President s own party approaching open revolt on the issue of health care. So far the response from the white house has been digging in. Hold on. Hold on. Let me i am trying to answer your question jonathan if you can calm down. White house Secretary Sean Spicer defiant and combative. He stands by it but youre mischaracterizing what happened today. Defending the president s claim former president Obama Wiretapped trump tower despite leaders from both parties saying theres no proof. We see no evidence of that. Spicer continuing to justify the president s baseless accusation. Theres widespread reporting that throughout the 2016 election there was surveillance done on a variety of people. The leader of the Senate Intelligence committee rejecting spicers claim in the statement saying we see no indications that trump tower was the subject of surveillance. The republican chair of the house Intelligence Committee saying the president s wiretapping claim is wrong. Do you have any evidence to suggest that any collection may have picked up Donald Trumps communications at all . Do you have any evidence to suggest. Other than general flynn we dont. The ranking democrat on that committee tells cnn he expects fbi director james comey to debunk it when he testifies before congress on monday. Theres no evidence of this at all. This as the Trump Administration confronts sharp criticism over the president s Budget Proposal. We cant spend money on programs because they sound good. Congressman Harold Rogers deeming the budget careless and counter productive. Senator marco rubio says proposed cuts to the state department undermine americas ability to keep our citizens safe. The budget aims to slash billions from Government Agencies to boost military spending hitting hard, social Services Like after School Programs for children and programs that feed the elderly. Meals on wheels sounds great. Thats a state decision to take the federal money and give it to the states. We want to give you money for programs that dont work. I cant defend that anymore. Its a wonderful program. Its one i would never vote to cut even one dollar. The white house also facing another sobering reality. The gops Health Care Bill may fall short of the votes needed to pass in the house. They now have 21 republicans saying they will vote no or are leaning against it. House leadership cant afford to lose another vote. Play host to german chancellor Angela Merkel among other things hoping to get tips on how to handle russian president Vladimir Putin. It will be interesting to see what reporter she calls on and what they ask and if they ask about the wiretapping claims. White house press Secretary Sean Spicers combative and angry defense of the president s unproven claims is nothing short of extraordinary. Heres more of that contentious press briefing. Are you saying that the president still stands by his allegation that president obama ordered wiretapping or surveillance of trump tower despite the fact that the Senate IntelligenceCommittee Said they see no indication that it happened . First of all he stands by it but your mischaracterizing what happened today. I understand that and at the same time, they acknowledge that they have not been in contact with the department of justice. But again i go back to what i said at the beginning. Its interesting how at the same time where were you coming to the dense of that same Intelligence Committee and members when they said there was no connection to russia. You din seem to report it then. So you want to come men and perpetrator as false narrative when those individuals have gone out time and time again. When chairman nunez said there was no information that hes aware of that that existed. That got zero reporting. When he when out yesterday and said i think thats impossible. The bottom line is that the president said theres information coming forward and going on during the 2016 elections. Where does the question . I believe he will. Jim. You were just quoting sean hannity there. The house and Senate Intelligence committee. I get youre going to cherry pick. Youre citing sean hannity. You also tend to overlook all the other sources there because i know you juan to cherry pick it. You do but where was your concern about the New York Times report something you didnt seem to have a concern about that. We have done plenty of reporting on all of it. No you juan to cherry pick one piece of commentary. Thats all been looked at. How do you know all of this . How are you such an expert in this. This has been looked at. How do you know its been looked at . Im sorry. Can you tell me how you know that all of this has, quote, been looked at. Youre asking me you made a statement, you said, quote, all of this has been looked at. So when your outlets said its all been looked at. The president s and the russians during the 2016 campaign it sounds like there might have been intercepted communications. The house Intelligence Committee chairman did mention that and we have reported that. Others have reported that on our air and various publications but sean you are refusing to answer, the question youre refusing to answer is whether or not no, i just said jonathan. You have a senate house Intelligence Committee, both leaders from both parties on both of the panels saying they dont see any evidence of wiretapping. How can the president go on. Your mischaracterizing what chairman nunez said. He said i think its possible hes following up on this. Youre stating that you somehow right. We have already cleared that up and he said exactly that but the president already said clearly when he referred to wiretapping he was referring to surveying. But it sounds like that you and the president were saying now we dont need wiretapping anymore. Thats not true anymore. No, no. So now we need other forms or surveillance. Thats cute but at the end of the day we talked about this for three or four days. He is referring to board surveillance. And when it does but where was the no, i think the president addressed that last night and said theres more to come. A Tour De Force of the concept of strong and wrong. Thats what you just saw on display right there. Lets bring in our panel. Politics editor for the root and professor of politics and journalism. Jason johnson, cnn political analyst David Gregory and abby phillip. She was at yesterdays white house briefing. Lets go with that impression. Abby phillip, youre sitting in there and this is, i get it. Theyre upset. They dont like it. Spicer doesnt like being chased. He feels that theyre being chased more on this than on the russian contacts i get it all but he did not introduce a single piece of information. A single fact to back up anything he was upset about in substance about this claim by the president which was proven time and again to be baseless. What was it like. We had all been sitting there for about an hour before sean spicer came in. Partly because he was probably trying to figure out how to deal with the issue. The statement had just come out not that long before that and what happened when he finally did start answering those questions was really an attempt to distract at the main issue at hand and there is no proof what the president is saying and he confirmed that theres never going to be a time it seems that the white house will be willing to acknowledge that the president may have been wrong or that he misspoke or that he maybe spoke without knowing all of the facts. And sean spicer made that very, very clear. Every time he was pressed on the substance of what the president said, the subject was changed to Something Else about why we should have been outraged about some other unrelated issue and that went on for, there was a ten minute reading of news clips none of which bolsted the president s claims. It went on for quite sometime. Thats right. Hes fighting his own party on this. These are the republicans and democrats that have said unequivocally no evidence of wiretapping and paul ryan rep, evan nunez and attorney general sessions said no and representative adam schiff and mark warner. You have been in plenty of these press briefings. Have you ever been in the middle of this one. Yeah. I have been in worse than this is. This is a press corps at work and white house with a credibility problem on the defense. I thought this was respectful. All things considered. It got heated but only got heated because sean spicer is both in and has put himself in a very difficult position. To be the spokesman for a president that entered something completely unsubstantiated for which there is no evidence and for a president that is not willing to be accountable when he says something that is dem demonstrably untrue. Presumably theyll pick up and continue to investigate whether there was incidental surveillance or information that was picked up as a result of any sort of surveillance, that was jermaine to an investigation into whether the Trump Campaign had contacts that were inappropriate for the russian government in a time when the russian government was trying to manipulate the election. Everything else is a waste of time. Sean spicer is trying to defend something for which there is no defense. He is trying to cherry pick other aspects of coverage that this white house pays such close attention to. Any scrap to suggest there was something nefarious going on by the government. No indication that the Obama Administration ordered surveillance of trump tower. That was the claim, its garbage. Move on to the rest of the investigation. But as you know david i see these tuns as a gift because when the white house wants to make it about lets talk about what is fact and what is being spun or what is fake, its an opportunity for journalism. Spicer provided a lot of them yesterday. He said, hey, you guys didnt cover. When they said theres no connection to russia, nobody has said theres no connection to russia. Nobody in the know. They said proof of collusion words matter. Collusion means you are working with the russians. We see no proof of that. Theyre continuing to look there early in that process but no connection, we see nothing but connection. I mean, when clapper, when he said no evidence of collusion that was covered all over the place. Sure, no question. You didnt go after the New York Times is wrong. That piece of the New York Times didnt mention anything like what the president is talking about. Thats why i said strong and wrong. The problem theyre going to have here though, if they stick to this, what happens . I see a man going through a break down. I wonder, im all serious about this. Sean spicer has been a communications guy. I wonder if he goes home and flaunts himself every day after these meetings. His anger and frustration i dont think is entirely with the press. Its with the realization that he has to put his reputation out there to defend dishonest things his boss is saying. Usually a press secretary is only two or three years in the job anyway but theres some sort of work. Every morning he gets thrown into the deep end of the pool to explain behavior that is untrue and as a fundamentally honest man and i do believe he is an honest man he is frustrated he has to continue to defend dishonesty. Do you agree . I think sean is in a tough spot. He is always out there as the spokesman for the white house for tuchlt s. Government, for the president. Needing to defend what his boss wants him to defend and he is out there doing this performance every day with his boss watching very very closely and making sure that he is doing the right thing so yeah this is an audience of one a lot of times for sean and virtually everybody else that goes out there on behalf of this white house. This president is very uncompromising about this idea of loyalty. Are you going to go out there and defend me at all costs . And the president himself has talked about the question of will he ever acknowledge when maybe something is wrong. Maybe he has something wrong and he said when you do that you give your enemies ammunition so i think it will be hard for someone like sean spicer to go against this sort of motivating force of his own boss that says, you know what, if we let them have this inch they will take a mile. We cant afford to have that. I think whats important here is in the media we dont have to make such ironclad judgments about all of this. This is Good Journalism at work. Pounding away. Asking questions, asking follow up. You say you vefd of surveillance, where is it . Where is it day in and day out . We have all the major chiefs of the Intelligence Committee saying there is no substantiation of this. We keep investigating. As journalists we keep working. We dont have to go toe to toe with them on these issues. We can keep doing the job that reveals itself. Remember the person that can get these answers the fastest is the president. He has chosen not to do so. Thanks to you all. Appreciate it. The president s Budget Proposal is also a big deal. Once again triggering bipartisan out rage over deep cuts to social programs that impact a lot of low income people who are trump voters. Why . Is this just a starting point or are we going to look at another war . Next. An unlimited data plan is only as good as the network its on. And verizon has been ranked number one for the 7th time in a row by rootmetrics. man hey, uh, whats rootmetrics . Its the nations largest independent study and it ranked verizon 1 in call, text, data, speed and reliability. woman do they get a trophy . Not that i know of. But you get unlimited done right. man 2 why dont they get a trophy . man 3 they should get something. woman 2 how about a plaque . I have to drop this. My arms getting really tired. Unlimited on verizon. 4 lines, just 45 per line. Why are you checking i want to see if it changed. Credit scores dont change that much do they . Really . Ill take it sir, your credit. Is great, right . When was the last time you checked . Yeah, i better check my credit score. Here, try credit karma. Its free. Alright, no more surprises. Credit karma. Give yourself some credit. Just barely a reflection within the gop about whether or not this is the right way to move forward. Its at 21 as of 11 00 p. M. Eastern time last night. That is relevant because it mean ifs that many republicans dont vote for it they would not have enough vote to pass this bill. What does the white house do now . David gregory, were going to have it on later today. Hes going to be talking on the show about how he feels about his own count and this is unusual to be fighting with your own and something fundamental. But assuming theyre anywhere near 21, what does that mean about what needs to get done. They have to negotiate over this bill and the speaker has to exercise his leadership. I keep thinking about what john boehner said, why there would never be a replacement on obamacare and he said because republicans never agreed on the way forward for health care. The only problem to me is that its capturing a moment in time that would move. Ultimately the white house would drive some of that. I do think this would ultimately test and it keeps moving through committee despite disagreement the more hes going to get members to get on board. If they want to see anything like tax reform or some of that promise will be look some of these things will be dealt with once they get to a conference committee. Professor its a very porn point. It made it through these three committees so far and what law makers on the house side right now that want to be the lawmakers that break this. You saw lisa running away because she did not want to answer the simple question of how this is going how she was going to vote, right . I mean they may not love this bill or even like it but they also dont want to be the one to break it. They dont want to be the one to break it but theyre also the ones that will suffer the consequences at the voting booth. Thats why theyre concerned but john boehner said theyre not going to be able to figure this out. Thats why i said before the replacement bill will come out on wednesday after the midterm. I dont think anybody right now wants to push this bill through as much as the republicans want to do tax reform and you have to get rid of it before you can do tax reform. They see these town halls and they dont want to face the consequences for it and unless donald trump can convince them ill visit every single district and make sure that you get elected theyre not going to do it. This is the first time they have been in the cross hairs of getting it done. This is the same problem that theyre dealing with on the budget side to the professors point sounds good until you have to pay for those cuts at the polls in your own district. This got sumd up really well in an interview with Pete Alexander and the budget man. Listen to this. We cant spend money on programs because they sound good. A program called the shine, rural counsel of pennsylvania that provides after School Educational programs for individuals in those areas which just so happens to be the state that helped propel President Trump to the white house. They tell me today that 800 individuals, no longer, children that need it most will no longer be provided the educational care they need. Lets talk about after School Programs generally. Theres supposed to be Educational Programs and theyre supposed to help kids that dont get fed at home get fed so they do better in school. Theres no demon strabl evidence theyre doing that. Actually helping results. Well start with you. That was a very controversial thing. We all have the same experience. I have tons of information all night. The harvard study cle