. >> david gergen worked in the ford administration and says terhorst aspired to be like a man named, president eisenhower's press secretary. >> haggerty said my job as press secretary is to help you get the news, to have the president held accountable through the press. increasingly it's become a political arm of the white house, one could even say it's become a propaganda arm of the white house. >> gergen is talking about spin, something he and others did for president reagan. >> we worked very, very hard to convince people that our version of the truth was the right version or at least was a credible version of the truth. >> how would you define the difference between a spin and a lie? >> i think a lie is a story that's contrary to the truth. i think spin is an effort to draw on parts of the truth. it's more like a piece of advocacy. >> thanks for being here for your daily briefing. >> you don't have to lie, ever. you simply say i can't answer that question or i don't know. >> i always had a glass of water on the podium. and so if i got a tough question and i really needed to thin

mj lee is joining me now and david gergen, adviser for presidents.i want to point out everyone that the cause and effect we're seeing from the presidents decisions, if you fire fbi director james comey, then you have special counsel robert mueller, if you fire attorney general jeff sessions, then you now have the ag nominee william barr who was just asked about obstruction of justice this week during his confirmation hearings. >> so if there was some reason to believe that the president tried to coach somebody not to testify or testify falsely, that could be obstruction of justice? >> yes, under that -- under an obstruction statute, yes. >> if there's some evidence that the president tried to conceal evidence, that would be obstruction of justice potentially, right? >> right. >> in your memo, you talked about the comey decision and you talk about obstruction of justice and you already went over that. you wrote on page one that a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction, is that right? >> yes. any person who persuades anoth

david gergen, we haven't heard from you. if the president does declare a national emergency and order a border wall built, which is where this seems it's headed, to get the government reopened, is that the best option at this point? because then it ends up in the courts. how do you see that? >> well, from trump's point of view i guess it's the best of a bad set of options. he's got himself in a corner. he is desperately looking for a way out. he is turning to this ridiculous idea of taking money away from puerto rico and california and other places and putting it on what is not a serious crisis. look, the most important -- there are all sorts of people around this country, special interests who have got their hands out all the time for money from washington. the most important people in this case are the members of congress. they are the ones who decide how money should be spent, what sort of priorities we should set in terms of spending. and the president had a republican congress, republican senate and a house for two year

presidents, david gergen. david, for two years, there has been so much head-spinning news that has come out of the trump white house, it's hard to know what day qualifies as the worst. what do you think about friday? was it the worst? >> it came close. i think republicans, ana, to paraphrase the president, republicans are getting sick and tired of losing. they lost obamacare, they lost the midterm elections and they lost big-time on the wall. now, that's not to say that the saga is over on the wall. the white house is clearly preparing the ground for potentially invoking these emergency powers at the end of the three weeks. i just cannot imagine they would close down the government again. the emergency then -- alternative emerges as the number one alternative. and as you've heard today, there are many republicans who have misgivings about it, oppose it. marco rubio, for example, says terrible idea. terrible idea. and there are others like him. >> we know the president doesn't take kindly to criticism. on top of

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it just cuts their legs off. >> david gergen, good to see you especially in the new year. happy new year. thank you. >>> a group of concerned parents in indiana living in a county that overwhelmingly voted for president trump now gearing up to take on his epa. i'll talk to a pair of moms who say a toxic site in their town is causing kids to get cancer. you don't want to miss this segment. >>> plus, president trump finally breaking his silence on the u.s. citizen being held in russia. what he is saying about this american facing spy charges. >>> and wild video of a group of bystanders doing something remarkable. flipping a burning car to try to save the driver. we'll tell you what happened live in the "cnn newsroom." the day after chemo might mean a trip back to the doctor's office just for a shot. but why go back there... when you can stay home with neulasta onpro? strong chemo can put you at risk of serious infection. in a key study neulasta reduced the risk of infection from 17% to 1%, a 94% decrease. neulasta onpro is designed to deliver neulasta the day after chemo and

john dean, former nixon white house counsel, anne milgram, former white house prosecutor, and david gergen, former adviser to four presidents, including nixon and clinton. david, let me start with you, as you put this together. you know, this is crucial, right? it goes into 2018. when we talk about manafort's lies, communications with the trump administration. and at the center of it is oleg deripaska. oleg deripaska, who the trump administration tried to ease sanctions on his companies right now. how big of a rebuke against president trump is this vote today, by 11 republicans who said, no? deripaska is a bridge too far. >> john dean will remember as well as i do how things got very, very complicated in the white house and more and more suspicious and it turned out the suspicions were true. and what one sees here is a very complex case, but the fact that paul manafort, under indictment, continued to have contacts within the white house, that his go-between leads back to deripaska and that this same administration is now trying to lift sanctions to give mr. deripaska, you know, a free pass

. >> i want you to stay with me as we bring in also david gergen who has worked in four white houses d so thank you, david. i'm so glad that you could be part of the conversation tonight with this extraordinary reporting. we're talking about what the washington post is reporting about the president's efforts to really conceal his interactions with the russian president. in fact, even confiscating notes from one of his interpreters. have you ever heard or experianed suchexperia experienced such a thing for other presidents? >> no, and i worked for nixon and we never experienced anything like this. if you kpicombine the story wit the washington post along with the new york times reporting about the fact that the fbi opened this counterterrorism investigation, if i were in the white house, i would be terribly worried. i would be terribly worried not just about my president. i'd be worried about the office to the presidency which i think is threatened in this situation. it's almost like a spy thriller that we're going through. it's unbelievable we'd be here. i'd also be worried about the

. >> we've heard from david gergen to john kelly expressing concern about what it means about talented people staying in the federal government wirks you don't really do for the money. also risks talented people leaving their posts to pursue employment in the private sector. >> look, i don't know about that. i'm not so concerned about people leaving. i really have an opinion on that. to kristen's point, democrats have way more risk than the republicans. 2018 a huge wave of really, really progressive, let's put it that way, liberal progressive, aoc and others who get elected to congress and democrats and the speaker fear those folks. >> david, no. >> come on. >> that's just an inaccurate. you're an expert on trump not on the democrats. i would say nancy pelosi -- >> that's not true. >> -- has never been more power ful than she is today. it has unified the democrats. you have alexandria ocasio-cortez and others unified in this belief there shouldn't be funding for this. she's in a difficult place, that's true. if they have that discussion that will be a harder discussion for democrats. >

i want to go to david gergen, julia kayan and here with me jeffrey toobin.cohen is trying to rig polls, online polls. >> and the polls didn't show him doing very well, either. so he didn't rig them very well. >> at the direction of trump. >> i -- i mean, you were right at the beginning. this is deeply weird at every level. i'm not sure there's any law enforcement matter here. i think this was actually before he declared for president so i'm not sure -- so it wouldn't be an unlawful campaign contribution but obviously michael cohen could be at some risk if he just stole some of the money that donald trump gave him. but in terms of actually violating the law i'm not sure anything here, anything violates the law. it does show how much donald trump was obsessed with polls, which is something we saw throughout the campaign. and also it just shows the depth of trust that he had with michael cohen, which of course relates to a lot of other things. >> which is all very important when you talk about whether laws were broken, you know, as this campaign started and con

senior political reporter and analyst is with us, gloria borger, david gergen, columnist kirsten powerske shields, and the obama solicitor general. neal, from the legal standpoint, can the white house make a valid executive privilege argument on the interpreter's notes? >> they can try but i think they'll lose. executive privilege goes all the way back to george washington. he asserted it in 1792 with respect to the indians. he lost there and had to turn over the information. most presidents have asserted executive privilege have lost, for reasons congressman schiff said, this isn't the strongest case. it's not one of communications between the president and his advisers. i think they may try. they certainly sent signals, the trump folks, that they will try. they will lose and the most relevant precedent, it always comes to this talking about trump, nixon, because nixon lost unanimously in the supreme court. the supreme court said the public has a need to know. and i think that if this went to the supreme court, they would say the same thing. >> the chairman also said that if the notes

paul begala, david gergen, who has served so many presidents over so many years, deserves a better titlen cnn political analyst, but that's what he's got. all shutdowns are contentious. are all shutdowns this contentious? >> no. no. once again, we're breaking new ground. republicans ought to appoint will heard as our lead negotiator. he makes more sense than almost anybody you hear because it's become such a charade. frankly, it's totally irresponsible for the white house to continue the charade when so many federal workers are about to lose their paychecks. and that sort of thing. i think it's very, very possible that the president set this meeting up today with the leadership of the congress in order to have a pr stunt. to walk out, stalk out. storm out. slamming the table. bye-bye. you know, setting himself up so he could claim the democrats are being completely unreasonable. and now i'm going to invoke the national emergency. >> paul, do you think the president is going to invoke a national emergency? and besides possibly ending up in court, what do you think of it? >> i'm worried th

let's bring in now former republican congressman, charlie dent, as well as david gergen, symone sanders, and amanda carpenter, the author of "gaslighting america: why we love it when trump lies to us." good evening! what a night, again! i know you guys have heard me say that when you were on the show before, but what a night! david, i'm going to start with you. >> sure. >> an oval office address, probably the most powerful tool in the president's arsenal when it comes to, in his toolbox when it comes to speaking to the american people. it's the hammer, right? did it work? >> i may be wrong, don, but i don't think it moved the needle. the speech was too short to be persuasive. and it was too long on questionable facts to escape scrutiny after the speech. i would have -- the speech had a hurried quality to it. it was like thrown together. it didn't really -- it wasn't -- it didn't move you. it didn't move the audience, i think, emotionally or rationally. i would have thought, for example, some very simple thing. they could have had the people in the white house compose a fact sheet on eve

david gergen joins us right now.ne who has been at who has an fsa backed loan and looking to close on their home, they have to sit and stew a while. that's another effect. how pervasive is this getting? >> well, it can get very pervasive. her right now, most people are not being impacted except by fear. we need to be careful not to scare senior citizens for instance into thinking they'll be kicked out of their homes. for people closing fha mortgages, they actually can go to closing. those contracts are being honored. importantly, for people who are federal employees worried about making their february 1st mortgage payment, it's very important they call their service or are the country they send their payment to and tell them what's going on, remind them. the servicers have been told to give them if they were in a natural herb. this is clearly not natural. neil: do they sense that this word to drag on, given the way things are looking on capitol hill, saying were the number two democrat on the hill. something about de

presidents, david gerg gergen. always good to have you with us. what's your reaction to the possibility that a sitting u.s. president would declare a national emergency to fulfill a campaign promise? >> it's very concerning, because it would be a vast expansion of presidential authority which the courts may well strike down and would leave the government closed presumably for a longer period of time. it's worth remembering that the classic case in this area is one that was brought during the time of harry truman as president during the war, and it was a strike, and truman tried to seize the private railroads, and there a case called youngstown where the supreme court ruled the president did not have such authority, even in the national -- in the midst of a war. we have no war here, and it's not clear we have an emergency. i think in terms of expansion of presidential power under donald trump which he's been pushing and pushing to do this in all sorts of areas, i think is really questionable for the country. >> vice president mike pence took the le