King be abdullah on thursday. He will also meet with xi jinping on thursday at maralago. A key point of convention, north Koreas Nuclear ambitions. President trump offering a vague, but head turning assessment to the Financial Times saying he may act unilater unilaterally, quote, if china doesnt act, we will. He expects the high profile meeting with china to be difficult. Particularly after all of the tough talk after the campaign. We cannot continue to allow china to rape our country. Thats what theyre doing. China is responsible for nearly half of our entire trade deficit. Reporter the president s soninlaw and Senior AdviserJared Kushner expected to play a key role. All of these diplomatic meetings come as the cloud of russia is hanging over the Trump Administration. The president continuing to stand behind his unfounded wiretapping claim. Insisting he does not regret any of his tweets. Attempting to downplay the connection with Campaign Advisers and russia as fake news. I would tell people whenever they see the president use the word fake it ought to setoff alarm bells. Reporter the House Democrat says he is seeing Michael Flynn issues as skepticism. He continues to push for a special information. Every time we turn around, another shoe drops from the centipede. Reporter the white house sending signals that the president will not press issues related to Human Rights Violations in the meetings with china and egypt. That would be a huge departure from the obama administration. Joe, so President Trump is going to put china on notice over north Koreas Nuclear weapons program. How will tough talk ahead of the meeting with chinas president go this week . We have will ripley joining us now from beijing with reaction. We are told the meeting will be at maralago later this week, but will not involve golf. Not for chinas president , right . Reporter thats right. He is actually banned all government officials from playing golf and shutdown a number of golf courses. He waged a war against the sport. Interesting they have a lot on the agenda. This interview with President Trump where he says the United States will take care of north korea with or without china. Chinese officials not taking the bait on that. At least in the public stationary fro statements overnight. The ministry of Foreign Affairs says there was a conversation with secretary of state rex tillerson. Not mentioning the subject of north korea. China blames the United States fore escalating tensions on the peninsula. What could the u. S. Actually do in north korea . It is limited without china action. China would need to enforce sanctioning. If there is engagement, as President Trump hinted on the campaign trail, that would be unprecedented. The president s comments cryptic. That would cause a lot of problems for china and not something they want to see happen. A lot of problems for lots of people. Will, thank you very much. Lets discuss with the panel. We have errol louis and David Drucker and jackie kucinich. Lets read more from the financialinterview. He says china will decide to work with us or they wont. That would be good for china and if they dont, it wont be good for anyone. Errol . It is a characteristically bold statement from the president. Of course, the reality is not simple. It is not just about whether or not china wants to help the United States. China has a 900mile border with north korea. 70 of the economy is related to china. They dont have the option of walking away and letting the u. S. Do whatever it wants. They are deeply invested. They dont want a refugee crisis. They dont want a failed state. They will prop up north korea no matter what. Nothing the president says changes that. This Financial Times interview that the president did is getting talk about what he said. We havent heard him talk about Foreign Affairs this way. Still early in the administration. This is about economic activity. 7 billion between north korea and china. Significant. It is about what happens if china doesnt like what you say. Americans have to remember they hold more paper and debt, Financial Instruments from the u. S. Government than anyone in the world. What is the plus minus here . It is all about politics. They are trying to carve out a atmosphere of interest. This is true under president obama. That gets us to the north korea issue. Why does china want to solve a problem that keeps us off balance and keeps us needing them. Especially when they dont want to make our life easier especially not to focus on them building the south china seas and displace us. China has no motivation. Our military options are complicated that seoul is over the border from north korea. We have to worry about a military strike in response to hit tens of millions of civilians in south korea. That is a major problem. This strikes me as the president is trying to do Something Different because his three predecessors failed to win on the north korea issue. I dont think we should dismiss a change of strategy out of hand. His options are limited. As errol mentioned, he found out it is easy to talk tough and assume that everybody in washington was stupid until he got there. These are issues with no easy answers. Go ahead, jackie. They long had smart people trying to solve them from both sides of the political aisle and many Foreign Policy backgrounds. I dont disagree with david or errol on this one in terms of the president. He has a habit of talking tough and we have to see him pull back later. I wonder if this is another case. First time we have seen him deal with somebody stronger than he is . You cannot under estimate the chinese. Lets float the paper. Lets see what happens. Again, people will argue they need the u. S. Economy stronger than anybody because they hold all this paper. This is the first time we see him talk to something using muscle who is muscular. The u. S. Is the dominant super power. It is interesting and disappointing to hear that the u. S. May be discarding one of the stronger cards in our hand which is human rights. He will not talk about it. Even as a point of leverage, one would hope he would go in and not discarding the major strength sitting down with the chinese leader. The go it alone strategy perked up ears. Ash carter was on the sunday shows this weekend and tried to layout a scenario of what that would look like or mean. Watch this. If it comes to the necessity to protect ourselves, we always had all options on the table. I wouldnt take any off. Preemptive strike. In 1994, i worked on preemptive strike plan which we did not need to carry out at that time on the beyond research facility. We have those options. We shouldnt take those off the table. How would north korea respond . To a preemptive strike on a launch pad. It is quite possible as the consequence of that launch attempted invasion of south korea. Okay. Dire. If you play it all out. And north korean regime is unpredictable. They dont follow the normal course of international diplomacy. I think ash carter laid out our risks there. What we can say is we tried to go through china and have them sort of be part of a multilateral effort. We tried to payoff the North Koreans for years. None of it has worked. They keep building up the nuclear program. They keep threatening the United States. We have to explore the options and we have to try to send a message to them this may not be a survival event for them. In that respect, i think the Trump Administration has to be given latitude to try to do Something Different. Nothing else has worked under republicans and democrats. Ash carter laid out the dilemma of this kid running this country the wrong way. You think the meeting this week will politically shift off the russia or is the senate intel carrying the ball . You have representative schiff saying everything going on in the white house is distract. What is the practical effect . It would be a great thing for the white house and country if russia investigations could proceed on their separate track and white house conduct the public business. Specifically making good on whatever he is going to do as far as china policy. The sabre rattling is alarminal. You hope to get focused on it and not tweet about it. Congress is moving forward with that. When we see the president spending as much time as he has to spend on the old allegations. The problems he made with the reckless tweet about the former president. You cant have in a world where you have a crazy person. You have what could be a failed state. What could be a refugee crisis. That is the great fear in north korea. Tens of thousands of people streaming in china destabilizing the peninsula. You cannot have all of this stuff. This is why it is important for the administration to announce policies clearly and resolve the russia issue as quickly as possible and bring stability. Jackie. I was going to say it is not like this is an old problem that keeps being old. There is new information about the russia issue every week. Be it what nunes did. It may be a week ago or two weeks ago at this point. Last week you had Michael Flynn disclosure report. He failed to disclose payments from Russian Television and speeches he gave for russian companies. This new information keeps coming forward, why are they not being transparent . I hear you on the disclosure thing. That was a preliminary report. I dont know they have flynn on hiding information. Trump brought it up again with the tweet. Its the same Fake News Media that said there is no path to victory for trump that is pushing the phony russia story. A scam. He just put gas on the fire by classifying it in a way that is false. How much of it is just on him . On trump himself . It is not about the flynn disclosure. It is the tweet. If this was the first time flynn had concealed something, i would give that to you. The whole issue with him saying he talked about sanctions. He didnt talk about sanctions. This is another thing that another log on the fire. This is trumps fault. It is a problem of his own making that has continued to spiral into the larger issue. Panel, thank you very much. We will have more questions for you. It will be a busy newsweek. The senate is heading to a Nuclear Showdown before the full vote this week. Senate committee will vote in a matter of hours. Will they advance the nomination of neil gorsuch for the Supreme Court . Probably so. Then what . We have Suzanne Malveaux live from capitol hill with more. Answer, please. Reporter good morning, chris. Answers, answers, answers. Not many answers here. A lot of suspension. The showdown in full swing here over what could be Donald Trumps most significant achievement. Getting neil gorsuch to the Supreme Court and on the Supreme Court. Both side jockeying for power as we approach the Committee Hearing in four hours. This is going to set the stage for three days of debate on the senate floor. How and when that debate ends is critical. Democrats are ready for endless debate. Republicans need 60 to cut off filibuster. They need eight democrats to join on that. We have heard from Senate Majority leader who says they are ready for the Nuclear Option to change the threshold to get the up or down vote for gorsuch. Neil gorsuch will be confirmed this week. How that happens depends on our democrats. How many are willing to invoke closure. After there were doubts about them. It is highly unlikely he will get 60. Reporter here is the state of play. All republicans so far, of course, going for gorsuch. You have three democrats who also say they will support him. This happened on sunday. One of those coming on board is senator joe donnelly of indiana. Joining manchin and Heidi Heitkamp of north dakota. We will look at the filibuster. Suzanne, thank you. Coming up, we will have more on the gorsuch confirmation. Which senators should we keep a close eye on. Our experts tell us next. In my johnsonville commercial we open up in the forest. Hi. Im jeff. Im eating my breakfast and all of a sudden a raccoon come up and ask me, what are you eating . I told him johnsonville breakfast sausage, fully cooked. Porcupine comes in and he says, does that come in patties . I said yup wolf comes in and says, howd you learn to talk to animals . And i said books and we had a good laugh about that. [laughter] thats a commercial made the johnsonville way. Does your makeup remover every kissproof,ff . Cryproof, stayproof look . Neutrogena® makeup remover does. It erases 99 of your most stubborn makeup with one towelette. Need any more proof than that . Neutrogena. All right. Somethings going to happen with judge gorsuch today. The Senate Judiciary committee is going to a vote. Likelihood they will advance the nomination of the Supreme Court pick neil gorsuch to the senate. The list of democrats to filibuster is continuing to grow. You have democrats and republicans preparing for what is being called the Nuclear Showdown. Lets bring back the panel to discuss this nuclearity. I make fun of the word,errol, because it has too much hype. That is the state of play. If this happens, you change the fu filibuster culture. They will be just like the nasty house. It is a possibility. This is book ends to what was already a radical action when it comes to Supreme Court nominees. The refusal to give a hearing to Merrick Garland was without precedent. Having taken that step, the republican majority looks like they will take the next step which is to change the rules possibly forever and have a narrow partisan vote to confirm Supreme Court nominees. Something that hasnt been done before or traditionalists see happen. David, this does lead back to Merrick Garland. When we have democrats on the program, we say this is political pay back. They said as much. They said now, no, no, this is not political payback. This is gorsuch is just too corporate friendly. His policies are off base. Thats the new talking point. Look, they can try to paint this any way they want. This all gets back to republicans who run the chamber. Harry reid breaking the rules to change the rule to Nuclear Option. I was there when they did it. Republicans were very angry about it. Democrats say they dont have a right to be angry. They held up bahamobamasnomine. When you look at mitch mcconnell, what you need to understand is he is not prone to political hiyperbole. He immediately upon antonin scalias death, Merrick Garland would not get a hearing. He would not follow that up by not making sure that neil gorsuch ends up on the court. When he says one way or the other, neil gorsuch will be on the Supreme Court. You can be sure the votes are there for the republicans to finish the job with the Nuclear Option and get him there. Tat is what will happen. You talk about political payback. It was mcconnell who said you will rue the day you did this. Now there is a little bit of a larger debate. This is not another law. You put somebody on the Supreme Court, they are there for a long time. Especially if it is gorsuch. He is a young, vibrant man. Thats why they say that in the senate, they had a higher standard. You used to need 60. It wasnt enough to get a thin majority. This is too big a deal. Does that theory still have legs, jackie . Im sorry. The theory of too big . You need to have 60. This has to be more of a slim majority vote. Supreme Court Matters too much to get rid of that tradition. This is not necessarily mcconnell would do if he wasnt pressed to. There is a larger question if this is the right fight for democrats. They might have another vacancy on the Supreme Court coming up. This is replacing someone who was a conservative justice. Conservative for a conservative. The next person who might retire from the Supreme Court would be a liberal, most likely. That would change the balance of the court. That is the fight that democrats thats going to be a very big deal should that happen during Donald Trumps term. The fact they are going after neil gorsuch is raising concern even within the democratic party. You see Michael Bennett have to weigh this and try to make that argument behind closed doors that maybe this is not the fight they want right now. Errol, lets talk about health care. The president vowed to fight another day on this. He told the Financial Times. I dont lose. I dont like to lose. We will have Great Health Care in this country. On his side, you could say that was just the opening. What happened in those days where the Health Care Bill quickly went down, he does see that a