and merry christmas. merry christmas. president trump directing his treasury secretary to call execs at u.s. banks in hopes of stabilizing the volatile markets? breaking details on the extraordinary move next. has been excellent. they really appreciate the military family and it really shows. with all that usaa offers why go with anybody else? we know their rates are good, we know that they re always going to take care of us. it was an instant savings and i should have changed a long time ago. it was funny because when we would call another insurance company, hey would say oh we can t beat usaa we re the webber family. we re the tenney s we re the hayles, and we re usaa members for life. get your usaa auto insurance quote today. our because of smoking.ital. but we still had to have a cigarette. had to. but then, we were like. what are we doing? the nicodermcq patch helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. nicodermcq. you know why, we know how.
and it s not clear what the end game is here. he just wants to show his base, as joe said, he is fighting as much as possible for the border wall, and we have seen the republicans take counteroffers, and the number keeps going down, and first it was $5 billion, and now it s between $1.6 billion and 5 billion, and democrats have no incentive to cooperate with the president, and nancy pelosi is going to be speaker of the house, and she can send a clean bill over to the senate, and the senate can decide to defy the president, and if somebody is frustrated with the fact that the government remains closed, the governmepresident m to cave. in the last 25 years, we had a limited number of shutdowns, two under clinton and one under
deal which he turned down. your job when you were in the white house was to deal with congress on these issues, and how is it a winning strategy for the president to say no when there has been a bipartisan agreement? i don t think the president s strategy is always to say no, erica. you look at what happened in the last couple of weeks, you have seen the president sign a prison reform bill and farm bill, and it s bipartisan. he believes border security is the platform he presented to be president of the united states, and he s frustrated the democrats are not coming along with the border security. i think where the administration errs is too much of the argument for the border wall is explained too much in tweets or at rallies, and i think that s what
this point, seeing as how they ll have control of one chamber of congress. it s an odd shutdown for those of us who have covered politics for a long time. usually a measure of urgency about these issues because the two parties don t want to be blamed. you just don t see that this time, guys. there s almost a kind of resignation. i think that s in part because of the change in power in the house that s coming. i also, frankly, think it s in part because the republicans can t really prosecute the case against the democrats because of what the president has said. you know, you don t see mitch mcconnell out there, lashing democrats left and right. you see him offering a kind of like 101 level civics class about how to fund the government. telling the president not very subtly that he needs to get democratic votes and that he then needs to sign the bill. it s very fascinating to watch
let s bring in the former clinton white house secretary, joel lockhart, and alisyn stewart. merry christmas eve. a lot of news to get to. joe, you suffered an epic shutdown, and how is this different? should we be worried about if this is a new normal? i don t know about new normal, but i agree with the abl acting chief of staff, and it s because both sides think they are winning. in some senses, they are. for trump this is about his base, and it s about a promise. in some ways this is a better debate than mattis leaving and the markets tanking and the mueller probe. and democrats think they are also winning, and standing up to the president helps them with their own base and also independents. they are playing a larger game. right now the incentives are to