The truth lacking and it is unfortunate. Theres so much that needs to be talked about. Whether it be the tax bill that was passed, is benefiting corporations in the top 1 to the exclusion of working families. We need to speak the truth about russia and there was no talk about any conversation about what it has done to enter gear the election of the president of the United States of america. The truth around who was benefitting from the bonuses in the stock market. We know that 10 of the stocks owned in this country, 84 of the stocks owned are owned by 10 of the population. This whole trickle down theory is a false suggestion to the American Public in terms of what they will benefit and how they will benefit economically. So i found the truth lacking. You mentioned the president did not talk about russia and the interference. There is a line that some people interpreted as being an oblique reference. The president said i call on congress to empower every cabinet secretary to reward good workers and remove employees who undermine trust or fail the American People. I was walking the hall and someone said, is that in reference to impeachment . I dont know. Fair enough. The president marked his oneyear anniversary in office that ended in a government shutdown. Nine days from now it may shut down again. I listened to the words that were spoken in the state of the union but i have to liberty in the context of what ive witnessed and weve all witness in terms of the conduct over the last year. And im having a difficult time reconciling with the words spoken. This president said he would support Daca Recipients. There have been several attempts to meet in a bipartisan way to reach compromise and that has not happened. I will say that on this issue about the government shutdown, i really do believe it has been presented as a false choice. We need to keep the government running and protect these Daca Recipients and we can do both. What sales to you for the next fight in nine days . It may be eight days by now. Would w the next shutdown looming. I believe there is a sincere desire on behalf of a Bipartisan Coalition to do what we can and need to do to protect the Daca Recipients, the dreamers. I am hopeful that is achievable. What the president has articulated around these four points goes far beyond the need and desire that we have to take care of dakota recipients. He is bringing up this issue of chain migration. We need to not put the diversity visas on behalf of protecting the dreamers but he is making that a condition of doing that. So i dont know where well end up when he keeps putting other things on the plate. Lets just protect the Daca Recipients. Lets keep our promise to them. And lets remember something that sit critical. This administration arrest by trarly decided on september 5 that it would be implemented with a due date of march 5. If nothing is resolved by march 5, theyll be deported. This administration brought this issue upon itself, frankly. Lets keep our promise to these young people. We told them, if you are vetted, and they cheered the vet, which they were. Which is why they were recipients. We said we would not deport them. Were you smocked the president introduced the discussion in a country of immigrants on immigration, on ms13 he . Thats how he began the conversation. Your thoughts. Im a career prosecutor. One of my main focuses was going after transnational criminal organizations. Ms13 is an example of the worst gang behavior. To equate that with dreamers and daca was completely irresponsible. And it was scapegoating and fear amongering and it was wrong. It was wrong in terms of the difference, who they are and how they live their lives and it was wrong because thats not what leaders are supposed to do. Were not supposed to convince the American Public of policy because we make them afraid. Thank you for joining us. It has been a late night. Thank you. We want to bring into the conversation another member of our extended family. Republican political veteran Steve Schmidt. Veteran of both many gop campaigns and the gop white house or two. Sum up what in addition to what were now told is the third longest state of the Union Address ever. What was it we witness from donald trump . Everything all together. The back drop. What we know to be the sub plot and his choice of words. This coming together of the three coequal branches of government. Theres a veneer of normalcy to it all. The president went in there as president dozen and addresses the nation. But left unsaid is that this president comes in. The most unpopular president this early in his tenure in the history of polling. Somebody who has spent the last year leading a faction in this country, dividing the country. Somebody who is besieged by criminal investigation talking about the importance of our Law Enforcement organizations and institutions, while at the same time the republican majority working the white house is engaged in a fullon assault, trying discredit the fbi, the justice department, doing everything they can conceivably can to inls late the president from these investigations. We heard talk about expanding our Nuclear Weapons arsenal. Theres not one serious student of American Defense policy that thinks that this should be the chief goal of he strengthening americas military. Across the depth and he breadth, you saw a divisive speech. The wedge issue of immigration. The scare tactics of ms 13. There was no talk in the sbeex the challenges the country faces over the next five years, ten years, 15 years. So this divisive president came in, at probably the most divided this country has been since the year of 1968. He did nothing to appeal to the better angels of our nature as a country in this speech. And more than anything, it was a speech delivered almost from an alternate reality. A fifth dimension. That presumes nothing we heard from this president over the last year. Nothing that weve seen he happened. And of course, it did. The American People know it. So i think this is a speech will not be long remembered. His words will float up like smoke from a fire and dissipate. In 24 hours, 48 hours, well see the looseness. The tweet out of left field that will extinguish this moment on of supposed normalcy from our minds. Steve, i wanted to ask but the first half of the speech which was almost only about the economy and the jobs. He talked about the number of jobs that have been created. Its true. More than 2 million jobs that have been created. It is the slowest pace of job growth in the last seven years. He talked about Economic Growth as if it is turbo charged. As if we were having a great new period of renewal in terms of Economic Growth. It was 2. 3 which is a little lower than what most economists expected it to be. Certainly lower handle the the three, four, even more that he promised as a candidate and even as president. Is there risk of the republicans trying to sell the country on an economic miracle when were kind of plodding along the way we have been the last few years . It is all im. Just like it would be out of cond over brochure trying to sell a pattern. People dont have. 400 cash available to deal with an emergency. 67 of the country doesnt have 1,000 in savings. So the dow jones average can be 47,000. It just doesnt touch huge portions of the country. We havent seen evidence that wages are rising in the middle class, the middle income workers of the country. And that has been the problem. That the country has been dealing with for a generation, the lack of real wage growth for working people. And the lack of real wage growth in the middle of the economy is fueling a tremendous amount of political instability in our system at this point. When all the gains are moving toward the top. Every time i listen to Steve Schmidt talk, i make a mental note, learn more words. Steve literally has better words. Can i ask a question . Yes. In our old job, you and i have been watching the democratic response. I counted in joe kennedys response, 15 wes, the zero is. You and me in our own colleague, the old chairman of the bush campaign, would have seen politician who speaks in the language of we, you and no is. A real formidable voice. What did you make of the democratic response . The most Effective Response of any party for quite a long time. He is a rise go star in the Democratic Party. We will have a big future. I think that the congressman close to him in massachusetts. The combat marine corporal veteran. A couple of others i think represent a real changing of the guard inside the Democratic Party. Chuck todd and Andrea Mitchell are with us from washington. Chief Foreign Affairs, Andrea Mitchell. Okay, chuck. You can go first. We were going to hear a lot of conciliatory, that it was a unifying message he wanted to send. If that was an attempt at unity, he has a lot of boring to do. While the beginning of the zpeech a good job saying those words, when you look at how he led with immigration. He led anydivisive way. Then theres gitmo. It got a standing ovation. It was an uncomfortable moment. If you want to keep it open, it should feel like necessary evil. Not something you stand and applaud. It is not a happy day. It should feel like, well, unfortunately that one really sort of started me. What are we cheering . It wasnt the speech they sold it to be. I go through teleprompter speeches. It is not him. There are some things he speaks sound like him. Ill throw in a beautiful and an extra totally but you can tell hes reading it. He did you tell own it. I think they would be better off letting him adlib it. The white house is in a duel with investigators over whether or not he can be the interviewed. Im saying the donald trump that we know with his twitter feed. All of this. The guy that likes the give us all nicknames. That isnt who you saw. When you dont see this trump very often. I dont know if they can sell anythi anything. Exactly half the speech. It was like devils food cake with vanilla ice kriel. Just great to eat. All nice. And then let have some rib eye steak now. It was a weird way of putting together a meal. The whole first part of the speech was aimed at dancing with the stars. Not regular people. Bring back the 10 you lost in the last year. Then the hard charging ms 13. One after the other. Using those experiences. Lets put it that way. And doing it in a way, this is really heavy stuff. Dessert first and then the raw meat. He knows hes making his base have to accept citizenship for these dreamers. Perhaps he feels the need to not talk about it. Let me tell but ms 13 and every criminal alien that i can think of. Let me tell you these stories. It may be a way he thinks he has to sell immigration to his base. Now to our chief Foreign Affairs correspondent. Talk about the issue not in the speech. Russia. What happened to our election and what it forces as a back drop on donald trump. Well, the fact russia is overhanging everything and that he will not acknowledge what his own cia briefer mike pompeo, the cia director who he is so close to spends hours every day with has said this week that russia is still going after us, still planning to interfere with our 2018 midterm elections, that we have not stopped the russian threat. Yet we see today the state department and treasury dragging their feet on the overwhelmingly approved russian sanctions from this congress, bipartisan, overwhelming, hundreds of votes, more than 500 votes in favor of that. And at the same time he doesnt even mention that russian threat in any real sense. And wont acknowledge the investigation that hes facing. Understandably that, but the fact that he will not even agree to what his own cia is saying about russia is another indication that he cannot deal with the reality of what russia did with this election. He seems to feel that is a threat to his own legitimacy even though it does not necessarily mean that at all. Hes the president of the United States. He was there at the podium today. I thought that by encouraging the applause, by applauding himself and stopping at the end of every sentence and by republicans jumping up, he slowed it down too much and made it seem even less trumpian than otherwise. Chuck talks about maybe he should have addlibbed it and we know how effective hes been at rallies. I dont think he should have adlibbed it, but everyone was heartbroken at the loss of those families and the adoption of that infant so thats very well done to illustrate his policies. Guantanamo, i dont understand that, either. There are 41 detainees right now at guantanamo. At its height there have been 708. But why take that on . Its another basepleasing moment and the Fact Checkers will be up all night, because on clean coal here we have a president in 2018 advertising the coal industry and not talking about the future. How that is appealing to anybody and also false claims on the auto industry, false claims on job creation, exaggerating that, one thing after another, and of course the grandiose claims about the tax bill, the individual is tax cuts are going to expire, the corporate ones stay forever. Two of the best in the business, Andrea Mitchell, chuck todd. Thanks, gang. That was terrific. Democratic senator cory booker of new jersey has been standing by. Senator booker, we saw you in the chamber tonight, saw you alive, saw you speaking to people on the way in. There were some democrats who decided not to go because of their positions. You decided to go. Was it a hard decision for you . No. Look, i respect that we have people who are free to do what they want to do. Whether its kneel when the National Anthem is playing or not attend the address. Me, i respect the office of the president , even though i have extreme difficulties with the person occupying it, i wanted to show my respect, as i would want when someone else is occupying that, a democrat is occupying that, i would like to see the same kind of deference to the office of the presidency and the institutions of the United States. The president s speech tonight was long, it was not Trump Campaign rally, it was a different sort of style from him. I wondered if you heard anything tonight that may change the dynamic overall in washington. Were thinking obviously in the short term about the prospect of the government shutting down again in less than ten days, but also about the difficulty in congress doing even the basics on a regular basis to keep the lights on. Do you think tonight may change anything . He advertises somehow a unifying call to our country. It was everything but that. He kept hitting hot button after hot button, exaggeration, lie. The Fact Checkers are going to have a field day on this. Ive already seen the Fact Checking coming out on exaggerating things, misstating things. And then using moments you could use to unify, whether its patriotism or faith. He used them as wedges to drive between people. I have this belief that before you tell me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Heres a guy that used religion tonight to divide. Heres a guy that used patriotism. Whenever somebody pulls out patriotism, uses it in a way to condemn people for their patriotic acts, this is a divisive way to go about it. The raw meat was ugly, and then the appeals to fearmongering, using ms13 as a way to cast a shadow around millions of americans who are looking for a full recognition of their citizenship rights. There are so many examples of this that were just painful. And not a unifying call. You could just see it around me with the other democratic senators, from moderates to people further on the left. You could just hear almost the moaning at times or the frustrations at times that he would pull out these tired troves within his speech and not give any real call to us as a nation coming together, or more specifically, us as a congress coming together. Senator, i know youre a member of the Foreign Relations committee. One of the things weve been talking about the whole night is the overall context of this presidency right now given this first state of the union while the president is under an investigation that focuses on russias interference in our election, the question of whether or not his campaign was complicit in that, and whether the president or anyone else in his administration obstructed that investigation. Today on the day of the state of the union, within 24 hours, weve had this announcement from the Trump Administration that they will not impose sanctions on russia that were agreed upon by overall majorities in the house and senate. Those sanctions were designed to punish russia for that election interference. I want to ask for your reaction on the Trump Administration explaining that they dont feel they need to impose those sanctions despite that law because they believe russia has been deterred just by the law existing. This is probably one of the more stunning examples of president ial malfeasance i have ever seen. Put aside your partisanship. Not only has the United States been attacked, but it is being attacked. We are under attack right now by the continued Cyber Efforts of the russians to undermine our institution, to undermine our electoral process. This isnt a question. We know factually that this is happening in the United States of america. There is a consensus upon our Intelligence Community about whats happening. So to have the president of the United States not sound the alarm which republicans have said, orrin hatch called this akin to a pearl ha