to the walls? for more on all of this, let s go to any phillip at the white house. abby what, more do we know how the president spent his day dealing or i guess not dealing with the shutdown. reporter: till a few minutes ago, the president had been rarely seen but plenty heard on twitter sending all the tweets you just mentioned but staying pretty much out of sight here at the white house. press secretary sarah sanders said he came to the office today, he made some calls. it s not comreer to whom. then a few minutes ago, the president left the white house and went to the naval observatory, that s the vice president s residence where he s now having dinner with vice president mike pence, his acting chief of staff mick mulvaney and son gnaw jared kushner. that would be the trio most responsible for the president s side of negotiations in this government shutdown. we still don t know where things stand. it seems like they don t stand much of anyplace at all. there s been a lot of blamin
there have been no proposals traded over the last couple days, there have been very limited comrukss. a lot of staff known to be talented and people who stk often thread the needle out of these situations didn t come to work today because they recognized a, their bosses were out of town and b it s going to an take awhile to figure this out. at this point everybody is looking forward to the point where nancy pelosi becomes speaker of the house. that s where house democrats will move immediately to send bills to reopen the government to the senate. here s the catch. mitch mcconnell already burned once by the president when the senate passed a unanimous bill to reopen government made clear he s not going to move on anything till the president signs off on it. whatever she sends over just means the next step in a battle that col last weeks. i love going behind the scenes only to find out there s nothing happening. what are staffers pointing to as potential triggers that might break the s
adults in the room. unfortunately, president trump has been hard to negotiate with. if he had listened to us two years ago, he would have had $25 billion for a wall and we would have had it the dream act. instead he listened to the worst elements of his cabinet as well as some pundits that basically guide his decisions. i do want to ask you, his threat to close the southern border, to withdraw foreign aid to those central american countries, do you take that seriously when he writes stuff like that? no, and i think that s a bigger danger the fact that no one takes this president serious. he is the boy that cries wolf too much. but also, i think it s disturbing the president of the united states is holding the american economy hostage. look, there are problems with nafta. we will very to renegotiate a lot of aspects of it. if you do such abrupt actions such as closing down the border, you re going to affect a good one-third to one-fourth of the economy of this country for people tha
trump s threat to shut down the entire southern u.s. border if he doesn t get funding for his wall in legislation to end the government shut down. the ball said one senate democrat is in his, meaning the president s court. this is a shut down remember, he once seemed eager for. i ll tell you what. we disagree. i am proud to shut down the government for border security, chuck, because the people of this country don t want criminals and people that he have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. i will take the mantel. i will be the one to shut it down the last time you shut it down it didn t work. i m going to shut it down for border security. so lately as you ve seen, he s been trying to bestow the mantle on is the democrats. jeff flake was asked whether he thought the president was still in fact, responsible. anytime you stand and say i own the shut down, then you own it.
i think at the end of the day, what we re talking about is the our government and how our government operates and the very serious decisions that a president has to make at like 12:01 after they are you know, sworn in. it s serious business. and i understand there are new people in the process but they re of there also were people working on the trump transition who had been involved in other transitions. so i think that it s an explanation but not an excuse. anita mcbride, thanks so much. thank you, john. up next, what a naked selfie has to do with the mueller investigation, plus new insight on the special counsel from some folks who have known him for decades and a reminder this new year s day at 9:00 p.m., don t miss the incredible story of comedy great gilda rad. here s a preview. hi, i m gilda radner and