Thats that this is a question of president ial leadership. At the end of the day, it will come down to the president of the United States being willing to lead in a big picture and in a more macro sense, make a decision what he can support and pull the trigger on it. Here was Lindsey Graham in our conversation just a few minutes ago. What the house sent over is unacceptable to me. The cres can i the militar chs kill the military. I appreciate House Colleagues but we need to get this done. Were inside the 10 yard line. We need a white house that can make a decision and stick to it. And andegreeia, Lindsey Graham has cultivated his relationship with the president and the attempted skill of talking to the president through the television. And i think theres a lot of message sending going on that look, the way out of this is for the president to live up to what he talks about as the tuesday
version of the president from last week when he seemed to embrace willingness to deal with a biparti
with us now. hey, garrett. reporter: hi, ali. the phone rang a coup times. he took the phone and he said hey, dick can i call you back. is that the dick we think it is? it is. that s dick durbin trying to call his negotiating partner in all this, lindsey graham in the middle of our interview there. this happened pretty organically this conversation with graham. there wasn t time to start the interview in a proper fashion. you hear lindsey graham laid this on the line here. this he says is a presidential prerogative. the president needs to decide, according to graham what he can support and get behind and needs to stick with it. you heard from graham stronger versions of language he has used about other people that room already this week saying steven miller his approach has no viability. you herd heard him ding fellow republican nor tom cotton saying his approach has no viability comparing to the man who is sort of the ultimate immigration hard liner steve king in the house sayin
version of the president from last week when he seemed to embrace willingness to deal with a bipartisan solution to dealing with this problem, not the thursday version of the meeting so infamous between graham and durbin and other republican senators and lawmakers one of whom lindsey graham kind of threw under the bus talking about tom cotton, his colleague from arkansas ho said has essentially turned into the steve king of the senate. steve king the ultimate immigration hard liner in the u.s. house, not exactly kind words there, but that s the opportunity for a deal here is one that gets led by the white house, not by the operators here on capitol hill. thanks to garrett and casey for that. chuck todd, we ve seen this movie before. we ve been through shutdown traumas for the nation. but we ve never seen it with donald trump in the oval office. that s the big differentiator. also we ve never seen it with a unified party controlling the house, senate and the white house. you don t usu