to lie. but, again, there s the question with michael cohen. just exactly what for instance, he s going to be testifying in front of a congressional committee february 7th. that s coming up all awfully soon. all eyes will be on that testimony, clearly. big picture, steve, the president told a false story about the trump moscow tower deal. he said, i have no business dealings with russia. we then learn that, of course, that the deal was happening not just through the primary season in late 2015 and early 2016, but all through mid-2016 when trump was actually the republican nominee. we know that michael cohen lied to congress about it. we know that michael cohen tried to align his story with the false narrative the president was telling. the idea that the president did nothing wrong here or bears no responsibility for michael cohen s false testimony, i think it s something that members of congress are going to significantly challenge. annie karni, quickly,
we don t know yet. it certainly puts the story in a gray area. the facts are in gray. we ll eventually find out whether or not trump directed cohen to lie is a fact or not. but right now it s in a gray area and trump is acting like it s a definitive thing. he s cheering on the special counsel. what will that look like if down the line the special counsel comes out with evidence that is not to his liking? he is propping this up as a way to shoot down another enemy. in previous times he s called the special counsel like 13 angry democrats. he s acting like he s exonerated. he s exonerated maybe in this news cycle, but it does feed into the it hurts journalists for him to be able to say fake news and for there to be solid ground making that claim tonight. right and on that front, i think we were looking all day. i think the question last night when this story on buzzfeed
politico. let me start with you. the president says major announcement tomorrow about the border and the shutdown. any idea what he s talking about? that s a great question, steve. i ve talked to a few white house officials earlier. and some people outside of the white house and the consensus seems to be that the president tomorrow will not declare national emergency but will outline a path forward and a way out of this shutdown. that being said, the white house is holding its cards close right now. we don t know necessarily what type of plan president trump will outline tomorrow, whether it will be some sort of compromise that he thinks congressional republicans and democrats can reach, whether it will include a fix to daca, which he has mentioned before. this is something that sort of hit reporters, myself included, by surprise today when the president said there would be this announcement tomorrow, that it would touch on the humanitarian crisis at the border and also on the shutdo
illegal immigration among those immigration hawks support president donald trump. that s the irony here, steve. the campaign e-mail today i think a lot of people reacted to that, saw that as being in poor taste. we re in the middle of a government shutdown that is now reaching its 29th day, 800,000 federal workers are about to go through their second pay period without a paycheck. here the trump campaign is fundraising off this. i don t think it was necessarily the right time for a campaign fund-raising email to be sent out, for them to be trying to fill their coffers, and it certainly belongs in the category that lindsey graham called sophomoric behavior when he was talking about things like the president s decision to ground speaker pelosi s plane and now this fund-raising email that was sent out earlier this afternoon. john, one of the things that strikes me as you look back on past shutdowns and you look at the polling divides about who to blame, 1995, 2013 over obamacare. the nu
would it be quibbling? yes. and i am troubled by it. it s almost inexplicable that he commented, whether it s a total denial or whether it was just along the edges and about the details. because of their past history, why they picked this one, the only thing you can say is because this is the clearest case linking donald trump to a crime that cannot be evaded. it isn t, well, he had the power to fire comey. that s within his constitution the rights. this was a straight-out obstruction of justice. william barr in his testimony said to senator klobuchar, yes, it would be obstruction of justice by the president or any other person. so this is one where he might want to say, hey, don t rush into impeachment hearings. just let s wait and see what happens. i think it s going to make it much more interesting on february 7th to listen to cohen and the latitude he s given. i don t think this relates