Weve assigned Police Officers to go check the other 42 assisted living facilities and Nursing Homes throughout the city. And todays take. Hillary clinton assessing blame and not only on herself, in her first live interview since losing the election with matt and savannah on the today show. Whats the biggest chunk . Whats the biggest cause of your loss . What part is comey, what part is russia, what part is you . Well, i think the determining factor was the intervention by comey on october 28th. But for that intervention, i would have won. But it stopped my momentum, it drove voters from me. Hello, everyone, im Andrea Mitchell in washington where tonight there will abe return engagement, Chuck Schumer and nancy pelosi back at the white house, this time as dinner guests following up on their meeting with President Trump last week which resulted in such favorable headlines that the president was clearly delighted. Nbc White House CorrespondentKristen Welker joining me now. This is carrying bipartisanship to a new level, dining with Chuck Schumer and nancy pelosi and not with the Republican Leaders . Reporter its incredibly significant, andrea, and i think it underscores the extent to which the president feels burned by the process of trying to overhaul obamacare. He felt as though he couldnt get the votes needed in his own party. He felt as though Republican Leadership didnt do what they needed to do to take the ball over the finish line. So as he looks to things like tax reform, infrastructure reform, the bottom line is he needs votes. So hes turning to the democratic leadership to try to work with them. I think the tax reform is going to be one of the topics at the forefront when he has dinner with pelosi and schumer tonight, but i also think theyll be discussing immigration as well as possibly health care, maybe some fixes to obamacare. This is significant and it marks really a new strategy here at the white house, and it comes, andrea, since meeting with a Bipartisan Group of house members today. After that dinner with the bipartisan members last night, it included three democrats. We expect him to confer with democrats in three states. They have indicated, andrea, that theyre willing to at least consider it. They know that in order to hold onto those seats, they need the trump voters, so this is a real possibility. But its a striking political move here at the white house and a very different way of proceeding with some of these big pieces of legislation than we saw in the early days of his presidency, andrea. Indeed. He wants policy, and what Chuck Schumer and nancy pelosi wants is something for the dreamers, protection for the dreamers, those immigrants for not just the next six months but beyond that. There is a tweet from where you are right now from the president. With irma and harvey devastation, tax cuts and tax reform is needed more than ever. Go, congress, go. So hes in a completely different gear right now. Reporter i completely different gear, and there is some frustration, i can tell you, on capitol hill as they await the allimportant details. What is this tax reform proposal going to look like . What are the specifics . Of course, we know initially the president had been pushing for, for example, andrea, 15 Corporate Tax rate. Given the fact republicans werent able to overhaul obamacare shls obamacare, repeal and replace it, they didnt get some of those tax rollbacks they were anticipating as part of the math. So now top aides here are acknowledging 15 will be tough. It might be closer to 20 . Sarah Huckabee Sanders didnt deny it when i questioned her on it. She said, look, the republicans want the lowest tax rate possible, but she didnt go back to that 15 number. I think this is going to be a key focus, but youre right, democrats are focused on immigration and daca, and i think youll start to see some levers, some pushing and pulling, as both sides try to work out their priorities, andrea. Kristen welker, thank you so much. A whole new chapter at the white house. In Hillary Clintons first live interview since the election on the today show this morning, she opens up. She has her new book called what happened . But she opens up about what she feels led to her stunning loss against donald trump, most notably james comey. When you heard the news that james comey had been fired by President Trump, what was your Immediate Reaction . He was fired for the wrong reason. But should have been fired . He should not have been fired for russia. He should have been disciplined. Whether or not fired, thats not for me to say, but he should have been disciplined for the way that he behaved on the email investigation. Joining me now is jennifer palmeri, former Communications Director for Hillary Clintons campaign, from a white house communicator for president obama. Good morning, jennifer. Good to see you. Well, the book and her interviews so far, shes clearly much more introspective than shes been in the past. Its clear shes not planning to run for Electoral Office again. But what about where she places the blame . Do you feel she clearly feels that jim comey, that first decision on july 5th to clear her of any legal wrongdoing, but then virtually indict her in a long News Conference, that that was out of line. It was. That was unprecedented, and i think my big beef with jim comey is he said he always wanted to play things by the book and not let outside considerations play into decisions that he made. If that were the case, he never would have done the july 5th press conference, he would have just made his decision not to prosecute the case any further and dropped it. And i think that was an original sin with comey, because once he had made it such a big issue, and he did he was the prosecutor, the judge and the jury in that case, and he laid out a very damning set of arguments against her, although concluded that there was no, as he once said, no reasonable prosecutor would proceed with a case here. But that was a very hard thing to overcome how much he had hes sitti the sitting fbi director had criticized her. Then to come back in october so close to the election, and the default at the fbi, the justice department, if you are close to the election, the default is supposed to be not to take any action, not to do anything that might impact the election. So, again, he chose to do something, take an extraordinary step that had a big impact, a determined impact on the election. Comey could have cost us the election. You were on a plane to des moines, as i recall, when you first got word that jim comey was reopening this with Anthony Weiners laptop. Actually, it was Kristen Welker who told me. I had been in the back of the plane with the press and she said, i just saw a story pop up that said the email investigation had been reopened up. I said, that has to be wrong. Neither she nor i could pull it back up, because as you recall, we had bad wifi. We had terrible wifi. Youre not told by the fbi this happened. It was all on news reports. And did you feel how did she feel, how did you feel . Did you feel sucker punched . I couldnt believe that it was true, and i kept looking for some other explanation. Once we finally, as best we could in that moment, figure out what had happened, i went up front to hillarys cabin to explain to her what had happened, and she took it like a champ. I said, i have something to tell you. What do you have to tell me . I said, its bad news. Its jim comey. She got a little smile on her face, and i said, so you knew we werent done . I knew we werent done, there had to be another round of something to deal with. In the moment youre thinking about how to handle this and you couldnt contemplate why he would do this. It was a big problem. It blocked out the sun for five days, meaning we couldnt get covered on anything else for a long time. I wanted to play another clip from this morning where she talks about don jr. Lets watch. He said he was trying to learn about your fitness for office. Whats your Immediate Reaction . Its ridiculous. Its another absurd lie to cover up what was really going on, which i hope we finally uncover and understand. So much has happened since she even wrote the book in terms of the june 16th meeting and the whole issue of russia, as she puts it in this interview today, you dont know what really took place, but theres certainly a lot out there. We still dont know. It was just in the last month or so just learning about trump jr. s meeting and then also telling one of the hill committees last week that they were asking russia about her fitness for office. Now, i wonder what fitness for office meant. I think it meant health. I wonder, is that why they chose to make health such a big issue for hillary and say that she was weak and that she wasnt up to the job . We heard rumblings about that, that the Trump Campaign was expecting some sort of bombshell email about her health that would come out. So i wonder now if you hear trump jr. Talk about fitness if thats what he meant. What about her going after Bernie Sanders and saying he damaged her to the point with progressives in particular, that he made a weapon to donald trump and helped her lose the election . You know, everybody wants hillary to say how she you know, she said in the book what actually happened and what factors she thinks hurt her. That hurt her. We knew in realtime that it was that he was hurting her. Its also true that once the primary was over, he did everything he could to help her, but a lot of damage was done, and thats a fact. I dont think that it is bad for our party to have this reckoning even if public and have this reckoning in the fall of 2017. There are i think that our party is eventually going to be able to come back together. I think its healthy that we have policy differences and we debate them out in public. The republicans have enormous problems and theyre too weak to even confront them and enormous differences, and i think that we can get through by the time we get to 18, be in an Even Stronger position than we are today. Jennifer palmeri, thank you so much to talk about what happened, Hillary Clintons book and her interview today. Good to see you. Thank you. Dont forget Rachel Maddows interview with Hillary Clinton. That is tomorrow at 9 00 eastern on the Rachel Maddow show only on msnbc. Coming up, a tragic story were following in florida. Five died after they were left powerless by irma. Stay with us. Or this john smith. Or any of the other hundreds of john smiths that are humana Medicare Advantage members. No, its this john smith. Who we paired with a humana team member to help address his own specific health needs. At humana, we take a personal approach to your health, to provide care thats just as unique as you are. No matter what your name is. You dont let anything lkeep you sidelined. Come on thats why you drink ensure. With 9 grams of protein, and 26 vitamins and minerals. For the strength and energy, to get back to doing what you love. Ensure, always be you. Every year we take a girls trip. Remember nashville . Kimchi bbq. Kimchi bbq. Amazing honky tonk . . I cant believe you got us tickets. I did. I didnt pay for anything. You never do. Send me what i owe. Ive got it. I mean, you did find money to buy those boots. Are you serious . Is that why you dont like them . Those boots could make a unicorn cry. Yeah, tears of joy. The bank of america mobile banking app. The fast, secure and simple way to send money. As the death toll from irma now climbs to 59 people, officials in hollywood, florida are reporting five nursing home residents have died after irma knocked out power to their facility earlier in the week. Police evacuated more than 100 residents of the nursing home today, and a criminal investigation is underway. Nbcs Gabe Gutierrez is at the scene. Gabe, what else have we learned about this tragedy . Reporter hi there, andrea. Good afternoon. You said it, this is a tragedy, it appears. Were expecting a News Conference in the next few minutes from local Hollywood Police as well as other authorities. We had heard a short time ago that, yes, as you mentioned, five people were confirmed dead. 115 others evacuated. Its still unclear what the conditions of those folks are, but we have spoken to several Family Members over the past few minutes who are very frustrated and theyre trying to figure out where their loved ones are and what their conditions are. We have heard from those Family Members that they hadnt had a lot of communication with this facility. Right now police say that a criminal investigation is underway and they say they received their first calls about this around 4 00 a. M. This morning. Officials say this had something to do with a problem with the ac, andrea, and of course, over the past few days, that has been a major concern throughout south florida and throughout the state. 15 Million People at some point in the state of florida have lost power. So we did hear from another employee at this facility a few hours ago that according to him, there were working generators at this facility yesterday, but this person was working on the day shift, and the question was what happened during the night shift, perhaps, that may have led to the ac perhaps going out . Thats all part of this investigation that is underway right now. This area is sealed off, and again, these 150 people were evacuated to other facilities. Were still awaiting word from authorities and a News Conference any moment now to find out what their conditions may be. Andrea . And gabe, do we know the ages of these victims . Reporter we dont. Thats another thing were hoping to learn, but we can tell you that from speaking with a case worker here, most of the residents here, according to this caseworker, were older than 65. We did speak with a Family Member who had a 58yearold sister here. So this was a facility that was treating mostly older folks, some had been here for years, and some of the Family Members said that they had previously very good interactions with the facility, others complained that the communication was not did not go so well, but again, were right now trying to find out one of the questions we have is why, if perhaps there was some problem with the generators, why authorities were not alerted to it, and thats all part of the investigation and something we hope to ask police in the next few minutes. Andrea . Thank you, gabe, and i know youll be reporting back with any updates at all. Thank you so much for that. Meanwhile, largescale evacuations are still underway in the u. S. Virgin island where irma tore through as a category 5. Nbcs ron mott joins me now from st. Thomas. Ron, what is the latest there . Reporter we understand that nbc news crews slept on that ship last night. They are taking someie evacuv e over to puerto rico today. We saw before we came to this relief station that the ship was still in the harbor, so they will be making their way to puerto rico and folks can get to points west, wherever they need to go, after they get to the island. Most of the people on the boat, tourists have been stranded here for the past week or so. Were at a relief station where the curfew just lifted 20 minutes ago, and were already, andrea, probably a good dozen, 15 people deep. Theyre coming in to get mres and some water to get through perhaps the next couple of days here. What i found remarkable, considering how much damage this Little Island withstood here, is people are managing to smile at each other. I have a condo down here and i know how important sanitation is. Its great to see humanity given people have lost just about everything. We did a quick tour around the island. There is significant damage here and its going to be a long, long time before this island is back up and running like it was before irma came through here. The eye of the storm passed north of st. Thomas within 20, 25 miz 25 miles, so the north end of this island has very heavy damage, and were talking sustained winds for 20 hours. That would damage a lot of these buildings that had been around for many, many decades and they simply couldnt withstand the battering from this storm. The tsa, we came in on a coast guard cutter yesterday. There is tsa here and theyre going to spend the better part of the next few days trying to get their screens up and tested so supplies a lot of people on the mainland want to get down here, it will be much easier to do that when the airport is open to community traffic. The control tower is out of order there. Theyve brought in a temporary tower, so its step by step, day by day. I spoke to the Lieutenant Governor last night who was polling the governor and just asked everybody here to have expectations one day at a time. In the capitol of st. Thomas, thank you very much. Some relief hurricane efforts. Last night hand in hand raised 44 million for harvey and irma. Oprah winfrey and beyonce participated which spanned four networks. There was also a performance by Stevie Wonder and the gospel choir. Lean on me ill be a friend, ill help you carry on it wont be long im going to need somebody to lean on just like the people who own them, every business is different. But every one of those businesses will need legal help as they age and grow. Whether it be with customer contracts, agreements to lease a space or protecting your