump tower moscow, they also got involved in an effort right after trump was elected to concoct a new plan that would result in sanctions being dropped on russia. it was dreamed up as a peace plan. michael cohen, felix sater were involved in that. this peace plan, its terms were ridiculous. the whole point was to drop sanctions on russia. that, of course, would have had the effect of dropping sanctions on the bank slighted to finance this giant real estate deal they were working on for trump that was going to make them all hundreds of millions of dollars. we'd known about that heading into today. trump tower moscow thing, president's lying about it. due to be financed by a russian bank. the guys working on trump tower moscow working on a plan to drop russian sanctions.

today we learned that the president's campaign chairman may have worked on that, too. paul manafort publicly denied in 2017 that he had anything to do with that supposed peace plan that would have resulted in the dropping of russian sanctions, but today manafort's defense team filed this new document in federal court in d.c. in which they apparently didn't redact things properly. you can see from the filing there are a bunch of things that are behind black boxes. you're nod supposed to be able to read those things but they screwed up when they tried to redact this document. if you open it up on your computer, you can read what is behind those black boxes. oops. and so because of that mistake by accident, part of what we learned today in this manafort court filing is that the president's complain chair, paul manafort, he has told prosecutors from the special counsel's office that he did work on that plan to drop russian sanctions. or at least he worked on something that was called a ukraine peace plan. the felix sater/michael cohen

plan apparently was this plan that took shape after trump was elected. if that's the same plan manafort has toerld prosecutors he was involved with, the timing of this thing is unusual, right? manafort got fired from the campaign months before the election. did they bring back the fired campaign chairman with links to russia to do work on this effort to drop russian sanctions along with the guys from trump's business who were trying to get the trump tower moscow built? we don't know the details of it, but that revelation that manafort was involved and that he has told prosecutors about this, that is new today. we also learned from that same document today from the bad redactions in that document, that prosecutors believe manafort shared polling data from the campaign with a business associate of his, a business associate of his who incidentally has been also indicted by robert mueller. he is also a person who has been described by the fbi in court documents as being associated and tied with russian intelligence.

we did not previously know that one of the things manafort was accused of doing during the campaign was giving polling data from the campaign to a guy in russian intelligence. but now we know that prosecutors allege that that's one of the things that paul manafort did. so that accidentally un-redacted court filing today, that was revelatory in a couple of different levels. it was one of a bunch of different developments in the russia secondly today, specifically the people in legal jeopardy associated with the president and his campaign. this indictment was revealed against natalia veselnitskaya, the lawyer who attended the trump tower meeting during the campaign with paul manafort and jared kushner and donald trump jr. that was the meeting they took, purportedly to get dirt from the russian government about hillary clinton. in today's indictment of veselnitskaya, prosecutors in the southern district of new york alleged that she lied to a federal court. she lied to a federal judge in a

russian money laundering case because she wanted to conceal the fact that she was effectively working on behalf of the russian government. she entered into the record in that money laundering case something that she described as a russian government independent investigation of the issue. when, in fact, it wasn't an independent investigation at all. in fact, she had helped the russian government produce that document. because she was working for the russian government and trying to pretend like she was not, the court ultimately was able to ferret out that she lied to the court on that matter. she is charged with obstruction of justice now. and there's a whole bunch of intriguing questions about this indictment. i mean, number one, this alleged attempt by her to obstruct justice in that case, in that new york courtroom, prosecutors say that effort by her happened in november of 2015. that's a long time ago. why did they charge her now? our own richard engel in a special hour that he did for

this show, he documented in detail this alleged obstruction of justice by veselnitskaya that is spelled out in the indictment today. richard engel confronted veselnitskaya about that in an interview. that was april of last year. why was veselnitskaya just indicted for it now? and actually, a further question, it looks like she was indicted for this obstruction of justice on december 20th. that indictment was filed under seal for some reason. and 19 days later, today, this indictment was unsealed and we're all now allowed to see it. why does that timing make sense, too? and then just as we were absorbing that news, we got further word today that the chairs of seven major committees in congress are now challenging trump's treasury secretary over a trump administration decision that was announced just before congress to lift sanctions on companies associated with this man, oleg deripaska. an oligarch close to vladimir putin. he himself had an odd connection to paul manafort and the trump

campaign. this is the guy to whom manafort offered private briefings during the campaign. again, you know, why was the president's campaign chair offering private briefings on the campaign to a russian oligarch close to vladimir putin who is now under u.s. sanctions? while at the same time he was apparently providing polling data about the campaign to a guy associated with russian intelligence who happens to have been his conduit to the russian oligarch connected to putin. why did the trump campaign at the highest levels have all these connections to the kremlin? we don't know. but tonight "the new york times" citing a single source reports that when manafort shared internal private polling data from the trump campaign with that russian intelligence guy, he asked that guy to pass that internal data on to ol leg deripaska and donald trump's treasury department announced just before christmas they want to relax sanctions on the

company associated with that goal abu musab al zarqawi oleg deripaska. now today the seven committee chairs in the house of representatives are demanding the trump administration explain that decision. they're demanding an immediate meeting with the secretary of the treasury, steven mnuchin to explain why these are going away. we write in response to a december 19th notification indicating that the treasury department intends to terminate sanctions on these three russian companies as part of a deal with oleg deripaska, a russian oligarch who has abetted the putin regime's malign activity against the united states. with oversight jurisdiction over the u.s. simmons to russia's attempts to interfere in our elections and other hostile actions, we have a number of concerns about the agreement that the u.s. has reached with mr. deripaska. the seven committee chairmen are asking treasury to delay the implementation of this relaxation on deripaska's companies. they're asking for a full

explanation how the treasury arrived at this decision and they want a meeting between steven mnuchin and, quote, all interested members on this subject and they want that meeting soon before the sanctions are withdrawn. again, the clock is ticking. congress has 30 days to object to the lifting of these sanctions. the trump administration announced just before christmas that that clock had started ticking because they announced that they'd be lifted. and then as we were absorbing that information, we got further word that the united states supreme court has weighed in for the first time today on an aspect of the mueller investigation. this is about a case that remains shrouded in secrecy, but the supreme court today declined to intervene on behalf of an unknown corporation that's owned by an unknown foreign country that's been fighting a subpoena that we believe is from the special counsel's office. in a very short order today from the supreme court, and a long and fascinating order from the d.c. court of appeals, we learned today almost nothing about the identity of this

corporation or which country owns this corporation, but we do know as of today that at the highest levels of the u.s. judiciary that foreign country and that foreign corporation, they're getting no help in their efforts to resist a subpoena about something that pertains to the special counsel's investigation. so this is today. manafort was maybe working on dropping russian sanctions, possibly along with the trump tower moscow guys. manafort was giving polling data, internal polling data from the campaign to a guy in russian intelligence who he was then asking to pass it on to a russian oligarch close to putin. the russian lawyer from the trump tower meeting has been criminally indicted in the united states for lying about the fact that she represents the russian government. the democrats that just took over the house of representatives are getting up on their hind legs and trying to stop the trump administration from dropping sanctions on companies owned by the pro-putin oligarch that trump's campaign chair was trying to pay back

during the trump campaign somehow and to whom manafort was apparently funneling internal polling data from the campaign. and the supreme court is not going to help country "a" and their unknown corporation, which the guise. of the mueller speci counsel investigation. and now that corporation is in contempt of court andti being charged $50,000 a day until they comply with mueller's subpoena. other than that, not much happened today, though. wonder what tomorrow's going to bewo like. that does it for us tonight. we will seeit you again tomorrow now it's time for "the last wo with lawrence o'donnell." good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. thank you for>> doing that summa of all the new investigation developments today because iga w thinking that in this b hour, we weren't going to be able to get tog it, but since the president said nothing tonight, we just -- we just might have time for it coming up. i i want to get more of your reaction tomo what the president said. here he is asking the