mckinnon is executive producer of showtime s the circus. before i get to that, i have some breaking news. breaking news at the top of the show is that the president had pressed top republicans to end the senate russia inquiry. that is according to the new york times is reporting that, jonathan martin, maggie haberman, and alexander burns. the white house is responding to that, gentlemen, and i want to get your response. it says, the white house has been cooperative with the senate intelligence committee s inquiry and the president is at no point has attempted to apply undue influence on committee members. he has reiterated what he has long said publicly, there is no evidence of collusion and these investigations must be must come to a fair and appropriate completion. it s interesting, he said, he said, there is no evidence of collusion. he didn t say there was no collusion. what do you think of that, david axelrod? you know, he has been saying he s been pushing for some time
this very short-term lens, which is, we just have to have a victory. and a lot of these guys may be facing primary opponents. and they want to say, we ve done something. and they re going end to up defending a bad bill. but in the long-term, as a strategist, i look at this and think, we rush through a bill just o get something done. and we re going to be republicans defending a tax bill that adds $1 trillion to the deficit as republicans? that s a big problem in the long-term. hmm. the president so reportedly saying that a government shutdown could be in his political interests. is that true? we ll talk about that when we come back.
country. so, i just we can t really know what that is right thousand. regarding this russia story tonight, one thing that should be noted, the republican senators who talked to the president kind of gave him the stiff arm a little bit and said, okay, thanks, and went about their work and continued the investigation, which is exactly what they should do. so i think while the note about him going to the senators is interesting, it should definitely be discussed. they did the right thing and are continuing to look into an issue that a lot of republicans believe has to be completed, because most people that i know have accepted, there is russian meddling in the election. the one thing i ll say is there s just a lot of instances of envelope pushing and sort of occupying this gray area. you know, once, twice, 15 times, you start to wonder if it s not sb intentional. 15? yeah, i was underselling. thank you, appreciate it. when we come back, the president suffering very little poli
he is apparently willing to make his stand is on the status of these 800,000 daca children of immigrants. the polling is pretty clear on this. large numbers of americans think that those kids should be held harmless in some way, for the fact that they were brought here, not of their own volition, but by their parent s, and they shouldn t be punished for that. yeah, that just makes it worse. and remember, mark, the president made a deal with or seemed to make a deal with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. according to the post, he s aggravated now because he said he looked like a chump in that deal. i would note the same week that he cut that deal, it was the last week he actually hit 40 in the rolling gallup poll numbers. that s what people want a president to do. it was the one time he went
because the washington post reports that it could be good for his best interests. if the government shuts down, it could affect social security payments, the cdc s ability to respond to outbreak could be slowed. how do you see the president spinning this as a victory? he could try. he s no spinning. a government shutdown says one thing, we can t govern and the republicans are in power. there s no upside for a government shutdown for the party in power. zero. what do you think, david? i totally agree with that. the last time a government shutdown actually benefited someone politically is when republicans shut down the government when bill clinton was president, because he refused a deal that would have cut medicare and that turned out to be a political disaster for the republicans. but in this case, the president, as mark points out, the president has both houses of congress. beyond that, the issue in which