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Don Lemon Tonight
Trump to Address the Nation at Oval Office; Suspected Criminals Show Up at all Ports of Entry?; President Donald Trump Threatening to Bypass Congress; Trump Says He Can Relate to Federal Employees During Shutdown; Sarah Sanders Fact-Checked Live on Fox News. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 07, 2019 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(JOINED IN PROGRESS)
[22:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Americans hurting now. It's going to get worse. That's not how you get a deal made, not any politician. Certainly not the best deal maker we've ever had as president. That's what you say you are. Now is the time to show it.
It's great to be back with all of you. Thank you for watching. Tomorrow we will bring you the president's Oval Office address live during CUOMO PRIME TIME, 9 p.m. Eastern here on CNN. And we will have a Democratic response. "CNN TONIGHT" with D. Lemon starts right now.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Good to have you back. I'm glad you had a good holiday. We kept up -- we kept in touch, texted, but I didn't get to see you, and I'll tell you why. We had a very selfish Christmas with my family because it was the first one without my sister. So, we didn't really do a lot, didn't invite a lot of people over. We did some things, but I just hope you understand that, and so.
CUOMO: I love you.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: I feel for you, and I'm always with you.
LEMON: OK. So, let's -- thank you very much for that. You got to hear the nicknames that my family calls you, but that's for another time.
CUOMO: C. handsome?
LEMON: No. It's --
CUOMO: Big man? Captain Jack?
LEMON: One of them is Blinky because you blink so much. So, listen, it's good. It's all good. They love you.
But let's talk -- let's talk about news because you talked about the president's address that we're going to carry. It's tough, and this is, I think, maybe the first time -- I would imagine. Listen, I haven't been in news for that long, almost 30 years, but not that long. That network presidents and executives have to wonder should they carry it live, should they do a live fact-check. Like, how do you handle this because you're giving the president of the United States -- which he should be given the bully pulpit? He owns it.
But you're giving him the opportunity to speak to the United States unfettered, to speak to the people of the United States and this president has a problem with the truth. So, what do you do?
CUOMO: You let him speak, and then you hold him to account. You know, I'm old enough to remember, D. Lemon, back in 2014 when then-President Barack Obama --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: About executive action.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: But here was the difference. They were savvy. Axelrod, we'll have to talk to him about this. They didn't ask the networks for time. This time the White House has asked for time. So, they made the decision, the broadcasts, not to carry President Obama talking about the 2014 executive actions. But he didn't ask for the time.
So, this time, the White House did. He's getting the time. I think that's the right move. I know a lot of people are upset about it. I hear you. I read my Twitter feed. I get it. But I think it's the right thing to do and it's also the right thing to do to check him and that's what we'll do.
LEMON: Listen, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do it, but do you think it should be -- I don't know -- a delay of some sort, and then you can -- because people believe it. People -- the president will say what he has to say. People will believe it whether the facts are true or not. I guess that's the chance you take with any president.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: But this one is different. And then by the time the rebuttals come on, we've already promoted propaganda possibly, unless he gets up there and he tells the truth.
CUOMO: He has his right to make the argument to the American people. And by the way, wanting barriers along the border is not propaganda.
LEMON: No, no, no.
CUOMO: It's not immoral. It's not wrong.
LEMON: The facts about that, though, who wants it, who doesn't, how much --
(CROSSTALK) CUOMO: And that's where our job comes in.
LEMON: -- how much it actually does protect, like you said, it's not a panacea. It's not a cure-all, there are other aspects --
CUOMO: A hundred percent.
LEMON: -- other technologies that go along with that.
CUOMO: A hundred percent, and that's our job. I have no problem with this. I see no problem with this. I believe that fears of people saying that, you know, you should limit the exposure of this president to the American people, I dismiss that notion entirely. I think that is anathema to American political exchange.
LEMON: I don't -- no, no, wait, wait, wait.
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: I'm not saying you're calling for it.
LEMON: I don't think you should -- no, no, no.
CUOMO: I'm saying when I hear it, that's what I think.
LEMON: No, I understand. I don't think limiting it. I do think -- and I said this before. I do think that the strategy or whatever it is that you did in the past is different with this president because -- or this administration.
They will call for a briefing or a press conference or whatever, and then not answer any questions and then just promote something politically, not take questions, and maybe at the last second, like he did with President Obama -- President Obama was not born in, you know, Africa. Then he goes away and doesn't take any questions, or like they did last week, the stunt in the briefing room.
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: I just think you have to be more strategic and more responsible to the viewer with this administration because it doesn't matter. We always say, it doesn't matter who's first. It matters who's accurate, right? If we get it right.
I think we should apply the same parameters that we do with that. We want to be accurate. We don't have to be first. We can monitor what the president is saying, or monitor what's being said in the briefing room. And then if it's news worthy, if they're taking questions about a topic that's important, then we can get to that topic, then we can go there. We can break in and say, listen, Sarah Huckabee Sanders is taking questions about the border wall right now. Let's go.
But if it's a political stunt, why do we even have to do it and, I don't know, just expose the viewer and the American people to propaganda?
[22:05:01] CUOMO: Let me give you a little different take for your audience.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: My feeling is this. This is the president taking to a disadvantage, not an advantage.
LEMON: Absolutely.
CUOMO: This isn't a Twitter thread. This isn't some quip. This isn't any of the other manifestations of our political dialogue that you were discussing. This is him in real-time, on live television, addressing the American people and making a case. He does it very rarely.
And this is a tough case for him to make. And I think that this plays to his disadvantage, not to the disadvantage of the truth and not to the American people. They should hear from their elected leader why he is making Americans suffer.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: And after it, we will say what was right and what wasn't right.
LEMON: I won't belabor it, but I think also the last part is what I wanted to talk about as well. Yes. The longer these stories keep coming out about people who can't make ends meet and the suffering, and they can't get their medications and pay their bills.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: It just gets worse. It gets worse, I think, for the administration because the president said he would own the shutdown.
CUOMO: Yes. I'll own the mantle. Don't worry, Chuck. I won't make you have to worry about this.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: Words are cheap. Did he expect it to go this long? I don't care.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: You always had to know that this was the risk. And we had those people on tonight. We had that mom and her son on tonight, and it's interesting to see the reactions online about it. And, listen, people shouldn't pay the price for political inaction.
LEMON: They shouldn't be pawns.
CUOMO: It's just not how it's supposed to work. And is there a political price? Is there not? I don't care. The truth is you need to see her face. You need to see her kid. And you need to realize what she and her husband are dealing with, and that should not be the price of political impasse. LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: It's wrong.
LEMON: Listen, I got to run. But a friend who work -- who works for the federal government said many of us are Republicans and not one of us would give up our paycheck for -- because of a border wall and a shutdown. That's the reality. I got to go, though.
CUOMO: Go ahead. Get after it. I can't wait to see what you say with Kevin Hart.
LEMON: Good to have you back, yes. We'll do that in just a little bit. Good to have you back, Chris. Thank you very much.
Hello, everyone. This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.
So here we go again. Another manufactured crisis from this White House. This is a president who time after time creates a crisis to distract you. We were just talking about that. Now it's border security and his sudden decision to address the nation from the Oval Office, followed by a trip to the border that sounds an awful lot like another political stunt.
Well sources are telling CNN the president's advisers told him that tweeting and speaking off the cuff wouldn't be enough to convince Americans to support his wall. So, what's he going to do? He's going to do a primetime address tomorrow night and visit the border on Thursday. And he is doubling down on his threats to declare a national emergency.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I may declare a national emergency dependent on what's going to happen over the next few days.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: And the sources telling CNN tonight that the White House counsel's office is looking at the question of whether the president can declare a national emergency over the border wall, saying that the challenges making the case that it's an actual emergency and that President Trump saying it doesn't automatically make it so, especially when it comes to this president since so little he says, quite honestly, is true.
The White House would like you to believe this is all about stopping dangerous criminals and terrorists from sneaking across our Southern border.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This group has apprehended last year 17,000 criminals trying to get across the border, 17,000, and that's one category. There are plenty of others. (END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: OK. So, here's the problem with that statistic, OK? Customs and Border Protection says in the 11 months through August of 2018, they encountered 16,831 people convicted of crimes, OK? But I want you to listen to me clearly here.
According to the Washington Post, 63 percent of them showed up at ports of entry, including airports, OK? The majority of them showed up at ports of entry including airports. And a wall wouldn't do much about that unless you were planning on building walls around all of our airports.
Then there is this from the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: CBP has stopped over 3,000 what we call special interest aliens trying to come into the country on the southern border. Those are aliens who the intel community has identified are of concern. They either have travel patterns that are identified as terrorist travel patterns, or they have known or suspected ties to terrorism.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:10:01] LEMON: So, that sounds pretty scary, huh? But wait. Former Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who is also the former chief of staff, White House chief of staff, defined special interest as being, quote, "from parts of the world where terrorism is prevalent or nations that are hostile to the United States."
A homeland security official in the Obama administration told Congress in 2016 that, quote, "many citizens of these countries migrate for economic reasons or because they are feeling persecution in their home countries."
And I want you to listen to this exchange between Sarah Sanders and Fox News' Chris Wallace. You have to watch this. Chris Wallace, who refused to let the White House press secretary off the hook. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH HUCKABEE-SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We know that roughly nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally, and we know that our most vulnerable point of entry is at our southern border.
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Wait. Because I know the statistics. I didn't know you were going to use it but I studied up on this. Do you know where those 4,000 people come or where they're captured? Airports.
(CROSSTALK) SANDERS: Not always, but certainly --
WALLACE: At airports. The State Department has said there hasn't been any terrorist that they found coming across the southern border.
SANDERS: It's by air, it's by land, and it's by sea. It's all of the above. But one thing that you're forgetting is that the most vulnerable point of entry that we have into this country is our southern border, and we have to protect it. And the more and more individuals --
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: But they're not coming across the southern border, Sarah. They're coming and they're being stopped at airports.
SANDERS: They're coming --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: So, NBC is reporting tonight that just six non-U.S. citizens, whose names were on the terror watch list, were encountered at the southern border in the six months since October of 2017 to March of 2018. There's no information about whether those people were actually considered terrorists or what happened when they were stopped. Stopped. We need to find out more information about that, but that's the reporting from NBC tonight. OK?
So, here's the real whopper. Remember when the president said this about the wall?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me, and they all know it. Some of them have told me that we should have done it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, as we always say around here, facts matter. And the fact is none of this president's living predecessors support him on the wall, not one. OK? Not one. The Carter Center put out a statement from former President Jimmy Carter today, and I quote. "I have not discussed the border wall with President Trump and do not support him on the issue."
President Carter, which really couldn't be any more clear -- couldn't be clearer than that.
A spokesman for former President Bill Clinton told CNN last week he never said that. That was Bill Clinton. A spokesman for former President George W. Bush said they haven't discussed this. George W. Bush. And former President Barack Obama reportedly hasn't even talked to President Trump since he left the White House on inauguration day. But listen to what he told the U.N. in 2016.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: And there's more. President Trump has even claimed falsely that Ronald Reagan tried for eight years to build a wall or a fence. Yes? OK. I want you to listen to what Reagan actually said. This is from a 1980 presidential debate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Rather than making them -- or talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems and make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit and then while they're working and earning here, they pay taxes here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: That was President Reagan. Can we please play that again? That was President Reagan, OK? Everybody, just listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REAGAN: Rather than making them -- or talking about putting up a fence, why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems and make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit, and then while they're working and earning here, they pay taxes here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: The Republican gold standard as president. The platinum standard, Ronald Reagan, Republican. And in spite of all that, this president is insisting on manufacturing a national emergency, one that has shut down the government for who knows how long and left 800,000 federal employees without pay.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I can relate, and I'm sure that the people that are on the receiving end will make adjustment. They always do. And they'll make adjustment. People understand exactly what's going on.
[22:15:05] But many of those people that won't be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100 percent with what I'm doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So, what do you tell the repo man or the bank, the mortgage lender? Can you make some adjustments for me? Adjustments? Tell that to federal workers who have to pay rent, who have bills coming due, who may live paycheck to paycheck.
The Washington Post is reporting almost 100,000 of those workers make less than $50,000 a year. They may have to do a lot more than just make adjustments. And workers who are not getting paid are not the only ones who will feel the pain.
If this shutdown continues into February, some 38 million people who depend on food stamps to feed their families could face severe cuts. And as hundreds of TSA screeners are calling in sick at airports all across the country, the airline pilots association, which represents 61,000 pilots, is urging the president to end the shutdown, saying "it's adversely affecting the safety, security, and efficiency of our national airspace system."
Sources telling CNN the TSA held a call today to try to figure out how to ensure officers show up to work. And yet here we are, just days away from day 18 -- just hours, I should say, away from day 18 of the shutdown. Now, you may be saying to yourself, wait a minute.
Donald Trump wrote the book "The Art of the Deal," although, I should point out he didn't literally write "The Art of the Deal" though he takes credit for it all the time, but I digress he had a ghostwriter. We have him on all the time. You might be asking yourself why can't the man whose name is on "The Art of the Deal," the man who got his first time magazine cover another thing he talks about all the time, he got that 30 years ago this week -- why can't he get this deal done?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and myself can solve this in 20 minutes if they want to. If they don't want to, it's going to go on for a long time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, the dirty little secret -- not so secret -- is Donald Trump is not very good at making deals. You guys didn't know that? Ask some New Yorkers who have been around for a long time or people who he's worked with. He's not really good at making deals.
The Wall Street Journal reminds us that he overpaid for the plaza hotel on Fifth Avenue, then lost it in bankruptcy just a few years later. He declared corporate bankruptcy six times. And the journal also reports he missed out on a deal that would have gotten him $180 million for a stake in his Atlantic City casino, but he didn't want to take his name off the building. He does like to put his name on things.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: It's going to be a beautiful, gorgeous, big wall that they're going to name Trump someday. That's why I'm going to make it.
I got to make it beautiful because maybe someday they'll name the wall the Trump wall. Just perfect. I want it to be so beautiful because maybe someday they're going to call it the Trump wall, maybe. Someday they'll call it the Trump wall, so I have to make it beautiful.
(END VIDEO CLIP) LEMON: So now you've got to wonder is the president missing out on a chance to make a deal to end the shutdown because he doesn't want to take his name off the wall? The wall, the shutdown, lots to talk about. Mark Preston, Kirsten Powers. We'll dig in next.
[22:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: So, I mentioned some NBC reporting earlier. We now have our own CNN reporting. An administration official is telling CNN that approximately a dozen individuals on the terror watch list were encountered at the U.S. southern border over the period from October 2017 to 2018.
That is as President Trump is set to address the nation from the Oval Office tomorrow night at 9, trying to make the case for his promised border wall.
Let's bring in Mark Preston and Kirsten Powers.
Good evening to both of you. So, we'll talk about that. Does the individuals on the terror list doesn't mean that they were active terrorist, right?
MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It doesn't mean they're an active terrorist. And then you also have to look at what the threat is coming across the border to what the response was from President Trump, and also the Congress people who represent the border. And what you have is a whole mix of confusion but literally what comes out at the end, Don, is they'll tell you that Donald Trump's solution to build a wall is not the answer.
LEMON: OK. So let me ask you while I have you here and then I'll bring Kirsten in. He's going to make this is prime time speech tomorrow night. He's going to visit the southern border on Thursday. He's trying to manufacture a border crisis, right?
PRESTON: No question, but this is ongoing.
LEMON: Misinformation.
PRESTON: Yes, ongoing.
LEMON: Is that going to help him get his wall?
PRESTON: I don't I don't know. Listen, if he does an emergency act and he taps into that money, we're going to get into a legal fight. But he may win that as well. I mean he may have the power to do so. It doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do.
But we should be very clear. He is not tomorrow night creating an emergency at the border. He has already created an emergency at the border. He has already created emergency at the border. He sent down U.S. troops for no other reason than for a political reason right before the midterm elections, and that came at a cost of about $75 million. Those troops were sent home a short time after the midterm election. LEMON: Kirsten, what do you think?
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think we need to look back on all the different manufactured crises and how none of them were borne out. I mean, most recently it was the caravan that was going to invade the country, which, you know, Mark is talking about and how much money and time and people's time was spent on that.
But this has happened in the past when it was the children -- unaccompanied children coming over the border. We were told they all had diseases. They all belonged to gangs. You know, all these horrors were going to be visited upon the United States. And so over and over we're told about these horrible things that are going to happen because of what's happening at the border, and none of them ever come to fruition. And this is the same thing that President Trump is doing right now.
[22:25:04] LEMON: So, what about him being the master negotiator, Kirsten, because remember, you know, it was a concrete wall. He said as much.
POWERS: Yes.
LEMON: And now he's saying, I never said it, but he did say it.
POWERS: Yes.
LEMON: And then now it's a steel wall, but $5.7 billion for a steel barrier.
POWERS: Right. Well, I mean the thing is we're talking about it like he should be negotiating with Congress, but he really should be negotiating with Mexico. And I'm not joking. He made a campaign promise that Mexico was going to pay for this wall, and now we have a government shutdown where people are in really dire straits financially.
LEMON: It's a good point.
POWERS: Because he was not able to fulfill that promise, which he said over and over. This was not some off the cuff thing. This was something that he said and now it's been turned into this thing where, well, you know, Nancy Pelosi needs to get together with him and make this deal. It's like that was never your promise, ever.
LEMON: Yes. Mark, I want to read this. This is from the New York Times, OK? It says, "President Trump's promise to build a wall on the southwestern border was a memory trick for an undisciplined candidate. As Mr. Trump began exploring a presidential run in 2014, his political advisers landed on the idea of a border wall as a mnemonic device of sorts, a way to make sure their candidate, who hated reading from a script but loved boasting about himself and his talents as a builder, could remember to talk about getting tough on immigration."
So, now we're seeing this physical barrier become something different -- (CROSSTALK)
PRESTON: Steel wall. It's going to be steel. It doesn't have to be concrete.
LEMON: But to call it a memory trick for an undisciplined candidate.
PRESTON: So what's interesting, I had not heard that part, but I have to tell you, I have heard many anecdotes where staff would have to do things like this in order to get President Trump to either stay on message or, in many cases, Don, to try to steer him away from a particular message because they knew if he went out publicly and said something, it would be much more damaging than what he actually came out and said. I've heard these numerous times from folks that were in the room with him.
LEMON: So explain that again. That what?
PRESTON: There was so much concern about President Trump when you worked for him, about what he was going to say, that a lot of the effort within the White House was not even necessarily to try to remind him to stay on talking points. It was more to try to steer him away from an even more controversial position or statement that he wanted to make.
LEMON: Got it. So, Kirsten, listen, all the pieces from the Trump playbook are there. The showmanship, the bluster. But it's not working. I mean his aides are telling him that his build-a-wall slogan doesn't have the same impact anymore. Do you see the president closing the deal with an Oval Office address and he hasn't used that tool yet?
POWERS: I don't think so. I think that he's preaching to the choir. The people who are going to support this idea already support it. And I think the rest of us can see what's going on and the fact that he is just manufacturing this crisis. He just did it. He was just the boy who cried wolf, right? I mean it just happened. And I don't think most people are going to fall for it.
What's even more concerning about it is that we actually have real threats against this country, you know, that should be dealt with, that he's not focusing time on. You know, cyber attacks, for example. You know, hacking.
These kinds of things that we actually know are real national security problems, and he's not spending time on that. Instead, he's spending time on trying to gin up support for something that, you know, you've laid it all out here at the beginning of the show. It's just not needed. It's not going to -- it's not going to make us any safer because of the way people are coming into the country are not going to be kept from coming into the country because of a wall.
LEMON: I got to run, but, Mark, how did this become -- morph from build that wall, a concrete wall, to, this is all about border security, because it's not the same thing, but they want it to be the same thing? One, listen, one does play into the other, but there was no talk of -- it wasn't border security. It was just build a wall. PRESTON: Hasn't that been his motto all along? He would seize on one issue and then he would just dig in on it. And this is one of those issues where he seized on it and he dug in. To Kirsten's point, his base loves this kind of talk. They feed into it, and he draws that energy off of it.
Remember the time during the campaign, Don, and even early on in the administration, they said, Donald Trump needs to get out of the White House. He can't seem to operate in Washington. He needs to go out to the crowds. He needs that order, that adoration. That's narcissism.
In many ways, you have to wonder if this is just being driven by his own narcissistic image of what's really happening and also, he doesn't want to be proven wrong. He does not want to be proven wrong.
LEMON: Thank you, all. Thank you, both. I appreciate your time.
Much more on the president's threat to declare a national emergency as justification for his border wall, that's next.
[22:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: President Trump threatening to bypass Congress and try to get the money for a wall by declaring a national emergency at the border with Mexico. Let's discuss now. Max Boot is here, the author of "The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right."
Thank you, sir, for joining us. This whole declaring a national emergency, should Americans be worried about that to get this wall?
MAX BOOT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, absolutely. I mean imagine if this were President Obama in office and he had some priority that he wanted to enact and Congress would not give it to him. And then he, therefore, declares a state of emergency so he can do it by executive fiat. Imagine how Republicans who would be freaking out and perhaps appropriately so because they would be denouncing this as insipient dictatorship in America. Now, Donald Trump is set perhaps to do the same thing. I think that's worrisome.
LEMON: It's a national emergency for -- if he says it's a national emergency for healthcare, therefore, just by fiat. I am just going to do it.
BOOT: Exactly. I mean the right would go crazy. And they'd be right to go crazy because this is why we have separation of powers. This is why we have Congress. This is why the President cannot simply appropriate money. He needs to get the consent of Congress. And Donald Trump may try to go around that to get out of this government shutdown that he created.
LEMON: So we have the Muslim ban, right? Mark talked about sending troops to the border as a stunt for the midterms and tariffs on Canada and other countries. He is constantly trying to use national security to get something that he wants politically. That's a dangerous trend, isn't it? [22:34:54] BOOT: It is. It's absolutely dangerous. And he's already misused that rationale to send troops to the southern border for no purpose, when they were thousands of miles from this caravan, which in turn was no threat. And now, you know, he's trying to look to see how he can use the military to build this wall, which Congress refuses to fund.
And it's not just Democrats. Remember, the last two years Republicans in control of both chambers, they would not fund the wall because they know it's a gimmick. It's ridiculous.
LEMON: Let's -- again, let us say it louder for the people in the back, if it was a national emergency --
BOOT: Right.
LEMON: -- why didn't he get it done in the first two years when he had Republican control of everything?
BOOT: Because everybody knows this is not a national emergency. In the year 2000, we had something like 1.6 million people apprehended at the southern border. Last year, we had about half a million people. So there's been a two-thirds reduction in illegal immigration. There is not a national emergency.
The emergency that exists is in Washington, where we have a government shutdown. And we have the President pushing the outer boundaries of his constitutional powers to enact his political agenda. That's the national emergency.
LEMON: Can -- I want you to listen. This is John Cornyn -- Senator John Cornyn, member of the Senate GOP leadership. This is what he told our Manu Raju. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R), TEXAS: I am confident he could declare a national emergency. But what that means in terms of adding new elements to this in terms of court hearings and litigation that may carry this on for weeks and months and years. To me, injecting a new element into this just makes it more complicated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So GOP senators are showing signs of frustration. Would a Republican-led Senate rebuke President Trump if they -- if he attempted to bypass the Congress?
BOOT: It's certainly possible. I mean the Senate passed a clean appropriations legislation without the wall funding. And I think senators want to put the government back to work. And I think the pressure is going to increase this week when you're going to have something like 800,000 federal employees who are going to miss a paycheck. That is increasing the pressure to stop this pointless shutdown.
LEMON: Yeah, Max, always a pleasure.
BOOT: Thanks, Don.
LEMON: Thank you very much. What's the greatest trick President Trump has ever pulled? One of my next guests thinks that he knows what it is. And he's going to tell us next.
[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: President Trump says he can relate to federal workers who can't pay their bills during the shutdown. Yup, he really said that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I can relate. And I am sure that the people that are on the receiving end will make adjustments. They always do. And they'll make adjustments. People understand exactly what's going on. But many of those people that won't be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100 percent with what I am doing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: All right. Let's discuss now. Chris Cillizza is here, Alice Stewart, and Amanda Carpenter. Amanda is the author of "Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us."
Speak for yourself, Amanda. Good evening. Thank you all for joining. So, Chris, let's start with you because --
CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Sure.
LEMON: -- because you pointed out the President's statement, and a great piece for CNN.com called the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled, OK? So give me the trick.
CILLIZZA: Well, OK. Donald Trump is someone of significant means. You can define what that means because he says he's much richer than Forbes, for example. But he's a billionaire, OK? He's also someone who has always been of significant means. His father was a well-to-do developer, primarily in Queens, in the outer boroughs. He gives his son, as his son's acknowledged, a million dollars loan, equivalent to about $6.7 million in today's dollars.
And by the way, "The New York Times" says he's -- in their report on the tax -- Donald Trump's taxes says he's given him a lot more. Donald Trump goes to private schools. He brags about, you know, the models and the actresses he dated. He has his own plane with his name on it. He's not the guy you would think would become the figure of the resistance to the so-called elites that working Americans, particularly men, latch onto.
And yet, there's very little question if you look at the exit polling from the 2016 election. That's exactly what he did. He convinced a good number of people, largely white men but also women, non-college- educated, that he was their voice when honestly you could walk out on the street here in Washington or in New York, and almost certainly find someone who is closer to their socioeconomic background, their educational background, et cetera, et cetera, than Donald Trump.
LEMON: Yeah. Well, what are you saying that most working class people don't have gold toilets? I mean come on.
(CROSSTALK)
AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Part of this, if I can pop in here, was that Donald Trump convinced Republicans that he would make them rich for --
CILLIZZA: Yeah. That's true.
LEMON: Aspirational.
CARPENTER: -- a lot of aspirational voters --
CILLIZZA: Absolutely.
CARPENTER: -- Trump was a path for prosperity for them. He was the rich guy who didn't fit into the club and would help pull them into Trump Tower. I mean this is sort of what Trump University is all about, selling Art of the Deal, The Apprentice, this was his brand. Whether or not that comes true or not will, you know, we can judge that in terms of his legacy.
(CROSSTALK)
CILLIZZA: Amanda is exactly right.
LEMON: Alice needs to get in. Alice needs to get in.
ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Don, what the President also did -- and Chris outlined the stark contrast between President Donald Trump and a lot of the blue collar rust belt voters across this country. But what he managed to convince them was that he was not your rich Romney guy. I was in a lot of focus groups back when Romney was running for President and the word they used for him was plastic.
[22:44:57] You ask a lot of these voters what they think about Donald Trump and they say he is a scrapper. Take the money aside. He is someone they would take into a bar room brawl. Donald Trump, they see as someone who is a get off my lawn, hold my beer, take no prisoners kind of guy, and he will have their back. And he was able --
LEMON: Get off my lawn.
STEWART: -- to convince them that he is more like them than he is not like them.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: So, his supporters are get off my lawn? I mean that's not a positive.
(CROSSTALK)
STEWART: Well, that's --
CILLIZZA: But it is -- but it is -- Alice is 100 percent right, though. He -- it makes -- now, a lot of times people vote against sort of not only their own economic conditions, but they vote against what you would think would be common sense in their world.
LEMON: Yeah.
CILLIZZA: But it is without question true. If you went up to someone and you say you're cheering as the plane that has Trump written on it is flying overhead, that this is the guy who somehow is representing your interests.
I mean in this last campaign, Don, he was in North Dakota, and, you know, he's running down the elites. And he says, we have better houses than they do. We have better boats. I mean I don't have a boat. My guess is most people in that audience don't own a boat. I mean it's a remarkable thing that he did. He, without question, accomplished that.
LEMON: Yeah.
CILLIZZA: Whether he could do it again is something else, but I do -- I am always struck by how he managed to do it.
LEMON: Well, the first thing letters of convinced. So listen. You mentioned -- I am just being honest. So you mentioned Trump -- you said Trump won 71 percent of white men without college education according to the exit polls. He took 61 percent among non-college- educated white women. He won 51 percent of voters whose highest level of education was high school, and a similar 51 percent of those who had attended some college but not graduated.
By contrast, he took just 37 percent among voters with some sort of postgraduate degree. Like now that that's said -- I mean I think it's an interesting polling and statistics. But there's nothing wrong with being rich. There's nothing wrong with being poor.
CILLIZZA: No, absolutely not. And I would note -- and I note in the piece, look --
LEMON: There's not wrong with being educated, highly educated, or not highly educated.
CILLIZZA: Right. And as I note in the piece, it's not -- that is not apples to apples comparison of, OK, middle, lower middle class, wealthy. There is no gray way. The exit polling doesn't ask that kind of question. So when you say non-college-educated white, that doesn't mean lower middle class, upper middle class. It doesn't mean anything. It simply -- it tends to correlate, but it's not the same thing. I think it's important to note that.
LEMON: Amanda, let's get you in. CARPENTER: OK. On one point, the -- I think Chris' piece is really interesting because Donald Trump is the accessible, rich guy for a lot of people who would like to be rich, right? Like this is why he's so popular. That's why he was on the map. But with the government shutdown that's happening right now, there have been a few stories I've been struck by that I think he needs to keep an eye on.
I think he came into the White House with the mentality that who cares if I furlough these government workers. They're just going to have, like, a paid vacation. We'll fix it later. That's kind of the attitude. But then there are stories now where people are going to work and not being paid.
LEMON: Yeah.
CARPENTER: That's a big difference. When you are forced to go to work for one week, two weeks, three weeks, he's joking around about maybe months or years without a paycheck. That puts -- that's a gut punch.
LEMON: But guess what?
CARPENTER: And so he needs to think about that. And I think once people realize that's the actual scenario for people who are working relatively low-paying government jobs, maybe things could change.
LEMON: Listen, no shade. Maybe some of the people out there believe that he can actually relate to it. I don't know. I got to go, Alice, quick, quick, quick.
STEWART: Just to Chris' point and Amanda's point, a lot of his voters would like to be like him and like to be rich and date supermodels. But many of them did vote for him for the policies and they supported him with regard to the economy and immigration.
LEMON: Got it.
STEWART: And a lot of the social issues.
LEMON: And judges and stuff, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, all. I appreciate it.
STEWART: Thanks, Don.
LEMON: White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders caught in a lie again. So why should we trust the White House when they claim there is a border emergency?
[22:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Was this administration -- administration's lie even too blatant for Fox News? Well, over the weekend, the White House Press Secretary was fact-checked live on Fox News by Chris Wallace. Sanders falsely suggested that thousands of terrorists are trying to come through the southern border. That lie has become a talking point for the White House and its allies as justification to build the southern border wall.
And it fits a pattern of misleading statements by the administration that had sought to tie immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border to Islamic terror.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We know that roughly -- nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists come into our country illegally. And we know that our most vulnerable point of entry --
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS HOST: Wait, wait, wait. Because I know the statistic. I didn't know if you were going to use it but I studied up on this. Do you know where those 4,000 people come -- where they're captured, airports?
SANDERS: Not always, but certainly a large number --
WALLACE: Airports. The State Department says there hasn't been any terrorist that they've found coming across the southern border from that --
(CROSSTALK)
SANDERS: It's by air, it's by land, and it's by sea. It's all of the above.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Chris is right. According to the Department of Homeland Security the figure represents individuals blocked from traveling or entering the United States, often at airports, and does not necessarily refer to the southern border. So, is it totally unlike Sarah Sanders to lie on behalf of the White House? Was this some sort of fluke?
[22:55:01] No. In fact, the White House Press Secretary has actually told falsehoods that are easily refutable, sometimes with videotape alone. For instance, when asked about heated rhetoric in the political atmosphere following the congressional baseball shooting, Sanders told this outright lie.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDERS: The President in no way, form, or fashion has ever promoted or encouraged violence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Well, Sanders also repeated the President's lies. Here she is telling President Trump -- telling Trump's lie that he had no knowledge of a hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDERS: There was no knowledge of any payments from the President. The President has denied the allegations. The President has denied and continues to deny the underlying claim.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So we know that's not true, and investigators know too. According to court documents, Michael Cohen illegally made the payment to Stormy Daniels acting in coordination with and at the direction of individual one. Individual one is Donald Trump. Sanders has also made false statements to back up the wild and untrue accusation from President Trump that former President Obama had his wires tapped.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SANDERS: Everybody acts like President Trump is the one that came up with this idea and just threw it out there. He's -- there are multiple news outlets that have reported this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Except it was President Trump who threw the false claim out there, with a tweet, of course. A former senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of investigations by the Justice Department under the Obama administration told CNN that Trump's phones were never tapped. And the fact is that warrants the tap into someone's phones in the course of a federal investigation would be sought by the Department of Justice.
The DOJ, in normal circumstances, conducts investigations independent of the White House and the President. And I want you to listen to this. Sarah Sanders recently told Politico that she wanted to be remembered for being, quote, transparent and honest. Is that how you're going to remember her? We'll be right back.
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