what do you make of this meeting? the democrats are offering $1.3 billion in border wall funding. the republicans before they released control of the house passed a bill of $5.6 billion. you think the president makes a counter offer in this meeting today or does he stand pat to his $5.6 billion number? it s hard to see a lot will get down. it s being described as a briefing where there s an update on what is happening down on the u.s.-mexico border. democrats are come in, we heard a lot of signals from capitol hill saying we re going to push back on the president if this is a partisan kind of review of what is happening down there. they said they ll do that in the meeting and do that after the meeting. so already you re seeing the two sides are not coming together to compromise. very entrenched on their two sides as they start the negotiations after the holiday break. trace: what is the goal for nancy pelosi? she starts today. they re going to pass the two bills. what is her goal c
syria. mattis was originally supposed to stay on through february. then president trump announced the deputy defense secretary, patrick shanahan would be taking over as acting secretary on january 1. lucas tomlinson reporting live at the pentagon. lucas? trace, in his first meeting as acting defense secretary, patrick shanahan told senior leaders here to remember china, china, china. a sign that this new defense chief plans to ramp up focus on china. shanahan arrived at the pentagon bright and early at the pentagon s river entrance just before sunrise. priority number 1. at the white house a short time ago, president trump kept up his attacks on his former defense secretary jim mattis. the president says he fired mattis. what has he done for me? how has he done in afghanistan? not too good.
so i don t i think there s a lot of issues there, a lot of senators have seen rand paul and others saying this is not what we need. we need to find ways as republicans to stand together. clearly mitt romney looking to be his own man as he s sworn in as a senator of utah. trace: are you surprised that the white house said that defense secretary matt tis retired and president trump said no, i essentially fired him. surprise you at all? i think clearly there s some bad blood there. the first tweet after he resigned, the president had a very nice response and then there s been some shots going back and forth. so i don t know that it s that surprising when somebody attacks the president or doesn t like how he s led, whether it s in the administration or externally. he s not shy to punch back. trace: yeah, the senior washington correspondent for politco, anna palmer. thanks very much. a former united states marine held in russia and accused of
situation since the government shut down about 12, 13 days ago. a great point. 22 days, the president has had zero contact with pelosi or schumer. what is the sweet spot, chad? you re talking to people up there. the president said earlier, there were reports that $2.5 billion might be a red line. is there a sweet spot for both sides that maybe we can see some kind of resolution the next four or five days? this is where we re starting to hear chatter last week that bipartisan senators thought there might be a deal on daca. now the government shut down is real, government workers are off the job. there s no holiday recess, members are coming back to session, that might help force the issue. sometimes you have unconnected issues that help resolve these partial government shut downs. nobody thought that anybody was going to come out of this until nancy pelosi gets control of the gavel, tomorrow afternoon,
going into this meeting in a standstill. what are we hearing from democrats ahead of the meeting? a couple things. the strategy is let s pull him down off of the $5.6 billion number here and get government workers back to work. you ve been in the beltway. americans all over the country not only rely on their jobs but relying on leadership to get the job done. interesting before i tell you about a tweet that we saw yesterday from nancy pelosi where she rejected this olive branch that the president was floating out there, i want to share a quick sound bite from the president from the cabinet meeting. he was asked about this idea that a wall is immoral. listen to how he compared it to another famous wall. when they say the wall is immoral, well then you better do something about the vatican. the vatican has the biggest wall of them all. the wall is immoral. look at all of the countries that have walls.