And the Senior Editor for politics at the atlantic. It has been a heck of a week. I heard the president before he left for france the frustrated over the fact the russia story will not go away. I have heard it suggested by some he saw this story involving his son as perhaps the Worst Development and worst day of his presidency. We have new developments. More new developments today. We have heard the president has hired a new criminal attorney, ty cobb. They have been looking for someone to come in for some time now to be the enforcer on this probe, figure out how they will react in terms of rapid response, as well as making sure people adhere to a similar storyline Going Forward. You are right in the sense that it cuts the issues surrounding his presidency as he goes away again. It is getting worse. We are almost at flood, flood at this point. You wake up to new revelations donut who was meeting with o jr. Today we see more people. We still do not know the full list of people. The second that story broke, you knew it could be a defining moment or the sheer gravity of the allegations involved. It is not going to go away until people feel like they have been fully transparent. We still dont know what is out there in other emails. We still dont know what was discussed other than the version of the story. Right now, it is on a trajectory of getting worse day by day. Jonathan the other Major Development is the june 9 meeting with the russian lawyer, the now famous meeting set up by don jr. Attended by Paul Manafort entered kushner. Now we learn in addition to the lawyer and promoter friend, we have at least two others. How many people are in the room i dont think matters. There are two issues. There is the don jr. Issue where he knew not only this information was promised on Hillary Clinton but it came from russian officials. He also knew this was part of a concerted effort by russia to get his father elected. That is one half of the equation. For what he said in saying i love it, i cannot wait to see it, that is stupidity. The second half of the equation kushner, Paul Manafort, people who should have known better and raised incredible alarm bells and red flags the second you saw an email promising that kind of information from that kushner,. Paul manafort, one of the most sophisticated plant operators in washington for many years. Jared kushner, one of the president s closest advisors. Don jr. stupidity on part. The other part of the equation is deeply troubling about what they knew what the president knew in terms of where it came from. Jonathan the age old what did the president know and when did he know it is newly relevant. The president has said he did not know about this meeting until a few days ago. Thatow we have reporting the president s legal team knew about this weeks ago. What is the significance of that . That is true. Other senior staffers have known about it for a couple of weeks. Here is the problem with that. Statementr. Put out a , it has been reported the president was involved in crafting the statement jonathan the first statement that denied and said this was just about adoption. It was at the very least, radically incomplete. It has since been updated. Went on don jr. Hannity and said it is all out there. But it turns out there are more people. This is why the president is right about the gravity of this. For establishment republicans, it has been a series of telling themselves story of stories about President Trump. With the russian story, republicans have been telling themselves these guys did not know what they were doing. This was more keystone cops and something insidious. But now, we have these brutal montages on tv shows of these officials telling again and again there was nothing going on with russia, it is outrageous, silly. And we find out all of that is incorrect. That is the problem. How now do they give any kind of blanket denial or any kind of denial that will be believed . Jonathan if the president is deeply frustrated, lashing out because of the russian story and the fact it will not go away, that is what i was being told over and over again earlier this week, this story is not going anywhere now. Chuck grassley has said he wants don jr. To testify before his committee. He wants Paul Manafort. This is the judiciary committee. This is not even the house and Senate Intelligence committee investigation. He wants Paul Manafort before his committee next week. Is this going to happen . Every time he lashes out, he makes it worse for himself. This has become the problem. The first rule of scandals is you want to get ahead of it. This is a white house constantly trying to find ways to catch up to a narrative escaping it. It creates two sets of problems for this white house. One is it gets increasingly difficult for the public to buy the stories it is releasing when it releases a new story with new details which have previously been of scared or obscured or falsify statements with each progressive day. There is nothing impossible to believe except every Previous Story of the version the white house has put out has been proven to be false or misleading in some significant respect. It is starting to distract the white houses ability to do anything else. An increasing number of aids are getting pulled in. They face their own legal liabilities. They can be called to testify. This is a nightmare for any white house with the scandal distracted from things it would like to be doing and talking about. The president s reactive style is a key driver of that. They brought in ty cobb, a new lawyer. These people are not listening to their existing lawyers. You have don jr. Talking about this on hannity and then being contradicted a day later. No longer on the planet would be advising the president or his family to be publicly discussing the things they are discussing for precisely the reason the facts to not match up with what is coming out of their mouths. It is interesting they brought someone else in. They are their own worst enemies and their own best friend. They are still playing to the base. A large group of people think he is being attacked by the left, it is obstructionists in washington blocking his agenda. It will be interesting to see Going Forward with health care if they cannot get it through the senate how much he removed himself from the entire process of his signature attempted legislative achievement. That is extraordinary. Whether it is calculated, a method to the madness to remove himself so he stays away from the blame, is interesting to me as to where the American People will stack up as to who they point the figure fingertip. Is not sure the russia thing resonating as much as we think it is with the bride rankandfile. Broad rankandfile. Jonathan one of our mutual friends said people already think there was collusion, people that support donald trump do not care. People who do not like donald have already made up their minds. What is the resonance . Public resonance is not going to affect the investigation. Invest in go the investigation goes on. But it affects how the investigation is seen. That is right. You were there, you covered it. You know judge george w. Bushs most productive period and Barack Obamas most productive period were those first few months when their party controlled the entire congress. Those days are precious and fleeting. There are increasing signs they will be fleeting for donald trump. He has to jam in as much as he can with all of the foot dragging over health care, with the distractions, they are now behind on that. I think anybody would take the under on the health care vote. Right now, they are exactly where they need to be to barely pass. You lose two republicans. Mike pence breaks the type. One more person walks through the door and health care is dead. Everybody around this table has covered these votes. Or you loseave it it. When it looks like it will sink, people will get off of it. Very bleak picture for health care. Tax reform not far behind. Im told it will try to do the development during the august recess and work on it in september. Have significant action on it by the end of the year. We are told if they cannot get it done by the First Quarter of 2018, you know how hard it is to do something in an Election Year , very bleak time and very little to show for controlling the entire federal machinery. Jonathan they are at 50 votes on health care. Not for the bill itself. Simply for the procedural vote to begin to be able to debate the bill. To republican andership in the senate those working this issue in the white house who tell me they think they can still get it done. Can they . They are absolutely hopeful they can get this done. The problem is the senators sitting on the sidelines with reservations are feeling to some extent cut out of the process. And even worse, they have objections to the bill. For some, it is too conservative. For others, it is not conservative enough. There is the criticism President Trump lodged. The house bill is too mean. It is not clear this revised version addresses that criticism. It is a tough circle to square for leadership. It puts the administration in a difficult spot. It campaigned on a variety of promises. This was one of the big ones, repealing and replacing obamacare. Mcconnell has stopped using the word repeal in his speeches. He is acknowledging at least implicitly that is not what they are doing. Even this much more modest to largely reform medicaid and not the system as a whole is now on the shoals. That is a dangerous place for any administration to be if it campaigns on promises which were popular and arrives in office and finds it deliver difficult to deliver on the promises. Face the voters. It will face the voters in 2020 and may not have a lot to show for it. Jonathan what does the president do the day after it goes down . Face the this is where i brie crazy like a fox argument again. The thing that is most interesting about this bill is it has made people aware of how important medicaid is as a program at all stages of life, for all types of people. Kids, women, the elderly, railamerica rural america, how far it stretches and how damaging the scale of the cuts could be, nearly 800 billion, to Everyday Health care people obtain and get. The poorest kids, the elderly in nursing homes. Here is something definitely true. The exchanges need to be fixed. The marketplace needs to be fixed. There are too few people providing plans under obamacare. Premiums are too high. Even the staunchest democrats agree there needs to be something to fix the marketplace. What could happen, it is possible there is some type of a partisan compromise that moves forward. Has said he has willingness to work on that type of legislation. Is it possible if the senate bill dies next week they come forward with some type of uprterm compromise to prop the exchanges, bring premiums down, get the marketplace function better, that can be hailed as a victory on both sides . Not repeal and replace. Not the signature promises republicans have campaigned on for seven years. But something donald trump could claim a victory . I think it is possible. Instead of repealing obamacare, youre talking about strengthening obamacare. Playing it off as fixing it and making it more plowable palatable. The Republican Party as a whole, anathema. One thing is for certain. That marketplace needs to be fixed. There is agreement on both sides that needs to be done. If this bill goes down, i am not sure it is possible for them to abdicate entirely under the something too short Critical Health care for a large portion of americans. Jonathan i want to come back to the legal team. You mentioned megan, there is a new lawyer. This comes after the extraordinarily strange chapter involving the president s lead attorney until now, i guess still very much part of the legal team. Can you explain this . He sent threatening emails to somebody he did not know . He went on a latenight in mill rant to someone who criticized him in an email. But the language was so abusive. Im going to move on you stuff you would not hear in modern conversation, particularly from the president s lawyer. He has apologized. They put out a statement saying it was after a long working day. I think we do need to think about the degradation of the office in general with some of the things happening in the antics happening. This is the personal lawyer of the president of the united states. We talk all the time about the president s tweets and whether they are appropriate or not. Becomingworried we are so immune to this, that this is just the latest in a 24 hour news cycle, and the next thing we brush off. Some of this stuff is unacceptable. You would not it would not be tolerated in any workplace. Certainly not my workplace. , among theentrating mattis, are we focusing on how severe some of this madness is and how deep it goes and how troubling it is and what kind of example we are sending to the rest of the world . Jonathan that tone is set from where . The president himself. That is the problem. When you have someone in that oval office who has no discipline, columbus we have seen him have message discipline is when he has gone dark three or four days max. Jonathan not a single public event on his schedule from sunday to wednesday. Are we in a position where he cannot be in public to enforce message discipline . Lets be serious. We have isis, the fight against isis. North korea, massive geopolitical instability and problems. And we are focused on his lawyer sending a latenight in no rent in mail around email rant. Jonathan that is what they would say. Isis is on its heels in iraq, defeated in mosul, essentially run out of raqqa. The stock market has hit consecutive highs this week. In his words, the president has done more legislatively than any president since washington, and he had a tough time with congress. They have an entirely different view of this. They would say we are spending too much time focusing on these issues and not enough on what they are publishing. What are they actually accomplishing . The accomplishments he pointed to our correct. Pointesident will rightly to those economic signs. One of the undeniably biggest accomplishments of the first six month has been giving business a spring in its step. Think of the bandwidth this is soaking up inside. Here is the amazing thing to reflect on. For all of the craziness and fascination of the last six months, there has not been a home or ant crisis at National Security event. Sanctum of the inner the oval office, it was reported this week the president s legal team is pushing for there to be a wall between him and his soninlaw so they cannot discuss the russia investigation. Frustration from the president s legal team that he injured kushner have been discussing the investigation. There are different legal teams. There are different p. R. Teams. Every person for themselves in this west wing, many of whom are going to face questioning from prosecutors. There is not the unity you would get in the last few white houses because by both circumstance and ofsonality, we have a bunch fedoms and people are worried about their own jeopardy rather than protecting their guy. Jonathan in the midst of that, there is the White House Communications operation which would normally be the one coordinating the message in terms of policy stuff. We have not seen sean spicer in public for more than two weeks. Few whited precious house briefings. Most of them offcamera. Where are we with the shakeup of the Communications Team . Is it coming . They seem to have faded into the background. The problem is they cannot get people to come in. They are desperate for talent. They cannot get people to come in. Because of the investigation, it is hard for people to leave. Jonathan you can understand the obsession with this. There has been more leaking out of this white house, leaking of conversations in the oval office, conversations between the president and foreign leaders, transcripts. It is quite remarkable. Leaking is a symptom of the underlying malady, which is you are looking at a white house which does not have any degree of consensus about what it wants to achieve. It has fractions vying for the attention of an easily distractible leader. You get the leaks because they are talking to each other and the president through the press. That is a huge problem for the white house. It is not really a communitys and challenge. It is an agenda challenge. This should have been a good week for the white house. The president is at his best on trips. The russia story overtook the positive message it wanted to send. Across as a communications challenge for the white house becomes a question, not of message discipline, but of discipline, of the president being able to remain focused on the things he wants to achieve, to communicate to his staff to bring them on the same page. When a president cannot bring the people working for him into agreement, that is when you get the leaks and infighting. That is when you get the tremendous albums that come with it that the white house problems that come with it at the white house now experiences. Thank you for being here. Jonathan President Trumps relationships with russia are again in the news this week. The trump family and said contradictory things about the trump organizations business ties to russia. Here is what donald trump told lester holt inmate in m ay. President trump i have had dealings over the years where i sold the house to a wealthy russian many years ago. I had the Miss Universe pageant which i owned for quite a while. I had it in moscow a long time ago. Other than that, i have nothing to do with russia. Jonathan in 2008, donald trump, jr. , told the real estate conference russians make up a disproportionate crosssection of a lot of our assets and he added we see a lot of money pouring in from russia. As craig unger reports in this months edition of the new republic, the money has been pouring in for the better part of three decades. As some of that money has come from questionable stories. Im pleased to welcome him to the program. Details, heavily researched story about trumps ties, business ties to russia, about the role russian money has played throughout his business career. Absolutely. I think we see these blockbusters dropping almost every day now in the