Partial Shutdown Likely To Continue Until After Christmas
CHIOU: Welcome back. Let's get you caught up on the developing news out of Indonesia. Authorities say Saturday tsunami killed at least 222 people when it slammed into parts of Java and Indonesia. More than 800 others are injured and hundreds of homes are damaged. A volcano may have triggered this disaster by setting off underwater landslides. One official says the disaster struck without warning adding that Indonesia lacks the equipment to warn about underwater tsunami threats. It is day two of the U.S. partial government shutdown and no signs of it ending anytime soon. Talks on Saturday went nowhere and the Senate Majority Leader sent lawmakers home for Christmas. The Senate isn't back in session until Thursday so that means barring some dramatic and unexpected deal the shutdown will drag on for days to come. At the heart of the issue, President Donald Trump's a border wall funding demands and no one is budging. President Trump is staying in Washington instead of spending Christmas as his Florida resort due to the shutdown. CNN's a Ryan Nobles joins me now alive from the White House with the latest. And Ryan the President says he wants $5 billion for this border wall. The Democrats say no way, no deal. So how do you see a way out of this?</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: I don't see a way out of it, Pauline. To be honest with you, this seems to be a prolonged staring contest between the powerful people here in Washington and neither side appears to be budging. And there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of communication between the Senate Democrats and the White House which appear to be the two most important players in this conversation. Listen to what Mick Mulvaney had to say this morning on one of the Sunday talk shows. He's of course the current Budget Director but he has an important job. He's the incoming acting chief of staff for President Trump. This is what he had to say about where the negotiations currently stand.</s>MICK MULVANEY, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET, UNITED STATES: New Mexico has now agreed for the first time in history to keep asylum seekers, folks who are trying to get into the USA on the Mexican side of the border. So this -- if folks in Mexican facilities maintained by Mexican officials, they're actually doing more for border security than many Democrats in Congress. So we really think we're in a good place in terms of getting the wall built and also getting Mexico to participate in our border security.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But none of that is Mexico paying for the wall? Let's just be clear about --</s>MULVANEY: You and I both know that it cannot work exactly like that.</s>NOBLES: So Mulvaney they're talking about how all throughout the campaign the President promised that Mexico was going to have to pay for the wall so why do American taxpayers have to foot the bill in the form of this $5 billion which has now held up the government in totality here and making at least 30 percent of the United States government grinding to a halt. Didn't seem to have a very good answer for that, Pauline, and it kind of shows you where these negotiations currently stand.</s>CHIOU: And in the meantime, during this week, as long as this goes on, essential government workers still have to work without pay. We're talking hundreds of thousands of people in airport security, customs, immigration. How long could this continue?</s>NOBLES: Well, I think it's realistic to expect it to extend into the new year. And then, if you forecast it out you know, the situation does not seem very positive because this is only going to become a more difficult process for Donald Trump because Democrats will now take control of the House of Representatives. And so if they have no inclination to deal with him when they're in the minority, once they become the majority they're going to have even less incentive to do so. So this could be a prolonged staring contest and you know the President is not necessarily taking advice from those who have his best interests in mind. You know, he initially had agreed to this short-term continuing resolution to open the door to more conversations and then there were very strong opinions from the conservative media here in the United States that told him that he should think otherwise and then he reversed course. They are now applauding this move by the President. And if this is where he is taking his cues, it stands to reason that this could take some time before there's a breakthrough in these negotiations.</s>CHIOU: Yes. That was a surprising on 180 that we saw earlier this week. Ryan Nobles, thank you so much for bringing us up-to-date live at the White House. Meanwhile, President Trump is losing yet another key official over his decision to pull troops out of Syria. The U.S. envoy in the fight against Isis is heading for the exits on the heels of the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis. President Trump is reacting by calling Brett McGurk a "grandstander whom he doesn't even know." Elise Labbott has more on the impending departure.</s>ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, the U.S. envoy in charge of the fight against Isis has resigned. Brett McGurk told Secretary Pompeo on Friday night that he would be leaving his post on December 31st. Now, McGurk was expected to leave in February to take up a post at Stanford University but his decision to leave early came on the heels of President Trump's sudden announcement that he would be withdrawing all troops from Syria. Now, McGurk just days earlier was talking to reporters about the new U.S. policy to stay in Syria not only to defeat the remnants of Isis but also to counter Iran. In fact, McGurk was in the region meeting with coalition partners to discuss this policy and was sitting with Iraqi leaders talking about the U.S. commitment to stay in Syria when President Trump tweeted that the U.S. would be withdrawing from Syria. And people familiar with McGurk's thinking say that not only did he feel his credibility was on the line but also he didn't feel he would be able to defend let alone execute that policy. McGurk has been the Envoy dealing with the 70-plus member coalition to fight Isis since 2013 first serving as the deputy to John Allen and then taking over as envoy himself, clearly has done a lot to reduce the presence of Isis. But as he said there are still remnants on it. He said it would be reckless for the U.S. to withdraw precipitously. I'm also told that the decision by James Mattis who he was very close to affected his decision. McGurk is saying that he could no longer serve the President in this policy against Syria. Elise Labott, CNN Washington.</s>CHIOU: And to discuss the fight against Isis and the government shutdown let's bring in CNN Political Analyst and Princeton University Professor Julian Zelizer. He joins me now live also from New York. Julian, we've got Jim Mattis resigning, Brett McGurk resigning. These are outright protests of resignation. So how do you see the U.S. government trying to conduct foreign policy?</s>JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it seems like it's a one-man show at this point, and that was the point of the resignations. Meaning, their debates about the policy in Syria, there are many people who support the president's idea of pulling troops out. But at the heart of the protest is the way the ad hoc way in which the president has done this. He's left allies not really knowing what the United States is up to. He's not even seeking the counsel of his own advisors and that led to high-level officials to leave. So we don't really know how this is being conducted but it certainly seems that the President is pretty much acting alone.</s>CHIOU: In the middle of all this, we've got this partial government shutdown. We saw that 180 that Trump took earlier this week which surprised both parties and even his vice president. Could this shutdown have been avoided?</s>ZELIZER: Absolutely. If the president had not insisted at the end in response to right-wing critics that the funding for the border wall be restored or be put into the bill, this would have been solved for now at least until February the short-term fix was agreed to. So this really has resulted from one demand from the president. And at this point the Republicans although again they complain about what the president is doing, they're not really putting pressure. They're not threatening to vote with Democrats to override him and that's really you know, the major thing that we're looking for right now at least until January really begins.</s>CHIOU: In January 3rd, we will have a new Congress seated. The House of Representatives will be democratically controlled. What will the first order of business be? Well, the first order of business might be actually getting the government up and running. It doesn't -- it's not clear it will be running by that point so that will be number one. Number two, you're going to hear from House Democrats a dual front of investigation and legislation. They're going to be pushing for oversight that has been lacking under a Republican Congress and they're going to be pushing for ideas that have a small chance of passing but that at least move the debate in a different direction than where it's been since January of 2017. So it's going to be high velocity politics in Washington starting in January.</s>CHIOU: And Julian, give us your perspective on where the I word fits in here, impeachment, because it's a delicate issue. The Democrats would want to go for it but they also don't want to mobilize the base and they also have to see what comes out of the Mueller report if it's even made, parts of it are even made public. So how does that fit into the whole legislative landscape looking into next year?</s>ZELIZER: Well, if an impeachment process starts it will consume all of the attention of Congress, there's no real way around it. That's the you know highest priority issue if it takes place and nothing else will be discussed. But it might be that House Democrats have no choice. It might be that the investigations force their hands regardless of the politics where someone like Congressman Nadler has no choice other than to start the proceedings based on these facts. What would really matter is not simply do they start an impeachment process, but how does the House Judiciary Committee handle it. Do they handle it with restraint and care so that it's seen as legitimate or does it look like it's sloppy and partisan like many people saw the Republicans with Bill Clinton in the 90s. That's really the issue rather than whether impeachment will destroy everything for Democrats.</s>CHIOU: And if it does move forward from the House and it gets to the Senate, we've got even more Republicans in the Senate in the new Congress, is that where it stops or does there have to be something so egregious that the proceedings move forward?</s>ZELIZER: Yes, it has to be really egregious even if the house votes to impeach the president as they did with Clinton, then the Senate needs to by a super majority basically vote to remove the President, to follow through on that. Right now, the Senate won't do that and House Democrats know that but scandals take on a life of their own and it could be that the facts are so egregious that it changes the political calculation of Republicans, that saving the President is no longer worth it to them or to their party. We're far from that at this point. We don't even have an impeach impeachment process that's begun. But don't assume the dynamics can't change as facts come out.</s>CHIOU: Julian, as we're heading into the end of the year, it's worthwhile looking back at the year and at past presidencies. Do you find any other presidency comparable to the Trump presidency?</s>ZELIZER: No. This is now in real unique territory. Obviously, many presidents and their second year in difficult circumstances, Congress has flipped to the other party or there's low approval ratings, but President Trump is you know, taking things to a new level. He's broken convention, he's ignored norms, and introduced ways of governing from the White House that we have not seen in more into history. So I do think it's fair to say that there's many parts of the Trump presidency which are truly unique and we don't even know how to react or how they will unfold in real time.</s>CHIOU: Yes. It's keeping journalists, history professors, and everyone busy. All right, Julian, thank you so much. Great seeing you, Julian Zelizer, a friend of the show and Professor at Princeton University. The partial U.S. shut down means roughly 25 percent of the government is no longer funded and hundreds of thousands of federal employees must work without pay. But those worried about holiday travel or Christmas gifts arriving on time, need not worry. Border checkpoints and airports are staying open at usual and the U.S. postal service is funded separately so presents in the mail won't be affected at all by this shutdown. Live from New York, this is CONNECT THE WORLD. Coming up, a devastating tsunami kills hundreds in Indonesia and officials say the death toll will most likely rise. The latest on the recovery efforts there after this break.