Camp david summit setting the 2018 agenda with the midterms in mind. Ive never been more optimistic about an Immigration Reform proposal making it to the president s desk than i am right now. Inside politics, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. Welcome to inside politics. Im niamalika henderson. John king is off today. To our viewers here at home and around the world, thanks for being with us. We begin the week with the fitness for office question. In a series of truly remarkable tweets on saturday, President Trump defended his competency and his mental acuity. He tweeted this early saturday from camp david, now that russian collusion after one year of intense study has proven to be a total hoax on the american public, the democrats and their lap dog, the fake news mainstream media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental instability and intelligence. He continued, actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and as everyone knows, went down in flames. He went on, i went from very successful businessman to top tv star to president of the United States on my first try. I think that would qualify as not smart but genius and a very stable genius at that. Later on saturday, reporters asked the president why he felt the need to take to twitter. Trump took the opportunity to play defense again. Only because i went to the best colleges or college. I went to a i had a situation where i was a very excellent student. Came out and made billions and billions of dollars. Became one of the top business people. Went to television. And for ten years was a tremendous success, as you probably having heard. Ran for president one time and won. Here to share their reporting and their insights, weve got julie herbville davis of the New York Times. Josh green, Mary Katherine ham the federalist and cnns jeff zeleny. Thanks to you all for being with us this morning. Jeff, im going to start with you on this. Really extraordinary that were talking about the president s mental acuity, in that he was responding in the way that he is. No question. And were only at the end of the first week of 2018. So i think that is sort of a good framing for this year. And the reason were still talking about this is because the president is talking about this. He is weighing in himself. He could, unlike any other figure on this planet, change the conversation. President s can change conversations by talking about anything. He has decided to focus his attention on this very issue. And by sending out that Early Morning storm of tweets, which you were just reading there, from camp david, a snowy camp david, a frigid morning, you have to wonder what is going on in his mind. I think we have a fairly good window. Hes very, you know, susceptible to anyone saying hes not smart. Think if hes smart or not, thats not the issue, temperament is a bigger question here as hes in the office office. There are aides and advisers around him who talked to Michael Wolff in that book who expressed concern about this. Now this isnt the first time weve heard this. Weve heard this a lot before. But by the president responding like this, im not sure he answers, the question, but i think its a temperament issue that is a bigger worry to Many Republicans in this stoun was they want to talk about their agenda and other things. Clearly the Russian Investigation is in the president s head. Its gotten under his skin here. If this first week of 2018 is any indication, its going to be a distracting year. And Michael Wolff on friday talked about the book. It came out. They pushed the publication up to friday. Here is what he had to say in terms of his reporting. According to your reporting, everyone around the president , Senior Advisers, family members, every single one of them questions his intelligence and fitness for office. Let me put a put a marker in the sand here, 100 of the people around him. Julie, that is quite a bold claim to make. Absolutely. And its very clear from the this book that he spoke to a wide range of people. Now the white house is pushing back and saying he didnt have the access he said he had. The president saying i never talked to him or i didnt talk to him for very long, but it is clear, i mean, it is difficult to get people on the record or even on background to make statements about the president s mental fitness, about his intelligence, but what you can glean from talking to people at the white house the length some of his aides and advisers go to to try to control him and keep him sort of on the path of being on message, being on the agenda and not saying erratic things, not doing erratic things, and that certainly points you to the conclusion that there are many people around him in his inner circle who have concerns about the way that he behaves and the way and his state of mind at key moments when hes going to be out in public and talking about important issues. And so i dont think its that it doesnt take you, too far to extrapolate that perhaps Michael Wolff got these people talking in a much more elaborate way about what the basis of those concerns are. I mean, i wouldnt go so far as to say 100 , but there is clearly a concern around the president about these issues. And rex tillerson, who, of course, is the secretary of state talked about this in an interview with elise labbot on friday. Here is how he responded to these the questions about the president. Everybody in this book, you know, questions hes mental fitness. Ive never questioned his mental fitness. I have no reason to question his mental fitness. Josh, how effective is that pushback . I dont know its hugely effective. The fact that these questions were being asked of tillerson are fraught with significance. Its widely reported that tillerson last year called trump a moron in a meeting at the pentagon. Thats a charge tillerson really didnt dispute. He never came out and said, no, i never called the president a moron. So i think that gives the sense, really support to wolffs thesis that the people around him dont have the highest opinion of his stability or his intelligence. And this, of course, has implications here, and the president frames it as a political argument in that its the democrats who are basically pushing this, but it also has global implications, right . The world is watching. The president of the United States and theresa may addressed this. She got a question about the president. In the states, there are quite serious questions being raised by some people about his mental state. Do you think theyre serious . As i say, when i deal with President Trump, what i see is somebody who is committed to ensuring that he is taking decisions in the best interests of the United States. Mk, not exactly a firm defense of President Trump. Shes had her own dustups with trump and quite cleverly sidesteps the central question there. As a person who is also, like, really smart, i want to push back on the notion we would be talking about Something Else. I dont think we would be talking about Something Else if the president wasnt tweeting this. He had a burn book come out about him, essentially, and he is always going to push back on that. What i am wary about because i have similar concerns to some of the people in the book and have been since he started running for president , the problem of confirmation bias. Almost everyone in this town and many in media, almost all of them, have these concerns. Therefore when you hear those concerns, you go, oh, that confirms exactly what i was thinking. Let me repeat that many, many times. I want to be careful how we weigh the reporting instances here and decide, okay, does this sound credible or not . Its going to sound possible in many, many cases. Thats something i get a little concerned about in a book of this nature with trump, but he will continue to talk about it and that will prevent us in the near future from moving on from it. To Mary Katherines point, i think the president s own response adds to that Confirmation Bias Problem because he seems to be in pushing back on this actually confirming some of whats been said about him. He cant resist. He cant check his own impulses and things like that. I do think for foreign leaders its a very difficult place to be, because like republican members of congress, these people have to work with this president whether they want to or not. There are a lot of things they have to get done with the United States. They cant inignore him. They cant put it to the side. They have to deal with this person. If they have concerns about this either his fitness or stability, that is a major problem for them. I also think, though, we should put it in perfective, like you said. There is no one in the trump base who voted for trump that is bothered by this. They believe the media is piling on. In some respects, they are. This is very much a conversation happening here in washington and across the country and, indeed, around the world, but we shouldnt pretend that everyone is on having it. This is going to rally his supporters as well. You know, the people are making fun of him. Every time he is out there on social media, hes speaking to his base, which is still very much with him. The thing they will note rightly, he won an election fair and square and we have a fairly rigorous process figuring out whether someone is fit. This was an issue in the election. Speaking of 2016, if you look at those exit polls, a question about the president s temperament was asked, does trump have the temperament to be president . Yes, 35 . No, 63 . He still won. And, of course, there is a breakdown, a Party Breakdown in terms whats so interesting about those numbers is that clearly a lot of voters in 2016 agreed with wolffs sthethesis that ma he isnt the most stable guy, he isnt a genius and voted for him anyway. Baked into the cake in some ways. One other point id make about this, too, where i think trump is correct is democrats have gleefully been pushing this notion that hes unfit, hes unstable. They summoned a yale psychiatry professorer to brief them, which is an odd thing to do because he had never spoken to him. There is a partisan effort to fan the flames on this. Trump has done everything in his power to help that effort out. I was speaking to an adviser who said the problem we have is this creates a feedback loop. Charges in the book, trump responding to it and then you guys, meaning we on cable tv are going to talk about this and trump is going to see it on cable tv, get angry and keep responding to it. Its not clear exactly how hes going to move on from this. Up next, trump as the negotiator in chief. His approach to working with democrats or against them on daca. And politicians, they tend to say the darnedest things. When your boss asks if youre staying on the job, a bit of advice here, always best to just senile and nod. Will gary cohn continue to remain . I hope. Where is gary . Is he here. Gary . Did you hear the question, gary, in this beautiful hangar that is freezing. I did not, so. Will gary cohn continue and remain in the administration . I hope so. If he leaves, im going to say im very happy that he left, okay . All right . Come here, gary. Are you happy, gary . You just passed a very big bill. Yes, im happy. How is that . Gary, hopefully will be stay for a long time. Cancer challenges us. To find smarter solutions. To offer more precise and less invasive Treatment Options than before. Like advanced Genomic Testing and immunotherapy. See how were fighting to outsmart cancer at cancercenter. Com outsmart im to help you park safelyball danin your garage. Ring its part of my new years resolution no more mayhem. Making sure your car is pulled in far enough. But not too far. 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We also obviously wanted to budget, so we went into daca and how were going to do and we hope that were going to be able to work out an arrangement with the democrats. I think its something that theyd like to see happen. We want the wall. The wall is going to happen or were not going to have daca. We want to get rid of chain migration. Very important. And we want to get rid of the lottery system. In addition to that, we want some money for funding. We need some addition at Border Security. Mk, you heard the president s wish list there in terms of daca. How likely is it hes going to be able to get those things and reach a deal with the democrats . Its not a question of whether republicans can stomach daca, most in leadership and the president posing a few years ago in photos with the d. R. E. A. M. Ers where not mind making that deal. But its going to be how much enforcement, action or money democrats can stomach. Hes going to have to get something that is at least a faint at the wall for his supporters. In the past, thats been the moment the ann coulters of the the world have turned him on him i think there has got to be enforcement there. There has always been a weird dynamic where trump could be a nixon to china on comprehensive Immigration Reform. The issue for many right of center people, rightly, they dont trust the federal government to do the enforcement part. They trust him more than they have trusted people in the past. I think he ideologically wouldnt mind getting a big deal like that done, but it has to have that trust part. So whether we get there or not is a whole other question, but it is one of these weird possibilities that a Trump Presidency creates. And hes floating what he wants in terms of this wall, the spending, 33 billion on a Border Security plan. A tenyear investment plan. About 18 billion for the border wall. Never mind i guess mexico at one point was supposed to pay for it. Josh, i want to go to you on this. The democrats, and youve heard some democrat activists particularly say that democrats should really stick it to the republicans and shut down the government. This is what dick durbin had to say about where these negotiations are. I think were going to have a very productive 2018. Again, the state department gets stronger evidence understanding what were trying to do. And i look forward to having a very, very successful 2018. For the whole year . I intend to be here for the whole year. Has the president given you any indication you wont be around for awhile . None. None whatsoever. None whatsoever. A little mistake there. Dick durbin actually said the latest white house demand on immigration, 18 billion for a border wall, he called it outrageous. Whats your sense, josh, of the democratic calculus here . Well, there had been hope among democratic activists that democrats would actually shut down the government or threaten to last year at the end of the year. And it turns out that the sentiment to move in that direction wasnt as strong as a lot of the activists imagined because there are a lot of red state Democratic Senators up for reelection next year who maybe arent willing to jump off a cliff to support something quite so extreme. So democrats absolutely need to get some kind of a deal. They are not going to give, you know, 18 billion for a border wall or do anything short of some kind of legalization for the daca kids. One positive, though, as far as reaching a bipartisan deal is the figure in republican politics and in trumps orbit who is most adamant about the idea he could not legalize the daca kids and had to build a border wall was steve bannon. Weve seen bannon blow himself up in the last week or so and trump kind of coming out actively on twitter insulting him. So thats one voice that i think will be silenced, which ought to open up a little bit more room for some kind of a deal to happen. And more broadly, julie, the gop in 2018, this is obviously what theyre trying to talk about here at camp david. What does it look like more broadly in terms of bipartisanship . All sorts of things on the list there, infrastructure, daca, zblobls listen, think they realized given the reality in the senate in particular theyre going to have to have some measure of bipartisanship to get this stuff done. If there is going to be an immigration deal, they need democrats. If there is going to be a infrastructure bill or welfare reform as the president has said, theyre going to need democrats to come along. And the president s going to do a lot more than he did last year in terms of courting some degree of centrist democratic support for his agenda. He pretty much wrote that all off for the tax bill and they got it through. Thats not going to be possible for a lot of other issues. You end up with red state democrats like manchin saying after the tax bill, for instance, trying to answer questions why was this not good for West Virginia . Hes like, well, there are actually are some good parts. You dont want to be on that side of the issue too often. Something like daca with democratic activists you dont want to say no, no, no, no, no when you could