an issue is important to the president s base, and he is digging in on this as he is heading into the new year with the democrats having control of the house. and today, president trump is sort of digging in on the demand for border legislation, and take a look at a his tweet from earlier this morning ashs and the republicans and the democrats must come together finally with a major border security package to include the funding for the wall, and after 40 years of talk, it is finally time for action and fix the border for once and for all now. kay the ti, yesterday he threatened to shut down the government over it. and the president wants $5 billion in funding for the border wall. no indication that the democrats will give it to him, and what they want, they want the legislation to be protecting the special counsel robert mueller, and the question is, is there any real appetite to shutdown the government, and this is something that could happen in a few weeks. i spoke with the republic
they said it would stop family separations. thus far their draft bill doesn t actually do that. so what you re seeing is the president and some republicans using this outrage about family separations to say actually we should get all of these other policies that we ve beenushing for, including ones that the president listed that have nothing to do with family separation. there s no reason that changing to a merit-based legal immigration system should affect these families at all. they re saying if you re upset about this, then give us everything else that we want. i look at the description of what s in that so-called compromise, a bill as you ve written about it, it would eliminate the diversity lottery, restrict access to asylum, set aside about $20 billion for added infrastructure and security along the u.s./mexico border. i want to play what the president had to say about this legislation yesterday morning. here s what he said after that
blows up politically. he acknowledged himself he wants to use these child detainees as leverage to get democrats to give in to his demand to fund his border wall and enact tougher border legislation. well, more on paul manafort next. president trump defending his former campaign chairman on the same day he is sent to jail over allegations of witness tampering. manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. but i tell you, i feel a little badly about it. they went back 12 years to get things he did 12 years ago. i m a four-year-old ring bearer with a bad habit of swallowing stuff. still won t eat my broccoli, though. and if you don t have the right overage, you could be paying for that pricey love band yourself.
impromptu fox news interview. i m looking at both of them. i certainly wouldn t have signed the i need a bill that gives this country tremendous border security. i have to have that. that confused a lot of folks, reporters certainly but also members of republican caucus on capitol hill. we got a statement from the white house yesterday. the president fully supports the goodelatte bill and the house leadership bill. help us understand quickly what the role of the president is in all of this. how important is his public support for a piece of legislation. he is hugely important. a lot of republicans who have been dekraaiicrying amnesty forg time don t want to support
something framed that way. if you have the president not backing something, it makes a lot of republicans say why should i bother backing that legislation. he could have tanked the bill by seeming like he wasn t going to support it. the white house is obviously trying to do clean-up on that. they put out that statement. it took them hours to do so but that s because they do see that i m sure that there are a lot of their priorities in this legislation. they were involved in helping craft it. it s really their best chance of getting a bill out of the house. so he needs to support it or else i think it s totally dead. john, i ll turn to you lastly. you were on what you called a carefully scripted tour of this big facility in brownsville, texas. my colleague was on that tour as well. this was the largest government contracted migrant youth shelter in the country in a former walmart facility down there on the border. what were your impressions of the place? what does that say to you abou