 Okay, it's Friday, it's 11 o'clock, it's Trump week, and I want to say something. Oh, Tim, I want to say this to you. You know the value of this kind of discussion, this weekly discussion, is that we can get a beat on things. We can sort of do a chart about how bad it is and whether it's worse than last week and could it be better next week and all that. And I keep thinking of that old thing that people talked about as a joke where they said cheer up, Tim, it could get worse. And sure enough, it gets worse. And that's the value of having a weekly show where we can see how it works as against last week and the weeks before, and I submit to you that it's getting worse. What we talk about here in the outrage of what he's doing is greater, more astounding every week. So let's not get caught up in the new normal. Let's always compare how it was before, even back to January 2017 over the good old days. Anyway, Tim, we got so much to talk about today. We were to graph this new normal. The line going up north on the chart on the graph would be off the paper by now. It would be a big paper, big paper. So let's divide the show in two parts. The first part, let's talk about the wall and all the implications and all the machinations. And the second part, we'll talk about the Mueller investigation in Russia. Let's put a couple of things in perspective on the wall because in the last two shows, you and I have discussed that I feel that Donald Trump needs the wall as his red meat for his base. And he never really wants to solve it. And you said every would-be dictator needs a scapegoat. And the wall and immigration and those people are his scapegoats. Absolutely. So I want to read a quote that I found just after he became president in 2016. And it's very interesting because it's very telling on where we are today. So January 30th, 2016, he was talking about the wall and he said, you know, if it gets a little boring, if I see people starting to sort of maybe thinking about leaving, I can kind of tell what the audience is thinking. I just say, we will build the wall and they go nuts. Wow. Wow, boy. So doesn't that quote really fit to where we are two years later? That may be the only true thing he said in the past couple of years. Anyway, yeah, absolutely true. And that's what he's doing, stirring the pot, distracting us from all the other things, including Mueller. This wall is really a distraction. But let's talk about what's happening, okay? And there's an issue about, has he really built any of the wall? And the answer is no, he hasn't. Has he, does he have the support of the immigration service? I don't think he does, except the department head. What's the name? They're calling him Sick Nielsen. Nielsen. They're calling him Sick. Yeah, yeah. Right. And TSA already is not showing up, they're calling him Sick. And the federal employees are selling stuff at garage sales and can't afford to live or pay their mortgages. I mean, the country's coming apart with three weeks plus into this ridiculous exercise distraction. But meanwhile, he doubles down, incredible. And when you think that he's doubled down, all any human being could double down, you know, the pathological side pops up yet again. Triple down. Triple down. And now he wants to call a national emergency. Bruce Ackerman of Yale Law School wrote a brief effectively in the New York Times, which was published in various other, you know, media, for the proposition that that's illegal. It's unconstitutional according to the Constitution of a bunch of statutes, a bunch of repeals of statutes, and some case law over the last several years, that it's not legal to call a national emergency and take funds that way. He's talked about, you know, using the military, using, you know, the National Guard or the Army to actually physically with their hands build the wall. I can see that. They're not being paid, yeah? I can see that with the building the wall. It's not going to work very well. I can see the National Guard on top of a 40-foot wall. Now, there's a boot camp for you. Okay. He's been talking about taking the money out of disaster relief. We need the money for disaster. He did a terrible job on Puerto Rico. FEMA did a terrible job on Puerto Rico. Now he wants to take that money away and further impede, you know, the recovery of Puerto Rico. Wow. And other places too. Remember, we had this fire in California and all. So that's another outrageous thing. Are those things less important than the wall? Is the wall, does it cover everything going on in the country? And what's really bad, and I keep thinking about this, is the second villain here is McConnell, who lets this happen. He gives Trump, I mean, an arguable political cover by not having, you know, the Senate vote. But you know what? For him to say, I'm not going to bring this to the floor of the Senate because if I do that, Trump will veto it. That's a first. That's not checks and balances. That's not what the Constitution had in mind. That's a violation of his oath of office, I think. McConnell doesn't want to see it on the floor because he knows very well there will be enough senators to have enough votes to veto, to override President Trump's veto of this. You know, the House has passed the Senate's bill. Those provisions open up HUD, Department of Agriculture, all these other departments that are not contingent upon immigration or homeland security. Open up the businesses. Well, that's his major lever. And he's using those employees as a pawn to leverage what he wants. Bottom line is, McConnell knows that there's enough Republican senators who will vote to override. Yeah, I think they must be. And that's why he won't let it on the floor to begin with. That does say something. I've never really seen that before. Yeah, they're breaking away. And if they haven't broken away yet, they're about to break away. I mean, there are so many articles in the paper, so many things are deteriorating around the country for this useless wall. Well, a lot of these senators are from purple states, and their elections come up in 2020. And that's the last thing they want is their constituents to remember how they were out of work and the farmers that are in their districts aren't getting their subsidies necessarily. And that's the last thing they need to be reminded about come October, November of 2020. Yeah, I think Trump is actually certifiable about this. It's a Section 8 situation. It's a 25th amendment. Really? I mean, he's getting close really to an impeachment, not on the basis of all the bad stuff in the Mueller report, but on the basis of what he's doing right now is unmanaging the country. The country is really coming apart now. Well, what's been the delta here? What's been the change? You don't have General Mattis and you don't have General John Kelly as bookends to try to corral him. He's untethered. Right. He's all by himself. And a lot of the people in the White House are gone. A lot of the agencies are down to skeleton crew. It makes it worse that they're not being paid or they're not there because of the shutdown. I don't know when this is going to get resolved. I see two options. One is status quo continues and it continues to unravel. I don't think that's really an option. The second option is he capitulates. I don't think he's going to capitulate. He's going to triple down. And then triple down is another option. He's just going to do it until everybody just sort of blows up. Their heads come apart. And then the last option is we talked about this before. Further distraction. Something that distracts us all from the wall. And I thought I saw a little of that in the Middle East where he was going to pull out of Syria and then what's his name said, no, we're not going to do that on a slow bell. And now this morning there's an article in the paper. He's calling a Michael Bolton. It's not Michael Bolton. But Bolton said we're doing it. Is that really Michael? No, no, he's calling a Michael Bolton. So whatever Bolton said, that's being modified yet again because now there's an article that the troop removal has already started, but they're not going to tell you a date by which it's going to happen. What's going on here? It's back and forth every day or two, it's back and forth. So anyway, I smell in that the possibility of a distraction by some kind of bizarre action in the Middle East. Well, you could argue the wall was a distraction, his major distraction. This is distraction from the wall. Yeah. I'm going to take our attention. So it's a distraction from the distraction. That's it. So what do you think? Which one, Lee? Double triple down and keep on plugging. Good triple down. He'll triple down. But what about my distraction theory? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what he's really, really good at that. You know, don't look over here, don't look over here, certainly don't look behind the curtain. He's a master at distraction and the shiny object. And I think your theory has some merit to it. So what about the Chuck and Nancy show? They've been pretty strong. You know, if I was sending him letters, I would give him complimentary letters. He cornered himself and they're enjoying the show. He put himself in a corner at that meeting with Vice President Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer. They're trying to see the grin. They're trying to bite their lip because they're trying to hold back laughing. Well, Chuck is an old-time lawyer. Yeah. And so he saw it happen in unfold right before the American public. And he's biting his lip to keep from smiling. And Donald Trump says, I'll take the mantle and I'll claim this as, you know, I'll be responsible for it. Yeah. What a perfect gimme. It was a perfect gimme. Yeah. You think they're going to weaken the two of them, the Chuck and Nancy? You know, and sometimes it comes down to who blinks first. You already see the Republican side starting to crumble. So that gives them probably more motivation not to crumble. You don't hear anything about the Democrat side crumbling? Well, particularly when they're saying, we are doing the best we can to open the government. We've just passed two different laws and they were the Senate bills. So we're taking it back to the Senate. Take it back to the Senate. And who's not going to entertain it? McConnell. Who's a McConnell? He's a Republican. Who's he represent? All the Republican senators, you know, what a gimme. What a political godsend. It's a blink first thing. But you know, they are getting, you know, they're getting the calls and they're seeing the realities of their constituents. They're out of work. They're not, you know, we've seen these time and time again play out in all the news stations of what's hitting on the local level of these employees being out of work. Or worse yet, the 380,000 who are furloughed, they're not going to get any money back. They're just out of work. And so, you know. They're selling their goods at garage sales. Yeah. They're, you know, I've got an article here about what the US Coast Guard is suggesting. There's helpful tints. I saw that. It was in the paper. Yeah. How, you know, babysit, have garage sales, you know, crazy things like that. It's humiliating. It's humiliating. Yeah. These are perfectly middle-class people working hard, doing career, doing the right thing. And now they're forced to become poor. Can I take two steps back for a second? Because what makes my mouth drop each and every time. I don't know if you want to use Kellyanne Conway's alternative facts. I don't know if you want to use Samuel Clemens or old statement that there's lies, damn lies of statistics. Whatever you want to use. I just call them bold-faced lies. But when Donald Trump says, I never said Mexico was going to pay for the wall. He was. You know, how many? I thought I saw him. 200 times. He's, over 200 times, he said that Mexico was going to pay for it. I saw an interview with him and Sean Hannity. It was a town hall meeting during the campaign and he said, well, you know, Mexico's going to pay for this wall. And Sean Hannity said specifically, you mean they're going to write a check? And Donald Trump said, obviously, well, this is what he said first. Obviously, they're not going to write a check, but they are going to pay for the wall indirectly many times over and really great trade deal that we just made. Okay. So he said in McAllen, Texas, when he just visited the wall here this week, but the bottom line is, he said on Sean Hannity, yeah, they're going to pay in the form or another. They might even write a check by the time they see what happens. So he literally said they could probably write a check. It's a threat, an extortive threat. But you know, unfortunately, you know, everyone bought it. Yeah. Everyone bought it. You know, there's a piece in the morning paper in the Times to the effect that these media, mainly Fox, are still behind him on the wall. They're still... Not Chris Wallace. Oh, good. That's an exception. Not Chris Wallace. I got to tell you. Here's a shout out to Chris Wallace. Chris Wallace. And boy, did he not mess around with Sarah Saunders, you know, because they've been using that lies, damn lies and statistics routine. Yeah. 4,000 terrorists, you know, are coming up to the southern border. And she no sooner mentioned that and Chris Wallace goes, I studied up on this one. Because most of those people who are on a watch list, they're not terrorists, they're just on a watch list, have been apprehended or contacted or, you know, prevented from traveling on at U.S. airports. Right. Most of them. At ports of entry. Right. Yeah. And that's the truth. Boy, you know, she's stammering and stuttering to figure out, now what do I say? No, she's a... You know, she's part of the tissue of lies, you know, you can't give her any better than that. But in the background of all this or sort of playing at the same time is the thing about the tariffs. You know, I remember, I think it was 60 minutes, they were interviewing some farmer in the Midwest and they said, well, how long, I mean, are you willing to support Trump indefinitely on the tariffs? And the guy says, no. He says, up to a point, we will. We'll give them a break. We'll give them time. I think I saw that one. Yeah. But after that period, after a sort of tipping point, we're not going to be behind them anymore. And when's the tipping point? And he said it was like three or four months or December, that's my recollection, December. In December, we're going to take a hard look at this and we're going to see whether we want to support him anymore on it. Well, December has passed. The tariffs are still wrecking havoc with our economy. And I think these guys must remember that, must have had a sort of common feeling about it. And I think the farmers and all the guys in that area of the country and that part of the economy, they're probably saying, we got to get out of this one. This isn't working for us. It doesn't matter if you're a federal employee on furlough or just not getting a paycheck but being required to work. All 800,000 are being used as a pawn in this political gamemanship of Donald Trump. But when you start doing that with farmers, and remember, because of the tariffs, what were the farmers supposed to receive? Subsidies. Guess what's shut down? Subsidies. Yeah. Department of Agriculture. How are they getting their subsidies? They're being really ticked off by now. Well, when you're being used as a pawn, that's not, farmers don't, they don't, they don't appreciate that. For a project that really has no validity, no usefulness, I mean, where did that come from? Maybe some advisor told them that, but it isn't, it isn't 30% of the country. It is not 30% of the country. Yeah. Let's go to our second topic. Okay? Muller, another backdrop, another parallel thread that's happening here. And you know, you could make the case pretty well that all of this, the tariffs and the wall and machinations around how to pay for it, they're all a distraction from the real issue, which is Muller. Because where there is smoke, there is probably fire. God knows what Muller is going to come up with, but it's coming closer now. You know, I mean, I think that people were making these predictions that February would be the time we'd hear more about it. I think that may be right. So what's happening with Muller? Again, very, very judicious on how he's laying this out. He's not out there in the airwaves. And I think we'll know more from Michael Cohen on February the 7th than we will from Muller because he's not letting anything out. We'll talk about Michael Cohen a little bit later in the show, but you know, that's going to be a show on shows with Michael Cohen. Was there something there that we haven't heard before? Yeah. But did he put it all in by way of affidavit? Well, who's seen the affidavits? OK, they're all been redacted. Yeah, OK. You know, this is going to be, they call it the John Dean moment. Well, guess what? John Dean was not that close to Richard Nixon. This wasn't. Yes, he was his attorney, but he wasn't close. John Dean has been on the television. Yes, he has. Making comments against Trump on a regular basis. Yes, he has. The Republican-Republican. I mean, take John Dean and exponentially put it to the 7th power. That's what Michael Cohen's going to be able to say in front of the House Oversight Committee, and it's going to be a barn burner. That's my prediction. It's going to be, we're going to hear things going, really? Is that right? It's going to connect Trump with all kinds of bad deeds. So, you know, this might be gaining a hell of a little bit of the Mueller report, but Elijah Cummings, again, who's the chair of the Oversight Committee, said, in no way will Michael Cohen's testimony before the committee going to interfere with the criminal investigation. So, we'll see. So, we'll see what else is going to come up. Yeah. And I suspect we'll get some real surprises. What do you think the connection is? I mean, the de facto going forward connection is between the Mueller investigation and all the other 16 other investigations. Plus, all the investigations, the Democrats will initiate now that they control the House. This got to be more coming down the pike, maybe redundant, maybe new material. Who knows what? All these witnesses are going to be appearing, and it's all going to be coming out, and I think the Democrats will be very open about it. So, we'll hear a lot more. Well, there's a thousand, you know, to bastardize President Bush's thousand points of lights, there's a thousand points of evidence, and they're all starting to connect. And I think that's what we're going to really start seeing is the connection points of these thousand points of evidence. So, what about my friend Rachel Maddow and her discovery, her revelation that Trump was getting stovepipe information from Putin? I think we talked about that before. A little bit yesterday, yeah, last week, yeah. And since that time, and it was kind of a first by her, I think. Right. And then others. She did the research. New sources have caught up to it, yeah. Right, and now it's all over the place, and it begins to make sense that then and now he's been getting information, sometimes illegally, from Putin and his friends, and he believes it, or he is saying he believes it for political reasons. This is very interesting because I think this plays very close to what Mueller is getting at. It's at least circumstantial that Bush had an inappropriate relationship with the Russians. You know, when you, your day's agenda is set by... Did I say Bush, Trump had an inappropriate relationship with the Russians. You know, when you get your agenda set by Fox and Friends every morning, it's no wonder that whatever Vladimir Putin is going to say is, you know, the second part of your agenda is being said. You know, he's, you know, between the inquirer, Fox and Friends, and God knows what he hears on the telephone line from Putin. Who knows what he's taking in as, as gospel fact. His past is catching up with him, but we don't, we don't know it all yet. We don't know about the, the steel dossier about what he was doing. Well, they try to discredit that 100%, but can't be discredited 100%. Discredited? You've discredited that? I mean, it sounds all very possible for me. I was an intelligence agent. I think the only point of discredited was done at the request and probably at the expense of the Democrats. It doesn't mean it's a lie. It could be true. I don't, you know, I don't discredit it. I think it's true, or at least large parts of it are true. So I, you know, I'm going back to the first part of this conversation is of distraction of the distraction. And I think that's what we're seeing right now. Yeah. And we're going to see more of it. Yeah. You know, it depends on to what degree he has to wedges himself out of the corner on the wall funding and what he actually gets as an agreement from the Democrats. I think something will happen. I don't know. Do you have any predictions on how long this is going to last? Well, I wanted to ask you that. I mean, I'm going to ask you about that. We talked about the time continuum, you know, how we here in Trump Week sort of check back on how it was before. We also had to look on how it will be later. And I think there are certain C changes, short term C changes that are emerging from the things we talk about. Number one is he losing the support of the Republicans. Two is the Democrats are pretty solid in their opposition to the wall. I think he sees that. I think a lot of people in government are in opposition to his shutdown. And for that matter, you know, the tariffs, these things are not showing themselves as not to be sustainable. And therefore, the double down thing that he does is showing himself to be not sustainable. And so you see this is all fraying, right? And you see he's doing more bizarre things, more unbelievable distractions. And all the while, Mueller, Mueller going forward. Mueller who may have smoking guns galore. We're going to find that out. And I guess the question is, if we're looking at the direction of all of this right now, it seems to me that the direction is, in my view, positive. In other words, he's getting found out. The reality is coming in. The negative is that he's taking more and more control, a la dictatorship kind of control of the United States government. Well, that's why the national emergency bugs me a little bit. A big deal, right? Yeah, that bugs me because to what degree do you start just declaring a national emergency for every 20 seconds, you know? This is an emergency. That's an emergency. I'm not getting cooperation from the Democrats on this issue. That's an emergency. In fact, Fox and Friends made a very funny comment. They didn't like this national emergency idea. And they said, well, what's to prevent a future Democratic president from saying climate change is a national emergency and start doing all sorts of institutional changes on a presidential basis of authority? You know, that would be defensible. It is a national emergency. Most important thing of all, and Trump doesn't care anything about it. And I think that's why a lot of Republicans are going, well, you know, not so fast here on this national emergency business because it's kind of like getting rid of the Senate, the ability to filibuster. Okay, we don't want to get rid of that because we know some day we're not going to be in charge of the Senate. We know some day it's going to be the Democrats that have this. So we're going to want to have that option. And so if we get rid of that, what's that going to mean for us during that four or eight years in the future? No different for about a national emergency of declaring it willy-nilly and having it come back to haunt you four or eight years later. The other sea change I think is worthy to stop on this one is democracy and the Constitution in general. And the way we have done government in this country and the way we are, the way that's declining, depreciating, fragmenting right now. And that's a sea change really to watch because that's the most dangerous sea change of all. Short of climate change, of course. That's the one that could bring us down. And in bringing us down, it could bring the whole world. And he's already chipping away at it. And he's chipping away at it in very, very different areas. And so, you know, if it gets to a 25th Amendment or if it gets to a Section 8 situation or if it gets to, we find out that it's done something so bad that it has to, you know, lead to serious impeachment proceedings and then we're going to see the rubber meet the road because he's not going to exceed to that. He's going to double down on that too. He'll fight it to the end of the green. We have to keep on talking about this. And you should keep on looking at Fox News just to check. You have to. This is a balanced discussion. Well, because Tim looks at Fox News. I do. He wants to hear the other side. I do. I have to. Thank you, Tim. Thank you so much. Tim, have a good show at Trump Week. Appreciate it.