they are convinced that chuck schumer will just dig in. the question becomes, what is the exit strategy? is there something short of the $5 billion wall request that they can get that they feel they can go back to their base and say look, we didn t totally capitulate. we got something. senator schumer spoke on the floor earlier today. he said the president speaking to to him directly, if you want this to pass you must abandon the wall. would something else work? with the president fold on this? he signaled that francis, steel slats. molly: yes, steel barricades! might be substituted for a concrete wall. but i just kind of get the sense that the democrats feel like there s blood in the water and they don t really want to back down because they feel that if they hold out, their position improves. there is not much leverage and also, given that president
their admonition, he has to stand tough on the wall. what they have driven him into a box cave. there is no clear exit strategy for trump and republicans, even if the government does shut down. as john and abbie have said, he seems to be governing by impulse moment to moment without any larger thought to where this is going to lead and how he s going to get out of it. look, if we are going to have a rebranding alert, it should be jazz hands thrown up on the screen. what the president is doing here, listening to right wing media, the problem is right wing s responsibility is to get ratings not governing. we are hours away from a christmas shutdown brought by a republican president with a republican congress. that itself is bizarre. so as he contemplates the situation he s got them in and the fact there is no strategy, it reminds me of his nemesis
leaders are talking about right now but we know that bob corker, who is kind of a swng voing vot all of this. a republican whose term in the senate is coming to a close here in the next week or so. he s been talking to chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell. he told us he was looking for an exit strategy here, something that did not involve passing the continuing resolution in its form. it appears now there is some horse trading between these leaders were corker involved to at least figure out what the next step in this process is. do they bring a motion to proceed, which would lead to a final vote to the floor? do they pull this legislation back and come up with some sort of new amendment to it that might be palatable to democrats and then perhaps get more people on board to get this over the fin, line? that remains an open question.
know what we re doing. we better make damn sure we know where it s going. what s the exit strategy? where is this going to go? five years, three years? i know it s indefinite as far as the question of nothing is perfect. nobody has got that much clairvoyance. but i don t think we have paid attention to this way enough. and, yes, i was not skeptical, but i asked tough questions during those debates on iraq and afghanistan. and i asked one principle question that must always be asked. what happens next? we didn t get any answers. and we don t have any answers now. we still have no strategy. i don t think we have a foreign policy. but we surely do not have a strategy or a policy in the middle east. i hear john bolton say, well, we should keep our troops in syria there until we drive the iranians out of syria. are you kidding me? 2,000 troops in a northeast
good evening. i am chuck todd here in washington. at this hour there s chaos in the white house, at the pentagon, and, yes, on capitol hill. thanks to one person, the president. and we re going to bring you the latest on all of it. oh, and by the way, the stock market just had its worst week in ten years with the nasdaq in bear market territory. welcome to what is going to be one hell of an hour here at mtp daily as we build towards the possibility that history will see this moment after the jim matt mattis resignation repudiation as part perhaps the beginning of the end of this presidency. we have news from capitol hill where the president has been marching his gop troops toward a partial government shutdown, now potentially hours away. but there appears to be some exit strategy in the works. what we re hearing is it would end up looking like a white house cave again on border money, at least through the lens of ann coulter and rush limbaugh. at this hour, there is also growing pani