joyce vance, chris lu, thank you both so much for being here.ll see you in a little bit. >>> up next for you, what it will ultimately take to bring u.s. troops home from syria. pin, but maybe not for people with rheumatoid arthritis. because there are options. like an "unjection™". xeljanz xr. a once-daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well enough. xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. xeljanz xr can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma have happened. as have tears in the stomach or intestines, serious allergic reactions, low blood cell counts, higher liver tests and cholesterol levels. don't start xeljanz xr if you have an infection. your doctor should perform blood tests before and while taking xeljanz xr, and monitor certain liver tests. tell your doctor if you've been somewhere fungal infections are common and if you have had tb, hepatitis b or c, or

i'm going to have to let chris lu go.ill get you after the break, alexi, on the next question then. i don't know if we're going to take the high road or not, shermichael. i just wish we would stay off the low road. >>> stay with me. up next, what it could take to get the trump administration to compromise on the border wall and reopen the government. we'll be right back. the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. (straining) i'll take that. (cheers) 30 grams of protein and 1 gram of sugar. ensure max protein. in two great flavors. if you have postmenopausal osteoporosis and a high risk for fracture now might not be the best time to ask yourself are my bones strong? life is full of make-or-break moments. that's why it's so important to help reduce your risk of fracture with prolia®. only prolia® is proven to help strengthen and protect bones from fracture with 1 shot every 6 months. do not take prolia® if you have low blood calcium, are pregnant, are allergic to it, or take xgeva®. serious allergic reactions, l

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. >> back with me, chris lu, former assistant to president obama, maya wily, msnbc legal analyst, andmentator let me go to you, chris lu if these number of people around president obama had been indicted, cooperated, all the things that we've seen, do you think that the obama administration could have survived, less reelected. >> i think it's fair to say that no one in the obama administration went to prison and that's a record we are very proud of if you're keeping score at home, the roger stone indictment is now the 34th person to be indicted, six people have plead guilty including the national security adviser, the campaign chairman and the deputy campaign chairman as much as donald trump might want to minimize this, roger stone is a person that knew trump for decades, was an informal adviser to the campaign, and as a former business partner of paul manafort's this is a significant development not only in terms of the charges against mr. stone, but the background in terms of the contacts between the trump campaign and mr. is known seeking more information about the wikileaks disclo

and joining me now is nbc's geoff bennett at the white house and capitol hill and chris lu, former assistant to president barack obama now a senior fellow at the university of virginia's miller center and eliza collins, usa today politics reporter. geoff, right now, any action there at the white house as far as negotiating with congress >> reporter: no, kendis. we don't expect to see the president at all today we saw the acting chief of staff mick mulvaney make the sunday shows. he was carrying the president's message, saying if the president doesn't get what he wants at the end of this next three-week period, he might, a, shut down the government again or, b, declare a national emergency i have to tell you, though, based on my own reporting, neither of those two outcomes is all that likely. one, we know that republicans on the hill, some of them we heard from today, susan collins, marco rubio said that shutting down the government is ineffective and hurtful. two, declaring a national emergency f the president thought that was a viable solution, he probably would have already elected to do t

joining us now is chris lu who was white house cabinet secretary in the obama administration.me. >> thank you. >> if the deputy white house chief of staff faced credible allegations of corruption and self-dealing, who is supposed to look into that in a normal white house? >> well, in a normal white house that person would have been out on the street so quickly. literally every single day of this white house i thought to myself if i did something like this i would have gotten fired. i mean this stinks on so many levels. you have somebody who's staying on government payroll without working, which is offensive even if we weren't in the middle of a government shutdown. you have somebody who abuses their authority to try to get a legislative fix to help only themselves. you have a 36, 37-year-old who wants to claim early retirement after 15 years. this is the definition of a swamp. and in a normal white house you'd have a chief of staff and president who would set high standards to ensure this kind of misconduct doesn't happen. >> is there an oversight mechanism within the way whit

chris lu, now senior fellow -- we'll be right back. stay with us. ♪ -morning. -morning.? -keep an eye on that branch. might get windy. have a good shift. fire pit. last use -- 0600. i'd stay close. morning. ♪ get ready to switch. protected by flo. should say, "protected by alan and jamie." -right? -should it? when you bundle home and auto... run, alan! ...you get more than just savings. you get 'round-the-clock protection. >>> no end in sight, let's play hardball. good evening. i'm steve kornacki in for chris matthews. president trump and congressional democrats are no closer to a deal to reopen the government as that partial shutdown barreled today into its 14th day, emerging from a nearly two-hour meeting from inside the white house this morning, minority leader chuck schumer called the talks contentious. president trump called them

"garbage" as chris lu just mentioned "is starting to pile up in washington, d.c." "the new york times" reports the shutdown is devastating native american reservations that depend an federal money for health care and food. just yesterday, i talked to a guy working for tsa was who working on new year's day but hadn't gotten paid since the government shut down. most things are going to start compounding and getting worse. two weeks with no paycheck is one thing. two months, quite another. after meeting with president trump at the white house today, nancy pelosi said she would pass legislation to pass unanimously out of the republican senate to open the government, legislation that does not include, crucially, wall funding, but in the weight of the shutdown squarely on trump's shoulders. >> we're asking the president to open up government. we are giving him a republican path to do that. why would he not do it? >> i asked him directly, i said, mr. president, give me one good reason why you should continue your shutdown of the eight cabinet departments while we are deba

let's bring in chris lu, and a senior fellow at the miller center and boyd matheson and laurence lessig, harvard law school professor and founder of equal citizens. he's also the author of "america compromised." we have heard the debate about whether this president can ask for a state of emergency, a national emergency, so that he can potentially end run the debates that are not quite -- excuse me, the negotiations that are not quite working out the way both sides want at the moment. and whether this would be possible. what's your reaction to that? >> over the past two years, the president has issued a litany of threats against private companies, political opponents, other countries. and to me it was a throwaway line in response to a question. i'm sure there's a lot of lawyering going on right now. in the end he'll realize he can't do legally what he wants to do or it's not worth the political success. as we saw over the last two years, this president had to scale back his travel ban several times in order to pass muster with the courts. i think in the end this is a lot of smoke. >> boy