This will be the last Axe Files for the year.

We're taking a little break for the holidays.

I hope yours are great and we'll be back on January 7th for another year of the Axe Files.

And now from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN,

the Axe Files with your host, David Axelrod.

If you've been following the saga of the Russian probe and Donald Trump,

then you almost certainly have seen Eric Swalwell, the Congressman from California,

a member of the House Intelligence Committee, often on television,

talking about the probe, but he's talking about a lot of other stuff as well as he travels around

the country, chairman of this future forum in the House, trying to talk to younger Americans about

the future and the direction of the country. And now, a potential candidate for President of the

United States at 38 years old. He came by Chicago this week on Route to Iowa and we sat down to

talk about breaking news, of course, involving the President, but also about his own journey

and the San Bishops new project on which he appears about to embark.

Eric Swalwell, welcome. Great to see you here in Chicago,

which I know is on the way to Iowa, which is where you're heading, which we will talk about

in the course of this conversation. But normally I start off with your story, I want to

get to that really quickly, but there are a couple of breaking news stories right now as

there always seem to be with this President. One was that apparently he's standing down on this

threat to shut down the government for the wall. Are you surprised by that? No, not surprised.

What we've seen him capitulate before. He talks tough, has a good game, but when it comes time,

to show his hand, he usually is holding a two and a seven and doesn't really have much

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