is who do you believe? my second question, would you tell with the world watching, you denounce what happened in 2016 and tell him that it never happens again? >> why have they never taken the server? why was the fbi told to life the democratic national committee. where is the server? i want to know where is the server and what is the server saying? with that being said, all i can do is ask the question, my people came to me, dan coates came to me, some others, they think it russia. i have president putin. he just said it not russia. i will say this. i don't see any reason why it would be but i really do want to see the server. but i have confidence in both

parties. i really believe that this will probably go on for a while but i don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. what happened to the servers of the pakistani gentleman that worked on the dnc? where are those servers? they're missing. where are they? what happened to hillary clinton's e-mails? 33,000 e-mails gone, just gone. i think in russia they wouldn't be gone so easily. i think it's a disgrace that we can't get hillary clinton's 33,000 e-mails. i have great confidence in my intelligence people, but i will tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. and what he did is an incredible offer. he offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with the 12 people. i think that's an incredible

offer. >> at the tail end of that incredible two minutes, president trump echoed an offer from vladimir putin made in private to help with the russia investigation. there is no documentation of what was actually said behind closed doors because, as "the washington post" reports, donald trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal it. after one meeting with the russian leader, trump reportedly seized the notes of the american interpreter. we're going to speak with the person who broke that story, national security correspondent for "the washington post" greg miller. that bombshell dropped just hours after the "new york times" reported that the fbi had opened an inquiry into whether president trump was secretly working on behalf of russia. and we also have with us one of the reporters behind that piece, michael schmidt. on saturday the president was asked point blank have you ever

worked for russia? nowhere in his 354-word answer did he say the word no. we have columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius. we have the president of the council on foreign relations and author of "aworld in disarray" richard haas and yamiche alcindor. >> let's give you the political context of what both republicans and democrats are going to be working under this week. new polling showing that americans are clearly blaming president trump and clearly blaming the republican party far more than democrats for the government shutdown stalemate that continues to drag on. according to "the washington post"/abc news poll, 53% say trump and the republican party

are at fault compared to only 29% who blame the president. in a new cnn poll, 55% blame the president, only 32% say the democrats are at fault. you break it down even further, independents point the blame at the president, not the democrats by a 53-23% margin, a 30% margin among independents. everybody knows those are devastating numbers. the republicans lost in a landslide the house of representatives the worst battering since watergate and now it continues just a few months later. donald trump continuing to lead them lower and lower and lower in the polls. now, women are blaming the president by a margin of 35%

while men are blaming republicans by a margin of 13 points. when asked about the situation at the border nearly half said there's a problem but not a crisis. 26% said it wasn't a serious problem but 24%, only 24%, less than one in four americans said the situation was a a majority of americans oppose president trump declaring a national emergency in order to build the wall. 66% to 31%. two in one oppose the president and the republican party shutting down the government to get extra money to build a wall. and cnn polling shows more than half of americans oppose the

building of a wall along the entire u.s.-mexico border. and look at this, 57% disapprove of the president's job approval, up five points. currently 45% approve and 47% of whites without college degrees disapprove. the approval rating is down 9 points from last month. this is the first time ever that donald trump has turn into negative territory with the group. even the pollster the president points to as his validator, rasmussen polling finds that his ratings are falling. trump's approval index dropped from negative 3 points a month ago to a negative 13 points on

friday at the beginning of january, he was at negative 7. mika, devastating numbers all the way around. but again, this is something that we knew was coming, this was something that, bluntly, we warned republicans they were going to shoulder the blame. when donald trump said in front of nancy pelosi and in front of chuck schumer, hey, i'm not going to blame you, this is all on me, this will be trump's shutdown, the american people were listening and there's nothing donald trump or any of the republicans can do now trying to twist the facts on that. >> you could see chuck schumer looking down and trying not to laugh, he doesn't understand exactly how bad that shut could be those numbers about what's happening in washington but

what's also happening and you could hear in the president's voice on saturday night appears to be panic. >> by the way, can we just say -- >> you can. >> you don't have to be a pop psychiatrist to listen to donald trump's voice on fox news this weekend, and he was in a full-on panic. full-on panic talking a hundred miles an hour. in that clip so he had to trash his own u.s. intel agencies. but, boy, he was in full panic mode. >> president trump and his allies reacted to the report that the fbi began investigating whether trump had been working against american interests on behalf of russia. after the spring of 2017 firing of director james comey. according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the probe, counterintelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's actions

constituted a possible threat to national security, unprecedented on so many levels. agents and senior fbi officials had grown suspicious of mr. trump's ties to russia during the 2016 campaign but held off on opening an investigation into him in part because they were unstern how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. agents also sought to determine whether mr. trump was knowingly working for russia or had unwittingly fallen under moscow's influence. no evidence has emerged that mr. trump was secretly in contact or took direction from russian officials. the president responded as part of the 12 tweets, 12 tweets saying the investigation was opened with no proof.

he gave an interview to fobs news. >> are you now or have you ever worked for russia? >> it's the most insulting question. the headline of the artarticle, called the failing the "new york times" for a reason. >> michael, why now? talk about developing this story and why is it that here we are at the beginning of 2019 that you finally had enough to go with the story. >> in many ways it's something we've been trying to understand for a year and a half, since the investigation was launched in may of 2017, to sort of understand the contours of it.

we were helped along the way by testimony that had been provided to congress by the fbi's general counsel at the time, who talked about how the firing of comey so unnerved the fbi. they did not understand what was going on. they knew there was this larger russia investigation, they knew there was a possibility that the president was trying to interfere with it and if he was trying to interfere with the russia investigation, what was motivating that? what was driving that? that that his connections to russia? the fbi knew about his trip for the miss universe pageant to russia, they knew about the steele dossier and they took the step to open the investigation which was taken over just days later by bob mueller when he was appointed special counsel.

>> tom nichols wrote for "usa today" that it actually would have been surprising given all of the strange behavior exhibited by the president during his campaign on this show actually in december of 2015, moving forward, and through the first couple of years of his presidency he actually said that it would have been strange had the fbi not made an inquiry into whether there was any connection between russia and donald trump that might impact america's national security. can you tell me what sort of division there was inside the bureau on whether this should be launched or not? >> well, the bureau is sort of looking at two questions. they're looking at a question of obstructi obstruction, simple criminal obstruction, was the president praeking the law by trying to interfere with the investigation and then the counterintelligence question, the national security question, something that would not usually result in a criminal

charge but trying to answer what are his ties and why is he acting that way? it's true ethat he was suspicious. you better have enough evidence and feel good about what you're doing before you go forward with that. it was the firing of comey that led them to that point, that made them feel comfortable to open an investigation into him. >> right. but, michael, the question is was there anything dissent within the fbi to open the investigation, or did most of the people that had that decision basically in their hands, did most of them agree that this was something that they needed to look into? >> i think this is something they thought for much of the spring of '17 they needed to look into. i think they were in agreement

after the thome firing, that this -- at the time that it was opened, the fbi had gone ahead and done this on their own. we sometimes forget what was going on in the larger context of the justice department at the time. rod rosenstein, deputy attorney general, the person overseeing the russia investigation, had just provided the president with a rational for firing comey's that was not the president's real reason for getting rid of him. so the fbi looked at. >> david ignatius, i want to back up a bit and get some perspective here. is there any precedent for president trump's attempt to keep the content of his cans. >> i have never seen any instance like this.

it typical you have multiple aides supporting the president, certainly you have a translator whose notes are discussed, disseminated. when this news broke over the weekend that there had been suppression of notes from one of president trump's meetings with putin, i happened to be with a former white house chief of staff. he was dumbfounded. he said -- so the question is why, what was so secret about these meetings? what was so personal and private? in the footage at the opening segment, we saw donald trump confronted with a shart question about his relationship with spootd deflection. when you don't want to answer, you deflect. we saw a perfect instance of that.

i'll say finally michael schmidt's reporting on this fbi investigation is so important because it reminds us that the fbi's vob in the beginning of this was about russia. this was a counterintelligence investigation into anomalous, strange behavior involving president. and the question the reporting raises is whether the alleged obstruction of justice and firing comey and other actions, whether that was the collusion, that was the effort to help russia. >> that is something that many legal experts have been bringing up over the past several days, that perhaps the obstruction was the collusion. maybe it was part of the collusion. maybe we don't have two separate legal theories at the same time. maybe it comes together. that said, let step back just for one second and, david, tell me what were your thoughts the first time you saw the headline,

michael schmidt's headline that the president of the united states, any president of the united states, was being investigated as an asset of one of our foreign enemies? >> joe, i'm not somebody who goes for conspiracy theories. i think usually the simpler explanation is correct so i've been reluctant to see this as a story of an american candidate and then president who was the tool of a foreign intelligence service. you begin to have to look at that more seriously now as you put everything together. in a sense this is a conspiracy hiding in plain sight. you put together every known fact, every piece of video with trump and putin together. it's our friend, ben wittis, that made the point it the obstruction that is the collusion.

suddenly it so clear. woo you can see the president is already destabilized as he thinks about how he's going to have to deal with it. >> greg miller, you'r reporting at the "washington post" brought to the american people the fact that this president, who had already made a lot of americans and foreign policy leaders uncomfortable with wanting to meet alone with vladimir putin, except with an interpreter, after the meeting seized the interpreters notes so even tell us about the story and the possible implications. >> this is a president who doesn't really listen to his

aides going into these meetings and this story is about how he often con seals what transpired in these meetings to the samean but of course the context here is russia and the russia investigation and the enormous cloud, which is a term the president himself uses, the cloud that hangs over him, the suspicion that hangs over him pause of these because of putin as mott do we know what happened to the notes? do we know if he destroyed the notes, if he stored them somewhere? what can you tell us about that? >> i'm not sure what became of the notes. the other officials in the administration only learned that trump had taken the notes later when they tried to go to this

interpreter just to ask questions about what had happened. they were looking for a readout of what had happened in that meeting. and the interpreter is the one who said, look, i was told not to talk about it, the president took my notes and this was just sort of astonishing to these other officials. these are officials in the trump administration. this included his top russia adviser in the white house, who is on this trip but was nevertheless excluded from these meetings with vladimir putin. >> so this interpreter, is it possible that this interpreter may possible and questioned pi the oversight committee in? >> of course there is that impulse right now. we quote the chair of the house foreign affairs committee saying he plans to appoint an

investigative foreign affairs committee to investigate the meetings with putin and what has happened on those occasions. it's a sensitive thing. interpreters are not the president's guides or aides. they're there for a function. there's concern about dragging a interpreter it seems a bit ridiculous to even asked sk but we need to check it off your list as well. have you ever heard of a president having a one-on-one meeting without any aides and only have an interpreter with him and then having that interpreter deliver back to him the notes with the order to not

talk about anything that was mentioned in the meeting? >> not surprisingly, joe, the answer is no. in my experience and i've worked in four administrations, you have both an interpreter when you need one and you have an official, usually the national security aide, taking notes. so it's to basically keep up with the conversation. when you have a national security council aide sitting there, he or she essentially reconstructs the entire conversation. they know the policy. they know the subtlety of what's behind this or that statement, the contest of it. the fact, first of all, that the meeting took place national security counsel in and of.

>> that is bizarre by itself. >> it's crazy. >> it's bizarre by itself that you would meet with vladimir putin without a foreign policy expert from your administration. that in and of itself should raise so many red flags. but then to destroy notes or get notes from an interpreter after, my good, that certainly has to raise so many flags inside the mueller investigation. >> you need the notes in order to do all kind of follow-up and things like that. the the u.s. government doesn't know what happened so it can't follow up, it can't correct on it. and this just needs this larger story. let's just put it out there. from day one of this administration, no one has been able to explain in the land of david ignatius novels what is

motivating this president on russia. there's no have testrategic rat for it. it shifts us on to all the sort of things that are beginning to come out. >> a man who has had contact with russia for years and came on our show in 2015, meekika, defending vladimir putin, saying he was a strong leader. when we brought up he assassinated people, it was brought up that our soldiers have killed a lot of people, too. >> greg, wouldn't the fbi want to talk to the interpreter? >> it's an interesting question. what does mueller see when he looks at this? is this something he has already looked at or is this something that would slow him down here at

the end and force him to go back and sark well -- it's sort of these questions that we're looking at. we do not know exactly what mueller did with the counterintelligence part of this investigation when he took it over in 2017. we do know that mule her a series of questions to the president last year and a certain subset of them related to russia. we do know in november when the president finally responded to mueller, he spent back at the end of the day, the president has answered a lot of russia questions o mueller, questions he still had as reese lent ily as with all the bad news coming out about donald trump and russia and the destroying of the notes or at least the hiding of

the translators' net and they would talk about sanctions, sanctions, by the way, that the united states congress, the republican congress said that they were going to pass regardless. and they weren't going to allow the president to ease sanctions with russia. but also you now of course have drpt trying to -- another big lie that donald trump is somehow being tougher on russia than barack obama was? >> well, obama doesn't win super high marks for pb but if you look at his actual behavior toward russia, what you see is a degree of deference.

the consequences of the wrapup of our 2,000 special forces will be to enhance russian and iranian power in syria. trump doesn't care. it doesn't really register with him. if you look in the gulf, look at saudi arabia, the uae, the country that's doing the action now, trying to be the deal maker, the place setter. it's russia. mike pompeo is having an odd bump each trip over the weekend. less to work than the russians have been getting. >> the trump argument i'm tougher on russia, what do you mean? >> especially as saved said who. >> all right.

t the. >> thank you both for your incredible reporting. still ahead on "morning joe" we've got several big stories to get to. new reporting says the trump administration request plus, a preview for president trump's pick for attorney general. what democrats are demanding from william barr. and "the atlantic" magazine is out this morning we're going to bring in their editor in chief, jeffrey gold persian gulfwe saw ten inches of snow and it was an epic snowball fight at the washington monuments yesterday. hundreds were out there enjoying

themselves n now that that storm is inpiished pb now worry going to fast forward to the next storm because this one is a big one. you'll hear a lot about that snow in the blue here on friday into the central planes. by the time we get to saturday, we take the know the highway and it's a little snrmt there are a lot of issues at the airports. new york city and times square mostly avoided the snowflakes this sunday.

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to crystal clear hd video monitoring from anywhere. gig-fueled apps that exceed expectations. comcast business. beyond fast. we have a shutdown and they go to vacation and they don't have to use their vacation days and then they come back and get back pay and in some sense they're better off. >> comparing the shutdown for federal workers to a free vacation, except they have zero money, zero, that they're getting on their paychecks. i don't know how to put into the

words the heartlessness of this administration as they try to characterize this shutdown. what are your thoughts moving forward? for all of these works aers how they know what is in store for tomorrow as they continue on with no pay? >> they don't know. there are people who are putting off buying a house or moving into a section 8 apartment because the department of housing and urban development aren't doing what they're supposed to do. the federal government is saying they're going to fund food stamps but i was talking to people in miami who are still very anxious about whether or not they can do this. over and over again across the country, we see people trying to make do and trying to figure out how to really live there lives as this government shutdown

stretches on. i want to add federal private kro contractors, people who are aren't federal workers, who are contractors, they work across the dmv, they're not going to get back pay. this is not a paid vacation. this is not a vacation at all. no one i have talked to have characterized this as a vacation. >> the president has brought bipartisan solutions to this, even when both sides agree, he won't. should democrats and republicans go around him? can they? and can they do anything about the workers who don't get back p pay? >> congress could do something for those who don't get back pay but the bill passed was focused on federal workers, not on

federal contractors. they're seen as a different part of the workforce that congress doesn't deal with. as far as what congress wants to do, there are people who may want to overcome a veto by president trump and maybe get the government open but that's going to be very, very hard. it's really a political c conundr conundrum. the president was about to take a deal where he was going to get some funding for the wall and say, hey, we didn't get all the money we wanted but it's a start. and conservative media pushed back on that, they basically told the president you lost here and he froze and said we don't want that deal. we don't see mccarthy, we see vice president pence. the president indicated that there wouldn't sign it.

>> it is a talk radio shutdown, mika. what we are seeing is donald trump's approval ratings plummet. we're seeing the percentage of americans who actually support talk radio solutions. it ain't the 40s, that's for sure. donald trump listened to a couple of voices mocking him, ridiculing him and his numbers have plummeted even in the rasmussen poll, which is by far the friendliest poll that he has. and, mika, it only going to get worse because we're getting reports of tsa agents not showing up at work and some are having to look for other jobs so they can put food on their family's tables. some tsa lines should down yesterday, a fear that's going to get worse in the coming days

and weeks. >> president trump goes after his former fixer michael cohen and gets a warning from top democrats about -- >> he was trying to intimidate him. >> it's incredible. >> and a look at the top 50 moments that have defined the president thus far. >> goldman, a consummate showman. what does he put his number 50 to draw people in, he's like a carnival -- donald trump puts his hand on the orb. that's number 50. >> ew. >> see, you want to know what the other 49 are now because goldberg is such a showman. >> goldberg joins us next on "morning joe." ext on "morning joe."

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jo joining us now, political writer for "the new york times" nick confessore. this morning "the atlantic" is out with its 50 moments that have defined the president's presidency so far.

>> jeff, we'll get to that in a moment. number 50, "donald trump touches the magic al orb." how am i not drawn in immediately? >> you are our target audience. i know the orb fascinates you. >> it certainly does, it certainly does. let's talk about something far more fascinating and frightening. donald trump not only met privately with vladimir putin, but he also made sure to seize the notes from the interpreter afterwards. what's the impact after that? >> the mind doesn't want to go where it's going on that story. it's kind of too absurd to believe. the impact of the story could be huge. there could be, as david ignatius mentioned to you a little earlier, there could be a

non-conspiratorial reason that is happening. donald trump does up end all sorts of norms in the way he approaches foreign leaders, so maybe there is a, quote unquote, innocent explanation for this. the easy explanation is he was embarrassed by something he said or was compromising in some way and wanted to make sure his interpreter, who works for the federal government, didn't give that information to officials. >>that following donald trump saying i trust the ex-kgb agent more than i trust my own intelligence. in 2015 he said on our show that vladimir putin was a strong leader and basically preferred him to barack obama and it was

fine that he murdered people. we kill people, too. >> look in this project we did on trump, it talks about collusion in plain sight. this is not a mystery in some way, it's a pattern of behavior. our job in journalism is to establish the pattern. there's a fact set here that is very compromising and pointing it out is the most obvious thing to do in the world. go on. >> i was just going to ask you the same question i asked david ignatius. what was your reaction? what was your gut reaction when you first michael smith's story said that the fbi was vetting to see if our president was an agent of a foreign power, a foreign power who considers themselves to be enemies with the united states of america?

>> there's two reactions. one is the practical reaction which is, of course. like i said, there's a set of facts that leads you to think that's their duty to do. the other reaction is that that is incredible, in the true definition of incredible, it's beyond credibility. how does it come to pass that we're having a serious discussion that the president of the united states is possibly a russian asset and we're having a credible conversation about it. we're talking about manchurian candidate-style scandals. it's just mind boggling. >> richard haas, let's talk about what's going on across the globe right now. you had mike pompeo have a rough tour across the world, and now he's talking with saudi arabia.

this is a region that's really up for grabs right now. what has been the impact of donald trump and what has the impact of our scattered foreign policy meant as mike pompeo has gone across the region doing i would suggest some -- making some very unfortunate statements? >> the secretary of state did himself and this country no favor with the speech he gave, which was wildly inappropriate on anywhere but certainly on foreign soil. but i think the larger story in the middle east is one of american pullback. most dramatically in syria. but when the president goes to iraq, he neglects to meet with the iraqi government leadership. all of this adds to a sense that essentially we're trying to wash our hands of this region, we're leaving it to iran, despite all of our tough talk to russia, we've given up on any political

change in syria. so we're getting a laboratory, we're getting a glimpse, joe, of what the world looks like had the united states abdicates and as we're seeing in the middle east, it's anything but pretty. it's not just that bad people and bad actors come to the fore, but people stop thinking about what this might mean for american interest. we are essentially limiting our influence in a part of the world that still matters, whether it's energy or potential for terrorists or nuclear proliferation. a few weeks ago we were talking about the new year. i said the thing that worried me most was the possibility of a war involving iran. in the last 48 hours we see the national security adviser asking for war plans for potential strikes against iran. you've got an israeli government that's attacking iranian positions in syria in the run-up to israeli elections. you have a saudi leadership that would love to have the story be the problem that iran is posing

so people stop talking about mr. khashoggi's murder. this is beginning to line up for the most dangerous part of the world for 2019. >> you have a president who wants to bring an end to what he calls enless wars, calls endless wars, and at the same time is making plans to attack iran. >> the syria situation has been appalling. you almost feel sorry for national security adviser john bolton, who lays out a tough rollback of trump's initial announcement of withdrawal of troops and then the contradictions and corrections and second guesses of his statements again. at this point i think it's very

difficult for anyone in the region to know precisely what our syria policy is. i wanted to ask jeff goldberg who has looked at the top 50 moments of trump world. i wonder what is the lasting damage to us? >> nothing lasts forever. we do wax and wane on our influence and popularity. you're asking the exact right question. when trump is no longer president, do we bounce back to our usual selves or is this some sign of inevitable decline? i think the longer this goes and the weirder it gets -- it's a bipolar quality or multi-polar quality to policy.

the president makes policy by tweet after seeing something on television. the security apparatus are doing one thing and the president is doing another. if you're an ally, you don't trusts. adversaries look at us and say we don't know what the hell they're going to do because the president is totally unpredictable. the intelligence movement is trying to analyze our moves but they can't understand them because we can't understand them. for a long time we just looked not serious because we elected someone without -- >> i would take it a step further and say we look weak and this is the moment that anyone with ill will has to act and has been further than they are been

able to get in the past as it pertains to us on the national stage. yamiche. >> the president has been described as politically teflon. when you look at these moments, are there any that threaten his presidency more than another? >> i think like most people in washington we assume until proven otherwise that this presidency lasts four years. but on the russia front -- and we have a piece by annie lowrie ranked very high on other list. we forget all these things, his business dealings. the man is still in business. the man still hasn't released his tax returns. say somebody does find his tabs returns, we night find some really interesting things in there. there are things that threaten the presidency. there are things like the orb, which go to the cosmic weirdness

of this presidency. but i think he's in jeopardy on multiple threats. >> so, jeff, you can come back in two years and give us the next list for the second two years and hopefully it will be different. i want to ask you what is number one on this list? >> number one has to do with the family and child separation policy. and we put it there because it seemed to go against nature a bit and certainly goes against traditional republican thinking about the sanctity of families, which is also democratic and american thinking. it was the gratuitousness of it, the cruelty of it that struck us as having lasting moral consequence. >> richard haas, wrap up the first hour for us. >> we're in a place -- >> good luck. >> -- domestically that quite

honestly none of us thought we would get to. the conversations we have around this table and others have after reading the "new york times" or the post, we go to a place where none of us ever thought we would see. here we are only halfway through this presidential term yet the foreign policy conversation shows the world goes on while this is going on. you can't touch the pause button. so the united states is distracted, it's divided, we're inconsistent on steroids. things are happening, things are deteriorating and yet we still have in front of us constitutional and political issues like a blithe that we've never contended with before. if you're not worried, you're not paying attention. >> yamiche, for the past three years you've been going across the country and reporting on people supporting donald trump. i'm curious as you see these numbers starting to bleed,

donald trump starting to bleed support among working class white voters, white voters without college degrees, are you surprised by that or do you think this is just the natural consequence of a government shutdown and some trade policies that are really having a tough impact on farmers and a working class americans? >> i'm not surprised by that but it is in some ways striking to people because this is a president who has really kept his base through scandal after scandal. "the atlantic" is talking about 60 moments. we could talk about more moments. when you hit people in their pockets, and that's what the shutdown is doing, when you hit people in their pockets, people start to pay attention, you may not be able to pay your mortgage or get your insulin.

when you start threatening people lives, that's when people start to question whether they can support him. >> thank you. stay ahead, we have much more on two bombshell reports raising new questions about donald trump's ties to russia. tom nichols say all the signs point the same way that, vladimir putin has compromising information on our president. tom will be our guest. >> plus "the washington post"'s philip rucker joins us with his new reporting about the president's inability to a reliable negotiators in the shutdown showdown. it reported the president didn't like too much in his saturday tweet storm. "morning joe" is coming right back. 25% of your mouth.

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are you now or have you ever worked for russia, mr. president? >> i think it's the most

insulting thing i've ever been asked. i think it's the most insulting article i've ever had written. and in you read the article, you'd see that they found absolutely nothing. but the headline of that article, it's called the failing "new york times" for a reason, they've gotten me wrong for three years. they've actually gotten me wrong for many years before that. >> now, he didn't say there is nothing. he said they found nothing, as if there were something to find. and it's very interesting. the associated press reporting this morning that white house aides are beyond themselves, mika, that the president of the united states did not deny that he actually had been an agent working with russia. >> welcome back to "morning joe." we have columnist and associate editor for "the washington post" david ignatius and nbc political

analyst nick confessore and joining the conversation, professor at the u.s. naval war college and author of "the death of expertise" tom nichols is with us. and political analyst for msnbc and nbc news philip rucker and form are u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama and an msnbc contributor joyce vance. good to have you all with us. >> let me say, mika, that answer from donald trump made about as much sense as hearing somebody, a music fan born in the second half of the 20th century saying they don't like led zeplin. speaking of which, tom nichols, your new column for "usa today" is entitled "all the signs point the same way, vladimir putin has compromising information on donald trump." you write "apparently the first time in history the president

himself was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation. the president has gone to serious lengths to conceal his discussions with an enemy foreign leader and his panicky tweeting and subsequent interview on fox news -- >> we need to play that. >> -- it says the president clearly has something to hide and the president fears president vladimir putin for reasons that can only suggest the existence of compromising information. tom, you don't have to explain the led zeplin thing again. >> thank god. >> yeah, thank god. all signs point to the same way, vladimir putin has compromises

information on donald trump. talk about it. >> it seems that the president defers to trump almost pro actively, not that the prussian preside -- russian president is issuing orders but that he's going out of his way to involve any friction with the russian president i think because he is anticipating that the russians could have a lot. my personal feeling, it's always just my personal view here, this is primarily about his financial dealings that are deeply entangled or seem to be deeply entangled with the russians for a long time and that he fears the exposure of that information. at the very least that's how he's acting. >> and i found interesting your lien "first the existence of the counterintelligence investigation is not scandal, indeed it would be a scandal if we found out today the fbi had not launched an investigation." explain that. >> it's interesting.

the president's apologists and enablers and defenders are rushing to say this is the fbi, it's a vendetta, there's no way can you do this. but if you have this much information about any american eng ta entangled this deeply with russia, it practically would have been malpractice for the fire not to look into this, with dozens of flashing red lights with the president himself bragging about firing the fbi director. at some point either they're a law enforcement counterintelligence agency or they're not. i'd say it would have been a scandal if they hadn't looked into it. >> joyce, it wasn't like the people bragged to people inside the white house that he fired comey. he bragged to the russian foreign minister and to the

russian ambassador to the united states insid and russians were allowed to come in. there is one incident like that after another after another and you can stack 50 of those incidents up that just don't make any sense by themselves. >> there was so much pred case here for the fbi to open the counterintelligence v investigation that it's absolutely correct it would have been irresponsible not to open it. there's an interesting nuance here, joe. counterintelligence investigations, that your not opened with the goal of prosecuting someone at the end of the investigation. they're opened to collect information that the intelligence community can use, in this case the fbi can use to protect our national security. so where trump has aggressively alleged there was a deep state that was out to get him, that's not true with the counterintelligence investigation. it's about garnering information

that's critical, not about prosecutions. the fact that the president of the united states became a target of a counterintelligence operation is really something that at this point is not surprising but that we should still be stunned by. >> jeffrey goldberg, i want to read you something else from tom's column because i'm sure you'll agree with it. "finally, it's exhausting but nonetheless necessary to point out again the titanic hypocrisy of the republican party and of trump apologists in the conservative media." tom and i both former republicans and tom and i like so many americans aghast at the fact that you do appear have have a president doing vladimir putin's bidding and yet these people are lining up on the side

of putin. >> what i don't stand is people who hold ronald reagan in high esteem hold donald trump in high esteem. it doesn't make any sense. i think of this from a policy perspective, about america's role in the world and what american democracy is meant to mean ideally for people around the world. ronald reagan had a distinctive loathing of authoritarian leaders, donald trump does not have a distinctive loathing of authoritarian leaders. just the basic sunniness and opt. >> -- i don't know how you hold these ideas in your head at the same time. >> jeffrey touches on a great point about reagan's sunny optimism. it was also a view of a world

ever expanding, that america's greatest days truly did lie ahead, that open markets and free men and women actually all that we could compete and outcompete against anybody else in global stage and we had nothing to fear. donald trump, as matt lewis talked about in an op-ed a few weeks ago said that trump's view was just the opposite, that it is a negative view, it is a view of a very scared man who believes that scarcity is what defines america and the american project, not optimism. >> and we've got three major stories pertaining to this going forward for the shutdown. we haven't even gotten to michael cohen and what the president said, the threat. we got the fbi investigation into whether or not the president is acting in some way for russia, and then of course

this report that the president was trying to hide his -- the notes from any meetings with putin. and there are reports that two house committees, foreign affairs and intelligence are considering issuing subpoenas to not just one but two interpreters, which is also unprecedented but at this point it may be what happens to find out what happened in those meetings. here is president trump on the phone with his friend judge jeanne pirot when asked about trying to hide these notes. >> why not release the conversation you had with president putin in helsinki, along with some other stuff that might advise fisa and the whole lot of them? >> i don't care. i had a conversation like a lot of presidents do.

we had a great conversation, we were talking about securing israel. i'm not keeping anything under wraps. i couldn't care less. "washington post," that's basically the lobbyist for amazon. he uses jeff bezos who has bigger problems than anyone right now. with putin, they say what did they talk about? we talked about very positive things because, look, we are beating everybody. but i'm with putin and they make a big deal. anybody could have listened to that meeting. that meeting is open for grabs. >> but of course the notes, he decided to seize the notes from the translator and not let any of his aides be with him, had to be a one-on-one meeting. tom nichols this morning said the president is speaking to judge jeanine and it is totally

lit. philip rucker, it may have been totally lit but it's raised more problems for the president, who sounded panicked in that situation. now you have aide. >> and a couple things, joe, the president just said in that answer you played that are simply not true, his meeting in helsinki with president putin of russia, that meeting, it was not transparent, it was not open for people to hear. president trump has not given a detailed, comprehensive, nuanced readout of what was agreed to between him and putin in that meeting and then there's the issue of the interpreter's notes that my colleague greg miller wrote about in that extraordinary piece over the

weekend. he said trump said to judge jeanine that this is a normal thing that presidents do, but that is not true. there is nothing normal about this. >> we saw twice in the interview with a friendly person that the president would not answer the question asked but asked a different question. the president putmeeting with putin, over two hours. >> and why wouldn't you talk about it? a meeting like that requires detailed notes so that you can implement what was decided. with judge jeanine, the correct answer to the question is no. it's not a complicated problem, that one. after the helsinki meeting, i know from my conversations with government officials that they

were desperately trying to find out what happened so that they could act on it, people at the pentagon, our top military commanders, what was discussed, what was decided. and in the end one source of information, believe it or not, was our intelligence agent of what was discussed in cables to their ambassadors and things like that. that's how people ended up finding out what happened. >> so the russians new the whol thing but our government did not. >> the were desperately trying it using russian exchanges to piece together what their president had discussed. >> amazing. >> all right. so we still haven't gotten to michael cohen. we'll get to that next. he's testifying before congress on february 7th, but wait till you hear what the president said about his father to judge

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welcome back. congressional leaders are warning president trump that his comments about an upcoming congressional witness could be construed as a crime. in that fox news interview over the weekend, president trump said this about the upcoming public testimony of his former lawyer and business associate michael cohen and cohen's family. >> he's in trouble on some loans and fraud and taxi cabs -- >> taxi medallions. >> in order to get a sentenced reduced, he said i'll give you information to the president. there is no information.

but he should give some information maybe on his father-in-law. that's the money in the family. he didn't want to talk about his father-in-law. he's trying to get his sentence reduced? >> what is his father-in-law's name? >> i don't know but you'll find out and you'll look into it because nobody knows what's going on over there. >> there's so many things to be said here. in response the democratic chairman of the oversight, intelligence and judiciary committees in the house issued a joint statement, quote, the integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the executive branch must be respected everyone, including the president. our nation's laws prohibit efforts to discourage, intimidate or pressure a witness not to provide testimony to congress. the president should make no statement or take any action to obstruct congress's independent

oversight and vettiinvestigativ efforts, including by seeking to discourage any witness from testifying in response to a duly authorized request from congress." wow. >> the justice department is part of the trump administration. the justice department, who would be making decisions on whether to investigate michael cohen's father-in-law. so with those facts laid out there, tell me, let's just change the fact pattern. what if it's a mob boss that is trying to intimidate somebody who has been announced he's going to testify against him and starts bringing up other family members and bad things that could happen to family members? >> i'm afraid that there really is no what if about it. this is in fact the behavior of someone who is trying to impede or obstruct a criminal

investigation. and woe've seen trump do this before, trying to deliver directions to subordinates through the press. it's reprehensible, it's inappropriate. it's another instance of obstruction of justice in plain sight. i think fortunately we're far enough along that people are calling him on it and it won't have any sort of an impact. if d.o.j. did not have an investigationnd way and was to open one today, i expect we would hear about that kind of improper interference. >> jeffrey goldberg, where are the republicans here? it witness tampering. for the two years that republicans ran all of washington, d.c., it seemed that all they were doing were cleaning up incidents like this. >> you know, who politics has a

lot of hypocrisy. this is interestingthere a lot of former lawyers in congress, both parties. that's the question i have. there's two groups of people, right, those who don't know better and those who know better. in the republican caucus there are a great number of people who know better, who in their practice as prosecutors, u.s. attorneys, as district attorneys, as lawyers, they know what's going on here. and someone needs to throw a brushback pitch at this kind of behavior obviously. >> and when you say they know what's going on, they know -- you can't help but look at rudy giuliani, who ran the southern district of new york for years. >> giuliani literally used to prosecute people for saying that. he would literally go after people who did that. >> i know. it's unbelievable. let turn from that story to

philip rucker, where we are in this government shutdown. it continues to to drag on, the longest government shutdown ever. doesn't seem to be any end in sight. you look at the poll numbers for donald trump and the republicans continue to plummet. where does this end? just how frustrated are republicans on the hill at donald trump's absolute failure to be able to negotiate? >> there's no plan. trump does not have a strategy or an exit planned from the shutdown, which is now the longest in u.s. history. he's been trying to the polling over the weekend shows he has failed to win the public relations battle here and now

it's a question of how does he get out of this bind. white house officials, administration officials, have been scrambling to tried to build some sort of an exit ramp that would allow the president to save face, get some funding for the border wall and reopen the government, but democrats are unwilling to budge on their on sis key senator, republican senator, perhaps reopen the government temporarily and have but it's not sure if that idea is going to get off the ground and as we sit here monday morning, i don't know when the government is going to reopen. >> and the numbers keep going down more and more. donald trump shuts down the government saying people are on his side. he's hearing from federal

employees. not true. less than one in 24% of americans absolutely support the and we asked the question this morning that we've been asking for two years now, how much longer do these republicans stick with him? you've got lindsey graham that tees shut the government down right now, right? this is the same lindsey graham who in 2016 said that if the republican party -- well, he said -- and he said if trump loses the republican party will be destroyed over a phony border wall. >> yeah. >> this is the same lindsey graham who in 2016 correctly said if the republican party nominates donald trump the party will be destroyed and it will be their own fault. that lindsey graham needs to get in a time machine and talk to this lindsey graham.

. this fall they had the worst beating politically since watergate, lost over 350 seats in state legislature -- it's the republicans that are going to be deep fending the senate seat and it going to get uglier until they make the break from donald trump, who is literally destroying their party. >> it hard to get into their mindset because it really hard to see how this ends well. it just doesn't. >> philip rucker, thank you for your reporting. joyce vance, thank you very much for your analysis and jeffrey goldberg, we'll be reading the atlantic report on "the 50 moments that defined the trump presidency so far."

and america's role on the world stage. that conversation is next on "morning joe." n is next on "morning joe." ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hear those words...

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a few weeks ago the president and founder of eurasia group and foreign affairs columnist and editor at large for "time" magazine ian bremer was on the program to discuss his book "us versus them, the failure of globalism" in which he argues that life has not improved for 40 years for the working and middle class in the united states. that appearance in part prompted the following tweet from tom nichols. "man, i disagree with ian bremer so much about this and what it means, we are going to have a discussion about this later in january." it is now later in january.

we get a preview of the discussion now. >> ian, let's start with you. you say globalism has failed not only americans but people across the globe. explain. >> i'm not talking about globalization. there's no question that goods and services have become cheaper and around the world we've created a global middle class that before was in poverty. but globalism, the idea of the united states opening borders and leading allies in providing security around the world, the perception among increasingly large numbers of people both in the u.s. and in almost every advanced industrial democracy, really excepting only japan has been that ideology has failed them. that's why you got brexit, which happened before the trump election in the u.s., that's why you've gotten trump and sanders and the euro skepticism across the e.u. >> let me stop you, though.

you say perception. let's talk about reality. does the reality match the perception? >> i think it doesn't 100% match the perception. it match tes it to a degree. when you talk about people who go to war in afghanistan and don't come back, that doesn't match perception. and the infrastructure really hasn't been there for the average american citizen. some of that is perception and some is reality. and social media drives perception of these things radically worse for all of these people. if it were just one simple thing and we could say let's fix that, it would be easier to address it. it's actually much more complicated. but it clearly is structural and

there is a lot of reality there. >> tom nichols, let's talk about the perception versus the reality. what is the reality in your mind? >> well, i -- ian, as you know, i found your book very affecting because we're both from massachusetts, both working class kids who moved from the decaying factory towns we were in, transitioned. so i'm very sympathetic to the argument that the speed of globalization kind of left people behind because of where things moved. on the other hand, there's a part of me that wants to put some of this back on middle and working class that wants all the benefits of globalization and then recoils from any of the cost with it. they want a very high standard of living, they want a lot of cheap electronics and the ability to move freely across the world and travel cheaply but they didn't want to look closely at how you achieve that. so i sometimes bristle at the

notion that globalism has failed because the united states set up an entire system, that woshs to our advantage and requires us to help and protect it and now americans are saying we want all the good things in that but we just don't want to do anything about it. >> let's say there is this global economy, as i think you're both saying. suppose the leadership of that system, call it what you will, passes to china, it's not an american-led globalization but a chinese one. how are we going to think about that? >> one is because the chinese are not becoming more like us as we get wealthy, they're doubling down on authoritarianism, state capitalism, you're going to eventually see a break and

you're going to have a bunch of countries that will have chinese standards and that's bad for everybody. so if we're talking about reversing globalization as a consequence of that trend and you see that with you look at the 5g fight. if that happens i think the one thing tom and i clearly agree on is that everyone's standards are going down. the solution to the problem of globalism failing is not an end to free trade. it's a better social contract for the average worker, the average member of the middle class that's falling behind. >> the problem is if that happens, the political fallout will be that the very people that are going to be affected by it are going to turn to the elites and say why didn't you do something about this? why weren't you out there

defending this system? >> why didn't you save us? >> why didn't you save us? why didn't you invest in this? why weren't we out there guarding that system that could make the passage of this kind of a system to chinese leadership much more possible. >> in politics there is no real argument in campaigns or formal politics in favor about this system. people in the elite take for granted that it's good and exists. and and the campaign certainly in 2016 you'd go around and lots of people would say things like "so why are we over there and over there? i don't get it. what's the point of this? is it worth the money"?

so how do you connect the argument over this policy more closely to people's actual lives and their participation in real politics. it's not a think tank debate, which is not a bad thing, but to make it more vital and build an actual constituency for it. >> i think one thing is putting on a more personal level. do you like e-mail? the united states defends the entire global system that makes that pop because i think well, sending an e-mail doesn't have anything to do with nato or the world trade organization or whatever. i think you have to bring it down to that level and say yes it does. the things you take for granted that you think are tremendously easy are in fact immensely complex and require management and defending in a very chaotic world, or that leadership passes

to somebody that you might not like down the line. >> i agree with tom completely about that, but so much harder to do in is the sense that so many different people feel disenfranchised and unmoored from that system. that requires a leader that can bring a single conversation back to people. that's perhaps the biggest structural fix of all. >> ian bremmer and tom nichols, where are you be today? >> at the carnegie council here in new york. it will be live streamed through their network at 4:00. >> that sounds great. we can't wait to listen. still ahead, we're going to be talking about what to expect as confirmati

confirmation kasie hunt will be joining us later. and donald trump just tweeted "getting ready to address the farm convention in tennessee. love our farmers, love tennessee. a great combination. see you in a little while. just one problem, the president is going to ohio. , the presiden is going to ohio

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have on the program today? >> there's a reflection of some of the growing frustrations behind the scenes of a lot of senate republicans that this is dragging onwards. it's affecting millions of americans, those 800,000 people, lots of pop-up food banks here in the d.c. area, a heart-breaking pop-up video, food inspections. they're hearing from their constituents about it. barring some sort of catastrophic event, either shut-down related or possibly mueller related, there's no way republicans are going to repudiate the president with a veto-proof majority. it comes down to what the president is willing to sign and

it doesn't look like he's willing to budget. >> nick confessore, the president puts out so many things in his twitter feed but one thing out today that we ought to correct is the president saying democrats didn't think daca was important enough to include in negotiations. it's worth noting democrats did include daca in negotiations the last time and it was vetoed by stephen miller. is there any talk about a grand immigration deal or is that something donald trump doesn't want? >> joe, there's always talk. the problem here is precisely the thing we were talking about earlier, his weakness politically, that this entire holdup is because he's too weak politically to advance his policy, the wall, the conventional way. his only hope of getting it done is to hold something hostage and jam it into this funding bill. that's why he's sticking with

it. he understands, i think, that this is a new washington where he can't get this done in any other way. it's the exact reason why chuck and nancy, as he calls him holding so firm. if they let him do it now, he'll keep throwing unpopular policies into these negotiations to jam them in because it's the only way he can progress. >> go ahead. >> i asked the vice president about this. he did a roundtable with reporters last week. he said specifically the president is waiting for the courts on daca. so the president's tweets about democrats taking it off the table is entirely incorrect. >> the republicans and donald trump, who has taken it off the table. david ignatius, how long can this president hold on? how long will his numbers even stay at 24% supporting him here when more and more tsa lines get

shut down and americans learn that congress could just pass a funding bill that would take care of those tsa workers? and congress could just pass a funding bill that could take care of fda food food inspectio that congress could actually pass bills that had nothing to do with this wall and those parts of government could continue forward? >> you know, joe, unlike you i keep waiting for the crack in republican support when people see the real cost of this. i mean, you know, worry about flying if air traffic controllers aren't getting paid or tsa personnel aren't being paid. it gets tube dangerous world. when will that crack come? it hasn't yet. the president is playing this all or nothing strategy. he has to have a total win or he feels he's coming out of this with nothing. he said over the weekend election has consequence, going

back to november 2016. it's true. elections do have consequences. we just had one in november 2018. and the democrats took control of the congress and, you know what? that's the thing that trump doesn't seem to understand is he has to negotiate now. he doesn't run all the government any more. if he's going to come out of this he's got to do a deal. >> david, for a man who wrote a book called "the art of the deal" and used that as his branding device for decades, he has backed himself into a corner. everybody in the administration knows he's backed himself into a corner. there's no deal to be had. his numbers are plummeting. democrats don't feel the need to give an inch on this wall. so where does it end up for donald trump and the republican party? >> well, he's insisting on the 100% deal that gets. he gets every dollar of the $5.6 billion that he was demanding,

and he's not going get that. his threat is i'm so reckless and irresponsible, i am going to take the government down. just watch me. and at some point reasonable people say, mr. president, you can't do that. then they intervene. i assume he'll come away and say i got a win because i stuck tough. but, you know, it's this all or nothing attitude that he has brought to deal making that's so frightening. >> kasie hunt, also this week, william barr is going to go capitol hill. the president's nominee to be the next attorney general. he's going to be facing, obviously, many tough questions. what's at the top of the list? >> i think you're going to see democrats several of whom on this committee are likely 2020 candidates who will be trying to make a mark here. they will focus most likely on a private memo that william barr wrote in june of 2017 about the

mueller investigation, arguing that it was fatally misconceived i believe was the phrase he used. that's generated a lot of concern. teen new chairman of the judiciary committee lindsey graham said he wants something of an explanation on it. senator feinstein has already asked him about this behind closed doors. she wants to get him on the record on that. i was almost expecting this hearing to be slightly sleepy but then the news over the weekend from the "new york times" and "the washington post," that sort of one-two punch of stories will elevate this and make it potentially pretty contentious. now on the flip side, william barr is supposed to replace matt whittaker the acting attorney general who democrats think has way more problems than william barr, so perhaps that's an argument in favor of moving this along. at the end of the day we expect him to be confirmed. >> coming up, by the way, the

president is tweeting this morning that nancy, cryin' chuck and democrats are to blame for the shutdown. i don't think people are buying this. >> actually, mika, less than one in four americans support the president. and his shutting down of the government. that's 24%. it's not nancy that's crying. it's a lot of republicans on capitol hill who are seeing their numbers go even lower. plus after the firing of james comey, the fbi was so alarmed that it began investigating whether president trump was working for russia. the "new york times" michael schmidt joins us with that new report. we'll talk to "washington post's" greg miller who wrote the other bomb shell piece from the weekend about trump's efforts to conceal his conversation with vladimir putin. "morning joe" will be right back with another packed hour. stay with us. stay with us i hear it in the background and she's watching too, saying

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you have groups that are wondering why the fbi never took the server, why haven't they taken the server. why was the fbi told to leave the office of the democratic national committee. i've been asking that for months and months and tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. where is the server? i want to know where is the server and what is the server saying? with that being said all i can do is ask the question. my people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others. 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. but i really do want to see the server, but i have confidence in both parties. i really believe that this will probably go on for a while but i don't think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. what happened to the servers of

the pakistani gentlemen that worked on the server. they are missing. what happened to hillary clinton emails, 30,000 emails gone. just gone. i think in russia they wouldn't be gone so easily. i think it's disgrace that we can't get hillary clinton's 33,000 emails. i have great confidence in my intelligence people. but i will tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer. he offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. i think that's an incredible offer. okay. thank you. at the tail end of that incredible two minutes president trump echoed an offer from vladimir putin made in private to help with the russia investigation.

there is no documentation of what was actually said behind closed doors because as "the washington post" reports donald trump went to extraordinary lengths to conceal it. after one meeting with the russian leader, trump reportedly seized the notes of the american interpreter. we'll speak with the person who broke that story, national security correspondent for "the washington post" greg miller. that bomb shell dropped just hours after the "new york times" reported that the fbi had opened an inquiry into whether president trump was secretly working on behalf of russia. and we also have with us one of the reporters behind that piece michael schmidt. on saturday the president was asked, point blank, have you ever worked for russia. nowhere in his 354 word answer did he say the word "no." welcome to "morning joe" on this monday, january 14th. with us we have columnist and associate editor for "the

washington post," david ignatius. we've got the president of the council on foreign relations and the author of the book "a world in disarray" richard haass. white house correspondent for pbs news hour. >> we'll get to those incredible reports in a moment but first let's give you the context, the political context of what both republicans and democrats are going to be working under this week. new polling showing that americans are clearly blaming president trump and clearly blaming the republican party far more than democrats for the government shutdown stalemate that continues to drag on. according to "the washington post" abc news poll, 53% say president trump and the republican party are at fault compared to 29% who blame the temperatures. similarly in a new cnn poll, 55% blame the president. only 32% say that democrats are

at fault. you break that down even further polling shows that independents point the blame at the president and not the democrats by a 53% to 23% margin. that 30% margin among independent, every republican on capitol hill knows, every republican leader across the nation knows those are devastating numbers. the republicans lost in a landslide in the house of representatives. their worst battering since watergate. and now it continues just a few months later. donald trump continuing to lead them lower and lower and lower in the polls. now women are blaming the president, the republicans by a margin of 35%. while men are blaming the president and the republicans by a margin of 13 points. when asked about the situation at the border nearly half said there's a problem, but not a crisis. 26% said it wasn't a serious

problem, but 24% only 24%, less than one in four americans said the situation was what donald trump said it was, a crisis. a majority of americans oppose president trump declaring a national emergency in order to build the wall. 66% to 31%. two in one oppose the president and the republican party shutting down the government to get extra money to build a wall. and cnn polling shows more than half of americans oppose building any wall along the border with mexico while 39% favored the idea. but this is where it gets serious for the president because this is a president who only cares about himself. take a look at donald trump's approval rating. new cnn polling shows only 37% of americans approve of his job performance. 57% disapprove.

that's up five percentage points since december. and that increase, that increase comes largely from whites without a college degree who, of course, have been a core group of supporters for the president. currently 45% approve while 47% of whites without college degrees disapprove. the approval rate is down nine points from last month and this is the first time ever that donald trump has turned into negative territory with the group. and even the pollster that the president points to as his validator, rasmussen polling finds his ratings are falling. trump's approval index dropped from negative three points to negative 13 points. at the beginning of january he was negative seven. mika, devastating numbers all the way around. but, again, this is something that we knew was coming.

this is something that bluntly we warned republicans they were going to shoulder the blame. this is something -- when donald trump said in front of nancy pelosi and in front of chuck schumer hey i'm not going to blame you, this is all on me, this is trump's shutdown. the american people were listening and nothing that donald trump or any of the republicans can do now trying to twist the facts to change any of that. >> you can see on chuck schumer's face in that meeting as he was looking down and trying not to laugh, are you this stupid because when he said he would own that shutdown and put it in his own words on tape for torch see he doesn't exactly understand how bad that shutdown will reflect on him. those numbers are about the shutdown. those numbers are about the wall. those numbers are about what's happening in washington. but what's also happening and what you could hear in the president's voice on saturday night appears to be panic. >> can we just say -- >> you can. >> you don't have to be a pop psychiatrist to listen to donald

trump's voice on fox news this weekend. and he was in a full on panic. >> yeah. >> full on panic, talking 100 miles per hour. you know, in that clip it looks like he got caught, he got busted and in front of vladimir putin so he had to trash his own u.s. intel agencies. but, boy, the other night he was in full panic. >> president trump and his allies reacted this weekend to the "new york times" report that the fbi began investigating whether trump had been working against american interests on behalf of russia. after the spring of 2017 firing of director james comey. according to former law enforcement officials and others familiar with the probe, counter intelligence investigators had to consider whether the president's actions constituted a athlete to national security unprecedented on so many levels. agents and senior fbi officials had grown suspicious of mr.

trump's ties to russia during the 2016 campaign, but held off on opening an investigation into him in part because they were uncertain how to proceed with an inquiry of such sensitivity and magnitude. agents also sought to determine whether mr. trump was knowingly working for russia or had unwittingly fallen under moscow's influence. no evidence has emerged publicly that mr. trump was secretly in contact or took direction from russian government officials. the president responded to the story in parts of the 12 tweets that he sent on saturday morning, 12 tweets saying the investigation was opened with no reason and no proof. he later gave an interview to fox news. >> are you now or have you ever worked for russia, mr. president? >> i think it's the most insulting thing i've ever been asked. i think it's the most insulting article i've ever had written. and if you tread article you see

that they found absolutely nothing. but the headline of that article is called a failing "new york times" for a reason. they've gotten me wrong for three years. they actually got me wrong for many years before that. >> donald trump also called the foork times after his election the crown jewel of american journalism, something like that. but, again, we'll put that to the side and bring michael schmidt in now. michael, why now. talk about developing this story and why is it that here we are at the beginning of 2019 that you finally had enough to go with the story? >> well, in many ways it's something that we've been trying to understand for a year and a half, since the investigation was launched in may of 2017. to sort of understand the contours of it. we were helped along the way by testimony that had been provided to congress by the fbi's general counsel, his top lawyer at the time who talked about how the firing of comey so unnerved the

fbi. they did not understand what was going on. they knew there was this larger russian investigation. they knew that there was a possibility that the president was trying to interfere with it. and if he was trying to interfere with the russia investigation what was motivating that? what was driving that? was that his connection to russia? there had been these questions about what he said about russia on the campaign trail. the fbi knew about his trip during the miss universe pageant to russia. they knew about the steele dossier and they took that momentous decision in may of 2017 to open the investigation, which was then taken over just days later by bob mueller when he was appointed special counsel. >> so, michael, tom nichols wrote for the "usa today" that it actually would have been surprising given all of the strange behavior exhibited by the president during his

campaign on this show, actually, in december of 2015, moving forward. and through the first couple of years of his presidency he actually said that it would have been strange had fbi not made an inquiry into whether there was any in connection between russia and donald trump that might impact america's national security. can you tell me what sort of division there was inside the bureau on whether this should be launched or not >> the bureau was sort of looking at two questions. they are looking at a question of obstruction, simple criminal obstruction. was the president breaking the law by trying to interfere with the investigation, and then the counter intelligence question, the national security question, something that would not usually result in a criminal charges but trying to answer what are his ties and why is he acting that way? it is true, he did do a lot of things before may of 2017 that led, that made investigators very suspicious. the problem is to open up an

investigation on the president you have to clear a particularly high bar. as we've seen it creates a lot of problems for the president when you do that. so you better have enough evidence and feel good about what you're doing before you go forward with that. it was the firing of comey that led them to that point, that made them feel comfortable to open an investigation into him. >> still ahead on "morning joe" "the washington post" greg miller lays out his new reporting that president trump is trying to keep secret his communications with vladimir putin, even from his own staff. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. ack.

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welcome back to "morning joe". we mentioned the "washington post" report from over the weekend that said president trump was working overtime to make sure there was no evidence of his conversations with vladimir putin. so let's bring in the "washington post" greg miller

who broke the story. >> this is a president who decent really listen to his aides going into these meeting, and then this story is about how he often conceals what transpires in these meetings from those same aides afterwards. that would be disconcerting in any circumstance for a president meeting with any world leader, but, of course, the context here is russia and the russia investigation and the enormous cloud which is a term the president himself uses, the cloud that hangs over him, the suspicion that hangs over him because of these questions about his relationship with vladimir putin and his motivation for so much of what he says and does. >> do you have any information about what happened to the notes? anybody in the administration, do they know if he destroyed the notes? do they know if he stored them somewhere? what can you tell us about that? >> i'm not sure what became of

the notes. you know, the other officials in the administration only learned that trump had taken the notes late where they tried to go to this interpreter just to ask questions about what had happened. they were looking for a read out of what had happened in that meeting. and the interpreter is the one who says, look, i was told not to talk about it. the president took my notes. and this was just sort of astonishing to these other officials. these are officials in the trump administration. this included his top russia adviser in the white house who is on this trip but nevertheless excluded from these meetings with vladimir putin. >> so, this interpreter, is it possible this interpreter may possibly be brought to capitol hill and questioned by the oversight committee? >> well, i think that there certainly is that impulse right now. of course, in our story we quote

the incoming chairman of the house foreign affairs committee saying he plans to establish an investigative subcommittee to look exactly at this question of trump's meetings with putin and what has happened on those occasions. but, of course, it's also a sensitive thing because interpreters, they are not president's advisers or aides. they are there for a very narrow impartial function and so there's also some concern about dragging an interpreter before congress to reveal the communications of a president. >> let's bring in richard haass the president of council on foreign relations. richard, it seems a bit ridiculous to even ask because we know the answer is no, but we need to check it off your list as well. have you ever heard of a president having a one-on-one meeting without any aides and

only having an interpreter with him and then having that interpreter deliver back to him the notes with the order to not talk about anything that was mentioned in the meeting? >> not surprisingly, joe, the answer is no. in my experience and i've worked in four administrations you have an interpreter when you need one and you have an official, usually the national security council aide who takes notes. there's an important difference between an interpreter's notes and official's notes. when i look at an interpreter's notebook they write the odd word. they do simultaneous translation. basically to keep up with the conversation. when you have a national security council aide sitting there he or she essentially reconstructs the entire conversation. they know the policy. they know the subtlety of what's behind this or that statement. what is the context of it.

the fact that the meeting took place without national security council aide in and of itself is unprecedented. >> bizarre by itself? >> pardon me. >> i said that's bizarre by itself you would meet with vladimir putin without a foreign policy expert from your administration. that in and of itself should raise so many red flags. you're exactly right. but then to destroy notes or to get notes from an interpreter afterwards, my gosh, talk about a guilty mental state. that certainly has to raise so many flags inside the mueller investigation. >> you need the notes to do all sorts of follow up and things like that. the bureaucracy needs to respond to the meeting. you have the meeting that's floating out there and the u.s. government doesn't know what happened. so it can't follow up. it can't correct on it. this just feeds this larger story.

let's just put it out there. from day one of this administration, no one has been able to explain, we're in the land of david ignatius novels exactly what is motivating this president on russia. there's no strategic rationale for it. i can't defend what the president is doing on foreign policy grounds so it shifts us to all sorts of things coming out. >> coming up on "morning joe," as far as a top economist at the white house is concerned, the government shutdown is like a vacation for the thousands of workers out of a job. that is a tough pill to swallow for one worker who has to now ration her insulin. she says quote i can't afford to go the er. i can't afford anything. i just went to bed and hoped i would wake up. that's next on "morning joe".

huge share of government workers would take vacation days say between christmas and new year's then we have a shutdown so they can't go to work. so then they have the vacation. but they don't have to use their vacation days. then they come back and they get their back pay and in some sense they are better off.

>> white house chief economic adviser comparing the government shutdown's impact on nearly 800,000 federal workers to a free vacation. yet they have zero money and zero that they are getting on their paychecks with no end in sight. i don't really know how to put into words the heartlessness of this administration as they try to characterize this shutdown. what are your thoughts moving forward and for all of these workers, how do they know what tomorrow holds in terms of their pay? >> the answer is simple. they simply do not know. people are incredibly anxious. they are incredibly stressed. just to run through some of the things we've been hearing at pbs news hour. there's a woman postponing her surgery because she can't afford to have it without knowing if she will have the money to take care of herself. people putting off buying a house. people putting off moving into a section 8 apartment because the department of housing urban and development aren't doing what

they are to do. people who need food stamps are worried. federal government said they will fund those food stamps. people in miami are anxious about whether or not they can do this. so over and over again across the country we see people who are trying to make do and trying to figure out how to really live their lives as this government shutdown stretches on. i want to add federal private contractors, people who are not federal workers but contractors, they work across the dmv, they won't get back pay. a lot of families that work with the federal government, this is not a paid vacation. this is not a vacation at all. no one that it talked to at all has characterized this as a vacation. >> a lot of people have been asking me and this is the question because obviously the president has been brought bipartisan solutions from this even at times when both sides agree he won't. should democrats and republicans do something to get around him? can they? then add on a subquestion to

that can they add anything about the workers who don't get back pay? >> right now congress can't do. they can do something for workers who don't get back pay but the bill passed that's focused on federal workers. they have not given back pay to federal contractors because they are seen like a different part of the agenda or different part of the workforce that congress decent deal with. in terms of what congress should do, people want to, including republicans and president's own party want to pass a bill and overcome a veto by president trump and get the government open. that's going hard. it's really a political conundrum. the president feels backed into a corner because he was about to take a deal where he would get some funding for the wall and also say hey we didn't get all the money we wanted to get but this is a start. conservative media pushed back on that. rush limbaugh, laura ingrahm, these people told the president you lost here and he froze and

said i don't want that deal. so we don't see mitch mcconnell in these negotiations. we see kevin mccarthy, vice president pence. congress passed a bill when president said i would sign it and then he didn't sign it. right now everybody looks backed into a corner. >> coming up on "morning joe" bob mueller will play in a big role in tomorrow's confirmation hearing for william barr. will the nominee for attorney general promise not to impede the special counsel? that conversation is next on "morning joe".

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. regardless of recommendation, i was going to fire comey. knowing there was no good time to do it. and, in fact, when i decided to

just do it, i said to myself, i said, you know, this russia thing with trump and russia is a made up story. it's an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election. >> that was president trump back in 2017 tying the firing of fbi director james comey to the russia probe, according to the "times" report that we've been discussing this morning, that was one of the two incidences in which the president tied the firing of comey to the russia investigation helped prompt the counter intelligence aspect of the inquiry. the other was a letter mr. trump wanted to send to mr. comey about his firing, but never did, in which he mentioned the russia investigation. even after the deputy attorney general rod rosenstein wrote a more restrained draft of the letter and told mr. trump that he did not have to mention the russia investigation. mr. trump directed mr.

rosenstein to mention the russia investigation anyway. on the heels of this report in the "new york times" our next guest puts forth the following thought. observers of the russia investigation have generally understood special counsel robert mueller's work as foe cussing on at least two separate tracks. collusion between the russian government and the trump campaign on the one hand. and potential obstruction of justice by the president on the other. but what if the obstruction was the collusion or at least part of it? joining us now, editor-in-chief of law fair and msnbc legal analyst benjamin wittis and also with us, professor of law at georgetown university, attorney neil. kasie hunt and nick confessore are back with us as well. benjamin, what if they are connected. it does appear all of this ends up in one place which is that the russians potentially have

compromising information on the president or they have some hold on him. >> or at least that the fbi was sufficiently worried on that score in the spring of 2017 to take the unprecedented step as far as we know in american history of opening a counter intelligence inquiry against the president of the united states. >> do we know is that investigation still open or is it closed? >> what we know is that in the days following the fbi's decision to open this investigation, rod rosenstein turned around and appointed bob mueller who inherited every component of the investigation that the fbi was conducting that jim comey had announced in front of congress in march, which is to say all aspects related to

russian interference in the 2016 election as well as any coordination or collaboration with that effort on the u.s. side and any efforts to obstruct the investigation. so we know that bob mueller inherited this investigation. we know that he pursued it aggressively in the sense that we have a lot of evidence of white house people being, you know, interviewed by mueller about the president's interactions with law enforcement, and we know that it is part of something that the president's lawyers have kind of responded to aggressively. so we know it was investigated. what we don't know is what, if any, conclusions he has drawn. >> neil, do you think the counter intelligence investigation is over and also given these stories, the "new york times" piece, "the washington post" piece, all these pieces of information that are coming out, is someone trying to send somebody a

message? and what would it be? >> we don't know whether the investigation is over. mueller runs a famously tight ship. so everyone is speculating. but counter intelligence investigations in general, when i saw them at the justice department went on for a long time because sources and methods it takes time to develop an investigation. now i think that the big point here is what ben is suggesting which is that the two parts of the investigation are colliding. the two remarkable stories over this weekend are not only that the president is under suspicion from the fbi of possibly being a russian asset but also as you were talking about earlier in your program, trump has been meeting with putin one-on-one and having those notes destroyed and i can't imagine an innocent explanation for this. whenever i have a sensitive meeting either when i was in the government or out i always wanted a witness. why? because otherwise i would be worried about compromise. i would be worried about the

other person in the meeting would say you did x or y. the only people that don't have witnesses at their meetings are the guilty. >> this is a really, really important point that neil just made. if you look at the "new york times" story about the predicate for the investigation which as you described in your introduction was about the bedminster letter that was written but never sent and then the lester holt interview, there's these sequence of things that happened after that including the revelation that the president had, you know, boasted about the firing of comey to the russian foreign minister and ambassador saying that he relieved a lot of pressure on himself in doing so. and then up to and including these numerous meetings to which neil refers in which, you know, he won't even let senior government officials know what was discussed or talked or have notes of the meeting.

and so all of those to go back to your question would independently themselves drive counter intelligence concerns on this score. that doesn't answer the question of what happened to the investigation, but i do think following neil's point, if you go -- if you look at those incidents and you say the fbi was concerned enough to open this inquiry in the first instance, would the subsequent activity alleviate or exacerbate concern? i think that question kind of answers itself. >> so, neil take these facts and reframe for us which things about the investigation that we know about publicly now seem more clear? what mysteries might be resolved kind of knowing that there might be a different focus here and does the question of why the president would act this way become somehow less important than the fact that he did act this way?

>> honestly i think that's too hard to answer at this point given the dribbles of information we have. the dribbles we have are really quite extraordinary. a sitting president being finishingered by the fbi. you have prosecutors in new york saying the president ordered the commission of various crimes with the michael cohen campaign finance. so all of these different strands together are very serious. i can't answer your specifics about where the counter intelligence piece of the investigation goes but i do think what we're seeing is teeing up to the attorney general, to mueller the question what do you do when you have a president who has been accused or looks like could be accused of very serious felonies and, indeed, apart from felonies acting against the interest of the united states. >> highly unusual. there's growing interest among some in congress over a potential deal that would have involved donald trump putting another trump tower just outside of russia's capital. two congressional aides have

told nbc news that house and senate investigators are to concussion on the project which president trump sought to complete before his inauguration. the russians named the proposed developments manhattan and a trump tower would have been its centerpiece. trump's partner in the project would have been the russian oligarch. he's believed to have close ties to russian president vladimir putin, and is the same man who promised dirt on hillary clinton which led to the infamousine 2016 meeting in the new york trump tower. a lawyer to oleg declined to answer questions. he said he project the oleg project drawing fresh scrutiny following the revelation in

court documents that president trump's former lawyer michael cohen lied to congress about his dealings on a separate competing russia real estate project. kasie hunt, elijah cummings was on "60 minutes" yesterday and he was talking about just how many, how many different tracks there are going here in terms of trying to issue a subpoena or figure out what questions to ask. it's going to be so tough. >> this is a great example of something that we may be learning about simply because democrats took back the house and it's been how many weeks since that's been the case. this seems to me to be pretty significant because of the connection that you laid out just there. yet another example of the level of closeness that this president had to this russian man who also offered dirt on hillary clinton through that intermediary.

benjamin, my question to you about this counter intelligence investigation this plays into it this new information that nbc news is reporting, there's some question about whether the fbi thought trump was a witting or unwitting russian asset. what difference does it make legally if you're the president and his team trying to sort through this and defend the president. >> that's a really interesting question. so the fbi has this concept of a co-optee which is roughly equivalent to what the russians used to call a useful idiot. which is somebody who, you know, may or may not know that they are being used by a foreign power, but is not -- is something less than an agent. and, you know, so one of the important distinctions is that, you know, being an agent of a foreign power engaged in

clandestine espionage of some sort is a crime, right? being an unregistered foreign agent is a criminal act. behaving a way in which you're being used by a foreign power may not be a crime. it may cause real national security problems remember but it may just be, you know, you're doing your thing for your reason, it's really useful for them, and so they are finding ways to support you, to help you. so it may be actually a profound legal difference because it raises the question of whether any criminal acts were committed or not and so one of the things the bureau is always interested in when they see somebody who they think is operating on behalf of a foreign power is this is a situation where ben is waiting on behalf of the foreign power is he an agent or where he's operating on behalf of a foreign power because he's an idiot and he's just kind of doing it effortlessly.

those are important distinctions. >> i agree with ben. but i do think -- look i'm a lawyer. we love as lawyers to ask is something criminal, is something not criminal, is it witting or not witting. even if it's unwitting at that point think about all the actions the president has taken after all of these revelations in his kind of constant attempts to shut down the investigation, to discredit it and the like. look, this is not a president who is shy of playing national security. he's shut down the government over a fake, bizarre claim about the wall and hypothetical view that some of these immigrants will come and hurt americans. you have the most concrete think imaginable and our main adversary putin is engaged in an attempt to undermine the united states democratic system. what's his answer? discredit mueller and point the finger the other way. there's something very weird. >> yeah.

you're absolutely right. unwilling, useful idiot. he can perhaps claim that from the get go but then the efforts to deflect and discredit those were willing and those are on him, every step of the way. i want to get neil and benjamin's take on william barr. i guess neil, i'll start with you. do you think that if he refuses to recuse himself from the russia investigation that he still should be confirmed? >> i don't think he should be confirmed. look, i mean, the confirmation of any attorney general, and i've had privilege to serve in a high ranking position. it's a big deal in any administration. but in this one in particular for reasons we've been discussing it's massive. bill sbar really known for two things. one, publicly he's known for shutting down tern contra probe by clamoring more the pardoning of those individuals. it's not a message we want to

send. so why wild pardon bill does not strike me as the ideal candidate. number two, mika, your question illustrates privately he's known for something else which is for campaigning for the job of attorney general by providing 19-page memo which is ridiculous and says basically that the president is above the law unless a congressional statute expressly includes it. so the murder statute which just says it's a crime to murder wouldn't apply to the president and things like that. i mean this is not -- at this moment in time bill barr is very smart but this is not the right person for attorney general. >> got it. >> so i spent some time last night reading the transcript of the confirmation hearing for attorney general during watergate of elliot richardson. and i was amazed by it, how germain a lot of the discussion that richardson had with the committee was to the

confirmation proceeding that's going to happen tomorrow. i would just say a few things that he said. one, it's famous he said he would only dismiss the special prosecutor for extraordinary t second guessing the judgments of the special prosecutor to not review of "vice" was one of the funniest we've ever read. that is next. i hear it in the background and she's watching too, saying [indistinct conversation] [friend] i've never seen that before. ♪ ♪ i have... ♪

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i get a sense you're a k kinetic leader. based on ininstinct. >> i am. people have said that. >> very different from your father in that regard. now, maybe i can handle some of the more mundane jobs, overseeing bureaucracy, energy, foreign policy. >> that sounds good. >> oh, my god. it was so good. christian bale's award-winning portrayal, boy was it ever, of former vice president dick cheney in the movie "vice." joining us, film critic for the

washington free beacon. sonny bunch. his review is entitled vice, portrays dick cheney as america's dad, and that's why conservatives might love it. they might. >> thank you for being on. i'm so glad i read your review because mika and i immediately said we needed to go see it because all we heard was it was this cartoon caricature of dick cheney, but actually, it was a little more layered than that, wasn't it? >> yes. i think that really gets to some of the things that make cheney a good dad. i mean, i do actually think there is a very kind of real and human portrayal of him. certainly in a personal way. now, look, the film is filled with rambling conspiracy theories about halliburton and koches and all that but if you just focus on what happens with the cheneys, i thought it was pretty great. i've actually watched it twice

now. the first time i saw it with a bunch of film critics. they were kind of iffy on it. it's getting very mixed reviews i'm surprised by. but then the second time i saw it in a georgetown theater with a bunch of conservative friends. and we had kind of a blast. in that speech, there's a speech at the end where cheney says how many of these attacks would you have let go forward because you don't want to treat these guys meanly. we kind of cheered at the end. it was an odd moment. >> yes, and we'll tell people if they wanted to know their reaction that you've got some cheering, they need to go to "the washington post" and read the review. what i thought was so fascinating about the movie and the review of the movie that you said, this was really -- it was a movie and especially the closing scene. it brought me back to simpler days when dick cheney would say things, mika would be deeply offended and i would consider her naive. i ste

instead of us being against trump all the time. but they'll look at it completely differently than a lot of liberals. >> sure. the director shoots it to make cheney look as evil as possible. he's darkly lit. he looks very imposing. if you just listen to the words, very compelling stuff. >> it's multilayered in that i feel -- i come from a family e ve very divided on that presidency. one of my brothers worked in that presidency. so i had sort of a interesting viewpoint on it. i feel like you had certain preconceived ideas about dick cheney. they may be bolstered. but you also are giving a little bit of more nuance as to how this all came together. it also left me just downright afraid at what we had going on now in the presidency and in the

state department. >> well, there's something to be said for kind of cold calculating confidence. >> right. yes. there is. there definitely is. >> i have one important question for you. i thought about this question all night. it's very important. is "vice" a christmas movie? >> oh. no. despite the fact it was released on c krs, definitely not a christmas movie. ? that's too bad. >> are you sure? >> not a christmas movie. it was so good. it was well done. sonny bunch, thank you so much for being on the show. kacie hunt -- >> sonny, thank you so much. again, read sonny's work. also the review at the "washington post." thank you for encouraging us to go see this movie. >> absolutely. it is time now for final thoughts. we'll give that to kacie hunt. what are you looking at? >> well, like we were talking about before on the shutdown,

i'm just waiting for the president to say something different. on "vice" i really enjoyed it too. it's almost like two movies in one. i kind of just wanted to watch the story of dick cheney and his family. i felt like i learned -- so nuanced and interesting. i heard some of the family members didn't necessarily love it. i'd love to have a word with liz cheney about it. >> liz cheney at the end obviously may not have liked it. i will say though it shows dick cheney as a loving and dedicated husband and father. it shows lynne cheney also as somebody that really did an extraordinary job taking a ne'er-do-well, as they said, and pushing him along. i thought it was a far more sympathetic look than k conservative figures are given. >> stephanie rule picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika, thanks, joe. hi there.

i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today, starting with a russian connection. a bombshell report revealing the fbi launch add counterintelligence investigation into president trump after he fired james comey out of concern he could be