Bother me because i hope that hes going to be fair. A different message than vocal Congressional Republicans who call the former fbis investigation biased. He has the right do what i want to do with the Justice Department, which is carrying out that russia probe. And he tweeted about the frigid temperatures. Saying in the east it could be the coldest new years eve on record, because we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our country but not other countries was going to pay trillions to protect against. Bun gel u bundle up. The president appeared unaware of the distinction between weather and climate. 2017 set to be the second hottest year ever for planet earth. It may get cold, but one thing is heating up that is lotto fever. Starting tonight, you have a shot at winning not one, but two massive lottery jackpots worth nearly three quarters of a billion dollars combined. Something only happened once befo before. Americans spent more in lottery tickets, than buying books, movie tickets and sporting events. A rare move for any sitting president , donald trump spoke to a New York Times reporter alone without any aides or staffers president. The president is on what he is calling a working vacation at maralago in florida. And the half hour chat was wide ranging from rob bheert mueller russia investigation which he said makes the u. S. Look good to the north korea, tax bill, Climate Change and even his golf swing. He says the sooner it is worked out, the best for the country. He talked about working on bipartisan deals in 2018 including one on daca. Just this morning the president tweeted the democrats have been told and fully understand that there can be no daca without the desperately needed wall at the southern border and an end to the horrible chain migration and ridiculous lottery system of immigration, et cetera. We must protect our country at all costs. Joining me now is the reporter who interviewed President Trump yesterday around lunch timing. That is Michael Schmidt. Also here with me in new york, nick ackerman, former assistant special watergate prosecutor. And gordon shank is with me as well. 16 times during the course of this interview the president said no collusion. What was the sense that you got from talking to him about how he pir p perceives where this investigation is at this point . It was probably the most sober the president has been about mueller. He didnt attack mueller. He basically said that he thought mueller would be fair to him which stands in contrast to what a lot of republicans have said where they have really gone after muellers credit ability. The president seemed to put some distance between himself and those xhentsds. And to basically say look, i got nothing to hide and he certainly said all those timings that there was no collusion. But he basically says i got nothing to hide and i think mueller will be fair. Which was sort of a lighter touch from the president who usually doesnt have that especially on issues that he is particularly worked up about like the russia investigation. And nick, you read the excerpts from this interview. What did you make of what the president had to say about the multl Mueller Investigation . First of all, he may be saying one thing on one hand, but he has all of his buddies saying something different. And secondly when he talks about collusion, there is no crime of collusion. The crime that is involved here is conspiracy. We know for a fact there was a federal crime committed, a felony. That was the hacking into the Democratic National committee to take emails and to use that to help trump win the president ial election. The only question is whether or not at any point either trump or members of his campaign joined that conspiracy. One does not can be guilty of conspiracy even though they didnt join on the day that the hacking took place. So in other words, if you have papadopoulous being aware that there were these 4,000 somewhat emails that were stolen, you have people on coming to trump tower on june 9 talking about dirt on on hillary clintohillar have the june 3 email from goldstone announcing that the russian government is backing trump. And then youve got these emails being distributed to guccifer 2. 0 and then through wikileaks with roger stone in the middle and then youve got don jr. Being involved with communications with wikileaks. Youve got Jared Kushner being involved. And youve got the person who is in charge of their Data Mining Program in the uk being involved with wikileaks. All of this is indicia that there could be a very serious conspiracy and then when you put on top of all that the flynn guilty plea where he pled guilty to lying to the fbi after the election but the materiality of that lie he has admitted related to events that occurred during the campaign wheres fbi was investigating any kind of joint effort where russia and the trump campaign. All of this says to me there is going to be a major blockbuster conspiracy indictment here coming out stooimgs sometiin th months. And you got his sense of what he thinks of Paul Manafort. He said ive always found Paul Manafort to be a very nice man. And i found him to be an honorable person. Two things came across to me here in the conversation that you had with him, there is the flattery that weve seen in the same context with michael flynn, and also an effort here to distance himself from paul man for the emphasizing in that conversation with you that he was only the Campaign Manager for about 3 1 2 months. Yeah, the president tried to do this delicate dance with manafort where he didnt offend him, he praised him, but also said if you look at other republican president , manafort has done a lot more work for them than he did for me. It was ochl a leanly a three mo. Its of really kind of trying to put the arms distance between them. The real question, what will the president do as manaforts case moves forward. He has been indicted. He faces significant criminal exposure. Not clear if he really has anything to offer the government. Obviously the president has to be preoccupied about that. He has had his former Campaign Chairman and former National Security adviser both get charged here. So this is a big thing that is hanging over his president is i. When he says there is no collusion 16 times, obviously something that is very front of mind for him. I want to move on to foreign policy, but let me ask you about one exchange that stood out to me, asking you control the Justice Department. Should they reopen that e mailing investigation . That being the one into Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Donald trump replaying what ive done is i have absolute right to do what i want to do with the Justice Department, but for purposes of hopefully thinking im going to be treated fairly, ive stayed uninvolved have this particular matter. Has he stayed uninvolved and what do you make about that line of the Justice Department . I have absolute right do what i want to do. Lets start with not being involved. The fact that he was criticizing sessions for recusie ining hims the fact that he keeps criticizing the government witness, keeps criticizing the investigation, he is involved. Secondly, he has no right do whatever he wants to do with the department of justice. Back in 1776, we made a decision as a country that we were not going to be ruled by one person and one king. We decided wed be ruled bylaws and a constitution. Under our constitution, it is the tim kaine and the department of justice that decides who is going to be investigated, whether or not there is a possible criminal matter. And whether somebody should be charged. The president has nothing to do with that. He cannot tell the department of justice what to do in that area. I mean, he thinks that he is operating the u. S. Government like he did with his real estate firm. That is not the way we operate. We do not have a king, we do not have a dictator even though he would like to be one. And we are a country of laws and a constitution and we have a process to follow here. If he doesnt like the attorney general, he can fire him, but the u. S. Senate has the right to confirm the person and to ask that person whether or not they will elect the president in a fear of investigations. You dont want a president using the department of justice as a Political Tool to go after people he doesnt want. And Michael Schmidt asked about a tweet that he fired off yesterday that read caught red handed, disappointed that china is allowing oil to go into north korea. There will never be a friendly solution if this continues to happen. President trump talking about his north korea policy saying my deal is that we have to treat them rough, they are a nuclear menace, still we have to be tough. What did you learn about there administrations posture from north korea . Well, in the beginning of the trump presidency, there was this attempt especially after the maralago meeting with xi jinping to trade trade with north korea. In other words, going soft on trade as President Trump put it in that interview if they were going to help on north korea. I actually thought they had gotten behind that especially with the National Security strategy that was issued. That seemed to set a china policy. Before that, we didnt have a china policy. We had a north korea policy. We were good on china if we thought they were helping an tough if we thought they werent. And that was basically a very important change for the United States in that National Security strategy to say no, we have a real chinaconduct. And now were back to the old way of sort of looking at china only in terms of north korea. I dont think that is really a good way of doing that. And one other exchange here, do you still think there is a diplomatic solution, President Trump saying china has a tremendous power over north korea. Far greater than anyone knows. I see that the secretary of defense saying i provide military options and this remain as diplomatically led effort. As you read the transcript and hear the rhetoric, do you agree, go you think th do you think this is still diplomatically led is. It is. But the problem and the Trump Administration over the last couple months is that the air has gone out of the sanctions enforcement effort. They started really well, they had a september 21 executive order. Which really was monumental, a major step forward. But they havent really pursued it and enforced it. And so right now were in this netherworld of talking about a diplomatic solution, but not really pursuing anything vigorously. This piece was posted last night. There was twitter push back from those who wondered about your approach, if you should have pushed back more. Can you talk about that, how you approached the interview and if you care to respond to what folks are saying that it should have been one in which you were correcting or pressing more and what you make of what follow on beings have said on twitter and elsewhere. The president can be a very difficult person to interview. He moves very quickly from one issue to the next. Jumping from tan gegent to tan againgent and he is difficult to interr t interrupt. So the approach is to ask questions and get out of the way and let him talk. I thought that that was the best way that i could get as much information and insight into how he sees the world, how he sees his presidency. And the way that he is thinking as we go into the new year. I thought that was the best approach. Its not an easy thing to interview him. It was in many ways sort of impromptu. But sometimes we get criticized for what we do and we j just us to live with it. Michael, great to speak with you. Thank you all. Some parts of the country, this could be the coldest new years eve on record. President trump pointed that out in a tweet, but then added maybe we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming. Well tackle that one next. And someplace are it is not frinlgts frigid, palm beach, florida where he and the family are spending the holidays. Hes been at his properties 113 days, just about one third of his time as president. Hes been at his Golf Properties 87 days. Stay with us. Nyl, nyl, but maybe not for people with rheumatoid arthritis. Because there are options. Like an unjection™. Xeljanz xr. A once daily pill for adults with moderate to severe ra for whom methotrexate did not work well. Xeljanz xr can reduce pain, swelling and further joint damage, even without methotrexate. 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With 220 million americans dealing with bone chilling cold temperatures expected to last into the new year, President Trump took to twitter to cast doubt on Climate Change. He tweeted in the east it could be the coldest new years eve on record. Perhaps we could use a bit of that good old Global Warming that our country but not other countries was going to pay trillions to protect against. Bundle up. Weather is not the news as climate. Joining me live is Lisa Friedman and also don byer, cochair of the congressional safe climate caucus. Lisa, help us with the definition. What is the difference between climate and weather . Thanks so much. This is one of the most common confusions that Scientists Say that they see. Climate is weather over time or as my colleague Kendra Phillips lewis who took the lead on our story yesterday came up with a really wonderful analogy, she wrote that climate is like having money, a billionaire is not suddenly poor because he forgot his wallet one day she wrote, but nor is a poor person suddenly rich because they had a wind fall of a couple hundred dollars. So you need to think about Climate Change as trends over time. And you say there is a misapprehension that climate scientists have to deal with. How persuasive is it among policymaker as you listen to folks on capitol hill for instance . Is this kind of rhetoric something that you hear . Sure, all the time. I mean, it is something that you hear over dinner tables as well. But i would say that what scientists have said to us in the past 24 hours is that it is troubling but perhaps not surprising to hear this kind of, you know, confusion from the president as well. We saw senator james inhofe bring a snowball to the senate floor in an attempt to prufr that there was no Global Warming. This was on a february day. And so this is a fairly common confusion and some would certainly say might be purposeful confusion. Congressman, let me bring you into the conversation and read your tweet. You wrorks one, this isnt how Climate Change works. Two, we werent paying trillions of dollars. You didnt understand the Paris Agreement in june and you still dont. Three Climate Change is real, it is a serious threat to our children. You need people on your team who can explain this to you. What prompted you to weigh in here and do you sense that the discourse is changing . Well, i think it is getting slightly better, but not for the president. There are now 60 people in the Climate Solutions caucus, 30 democrats and 30 republicans. That is up from six republicans in the last congress. So that is progress. But it doesnt men when you hhe have the president continuing the fiction that weather is the same as Climate Change. One thing he talked about the political i dont knows well spend in paris, he missed the fact that our paris commitment was 3 billion. We just passed legislation last week to commit 81 billion to deal with the fires in california, the puerto rico hurricanes, the floods in houston. And all these were essentially 1 in 1,000 year events. All directly due to Climate Change. And what has happened since the president decided to withdraw from the Paris Agreement . What has happened in washington . Weve certainly seen cities here doing more. I noted that the chicago Climate Change just added ten more cities to its ranks. What has changed when you look at the folks concerned about Climate Change . Well, i would first add to the congressmans comments that the folks from other countries that ive spoken to in the past 24 hours, you know, are always quite concerned about that comment because japan has put 1. 2 billion, uk, germany, other countries in the range of about 1 billion. And countries are everyone small developing countries are putting money towards efforts like