Trump Cancel's Pelosi's Trip; Trump Directed Cohen to Lie.
CAMEROTA: All right, President Trump hitting back at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The president has denied Pelosi access to a military plane to go to a war zone, and in the process revealed the destinations of her secret trip. Joining us now is John Avlon, Joe Lockhart and Rachael Bade, congressional reporter at "Politico." Rachael, turnabout is fair play, OK. So Nancy Pelosi sort of disinvited him from the State of the Union and Donald Trump had a trick up his sleeve, President Trump, and canceled this co-del (ph), congressional delegation as it's called, where she was planning to go to Afghanistan, among other places. So, tit for tat. This is where we are today.</s>RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it's funny because, you know, Democrats were actually already on a bus that was getting ready to leave the Capitol Building to head to the airport. They were all packed up. And this came at the last minute and totally upended their plans. You know, the White House is trying to say this is about security and about, you know, sort of the same reasons Pelosi gave for delaying the State of the Union saying we can't be doing something like this when employees are not getting paid. You can't use the security, et cetera. But make no mistake, this was not about security. This was about revenge. And this was about the president hitting back at Nancy Pelosi after she clearly insulted him by taking away sort of this televised address that he was looking forward to. And I -- you know, it might have had some temporary gratification for the White House, but long term this is going to make it even harder to find a deal to get out of this shutdown. We are in day 28, I think, and it feels kind of like we're in the congressional version of "Mean Girls" right now with people just trying to one up each other. We're nowhere near a deal on this.</s>BERMAN: The question is, who is trying to make fetch (ph) happen in that case, Rachael? Look, the added switch here is also, yes, it may be tit for tat. In this case, what the president used was telling the Taliban where Nancy Pelosi and other congressional leaders were going. Hey, these people, they're coming to Afghanistan. Be that as it may, John, how does this bring us any closer to ending the shutdown with 800,000 federal workers not being paid and the economy being hit twice as hard as economists originally thought?</s>JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It doesn't. And the president doesn't even seem to be focused on that goal. He seems to be dug in and waiting to see if he can make Democrats blink. The problem is, the real world costs of this are escalating. We are now in week four. This is a week longer than the longest shutdown in American history before that. It is multiples longer than the average length of shutdowns. This is a singular act of incompetence. It is self-inflicted by the president and members of Congress. Lindsey Graham and others have tried to offer up a deal. That deal could probably get done. Open up the government and then, you know, pass a balanced plan with border security and the dreamers, let's say. The president seemed uninterested in that to date. There's probably no other resolution than something like that because the president's vision of victory, where Democrats suddenly capitulate and say you can have border security for nothing, ain't going to happen right now.</s>CAMEROTA: But, Joe, why does this make it harder? Keeping everybody in Washington, a forced, you know, stay occasion, keeping everybody there, why doesn't it make them roll up their sleeves and have to get this done?</s>JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Because it isn't about location or geography. There's a big difference between what Nancy Pelosi did and what Donald Trump did. Nancy Pelosi did something that was strategic. She was taking something that Trump needs. He needs the national stage. The State of the Union is the single best day every year for the president of the United States. So she used -- is using her leverage to try to get a deal. Trump took nothing from Nancy Pelosi. Maybe she want go to Afghanistan and would have --</s>CAMEROTA: Well, some power. I mean it was a power play.</s>LOCKHART: It was a power play, but to what end? What -- how does it weaken her position? Democrats are not going to -- this is what Trump needs to understand, Democrats are not going to move. The reason is, elections matter. They won the last election by almost 10 percent. Trump made it about immigration, made it about the wall, and the voters said no. So they're not going to -- so the only -- we're going to get a deal when Trump backs -- finds a way to back down. That's the only way we're going to get a deal. And that's why Pelosi's move was strategic. The missing piece in all of this, in all of this, is Mitch McConnell.</s>AVLON: Yes.</s>LOCKHART: The House has passed the bills. The Senate is holding them up. I've read the Contusion. There's nothing in the Constitution that says the Senate has the power to prevent Republican senators from taking hard votes. That's what Mitch McConnell's doing.</s>AVLON: MIA Mitch is one of the real</s>LOCKHART: And that's -- yes, and that's -- that's why this is only a matter of Trump finding an exit ramp. He doesn't -- he seems more interested in playing this tit for tat than finding that ramp. That's how this is going to end. It's not going to be Democrats caving.</s>BERMAN: I will say, the other thing the president did by keeping that bus load of Democrats here was keep Adam Schiff and other Democratic committee chairs around to comment on the "BuzzFeed" story that the president suborned perjury.</s>CAMEROTA: The law of unintended consequences.</s>BERMAN: Telling Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. Rachael, you know, this story broke, it was 10:11 last night p.m. So it hasn't even been 12 hours since. There are already Democrats reacting on the record, some suggesting this will be the trigger to hold impeachment hearings. Where do you see this going and how do you see the maneuvering playing out today?</s>BADE: Yes, I mean, I do think we're going to hear Democrats start using the "i" word. I mean I was watching Twitter last night as this was blowing and one tweet caught my attention. Congressman Ted Lieu. He's a close Pelosi ally. He's a veteran of California. The two of them are pretty tight and they're always in lock step. And he was saying it is time for the House Judiciary to start considering whether the president committed high crimes. And that's surprising coming from a Pelosi ally specifically because Pelosi has told people, do not use that word. And if you're hearing an ally use the word impeachment and phrases like high crimes, that means you're going to -- this is like a game changer, right? And you put that in the middle of this intense standoff over the shutdown, it's just -- the toxicity on The Hill has reached a level I have never seen in my time being up there. I can tell you on the floor yesterday we heard Republicans yelling at Democrats -- literally yelling at them saying, go back to Puerto Rico, where some of the Democrats were on a co-del (ph) the weekend before. You have freshman Democratic lawmakers going back to Mitch McConnell, as we were just talking about, starting this hash tag, where is Mitch and running around the Capitol making sort of this scene about where is Mitch McConnell since he's not leading on this issue. You know, throw the Michael Cohen narrative in the middle of this, it's just toxicity everywhere. And the only way I see, beyond the president backing down on the wall right now, is this whole declaring a national emergency. I'm really interested to see if that talk is going to pick up in the next couple of days given what we've seen happen over the past 24 hours.</s>CAMEROTA: This is madness, John.</s>AVLON: Yes.</s>BADE: It really is.</s>CAMEROTA: All of this yelling at each other. And as Rachael points out, all the toxicity. And in terms of Congressman Ted Lieu, he's getting out too far ahead of it. I mean we have to confirm the "BuzzFeed" reporting.</s>AVLON: Yes.</s>CAMEROTA: And if it is confirmed, it is unambiguous that this is an impeachable crime. But we're not there yet.</s>AVLON: We are not there yet. These are very good reporters, but you don't begin proceedings based on a report. You do it when an actual report, the Mueller report, is dropped. But this -- this is the problem. Donald Trump and this entire circumstance we are in, to some extent, is a symptom of a larger problem that's been percolating for a long time. Polarization and hyper partisanship. The inability to reason together. Demonizing people you disagree with. And now you're seeing it hit a boiling point. And it could be at a boiling point exactly at a time when the founders hoped that people could rise above their partisan nature in the most basic sense. That principles would trump partisanship. There's no evidence of that in Capitol Hill, but that's going to -- what will be required if we're going to have anything like a deliberative discussion about impeachment. So don't get ahead of -- let's get the report done and then let's see where the chips fall where they may.</s>BERMAN: I don't think the suborning perjury, by the way, is divorce necessarily from the shutdown here --</s>AVLON: No.</s>BERMAN: Which is that the president will use the shutdown and the wall to keep his base in line as he fights the allegations against him. All right, guys, thanks very much.</s>CAMEROTA: All right, if you live in the eastern U.S., you're about to get extremely cold. Bitterly cold. And intense snow. It is huge. It's coming. Your forecast, next.