Bret im sorry. I couldnt help it. I will tune. In thank you. Good evening, welcome to washington. Im bret baier. Breaking tonight, former President Donald Trump says the quarter billion dollars civil Fraud Lawsuit against him is a scam. The former president making the comment as he arrived at the Manhattan Courthouse where the trial began. He is accused of deceiving banks and insurers. No one is above the law. During opening statements, the state argued trump and his family routinely filed inflated financial statements. But trumps team disputes that. Arguing value is subjective. And determined by what someone is willing to pay. Trump argues his brand brings additional value. While Attorney General james claims the former president routinely lies about his net worth. This is disgraceful trial. Put forward by Attorney General who is corrupt. Were going to be here for months with a judge already made up his mind. Its ridiculous ruled trump and others including his adult sons eric and don
cave. really quick, either he is showing he is willing to give, or perhaps he has even forgotten himself the various sequence of events that have, you know, happened, leading up to this, because some of the overtures that he is willing to make today, reportedly, seem to be overtures that have already been made, whether they were failed, or offered some incentives. exactly. i mean there was a broader version of the deal that was offered a year ago in the previous shutdown impasse. but vice president pence himself has rejected, when we asked him on capitol hill, what about a daca for wall deal, and i believe a week ago, though the time line in my brain can be warped sometimes, but a few days happening to all of us. when the vice president explicitly rejected that, he said the president would like to wait until the supreme court indicates whether it will weigh in, on this daca case, one way or the other and the president has also contradicted that since. so there is a lot of mix
democrats feel they have an extremely strong hand to play right now. it s a unifying issue coming into this majority. and, again, what we saw today, lamar alexander, republican senator, he put forward three options that could move past this shutdown impasse. none of those involved what the president is asking for, $5.6 billion. so i think among republicans who are not necessarily in the president s base and his core constituency, certainly an acknowledgment that the $5 billion of wall funding or perhaps even less than that is just not possible. and sung minn, almost a million americans are either furloughed so not being paid or working without pay. many government workers who don t make all that much money and some do live paycheck to paycheck. and it s unclear when and if and how this is going to end. take a listen to president trump when asked how long the shutdown might continue. how long are you willing to keep the government shut down?
advisers, those who remain, going to be telling him? how are they going to be able to help us get past this shutdown impasse and calm the turmoil that seems to be roiling the markets? well, you would hope that they will be back at work today trying to come up with a plan for the shutdown. there should not seem to be one. the president just yesterday in his christmas morning message to the troops took a couple questions from reporters and said he intends to keep the government closed until he gets that border wall funding and that it could be a very long time. he actually claimed that many federal workers were personally communicating their desire to keep the government open to him. that s just not a credible claim and there s no evidence to support that. but, look, i think the advisers in the white house are going to look to figure out how to deal with this, how to govern in january in a divided with a divided congress. and that s a problem. the other thing that i hope that they ll
unexpectedly overturn negotiations like a flimsey coffee table. the vacillateliing positions on immigration, in a piece titled, quote, the a president not sure of what he wants complicates the shutdown impasse. quote, one thing was clear to both sides of the negotiations to end it. the president was either unwilling or unable to articulate the immigration policy he wanted. much less, understand the nuances of what it would involve. here s the enduring image of the president during the shutdown. no notes, no details, no staff, hat on. all of this said, the white house took a victory lap this afternoon. democrats realized that the position that they had taken frankly was indefensible and that they had to focus on first funding our military, protecting border patrol agents, funding