Transcript for Trump shut down government to break promise that Mexico pays for wall: Top Dem

As we start this new year, president trump is facing a new reality in Washington, dealing with divided government for the first time. Consequences just starting to play out with new investigations coming in the house. Robert Mueller preparing his report, and right now, a stalemate. Day 16 of the government shutdown. No deal in sight to get 800,000 federal workers back to work and paid. The border wall promise that fueled Donald Trump's campaign has now stalled the government he leads. Place holder talks at the white house on Saturday made no progress, and another meeting set today. Will president trump defy congress by ordering the military to build the wall he vowed Mexico would pay for? Let's go to the power brokers, the incoming chair of the house armed services committee, Adam Smith. Thank you for joining us this morning. Let's get right to it. Does president trump have the ability, have the authority to declare a national emergency and have the military build his wall? Unfortunately, the short answer is yes. There is a provision in law that says the president can declare an emergency. It's been done a number of times, but primarily it's been done to build facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this case, I think the president would be wide open to a court challenge saying, where is the emergency? You have to establish that in order to do this, but beyond that, this would be a terrible use of department of defense dollars. The president spends most of his time talking about how we're not spending enough on national security. Now he wants to take $20 billion out of defense budget to build a wall. Which by the way, is not going to improve our border security. The president seems unaware of this, but we have actually already built a wall across much of the border, and all border security experts that I talk to say, where a wall makes sense, it's already been built. We should have a conversation about national security -- sorry, about border security, but first, we should reopen the government and start paying our border patrol agents and the 800,000 federal employees who are furloughed. We have heard Mick Mulvaney say he is willing to give on a concrete wall. He wants it to be steel instead. Are they giving you something you can work with there? No. He doesn't understand the issue. There was a great quote from Mulvaney a couple of years ago where he said, you know, he was critical of president -- then-candidate trump's comment about the wall. It's a childish response to the problem. If you understand what's happening in border security -- we have quintupled the border security budget in the last 15 years, and by the way, it's been fairly effective, but we have invested in border patrol agents and donees and airplanes and sensors and technology. A concrete barrier is not going to automatically stop people from coming. Democrats have supported some barriers and the president is out tweeting this morning. He said -- he is quoting senator Barack Obama in 2005. We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked and I voted when I was a senator to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in. Any concern that this hard line is going to backfire? No because that's the point. The wall is not in itself a bad idea. It's just -- it's been done, and what the president has not done is he has not made the case that on the portions of the border where a wall has not been built, how is a wall going to actually enhance border security? There is no evidence whatsoever that that's necessary, and yet he is willing to shut down the government and stop paying border patrol agents and in many cases, you know, stop all the efforts that we have made to enhance border security over a campaign promise, and a campaign promise as you pointed out that Mexico was supposed to pay for. He is shutting down the government to break his signature campaign promise. The signature campaign promise was that the taxpayers wouldn't pay for it. Let's talk about the broader agenda. You said you want to hold hearings in the armed services committee on the politicization of this. What does that mean? Who will you call? What we have seen is -- when he has campaign rallies when he is talking to troops. I don't think you should use the military to advance your agenda. Every other president before this when they worked with the military and talked to the troops, it's been about national security. It's been about their services. Their service, I'm sorry. When president trump talks, it's about his campaign, about how bad the Democrats are. We need civilian control of the military and we need to separate those things, but the main thing I want to focus on in the hearings we have coming up once we get our committee set is transparency and oversight, you know, why did the president send 5,600 troops -- active duty troops to the border? What was the purpose of it? What is his policy in Syria and Afghanistan as he is now talking about pulling out? There has been a lack of transparency and an explanation for what his national security strategy is. We want to make sure that the officials at the Pentagon and the white house let congress know, and that we work together to develop a coherent national security strategy. You mentioned Syria. We all know that former defense secretary James Mattis resigned in protest in part of the Syrian decision and also made it clear he can no longer go along with the president's approach of treating our allies and dealing with our adversaries. Will you call former secretary Mattis? I would like to. Now I understand and I respect the president has a right to private counsel from his top advisers. I'm not going to call former secretary Mattis to say, you know, what did the president say about this? What did he do about that? Secretary Mattis is one of the most knowledgeable, capable experts we have on defense policy and foreign policy. His views on what we should be doing around the world would be invaluable for members of our committee. So we would love to get his perspective on a wide variety of issues. And what should we be doing in Syria right now? The president announcing he wanted to withdraw, but John Bolton today said the united States is not going to withdraw our troops until Turkey promises to protect the kurds until we're certain that ISIS is defeated. Do you know what the policy is, and do you support it? I don't think anybody knows what the policy is. That's part of the problem and why secretary Mattis did a decent job. Our allies matter enormously, and the president treats them like dirt. He insults them regularly, does not consult them, makes radical decisions via Twitter and changes his mind the next day. The world is big and complicated. The U.S. Is not able to do everything on our own. We need allies to support us. He has alienated them across the board, and in Syria, the two points that John Bolton made are obvious. Those are the two big concerns we have. We don't want ISIS to rise again and be a transnational terrorist threat and we don't want our allies the kurds, to be slaughtered in Turkey. That was obvious how many ever weeks ago it was when president trump apparently on a whim tweeted out, we're getting out of Syria. So, you know, I'm pleased that John Bolton has recognized the national security interest. That's what we want to have on the armed services committee, not a tweet, let's get out of Syria. Let's have a discussion about the pieces that are necessary to meet U.S. National security interests and make an informed decision. Let's talk about impeachment. A couple of your democratic colleagues have already filed articles of impeachment in the house. And there was a congresswoman that said this. I stand by impeaching the president of the United States. I ran on that. That's how my grandmother if she was alive would say it. That's the cleaned up version of what she said. What was your reaction to that, and are you concerned the Democrats may be pushing this too far too fast? I don't think we're pushing it too far too fast. The congresswoman represents a constituency that has every right to be angry at president trump. Vice president Cheney used a similar word to Patrick Leahy. That was on the floor of the United States senate. People get passionate about their politics. I don't think it makes a difference how she said it. I wouldn't have said it that way, but the most important point here is impeachment is a serious undertaking. No president has been removed from office, and if you do this, you are -- you are substituting the judgment of the voters for the judgment of congress. Now if the crimes are serious enough it needs to be done, but we need to be very deliberate, very serious and very careful about how we do this. Mindful that the president will not be removed from office unless 67 senators affirm or convict on the impeachment. We need to see Mueller's report and we need to make a very, very strong case if there is one to be made. This is not something that should be rushed or done hastily. It's a serious obligation of congress. If the president has committed the crimes and we have seen considerable evidence he has committed them, we'll take it seriously. We'll wait for Mueller's report and do it in a serious way. Thank you for your time this morning.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.