yes, sorry that we re speaking under weird circumstances which is a new congress and an old shutdown. let me ask you this first question about the president today and this idea that he could declare basically a state of emergency of sorts and build his wall his way without congress. he believes he has that authority. do you believe he has that authority? i m going to have to see where that authority is coming from. obviously congress delegates those funds and appropriates funds specifically for specific tasks. the president does have some reprogramming authority. that typically has to come back to congress to get additional approval on. he is very passionate about this as an emergency, this needs to be resolved. we do have a high number of people coming in at the border. we have used national guard for instance, and many administrations, president obama, president bush, others used national guard fl. using national guard troops is different than using corps of engineers to build an
public opinion is going against him on this. public opinion is against the wall. public opinion is, you know, bringing i think bringing down his approval ratings, and you know, i think that there is you re also seeing some fraying of the republican coalition with people like cory gardner and susan collins now saying they would vote on the democratic measures. i think the numbers in this, i think you could see more senators do that. you also, mitch mcconnell has sorts sort of done a homer sifmpson ad stepped back into the hedges. he has been relatively i think there s deep seeded animosity by him feeling he was kind of screwed over by the president several weeks ago. the mitch mcconnell conundrum is fascinating. he has to worry about his conference and himself. he s up in 2020. so is cory gardner and susan collins, and he s got to walk that line. the trump, you know, matt bevin who s currently the governor of
we begin tonight with one heck of a lead story. as the seeming inevitability of eventual impeachment proceedings collides with talks to reopen the government. folks with two big stories sort of lingering today, impeachment chatter and the president s shutdown over the wall, they re more connected than you might realize. right now it appears that the president isn t just trying to built a wall to keep illegal immigrants out, he s trying to build a wall to keep his political base in. with this new democratic house, with all the investigations, with mueller s report in the works, it s very possible mr. trump realizes that if he loses his base, he could lose the presidency as lindsey graham has been warning. the president met with congressional leaders at the white house this afternoon and then gave a lengthy press conference, sort of a classic trumpian press conference. what we saw at that press conference was a tale of two trumps. one who seemed intent to dig in and another who seemed a
president trump, who knows, and we ll see what happens. let s bring in tonight s panel, kimberly atkins, michaelger son, and doug cornell. kimberly right after the president finished, my ep and i both had two different interpretations of which trump we saw. the guy wants to dig in and a guy with an exit ramp. one of us saw one more dug in, one of us saw one desperate for an exit ramp. i saw someone who was pretty dug in. he seemed to actually be enjoying himself at this press conference where he was doing his normal free wheeling thing and it seems to me that as long as he has this shutdown battle over the wall, it gives him the platform to keep talking about the wall, to keep focus on the wall. as soon as the government is back up and running, that goes away. so that s really a disincentive for him to move on this at all, and at the same time, the democrats have taken over the house are just as
power. and what the hell do you know about my people and whether they deserve to have their voices heard? it s like, i ll tell you if they should have their voices heard. russians had a lot of reasons to be angry. that fall it was announced that putin would run for president again for a third time. that meant he could potentially rule russia until 2024. some people said, oh, my god, i m going to die with this guy in power. a few months later, the elections for russia s parliament were a farce. we do have serious concerns about the conduct of the elections. hillary clinton called out the election. i don t think she realized how badly that was going to go down. with his back against the wa