House democrats armed with subpoena power and new found Political Capital plan to hold President Trump to account. It is a divided government which this morning remains partly shutdown for the 13th straight day and the standoff could last for weeks. So frame this moment for us. If you take a snapshot of what today looks like, it would be very easy to say that this is the crossing of two paths, the coming not only democratic majority, but coming democratic dominance in american politics. Youve got the republicans on the run. Youve got donald trump right now being even more irrational than before, even more bizarre than before. So much so that there are two editorials in the wall street journal editorial page questioning his fitness for office. One, in fact, suggesting that the questions being raised more and more in their circles, whether americans can put up with much more of this after donald trump serves out his first term. That comes with a huge asterisk. We remember when donald trump first launched his campaign in june of 2015, him sitting at 1 , 2 . I remember when we got electsed in 1994, the u. S. News and world report cover that showed a picture of a dieing Democratic Party saying is this the end of twoparty rule . I remember barack obama being elected in 2008 and hearing about the permanent oh bam ma Obama Coalition which lasted two years. If you take a snapshot of today, it looks like trump is down, trumpism is going down and will not recover. There are a lot of reasons to believe that is the case. But we always have to be wary of making snap judgments based on a day. That is for sure. One thing is for sure, mika. Today, nancy pelosi will be sworn in as speaker of the house for the second time. The first time, of course, in 2007 and now again in 2019. We will see the exactly what happens, what democrats learned from their first four years in office. And i suspect those challenges are going to be great. Yesterday marked President Trumps first Cabinet Meeting of the new year. The department of defense is now run bay long time executive at boeing, one of the largest defense contractors in the world. The epa is being run by a former coal lobbyist. The department of health and Human Services is being run by a former pharmaceutical lobbyist and the department of interior has a former oil industry lobbyist acting as an acting secretary not to mention the acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker who yesterday launched into praise of the president. Sir, mr. President , i will start by highlighting the fact that you stayed in washington, d. C. Over the holidays giving up christmas with your family, new years with your family, trying to bring an end to this shutdown and security to our southern border. You have demonstrated your dedication to delivering on this critical issue. For our country and for the American People. Wow. Its unbelievable. I want to show a couple other clips from there and then get a response from our panel, especially David Ignatius can on some of these Foreign Policy issues. During the Cabinet Meeting, donald trump seemed to become the first president of the United States to ever endorse the 1979 invasion of afghanistan. We are talking to the taliban. We are talking to a lot of different people. But here is the thing. You mentioned india. India is there. Russia is there. Russia used to be the soviet union. Afghanistan made it russia. Because it seems to me went bruptd fighting in russia. The reason russia was in afghanistan is because terrorists were going into russia. The problem is it was a tough fight. Literally, they went bankrupt. They went into being called russia again as opposed to the soviet union. You know, a lot of these places youre reading about now are no longer part of russia because of afghanistan. But why isnt russia there, why isnt india there, why isnt pakistan there, why are we there and were 6,000 miles away . Literally, hes literally wrong. It was not afghanistan that bankrupted the soviet union. It was a collection of terriblemakterrible mistakes, tragic mistakes over 74 years. It was purges where up to 30 million russians were killed by their own government. It was forced famines. In ukraine, it was a collection of things. Every president , actually, and this is relevant, David Ignatius, it was every president from harry s. Truman starting in late 1946 to 1947 to George Reagan and george w. Bush, it was a collection of their policies that donald trump is dismantling that actually brought the soviet union to their knees. Getting a History Lesson from a man who is now tearing asunder those policies that actually did destroy what evil em pair Ronald Reagan called the evil empire is quite rich in early 2019. Well, happy new year and a History Lesson. There were many, to me, cringe worthy moments in that first Cabinet Meeting. Having the president sitting in front of a huge poster of himself was one. He clearly has no understanding of the idea that has driven, as you say, joe, every Administration Since harry truman that American Power in the world is a force that makes us stronger, safer, more prosperous, that our network of alliances, our relationships, the commitments we make to people are at the heart of American Power. The president doesnt see that. He wants to pull back. Hes almost inviting the russians to come back. So the History Lesson about afghanistan was one small piece of this, the way that he has. Ive been talking with piece who are really i dont think theyre reeling is overstating it from governments around the world, from members of our own 34i military who are seeing the guardrails, being taken off as joe mattis leaves, as secretary of defense, as john kelly leaves, the white house chief of staff, the people who the world sees as having some of the president s instincts are leaving and theres real anxiety about what is ahead. People trying to understand what are we trying to do in afghanistan . How long are we staying in these places . And people who i talk to shrug their shoulders. One said to me last night, you know, we just have to reckon with the reality that america is less important in the world than its been for a long while. Thats worrying. Yeah, lets take a look at what the president said about syria. And i want to follow up with you on that. Look, we dont want syria. Obama gave up syria years ago when he didnt violate the red line. I did when i shot 59 missiles at it. So syria was lost long ago. It was lost long ago. And besides that, were talking about sand and death. Were not talking about vast wealth. Were talking about sand and dealt. First of all, david, as you know better than most reporters in washington, d. C. , syria wasnt lost years ago. In fact, our 2500 men and women are doing a hell of a job there right now. Could you talk about the fact that the commander in chief sees syria as nothing more than sand and death and could you explain to our viewers who the president is doing is i giving russia a foothold in the middle east, giving iran a chance to be a existential threat to israel and finally resurrect isis and other terror groups that plan to fill in that void. Joe, its simple and tragic. Our president , commander in chief, describes this country which has been a crucial test of wills between different regional players as simply sand and death, hes essentially folding our hand and requiring the people of that region to look elsewhere for solutions, to look elsewhere to fill the vacuums. The kurds, who until a couple of weeks ago depend on us as faithful allies and stabilizing Northern Syria who are successfully, because they have no other choice, turning to russia and the Syrian Regime and trying to cut a deal. I think President Trump has this notion that turkey will be the stabilizing force in Northern Syria. That aint going to happen. Theres been a lot of evidence to test that proposition and thats not going to happen. But it just to see the American Power which had been successful at low cost in destroying isis and stabilizing that part of the country being destabilized by the president pretty much willynilly against the objections of the secretary of defense, his secretary of state, his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, you cannot find anyone basically who doesnt think he made a mistake on syria. Its just tough to watch. Not only is that tough to watch, mike barnacle, much of what he said was complete and utter nonsense, what he said about generals of the past generation actually is so dangerous on so many fronts. But i want to read for you what ann garren described yesterdays meeting in the Washington Post. 935 minut 95 minutes out outright lies i added lies. She said falsehood. Deeply offensive, maybe draft dodger doesnt fit his circumstances perfectly, but i think most persons would consider what he did draft dodging. Hes draft dodging back during the vietnam war while Robert Mueller is working for a year to fix his knee so he can go fight in vietnam. Then you have people like general mattis and Stan Mcchrystal and William Mccraven who have put their lives on the line for a generation in service and defense of our public and you have that man in the white house attack them. Yeah, joe, and that man in the white house when it came to a kuhn frontation that he felt had to be resolved quickly in order to get jim mattis out of the office of seblcretary of defense on january 1st rather than february 1st, he had mike pompeo call general mattis because he was probably afraid to call jim mattis. Im aligned with David Ignatius here in the sense that for the past three days, ive spoken to half a dozen people who were members of Prior Administrations and one who was still with this administration. The theme was the same. They felt there was a line of astoundingly ignorat and astoundingly isolated and dangerous incident yous involving this president who for two weeks has been in basically isolation. And he appears yesterday finally bursting at the seams to talk. And every win of the people that i spoke to had one theme in common. They indicated they had been called by members of governments and other nations used to dealing with a sensible, sane and safe United States of america. Asking them what was going on, how long do they anticipate what was going on now would last and did people here in this administration realize the risk and the heightened danger they were bringing by this erratic behavior. That was the common theme. Well, the ignorance was astounding in the president s display yesterday, mike barnacle. It was dizzying, really, to watch him talk and try and recount history in his own words. I think sam stein put it best. Sam, you tweeted somehow trump has gone from the soviet invasion of afghanistan to the kurds to tom cruise to computerboards and obama and plain loads of cash. Here is the tom cruise portion of that. Take a look. Iran is a much different country than it was when i became president. Iran, when i became president , i had a meeting at the pentagon with lots of generals. It was like from a movie. Better looking than tom cruise and stronger. And i had more generals than ive ever seen and we were at the bottom of this inkrecredibl room. I said this is the greatest room i ever ever seen. I saw more computer boards than i think that they make today. Iran is a much different country right now. Thier havi theyre having riots every week in every city bigger than theyve ever had before. Their currencies are under siege, thanks so much. A lot of bad things are happening. When we do all the things that weve done monetarily to iran, iran is in trouble. Sam stein with the zigzagging of his brain from one topic to another, sometimes really utter nonsense. I guess the question is, getting back to the shutdown and getting back to the business of trying to make the government run, which it is shut down partially now, how does anyone strike a deal with this man, even the republicans . Well, they dont. What happened yesterday in addition to this disjointed talk about Foreign Policy is he essentially just discounted out of hand the shutdown offer that his own Vice President had recently made to Senate Democrats which was sort of half of the 5 billion for the wall. He said no, we want the 5 billion. So it becomes very hard for lawmakers to negotiate in good faith with the white house when they know the president can just undermine mike pence at any moment. But, you know, yesterday was crazy, obviously. And i dont want to trivialize it too much. But as David Ignatius said, how weird is it to walk into a room and theres a movie poster of someone just laid out on the table. Lets say you were in a Corporate Board room. That would be bizarre. But yesterday we were brought into this room and they had this movie positiver laying there for some unknown reason. Its minor, its silly, but its totally bizarre. And it gets to something that is common with this president , which is there is a trivialzation of everything thats going on in the world. Everything is broken down for these small little bits. And theres huge consequences. One thing i and david can talk to this maybe more than i can. But during the course of this rambling Foreign Policy speech, he outright dismissed the world that india was doing. He said oh, theyre building a library. Who cares. India is doing more than that, but comments like that seem to have real world diplomatic impacts. And trump seems to not care about all the chaos that he leaves in moments like these. It has real consequences down the road. Yeah. We dont know what hes doing, if he cares or not. We know that he certainly doesnt understand the impact of his ignorance on americas standing across the globe. Michael steele, lets talk about his standing inside the Republican Party. We saw mitt romney come out with a strong oped two days ago. Of course, i was humored by lets say certain blue checkmarks on the far left who with attacked romneys oped. And, of course, these are the same people who have been pitching f bitching for years. Here is a guy that i certainly never saw it in the clinton demonstration when every republican and democrat i knew were attacking bill clinton. Romney made a sworn statement before he was sworn in. But just that oped before being sworn in was a remarkable thing. And for the most part, the Republican Party was silent yesterday. You read the wall street journal today, theres criticisms of the president on the editorial page today, some suggesting that we may not be able to handle a second trump term. Are we seeing an inflexion point and are we going to see more of this from republicans in 2019 . I think that is the prevailing question within republican circles, joe. I think what romney did was he finally put a crack in the waum that had been systemically built by grassroots activists, certainly in that cabinet room as you listen to the acting attorney general wax poetic about the president s behavior over the holidays, romneys oped, leading off the way he did before he takes the oath of office, i think sent a signal that theres a change coming in the way that this senate, with him in it, will respond to this president. I think Mitch Mcconnell notwithstanding, and that will be an interesting game of chess between the two of them, mcconnell commanding control of the Senate Caucus in terms of having a unified front on behalf of the president s agenda and mitt romney, who is drawing a very fine line, joe, around character. A lot of folks kind of missed the point of this oped. Yep. That roomney was not saying dont like the tax cuts, i dont like the big policy initiatives that have had some successful impacts on the economy and certainly for the party. What i have and where im drawing the line is on the character of the man holding the office and how he diminishes the office, i think symbolized in that poster that we were just talking about on the desk, not the impact of the ideas and the policies that are coming forth. And i think romney wants to draw that distinction. It is a bizarre world, mika, that we all a political world that were all a part of. Yesterday the press conference reminded me of the story about putting the frog in a pot of water, turning it to a slow boil. The frog not realizing what was happening and pretty soon its at a full boil and the frog dies. Yesterday, that frog found himself in a five alarm fire looking at the movie poster and all the other chaos that was raining around that white house. Again, if if and its a big if. If we had a cabinet that was filled with people with more character, so many that had character have been fired. If we had a house and a senate that took their job seriously, there would be people going up to the white house this morning saying, mr. President , questions abound whether you were fit for this office. If this continues, we are going to ask your cabinet to take a vote on whether you were fit for office sx office and invoke the 25th amendment. If any of the 44 president s would have behaved that way, those questions would have been raised. If barack obama would have done that in 2013, republicans would have probably tried to start impeachment hearings. And rightly so. This is a man who obviously is not fit to hold the office. And weve known that f