shutdown will simply have to keep waiting even within the administration now. it appears there is some disagreement over the meaning of border wall. the outgoing chief of staff john kelly made headlines with an interview he gave to the l.a. times in which he attempts to redefine what president trump means when he says border wall. take a look at this quote that kelly gave the times. to be honest, it's not a wall. the president still says wall. often times, frank ly, he will say barrier or fencing. now he has tended toward steel slats but we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration. lately we've seen surrogates for the president trying to describe his long-promised border wall as some sort of barrier. kellyanne conway earlier this week was speaking with dana bash on "state of the union," suggesting that part of the disagreement between republicans and democrats is over semantics, what this barrier essentially means. president trump took a wrecking ball to that, an all-concrete wall was never abandoned, all caps for emphasis, as reported by the media. some areas will be concrete but porder experts prefer a see-through wall that makes it possible to see what is happening on both sides. makes sense to me. he is also calling on democrats to return to washington, d.c. to try to negotiate a deal that would reopen the government. there are some optimists out there, including senator lindsey graham, here at the white house this weekend, having a long lunch with the president. he was a bit optimistic. he tried to present an idea to the president that might offer a legal solution for dreamers, legal status for recipients of daca in exchange of border funding, an idea we saw before. he said the president was not committed to that. both sides do have to sit down and start talking once again, he said. pam? >> we should note in his tweet this morning that the concrete wall was never abandoned, something that's been reported by the media. that was coming directly from his outgoing chief of staff, john kelly. >> on the record, yeah. >> on the record. boris sanchez, thank you for that. >> white house reporter for the washington post and patrick healy, editor for "the new york times." great to see you both. >> hi, pam. >> all right. i first want to go to what lindsey graham said after having this two-hour lunch meeting yesterday with president trump. let's listen. >> after lunch i've never been more encouraged if we can get people talking we can find our way out of this mess. the president didn't commit, but i think he's very open minded. i know there are some democrats out there who would be willing to provide money for wallboarder security if we could deal with the daca population and tps people. >> patrick, i want to go to you first. what do you think about what we heard from lindsey graham? do you think that a deal that involves daca is something that democrats can get on board with? >> no. democrats don't want to go down the daca road. at least not now. they don't want this to get fuzzed up with a number of different issues being pulled together. they want to pass a bill that reopens the government, that shows that the democrats support government functioning normally and making sure that hundreds of thousands of workers are getting their paychecks so they're not dipping into savings or credit. and what they're open to, it seems like, is border security issue. but you're hearing senator graham using these formulations like wallboarder security. he's trying to sort of please, it seems, president trump, who is so fixated on the wall because he knows that the republican base that his supporters very much want a wall or at least have gotten behind him certainly during the 2016 campaign and as president over a wall. senator graham introducing daca into this, at least right now for house democrats, isn't the path they want to go down. what it will come down to is whether president trump still insists on calling something a wall and asking for several billion dollars for it or a more looser border security bill. >> the president still hasn't reached tout democrats to negotiate. and it's still unclear what he will sign at this point. right? >> exactly. i mean, it seems publicly clear that he's not willing to budge from the $5 billion. we also know that the white house has offered privately to democratic leaders a smaller scale deal, about $2.5 billion in border security funding as well as more money for immigration enforcement. the mixed signals problem is one that has been a problem for the last several weeks as we've tried to navigate this shutdown. mike pence, the vice president, had come to a lunch with republican senators and republican senators left that lunch feeling pretty confident that the president would sign a so-called clean funding bill, which didn't have all the wall funding that democrats oppose but clearly we saw the president came out strongly a few days later and said he would not support that piece of legislation. in terms of discussions with the democratic leaders, you're right that there is none going on right now. the last time that the president talked with the incoming speaker, nancy pelosi, who is one major part of the equation here, was december 11th in a phone call after that dramatic oval office confrontation, and the discussions with chuck schumer are being primarily led by the vice president and the acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney. perhaps when congress is fully back in session later this week, we'll see more direct communication between the president -- or among the president and schumer and pelosi but right now these discussions are simply not happening. >> they are clearly at an impasse. patrick, you had alluded to this. this sort of change in language over the border wall and the outgoing chief of staff john kelly told the l.a. times that the administration had abandoned this idea of a concrete wall. then you have kellyanne conway telling cnn yesterday this is all about semantics and we shouldn't be caught up in the semantics of the wall and what it might look like. what do you make of the change in language? the president's tweet this morning, claiming they didn't abon done the concrete wall. go ahead. >> he's the president of the united states, right, so you sort of start with him and not so much kellyanne conway and the argument over semantics. the president of the united states still says wall. he says it over and over and over again. and voters, regular people know what a wall is. wall isn't a fence. he seems to care so much about a wall that he's going on twitter, contradicting his own chief of staff, john kelly's on-the-record remarks saying they abandoned a wall. it's extremely important for this president to say to his base, who follows him on twitter very closely, i am still for a stro strong, big wall. we know what that is. the problem is that runs smack hard into house democratic opposition and a good number of democrats in the senate, too, who don't believe that the threat to america is so great that you need to build a gigantic wall on the border and spend billions of dollars to do it or shut down the government and prevent people from getting paid. so, you know, people can say all they want about the semantics but the reality is that the president keeps doubling and tripling down on we've never abandoned a wall. a wall is what we're going to get. he's going to either end up caving big time, you know, if they end up going with border security or you may see a very long shutdown. this seems to be where the president wants to make his stand. >> what do you think? >> we'll have to wait and see how long this shutdown goes. while we have the democrats seemingly unmoving from their position and the president as well, republicans on capitol hill, while they do want to support the presses's policy goals, they do support a wall, more border security, they're not willing to risk a shutdown to achieve those policy goals. that's kind of the big difference between congressional republicans and the president. and we'll have to see as the shutdown goes on if senate republicans, house republicans particularly start to lose their patience but how long the shutdown goes on, if they're hearing from their federal worker constituents back home about their furloughs and missing paychecks and if that changes the calculus at all. besides that, adds something extraneous, whether it was trying to defund obamacare in 2013 or trying to add dreamer protections earlier this year on the part of democrats. that's the side that usually loses a shutdown. but we'll have to wait and see. >> we shall. the politics of it, the blame ga game, there are 800,000 federal employees who were impacted by this partial government shutdown. thank you both for coming on. >> thanks for having us. new york is gearing up for the nation's most high-profile new year's eve celebration. and 2019 will get a soggy start when the ball drops. chad myers has the forecast. very different new year's eve this year than last year, right, chad? >> 50 degrees warmer this year than last year with the windchill factor last year being 5 degrees below zero. this year it will feel like 45 above. it will be raining, no question about it, raining in ohio, nashville, atlanta, georgia, even potential for afternoon tornadoes with the storm system. it is a big storm. but it is not a white storm unless you're in michigan, wisconsin or back into iowa. that's where the cold air is. the rest of the u.s. is well above normal for this time of year. it does rain, new york city, philadelphia. it rains all night long. even at midnight, i don't see any breaks possible. maybe it turns into some mist and drizzle but will be wet in the northeast. almost 60 in d.c., 66 in atlanta. even on the other side of the world over here, we begin to see the cooldown. 9 is the temperature in denver and there will be some wind. it will never feel that warm. salt lake city, 20. the benefit of this is that for all of you that decided to go skiing for new year's, you picked the right week because we have three to six inches of good snow coming in from colorado down to angel fire. if you're out there, enjoy it. it's cold but you can't ski when it's warm so enjoy the cold and the snow. pamela? >> pretty crazy. i left the house this morning in washington, d.c. without a coat. so, chad myers, thank you so much. >> you're welcome. if you can't be in times square, the next best thing is to watch the ball drop live with anderson cooper and andy cohen tonight at 8:00 eastern only on cnn. it is officially 2019 in new zealand. fireworks lit up the night sky earlier today. an impressive light show over sydney harbor in australia. heavy storms in the hours leading up to the big show. still ahead on this monday morning, elizabeth warren seeing 2020? the massachusetts democrat just launching her own presidential exploratory committee. we have the very latest. plus russia arrests a u.s. citizen accused of spying. we are live in moscow. and disturbing new video uncovered, showing staffers pushing and dragging migrant children at an arizona shelter. we have the latest. ♪ do you want to take the path or the shortcut? not too fast. 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oh, okay. didn't see that on the website. he's been acting more and more like his dad. come on, guys! jump in! the water's fine! tom pritchard. how we doin'? hi, there. tom pritchard. can we get a round of jalapeño poppers for me and the boys, please? i've been saving a lot of money with progressive lately, so... progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents. but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. senator elizabeth warren takes the first step for a run to the white house. she announced moments ago that she is launching an exploratory committee. mj lee has more. she joins me now from boston. good morning, mj. >> reporter: hey, pam. it is suddenly feeling like a 2020 senator elizabeth warren announcing this morning, as you said, she is forming an exploratory presidential committee. this confirms what we expected for a while now. that she is, in fact, going to run for president and is the first major democratic candidate to take formal action in a presidential campaign. here is a little snippet from that video. >> no matter where you live in america and no matter where your family came from in the world, you deserve a path to opportunity because no matter what our differences, most of us want the same thing, to be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules and take care of the people we love. that's the america i'm fighting for. and that's why today i'm launching an exploratory committee for president. >> now the video actually began with her describing her childhood in oklahoma and her father suffering a heart attack and working as a janitor and her mother getting a minimum wage job. senator warren says despite those hardships she was lucky enough to become a law professor and, of course, a senator. she makes the point in this video that not all other american families are as lucky as hers. and the themes we see in this video, pam, themes like fighting economic inequality, government corruption, taking on big banks and big corporations, these are themes we've seen senator warren talk about on the national stage for several years now. these clearly will be the issues driving her presidential campaign. now the reason that we are set up in the boston area this morning is because this is where her staffers are looking for office space for her eventual presidential campaign headquarters. we are also told that she has -- the senator herself has already spent hundreds of hours on the phone with political leaders and activists in the early states and her plans are to travel to those early states as soon as possible but, of course, that all depends on what ends up happening with the ongoing government shutdown back in d.c. this will be a crowded democratic field, pam, as you know. what she does have working in her favor, at least today, is that she is, again, the first one out of the gate and those optics are certainly important. pam? >> absolutely. mj lee, thank you very much. live from boston. let's talk about what the polls are saying about warren's chances in 2020. i'll bring in cnn politics writer and analyst harry enton who joins me now. thanks for joining me. >> my pleasure. >> you say warren's best performance in the 2018 midterms was one of the weakest for a democratic senate candidate even though she won by 24 points. explain that. what stands out to you about those numbers? >> massachusetts is a very blue state. hillary clinton won there by 27 points, liz warren won there by 24. 2018 was a much better year for democrats nationwide. so the fact that liz warren did worse than hillary clinton in massachusetts suggests perhaps she's a below-par candidate. >> let's talk about the cnn poll. the cnn poll from earlier this month, showing that she is fairly low on the list of front-runners and democrats choice for their nominee. look at this full screen here. what does her home state polling tell us about a possible 2020 match-up? >> if you look at people's home state polling you would, in fact, see they're well out ahead. look at joe biden's polling in delaware, or bernie sanders, they poll well but when matched up against her opponents in a potential democratic primary she's polling third or fourth behind biden and sanders, which suggests something is quite wrong, right? if people in your own home state, democrats in your own home state say maybe we prefer another democrat, perhaps it says when other people nationwide are exposed to liz warren they might not look her as with much. >> very interesting. boston globe editorial page urging her not to run. here is what they said. while warren is an effective and impactful senator, she's become a divisive figure. unifying voice is what the country needs right now after the polarizing politics of donald trump. what does your polling say about this? does it back it up? >> i think it does. perhaps she should have run in 2016. her standing and polling nationwide was higher. if you look at the polling now, what you tend to see is that liz warren's favorable ratings are not that high among the general population. of course, remember, winning a democratic primary is just the first step in winning the presidency. you then have to go and win a general election and liz warren, her very liberal record, combined with the fact that donald trump has already gone after her has made her a divisive figure nationwide and i think that's what that globe editorial is getting at. >> she's been a divisive figure, you say. there was the back and forth with the president, with donald trump. the pocahontas attacks he launched at her, then she did those dna tests that she released. do you think that's hurt her at all nationally? >> i think they have. if you speak with most democrats, they would suggest perhaps liz warren didn't get the upper hand of that particular battle. and i'm not sure it was a particularly smart move by her, especially in the lead-up to the midterms when most democrats wanted to keep their eyes on the president, he was able to go after her. i should point out, of course, we have more an a year to go until the democratic primary. it's possible that, in fact, senator warren could pick up spe speed. >> harry enten, thank you very much. an american in russia accused of spying has been held for days but details are just beginning to trickle out. zzlers. yeah, uh...for the team... >>the team? gooo team.... know what's better than overnight shipping? free one hour pickup when you order online... or on our app. at office depot officemax need a change of scenery? kayak searches hundreds of travel sites - even our competitors - so you can be confident you're getting the right flight at the best price. kayak. search one and done. this morning, russia says it has detained a u.s. citizen on suspicion of spying. american paul wheelan was taken into custody friday when, according to russian authorities, he was carrying out an act of espionage. matthew chance has the latest. matthew? >> reporter: pamela, thank you very much. there's not a great deal we have to add to that because details have been sketchy from the russian side as to exactly what happened. we know that this individual, paul nicholas wheelan was arrested december 28th, a couple of days ago, in moscow, the russian capital, while undertaking what the russian authorities say were espionage activities. fsb, the lead counter es pichpi agency had that statement but added nothing further. russian foreign ministry has said the u.s. authorities at the embassy in moscow have been notified about the detention. we reached out to the embassy. they say they've got nothing they can give us in terms of information or detail at the moment. i spoke to them a few minutes before we came on air, they said the state department would be preparing a statement and once that's approved shortly, it will be obviously made public. hoping to have a bit of clarity then about what exactly this is all about, pamela. >> lots to discuss here, matthew chance, thank you so much. joining me now cnn global affairs analyst david rhode, executive editor of the new yorker website. as we heard from matthew, details are sketchy. we don't have a lot of information. but how concerning is this to you, of this american detained in russia? >> the initial speculation is that this could be retaliation for the recent conviction of maria butina, russian national who infiltrated the nra and other groups this arrest could be a bargaining chip that this american has been arrested could maybe in the future be trade for butina. it's also a warning sign. journali journalists in moscow are saying that this could be a message that putin is sending president trump for the new year, that russia will be confrontational if needed. >> let's talk about that big picture here. what does this mean about u.s./russia relations moving forward? >> it's a clear sign that putin will continue to be aggressive. it's a sense that, you know, if you looked at this proposed withdrawal of american troops from syria, something that putin has praised and has called for for years, that withdrawal is not being rewarded by putin. he is continuing to be aggressive. and this is what skeptics say, that the way to deal with putin is to be tough with him and push him back and that will cause him to back down instead of making gestures and praising him, as president trump has sometimes done. >> i want to turn to syria now. the president's strategy appears to be changing. this morning the president tweeted, affirming his plan. saying if anybody but donald trump did what i did in syria, they would be a national here o he also said isis is mostly gone. we're slowly sending our troops back home to be with their families while at the same time fighting isis remnants. this is in stark contrast, david, to his announcement last week, saying that withdrawals of u.s. military would be full and rapid and that isis was largely defeated or was eradicated, he said. what's going on here? >> it's confusing. what's odd about the tone of the message is that -- i want to stop and be respectful to the president and the office that he has, but he's talking about what he achieved in syria. it's kurds, 1,000 of whom, over 900 of whom died last year fighting isis that actually defeated the group and other militias and the very brave american soldiers, special operation soldiers advising and fighting alongside them. this has been a complicated effort in syria. all experts agree it's not over. isis remnants are still there. so the president is changing his tone and i think that confuses moderate muslims, the kurds among them, who are fighting extremism, you know, shoulder to shoulder with u.s. troops. this is a very confusing message from the white house. >> and after meeting with the president sunday, republican senator lindsey graham suggested that the president has a, quote, better understanding of the stakes in syria and that he has agreed to re-evaluate his plan. let's listen to what he said. >> i think we're in a policy situation, we're re-evaluating what's the best way to achieve the president's objective of having people pay more and do more. after discussions with the president and general dunford i never felt better about where we're headed. i think we're slowing things down in a smart way but the goal has always been the same, to be able to leave syria, make sure isis never comes back, our partners are taken care of and iran is contained. i think that's possible. >> let's pick this apart. this is further muddying the water when graham came out and said that. just last week, senator graham said this was a stain on u.s. honor, withdrawing troops and so forth. now he is saying he's feeling a lot better about the situation. what do you make about his change of heart and the fact that the president appears to be wavering here? >> i think graham is personally happy because the president might slow down this withdrawal. what's getting lost in this are sort of the basic facts. u.s. troops have been in syria about four years, there's only 2,000 of them. four americans have died in four years. one american death is too many but this is a very small deployment that's been remarkably successful. and i think the goal is to sort of extend the fight and finish off isis. and so graham, i think, is happy. he's trying to convince the president to slow down this withdrawal but it's quite confusing, a declaration of victory one minute and now we're going to slow down the withdrawal at this point. lastly, i think the islamic state is still a very serious threat to the united states. they've carried out terrible attacks in europe, isis-inspired attacks have occurred in the u.s. graham's argument is that you keep a small number of troops for a short period of time and we finish them off is a smart one and it sounds like the president is coming around to that argument. >> thank you for your analysis. >> thank you. it would take a big rally to keep the dow from having the worst december the since the great depression. we'll be right back. [ doorbell rings ] janice, mom told me you bought a house. okay. [ buttons clicking ] [ camera shutter clicks ] so, now that you have a house, you can use homequote explorer. quiet. i'm blasting my quads. janice, look. i'm in a meeting. -janice, look. -[ chuckles ] -look, look. -i'm looking. it's easy. you just answer some simple questions online, and you get coverage options to choose from. you're ruining my workout. cycling is my passion. let's get right to wall street and the last trading day of the year. dow up, look, triple digits on hopes of u.s./china trade talks. don't be fooled here. this is no december to remember. cristina alesci is at the new york stock exchange. good morning. >> good morning, pamela. that's right. we're on track for the worst december since 1931, pamela. the market, at this point, would have to rally another 600 points to avoid that record low. bigger picture here, there is optimism on the floor this morning because of a possible trade deal or the president talking up a possible trade deal between the u.s. and china but listen for the year the markets have just been abysmal. the s&p is down 7%, the dow 6.7%. and to a certain extent this was bound to happen but it is the way that stocks are taking a hit that cause a lot of concern. december specifically was marked by panic selling and a lot of volatility. one of the indices, s&p 500 was up or down about 1% nine times in december alone versus eight times for the entire year in 2017. this is the kind of thing that causes a lot of concern among investors and traders every day here. and they're trying to figure it out. they're worried about the economic slowdown, the trade war and more importantly, dysfunction in washington and how it might have real impact on fiscal policy in 2019. >> it seems like as we enter the new year, tomorrow, investors are worried about what 2019 might hold. >> yes. the three major ones i mentioned. also underlying the concern here is the fact that investors are worried that the stimulus that we saw from the tax cuts this year might begin to wear off at the same exact time that the federal reserve will go ahead and probably raise interest rates next year. so that is a major concern against the backdrop, as i said, of a lot of uncertainty in washington, d.c., dysfunction in the white house that is not giving anyone any comfort here and investors trying to figure out how much fundamentally these companies that make up these indices are worth. pamela? >> cristina alesci live for us at new york stock exchange. thank you, cristina. arizona prosecutors looking at alleged cases of abuse at a facility holding migrant children. what is being done about this troubling video? 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[ indistinct talking ] -deductible? -definitely speaking insurance. -additional interest on umbrella policy? -can you translate? -damage minimization of civil commotion. -when insurance needs translating, get answers in plain english at progressiveanswers.com. ♪ -he wants you to sign karen's birthday card. it's a high honor. gilda radner was a comedy superstar whose reach expanded far beyond the world of entertainment. her iconic "saturday night live" characters made us laugh. her thought provoking writing broke boundaries for women, and her hard fought battle with cancer brought attention everywhere. now, love, gilda, uses special access to her diaries, letters, and home videos to tell gilda's story in her own words. here's a preview. >> this is gilda radner. her voice and her writing. >> first and foremost, above everything else, my main priority is that i am a girl. i have never wanted to be anything else. i'm fascinated with boys but i never wanted to be one. i agree, gilda. >> to be a girl and be funny means you have to sacrifice a lot of things because of your loud mouth. >> being neurotic is the only subject. yes. >> i can't even begin to imagine how i got famous. it seemed like i just took the next job and it turned out millions of people were watching me do it. >> maybe you know me, maybe you don't. maybe you heard of me but never saw me, or maybe you used to know me but don't know me anymore. one time in my life, i was famous, and it seemed like everyone knew me. >> and poppy harlow recently sat down with jordan walker pearlman, the nephew of gilda radner and her husband, gene wilder. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> we should note you're a filmmaker as well. not the filmmaker of this film, but a filmmaker as well. >> allegedly so. >> so they say. gilda came into your life when she fell in love with and later married your uncle, gene wilder, who helped raise you. what was it like to see her, to see both of them together as we look at some of these wonderful family photos? and movies that were shown in the film. walk us into what it was like in that household. >> it was like she was two sticks of dynamite and he was a buddha fountain. >> yin to the yang. >> yeah, but what was interesting is they both changed a little bit of each other's personalities. gene and i met gilda at the same time, for a movie called "hanky-panky" directed by sidney poitier. he wasn't familiar with her work or "saturday night live" at the time. we rented tapes of it. they met, and there was a spark between them. but he said, he told me it wasn't romantic, for two or three months. he would take me out to dinner and say i think gilda is the type of person i should start dating, but not her. because there's no romantic spark there. and she's married. i would never do that. then two months later, i was with him at the house and he said, i have news for you. i fell in love with that funny ballerina. and she's going to move in to the house. >> and the rest is history. >> the rest was history. >> let's talk about her and her battles and what she struggled with. >> the sad part that i'm going to have trouble talking about. i couldn't wait until we got to it. >> she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, 1986. in the film, we see these really poignant home movies of gilda and gene together and at the hospital, and at home, and clearly a very difficult time. what was that like for you? how did gene support her through it? >> the most frustrating thing for gene and i, the most painful thing was that a year and a half before she got diagnosed, she told the doctor she had cancer. and they refused to believe her. >> she knew. >> she knew. and they all but, and i was in the room, so i dare any of them to contradict me. they all but patted her on the head and said, there there, little lady. you're a hypochondriac. you have epstein barr virus. you have chronic fatigue strm. you're not working enough. that's the problem. she said no, i have cancer. they wouldn't believe her. when the diagnose came. at the time, too late, ultimately, we were in shock but we were also so angry because if we had -- at ourselves for not pushing the doctors more, but also at the doctors for not listening to her. >> if she said it, she said this to them, and they didn't listen. >> she said you're not listening to me, to these doctors. i have cancer. and i know if gene had been saying it about himself -- >> they would listen because he's a man. >> precisely. >> what do you hope that and think that her most lasting legacy is? >> in terms of her legacy, i don't want her to be remembered by the saddest thing that happened to her because she did wonderful work and touched lives wonderfully. she would have loved to have seen people in the theater or at home watching love gilda, laughing at some of her old bits. that would have made her really happy. >> thank you so much. >> thank you very much. i appreciate it. and gilda airs tomorrow night at 9:00 eastern right here on cnn. 2019 will get a soggy start in new york city tonight. thousands of people are expected to crowd into times square for the ball drop. but they'll have to contend with extremely tight security and heavy showers as well. we start with cnn's chad myers who has the forecast. i guess it's rain, but it's going to be warmer this year compared to last year, right? >> 50 degrees warmer in new york city will be the feels-like temperature today compared to 365 days