it s wednesday, january 17th. i m ayman mohyeldin. alongside louis burgdorf. it is day 27 of the shutdown and a bipartisan effort to refund the government has hit a major snag. a group of senators have planned to send a letter to president trump requesting the government be temporarily re-opened in exchange for a serious debate about border protection but wording to politico the effort failed after the letter s signers fell short of the 20 senators in both parts that supporters were trying to accrue. many republicans wanted more of a commitment from house speaker nancy pelosi in order to move forward with the letter and others thought it was a pointless endeavor to endorse it if there was no signal from trump that he may accept it. senators hoped to set up a meeting with the vice president mike pence yesterday afternoon but that never happened. republican senator lindsey graham is still urging the senate to take the lead on this. the house is not going to be the center of gravity, it
something that people on the ground are rattled by usually comes back to bite us. this is the beginning of what happened in iraq. isis claimed responsibility. if true that shows that they are not defeated and they have been emboldened. my advice to the administration i under why you want to re-evaluate our footprint every where, it makes sense but take this as a warning sign of what could be coming. democratic senators are demanding answers after the washington post reported that president trump took his interpreter s notes after meeting with vladimir putin and instructed the interpreter not to share anything with any other administration officials. senators bob menendez and jack reed have sent a letter to the white house requesting confirmation that president trump properly preserve all records of his communications with the russian president. quote your insistence on secrecy related to helps interactions with our own staff is alarming,
tell whether some of these decisions when he makes them are thought through or are they kind of instinctual he goes by his gut? there was talk a couple of days ago he was considering withdrawing the u.s. from nato. you know, obviously that isn t shock waves through the foreign security establishment. these are ideas based on his instinct. and what we have to try and figure out are these ideas that then he backed off of or that then staff was able to kill. on nato, a lot of internal resistan resistance. are we likely to see the president go with another thing he s called for, the withdrawing of u.s. troops from afghanistan like he did in serious? we talked with rand paul. he wants to keep the u.s. out of afghanistan. he said trump is moving in that direction. he said he s very frustrated with the war. the president changed his mind and listened to advisers and
unprecedented. the senators requested that the white house permit congress to interview the interpreters who were present at those meetings. meanwhile the kremlin struck back at the new york times report that federal investigators looked at whether president trump was, in fact, a russian asset. bloomberg quotes top russian officials mock the claims that trump has been working on russia s behalf. that s stupid top russian official. having the president of the united states be an agent of another country, just think about that. foreign minister sergei lavrov accused the american news outlets for lowering their journalism standards. lavrov denounced u.s. lawmakers for challenging what he described as trump right to conduct foreign policy, quote,
any quote concrete steps to dismantle the nuclear weapons that threaten our people and our allies which stands in contrast to trump s claims. u.s. military weigh concerns over potential recruits. and the space force comes to life. sort of. hollywood star bringing the new military branch to life on the small screen. plus bill karins is back with details on a major snowstorm making its way across the country. stay with us. us