Shutdown will simply have to keep waiting even within the administration now. It appears there is some disagreement over the meaning of border wall. The outgoing chief of staff john kelly made headlines with an interview he gave to the l. A. Times in which he attempts to redefine what President Trump means when he says border wall. Take a look at this quote that kelly gave the times. To be honest, its not a wall. The president still says wall. Often times, frank ly, he will say barrier or fencing. Now he has tended toward steel slats but we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration. Lately weve seen surrogates for the president trying to describe his longpromised border wall as some sort of barrier. Kellyanne conway earlier this week was speaking with dana bash on state of the union, suggesting that part of the disagreement between republicans and democrats is over semantics, what this barrier essentially means. President trump took a wrecking ball to that, an allconcrete wall was never abandoned, all caps for emphasis, as reported by the media. Some areas will be concrete but porder experts prefer a seethrough wall that makes it possible to see what is happening on both sides. Makes sense to me. He is also calling on democrats to return to washington, d. C. To try to negotiate a deal that would reopen the government. There are some optimists out there, including senator Lindsey Graham, here at the white house this weekend, having a long lunch with the president. He was a bit optimistic. He tried to present an idea to the president that might offer a legal solution for dreamers, legal status for recipients of daca in exchange of border funding, an idea we saw before. He said the president was not committed to that. Both sides do have to sit down and Start Talking once again, he said. Pam . We should note in his tweet this morning that the concrete wall was never abandoned, something thats been reported by the media. That was coming directly from his outgoing chief of staff, john kelly. On the record, yeah. On the record. Boris sanchez, thank you for that. White house reporter for the Washington Post and patrick healy, editor for the new york times. Great to see you both. Hi, pam. All right. I first want to go to what Lindsey Graham said after having this twohour lunch meeting yesterday with President Trump. Lets listen. After lunch ive never been more encouraged if we can get people talking we can find our way out of this mess. The president didnt commit, but i think hes very open minded. I know there are some democrats out there who would be willing to provide money for wallboarder security if we could deal with the daca population and tps people. Patrick, i want to go to you first. What do you think about what we heard from Lindsey Graham . Do you think that a deal that involves daca is something that democrats can get on board with . No. Democrats dont want to go down the daca road. At least not now. They dont want this to get fuzzed up with a number of different issues being pulled together. They want to pass a bill that reopens the government, that shows that the democrats support government functioning normally and making sure that hundreds of thousands of workers are getting their paychecks so theyre not dipping into savings or credit. And what theyre open to, it seems like, is Border Security issue. But youre hearing senator graham using these formulations like wallboarder security. Hes trying to sort of please, it seems, President Trump, who is so fixated on the wall because he knows that the Republican Base that his supporters very much want a wall or at least have gotten behind him certainly during the 2016 campaign and as president over a wall. Senator graham introducing daca into this, at least right now for house democrats, isnt the path they want to go down. What it will come down to is whether President Trump still insists on calling something a wall and asking for several billion dollars for it or a more looser Border Security bill. The president still hasnt reached tout democrats to negotiate. And its still unclear what he will sign at this point. Right . Exactly. I mean, it seems publicly clear that hes not willing to budge from the 5 billion. We also know that the white house has offered privately to Democratic Leaders a smaller scale deal, about 2. 5 billion in Border Security funding as well as more money for immigration enforcement. The mixed signals problem is one that has been a problem for the last several weeks as weve tried to navigate this shutdown. Mike pence, the Vice President , had come to a lunch with republican senators and republican senators left that lunch feeling pretty confident that the president would sign a socalled clean funding bill, which didnt have all the wall funding that democrats oppose but clearly we saw the president came out strongly a few days later and said he would not support that piece of legislation. In terms of discussions with the Democratic Leaders, youre right that there is none going on right now. The last time that the president talked with the incoming speaker, nancy pelosi, who is one major part of the equation here, was december 11th in a phone call after that dramatic oval office confrontation, and the discussions with Chuck Schumer are being primarily led by the Vice President and the acting chief of staff, mick mulvaney. Perhaps when congress is fully back in session later this week, well see more direct communication between the president or among the president and schumer and pelosi but right now these discussions are simply not happening. They are clearly at an impasse. Patrick, you had alluded to this. This sort of change in language over the border wall and the outgoing chief of staff john kelly told the l. A. Times that the administration had abandoned this idea of a concrete wall. Then you have Kellyanne Conway telling cnn yesterday this is all about semantics and we shouldnt be caught up in the semantics of the wall and what it might look like. What do you make of the change in language . The president s tweet this morning, claiming they didnt abon done the concrete wall. Go ahead. Hes the president of the United States, right, so you sort of start with him and not so much Kellyanne Conway and the argument over semantics. The president of the United States still says wall. He says it over and over and over again. And voters, regular people know what a wall is. Wall isnt a fence. He seems to care so much about a wall that hes going on twitter, contradicting his own chief of staff, john kellys ontherecord remarks saying they abandoned a wall. Its extremely important for this president to say to his base, who follows him on twitter very closely, i am still for a stro strong, big wall. We know what that is. The problem is that runs smack hard into House Democratic opposition and a good number of democrats in the senate, too, who dont believe that the threat to america is so great that you need to build a gigantic wall on the border and spend billions of dollars to do it or shut down the government and prevent people from getting paid. So, you know, people can say all they want about the semantics but the reality is that the president keeps doubling and tripling down on weve never abandoned a wall. A wall is what were going to get. Hes going to either end up caving big time, you know, if they end up going with Border Security or you may see a very long shutdown. This seems to be where the president wants to make his stand. What do you think . Well have to wait and see how long this shutdown goes. While we have the democrats seemingly unmoving from their position and the president as well, republicans on capitol hill, while they do want to support the pressess policy goals, they do support a wall, more Border Security, theyre not willing to risk a shutdown to achieve those policy goals. Thats kind of the big difference between Congressional Republicans and the president. And well have to see as the shutdown goes on if senate republicans, House Republicans particularly start to lose their patience but how long the shutdown goes on, if theyre hearing from their federal worker constituents back home about their furloughs and missing paychecks and if that changes the calculus at all. Besides that, adds something extraneous, whether it was trying to defund obamacare in 2013 or trying to add dreamer protections earlier this year on the part of democrats. Thats the side that usually loses a shutdown. But well have to wait and see. We shall. The politics of it, the blame ga game, there are 800,000 federal employees who were impacted by this partial Government Shutdown. Thank you both for coming on. Thanks for having us. New york is gearing up for the nations most highprofile new years eve celebration. And 2019 will get a soggy start when the ball drops. Chad myers has the forecast. Very different new years eve this year than last year, right, chad . 50 degrees warmer this year than last year with the windchill factor last year being 5 degrees below zero. This year it will feel like 45 above. It will be raining, no question about it, raining in ohio, nashville, atlanta, georgia, even potential for afternoon tornadoes with the storm system. It is a big storm. But it is not a white storm unless youre in michigan, wisconsin or back into iowa. Thats where the cold air is. The rest of the u. S. Is well above normal for this time of year. It does rain, new york city, philadelphia. It rains all night long. Even at midnight, i dont see any breaks possible. Maybe it turns into some mist and drizzle but will be wet in the northeast. Almost 60 in d. C. , 66 in atlanta. Even on the other side of the world over here, we begin to see the cooldown. 9 is the temperature in denver and there will be some wind. It will never feel that warm. Salt lake city, 20. The benefit of this is that for all of you that decided to go skiing for new years, you picked the right week because we have three to six inches of good snow coming in from colorado down to angel fire. If youre out there, enjoy it. Its cold but you cant ski when its warm so enjoy the cold and the snow. Pamela . Pretty crazy. I left the house this morning in washington, d. C. Without a coat. So, chad myers, thank you so much. Youre welcome. If you cant be in times square, the next best thing is to watch the ball drop live with Anderson Cooper and andy cohen tonight at 8 00 eastern only on cnn. It is officially 2019 in new zealand. Fireworks lit up the night sky earlier today. An impressive light show over sydney harbor in australia. Heavy storms in the hours leading up to the big show. Still ahead on this monday morning, Elizabeth Warren seeing 2020 . The massachusetts democrat just launching her own president ial Exploratory Committee. We have the very latest. Plus russia arrests a u. S. Citizen accused of spying. We are live in moscow. And disturbing new video uncovered, showing staffers pushing and dragging Migrant Children at an arizona shelter. We have the latest. Do you want to take the path or the shortcut . Not too fast. vo you do more than protect parks when you share the love. You protect our future. 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If your uc or crohns treatment isnt working for you, ask your gastroenterologist about entyvio®. Entyvio®. Relief and remission within reach. And if you get lost, just hit me on the old horn. Man toms my best friend, but ever since he bought a new house. Tom its a 10 cover . Oh, okay. Didnt see that on the website. Hes been acting more and more like his dad. Come on, guys jump in the waters fine tom pritchard. How we doin . Hi, there. Tom pritchard. Can we get a round of jalapeno poppers for me and the boys, please . Ive been saving a lot of money with progressive lately, so. Progressive cant protect you from becoming your parents. But we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us. Senator Elizabeth Warren takes the first step for a run to the white house. She announced moments ago that she is launching an Exploratory Committee. Mj lee has more. She joins me now from boston. Good morning, mj. Reporter hey, pam. It is suddenly feeling like a 2020 senator Elizabeth Warren announcing this morning, as you said, she is forming an exploratory president ial committee. This confirms what we expected for a while now. That she is, in fact, going to run for president and is the first major democratic candidate to take formal action in a president ial campaign. Here is a little snippet from that video. No matter where you live in america and no matter where your family came from in the world, you deserve a path to opportunity because no matter what our differences, most of us want the same thing, to be able to work hard, play by the same set of rules and take care of the people we love. Thats the america im fighting for. And thats why today im launching an Exploratory Committee for president. Now the video actually began with her describing her childhood in oklahoma and her father suffering a heart attack and working as a janitor and her mother getting a minimum wage job. Senator warren says despite those hardships she was lucky enough to become a law professor and, of course, a senator. She makes the point in this video that not all other American Families are as lucky as hers. And the themes we see in this video, pam, themes Like Fighting economic inequality, government corruption, taking on big banks and big corporations, these are themes weve seen senator warren talk about on the National Stage for several years now. These clearly will be the issues driving her president ial campaign. Now the reason that we are set up in the boston area this morning is because this is where her staffers are looking for office space for her eventual president ial campaign headquarters. We are also told that she has the senator herself has already spent hundreds of hours on the phone with political leaders and activists in the early states and her plans are to travel to those early states as soon as possible but, of course, that all depends on what ends up happening with the ongoing Government Shutdown back in d. C. This will be a crowded democratic field, pam, as you know. What she does have working in her favor, at least today, is that she is, again, the first one out of the gate and those optics are certainly important. Pam . Absolutely. Mj lee, thank you very much. Live from boston. Lets talk about what the polls are saying about warrens chances in 2020. Ill bring in cnn politics writer and analyst harry enton who joins me now. Thanks for joining me. My pleasure. You say warrens best performance in the 2018 midterms was one of the weakest for a Democratic Senate candidate even though she won by 24 points. Explain that. What stands out to you about those numbers . Massachusetts is a very blue state. Hillary clinton won there by 27 points, liz warren won there by 24. 2018 was a much better year for democrats nationwide. So the fact that liz warren did worse than Hillary Clinton in massachusetts suggests perhaps shes a belowpar candidate. Lets talk about the cnn poll. The cnn poll from earlier this month, showing that she is fairly low on the list of frontrunners and democrats choice for their nominee. Look at this full screen here. What does her home state polling tell us about a possible 2020 matchup . If you look at peoples home state polling you would, in fact, see theyre well out ahead. Look at joe bidens polling in delaware, or bernie sanders, they poll well but when matched up against her opponents in a potential democratic primary shes polling third or fourth behind biden and sanders, which suggests something is quite wrong, right . If people in your own home state, democrats in your own home state say maybe we prefer another democrat, perhaps it says when other people nationwide are exposed to liz warren they might not look her as with much. Very interesting. Boston Globe Editorial page urging her not to run. Here is what they said. While warren is an effective and impactful senator, shes become a divisive figure. Unifying voice is what the country needs right now after the polarizing politics of donald trump. What does your polling say about this . Does it back it up . I think it does. Perhaps she should have run in 2016. Her standing and polling nationwide was higher.