And make sme choose. in the wake of the oval office photoon that jeff was talking about i spoke with staff literally cringing thinking that the president undercut any negotiating position they had. one of them told me that the president doesn t really have a negotiating position at all because of course nancy pelosi will need the house democrats into the minuterity in exactly two weeks on january 3rd. there is all the leverage. democrats are seen as having all the leverage here. what we have seen over the course of the last 48 hours after the president let s be frank he reversed field whether or not he told the leaders republican leaders that he would sign on to what had passed the senate, again unanimously, by voice vote, with that $1.6 billion on border security as opposed to the slat wall that the president is now talking about that he would sign on to that. of course he was excoriated by pundits on the right and
Foreign affairs and judiciary committees. with a welcome to you, give me a sense of where things stand right now, the conversation among your colleagues today. are democrats ready to compromise on a wall, the wall? thank you alex for your question. let me remind american people what donald trump said last week, quote, i am proud to shut down the government, end quote. we are now in day one of the trump shutdown. it is not a proud day for, he ma. it is a failure of the republican leadership. they control the house, the senate, and the white house. democrats are certainly happy to talk about border security. but we are not going to build this stupid vanity wall of donald trump with u.s. taxpayer dollars. looking at what s been said by democratic leaders nancy pelosi and schumer, they put out a joint statement. it said that the president threw a techer tantrum that led to the shutdown. how do you interpret the shutdown with respect to the president s behavior? a shutdown is somethin