welcome back to "up." i'm david gura continuing to marvel at in amazing piece in the "washington post" which broke overnight. president trump con sealing details from his meetings with president putin, concealing those details from members of his own association. at one point they took possession of the notes of his interpreter and told the l ing

uist not to discuss what transpired with other officials. the president disclosed that piece last night in a phone conversation with jean piro on the news. >> why not release the conversation you had in helsinke? >> i could. i don't keep anything under wraps. i couldn't care less. >> here to talk about what happened in helsinke, here is dan coates. here's what he said to my colleague andrea mitchell last summer. >> i don't know what happened in that meeting. i think as time goes by and the president has already mentioned some things that happened in that meeting, i think we will learn more. >> 181 days later what presidents trump and putin discussed for four hours remains a mystery. of course, there is that bombshell report in the "new york times." i'll remind you once again of

the headline because it's so astonishing. the fbi had questions whether trump was secretly working on behalf of russia. that raised new questions about president trump's interactions with president putin as well, like when he stood shoulder to shoulder with putin and broke intelligence over russia's interference in the 2016 election. >> dan coates came to me and others and they said they think it's russia. i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be. >> then there's the long history he has of expressing deference and admiration for president putin. >> are you an admirer of the russian? >> i think he's done a great job of outsmarting our country. >> i was in moscow. it was so great. putin sent me a beautiful present with a beautiful note. >> do you like vladimir putin's comments about you? >> sure. when someone calls you brilliant

it's always good, especially when the person heads up russia. >> you were asked if you've ever spoken to vladimir putin. >> no comment on that. >> one of the things people like about you and to answer any question. >> maybe i did. perhaps it was personal. i don't want to hurt his confidence. >> if putin likes donald trump, i consider that an asset, not a liability. >> why he's advocated russia first foreign policy not only on the campaign trail but also inside the white house. >> we don't really need nato in its current form. nato is obsolete and we're spending disproportional amounts. >> people from the kremlin would rather be in russia than where they were. >> the reason russia was in afghanistan was because terrorists were going into russia. they had a right to be there. >> now it's punctuated by this new consequential reporting.

she was asked a question no president has ever been asked before. >> are you now or have you ever worked for russia, mr. president? >> i think it's the most insulting thing that's been asked. i think it's the most insulting article that's been written. >> let met point out he didn't answer the question. clint watts, msnbc national security analyst and fbi special agent, msnbc contributor michelle goldberg and paul butler, an msnbc legal analyst. >> your reaction first to the "times" piece and the "post" piece. >> i wasn't surprised by the "new york times" piece. the series events going through 2016. the president is adamant about michael flynn and that maybe we should go easy on him even though bizarre phone calls that he apparently lied about. and now he fires the fbi

director and he brags about it both to the russians and the oval office where there are no american cameras, really only russian cameras, if i remember. and he brags about it essentially to lester holt. so this is it. for some reason if the american public guess lost, he's doing this out in the open. overt isn't any better. if you saw it in secret e-mails, would you be alarmed? that's the twist to all of this. in terms of the "washington post," it says more people in russia know what happened with our president than people in america. imagine you're dan coates or director of the fbi, the cia, any of these agencies, and you don't know what was said or what your country agreed to, but the russians do. that means that no matter what the president says, they can come back and say, that's not what was said in that meeting, president trump said this. president trump can't even refute it because no one else witnessed it. it is a dangerous position for

any national security establishment with any country. it doesn't matter if it's russia or others. russia just happens to be the best at this. >> let me put focus back to this relationship between the two presidents. how has your collective sense of this changed in light of your reporting? >> i thought you did a great way of bringing out key moments of president trump with these o outlandish statements of trump and his dangerous foreign policy. all the news that was coming out this weekend was the trump tower deal in moscow. because we've always been looking, is it just that the russians offered to help him win the election, which we know happened, you know, if not personally to president trump, then to his family and associates. or was there actual, as there always is with donald trump, just financial gain there? he was in talks to -- while he was saying i have no business dealings with russia, he was actually in talks to build a

trump tower in moscow and to have a $50 million penthouse there for vladimir putin. so this morning my husband said, well, with there just be a smoking gun already? i'm like, this is like a smoke-filled saloon, right? we have so many things that have been absolutely sort of the worst of our suspicions and fears have been leaked out on a biweekly basis. i think it's very clear right now that this president has an unnatural relationship with one of our greatest adversaries, if not our greatest. >> i'm going to read an article in new york magazine just about some of the things the president has said, where this pro-russia rhetoric has come from. he writes, it's hard to understand how some bizarre russian ideas he spouts have found their way into trump's brain. his warnings are not notions

that trump would use to binge watch fox news. >> he parrots these fairly obscure ideas, that he can't be getting anywhere else unless he's covertly watching him today. but one thing we know about trump is that he repeats the last thing somebody said to him. one of the questions i hope congress will start investigating is we have these five conversations that happen at various international forum that we know happened. we know the conversation happened, we don't know what was said. as far as trying to subpoena the interpreter, i hope they'll also try to figure out what sort of phone conversations they've been having because we know donald trump has been having tons of unsecured telephone conversations all the time. >> we need a phone readout. >> for all we know, they could be talking every week. >> paul butler, in reading the

"new york times" piece, let me pivot to that. there is a sense of knowledge about that investigation that the focus here is not on coordination exexclusively, it s on russia's role. when you look at the investigation more broadly, so not just the relationship between trump and putin, how it changes in light of the times reporting. >> there's been a lot of focus as a criminal investigating, looking at whether there were crimes of obstruction of justice or conspiracy to defraud the united states. mueller's other charge is about national security. so what's happened is that this investigation that was opened by the fbi into whether the president of the united states is a double agent was taken over -- that the fbi was investigating it, and we should assume that mueller is continuing to investigate that. so we've known that. so i agree with you, clint rk, actually think the post article

is more damaging because what it suggests is, again, the president has met with putin five times. we don't know what happened. and he met with putin another time with tillerson and snatched the notes from the interpreter after. what is that about? that's not normal. again, when we look at the question of whether he's compromised by the russians as a skeptical prosecutor, i asked, well, he sure looks like it while he's all up in putin's kool-aid about crimea, about getting rid of the sanctions. he constantly says these shoutouts to putin, that he likes him better than he likes most american politicians. at the end of the day, whether he's compromised by the russians, he may not be a double agent in terms of criminal law, but in terms of national security, i'm not sure whether it matters. he sure acts like a double agent. >> clint, i always like to look

at responses to things like this. i look at what sarah huckabee sanders' response is to the "washington post" speech. the "washington post" story is so outrageousing inaccurate it doesn't even warrant a response. the liberal media has wasted two years trying to manufacture a fake collusion scandal. you look at the tweets we saw from the president, a lot of similarities in the way he tried to divert from what is being report reported. >> the simple answer from the president is to make a denial. why not just say no, none of this is true. they don't do that. that's communications 101. the other thing is he's not tough on russia. he consistently tries to minimize his actions. this week secretary of the treasury goes to congress, why are we relieving these sanctions? it's not entirely clear why we're doing that.

they are not being tough. consistently we hear that the president is alarmed of convicting too many russians. it didn't happen to us. this minimalization is consistent. if we want to be consistent with russia, never talk to them again. why are we going after vladimir putin when he just targeted our electrical institutions, hacked into our databases, meddled with the vote and helped elevate policy positions that are not the norm even for the republican party or anyone in the united states. there is no reason to go and try to build relations with someone who just punched you. you punch them back or shut them out. it makes no sense. up next a freshman congressman who is giving his entire pair check to charity until the government shutdown comes to an end. governor max rose of new york joins us in just a moment.

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in the last hour a new york federal judge sentenced cohen to three years in prison. >> facebook said it allowed other big tech firms to see your private information but not without consent. >> tonight's other major piece of new reporting broken by nbc news piece of new reporting broken by nbc news p welcome back to "up." i'm david gura and this is the 23rd day the u.s. government has been partially closed. lawmakers return to washington tomorrow but there is still no end in sight to what has become the longest shutdown in u.s. history. talks have stalled between the president and congressional leaders, and more than 800,000 federal workers continue to be affected by this. i'm pleased to have congressman max rose from staten island. he is the army man in

afghanistan who turned it from red to blue. you've been picking up trash at miller field in staten island back in the district while this is happening. give us a sense of what happens next. there is this conversation the president is having about declaring a national emergency. legislatively, what's your sense of what happens next when you go back to washington. >> the national crisis today that we face, the greatest national crisis that we face is this shutdown. >> you're not shy of calling it a crisis. >> this is absolutely a crisis. to put this into perspective, when you walk through airport security right now, those folks missed a paycheck. the pressure, the stress they are under, i don't think we all can fathom at this table. we have got to get this government back open. all we are asking for, even on a temporary basis, get it back open, get these people the pay they deserve and then we can have a very sensible, very substantive and comprehensive discussion about how we can

secure our borders, preserve our national security and also maintain our values. those two are not mutually exclusive. i'm sick and tired of hearing discussions if we have to pick between the two. >> let these guys get in here in just a moment, but i watched your ads, listened to you on the campaign trail. you knew things had to be fixed but you were optimistic they were going to be fixed. >> of course. >> given that, what has this entry into this new job been like, to go there and see so acutely the level of dysfunction, seeing washington not operating efficiently. >> washington, d.c. is absolutely broken, plain and simple. there is also a cultural problem as well. i described the shutdown as a crisis. as a consequence of that, my hope is everyone views it as a crisis. they should be locking themselves in a room, negotiating, discussing this, and not leaving that room until something is fixed. one of the biggest problems with this shutdown today is the fact

the legislative branch is still funded. our trash is still being picked up. we still have our entrances and exits being guarded, our offices still being cleaned. there should be a shutdown that members of congress feel as well so hopefully we continue to push to get this thing opened. one of the reasons why i've decided to donate all my salary during this time to charity is because we all need to have skin in the game here. we need to stand to solidarity with folks who, even though they're not being paid, are still living up to their responsibilities, living up to the oath they swore to this country. >> talking about border security, the question is wall or no wall. if it's not a wall, why is the wall ineffective? we need to look at why this argument is made. and the second one is, what is effective border security? this goes back to the last decade. we've done fencing in 2006, we've done other things. what is the solution? because i don't really hear in the debate if we're not going to

do a wall, what are we going to do? >> the problem is because washington, d.c. is dominated by politics, it's not dominated by an actual policy discussion. you well know, coming from a security background, we should start from a needs assessment. we should start from a basic study that is nonpartisan, apolitical in nature as we figure out what the threats are and how we can fully fund them. nobody, especially myself here, is saying we should not fund national security and border security. the question is not a wall or no wall. the question is do we do something stupid and waste money, or do we adequately invest limited resources in ways we can best protect the american people? ports of entry. i got fentanyl streaming into my district, killing kids. airport security, principal way in which terrorists come into this country. immigration support, so people are not waiting for two years for their asylum hearing. these are critical things for

technology. we need to invest billions of dollars on a long-term basis to keep our security. >> i'm curious how much -- yesterday i had brunch with one person who is a contractor at the smithsonian and who is on hiat hiatus. i was at a party with someone else who is a lawyer at the fec who is just -- >> you get around. >> but it was a strange thing where i started to realize, oh, this is really affecting people i know, but i don't know how broadbased that feeling is -- like in your district, what are you hearing from people? >> the latest "washington post" poll showed 18 million people were in a crisis. >> i got a call from someone yesterday who worked for the homeland security department. because people are just now not getting their paychecks, this is

starting to hit home. am i dipping into savings? can we go to the movies on friday night, putting food on the table. these folks are doing the right thing, exactly what was asked of them, and the way we're treating them is disgraceful. so the pressure, this crisis, is only going to continue to build. it's one reason why we went to a federal park yesterday, because just protesting this is not enough. we have to unite and try to solve this crisis. >> what is the understanding of people in your district of who is responsible for this crisis? >> they don't care. >> at all. >> no, when you're working hard every single day, okay, you're not analyzing the political, you know, chess game that's going on right now. that's not the way normal people's minds work. no offense to you all. >> normal people blame someone when things go wrong. >> i think they intuitively understand that people are supposed to go down to

washington, d.c. to get the job done. in this one particular instance, i've been very vocal that this is at the feet of the president of the united states. there was a deal, the senate signed on. you guys know the story, blah, blah, blah. but that doesn't mean everyone should just sit back and say, okay, it's his fault and i'm not going to do a thing. we have to continue to push and push and push and say, let's get this government back open and let's preserve national security in the process. that's what matters to people. not a blame game. >> i think people would be surprised to know congress is still getting paid and that congress is still open. that is the type of thing that makes people outraged, that tsa workers who are living paycheck to paycheck and who -- you know, that is a very real across the country every single airport in america, you are face to face with someone who is working for free and is the frontline defense to what is actually a national security threat. can you explain, is there any talk, other than you, about why

congress is getting paid? is that like a conversation? >> there is definitely legislation being put forth that i support that congress should not get paid in the event of a future shutdown. more importantly, there is legislation that i believe will emerge that i'll fully support that says a shutdown shouldn't be possible in the future. we cannot allow a shutdown to be a negotiating tool. to bring the country to this form of crisis so that you can get what you want, it's absurd, it should not be allowed, but people would be surprised when they learn a lot of things about congress. they would be surprised to learn that a lobbyist can bundle unlimited amounts of money, hand that over to an elected official during a fundraising event or whatever, show up at that elected official's office the next day and lobby him or her on an issue of political importance to their corporate client. people would be surprised that a member of congress can take a first class seat from any entity right now. it's an absurd institution, it's culturally broken, and we have to fix it. >> last question here.

you did a ceremonial swearing in at st. george theater. senator chuck schumer was there. >> missed you there, man. >> full house, i couldn't get in. you didn't vote for nancy pelosi. what has this meant for democratic leadership? we talk about chuck and nancy, the president talks about crying chuck and nancy. talk about them as an institution of two at this point. how are they working together? what's the sense you have of that? >> senator schumer is my buddy, man, but no one governs through a rearview mirror. i took a vote on nancy pelosi. i was very clear and consistent for more than a year about that. but at this point what everyone is focused on is opening this government back up, and then, god forbid, actually fulfilling some of the promises we made during the campaign. everybody looks at a campaign and says, that's great, you won, now let's focus on some other stuff. no. we made a promise to the american people we're going to do something about the price of

health care, anti-corruption, infrastructure. now we owe it to them to actually do it or else i'm going to have a short stint here in congress, and i want to be able to be invited back here. these pastries are phenomenal. >> take one for the road. max rose, thank you so much. come back again, please. up next, the dangers of declaring a national emergency and why president trump may want to think twice about it. plus, many furloughed workers criticized the president for being out of touch with their struggle, and moments like this one did not help. >> if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. you need i.d. >> no, you don't. if you need an i.d. to buy your groceries, you're an alcoholic. c your mornings were made for

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well, i have the absolute right to call a national emergency. other presidents have called many national emergencies for things of lesser importance, frankly, than this, and i have the right to do it. >> president trump last night doubling down on his right, as he calls it, to declare a national emergency when it comes to building a wall on the mexican border. the idea of calling a national

emergency has fellow republicans concerned about future repercussions. >> i can tell you from people on my side of the aisle, one of the concerns we have is if the concern today is the border wall, tomorrow the national security might be climate change, so let's seize fossil fuel plants or something. >> michelle, let's start with you. let's talk about what the president is going through presumably at this point. he talked about his right to do this, his ability to do this. it he did it last night with jean pirro. >> i think he's weighing sean hannity, russh limbaugh against the rest of the country. the vast amount of the country against republicans who are very torn about the implications of this. none of this is about national security or even about building

the wall. it's about whether he gets out of this with his dignity intact and with a win that he can then run on going into 2020. so part of the question is do republicans want to take this incredible step of declaring a national emergency so that donald trump doesn't have to negotiate an end to the shutdown that can then be used against him. i'm a little torn, to be honest, about how freaked out we should be about this. i think two years ago if you had said, you know, that the president was on the cusp of circumventing congress and declaring a national emergency based on a racist big lie, we would all think, how far we've fallen, right? i can't tell if it's just that we've been the frogs in the proverbial pot, we're all completely boiled where it doesn't seem like as much of a big deal as it would have then. if it's fascism, it's kind of kabuki fascism without any substance to back it up, in part if he declares a national

emergency, it's somewhat with the expectation that it will go into effect and that the courts will block it, and that the reason he's doing it is so that he can get out of this shutdown and then blame the courts when his wall doesn't get built. nevertheless, i do think that the other side of it is, you know, we're kind of going further and further and further away from any sort of working re legislative process. we have this administration full of acting secretaries, so they've already circumvented congress with regard to the rights function. so we are moving toward this eu unitary executive rule. >> i'll call freakout. we saw this day one. after the i nanauguration, i wa

headed back to washington. the president is lying to a number of people at the inauguration. he came out, and if you remember, he didn't take any questions. it was the biggest inauguration in history and he walked off. we said, this is how the regime operates. this is how you diminish democracy. around the world they are comparing the united states to syria, egypt, pakistan, places where democratic institutions have really been devolved in the past 10 to 15 years. it's one thing to call an emergency when you know there is an emergency, when a tornado hits north carolina. this president does not understand checks and balances, he does not care. he listens to the last person in the room. it's often erdogan, it's often putin. these are the people he listens to. >> the authoritarian states around the world, how is this

being perceived internationally? >> you can't keep listening to nonsense all day that comes out of the white house, or even in terms of the other political side. the ultimate effect of declaring a national emergency is nothing is ever an emergency again if you're just a citizen. >> or everything is an emergency. >> you go, how would i know this? i have my facts, you have your facts. this is how authoritarian regimes are run around the world. >> one of the things that trump is making us do is reexamine a lot of our institutions to see if they can be powered up to defend against some person like trump exploiting the power. and so this law passed in 1976 says that the president has to specifically declare a national emergency based on a crisis, and then it kuind of unlocks a hundred other laws that give the president this power.

it doesn't have any parameters about what a national crisis would be. so it's been invoked 58 times since 1976 by every president. one concern now is maybe there needs to be a more specific definition about what constitutes a crisis. >> kelly, you mentioned you were down in d.c. now you're living in london. and the parallel that's been drawn is the possible backlash. we're looking at this vote on tuesday, westminster's brexit plan. how is the parallel today? you've lived both lives there. >> there is a parallel, and the united states is living in a state of emergency. you look at the economy there, look at what's happening in europe. but there is also an investigation by the british government into russia's role in meddling in the brexit vote. the parallels are stunning. they're looking at steve bannon, his relationship to a hedge fund that had to do with cambridge analytica and how they used their influence with facebook.

i think it's the united states thinking it's special right now, that russia is paying attention to the united states. what they're doing in the u.k. is very emblematic of what's happening here. >> you've written the book on this. >> they've gotten what they want. the whole idea is to elevator leaders who will be specific to another viewpoint. they pursued this in germany where they have now ushered in a new sort of government in terms of percentages. what is most baffling to me is it is in plain sight. it is happening right in front of people. and what brings them to care? life is pretty good in the u.s., it's pretty good in the u.k., but what if it retracts? what if life isn't good in a year or two or it declines more? will we see this sort of rising up? i don't know. i'm 50-50 on it, but i think there will be changes.

there needs to be a series of new laws in trump time, whether two years or six years, where it spells out pardon, foreign influence, national emergencies, whatever it might be. we don't need to go through these crises. >> it's too bad because we're moving away from responsibility. >> this is "the breakfast club." the president nominating his next attorney general has confirmation hearings this week, and the hot seat has only gotten hotter in light of what we've learned from the "new york times" and the "washington post" this weekend on the president's behavior and bill barr's privilege on a border wall. >> i think that's overkill to put a barrier from one side of the border to the other. o the o.

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it tells me a lot about the people running the fbi, mccabe and that crowd. i don't trust them as far as i throw them, so if this really needs to happen, congress needs to know about it. >> the top secretary in the judiciary committee reminding us of the gamechanger in the "new york times." the fbi was looking into whether president trump's decision to dismiss james comey stud a possible threat to national security. the fbi doing extraordinary things, investigating a sitting president for one. has the bureau endured an assault from the president of the united states.

the "new york times" said, a vigorous debate has taken shape among some former law enforcement officials outside the case over whether fbi investigators overreacted in opening the counterintelligence inquiry during a tumultuous period at the justice department. where do you fall in this debate? >> it's interesting because senator graham doesn't say what would we do if a foreign power tried to insert somebody into the presidency. remember, this started before he became president. this investigation started before that. so when you see the firing, that would be the natural actions that you might see from someone who is inserted by a foreign power. so then i'm guessing we would need a special counsel, which is what we have. so it's interesting how the senators kind of gut reaction is that we shouldn't have a sitting president, then they need to make sure we didn't have sort of

a manchurian kind of president. how do we do this? do we count on the senate to do an oversight? probably not. we've seen how they work in the last two years. the house? probably not. >> a moment ago i mentioned the fbi having tracks with the president of the united states. you heard him talk about andrew mccabe and these other things. how do you believe that stuck among those who supported the president? >> it's really dangerous. i have my own critiques of what our intelligence agencies have done, but this issue of whether or not a president can define his enemies as, you know, the media, the fbi, the cia in many cases, members of congress, individual citizens who he often picks out, it's very, very dangerous. the other thing i think a lot of

that right now is just how much this has shown how weak our institutions are, how weak the guardrails are. you would have thought maybe a few years ago that we would not be in this position, that you would not have an entire political party, you know, parroting these right wing fringe views. you would not have them attacking the top law enforcement in the country, which is the fbi. and yet here we are. i'm thinking a lot about what we need to do once this presidency is over, right? after nixon we had campaign finance laws, we had the presidential powers act. we need to be thinking about how we shore up, in this age, our democracy. because it does not enforce itself, and i think that's become very, very clear. >> paul butler, i was reading this piece by ben wittes. it talks about the divide of the counterintelligence side from the fbi. put simply, an fbi vesks can be

launched as a counterintelligence matter or it can be launched as a criminal matter. but when the bureau shows up, it shows up with all of its authorities, not just the ones associated with the particular type of investigation originally predicated. a lot of big words there. that point, that there has been a separation between the counterintelligence, he says that wall has disappeared or gotten smaller. do you agree with that? >> i think so. after 9/11, the fbi got out of the war on drugs, which was a good thing, and started to focus much more on national security. and so now it looks at those from a criminal wall perspective whether it can bring cases against people, but much more importantly, it's about national security. so the counterintelligence is key. the concern about what's happening now, though, is that trump is trying to derail the investigations. he has not been able to so far because of mueller, but as importantly, because of the

oversight by rod rosenstein. and now trump has nominated a person who has expressed hostility to the investigation. that's attorney general nominee barr and the acting attorney general auditioned for the job by telling trump how he could get around that investigation by starving it to death of money. and so trump has effectively possibly derailed the investigation. and here's the other thing. we wouldn't know what exactly barr or whitaker has done or will do until after the investigation is over. under the law, the only thing that has to be revealed now is if the president tries to fire mueller. but if the attorney general has oversight, that could be -- that doesn't have to be reported. if they say don't bring this indictment, that doesn't have to be reported by mueller until afterwards. >> i'll be back in just a moment. president trump loving to take

credit for what he calls a record-breaking presidency. he's been more quiet about his latest record, the longest shutdown in history. more on that when we come back. ♪ memories. what we deliver by delivering.

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yesterday on its 23rd day. this is now the longest government shutdown in u.s. history. the previous record was set when bill clinton was president. a clash for 21 days between 1995 and 1996. michelle, i will go to you first here. on the matter of record, yes, but also the president's approach to this. looking back at the last shutdown in 1995-96 there was at least an effort to make it seem like the goal was to get out of the shutdown. i'm struck how we hit the record and nothing much happened as a result. not like there is much concern. >> there's never been a shutdown that was initiated by the president. in every past shutdown it was presidents desperately trying to deal with a recalcitrant congress, not congress trying to deal with the recalcitrant president. this isn't the only record by any means trump has set. he's had record low approval ratings, has a record deficit, had record turnover. he sets all sorts of records for

chaos and instability. to me, the question is when this becomes really obvious to everyone that you elect a president like this and this is what you get. the government is shut down. american foreign policy is in chaos. when that becomes manifest in people's lives which is slowly starting to happen. >> heather, react to that. i go back to asking max rose about whether people perceive what's wrong. >> the midterm elections show people perceive this is absolutely a president and a party that no longer has authority -- moral authority or policy authority with the american people. it was a record win for the democrats. again, a record low approval rating for the president. record numbers of days on the golf course. that's one thing we can add to it. >> filling up the guinness book here. >> i'm glad you mentioned the deficit. as a policy person, that's one piece i'm just agog about the fact that the republican party

stopped barack obama from fully funding some of the expansions on health care from moving in terms of expanding social security, in terms of all of the things -- >> or a proper response to the crisis. >> or climate change. all of the things that were hemmed in because republicans wanted to curtail spending when a black man had the purse strings. they have the record of deficits as far as the eye can see. >> heather mentioned moral authority. i'm struck by what i hear now from the house speaker putting it in moral terms. the proposal to build a wall is immoral. your reaction to that? the effectiveness of the rhetoric, the way she's couching this in those terms. >> you can't argue with success. trump still has his base, his core group of people who believe whatever he says or pretends to believe it or don't care whether he's telling the truth. it will be interesting to see

now based on this shutdown the fact that working class people not making a lot of money think of a tsa agent. she doesn't get her paycheck. that's something most americans can relate to. what would i do if i have gone to work every day, done everything i am supposed to do, payday comes and there is no money. how can you pay your bills, send your kids to day care? if trump's base is this famous white working class group of people this is something that should make them question their allegiance to this man. >> last question to you. this seems like an increasingly myopic president. this is what the focus seems to be on. what do you make of that? we're talking about the wall and the shutdown. >> the world has never been sonar rs so narrowly focused on one or two things at a time. we can't focus on anything.

the syria discussion three years ago would have been the top story we would have talked about for days that we were with drawing from syria or afghanistan. an isis or terrorist attack. there is one in morocco where they killed innocent women. we have missed the rest of the world. all we know about is a wall or no wall. shutdown or no shutdown. >> thank you very much. my thanks to heather, michelle and paul as well. up next, joy reid digs into the reports putting trump and putin closer than ever before. p and p closer than ever before. here we go! discover. hi. i like your card. i love all the cashback and security features, but i'm not going to pay an annual fee. i'm just not going to do it! okay. okay? discover has no annual fee on any of our cards. so it wasn't my tough guy act? no. we just don't have any annual fees. that's a relief. i've been working on that for a long time. if we had talked a month ago, that would have been a whole different call. i can imagine. excuse me, sir can i please have no annual fee? no annual fee on any card only from discover.

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that does it for me. thank you very much for watching. a.m. joy starts right now. >> from everything i see has no respect for this person. >> well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president. >> no puppet, no puppet. >> it's clear. >> you're the puppet. >> it's clear you won't admit -- >> no, you're the puppet. >> good morning, welcome to a.m. joy. there is probably nothing more triggering for trump's base than the suggestion that hillary clinton is right about something. but her prognosis in 2016 that trump was a puppet for putin sure looks more plausible after two jaw-dropping reports from this weekend alone. the first from the "new york times" reporting that the fbi opened a counterintelligence inquiry into whether trump was secretly working