amanda are back with me. did you hear the part tonight where the president said he got confirmation from mexico they are going to pay for the wall? indirectly, right? i was trying to lighten the tension, a little bit. what is your reaction to this statement from the president? watch this. all americans are hurt by uncontrolled illegal migration. it strains public resources and drives down jobs and wages. among those hardest hit are african-americans and hispanic-americans. what do you think there? what is he doing? is he pitting black against brown? he is attempting to pit black folks against brown folks in this country. this is not something new. this is something we ve heard over and over again. it is absolutely incorrect.
only eight minutes he asked for. i thought, it s not his venue, he s only affabsking for eight minutes. he s going to do that and end up with the congress fighting it and then it going to the courts and the court denying it, and then he could say, listen, they obstructed me, i tried all i could, and that s his way out. i thought it was eight minutes because he wasn t that into doing it. it s not his venue. i think he feels that he s winning. i was at lunch with the president today in an off the record session, but i can tell you this, i ve never seen him more confident or more secure in his arguments. he thinks that he wins on border security. interestingly, that s a new phrase for him. he s always said wall, wall, wall, wall, and now he s expanding it into areas that are ironically, certainly needed. anybody who goes to the border and talks to those in charge can tell you that, but republicans traditionally voted against some of the things he s asking for right now, but it s new
we ve got to go. ana, luis, rick, thank you very much. one point, as we get to don lemon tonight, there was no charges against manafort for this behavior, at least not yet. that s it for us. cnn tonight with don lemon starts right now. you know why he wants to talk about the wall, because i heard that, because he is he s losing the argument and he has to continue to talk about it. but did you notice that he didn t mention the wall until like almost halfway down yes. in his speech. it came last in his list of wants. and i don t know why he did this, he said, it s not going to be a concrete wall, it s going to be a steel wall, because that s what the democrats want. that is demonstrably false, but it s important to note, don, you see an evolution with the president. you re right on that. he is morphing it to be what is there already. but, chris, we have been reporting about, for years on cnn, about ballard fence and the different between a ballard fence and a wall
he said mexico was going to pay for it? everyone always says that, why don t you mention that, that mexico would pay for it. and the wall just got 10 feet higher, and it was concrete with a beautiful door. mexico will never pay for this wall. it s actually never going to be built. it is ridiculous. you don t think it s going to be built? no, no, absolutely not. why do you say that? there is fencing already there, to be honest with you. there are places where we already had fencing that it made sense for some security. but now they want to build out in areas that make no sense at all. it s interesting, because when he talks about what is already there, there could be areas of improvement, there could be areas that are added, but that s already been in the works. part of that was cleared during the obama administration, wasn t it? that s right. the notion that somehow they re going to create these new fence in areas that are people are crossing now. well, that s the mountai
want this shutdown to end, don. but, you know, just after the president s speech, white house officials were going around saying that this was a big success for the president, that he s presenting commonsense solutions to the american people. they re using this term common sense, you heard the president mention that in his speech tonight, that he feels like he s using common sense. my guess is that, my sense is that going into this speech, they were using terms like crisis and emergency. i think moving forward after tonight, don, you re going to hear terms like common sense as the president meets with democrats and republicans tomorrow here at the white house, he goes down to the border with mexico, down to mcallen, texas, on thursday. but make no mistake, don. it almost felt as though the president was trying, you know, his basic last chance here. basically, his last chance here to get that wall that he promptly promised his supporters