And our first guest tonight is a member of the Judiciary Committee, which is now planning an investigation of the emergency declaration. Even donald trump is having a hard time pretending that this is an actual emergency. For one thing, he flew to maralago right after declaring the National Emergency. And look at how he started his big speech, issuing the National Emergency declaration. Notice what he doesnt mention. Before we begin, id like to just say that we have a large team of very talented people in china. Weve had a negotiation going on for about two days. Its going extremely well. Who knows what that means. You know all of the situation with respect to brexit. We have a very good trading relationship with uk. We have a lot of great announcements having to do with syria. Were working on a summit, and you know all about the summit. It will be in vietnam. Hanoi. Weve been working very closely with south korea, with japan, but china, russia, on the border, have really been at least partially living up to what theyre supposed to be doing. If there is a real emergency at the southern border, youd think trump might have started his announcement by actually talking about it. Instead, the first border he mentioned was the one in north korea. When he finally talked about the u. S. Border, he announced his National Emergency and made this strange prediction. We will have a National Emergency and we will then be sued and they will sue us in the ninth circuit, even though it shouldnt be there, and we will possibly get a bad ruling, and then well get another bad ruling, and then well end up in the supreme court, and hopefully well get a fair shake and well win in the supreme court. Today the aclu and the state of california said they also plan to challenge the president in court. If the president is hoping to win those court battles, his administration will probably need a better explanation for ignoring congress to build the wall than the one that he gave to nbcs peter alexander. In the past when president obama tried to use executive action as it related to immigration, you said, the whole concept of executive order, its not the way the countrys supposed to be run. You said youre supposed to go through congress and make a deal. Will you concede that you were unable to make the deal that you had promised in the past and that the deal youre ending up with now from congress is less than what you could have had before a 35day shutdown. I went through congress. I made a deal but i want to do it faster. I could do the wall over a long period of time. I didnt need to do this, but id rather do it much faster. I didnt need to do this, said the president , who is ultimately going to have to justify why he declared a National Emergency. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded to that with this tweet. Clearest sign that real Donald Trumps fake emergency is not legitimate, the president himself says he didnt need to declare a National Emergency. Its just a faster way to force taxpayers to foot the bill after congress wouldnt let him have his way. Another strange moment today was when the president explicitly tied his socalled National Emergency to the 2020 election. I dont have to do it for the election. Ive already done a lot of wall for the election. 2020. And the only reason were up here talking about this is because of the election. Because they want to try to win an election, which it looks like theyre not going to be able to do. I dont know what ive already done a lot of wall actually means, but just to be clear, not a single mile of new wall construction has happened. Trump also had a lot to say about conservative talk radio hosts, including ann coulter, who called him an idiot today. And today House Democrats responded to the president. Alexandria ocasiocortez and Joaquin Castro said they will introduce a resolution to terminate the emergency declaration. And the House Judiciary Committee chairman jerry nadler sent a letter to the president saying his committee, quote, is commencing an immediate investigation into this matter, which raises both serious constitutional and statutory issues. We ask that you make those individuals involved in this declaration available to us for a hearing in the coming days. All right. Joining us now is democratic congressman of rhode island. Hes on the policy and Communications Committee and he has visited the u. S. Mexico border multiple times. Congressman, good to see you. Thanks for joining us tonight. Good to see you. My pleasure. The president was having trouble making a clear justification for why he declared this National Emergency. He did mention ann coulter. He mentioned Rush Limbaugh. He mentioned sean hannity, but in the end he may be diverting funds that would otherwise be used for legitimate military purposes. I want to just play for you quickly what donald trump said about why he would to that. We had certain funds that are being used at the discretion of generals, at the discretion of the military. Some of them havent been allocated yet, and some of the generals think that this is more important. I was speaking to a couple of them. They think this is far more important than what they were going to use it for. I said, what were you going to use it for . I wont go into details, but didnt sound too important to me. Congressman, that sounds weird. Youve been down to the border. I havent spoken to any generals who suggest that the things that theyre doing with their money would be less useful than spending it on a border wall. This is f35 training. This is Real Construction work at bases. This is this is kind of hard to believe what the president just said. Yeah, i mean, president is suggesting hes going to take money from Critical Military construction and counternarcotics work. Its kind of ironic when hes claiming he needs to build a wall for both of those purposes. But, look, there is no emergency at the border. Ive been there two times in the last year. Illegal border crossings are down to a 40year low. His own Intelligence Community when hey do the world threat assessment that identifies the greatest threats to the United States didnt even reference the southern border and certainly never said there was an emergency. So there is no emergency at the border and the president s statutory authorization that hes referring to relates to military construction to support the armed forces, which is clearly not immigration related. So there is no basis for this. This is the president attempting to circumvent the will of the American People, as reflected through decisions in congress. This is really disrespectful to the rule of law, to the separation of powers between the branches of government, and we have a democracy. The president , just because hes frustrated that he didnt get what he wants, isnt allowed to just circumvent the democratic process. Hes not an imperial king where he can just issue an edict. We have a functioning democracy and he failed to convince the congress and the American People of the necessity of this wall and he just cant do what hes purporting or proposing to do. You know, the president trying to get 8 billion for this. More than the 5. 7 billion he was asking for in the first place. As we know, a red herring in the first place. Each the most conservative estimates of the wall the president wants to build in 20 to 25. Estimates close to double than that. As represents you have to deal with the fact that 8 billion is a lot of money. 8 billion for technology that is not deemed by the experts to say the thing that is going to keep our border more secure is a waste of american money, and as nancy pelosi said, this is one way or the other taxpayer money. No, absolutely. Look, we have a responsibility to make certain that we secure the border in this country, but we need to do it in a way that actually achieves the objective, using the best technology, doing cargo inspections, using drones, using satellites, additional personnel. The things that the experts say will actually work, rather than this sort of monument to the Trump Campaign promise that he said mexico was going to pay for. Its ineffective. Its wasteful. It will not achieve the objective he claims it will. And thats why a Bipartisan Group of congress negotiated a resolution of this issue and passed it overwhelmingly because we settled on smart, tough, effective Border Security and not this Campaign Promise that the president made. Congressman, the chairman of your committee, jerry nadler, has sent this letter to the president saying make people who were involved in this decision available because youre going to investigate. On what basis are you going to investigate . What are you looking for . Well, were looking for the president to come forward and the president s team to make clear what is the basis of this determination . How do they come to the conclusion that there was a National Emergency . Which, of course, there is not. What advice he got with respect to whether or not that was appropriate. What authority he thinks he has to reallocate funds. We want to understand kind of how the president came to this decision, what influenced his ultimate decision to do this. Because what we really believe is that this part, as he mentioned in the press conference, this is about a campaign. This is about keeping this issue alive so that he can claim hes fighting to secure the border and nobody else will do it and no one else wants to get it done but him. Hes going to continue with this narrative. He wants this fight because he thinks its politically advantageous, but its dangerous to allow the president of the United States to circumvent the will of congress, the rule of law in this country, the separation of powers and just decide that he thinks this is important, this policy disagreement, and hes going to go ahead without congressional authorization, undermines rule of law in this country, undermines democracy. The Judiciary Committee is going to have a full investigation of this so that we can let the American People see whats really happened here. Congressman, thank you for joining me tonight. All right. Lets bring in our panel. Dara lind, Senior Correspondent for vox. Com covering immigration. Cristina beltran is an associate professor in the department of social and cultural analysis at New York University and shes also the author of the trouble with unity latina politics and the creation of identity. Welcome to both of you. Thank you for being with us. Dara, let me start with you. This was a Fact Checkers dream today, the president s rambling unscripted conversation, in which he talked about anything that kind of came into his mind. But the fact is he kept on going at journalists who were asking him factbased questions about the truth about immigration, about the people who come across the border, about drugs. The president was creating and discussing his own reality today. Yes, thats absolutely true. Its also not the first time weve heard this. I mean, so much of what he said today he said during his prime time speech in january during the state of the union. The problem with talking about the border right now is that donald trump takes up so much oxygen talking about the kind of fever dream of this lawless environment that talking about the actually difficulties that there are with, you know, unprecedented numbers of children and families coming in, with Border Patrol is equipped to handle that, you know, serious concerns about the conditions that people are being kept in arent coming to the fore. Right. Because its entirely determined by donald trump says there is a crisis and therefore thats all anyone can talk about. Youre right. It takes all the oxygen. Anybody who could be working on other things. I think you can get 100 agreement in this country that there are issues with immigration. But to different people those are different things. Christina, this is the problem, right . Donald trump has for better or worse created a narrative around bad people coming over the southern border and thats our immigration problem. Right. Right. I mean, theres actual realities we can have really important and interesting discussions around immigration. Instead were caught up in Donald Trumps sort of racist dystopian fever dream. And i think a lot of it that we really have to think about is that his base and the nativist portion of his base are really informed by that fantasy. So reality doesnt change it. Its a constant reference. I think one thing that is important to think about is this has a long history. Since the 19th century, there have been certain characterizations of mexicans as bestial, savage. There is a historical way almost at times a pornographic pleasure where he discusses lured descriptions of Migrant Women being tied up with duct tape and brutalized. There is a compulsion he has to tell this story. Its like misogyny disguised as compassion. Let me just play that. In a weird thing, that was even weirder. I want to get to the bottom of this one. Donald trump was describing, as you say, Human Trafficking today. Lets listen together. They cant see three women with tape on their mouth or three women whose hands are tied. They go through areas where you have no wall. Everybody knows that. Nancy knows it. Chuck knows it. They all know it. The danger here, cristina is that Human Trafficking is a real problem. Lots of women get brought into the country and are trafficked, most of them with passports through border crossings. To suggest thats how were dealing with the problem of Human Trafficking is misleading and detrimental to our fight against Human Trafficking. Its completely unhelpful in every way and its tied to this idea of Migrant Women being brutalized because mexican men or latin american men are monsters. Its always this story that we have real problems this country. We have problems with drug. We have real issues with economic inequality. Rather than have conversations about the reality of economic inequality, lower wage, drug use, instead we have this conversation in which all the issues are displaced on to migrants as savage criminals. If we have walls, those problems will not be here. Thats one problem. Dara, the other problem is that its not clear whether this is just a base or just nativist supporters of the donald trump. Kelly odonnell got into a conversation with the president today about whether or not his policies being determined by rightwing media hosts. Lets listen. Mr. President , could you tell us to what degree some of the outside conservative voices help to shape your views on this National Emergency . I will talk about it. Look, sean hannity has been a terrific, terrific supporter of what i do. Rush limbaugh, i think hes a great guy. Hes a guy who can speak for three hours without a phone call. Try doing that sometime. Deciding policy, sir . They dont decide policy. Ann coulter. I dont know her. I hardly know her. I havent spoken to her in way over a year, but the press loves saying ann coulter. I like her. But shes off the reservation, but anybody that knows her understands that. Dara, i mean, that was just weird. The president was asked about influences and he named the three people who most observers think he is building his immigration policy for. Yeah, although its always hard to know with this president whether hes saying that because he actually does have relationships with them or whether hes saying that because he watches a whole lot of television. And so if those are the names that are coming up as influencers, hes going to interpret that. But its definitely clear that trump is very afraid of any fight with people who he thinks of as mediating between him and his base. Even to point where, you know, hes been saying for years at this point that any border barrier that is built needs to be steel poles or steel bollards or slats, but when he posted a sketch of a design in december and the right wing freaked out to a certain extent because they were expecting a concrete wall, he had to backtrack on that. Even though his dhs has said thats exactly what they want to build. Identical to the stuff they want to build with emergency money. The definition of a wall has gotten caught up in this dynamic between trump and the rightwing media. Because its not clear which one of them, if there were a fight, would be the one to take the base. And the sad part is after throwing out the line about Rush Limbaugh and sean hannity and ann coulter, ann coulter responded today by saying, look, the only National Emergency is that our president is an idiot. I hope that if i called somebody out, theyd be nice to me. Thanks to both of you. Dara lind and cristina beltran, thank you. Breaking news. Special counsel Robert Muellers team tells the court they have no objection to Paul Manafort spending two decades in jail. Is that going to change manaforts mind on cooperating . Well have that next. And later, Many Republican names have been bandied about as potential primary challengers to donald trump, but today a vet