jeff sessions recused himself, which he shouldn't have done. >> i think he probably did the right thing, recusing himself. >> the president released seven tweets writing, bob mueller is totally conflicted. >> i have the utmost respect for bob and his public service. >> i call it a witch hunt. it is a witch hunt. >> i don't believe mr. mueller would be involved in a witch hunt. >> the president's retweets showed a list of democrats including deputy rod rosenstein behind bars. >> i have a very high opinion of rod rosenstein. >> i have president putin. he just said, it's not russia. >> i believe the russians interfered or attempted to interfere with the election. >> donald trump and william barr don't agree on everything but they do seem to agree a sitting president cannot be indicted. members of congress not so sure

about that. good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is wednesday, january 16th, along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor, mike barnicle, historian, author of "the soul of america" and vanderbilt, jon meacham. msnbc news and contributor. a former department spokes mann and now justice security analyst, matt miller is with us and reporter for "the daily beast," betsy woodruff. in a moment we will get to what we learned from testimony from trump's nominee to be attorney general. why the public may not get to read report mueller's report after all. we go live to london where prime minister theresa may suffered the biggest defeat for any prime minister in history. brexit may be confusing. one thing it is not, it is a mess. that, we can agree on.

first, the government shutdown, with no end in sight, both the house and senate say they are canceling next week's scheduled recess unless there's a resolution. right now, that appears unlikely. according to the associated press, president trump showed no signs of backing down during a conference call with supporters yesterday. trump reportedly said, we will stay out for a long time if we have to. we'll be out for a long time. he added, people are very impressed with how well the government is working with the circumstances that we're under. >> actually, no. more polls came out yesterday that showed people are not impressed with it. in fact, americans are overwhelmingly still blaming donald trump and donald trump's republican party. >> the ap goes on to report behind the scenes the administration and its allies on

capitol hill are warily eyeing the next payday for next tuesday's deadline when they need to prepare the next round of paychecks for workers who have been seeing zeros on their pay slips. the white house had invited a group of rank and file democrats to lunch yesterday to discuss trump's proposed border wall and the shutdown. none of the democrats took trump up on the offer. the "new york times" reports the shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the u.s. economy than previously thought. doubling projections of how much economic growth is being lost each week, the shutdown continues. revised estimates from the council of economic advisors show the shutdown is beginning to have real economic kwepss. the paper notes quote the analysis and other projections from outside the white house suggest the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth

and could ultimately push the united states economy into a contraction. meanwhile, a growing number of federal workers face deepening anxieties about when they will see their next paycheck. yesterday, the trump administration ordered thousands of furloughed federal employees back to work without pay as the shutdown drags on. nearly 50,000 employees will have to return to work to fulfill key government tasks, disbursing tax refund, overseeing flight safety and the drug supply. posting today, you will not be receiving your regularly scheduled paycheck. to the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time in our nation's history service members in a u.s. armed force have not been paid during a lapse in appropriations. our friends, over at all in put together this string of local

reports that shows how widespread the harps have been. >> it he's been hard. it's been a struggle, just trying to make ends meet. >> 18 year federal government employee williams sweeping her garage, shut down from answering calls at the irs. the single mother of two worried. >> my daughter is a senior this year. i have senior fees, i have graduation, and she's also going to college next year. >> reporter: hundreds of coast guard personnel lined up at alameda. most of these military phoning are still working without a paycheck. >> i'm running out of money. i still have rent and car insurance and necessities. >> reporter: matt and his wife are both epa employees, both furloughed. is there a deadline in your head, you're thinking, we're okay until here. >> i would think we could get through until the end of the month. you never know. >> reporter: resorting to

touching their savings, this local family not wanting to be identified said the tips thursday were not helpful by any means. >> garage sales and baby-sit, i think was demeaning. >> it will all be over soon. you can make it a couple more weeks. no? when february's rent is due, we can't pay it. >> willie, we see the suffering that's going on across the country, of course. many people focusing on the fact members of the armed forces not being paid for the first time ever in the lapse of appropriations, air safety possibly compromised and endangered and food safety possibly compromised and endangered. this is a shutdown the republicans never wanted. it's a wall republicans never wanted while in power for two years. how much longer can mitch mcconnell hold them? >> this is outrageous.

you listen to those stories and it's been outrageous several weeks. this is real. not a political fight in washington, not a game about tweets, impacting people's lives. there's a food pantry in new york city called common pantry, a great organization. over the weekend, they're feeding federal workers. i know people who work there and came up with tears in their eyes, choked up embarrassed they're coming to get food from this place because they didn't get a paycheck on friday. the president of the united states, if there were humanity inside of him he would listen to these stories and people he might consider this is ridiculous and a way to open pieces of the government and continue to have a discussion on the wall, if that's what he wants to do. the truth is, as you pointed out, the american people are not pointing out the argument that there is a crisis at the border so grave it warrants the suffering. just over half of all americans

believe the president is to blame for the government shutdown, a new maris poll finding 54% say president trump is at fault. 31% blame democrats in congress, compared to 5%, who blame republicans in congress. 7 out of 10 americans say shutting down the government in order to reach an agreement on policy is bad strategy compared to 22% who say that is a good strategy. this is the fourth poll showing president trump shouldering more of the shutdown blame than the democrats. this is the president's case, there is a crisis, national security crisis, humanitarian crisis at the border and we will keep the government shutdown until we get the wall. the american people not buying it. >> and joe, he took the ownership of the shutdown in front of television cameras with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi saying, i will own this

shutdown. is he trying to figure out a way by repeatedly inviting them to the white house when repeatedly they have already been tricked two or three times. a bipartisan solution has been put in front of him. he's gotten up and said bye-bye and had temper tantrums. >> does he think if he keeps inviting him the shutdown will belong to them? what is in trump's mind? >> he doesn't think, he doesn't plan. an aide said the president's response to having a 40s plan for this crisis was basically, he quoted mike tyson, who said everybody has a plan until they're punched in the face, maybe is his justification for doing absolutely nothing. mike, there is no strategy. there is no 40s. this is a day trader who

continues to make the situation worse for himself, make the situation worse for his party politically. it's just devastating for the republican party politically. we saw the real life consequences for americans, not only the 800,000 that are federal employees but a lot of contractors and their families. you go down the economic food chain and up the economic food chain, there are millions of americans who will be hurt and you now have economists saying this will have a significant impact on the united states economy. >> joe, there is no doubt that this shutdown is on one person. his name is donald j. trump. he wanted this shutdown, he's got this shutdown. this is clearly more prove unfortunately for the united states of american, this is a president of the united states lacks an empathy gene. he does not understand whole

families, more than 800,000 people hurt here, the extended families of these people, people who own smar variety stores and supermarkets in areas they live, are now suffering a loss of business. i don't know about you. you get here from nashville, tennessee. my sense is, matt and i were talking about it, if the tsa and air traffic controllers who are shut down, went home, refused to work because they're not getting paid, this thing would be over in about two hours. >> it might not take that long. tlerl, i think right now, for all the powerful stories of employees suffering and beginning the ripple effect and military folks it hasn't really sunk in. it's still, for most people, this is trump exaggerating the border. then they think, well, there are people coming and i don't like the democrats either. a lot of that going on.

you shut down commercial aviation in the united states which stops the economy and a certain level of somebodyialability, i think you're right. it's 90 minutes -- social ability -- it would be an interesting question on trump. should i be ronald reagan, should i fire them? you can't fire the tsa simply asking to be paid for the work they're doing. it feels to me, once again, this is important, it's about -- from the democratic perspective, this is about a principle. we do not want to put up a closed sign on the border itself. think about just the last 96 hours or so, we've gone from knowing -- finding out the fbi opens a counter-intelligence investigation into the president of the united states being an asset of russian intelligence,

the government shutdown over a fundamental principle of the definition what it means to be american, are we open or are we not? this is kind of another week in america. part of what we all have to do, it can get wearying and you can become inured to the scale, the attorney general, all these stories would have been enormously important but they come so rapidly, i do think it requires an act of patient ascent to listen and follow this. >> john, i've actually agreed with everything you said, except one thing. that was you had said it was a shutdown over whether we are going to remain open as a country or closed. it's not even over that. it's a seinfeld shutdown, a shutdown over nothing. republicans and democrats agreed by unanimous consent to keep the

government. this is rush limbaugh and ann coulter attacking the president of the united states and he was being so insecure he listened to those two people and panicked and kept the -- americans do not want this wall. they said they wanted to tune it to the point of $1.6 billion. republicans don't even want the wall. this is donald trump and donald trump alone and not even for policy reasons. he was ready to give it up. this is just him being intimidated and frightened of some talk radio pundits. >> sometimes, i wonder, given the emphasis we all have on both culturally and what i do for a living, maybe we talk too much about the president. no, we don't, as it turns out. >> right. >> because it is this immense

force and the fact we elected someone and character is destiny at once narcissistic and incompetent, a hel of a combination, the question is how stubborn is he? i didn't think he would last long and find some way to declare victory. what do you think the way out of this is? >> i agree with you. the tsa finally not showing up for work. willie, when that happens, it's actually republicans going to and from their districts that are going to be complaining, their constituents are going to be complaining. there will be a hit in the economy the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time. i think that's probably unfortunately the way that we get out of this, when it happens, i suspect we have republicans that have to override donald trump's veto, and then donald trump will run against republicans in congress and democrats in congress if he

seeks re-election in 2020. >> we ought to celebrate those tsa workers working right now, this morning at this moment not getting paid, and people at the fda and united states coast guard for god's sake, protecting our shores for no pay. matt miller, is there the obvious point, the republicans owned washington the last two years and probably should have gotten the wall done before they lost the house. it doesn't look like there is any movement. we're nowhere. the president is where he is, said i'm not moving off $5.7 billion. nancy and chuck schumer put down their marker at 1.3 and mitch mcconnell is sitting the whole thing out. >> these things move very slowly and very quickly at the end. in terms of a political stalemate, you're right, there's no movement resolving that stalemate right now. you can see under the water things are starting to collapse for the president. his poll numbers going down.

some members in the senate, those up for re-election urging the president to take it up and open the government. you see the white house seeing this is hurting economic growth and will have an impact on economic growth this quarter. you look at the underlying signs, they're all bad for the president. one of the things about crisis management, what i do for a living when i'm not here, the hardest thing for people to understand when you're in a crisis and look down the road and understand there's only one way out of this or two ways out of this, i have to do something unpopular, something i don't want to do, something that hurts me. better to do it now than a month from now, when i've taken a beating in the press or hurt my company's reputation. when you're in politics and dropped your poll numbers and had real impact on the country, the thing that's happening, when you have a real impact on the country, the 800,000 federal workers directly impacted and

others impacted if this does harm economic growth the white house itself says it's starting to do. eventually there will be a collapse in political support. if the president doesn't cave, the way out is for republicans in congress to cave. >> and the president speaks for those furloughed workers when he says, they're with me on this, they want the wall. >> i'm not sure he can turn this into a positive branding experience, which is what he's used to doing. betsy woodruff, let's look at these polls. new polls show just over half of all americans believe the president is to blame for the government shutdown. it also says it's taking a toll on donald trump's standing with the public. this month's gallup poll finds the president's approval rating is down to 37%, his worst rating in a year, with 59% disapproving. among independents, trump

dropped to a 31% approval rating, dropping eight points since december. in a quinnipiac poll, 33% approve strongly and 8% apryouft somewhat. the poll also found the rating of president trump's handling of the economy is dropping. 49% approve. 48% disapprove. that's the highest disapproval for his job on the economy since his first seven weeks in office. a majority of voters do not think donald trump is fit to serve as president. 53% of voters saying, no. 44% saying, yes. 57% of independent voters find trump unfit to serve. >> two other quick data points. first, donald trump is the only president in the history of

polling to never go above 50% his first two years in office. his numbers have been abysmal and he has set the record for the worst two years in the history of american polling. that's number one. number two, get this -- republicans should get this, too, with all their for a mongering on the border, americans actually believe democrats can do a better job securing the border than donald trump and the republican party. >> betsy woodruff, take your pick. damage to the republican party, damage to the presidency and potential impact with these numbers to trying to get this government reopen again. >> these kind of numbers cause a lot of anxiety for the people working on trump's 2020 re-election bid. one data point from the quinnipiac poll you're referring to, it was striking when i was reviewing the numbers this morning. we remember the speech trump

took about a week ago on the broadcast networks, about his case nor the wall. it was a demagogic address and important for the white house, how they were making the case for this shutdown devastating for hundreds of thousands of americans. quinnipiac found after that huge pivotal effort, only 2% of americans changed their thinking about this wall. it basically had no effect. a negligible effect at all. that was their hail mary and it didn't succeed. another number from these polls important, less than 10% of democrats think trump is fit to be president. that might not sound surprising but that number is important to people working on trump's re-election campaign because in part, part of the reason he won in 2016 because he did so well in democratic strongholds, michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania where historically democrats are responsible. trump does not have a road back

to the white house in 2020 unless he can peel off some of those traditional democratic voters. if the cohort of people who voted for obama and then voted for trump, who played a key role at making him president in the first place are right now looking at this shutdown and thinking maybe we made the wrong choice, that's a big problem for his re-election bid and being taken seriously by those in the election orbit. >> explain, if you can, why is it republicans are willing to break with donald trump when it comes to sanctions, nato, russia. but when it comes to this government shutdown having a devastating impact to a lot of people in their own district, devastating impact on their own poll numbers, the president's poll numbers, they're not willing to move? >> it's a really good question. i don't know there's an easy answer to that. part is because the president has been so aggressive and vocal

about this shutdown, we do know many senators and republicans of congress who live in very trump friendly districts and states are quite sensitive to trump on the issues he's the most vocal about. trump has yet to vocally publicly say he thinks the united states should pull out of nato. even though he's made his view clear about some of these sanctions particularly on russian oligarches, he hasn't really been working the phones on capitol hill when it comes to that question. we have a big story out this morning on an ally of paul manafort's and close ally of putin's, one of the world's richest man and it was voted to keep sanctions on him despite they're trying to get the sanctions off these two companies he is connected to.

republicans are part of the reason they took that procedural step. a number of republicans peeled off, broke ranks with treasury despite the fact that treasury secretary mnuchin was on the hill to make the case to take sanctions off these companies. on issues where trump himself isn't making a ton of noise, not sending lots of tweets and not making key campaign issues, the issues, were perhaps, trump may feel a little bit shy, uncomfortable with his views, especially on the republican session. thus far, only a few republicans peeling off. >> thank you so much. again, this is a shutdown about nothing. just a couple weeks ago, republicans voted with democrats unanimously to keep the government open and move the debate forward. here, you have again people

suffering all across america. the united states government shutdown, and our economy, people inside the white house saying this could hurt the united states economy all over a shutdown about nothing, about a wall that republicans didn't even want up until two weeks ago. >> sounds like a trump business in the months before bankruptcy. still ahead on "morning joe." sure, william barr broke with trump over the quote unkwoeft witch hunt. there were several key areas where the president's pick for attorney general said things about the russia probe that would be welcomed by the white house. plus, two more senate democrats jump into the presidential frey. we'll show you what kirsten gillibrand and sherrod brown have planned. ve planned i hear it in the background and she's watching too, saying [indistinct conversation]

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i have known bob mueller for 30 years. we worked closely together throughout my previous tenure at the department of justice. we've been friends since. i have the utmost respect for bob and his distinguished record of public service. when he was named special counsel, i said, his selection was good news and knowing him, i had confidence he would handle the matter properly. i still have that confidence today. given his public actions to date, i expect that the special counsel is well along in his investigation. at the same time, the president has been steadfast that he was not involved in any collusion with russian attempts to interfere in the election. i believe it is in the best interests of everyone, the president, congress, and the american people that this matter beresolved by allowing the

special counsel to complete his work. >> but there were several other times during yesterday's confirmation hearing when the president's nominee for attorney general, william barr, avoided making commitments about how he would conduct himself related to the mueller investigation and the president's conduct. >> will you commit to make public all of the reports conclusions, the mueller report, even if some of the evidence supporting those conclusions can't be made public? >> you know, that certainly is my goal and intent. >> will you commit that you will explain to us any changes or deletions that you make to the special counsel report that's submitted to you in whatever you present to us. i will commit to providing as much information as i can, consistent with the regulations. >> you said that a president

deliberately impairing the integrity or available of evidence would be an obstruction, is that correct? >> yes. >> so what if a president told a witness not to cooperate with an investigation or hinted at a pardon? >> you know, i'd have to know the specific. i'd have to know the specific facts. >> would it be appropriate to go against the advice of career ethics officials that have recommended recusal, and can you give an exactly or situation or scenario you would go against a recommend digs you recuse yourself. >> there are different recusals, some are mandated and others judgment calls. >> let's imagine it's a judgment call and the judgment by the career ethics officials in the agency are that you recuse yourself. under what scenario would you not follow their recommendation? >> if i disagreed with it.

>> on what basis would that street agreement be? >> i came to a different judgment. >> on what facts? >> the scenario. >> on what recommendation would you not follow the recommendation of the ethics committee? >> if i disagreed with him. >> in some ways he is an obvious choice for attorney general. he is well qualified and knows the department and traditions. he came in and said a lot of the right words you expect to hear from an attorney general nominee. there are some concerns you highlighted. when he talked about the end of the mueller investigation whether there will be a report. we still don't know if there will be a report. if there is one, he talked about

other things like a decholination or prosecution memo that they write and send up the chain if they decide not to indict someone or release an indictment. they're always confidential. the thing is under their own rules the president can't be indicted. it's hard to see that scenario outlined where those documents remain confidential is the applicable one here and why democrats push for more transparency. i think his answers would still be somewhat acceptable if it wasn't for the memo he's written, it gives you concern not just that he has written the memo and expressed views about executive power, but he gave it to bob mueller's boss and others at doj if rod rosenstein had been fired, he gave it to his outside attorneys, mike pence's attorney and jared kushner's

attorney, sharing it with all the men and that raises questions about his impartiality he didn't go far enough to address. the tell is with ckamala harris that -- and deputies attorney generals all committed not only to seek the advice of them but he wouldn't commit. >> he certainly said i will make a great deal of deference to ethics officials that made the decision that maybe i should not be involved with it. there would have a be a very compelling reason for me to ignore him. he didn't do that. he said, i'll do what i want to

do and disagree if i want to disagree. i understand it has been the guidelines of the justice department some time a sitting president cannot be indicted. in this case, when you have a possible illegal act the subject of the possible indictment, and that illegal act could be argued, that illegal act helped elect that president of the united states, then, suggesting that a president of the united states cannot be indicted in all cases, that is -- that suddenly becomes a guideline that is meaningless, because it was the illegal act that could have possibly caused the election of the president. >> i think that opinion by the department of legal counsel is suspect and wouldn't hold up in the courts. i also think it's an academic

debate because they're the ones that hold the opinion an get to decide whether to bring charges or not. it's an important discussion to have. if the president can't be indicted. for that opinion to not be a farce and the president above the rule, it means at the end of the department's investigation they find evidence the president committed a crime, or not a crime but violation of oath of office, something barr indicated yesterday trying to end an investigation that would impact on him, it's incumbent of the department to turn it over to the body that is responsible holding him accountable. congress. he has criminal exposure in the mueller probe. there's actual evidence of criminality in the new york justice probe where they know he committed a real crime. there is a real question at the end of both of those probes, what happens. i would like to have heard from

barr, maybe we won't make that evidence public but if we find he committed a crime or violated oath of office, we'll make that available to congress. >> and also committed a crime in this is campaign to get elected as president of the united states. mike, you talk about far as, you have trumpists writing opinion pages, people formerly respectable conservatives demanding robert mueller have more transparency and he release information for the american people to read in the middle of his investigation which they know is something that he's never going to do. yet, here we have mr. barr, who i believe did well yesterday, but we have mr. barr suggesting he may not even be transparent

with congress or the american people with the final report, i must say, in an otherwise strong job on capitol hill yesterday, it's something that really causes me grave concern, that they would not even allow, he would not even allow his attorney general, robert mueller, to be transparent with the american people. >> mr. barr had a pretty good day yesterday in front of the united states senate. he answered questions specifically. he answered questions that gave some relief to people who felt he would perhaps interfered with bob mueller. he cleared that up. there were two flags as just mentioned. one is reluctance to agree to recusal and the other is reluctance to agree to release the complete mueller report. one of the interesting things about his testimony to many people, was that it came as such

a relief to a lot of people, given what's happened to the justice department. we have had a series of premeditated attacks on one of the most vital institutions of our country, department of justice and the fbi and people are saying, wow, this is great. now, we have a guy who won't ruin the department more than it's already been ruined. >> he's been attorney general. >> yeah. >> it's been 25 years, 27 years. richard thornburgh went to run for the senate against harris whatford in '91 and bar took over the end of the first bush administration. yes. joe knows this well, in conservatism, barr is of a particular time, through a federalist -- i suspect he's of the federalist society, clearly very conservative washington lawyer. he looks like an attorney

general because he was an attorney general. at this point, in trump's washington, you know, that goes for a lot. at least he's not judge piro. >> whittaker. >> or the one who's in office. >> judge sessions. >> again, donald trump's the only guy who can make jeff sessions look like oliver wendall holmes that he may have done. i think it's fascinating because all these tributaries will come rolling into the same place, russia, mueller, stuff we don't know about, the campaign stuff. i think it's a fascinating moment about presidential power. i understand the basic idea you can't indict a president and it would be a political target and be constant. is someone really above the law, saying you can't indict and wait until after he's gone, out of

office to try him? the founders basically wanted to entrust to the impeachment process. they wanted to make it difficult and didn't want a parliamentary system. that's why treason is hard to prove. sometimes people think, oh, god, does it really matter who my congressman is, senator, because the boat goes on anyway? yeah. it does matter for moments exactly like this. >> matt miller, if you were an american watching at home, you don't know bill barr or his history, he says he will protect the mueller investigation, it should go on. he will tell the public. he does not believe it is a witch hunt. he said he believes jeff sessions did the right thing recusing himself. he's been attorney general.

he was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote by a democratic senate in 1991. this looks like a conventional choice to become attorney general. i guess what the senators in the room, 57 republicans and 47 democratic senators, it would be a surprise if they didn't confirm. they have to decide whether the man in the room is bill barr or the 20 page memo he put out in june is the real barr. >> it is a tough question. it's whether you trust him or not. i'm not going to defer to partial justice officials, you have to trust me to do the right thing. there are reasons to not trust his judgment and reasons to think he would be admirable in that position. it was asked is it unethical, the wrong thing for the

president to do to interfere with a probe by the department of justice. he said it would be a violation of the president's office. >> the president has done that with mike flynn and the new york investigation, when he asked why more wasn't being done to control the investigation into him, his kids, his important business. that was an important answer. it sets the stage for something to be done about it. he said if the president were to offer a pardon in exchange for a witness's silence, that would be a crime. those are important things. we have to see how he applies those facts. the question is, do you trust him or not? hard answer. >> a fascinating situation. we will turn overseas where the situation in the uk is perhaps as complicated and troubled as things here at home. >> i've always believed the best way forward is to lead in an

orderly way with a good deal and have devoted much of the last two years negotiating such a deal. >> in the last two years she's only had one priority, the conservative party. her principle of delay and denial has reached the end of the line. she cannot seriously believe after two years of failure she's capable of negotiating a good deal for the people of this country. >> that was british prime minister theresa may and the leader of the opposition, labor party, jeremy, after the deal went down in a crushing defeat. the meeting is to be held this afternoon. all of this 10 weeks before the divorce date. joining us now, catty kaye, and

in london, bill neely. >> bill, let's start with you, with news from london. it's always said if you're in a bad mood, go see a tragedy because when you leave a comedy, you're just as depressed as you were before. in this case, it's very good medicine for americans to see what's going on in london. we aren't quite as depressed about how terrible things are here. >> you're absolutely right. there are parallels on both sides of the atlantic, if you want to listen to gridlock, you have just listened to it in the british parliament, two tribes not listening to each other, country divided, people's trust in government ebbing away. for this government in the uk, a complete humiliation. we expected theresa may's deal patiently negotiated over two years information britain to leave the european union would

be defeated. this was unprecedented. the last time a government lost like this was 1924, by 166 votes. this was by 230, a complete and utter humiliation. not in any other country at any other time or company, a chief executive with losses like that would be a door by midnight last night. that will not happen for theresa may. yes, in about 10 minutes time she will begin to face questions, then six hours of a debate, then a vote of no confidence in the government which she will win because her party doesn't want to see the opposition take power. it's a crazy situation. the question then is what next and nobody knows. she must come up with a plan b by monday. she'll be scrambling around the opposition party, what do you

want? she'll go to europe and said, can you give us any compromises. it is a complete mess. it almost makes what's happening in washington look pleasant. >> it is a complete mess. one of the problems is bill speaks of two tribes. it's not even quite that simple. there are members of labor who support brexit, conservatives who support brexit. the cross currents are pretty difficult to pin down, aren't they? >> absolutely right. this is the problem. there are splipts across shot through politics and families and the labor party and conservative party have been split for years. it has been split for 40 years. first of all, david cameron trying to neutralize his

eurosceptic wing by calling this referendum, won narrowly, 52-48, 2 1/2 years ago, and then theresa may saying, okay, you voted for brexit, i will give you a hard brexit. that hard brexit was defeated last night. now, what? is it a soft brexit? is it no brexit? we know march 29th, 70 days time, by law, deal or no deal, britain will leave the european union after 45 years of membership unless there is a delay unless they come up with plan b the european union says, we will give you a bit more time to work this out. frankly, in brussels and paris and berlin, they have their hands on their head looking at the uk. somebody mentioned the word,

shattered freud delighting in the misfortune of your opponent or enemy. in britain, they always said, we're the sensible ones. we can work things out in a calm and measured way. we have great diplomats, strong and stable. they are looking now, strong and stable? you have to be joking. it's a farce. the tragedy in this country everyone knows it and nobody knows a way out. >> bill neely, thank you. appreciate it. >> catty, we have been hearing that a couple years. nobody knows the way out. i always told people and said it on this show, when mika and i came back from london two summers ago, people were saying, you think you have problems there, we have problems that don't just involve one man like donald trump.

it is a system and there's no way out. two years later, it's gotten even worse. >> either way the [referendum seemed simple, we've been shackled to this organization and don't like the rules that governs the size of our tomatoes and that allows french and polish and italian people with no control over our borders and we want to leave. we found out over the past 2 1/2 years, the process of rolling back globalization and these intricately wound organizations is much more complicated. it might be a salutary thought for donald trump as he's looking at nato, it's very difficult to get out of these organizations because they are embedded in so many facets of our lives. the european union says, you can

leave but can't cherry pick the best. you can't control your borders and have no tariffs. britain is saying, we want to leave and cherry pick. 72 days to go, britain still doesn't know what its relationship will be. >> the ft editor for the united states said following may's huge defeat, britain has a second realistic chance to reverse. i implore agitated brits to implore for the vote. it can help reverse it. mika, we'll talk to catty and others over the next hour or two and see if that is a possibility. >> stay with us. still ahead, president trump has said time and time again there was no collusion with russia

during his 2016 campaign. each time, he's met with vladamir putin, trump has fueled suspicions about their relationship. new reporting on that coming up. . to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best to make you everybody else... ♪ ♪ means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight and never stop. does this sound dismal?

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matt miller we got earlier this week our umpteenth report robert mueller was wrapping up his investigation and ready to go, then we learned he is still working with rick gates and a couple of months to work with him before sentencing and the man cooperating with the investigation. what's your sense from the outside, where this is, and how long this goes on with bob mueller? >> i think we are close to the end. you saw john coarse is scheduled

to testify before the grand jury on friday. it seems he and stone will be going before the grand jury. this memo with gates you can read mueller wants two more months with him. rick gates didn't just work with the trump campaign, the inauguration. there is an investigation in new york that just started. >> as a long-time business partner of paul manafort. i know we will see you on day two with the confirmation hearings with barr. we will go to one town that relies on federal funding. and robert costa joins us with what he's hearing from senior republican lawmakers what must be done to reopen the government, if anything. "morning joe" will be right back. e right back the way i was made to. it nourishes and strengthens my joints

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hey, can you spot me? come on in! find your place, today, with silver sneakers... included with many medicare plans. call the number on the screen now or visit getsilversneakers.com it's been hard. it's been a struggle trying to make ends meet. >> 18 year government employee laquisa williams sweeping her garage, working for the government of the irs shut down. >> my daughter is a senior and i have senior fees and graduation and she's also going to college next year. >> reporter: hundreds of coast guard personnel lined up in almeida for the food give away.

>> i am running out of money. i still have rent and car insurance and car payments, necessities. >> reporter: matt and his wife are both epa employees, both furloughed. is there a place in your deadline, we're okay until here? >> i would guess we can get through the month. >> reporter: resorting to their savings, this local couple not wanting to be identified said tips were not helpful. >> have garage sales and baby-sitting i think was embarrassing and demeaning. >> we are told you can make it a couple more weeks. no. so, when february's rent is due, we can't pay it. >> some local news reports from across the country that show how widespread the harps have been due to the government shutdown. now, at day 26, with no end in

sight, welcome back to "morning joe." it's wednesday, january 16th, still with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor, mike barnicle, historian and author of "the soul of america," jon meacham. bbc, katty kay and from the cia and department of defense, nbc analyst, jeremy bash. political reporter for the "washington post" and moderator of washington week on pbs, msnbc political reporter robert costa with us as well. there is a lot of blame the president would like to not put on himself, joe, for this shutdown. i think he's trying to wait it out to see if we can brand it on chuck and nancy. we are at a historic time length now and people are really hurting. >> you look at everything that

happened over the past four or five months. republicans, if they are interested in surviving the future, should do the same. everything the president has done and everything he has touched, to borrow from rick wilson died politically. he tried to gin up hatred towards immigrants, tried to make up a caravan crisis that never came to fruition. he tried to turn people against non-white americans. what happened? democrats had their biggest victory and republicans had their worst defeat since watergate. now, look at the polls that have come over the past week over the president's shutdown. this is the president's shutdown. he took credit for it. he was the one that pulled republicans back when they voted with democrats to keep the government open and keep paying tsa workers and keep paying our coast guard men and women and keep the food inspections going at the fda and continue normal

operations of the federal government, air traffic controllers, the people who keep us safe. the president of the united states was the one who singularly decided he was going to shut down the government. following up on what jon meacham said earlier today, we wring our hands sometimes, do we talk about donald trump too much? no. actually, the media doesn't talk about donald trump too much because he is a one man wrecking ball. >> yes. >> bob costa, there are a lot of republicans on capitol hill starting to see the numbers, tilting overwhelmingly towards donald trump and the trump republican party. what are you hearing on capitol hill, especially in the senate where right now deliberations matter most because if republicans move like they did yesterday on russian sanctions, the house will move and the government will be open and paychecks start going again to

members of the coast guard to tsa agents and air traffic controllers and other people that keep america safe. >> last night at the capitol, several moderates of both parties say they plan to release a letter saying it's time to reopen the government and restart negotiations. they don't have a deal to propose but want to pit on paper. and the problem solvers group heading to the white house to discuss. the real story, all these bipartisan talks, they said they believe the bipartisan groups won't get anything done. the leadership is deadlocked. the only thing is for the american government to become outraged. some kind of breakdown at airports with tsa agents not

showing up, only something at that level because of the paralysis in washington would enable the shutdown to end. >> we heard what concerns mitch mcconnell the most is protecting his members so he can remain senate majority leader. he promised us a month ago there wasn't going to be a shutdown. he passed a bill to keep the government open. the president took credit for the shutdown. you have joni ernst, susan collins, corey gardner, go down the list. a lot of republicans. they're going up in twinge states in 2020 and have to start being concerned, especially joni ernst. what pressure are they putting on the president, the administration to get things moving? >> joe, you're talking about

concern for a general election. talking to republican senators and their aides, they remind me six years ago this month, senator mcconnell drew a primary opponent in kentucky, matt bevin, and all the senators are often keeping their eyes behind their shoulder saying who will maybe primary me if i break from donald trump. does mcconnell want to see the shutdown end? his aides say yes. but they believe he can't get away from donald trump and put hisself to the challenges. >> at what point does mitt romney hop into this conversation? we heard he and other republicans say this is a fight between the white house and democrats. they have to make a deal. we can't convince democrats it's a good deal. the white house has to do it. how long does this go on before he gets in the fight if ever. >> mcconnell, say anything about

him. he has a good temperature taker of his own conference. right now, many of his members are frustrated, but not hopping mad. you have senator collins and gardner and senator mccowsky taking more of an aggressive posture to shut down the government. only once a precipitating re-vent, national fury will he truly act. he is someone that doesn't cut a deal just to cut a deal. he cuts a deal when he thinks it will help him keep in power and help his members stay in power. >> meanwhile, jeremy bash, we've been talking about the real world impact, the commandant of the u.s. coast guard posted this yesterday. today, you will not be receiving your regularly scheduled paycheck. to the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time in history the u.s. service members have not been paid.

that's admiral schultz talking. continue the work and the job you've been doing but you have to do it without pay. they're not the only ones asked to do that. >> and that there is a national security emergency and crisis that necessitates all elements of the u.s. government to protect ourselves from this massive invasion of people in flip-flops 800 miles from the border. what does he do? shuts down the government and denies pay and eviser rates the morale. you saw that letter of the fbi agents association decrying the fbi employees. the coast guard's men and women who actually do patrol our borders and sea borders and close jin waterways. the tsa, transportation security agency, which is responsible

primarily for securing our airports and aviation systems. if in fact the rationale for our shutdown is security, the shutdown is only undermining it. this week, reporting president trump went to extraordinary lengths to keep his conversations with russian president vladamir putin secret. it led the "new york times" to disclose an off the record call with the president. it happened in july of 2017. trump met with putin in hamburg, germany, after which trump pulled up his notes and sat in a chair with putin with no others present. writing after air force one was heading home from germany,

argued the russians were falsely accused of interference and insisted a few things be off the record and noted a few things in public in notes aside. he eraids russian hacking three times in that putin denied involvement. he said if we did, we wouldn't have gotten caught because we're professionals. mr. trump said, i thought that was a good point because they're some of the best in the world at hacking. asked how he weighed mr. putin's denials against the evidence presented by james comey, john brennan and james clapper, he said mr. clapper and mr. brennan were the most political intelligence chiefs he knew and mr. comey was -- >> so -- >> whoa. >> jeremy, it is of course stunning it does what the president does especially with vladamir putin. it's also stunning how arrogant and how blind vladamir putin is

to the capabilities of the united states' military or united states intel communities. you look at the robert mueller indictments, not only did we catch him red-handed, we knew which officers were at the keyboards and what buildings they were in, we knew what keystrokes they used to try to hack into the united states government and hack into the dnc. we knew everything about them. we know the code names. it was like an open book, like we were opening up the ceiling and staring right into vladamir putin's office. the arrogance of that statement and quite frankly the ignorance, some would say, certainly not me, some would say? the stupidity of the president of the united states to believe that denial is breathtaking. >> we had evidence that showed

up in the indictment of the officers, this assessment has gone all the way back to january 17, in the early days of the presidency, it came forward russia had meddled in our election in a way to favor donald trump. trump never wanted to accept that assessment because it undermined him. the way he's been pro putin, parroting putin's lies has been only, i think, confirmatory that the president doesn't believe our intelligence community and credits the kbg spy master over our own agency. and this secret diplomacy than what he did and told the aides to go away and had a one-on-one meeting with vladamir putin and went to the cameras afterwards

and said, i believe them over my own intelligence agencies. >> katty kay, over my lifetime, which has been considerable, i have never seen a front page headline as i saw in the "new york times" on friday that absolutely staggered me and brought home so etch, so many events all-in-one story the president of the united states under investigation by the fbi for perhaps being suspicious that he was an asset of the soviet union, russia. today, we have government by paralysis here in the united states. the government of great britain collapsing. the president of the united states implying he would like to withdraw from nato. all you can think of is this is the greatest gift vladamir putin has ever been given in his life, the collapse of western political societies he sought to

achieve quietly behind the scenes, and he's achieving it. >> over the last 70 years, britain and the united states have been cast as the two adults in the room when it comes to security. it has been an anglo-saxon alliance to foreign policy, to a large extent, kept the world safe since the end of the second world war. donald trump seems to be pulling back from that and seems to be giving a large leash to vladamir putin. britain is so consumed with brexit negotiations it can't be on these issues. and every time he's asked about intelligence agencies, he dismisses it as too political. the people who launched the fbi into the counter intelligence problem, they're too political.

vladamir putin is never too political and he always seems to be prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. it's really hard to think the president of the united states could have been an asset wittingly or unwittingly of the russians. the question has to be asked because there are data points to do this. these are not people in the fbi asking these questions, they are doing it because the data points led them there. that is why the report in so stunning. >> there's such a fire hose of trump news each day, it's hard to stop and ask how important it is and significant it may be. a show we had yesterday hasn't gotten a lot of attention, that the president sought to withdraw the united states and wanted to get out of that 70 year alliance. why would he want to get out?

would that be a gift to vladamir putin, or enough, 70 years in this alliance. that deserves attention. >> let's be honest, do we really think donald trump could separate nato from nascar? >> no. >> honestly. so something is going on. the focus on nato has been interesting from the very beginning, you talk about the debt ratio. i'm as dorky as anyone else in america. >> you are. >> thanks very much. >> we all agree. >> thank you. i brought america together on that. >> i wasn't following the debt ratio with nato. it's an interesting thing to focus on. it's this weird moment historically, where though it's still a nuclear age, we're kind of back to a pre-world war i,

great game influence. it's hard to sometimes think about this. what putin wants, what every russian leader wanted, since peter the great. more land, more territory. ukraine is a gas station. this is what he does. this is what russians send to do in their national character. liberal democracy, western democracy was what was, dare i say, of the wall against that. this is a persistent attempt, usually persistent for trump to bring american influence -- there's a great line -- here you go, mika, when the first nato people, lord is made, for catty to -- pug is his name. barnicle knew him. i think they were in

kindergarten together. >> yes. >> the point is to keep the germans down, russians out, and the americans in. right now, the germans, because we're out of that calculus, but the russians want in. >> jeremy bash also, what's so fascinating is that -- fascinating and troubling but also a very compelling argument that donald trump actually is listening to vladamir putin and doing the bidding of vladamir putin. you can look at what he said about nato that did not concern him until two years ago. you can look and see he is repeating the proch ganda vladamir putin spouts out about afghanistan. and why the soviet union went to

afghanistan and they collapsed. and look at what he said about montenegro international conference, it came directly from the mouth, propaganda machine of vladamir putin. we have a president of the united states who keeps mindlessly parroting vladamir putin about topics he knew nothing about until he started meeting vladamir putin. >> this is fundamentally what drove general mattis to leave the secretary of defense. he watched how we were yielding to russia on a variety of issues and announce the pullout of syria, which was a total gift to the kremlin. it emboldened russia, emboldened iran and assad, russia's client. and allowed a land bridge to be built from northern tehran through iraq and syria and

eventually north lebanon. i think jim mattis and other hawks are looking at this, what has become foreign policy in the year of trump. we have ultimately yielded it to vladamir putin. let's talk about william barr. what was the summons to mr. barr's testimony on the hill? >> so many of confirmations now are partisan exercises, people are running for president. republicans in the senate expect mr. barr to be confirmed, not probably by an overwhelming vote because of the nature of politics today and they're at each other. many democrats remain skeptical of mr. barr wondering if he will protect the investigation, a careful lawyer and treaded very

neatly not mentioning any firm promises how he would handle the mueller report. >> katty kay, one quick question, what was said yesterday, that now would be a time for a re-vote. this would publish the best time for a re-vote, would be the best time for a re-vote on brexit? >> if you asked me six month ago, i would have said it was not going to happen. because it was defeated so crushingly yesterday, everything else now is back on the table, that includes the chance of a re-vote. i would say the chances of a hard brexit, crashing out of the european union with no deal at all are probably a little higher than chances of second referendum. everybody is looking at those two policies in britain. >> katty kay and the others, thank you for being with us this

morning. bearing the burdens of the government shutdown. to huntsville, alabama, for the latest there. latest hear those words... breast cancer. we thought that we would travel to cancer treatment centers of america. we left on day one feeling like we're

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honest the residents in one alabama city in the heart of trump country, an estimated 5,000 workers in huntsville, alabama, and marshal's space center have been impacted by the shutdown slowing down the economy of the rocket city. joining us now is hans nichols. good morning, hans. >> we are here in rocket city because we want to get a sense

how the shutdown is affecting real americans, especially those that may have supported president trump. you have 40,000 workers here. what we're hearing talking to these furloughed workers, people are starting to hurt. there was a shift over the weekend, when people missed that first pay period. we talked to everyone from pawn shop workers to preachers and people are getting frustrated and also getting angry. >> i know it's really piss off a lot of people. these are veterans retired and it is not affecting their retirement check. they're not to the point it's really hurting them. it doesn't affect me but it's affecting so many other veterans. that's a shame. not just veterans but everybody. coming down, president trump, to the point to where you're willing to debate with the

democrats and get this thing resolved. continuing it any longer is only going to hurt hurt and hurt. >> reporter: just about everyone we talked to has some connection to someone who's been furloughed or is working without pay. it gives you a sense how wide this is in the community. at pawn shops, they've seen almost 100% increase of people coming in that need cash that quickly. they're thinking about selling valuable items. you get a sense this is their first time coming into the pawn shops and their heads are held low. >> when a furlough hits, a lot more of civilian government contractors get affected. people don't think about that. they think about veterans or army reserve and military personnel. they don't think about the subcontractors and contractors that are employees.

when a furlough hits of this magnitude for length and they're talking about months and stuff, people get scared because they have mortgages and stuff like that. >> reporter: one story we heard is a group of ladies went into that pawn shop, about five of them, trying to assess it out. they've never been in a situation they needed cash that desperately. a little later, one came up, head held low, and put her wedding ring up. it's how much they're hurting and when will it be a pressure point, does trump's own base force him back to the negotiating table. >> hans, thanks so much. joining us, columnist and editorial writer for the "washington post" and msnbc contributorer and former advisor to former president george w. bush, ko creator and president

of the circus on showtime coming back next week, mark mckinnon. >> mark mckinnon, what's so heart breaking about this, you hear stories about people going into a pawn shop and pawning their wedding rooms, not getting paid, members of our armed forces. every shutdown is difficult and tough. in '95/96 there was a shut down balancing the budget where the first republican congress in 40 years wanted to force that to happen. in 2013, it was over the affordable care act. whether that was the right thing to do or not can still be debated on both sides. here, you have people suffering for no political reason at all. you have a phony wall only 1 in 4 republicans supported when they were in power, and you had an agreement between republicans and democrats to keep the

congress open and donald trump was for it until two talk radio hosts told him he was weak. >> je. >> this is just cruel. absolutely cruel and for no good reason. >> the question, joe, is where is the breaking point going to be? huntsville is one of the few places. it's in alabama, right, trump country for sure. there's not a lot of other places there's a lot of federal workers. ultimately, i think president trump says, this is a win, i will save our country and security. i think it will ultimately be a national security threat around the issue. fundamentally the wall is about national security. because of the national security argument and security problems arise, that's where it breaks. >> americans are feeling real pain, so much pain because of

the political shutdown in washington, literally over nothing, you look at what's happened the past month. let's talk about the political damage being done, continued political damage done to the republican party and republican brand. they're getting slaughtered in absolutely every political poll. >> i may push back just a little bit. this is not a good situation for republicans. flurry getting blamed more than others. it is longer than the shutdown of 2013, but the numbers for republicans have not sunk like a rock as fast as they did in 2013. part of that is the timing of the shutdown. the beginning weeks happened over the holidays people were already taking time off work. with the first pay period being missed, you will now see more americans saying, this isn't some issue in washington, those

morons on capitol hill who can't get anything done, now, it's starting to affect me. 82% of americans said they had not yet been personally in convenienced by the shutdown, in past numbers. the moment something happens at an airport, that's the thymes the numbers get ugly. that's when you see the numbers medical for republicans get worse in a real way. >> donald trump is moving to his lowest point yet. he's down 37% in gallup. 59% disapprove. he's down in absolutely every poll, the overwhelming majority of americans blame trump republicans and not democrats. where is the silver lining you're pointing out for republicans? >> it's not that there's a silver lining for republicans, when i hooked at the polling

averages, trump's points dropped half a week each week of the shutdown, not good news if you're the white house but not crisis level yet. i believe after this first week missing the paycheck, you will see that 82% saying i haven't been inconvenienced by the shutdown. that number will get worse and as it gets worse you will see the president losing more than half a point a week. we're at the inflection where the slow bleed has potential to become a gushing wound. >> jonathan kaye part, the president is down in the polls in every poll. 37% in the gallup poll. 37% in the cnn poll, only two points away from his lowest ever. he was in the low 40s before this began. >> yeah. it's good to hear kristian break

down the numbers. when you hear a president say he is willing to let this go on for months and years, maybe the president should take this into account. the issue is for the american people to understand, this is not an abstract problem, not something happening somewhere else or washington centric problem. this is quickly becoming an american problem. people should know the chiron was there that he's the pentagon correspondent, i want to tell you about my sources from the state department, i haven't heard this talked about enough. people are worried about local staff funding for people around the world, their funding will run out at the end of this month. there's concern when local employees don't get paid, the

line of responsibility goes up because those people will sue for their salaries. diplomatic security funding is expected to run out by february. this is not right now a domestic problem, quickly going to become an international problem for the united states. >> 24 hours ago, former senator, claire mccaskill was sitting in that seat exactly. she was in the middle of this shutdown fight when she left office a couple weeks ago. she said the only way out of this is for mitch mcconnell to step up and do something. mcconnell says, i have nothing to do with this. this is for the democrats and the president to make a deal. do you think there is some point he ultimately steps into this? >> i think he's doing everything he can. sure he's giving lots of options. the state of the union is coming up in 10 days.

if i'm the president, that was one of the high points of my administration last year, i don't want to defend a shutdown at the "state of the union" address. >> i don't know if he minds that, does he? he seems to be enjoying this fight. >> i think he would actually relish that. >> i wonder if this isn't all about donald trump seeing a possible fight for impeachment coming up. if he has a hard core 35, 36% of supporters, he wants to keep them through 2019. he knows in 2019, mueller is coming after him and the democrats in the house of representatives are coming after him. maybe, mike barnicle, he would rather keep that 36% on ice than actually try to be seen as rational by the other 36% of americans. >> you know, joe, one of the

more interesting aspects of the shutdown, in this business and the business of politics, we rely more and more on polling data to take the pulse of the country, the temperature of the country, how people are reacting to the shutdown. while it has an impact on a certain segment of people and blah blah blah, stuff like that, the striking thing about this shutdown is the distance between elected officials specifically in the united states senate and the lives of ordinary people they represent. it's incredible. if you lose your paycheck for one week, there's a rule of thumb, it will take the average person a month of to catch up. one paycheck missing, a month to ca catch up. you have 800,000 people to catch up what they've been missing. the ripple effect, shop owners in the neighborhood not getting the business they got a month

ago, before the shutdown began. you don't hear a single united states senator, at least to my knowledge, maybe there are some, the majority of the members of the united states senate have not spoken out in outrage over the ordinary people they represent. it is prophetic. the depth of feeling is something no poll can ever register. >> republicans need to step up and speak out on this, considering it is their president they support 95% of the time causing this pain. jonathan, that president himself said these federal workers will be fine. manage just fine. nancy pelosi said they aren't going to be just fine. unlike donald trump, they can't ask their daddy for a loan, for $200 million. there are some people on their own have children, struggling,

going to pawn shops to pawn their wedding rings in tears. >> that was heart breaking. when people elect the president of the united states, they elect someone to safe guard the national defense and have the best interests of the american people at heart. they also want someone looking out for them, not just policy-wise, also empathetically. we talked about that on this show and around the country about the empathy deficit of president trump. you have to have a sense of empathy and motorcycle conviction for someone else's being to fix this situation. the fact he won't fix it, only views this shutdown as a political game instead of a human tragedy, as we're seeing, i thought i was no longer able to be speechless.

but if the president of the united states were to only see only hans nichols piece with the woman in huntsville, alabama, talking about the woman who came in to pawn her wedding ring, i think anyone, any american with a heart, sense of empathy, and especially if that person were the president of the united states would call the members of congress in and come up with a deal and put this wall discussion, as phony as it is, off to the side, so everyone can get back to work and be whole. >> yeah. >> they're working, just no money. >> kristen, back in early 2017, we talked around the set and a lot of other people did, too, about this catch-22 republicans were in. somebody like mitch mcconnell can't really cross the republican president because he has a primary in 2020, as do many republicans who don't want to try to win the war of the general election but end up

losing the battle and not even getting there. what helps in a primary hurts in a general election. we saw that in the mid-terms in 2018. have you seen any republicans nationwide on the national stage that's been able to figure out how to move beyond that terrible catch-22 that's bringing the republican party down? >> it's hard to come wake up a specific example on that front. when i think of someone who's done that well, rick scott from florida, when he was governor there, it was a state where he was a vocal supporter of the president but he also maintained a job approval rating in florida that was above where the president's own job approval was by just being a good governor, do well on things like hurricanes. i think when it comes to what voters want, the way you can be a supporter of the president and win a general population by

getting the basics of governing right. when the government is shut down the basics of governing are not being gotten right. you asked me before about threats to the republican brand. the republican brand has faced a lot of damage over the last number of years. this idea president trump can't oversee a competent functioning of the federal government is the sort of thing that could further bleed some of those people away from him. to my point earlier, this doesn't end until one side or the other begins feeling really significant political pain either coming from their base or voters they perceive as swing voters that will decide their general election. moderate republicans are the ones first seeing that calculation changing as general election prospects become dim as more swing voters go, why can't you guys govern. >> thank you both for being here this morning. coming up with the turmoil

of the u.s. and britain, vladamir putin seems to be having a good run of things. the u.s. senate may have set russia's president back on his heels over sanctions. we will talk to the american-born businessman who calls himself putin's public eni number one, next on "morning joe."

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in a bipartisan rebuke on the administration, the senate voted on a resolution that would maintain embargoes for three russian companies linked to one of putin's favorite oligarches and needs 60 votes to pass in the senate. joining us a man who was known as the man driving the magnitsky act, that froze their assets and

visas. putin has worked to get this act repealed. bill, good morning. a refresher for our viewers or introduction perhaps. in help sinky last effectivelyd said sure the mueller team, special counsel can come visit and interview our people in russia as long as they give us bill broward. >> the magnitsky act was passed in 2012. vladimir putin is a major human rights violator who has a lot of assets so he personally feels affected by this legislation. he's made it his single largest foreign policy. he's been going after me. for literally seven years has been going after me. they issued seven interpol red notices. extradition requests. death threats. kidnapping threats. vladimir putin is so upset with

this because it touches him with his achilles heel which is his money in the west. >> and his colleagues. >> exactly. his colleagues hold his money. >> so, what is your take, the general take of what's happening right now. we're talking in the last couple of days donald trump is discussion openly the idea of withdrawing the united states from nato after 70 years. we're talking just this morning about brexit, whether or not great britain will leave the eu. what's the view from russia over what's happening in europe and the united states? >> so, putin has got three big objectives and he's not shy about these objectives. he hates nato. he hates the eu. he hates a strong united states. the reason for that is that russia is really kind of a tiny little country. it has an economy the size the state of new york. a military budget 90% less than the united states military budget. and the one thing he hates is when you have these countries

that can say no, you can't do that. so by weakening the eu, brexit, weakening nato through whatever means he can weaken nato, and by having the united states in a state of effective intellectual civil war, vladimir putin is getting away with a lot of stuff and he's pretty happy right now. >> what do you think the relationship is between vladimir putin and donald trump in the sense that it appears that donald trump collapses when he's in putin's company, that he just collapses and carries on about putin after he leaves putin? well i saw this very personally in helsinki when vladimir putin says we want bill broward and he said i think that's a great idea. i mean any aide or adviser would have said that's a stupid idea, terrible idea. it took him four days to walk that idea of handing me and 11 others over to vladimir putin.

and why? you know, it's either really dumb, or there's something more sinister going on. i can't say. what i can say is, and i can say this personally because it was directed towards me. it was totally inappropriate, beyond believe inappropriate and shouldn't have happened. >> predicting the future is tricky, obviously, and to use an old soviet phrase what do you think the five year plan is here? what do you think the world for you will look like in five years? >> well, from putin's perspective he has no five year plan. his only objective is to stay in power, keep his money and stay alive. and in order to do that, as russia gets poorer and russia is getting poorer in a lot of different ways, sanctions, oil ways, putin has to make trouble. the trouble will come to us and it will be invasions of foreign

countries. cyber attacking political process. it's going to be cyber attacking networks of electricity companies, et cetera. putin can't face any of the west in a straight up conflict but he can do all this asymmetric stuff. >> so it gets worse before it gets better. >> it doesn't get better just worse. >> putin afraid internally somebody will kill him? >> putin has a lot of enemies. in order to amass a fortune that i estimate is $200 billion. he had to kill a lot of people. took hostage of a lot of people. he's sized property. he's worried about the elite. then regular people. one out of four russians don't have a toilet inside their house and these oligarchs are busy on their yachts and villas and private jets and that doesn't make for a stable secure future for a leader who has taken that stuff away from people. >> can you talk about the

overall impact of the magnitsky act? >> the major impact of the act is in the old days when you sanctions a country you sanctioned the country and all the people would suffer. elites would bring in their private jets with caviar and champagne. magnitsky act goes after the elites leaving everybody else alone. the only thing i would change with the magnitsky act is i would enforce it more liberally, go after all these bad guys. >> sergei magnitsky was your attorney who was tortured to death in jail. bill broward you continue to be brave and outspoken despite vladimir putin having his eye on you. thanks for being here this morning. and still ahead we'll be joined by the vice chairman of the senate intel committee, senator mark warner who said there's still a lot of

unanswered questions about donald trump and russia. plus, much more on the widening impact of the government shutdown on both the economy and national security and people's lives. and with no deal in sight one democrat is tweeting, please tell the president it's okay to open the government. connection condition officials keep finding drug tunnels beneath the u.s.-mexico border. msnbc's jay job takes us inside one of them. "morning joe" will be right back. e right back hey. i heard you're moving into a new apartment.

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jeff sessions recused himself. which he shown have done. >> i think he probably did the right thing recusing himself. >> president released seven tweets writing bob mull certificate totally conflicted. >> i have the utmost respect for bob. >> i call it a witch-hunt. it is a witch-hunt. >> i don't believe mr. mueller

would be involved in a witch-hunt. >> president's retweets included one that showed a group of prominent democrats including his deputy attorney general rod rosenstein behind bars. >> i have very high opinion of rod rosenstein. >> i have president putin, he just said it's not russia. >> i believe the russians interfered or attempted to interfere with the election. >> donald trump and william barr don't agree on everything but they do seem to agree that a sitting president cannot be indicted. members of congress not so sure about that. good morning and welcome to "morning joe". it is wednesday, january 16th. along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnacle. historian, author of "the souffle america" john meacham. he's an nbc news and msnbc contributor and former justice department spokesman now an

msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller is with us. also with us political reporter for the "daily beast" betsy woodruff. in a moment we'll get to what we learned in yesterday's testimony from trump's nominee to be attorney general. why the public may not get to read robert mueller's report after all, but first the government shutdown. with no end in sight, both the house and the senate say they are cancelling next week's scheduled recess unless there's a resolution. but right now that appears unlikely. according to the associated press president trump showed no signs of backing down during a conference call with supporters yesterday. trump reportedly said we're going stay out for a long time if we have to. we'll be out for a long time. he added people are very impressed -- listen to this. people are very impressed with how well the government is working with the circumstances that we're under. >> actually, no.

more polls came out yesterday that showed people are not impressed with it. in fact, americans are overwhelmingly still blaming donald trump and donald trump's republican party. >> and the ap goes on to report that behind-the-scenes the administration and its allies on capitol hill are eyeing the next payday, hoping to reach a resolution before next week's tuesday deadline when they need to prepare the next round ever paychecks for workers who have been seeing zeros on their pay slips. the white house had invited a group of rank-and-file democrats to lunch yesterday to discuss trump's proposed border wall and the shutdown but none of the democrats took trump up on the offer. the "new york times" reports the shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the u.s. economy than previously thought. as president trump's economist doubled their projections of how much economic growth is being seen each week or being lost each week, the shutdown

continues. revised estimates from the council of economic advisers shows the shutdown is beginning to have real economic consequences, and the paper notes quote, the analysis and other projections from outside the white house suggests the shutdown has already weighed significantly on growth and could ultimately push the united states economy into a contraction. meanwhile a growing number of federal workers face deepening anxieties about when they will see their next paycheck. yesterday the trump administration ordered thousands of furloughed federal employees back to work without pay as the shutdown drags on. nearly 50,000 employees will have to return to work to fulfill some key government tasks like dispersing tax refunds, overseeing flight safety and inspecting the nation's food and drug supply. as the commandant of the u.s. coast guard posted this on tuesday, today you'll not be receiving your regularly

scheduled paycheck. to the best of my knowledge this marks the first time in our nation's history that service members in a u.s. armed force have not been paid during a lapse in appropriations. our friends put together this string of local reports from across the country that show just how widespread the hardships have been. >> it's been hard. it's been a struggle. just trying to make ends meet. >> reporter: 18 year federal employee sweeping her garage. shutdown from answering calls at the irs. she's the mother of two. >> my daughter is a senior this year. i have senior fees. i have graduation. and she's also going to college next year. >> reporter: hundreds of coast guard personnel lined up for the food and supply give away. most of these military folk are still working without a paycheck. >> i'm running low on money. i still have rent, car payment,

car insurance. all the necessary advertise. >> reporter: matt and his wife are both epa employees, both furloughed. >> is there a deadline in your head where you're thinking okay we're okay until here. >> we can get through to the end of the month. but you never know. >> reporter: this local coast guard family not wanting to be identified say the tips they received on thursday were not helpful by any means. >> have garage sales, telling us to babysit and i think that was pretty demeaning and embarrassing. >> it will be over soon you can make it a couple more weeks. no. so when february's rent is due, we can't pay it. >> we see the suffering that's going on across the country, of course. many people focusing on the fact that members of the armed forces not being paid for the first time ever in the lapse of appropriations. air safety possibly compromised,

and endangered. food safety compromised and endangered. this is a shutdown that the republicans never wanted. it's a wall that the republicans never wanted while they were in power for two years. how much longer can mitch mcconnell hold them? >> this is outrageous. you listen to those stories. this is real. this is not a political fight in washington. it's not a game about tweets. this is the impacting people's lives. there's a food pantry here in new york city called common pant try. a great organization. over the weekend they are feeding federal workers. i know people who work there. they came up with tears in their eyes. they are embarrassed they are coming to get food from this place because they didn't get a paycheck on friday. i think the president of the united states, if there was humanity inside of him he would look at these stories and listen to these people and might consider that this is ridiculous and that there's way to open pieces of government and

continue to have a discussion on a wall. if that's what he wants to do. the truth is, you pointed out at the top that the american people are not buying the president's argument that there is a crisis at the border so grave that it warrants all the suffering we're seeing. let's look at the new poll that shows just over half of all americans believe the president is blamed for the american shutdown. 54% say president trump is at fault. 31% blame democrats in congress compared to 5% who blame republicans in congress. the poll also found seven out of ten americans say shutting down the government in order to reach an agreement on a policy is bad strategy compared to 22% who say that's a good strategy. this is now the fourth poll this week that shows president trump shouldering more of the shutdown blame than the democrats. mika, again, this is the president's case. there's a crisis. a national security crisis. a humanitarian crisis at the border. so we'll keep the government shutdown until we get that wall.

the american people just not buying it. >> yeah. i mean obviously trump, joe, you know, kind of took the ownership of the shutdown when he took the ownership of the shutdown in front of television cameras with chuck schumer and nancy pelosi saying i will own the shutdown. and i wonder is he waiting this out trying to figure out a way, keeping, you know, repeatedly inviting them to the white house when repeatedly they have already been tricked two or three times. a bipartisan solution has been put in front of him, meetings have gone terribly. he's gotten up and said bye-bye and, you know, had temper tantrums. does he think if he keeps inviting them somehow the shutdown will belong to them. what is in trump's mind? >> he doesn't think. i mean the fact is he doesn't think. he doesn't plan. there was a comment yesterday, an aide said the president's response to having a forward thinking plan for this crisis

was basically -- he quoted mike tyson who said everybody has a plan until they are punched in the face which maybe is his justification for doing absolutely nothing. mike, there's no strategy. there is no forward thinking. this is a day trader, though, who continues to make the situation worse for himself, make the situation worse for his party politically. it's just devastating for the republican party politically. but we saw the real life consequences for americans, not only the 800,000 that are federal employees but a lot of contractors and their families and you go down the economic food chain and up the economic food chain, millions of americans will be hurt, and you now have economists saying this will have a significant impact on the united states economy. >> joe, there's no doubt that this shutdown is on one person and his name is donald j. trump.

he wanted this shutdown. he's got this shutdown. and this is clearly more proof that, unfortunately, for the united states of america mr. meacham this is a president of the united states who clearly lacks an empathy gene. he doesn't understand that real human being, whole families, more than 800,000 people being hurt here. the extended families of these people. people who own small variety stores and supermarkets in the areas where they live who are now suffering a loss of business. and i don't know about you, you get here from nashville, tennessee. . my sense s-matt and i were talking about it, if the tsa and the air traffic controllers were shutdown, went home, refused to work because they are not getting paid this thing would be over in about two hours. >> it might not take that long. clearly, i think right now for all the powerful stories of federal employees who are suffering and the beginning of

the ripple effect and the military folks, it hasn't really sunk in. it's still for most people this is trump exaggerating the border but they think well maybe there are people coming and, you know, i don't like the democrats either. i think there's a lot of that going on. you shut down commercial aviation in the united states which stops the economy and a certain level of socialability, you're right, it's 90 minutes by the time you actually get everything together and clear all the big macs off the table and get the meeting going. trump would think should i be ronald reagan, should i fire them. you can't fire tsa to be paid for the work they are doing. >> we'll run through some of the new poll numbers including what percentage of americans say the president is unfit to serve. >> pretty high. >> but first bill karins with a

check on the forecast. he's fit. >> he's pretty high too. >> not now, joe. we have two big storms. one is in california today and a piece comes to the east coast for a major winter storm saturday into sunday. the cal storm has already begun, major impacts. we're first going to deal with possibility, at least of those mud and debris flows in those fire scar areas. up to three and four inches of rain in the mountainous areas. everyone has a chance for tlfg. mountains get up to four feet of snow. winds gusting up to 60 miles per hour. chance of 30 to 40-foot breaking waves on the coast. that's a huge winter storm for california. two piece storm. one will come to the east. friday morning we'll wake up to one to two inches of snow through the northeast. not huge but during the night so maybe school delays. that's the minor storm. the bigger storm is going to begin as we go through saturday. notice the snow possibly from

texas back up to chicago. snow and ice in the ohio valley. then as we go throughout the day saturday this heads into pennsylvania, new york state saturday night into northeast. heavy snow to north. band much ice on the back side of it and rain throughout the southeast. mostly rain for the mid-atlantic. sunday morning all out snowstorm central and northern new england. ice storm likely from areas of southern new england, new jersey to pennsylvania by sunday. tomorrow i'll pinpoint actual snowfall amounts. right now we'll label it as possibility of heavy snow north of new york city, moderate to the south of there and than moderate to minor event through portions of the ohio valley. a lot of travel impacts for you as we go throughout wednesday today in california and all the way through the weekend in area of new york city. if you have travel plans in the big apple the worst of it will be saturday night and especially sunday morning. you don't want to be on the roads or at the airports at that

time. you're watching "morning joe". we'll be right back. g "morning . we'll be right back. i hear it in the background and she's watching too, saying [indistinct conversation] [friend] i've never seen that before. ♪ ♪ i have... ♪ zoo i am a family man.

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we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. zoo. this month's gallup poll finds the president's approval rate is down to 37%, his worst rating in a year. with 59% disapproving. among independents trump has dropped to a 31% approval rating, dropping eight points. since december. in a quinnipiac poll, only 33% of voters approve strongly while 8% only approve somewhat, meanwhile 50% disapprove strongly and 5% disapprove somewhat. the poll also found that the rating of president trump's handling of the economy is dropping. 49% approve. 48% disapprove. that's the highest disapproval

j for his job on the economy. a majority of voters do not think donald trump is fit to serve as president. 53% of voters saying no. 44% saying yes. 57% of independent voters find trump unfit to serve. >> mika, two other quick data points. first donald trump is the only president in the history of polling to never go above 50% his first two years in office. his numbers have been abysmal and he's set the record for the worst two years in the history of american polling. that's number one. number two, get this. and republicans should get this too with all of their fear mongering on the border. americans actually believe democrats can do a better job securing the border than donald trump and the republican party.

>> so betsy woodruff take your pick. damage to the republican party, damage to the presidency and potential impact with these numbers to try to get this government re-opened again. >> these kind of numbers cause a lot of anxiety for the people who are working on trump's 2020 re-election bid. one data point from the quinnipiac poll you referred to that i found really striking when i was reviewing the numbers this morning. we remember the big speech trump gave about a week ago where he took time on all the broadcast networks and rolled out his case for the wall. he said a lot of things that was incorrect and misleading. it was important to the white house how they were making this case for the shutdown that's been devastating to so many hundreds of thousands of americans. quinnipiac found after that speech that huge pivotal effort only 2% of americans changed their thinking about this wall. it basically had no effect. that was their hail mary and it

didn't succeed. another number from these polls that's important, the last screen you showed up on air showed that less than 10% of democrats think trump is fit to be president. that might not sound surprising but that number is important to people working on trump's re-election campaign in part because part of the reason that he won in 2016 was that he did so well in democratic strongholds. states like michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania where historically democrats are successful. trump does not have a road back to the white house in 2020 unless he can peel off some of those traditional democratic voters and if the cohort of people who voted for obama then voted for trump and played a key role in making him president in the first place and looking at this shutdown and thinking maybe we made the wrong choice that's a big problem for his re-election bid. those numbers are being taken seriously by the people in the president's orbit. >> explain for us why is it

republicans are willing to break with donald trump when it comes to sanctions, when it comes to nato, when it comes to russia. when it comes to this government shutdown having a devastating impact on a lot of people in their own districts, devastating effect on republican poll numbers, devastating effect on the president's poll numbers they are not ready to move. >> that's a good question. there's not an easy answer for that. i think part of it is the president has been so aggressive and vocal about this shutdown we do know that many of the republican senators and members of congress who face -- who live in very trump friendly districts and states are sensitive to trump on tissues that he's the most vocal about. remember trump has yet to vocally publicly say thinks the united states should pull out of nato. even though he's made his view clear about some of these sanctions, particularly on russia oligarchs, he hasn't been working the phones on capitol

hill when it comes to that question. we got a big story out this morning about the sanctions, on oleg deripaska an ally of paul manafort, very close ally of vladimir putin, one of russia's richest men. the senate voted yesterday to keep sanctions in place on oleg deripaska despite the fact that the treasury department is trying to take the sanctions off these two or three companies that oleg deripaska is closely connected to. republicans are part of the reason why the senate choked that procedural step. many republicans broke off despite the fact that steve mnuchkin was on the hill having meetings with republicans to take sanctions off of these oleg deripaska companies. where trump isn't making a ton of noise, not sending a lot of tweets, making key campaign issues, trump may feel little bit shy, a little bit

uncomfortable with his views, especially on the russia question. we see republicans breaking ranks. when it comes to the shutdown, of course, thus far only a few republicans who are peeling off. >> combing up on "morning joe" what william barr said and didn't say in yesterday's nomination hearing for attorney general. "morning joe" is back in a moment. k in a moment to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing it's best to make you everybody else... ♪ ♪ means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight and never stop. does this sound dismal? it isn't. ♪ ♪

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my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. will you commit to make public all of the reports conclusions, mueller report even if some of the evidence supporting those conclusions can't be made public? >> you know, that certainly is my goal and intent. >> will you commit that you will explain to us any changes or deletions that you make to the special counsel report that is submitted to you in whatever you present to us? >> i will commit to providing as much information as i can consistent with the regulations. >> you said that a president deliberately impairing the integrity or availability of evidence would be an

obstruction. is that correct? >> yes. >> okay. and so what if a president told a witness not to cooperate with an investigation or hinted at a pardon? >> you know, i would have to know the specifics. >> okay. would it be appropriate to go against the advice of careers ethics officials that have recommended recusal and can you give an example of under what situation or scenario you would go against their recommendation that you recused yourself? >> well, there are different kinds of recusals. some are mandated, for example, if you have a financial interest but there are others that are judgment calls. >> let's imagine it's a judgment call and the judgment by the career ethics officials in the agency are that you recuse yourself. under what scenario would not follow their recommendation. >> if i disagreed with it. >> what would that be? >> if i came to a different judgment. >> what's that basis?

>> the facts. >> such as. >> whatever facts are relevant. >> one what scenario would you imagine you would not follow the recommendation of the career ethics officials in the department of justice or recuse yourself from the mueller investigation? >> if i disagreed with them. >> okay. >> all right. matt, what was your take of mr. barr's first day? >> you know, in some ways he's an obvious choice for attorney general. he's very well qualified. he knows the department. he knows the traditions. he came in and said the right words that you expect to hear from an attorney general nominee. but there are some real concerns about them. the first concern is when he talked about the end of the mueller investigation, whether there's tube report. we still don't know whether there will be a report. if there is one, he talked about other times in the hearing like a prosecution memo which are these memos that the department prosecutors write and send up the chain if they decide not to

indict someone or bring an indictment. those are confidential. never released publicly. the difference hereunder the department's own rules the president cannot be indicted. we're not in a normal scenario. hard to see how that scenario that he outlined where those documents remain confidential is the applicable one here and that's why democrats push for more transparency. his answers would be, i think his answers would still be somewhat acceptable if it wasn't for this memo he wrote. the memo gives you real concern not that he just wrote the memo and expressed views of executive power, he gave it to bob mueller's boss, to another official at doj and gave it to the president, inside counsel in the white house, outside attorneys, to mike pence attorneys. he was sharing it with all the president's men and discussing it with all of them. that raises questions about his impartiality.

the tell is that answer that exchange with kamala harris where he not only refuses to recuse himself but won't commit to deferring to the advice of people we know are impartial. that's such a break with precedent. previous attorney generals of both parties, jeff sessions, erik holder, rod rosenstein, all committed not just to seek the advice of ethics officials but to follow it. it's a real tell about what his intentions are that he wouldn't make that same commitment. >> up next the top senate democrat on the intel committee mark warner is standing by. he joins the conversation straight ahead on "morning joe".

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let's now bring in the vice chairman of the senate intelligence committee democratic mark warner of virginia. mike barnacle, john meacham and mark mckennan are back with us along with willie and me.

senator, first of all, continuing the conversation, do you expect you'll vote for the confirmation of bill barr? >> i've already said i thought it was appropriate for mr. barr to withdraw. he has a great reputation. he's got experience. but let's look at the facts. we got a president who is obsessed about the mueller investigation. he's tried to do everything possible to undermine it. he put in this acting guy mr. whittaker whose only qualification is he was against the mueller investigation. and i think mr. barr, unfortunately, in a sense disqualified himself when he sent these unsolicited memos that seemed to say hey look at me. i'm against the mueller investigation. i think the president has extensive executive powers. and i think with this kind of cloud over trump's view of mueller, we don't need an attorney general that is going to be at all compromised on this

issue. >> compromising the investigation. so then on that, i'm just wondering what stands out to you the most in terms of donald trump's connections, compliance with russia. what one publicly known fact makes it seem most likely that president trump was working with russians to impact the outcome of the election, do you think? >> i'm not going to try to get into that speculation. i'll get into what we, from our senate investigation committee have discovered. we knew russians intervened. we knew they did it to help trump, to hurt clinton. we know that throughout the whole campaign donald trump said never a bad word against vladimir putin. we know that donald trump in a bizarre to say the least performance in front of the whole world kowtowed to vladimir putin and then did no kind of read out. even his own senior team about what happened during that couple

hour session and we know as recently as this week luckily a number of republicans joined us, but the administration was trying to remove sanctions from one of putin's closest cronies, the oligarch, oleg deripaska. so, again, i think we want to see what mueller does. we want our senate investigation to finish. but you've got people in the trump administration themselves that were in like jim mattis who thought this president was taking us in an inappropriate way. we've seen these most recent reports trump might be trying to take us out of nato. these are things that align very closely with the goals of put. >> absolutely. these all facts you're discussing. >> these are not areas -- i think all my republican colleagues would agree at threat of litany there. people can draw different conclusions. in terms of the factual basis of mr. trump's performance and the russian activities in 2016, i

don't think there's any debate left. >> all right. let's move to the shutdown. >> sure. >> what is your latest sense on how this ends? >> mika, this may not be affecting the whole country but the stories we're hearing, because we got a lot, obviously federal employees. we're hearing people even if they get back pay they took money out of their iras, advance against credit cards. financial penalties there. we had a young couple who had a kid right before christmas and couldn't get their child on the federal insurance and they had a major hospital bill because the person couldn't submit the form that was furloughed. there are a group of us in the senate who said open up the government for a few weeks, let's have a crack of coming up with a bipartisan solution. but what you've seen, i put an op-ed in the "wall street journal" today, i was a business guy longer than i've been a politician, and, you know, business 101 is if you're trying

to do a negotiation, try to have a circumstance where there's a win-win, empower your negotiator, make sure you got a workforce you got them on your side. donald trump is violating virtually every basic business rule of how to do a good negotiation and this was supposed to be the master deal maker. i think, as a matter of fact in retrospect i'm not sure how it ill end. business schools and management consultants for years will turn to this and say how not to negotiate a deal rather than the art of the deal that mr. trump proposed. >> senator, this is willie geist. president watches a lot of tv, especially in the mornings. let's pretend you're negotiating with him right now. what should democrats be willing to give? chuck schumer and nancy pelosi say here's $1.3 billion he says nope i want $5.7 billion for a wall. what does a negotiation look like and should democrats be doing more to engage the

president >> the first of all you don't negotiate with a gun to your head with enormous people's lives in jeopardy and frankly in many ways increasing the safety of air spaces. do you want your air traffic controller thinking 30% of their time about whether they can pay their kids' tuition or mortgage. let's do a cooling off period. let's re-open the government for a few weeks. whether it's trump or democratic leaders or whether we give a crack to a group of bipartisan leaders. let's see if we can come up with ways we can increase security at the border. additional resources for security at the border, i'm all in on. but it ought to be driven by border experts and not by a political promise that was made in the 2016 campaign. so i think there's an awful lot of democrats that will increase border security but let's do it with the government open and a

set period of time. again, one of the things that's clear is that if donald trump is successful with shutting down the government this time, he will use this tactic again when it comes to the debt ceiling, comes to the end of the year discussions about appropriations bills. one thing that ought to come out of this and there's a bunch of us talking about this, how can we make sure that this is the last time either side ever uses this kind of, i think, draconian tactic in a policy debate. >> it looks from the outside, senator, to a lot of americans, especially those who aren't getting paychecks that we're stuck here. nobody is talking to each other to push the ball forward. what can you tell us if you pull back the curtain for the american people this morning about what's happening behind-the-scenes if anything. is mitch mcconnelly privately work to get a deal done. is something happening in that building where you're standing right now to end this shutdown? >> first of all, willie, there's

nobody more that's hearing from federal employees than me and tim kaine from vai and my colleagues from maryland. later at this week i'll be at a food bank giving out food to federal employees. that's an embarrass merment in iran america. there's a lot of us who are kind of -- i would hope to more reasonable folks in both parties trying to say hey we got to figure a way to move this off the dime and one way we've been thinking about can we get the government open for a couple of weeks and give another group to empower us to get to a level of compromise. it starts with opening the government for at least a couple of weeks. >> the president has rejected that idea time and time again. >> there might be another chance if we can show there's enough republican support. there are a whole slew of my republican colleagues that know that this is not good for our country. the current status quo.

>> let's hope for the benefit of those people not getting paid. senator mark warner, thank you for your time. we appreciate it. >> you know, it was interesting, the senator's first comment about negotiation, he came perilously close when he said we don't want to negotiate with terrorists when he talked about the president of the united states. one point is empower the people on your team. repeatedly we have witnessed, i think, the situation we're not just with regard to the shutdown. you can negotiate with his increasingly shrinking team and thinking you have an agreement and then the president of the united states himself an hour after you leave the building or an hour after you hang up the phone completely changes his mind about the agreement that was, that you thought you had. >> it's exactly right. you say negotiate with the team. who is the team. there's no team. one person. it's unclear what his strategy is. he doesn't have a long term

strategy. i would like to just go back to what senator warner said about bill barr. as i was listening to bill barr yesterday, listening to testimony, 98% could have come out of sally gates mouth. you think of who else could have been picked. i shocked he picked bill barr. there's a couple of things he said that's absolutely clear. he won't fire bob mueller. he respects him and is an old friend of him. there will be a report. that's pretty reassuring for most of america. >> we want to get to some breaking news out of syria now where there are reports of an explosion in the northern syrian city near a u.s.-led coalition patrol. nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel filed this report for us roughly an hour from where the explosion reportedly happened. richard? >> reporter: good morning, mika. kurdish officials and witnesses

tell you that there was an explosion in the city not far from here in northern syria this morning and coalition forces were targeted. top kurdish official told us specifically that a group of coalition force including americans were on foot in the city, in front of a restaurant, that they were approached by a man wearing civilian clothes but that he was a suicide bomber with an explosive vest hidden underneath his clothing. when he got to this patrol he detonated his explosive and there were multiple casualties. no confirmation on number of casualties but they did include americans according to this kurdish official. witnesses say that helicopters soon arrived at the scene. it is a very crowded area, right in the city, in the center of manbij. the helicopter was not able to land. troops fast roped out of the helicopter to deal with the

casualties, to secure the area. more helicopters arrived. isis through it's official social media accounts has claimed responsibility, saying that one of its suicide bombers wearing an explosive vest targeted coalition forces. so far no official word from the u.s. military, only that they are aware of these reports and investigating. all right. richard engel, thank you very much for that report. we'll be following that breaking news and john meacham, this will only probably exacerbate the problem of the president's abrupt draw down in syria, which is being dialed back but there's a conflict between the messaging of his administration versus what the president says himself. and i suspect the president might take this as an opportunity to use this incident to back up, actually, what he's doing when others would say it's just the opposite. >> yeah. our chief concern, obviously, is

with the forces who may have been injured or even killed. and this is a moment where we need a commander-in-chief who puts the national interest ahead of one's own personal political interests. and i quiver a little bit at the thought of what might be said, is it possible that we're going to have a president who says see, i told you so. >> exactly. >> which is exactly what we don't need. and if you have any doubts about the importance of politics and civic life is, remember the character is destiny and the character of the person at the top is constantly tested. >> i know. we'll be following this. up next, what good is a border wall if drug smugglers can just dig tunnels beneath it? jacob soboroff takes us inside one of the many cross border tunnels next on "morning joe."

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♪ ♪ cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. this morning, president trump is making his case for the border wall tweeting, "there are now 77 major or sith walls built around the world with 45 countries planning or building walls. over 800 miles have been built in europe since 2015. they've all been recognized as close to 100% successful. stop the crime at our southern border," tweets the president. however, while the federal government remains in partial shutdown over trump's demand for

a wall on top of the u.s./mexico border, in the last month alone mexican authorities have discovered three tunnels under it. joining us now is nbc correspondent jacob soboroff. you've been seeing these kind of tunnels, types like this one firsthand. >> reporter: i don't think we can stress enough how much the president's perception is not based on reality particularly where drugs come from and dob contribute to the greatest overdoses in american crisis. they're through ports of entry and smuggling tunnels. here's what is it looks like when you go down in one. take a look. >> that's it. >> that is it. that's the infamous lowering bathroom floor entry. >> what do you mean? >> the floor, the bathroom floor lowered down to provide access to the tunnel. >> reporter: so inside that warehouse, the bathroom floor goes down and you get to the tunnel. >> yeah. >> reporter: last year we meant

this agent to learn more about the elite agents whose job is finding and stopping cross border tunnels. it already looks like 2019 could be a busy one. this is one of the three tunnels the mexican police found between nogales, arizona and nogales, mexico. when president trump headed to the border last week, the patrol said they're seeing no tunnels there, too. >> this is the second tunnel that we've located. >> reporter: in 1993, the patrol found the first narco tunnel in this year, the same year the original border fencing went up here and they've been finding them ever since. this is the galvezi smuggling tunnel, stopped in its tracks by the border patrol. >> watch your head. >> oh, wow. is this a pretty standard tunnel? >> no, this is definitely not standard. this is like the cadillac of tunnels as it was. >> reporter: the cadillac of

tunnels. who built this thing. >> mostly low levels told to dig in a straight line. >> reporter: told by who? cartel? >> that's probably a safe assumption. simple hand tools. digging is the easy part. getting the stuff out. they sack it up in 50-pound bags. >> reporter: are those trucks we're hearing above us? >> yes. >> reporter: so there are trucks on a road above us. so this actually is going under an existing road in the united states? >> correct. >> reporter: is that normal? >> yep. >> reporter: these things will. >> every one of them. >> reporter: under roads. >> airports. >> reporter: once you're deep enough, you can going under anything you want, under about anything. right. >> reporter: including border fencing or a border wall? >> yes, as long as e as long as they can get from point a to point b in secret, they're going to do it. >> reporter: do you anticipate finding more of these. >> they're always tunneling

somewhere. >> reporter: they are always tunneling somewhere, the agent told me. i reached out to dhs the last couple days to see what the current state of narco tunnelling is and how that fits into what the president is talking about. they said they did not have the resources to comment because of the shutdown over the border wall. jacob, great report there. thanks so much. a couple minutes left. how about final thoughts for the day as we head into another one. >> jacob mentioned the shutdown. it is amazing we have a total incompetent who cannot do his job at the top of the ladder, the president of the united states single-handedly preventing hundreds of thousands of people from doing their jobs. >> jon? >> be patient, an tentative. this stuff's going to keep coming as fast as possible. pick your metaphor, we're in a meteor shower, whatever. it's really important. >> i think it's clear that the president has run into a

rhetorical cul-de-sac with the wall. the way out is semantic difference. the democrats are saying we want security. it's the wall that should become a metaphorical problem and we'll see if we can break through that in the state of the union address and some way he begins to bridge toward security. he can call it a wall, the democrats security. >> reporter: the president continues to dig in on the $5.7 billion for the wall even as his approval rating slips to 37% in the gallup poll. americans are saying we're not buying the case you're making which is there is a crisis on the border which warrants all of what we're seeing, including people not being paid in the federal government. >> he does continue. it's not great advice but hoping that republicans realize at some point that they're going to having to act without this president and perhaps vote veto proof majority voting to end the shutdown before this president takes advantage of the state of the union to do more damage to

the american people and to this country and to our economy. that does it for us this morning. stephanie rhule picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks so much, mika. i'm stephanie rhule with a lot to cover this morning. starting with setting the bar. president trump's pick for attorney general grilled by senators for a total of nine hours on capitol hill but not being coy when it comes to the mueller investigation. >> i will not be bullied into doing anything i think is wrong. >> on my watch, bob will be allowed to finish. >> his strong stance on the mueller investigation taking on added importance as we learn that former trump aide rick gates is still cooperating in several investigations. and we get 400 pages detailing paul manafort's lies. and how about this, bad news for america. shutdown. day