Warming is making this country have very severe weather. This will rank as one of the worst losses of life to a fire in many, many years. My mom texted my sister they were trapped in the room. Our hearts go out to every family who lost a loved one. This is new day with chris cuomo and alyson camerota. Welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is your new day. Chris is off. Bill weir skwroeupbjoins me. Good morning. He thinks special Counsel Robert Mueller will be fair to him. He says the russia investigation makes the u. S. Look very bad. This was an impromptu interview in which the president insisted 16 times there was no collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia. He said he has every right to do whatever he wants with the Justice Department. He made news last night with a tweet tweeting that the east coast could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming. As bitter cold temperatures grip much of the nation, once again trying to undermine the Science BehindClimate Change knowing the rest of the planet is above normal temperatures is something he called a hoax. Cities are deploying an unprecedented number of Law Enforcement officers to protect revelers as they ring in the new year. Abby phillip live in west palm beach, florida. Good morning, abby. Reporter good morning, bill. The president spending a couple of minutes with a New York Times reporter in the dining room of his maralago resort a few blocks from here. The president talking at length about this russia investigation and making some surprising comments about the idea that he believes that rocket mueller is conducting an investigation that he has at least some confidence in. Let me read you a little bit of what he had to say to that reporter. He said there was no collusion with respect to my campaign. I think ill be treated fairly. Timingwise, i cant tell you. I just dont know. But i think well be treated fairly. That seems to contradict a lot of what we have been hearing from other republicans who waged something of a campaign over the last several weeks to undermine the mueller probe, suggesting that it at its core unfair to the president because perhaps the people who are investigating the president are supporters of hillary clinton. The president also talking a little bit about the impact he thinks the probe is having on the reaction to the United States abroad. He said the only thing that bothers me about timing, i can its a very bad thing for the country because it makes the country look bad. It makes the country look very bad, and it puts the country in a very bad position. So the sooner its worked out the better. It is possible the president was reflecting on how it makes him look on the world stage in addition to the country. The other remarkable thing about this interview, bill and alisyn, is the president was at his club where he is often not totally surrounded by aides. And there was not a Single Person who worked for him at the white house with him when he sat down for 30 minutes with this times reporter. Many of them learned about this interview much after the fact. And probably were surprised by the fact that he spoke so freely about this ongoing investigation. Bill and alisyn. Abby, very interesting is. So he was, we can assume, he was untethered by any aides. Anyway, it is quite illuminating. Lets discuss with David Drucker and former federal prosecutor renata marriotti. David drucker, isnt it interesting to hear the different tone that he thinks Robert Mueller will be quite fair to him . I think the president struck the right tone. If youre going to try to cast doubt on an investigation, and that is a pretty normal thing to do, they dont want to be found guilty of anything or indicted, the best thing to do is have your supporters cast doubt and you play the role of the statesman and saying of course you have full confidence in the justice system. From a political standpoint, it was unusual because trump doesnt always abide by those rules. Then we end up in discussions about whether or not he has any concern or understanding for how the rule of law works and how it impacts the presidency. Here he seemed to be taking that conventional approach. If he could stick to that, i think it would do him as well as long ass, as he claims, there will be no aspersions cast on him from this russia investigation. Renato, you made an interesting point about his control of the department of justice. He asked if he would open up an investigation against the clintons. And he said i have absolute right to do what i want with the Justice Department. But for purposes of hopefully thinking im going to be treated fairly, ive stayed uninvolved with this particular matter. He talked again about how his disappointment in Jeff Sessionss recusal. Its too bad jeff recused himself. I like him. I dont want to get into loyalty, but i will say this. Eric holder protected president obama. Totally protected him. When you look at the irs scandal. These were real problems and holder protected the president. I have respect for that. Ill be honest, i have respect for that. What strikes you about his take between the executive and the Justice Department . The second passage, essentially the president is saying he thinks the attorney general should shield them from problems that are problematic. Whenever the president does something that might violate the law, the attorney general should step in, have his back, and stop the investigations which of course is not at all pay back the Justice Department is supposed to act with the president of the United States. In that first passage you mentioned, that is a little concerning, right . The president is saying i have absolute authority to do whatever i want with the Justice Department. To end investigations into me. To initiate investigations into opponents. Is he right . Does the president have the authority to do that . He doesnt if he is doing so in an unlawful way. For example, you can imagine a president ending an investigation into himself or friends in order to benefit himself in a corrupt way. Thats against the law. Or imagine a president taking bribes. Of course thats against the law. There are certainly limits on what a president can do. And he parrots an argument we have heard at times from his team. And so i do agree he was on point in terms of making the arguments that perhaps he wanted to make. But its a very dangerous argument for a president. David, also interesting, 16 times he said there was no collusion between my campaign and russia. Obviously you can tell hes thinking about it and concerned about it since he felt the need to repeat it many times. However, its interesting because if he didnt know about the meeting with don jr. And a russian lawyer, if he didnt know about Michael Flynns meetings with the Russian Ambassador that werent disclosed, how can he know . Right. And its possible he cant. Look, i think we have seen from the beginning the president very, very sensitive to this idea that his campaign colluded and did things untoward. It would delegitimize his victory and make it something aboveboard and not really real. I thought the best tact he could take is i did not collude. As far as i know, nobody in new campaign colluded because of course i wouldnt have abided by any such action. But let the investigation goes where it does. If anybody did anything they werent supposed to do, i want them prosecuted. The president could wrap this up as a matter of trying to deal with the overall meddling with the russians in the election saying he was going to finally do something about it when his predecessor didnt. This would be an argument, regardless of what people think about that argument, that would put him on offense and where you would want a president to be politically. And i think voters would understand that a lot more. As we have found out over the last year, we dont know quite yet if there was collusion, but we do know people werent always telling the truth about who they met with and why they met with him in terms of people in his circle. Right. Until those are explained, it leaves open this idea he might not always have known what was going on if in fact, its true he did not personally participate in any activities like that. Any time he brings up a particular point that makes you scratch your head, it opens up a new line of questioning into his logic. For example, he said i saw Dianne Feinstein the other day on television saying there is no collusion. Shes the head of the committee. The republican, in terms of the house committees that come out, they are so angry because theres no collusion. I actually think it is turning to the democrats because there was collusion on behalf of the democrats. This is exactly what Dianne Feinstein said on television. Take a listen. I think what were beginning to see is the putting together of a case of on obstruction of justice. I think we see this in the indictments, the four indictments and pleas that have just taken place. And some of the comments that are being made. And i see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of director comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the russia investigation. Thats obstruction of justice. He can say no collusion 16 times, 26 times. But the fact remains, renato, he fired james comey and said to lester holt he did it because of the russia investigation. The oddest thing, there are a number of odd things. One of those is this passage youre point to go where over and over and over again the president keeps saying the democrats are claiming he didnt collude. You can say whatever you want about democrats. But giving President Trump the benefit of the doubt is not one of the things they have been doing a lot of. I think democrats have really been going after the president on this issue. I cant think of a democratic elected official who is out there sawing that the president didnt collude. Thats a bizarre statement i guess in his mind if democrats are out there saying, hey, theres an obstruction of justice issue or Something Like that. That means in his mind there is no collusion. I dont know exactly what senator fine is stein is saying. Didnt sound like it. David drucker, renato marriotti, thank you very much. It stkpdoesnt look like we get an end of the Year Press Conference from the president. The president insisting he knows more about the big bills in congress than any other president ever. Do the facts support this . Well be right back. You wont see these folks they have businesses to run. They have passions to pursue. How do they avoid trips to the post office . Stamps. Com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. Get a 4 week trial, plus 100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. Go to stamps. Com tv and never go to the post office again. President trump sat down with the New York Times, impromptu, unsupervised after i bragged about his knowledge of things saying, i know the details of taxes better than anybody. Better than the greatest cpa. I know the details of Health Care Better than most. Better than most. And if i didnt, i couldnt have talked all of these people into doing ultimately only to be rejected. This is not you messing up this read. It is the grammar where it gets a little tricky. A bit of an offramp i wasnt seeing. A man with good grasps of the english language, David Drucker and abby phillip is back with us. Renato had to leave. Lets talk about the big bilge. Abby, you have covered this white house since the beginning. I remember the quote about who knew health care could be so complicated. But he seems to be taking credit for the tax bill. Take us through your impressions of than comment. Yeah. I think the idea that he knew Health Care Better than anyone is something most people on the hill would disagree with. It is true they gave him a lot of credit for knowing the details of taxes, or caring a lot about them, wanting to move things around to want to make that bill work. It was interesting to hear him say that he also knew all the details of the big bills that congress has done of which there have not been that many in this past year. But its fascinating to hear him react to that criticism of him that frankly you hear from both democrats and republicans on the hill that this is a president who just does not want to get into the weeds on policy except on the issues of taxes which he appears to know better than others. I will read a little bit more, david, of what he said in this revealing interview to the New York Times. Number one, i have unbelievably great relationships with 97 of the republican congressmen and senators. I love them and they love me. And number two, i know more about the big bills than any president thats ever been in office. Whether its health care and taxes. Especially taxes. I couldnt have persuaded a hundred congressmen to go along with the bill. I was a great student and all this stuff. Oh, he doesnt know the details. These are sick people. Reading these is enjoyable. Its very entertaining. I guess im a sick person. The thing about it, president s dont need the details of everything. It is to know the details of a few big things and make sure they know how to delegate and they know how to build unity around some big ideas and get some things done. The American People dont expect their president s or members of congress for that matter to be experts on everything. They want people that are competent, they can trust and they feel are generally intelligent so when they come into contact with new policies and things that pop up that you cant plan for, that you will be able to deal with it. We saw the president s deficiencies when it came to certain policies versus others. When it came to health care, he knew a lot less about International Trade and taxes. I always thought his biggest handicap this year was that he didnt seem to understand the process of governing. What i mean by that is he came to the table not really understanding the pressure points in congress and the processes of congress, the committee process, and how members of congress are going to deal with pieces of legislation and how the president , maybe the president and the leader of his political party. It doesnt mean everybody just hops to it like when he was ceo. Him getting his arms around that process if he has, if he understands that better will put him in a much better position in 2018. And i dont think, alisyn, that it is necessary for him to brag about things that are just not i mean, theyre just not true. You dont think he knows more than abraham lincoln, bill clinton and, i dont know, we could go through all of them. You dont think President Trump knows more than all of them . He is one on of 44. They may not have been as good politicians. They didnt necessarily get things done. It is odd that he feels the need to put himself, to describe himself that way when that is not how the American People will judge him. He has a perception of a man who ran a privately owned business, not even answering to shareholders. Especially when talking about democrats, abby. He said had they come to me, the dems, i would have gone to mitch. I would have gone to the other republicans. I would have worked something out bipartisan. That could have been a change to salt or knockout of salt. That is the state and local Tax Deduction on the federal. What was the reality of the interplay between democrats and the republicans during that tax process . Reporter yeah. I think the republicans made it pretty clear from the beginning that they wanted this process to be largely one that reflected the values of the republican party. And it was going to be difficult to get democrats on board with that. Underlying all of this is the reality that not a single democrat has voted with this president in this first year of his term, which i think in january everyone would have thought was unheard of. There are several democrats, joe manchin and Clare Mccaskill are in states that donald trump won who this white house believed would need to be with this president on a lot of policy and they havent been. Largely, the reason for that is because the president is viewed as politically toxic among democrats and among moderates. Many democrats dont see any political consequences to not being with him on policy. So perhaps thats true. Although im not positive that Mitch Mcconnell and paul ryan would have gone along with that. I think in the theory of bipartisanship is often more important to this president than the reality of it, which would require them sacrificing a lot of things and even sacrificing republican votes in order to get a few democrats on board. So the president i think just tweeted about Global Warming or how cold it is. Maybe we can put that up. That was last night. Okay. In the east, it could be the coldest new years on record. Perhaps we can use a little bit of that good old Global Warming in our country, but not other countri countries. So bundle up. The president said its a hoax. Global warming isnt happening. For reference, lets put up a map of the entire planet. And you can see the bright red spots are where it is is above normal temperatures. And the arctic is the most alarming part of that. The blue sphrofp were living through right now is a little tiny part of a big heated planet. It is sort of like not understanding when the sun goes down in your naked,