are really going against a radical left. i don t want to see a shutdown. a shutdown would be a terrible thing. juan: jedediah, no more mention so far of emergency declarations. seems as if republicans in the senate aren t buying it. he s not clear. he s kind of holding us in suspense. is this trump the tv producer? jedediah: maybe. i think he knows the numbers that have been released. it stinks, it really does. people on the right are going to be saying what was the point of a shutdown? i think people thought if you shutdown the government to try to budge the democrats and if they didn t, your next step would be a national emergency. i think he is in a position where he put out there in the very same way he has to learn to stop doing this. he put out there that mexico is going to pay for the wall. didn t work out that way. he put out there that he wasn t going to budge. when you don t, people are disappointed. now he s saying i m going to redirect more other federal
maybe he didn t. they did not make that assessment. the cia has looked at it, they have studied it a lot. they have nothing definitive. in a statement, the president also appeared to buy into a saudi smear of khashoggi, adding, representatives of saudi arabia say that jamal khashoggi was an enemy of the state, and a member of the muslim brotherhood. khashoggi s family has blasted those claims as ridiculous. secretary of state mike pompeo backed up the president s statement. this is a long, historic commitment, and one that is absolutely vital to america s national security. it s a mean, nasty world out there. reporter: but not all republicans are on board. i m concerned about our standing in the world and what it says about the united states. reporter: president s willingness to believe saudi denials is consistent with his posture toward other countries like russia and the meddling of the 2016 election. maybe it was. it could be russia or china or somebody sitting on their
about them publicly. presidential meddling could undermine the legitimacy by attaching political overtones to investigations in which career law enforcement officials follow the evidence and the law. so potentially, this is explosive if, in fact, the president would have ordered the justice department to launch this kind of prosecution, that could be seen as an abuse of presidential power. that s right. it s sort of the red line, the third rail, this political interference in doj investigations so if there is evidence, that s a big problem. department of justice is supposed to be independent, not for the president to investigate his enemies or foes. so that is a real key issue here. more was there any interference, did this message make it to doj and did they act it on it. i want to bring in jeffrey toobin. give us your thoughts. as we ve been saying, this is
clinton prosecuted. but now we see that he made an even greater effort to make it happen. fortunately, the internal checks and balances within the white house seem to have stopped this idea. and what does it say to you, jeffrey, that in the article, the president has reported as having felt that the fbi director, christopher wray, whom he appointed, who he nominated to be the head of the fbi, that he was critical of him for failing to more aggressively investigate mrs. clinton, calling him weak. well, this is his view of any government official. whether it s in the fbi or the justice department, who doesn t do his personal bidding. he has absolutely no understanding that the fbi, the justice department, the entire u.s. government, works for the taxpayers, works for defending the constitution. he thinks they are all his personal servants. and when they don t do something he wants done, even if there is no legal basis for it, even if
the united states to hold it accountable for the murder of this journalist. is that just the price of doing business with the saudis? this is incredibly disturbing, as well. i mean, it s hard to say what s more disturbing, the president wanting to use the justice department to go after his political enemies or for him to basically he just said it. maybe he did it, maybe he didn t. and the way he said that was, basically, at the end of the day, president trump doesn t care. which means the united states doesn t care. and this is part again of a pattern of dictatorship and autocratic approach to government. we have seen the media targeted in many countries throughout the world. with new constitutions placing restrictions on free speech and freedom of the media. and i think the most disturbing thing about this is that the saudis thought they could get away with it. you know, ten years ago, if they had been thinking about this, that the international price that would have been paid, th