All in starts right now. Good evening from new york. In just one hour the president will address the nation, giving you rare grant of primetime air time from all the networks and then there will be a response from the Democratic National committee leaders, nancy pelosi and Chuck Schumer. This as the president looks for any possible way out of the impasse hes painted his way am to. Youll remember he made promise of a big buteautiful and a prome that was ridiculous on its face that mexico would pay for the wall. It was immediately apparent mexico was not going to pay for it. Two years of unified republican governance and the republicpartt prioritize giving him money to do it or building the wall. And here we are on the 18th day of a shutdown. Hes cornered between a promise, rush limbaugh, anne coulter and supporters on the other. And he is losing. An escape President Trump has trapped himself in. National security and justice reporter who has been relentlessly Fact Checking on the dire claims about the border. What are you looking for tonight . They have been throwing a lot of dodgy and false statistics around. Reporter weal all be Fact Checking relentlessly. Im interested to see how hes going to try to build himself as credible in any means as a source who can tell us why he needs this border wall and willing to continue a Government Shutdown or call for a National Emergency to funtd this. As you know the numbers have been fact checked when it comes to terrorists. Only six in early 2018 only six immigrants known or suspected terrorists caught coming across the border in early 2018. Thats far below the 4,000 number that had been thrown out by this administration and i wonder if hes going to pivot away from the terrorism angle. Weve heard its needed the humanitarian reasons. Ha thats hard to buy as it would force people into more desolate journeys that have led to child deaths. And is he going to make the argument drugs. More come through legal ports of entree and the mail. So if he tries to make the uj estion this will stop the opioid epidem, thats also a hard argument to make. Unless we get jaw dropping news, well see the president trying to explain to the American People why the wall is so important its worth dragging out the shutdown. Thank you so much. Joining me is chuck todd, host of mtv daily. I understand you had an offtherecord lunch at the white house. I would say it the best way to put it without violating the offtherecord mindset and this is their way of trying to preview the argument theyre going to make tonight, see if they can have influence in how we frame tonight. I like to get that transparent. Number one is that they had they have to do tonight in order to calm Congressional Republicans down. They do seem to be concerned about that. There was an acknowledge they hadnt made itter given the air cover, if you twiel republicans taking a beating on the congressional side of the aisle. I went 32 assuming assuming we o get a hint in how were getting out of this and i came away with oh, theyre not interested in getting out of it. Theres not going to be an announcement of im declaring a National Emergency. He seems to be more about making a case to keep republicans on his side. I mean the Congressional Republicans. Because theyre about to all leave him and i think they know that. Thats interesting and important insight. Theres two ways of looking at this and one is theyre leaning to this tactically because they want to talk about this and not other things. Theyre picking this fight affirmatively. The other thing is theyve ad hawk stumbled their way out. Which of those dwo do you think it is . Its more of the latter. Look, the president believes immigration is always a winner for him, period. If you bring him a poll, hell say yeah, they told me the wall was unpopular and i won anyway. He believes theres a silent majority with him on the wall. He believes its democrats who dont understand the importance of the immigration issue and he really does believe if he can make his case that it will be the democrats who get punished for the shutdown, not the republicans. But he hasnt really been able to i will be curious to see if he any better at it tonight is why you have to shut down the government to have this debate. That is the part of this that they say they need it, they lose leverage if they dont. But to me if youre threatening a National Emergency, you created more lever frj yourself. Play negotiator. At the end of the day, then why are you keeping the government shut . Good question. Appreciate it. Good to see you, sir. Joining me now is former president ial candidate, tim kane. Youre precoff the floor where they successfully blocked on what would have been the first bill for consideration in this new senate. You had this to say earlier. The enist should vote on nothing else until we vote to reopen the government, period. Its squeezing the finances of so many americans. As leaders we cant just whistle past the graveyard of this crisis. In fact it is still going on, chris. Theres about 14 of us speaking up until the president s speech and the point were making is exactly the point chris just made. Why shut down the entire government, punishing more than 800,000 federal employees who are all going to miss a paycheck friday, punishing citizens, hurting our countrys reputation to have a border and security debate. You want to keep government open and we can have that debate and democrats have shown repeatedly as recently as last february that were willing to deal and put significant Border Security moneys on the table. But what we dont want to do is pay for the president s broken promise of a wall that mexico was going to pay for. We just want Border Security to be done right. The Biggest Group of folks without document cans are those who come in on legal visas and over stay. You can build a million foot wall and its not going to stop that. And apprehensions are at a 45year low. This is a manufactured crisis about the wall but the president shouldnt be punishing everybody else because of his idiotic promise that hes broken to get mexico to build a wall for him. The first two years of the Trump Administration which had republican majorities in both houses. Can was there any motion by Mitch Mcconnell to pass a wall bill . He evaded the filibuster. Its a funding question i think they could have got in under reconciliation . Thats a great question. They used reconciliation to try to destroy obamacare, that was their priority. I learned something valuable. I was part of a Bipartisan Team that really presented to the president a bipartisan proposal last february. Border security done right and in the amount the president asked dung right to protect dreamers and the president blew up the deal. Well, he asked for both halves of it. What i concluded is hes not interested in the wall, Border Security. Hes interested in a talking point to rally his base. So he has shown no interest in like sitting down and actually doing a negotiation and finding a path forward, even when we offered him 25 billion inboarder security over 10 years, he blew up the deal. And heres a talking point about the policy to punish all the employees. Can you good faith negotiate the answer is its very hard to. Its been very difficult to do any kind of negotiation because its unclear whether the president will stick. We thought he was going to accept the deal in february and he blew it up. We ehad a deal in december or so we thought. It and President Trump blew it up. And all were asking our Senate Colleagues oo do is vote for exactly what you voted for three weeks ago and it shows how afraid they are of the president that theyre hiding under the desk. Thank you very much. Joining me is former republican straltgist, steve schmidt. Aing is issal person to tell you what the heck the thing is that government is now shut down over. Do you understand what that is . Of course not. Its an absurdity. And the entire premise that trump is going to address the nation to persuade the country of something is an absurdity in and of itself. Hes persuaded nobody about anything from the moment he became president of the United States. Hes trying to insight intensity among his base, trying to hold republicans together. Now we saw Republican Party in this last election that lashed itself to the mast of the s. S. Trump, went down to the bottom of the sea floor, Speaker Pelosi now runs the house. When you look at the map for 2020, that map is not anned a ven tajs map for Senate Republicans and it seems they now are lashing them selves to the mast of the s. S. Trump. Real pain is about to be felt in the economy by these wurksers who many of them are working hard, protecting the American People. At a danger level, we have a president who will go on tv tonight and lie and lie and lie some more. This is a manufactured crisis. Hes setting up a precedence. Claim powers that have never been exercised by a president and all the while doing it with the scapegoating of minority populations. Its a dangerous moment. As dangerous as it is stupid. National emergency talk which is being floated. Some argue a border crisis to free up the border wall will allow republicans to open the government without looking like they cave. And i saw other reporting indicating House Republicans want him to do that because it would take that off them and allow everybody to save face. Well, again people that have embraced the illiberalism of the trump era. This is a small r republican form of government. Were a madisonian democracy. The president is not the maximum leader. Hes not a king, hes not an emperor and when we look around the world, where are the places that we see leaders declaring National Emergencies to u surp power from other institutions . Turkey with erdogan, russia with putin, saudi arabia. You dont see this in healthy liberal democracies and so the entire premise of this National Emergency is dubious to say the least. It will almost certainly be hammered into the grounds of federal court. But the idea that the president of the United States would manufacture out this crisis. We saw in the election that this division that was invading america through the southern border, the socalled caravan which he deployed active duty elements to the border and his pr stunt all the sudden the republicans lose and the danger of the caravan dissipates. We never hear about it again. This is about his ability to go to his rallies, like the wizard in the wiz rbd of oz and say look, my faithful friends, i have given you the magical trump wall. Nobody has seen it. Try to solve a problem that does not exist. Illegal immigration comes from visa over stays and people arriving at airports. And so what he needs to be able to do is politically save face. In the entire premise of this argument, this shutdown is this should never have been a debate if you take trump at his word about american taxpayer dollars in the first place because he promised the American People to my ears that mexicans would pay for the wall. This is about the paceos not the dollars. Trump said no dollars would be used for the construction of the wall. The mexicans would pay for it. They would pay for it in paceo the reality is there are no pesos because from the first moment he mention trksd it was nothing other than a con. Its a con just like trump university, its a con just like his business career. Its a con just like Everything Else having to do with this man is a con. And we will get the con from the oval offices tonight. Thank you very much. We have a lot to talk about before the president s Oval Office Address, including the actual humanitarian crisis. Plus a prespeech fact check with the one and only Rachel Maddow. But first there is other really good news tonight. Smoking gun evidence of collusion between Paul Manafort the suspected intelligence officer. All that and more ahead. All that and more ahead. When i say, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of 412, you probably wont believe me. But you can believe this, real esurance employee nancy abraham. Look her up online. Esurance, its surprisingly painless. With the chase ink business unlimited card, i get unlimited 1. 5 cash back. Its so simple, i dont even have to think about it. So i think about mouthfeel. 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Thats why we have 2hour appointment windows, including nights and weekends. So you can do more of what you love. My name is tito, and im a techhouse manager at comcast. Were working to make things simple, easy and awesome. An accidental but explosive disclosure courtesy of Paul Manaforts lawyers showing a possible Straight Line between a Campaign Manager and in other words collusion. Youll remember the special counsel filed a Court Document in december alleging that manafort had violated his cooperation agreement, that he had instead of cooperating repeatedly lied to mueller s team. That was heavily redacted. And today manaforts defense team responded with their own document and while much of that was redacted, they missed a few parts. They failed to effectively redact a few key points. Manafort shared polling data with related to the campaign. Kilimnik whos believed to be a russian intelligence asset whos been indicted and fled to russia. To help figure out whats going on, im joined by political enterprise and investigations reporter for the washington post. Crazy the way we got this information today. Have you ever had Something Like this happen . A few months ago when they told us julian asauchg had been indicted in an Unrelated Court daulkument. But this is an odd way to learn this type of information. And because it came from Paul Manaforts lawyers, it was prevented in the least objectionable way poslk and yet still stunning. What were learning from this is the Mueller Team Says Manafort lied about two discrete things and one is polling data. He gives kilimnik polling data while hes Campaign Manager of trump . A little unclear definitely during the president ial campaign. We dont know whether it was during the time period when he was chairman. We edo know he was in contact with kilminik throughout that time period, including an inperson meeting in august. We also know they corresponded about the Russian Oligarch seeing Paul Manaforts new job and maybe getting a private briefing on the election. But why would Paul Manafort be giving polling to kilminik . I dont know. Is it connected to this idea of giving a private briefings . The spokeswoman has said those briefings never occurred. They never said they received nothing. A big question is what is he do with that data . And we just dont know yet. And another thing is the meeting in madrid. We dont know when the madrid meeting happened. Is that correct . Well, Paul Manaforts spokesman told me just this evening that one piece of information he could give about this filing is that meeting happened in january or february of 2017. So apparently after the ewlekz. Nevertheless it was clearly a topic theyre asking about. Sglrsz well, it appears it has something to do with a quote ukrainian peace deal. The idea that Michael Cohen pass to Michael Flynn or his office, some plan to lift sanctions on the russians. If hes meeting in madrid to do that, thats interesting . And we dont know if its connected to the madrid. He lied about madrid, peace and polling data. What we have been told today is a huge new piece of information. Yeah. Also again why is he lying even after hes cooperating with them and we should note the contention from manaforts team is not that those things didnt happen. Theyre just saying he forgot, basically. Thats exactly right. Theyre definitely saying yes, yes all those things did happen. He just forgot about them. His memory was fuzzy and after being shown documents he was immediately forthcoming about them. Ive been to madrid once. Back to tonights Ova