Trump Spending Christmas Holiday At Mar-a-Lago; Trump Slams The FBI On Twitter
DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and Merry Christmas. I'm Dana Bash in for Kate Bolduan. President Trump is spending this Christmas holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He and the First Lady attended Christmas Eve services at the church where they were married. Prior to that, the President held a teleconference with U.S. troops. He also managed to get in some golf over the weekend. Then if you are keeping track, the President has spent 85 days at one of his golf properties since inauguration day, January 20th. On the political front, Mr. Trump kept up his Twitter tirade targeting the FBI. White House Correspondent Sara Murray joins us from West Palm Beach, Florida. Sara, Merry Christmas to you. Fill us in on the President's tweets.</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Merry Christmas, Dana. I mean we saw the President engaged in some more traditional Christmas activities as you pointed out yesterday. But in -- over the weekend he could not help but air his grievances on Twitter. He was lobbying attacks at the FBI, specifically Deputy Director Andrew McCabe who is set to retire in a few months. He also took aim at the media and insisted he is not getting any credit for all of the hard work he's done since in office -- since he took office. So clearly a little bit of an airing of grievances for the President as we head into this holiday season, Dana.</s>BASH: And what do we know about how the President is spending this Christmas day?</s>MURRAY: Well, the White House hasn't given as a lot of details yet on how the President will be spending this day. He doesn't have any public events, but just to give you a sense of, when you're a President, you're never really on vacation. You're always juggling these duties. The one thing that we do know from Sarah Sanders, the White House Press Secretary, is the President was briefed today on that suicide attack in Kabul, so we're still being kept up to speed even though</s>BASH: And Sara, before I let you go, I just want to talk to you about this tweet that the First Lady sent out this morning. A Christmas selfie wearing her Santa hat, really playful and, of course, looking quite nice there. The whole notion of her sending this out really struck me because it seems to me kind of a fitting end to a year where, I think we saw an evolution not that comfortable, perhaps understandably so, with the role of the First Lady. And now so comfortable that she feels, you know, good enough to be playful in that way. What do you think?</s>MURRAY: That's right. It was almost a more pronounced evolution and the President himself has gone through. You know, Trump is pretty much the same Trump we saw when he took office, but for Melania Trump, I really think she has sort of come into her role as First Lady. When you talked to people who work for her, who have worked for her, they say she's gotten much more comfortable. She's gotten much more comfortable with picking out the kinds of things she likes to do. She likes to do events with children for instance and will now go out of her way to schedule those. But also just kind of comfortable in her own skin and in taking the role of First Lady and adapting it to her own personal style and I think that's what we see when we see sort of like the playful selfies that she's posting. Sure it's not traditional of a First Lady but, you know, this is not a traditional first couple and I think that Melania Trump is going much more comfortable with that over the past year.</s>BASH: I agree. Sara, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Now, let's get some perspective on the President's tweets slamming the FBI and the road ahead for Republicans in 2018. Joining me now, CNN Political Commentators Paris Dennard, Scott Jennings and Symone Sanders, welcome one and all. Merry Christmas to you. Paris, I want to start with you. What do you make of the President's latest tweets? He's been sending out several of them over the weekend blasting the FBI. And obviously it's part of a larger effort to undermine the credibility of the independent counsel, but do you think this is a good move?</s>PARIS DENNARD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all, Merry Christmas to you and to everyone watching. I think the President is simply highlighting the fact that he is not pleased, as we all know, with the direction that this FBI investigation is going in mainly because there's a lot of things that people are raising that looked to be political. When you have FBI people that are working for Mueller who have donated significant amounts of money to the Clintons, when you have people that are sending out tweets that seem to be anti-Trump, when you have them possibly giving e-mails in a manner that might have not been above board, you see this President voicing his disdain via Twitter and I think that is well within his right to do so. And I think it will continue because what we see on the left is everyone can talk about how great this investigation is because they want the President to go down. But when there's things that are legitimate concerns and grievances we want the right and the President to be silent and he won't.</s>BASH: OK, so that's understandable. But Scott Jennings, it's not like he is just going after political leaders. He also has been going after the FBI in general when you're talking about career service people and never mind that, you know, most of them, the vast majority of them are working very hard to protect the United States here and abroad. Just on the raw politics of it, I don't know if you know many FBI agents, but I don't know many who are liberal tree-huggers.</s>SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I think most -- I think the President would agree that most -- vast majority of FBI employees are hard at work doing their job every day. But in the context of this investigation, some information has come out that have caused some people to; you know, take a beat and say, "Well, wait a minute, who is involved in this and do they have motivations?" I have not supported getting rid of Mueller. I have not supported wiping this investigation away. I think all of it needs to continue, but I also think the American people are smart. And if they get more information about everything that's going on and they can make their own decisions and not make up their own minds about whether they think it was done in a biased way. The President clearly is unhappy that this has been going on for the entirety of his presidency. He feels likes it's a drag on his presidency, and frankly, I think a lot of Republicans are wondering, "When are we going to be able to have this finish so that we can have a presidency without a cloud over it?"</s>BASH: Symone, do you want to weigh-in?</s>SYMONE SANDERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, yes. I mean, I think, look, I think it understandable that President Trump is defensive. That he's attacking the FBI because they are -- just like Scott said, there's a cloud over his presidency. But I just to remind everyone and all the American people that Donald Trump brought this, i.e., the especial council upon himself when he fired former FBI Director James Comey himself. This isn't going away anytime soon. And it's just makes it worse every single time the President tries to weigh-in via Twitter on the investigation. So I think the best thing for Republicans and for this President would be that he just kept silent. But I think that's cautiously optimistic and purposely not happen.</s>BASH: I think that is unlikely given the year that we have seen with this President in the White House. Let's look ahead. Scott, I want to bring you back in on the fact that the President, Republicans, they had a victory on tax reform but they have a lot to do and this is on the must-do-list in January alone. Check this out. They have to do spending bill so that the government stays open, disaster funding, very important, reauthorizing the Children's Healthcare on ownership, critically important DACA or Dreamers and border security, something that is politically dicey. Oh, and by the way, fixes to Obamacare that was promised as part of the tax bill. Are they going to be a little to get that done in the first month alone?</s>JENNINGS: I don't know if it will happen in the first month. The DACA fix can wait until March and the President could frankly reauthorize the executive order if it doesn't get done in March. I think everything on your list is going to get done in a bipartisan fashion with the exception of Obamacare. They're going to have a harder time doing that. I think generally in 2018 we're going to see a pivot towards bipartisanship principally, because they're not going to have the reconciliation process in the U.S. Senate. The big battles we fall off this year on Obamacare repeal and tax reform were done under reconciliation, meaning, they just needed 50 votes. I doubt that process is going to exist next year. So everything they do with the exception of personnel matters is going to need 60 votes. So pivot towards bipartisanship, they will not shutdown the government, Children's Healthcare will be protected. I think the Dreamers will get what they deserve, which is a legislative fix. I think it's all going to get done, although at times it may be a little messy.</s>BASH: I think you're right. I think it's much more likely that you're going to see bipartisan work if there is any work at all in the next election year for lots of reasons, most of which you mentioned. But, Paris, on the whole issue of Dreamers, let's say the President does go ahead and sign the legislative fix, meaning allowing the Dreamers to stay in the United States legally. What will that do to the conservative base? Will it depress the base, make them angry going into 2018 election?</s>DENNARD: Well, I think, one of the things that we've learned from looking at this presidency is it's a unique presidency, in the sense that the person that support this president believe him and trust him and know that he is going to do the right thing for the American people. So if the President comes to the American people, especially to the basin says, "This is why I signed this legislation and this is why this is going to make America great again and be a benefit to us as a nation," I think the base will be satisfied with that. But if the base will not be satisfied with is if he gets railroaded by the Democrats and let the left dictate to what he is going to do. I don't think that's what you get from this President, but he is going to negotiate and get the best deal for the American people. He is a type that we'll get the best deal and we'll articulate that to the American people. And I think the base will understand whatever he decides to do, but they will know that it's in the best interest of the country and are putting our national security first. That's why that wall has being built and it's going to go up and he keeps reiterating that that is happening.</s>BASH: Well, that's to be determined.</s>SANDERS: Well, Dana --</s>BASH: Symone before you weigh-in, I just want you to listen to what your old boss, Bernie Sanders, is saying about Republicans and warning about the fact that they should be nervous about the 2018 midterm elections. Take a listen.</s>SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: So I think what you are seeing is a referendum on Donald Trump about a man who said one thing during the campaign and his actions are very, very different. So I think the -- what we're seeing in Alabama, what we're seeing in Virginia, New Jersey and in states all across this country are large voter turnouts, where people standing up and fighting back, and demanding that we have a government that represents all of us not just the 1 percent. If I were the Republicans, I would worry very much about 2018.</s>BASH: Symone, do you think it's politically savvy for Democrats and progressives like Bernie Sanders to be warning about 2018? Are they raising expectations really high that Democrats are doing really well?</s>SANDERS: I think what Senator Sanders was doing was just speak in the back and that he snatched the words went out of my mouth. That's exactly what I was going to say in response to care. What we have seen not just in the really big elections that, you know, we were all covered right here on CNN, but Democrats left 33 legislative state this year that we're reliably Republican. Have they clipped</s>BASH: Scott Jennings, final thought.</s>JENNINGS: Yes, look, I think that it's going to be a tough midterm for Republicans. Historically, it is for a president's first midterm. I think both chambers are employed. I think the Senate is slightly more secure than the House. And what the President and the White House need to do is connect the American people's good vibes on the economy with his job approval. If the President's job approval takes up a little bit, then I think you'll see the generic ballot shrink and Republicans can hold. But I would just say, if Democrats take one or both chambers in November, it could be the functional end of this president's first term because the policy and investigatory paralysis will be swift and terrible, I imagine.</s>BASH: That's quite an ominous warning for Republicans. Thank you all, Paris, Scott, Symone. Appreciate it and thanks again for coming in on this Christmas day.</s>DENNARD: Thank you.</s>BASH: And still ahead, Pope Francis calling for peace at the end of a very turbulent year and delivering appointed message on some hot button political issues. Plus, did you wake up to a white Christmas? We're tracking the Arctic weather as millions across the country are walking in a winter wonderland this morning.