they re both serious and important, which they both are, or they re both a joke. steven, we re on day 27 of the shutdown. the polls, we ve been reporting or the new york times reported the president feels he s getting crushed on the shutdown issue and here s why. he cares more about the poll, more on that to come. and poll after poll showing the numbers are not looking good for him. no matter how you look at it you re up to blaming him anywhere from 53% to 56% of americans blame him or republicans for the shutdown. how worried is he that he s losing here? by the way, erin, i was never in favor of this government shutdown in the first place. i just don t feel it s a good way to resolve these conflicts. but this may be an example where trump is losing the battle but winning the war. it was very interesting, erin, i listened very closely to your conversation with that congresswoman, the new freshman congresswoman i think from michigan. and she must have said several times in that inte
but i also want to take a step back and say, you know, something was going on in this campaign whether trump knew it or not that so many felt either sort of like they had a welcome mat to talk to the russians. and that comes from the top. you know, trump set a tone for the campaign, which was this kind of behavior is okay. and that we have to remember. and then obviously now this leaves him only sticking out and saying the president himself didn t collude. that s the only thing that s left here. right, and since we found out last week that paul manafort gave secret polling data to a russian intelligence official the idea that no one was involved with collusion is becoming harder and harder to defend. thus yesterday s statement. and as i say before we go the fact the word poll is involved is pretty significant as well. thank you all. and next what s the connection between jerry fallwell, jr., donald trump and that i.t. expert? and this cardi b video
heavily suggested that he believed there might have been collusion. it was not only that there could have been but that there well might have been. and i think that s the big difference. he tried to walk it back today in what he said in the file analysis today was pretty neutral. but what we know is when he was really speaking from his gut, from his heart, from his head was last night when he opened that door. and by the way that was not his finest hour. i mean, maybe one could say that both specifically and metaphorically to the situation he s in right now. i want to read his tweet. my statements on collusion haven t changed. the misinterpretation has changed. the point is i represent the president, not the campaign. but from both perspectives there is no involvement with the russians on the e-mail hack. okay, hugely confusing if you re watching this.
the president s trip to iraq was top secret. that s the way it goes. we keep these things secret so that the life of the president or the first and second in line to the presidency is not threatened. the president revealing pelosi s plan is simply not protocol and not appropriate. even if he is canceling her trip it should not be public information. abbey philip is out front live outside the white house. and abbey, does the white house have a strategy or is this just about retaliation? clearly the president wrote it himself with the random capitalizations and all. this is his letter. reporter: it had been 24 hours since nancy pelosi asked him to postpone his state of the union because of the shutdown. and a lot of people wondered why president trump and the white house seemed to have not responded at all to that. and that s partly because according to our sources they didn t have a plan. they didn t know how to respond to what she had put on the table and were looking for a strateg
we will continue to wait for your excellent, excellent reporting. thanks so much for doing what you re doing. we are grateful to you. and our viewers thanks very much for watching. i m wolf blitzer in the situation room. erin burnett out front starts right now. out front next, trump fights back. never to be outdone, the president abruptly cancels the speaker s trip to afghanistan. plus rudy giuliani doing major damage control over contradicting the entire trump team s defense on collusion with russia. he s got a new explanation tonight. and michael cohen admitting he tried to rig online polls for trump. bags of cash exchanged reportedly, all directed by the president. let s go out front. good evening. i m erin burnett. out front tonight president trump strikes back. lashing out at his nemesis, the house speaker nancy pelosi after he threatens to postpone his