Well read between the lines. And sweeping tax overhaul that could become this Administration First legislative win. Democrats cry foul last minute. Well tell you whats next for the bill and what it could mean for your bottom line if it became the law of the land. But begin this afternoon with flynn fallout. Premt tweeting this, quote, i have to fire general flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the fbi. He has pled guilt to those lies. Its a shame because it was lawful and nothing to hide. Twitter response comes after the president fielded questions about Michael Flynn guilty plea and plans to cooperate with Robert Mueller investigation. [ inaudible question ] no, im not. And what has been shown is no collusion. Well, team of experts join us in a moment to break that down. But begin with nbc jeff bennett in the white house in washington. And we heard you get the questions before President Trump before he went to new york. What is he saying about the news yesterday and how unexpected was the tweet this morning. Well, entirely unexpected. He was doing it between the motorcade in new york city. And the implication, david, is President Trump knew that general flynn lied to the fbi when he fired him h remember, the official line is that the president fired flynn for lying to the Vice President. But if the president fired mike flynn for lying, knowingly lying to the fbi, there is a whole loss of obstruction potential obstruction of justice questions. I reached out to the officials of implications of that tweet. Waiting to hear back. I also got a chance to ask the president this morning, one, if hes concerned about what mike flynn might tell the special counsel. And, secondly, if he still stands by his former National Security adviser. Take a listen. No collusion. No collusion. [ inaudible question ] well see what happens. So he says well see what happens. Thats sort of a standard dodge the president likes to use, so dont read too much into that. But we are all waiting to see what Michael Flynn is going to provide the special counsel in exchange to what appears to be a fairly lenient plea deal. Let me ask you what the president saying there whats mirrored by their staff is saying . How did they react to the news of special counsel. Reporter well, they say that he learned of it for the most part when we all did, in the news. And that the white house was blindsided by this. Another person close to the president says that this development is bad. To simply put, very bad for the president. There is no real good way to spin this. You see the president doing his best there to talk about Something Else. He would like to talk about taxes, that huge victory the republicans scored last night in the senate. How much is this over shadowing that, jeff, the president up late last night . Said he received a phone call. He wants that to be the paramount thing we are all talking about. To what degree is he not at this point . Reporter certain amount of frustration. He was in new york trying to slam democrats for not getting on board and joining the republicans who did vote for that plan. Republicans have made clear on the record that they needed to pass tax reform, or i guess tax cuts, not just to have something to shoal folks back home, their constituents but also show republican donors having control of all the levers of power in washington actually means something and can actually come into fruition in terms of legislative policy. So thats the conversation the president wants to be having although hes certainly be deviled by all the attention on his former National Security adviser. Thank you very much. Joining frus the white house this afternoon. And President Trump tweeting out that he knew flynn lied to the Vice President and the fbi. But lets take a look at the time line. January 24th manufacture v investigated by the fbi. A day later asks comey if he can let the investigation go. Two lays later President Trump says in the first and only solo News Conference hes had the white house, that he did not direct Michael Flynn to discuss anything. And then on may 9th fired james comey head of fbi. So did he know he knew . Lets bring in our panel msnbc here in new york and editor legal with me in new york as well. And special assistant to president obama ned price and director of National Security george mason university. Dana, let me start with you and this tweet who we say the president may be undone by a bigger character, tweeting while he was in the motorcade in new york. What do you make of that . What do i make of the president s tweets . Thats a large question. I can minimize it, because in the law, the rules of evidence on twitter to be used against a defendant in a case. So we parse those words, and i guess its the criminal defense in me that says well it could be an issue of punctuation. Consider if he said i fired flynn because he lied to the Vice President , and semi colon and lied to the fbi. But if prosecutors want today look at this as a possible admission, it becomes a statement that can be used against not only the president but anybody, anybody who makes a Statement Like that on twitter. Thats why Law Enforcement love social media and twitter and facebook thats where criminal makes case sz against themselves by posting pictures or making statements that directly incriminate them and are admissible. So ultimately whether or not this tweet is bad for the president comes down to grammar and punctuation. We are splitting syntax and looking at punctuation as well here. But the focus is on obstruction of justice to a large degree. What did we learn yesterday about how Robert Mueller is approaching that in particular . Well, i think we now know thats very serious problem. I think we know that it may include pence, it may include white House Counsel don mcghan. I think yesterday it was a move that was signaling a lot of people, including a senior and very Senior Member of the trump Transition Team, host are now being implacated in what looks like conversations, both around the russia sanctions but also the obstruction charge. And i think what trump does, when he kind of tries this one, two, faint, i didnt do it, but even if i did, it would be legal, but even if it was illegal i didnt do it. I think its too clever by half. And as danny says, judges we have seen time and again taking judicial notice, dropping trumps tweets into footnotes. So when he more or less admits, well, i know flynn did something illegal, and then also i went and told comey to go easy on him, he pretty much made himself obstruction of justice tshirt right there. Let me ask you how you processed the information in the documents. The narrowness of the charge brought against Michael Flynn tell you about this investigation . Well, look, at the end of the day h you know, Michael Flynn has only pled to the lies that he told to the fbi. Very minor sort of lies about what happened in the larger scheme of things, we know they have potential charges on him for the failing to register as foreign agent, the turkey issue, son, a lot of potential charges. He pled to one count to the fbi. So that suggests hes probably profered some information to the investigators. I wouldnt jump to what that is, but he has something to tell them, i think thats whats important about this. Let me ask you about this, that being there was a senior transition official, very senior transition official as well. Help us understand who Michael Flynn might have been communicating with, as you understand it, or as you confer what was happening a few months ago . Well, learned something very interesting yesterday, david, in these documents, that is Michael Flynn was not acting on his own volution. He did not go rowingue. He was following orders. So the question becomes who was calling the shots. As you mentioned these documents yesterday referenced a very senior transition official and senior transition official. The circumstantial evidence and reporting to date has suggested that the very senior transition official is Jared Kushner. Jared kushner who has quite a bit of exposure in this case got a lot more yesterday because it seems that Jared Kushner was the one who instructed Michael Flynn to make contact with the russians ahead of a United NationsSecurity Council resolution vote on israel settlement ac activity. The bigger question is who was the senior transition was in this case, there was some speculation kt mcfarland who was the deputy. What makes that interesting, as you can imagine, the deputy to the National Security adviser would not be ordering the National Security adviser to be doing anything. She would most likely be taking orders from somewhere else above the food chain. And i think that certainly raises the possibility that the ultimate person giving those orders was someone like jared flynn or yes even president elect at the time donald trump. Jared kushner or President Trump as you said. Let me ask you here about you wrote here about collusion. And this is a squishy thing. Legal concept. Where is the bar set . And how hard is that to have a conversation about that . Its such a good question. And i would commend to people, jeff tubin just did a fantastic piece that went online on the o new yorker today. Which we know to be true. There is no collusion. You can have a conspiracy of a bunch of people can conspire to break a federal law or statute. But when trump says over and over, no collusion, no collusion, thats not a thing that mueller is even technically investigating. So really the question is, is he doing Something Else that we are all calling sloppily, i think, legal experts would tell you, sloppily calling collusion, that is in fact some kind of conspiracy either to talk to russia about getting these wikileaks documents or to take money from foreign agents as part of a campaign. Those are actual federal statutes. We can talk about that. But whatever collusion means, i think its a way of deflecting and dis tracting from the actual possible conspiracy charges and the things that mueller is investigating. Let me ask you about, a little psychoanalysis here, but we know now what he was lying about or the fact that he did lie t now it seems the focus shifts why he was doing that. And the president is raising the spector of that as well. Is that inquiry now . It is an inquiry because there is an argument to be made he may not have been doing anything wrong. Sure, you can make the argument violation of logan act, but its been at deaths door for hundreds of years, last prosecution was i believe in 1983. So anything else flynn had to be believe he was doing so at the orders of others. Few good men defense. Someone else ordered the code red thats why i made the call. Really does raise the question why lie. He might not have believed he was lying. Yes, he pleaded guilty, but this developly not a statement that he truly believed was making a false statement. In reality he was presented with a prosecution for section 1001, and he made a business decision to pled guilty to it and of course he put those facts on the record and considered to have done it. But he may not have been aware that he was lying. Although his plea indicates otherwise. Let me ask what you the cooperative Michael Flynn means for the investigation Going Forward outlined in the plea yesterday that heel cooperate fully. What will that entail . What do we know what that will entail . Obviously he cant do anything under cover because the fact this was a public plea. Whats the role hes going to play Going Forward . I think hes going to have to tell the prosecutors everything he knows. He was pretty high up in the conversations going on. And in the white house for good party. So he knows a lot what was being discussed. To the extent hes trying to make charges. Anything there . Who knows. But clearly profered something on him. So there is a lot here, but again i think a lot of people are jumping to conclusions what he might say. We dont know what hes got. And let me ask you about the role here that Michael Flynn played within the campaign, Transition Team, and the administration. Of course it was a brief stint there. But he was the president elect for a substantial shaamount of time . What might he know . Michael flynn was one of the earliest boosters of President Trump. But also featured in some of the notorious scenes from both the campaign and in the transition. Perhaps there is none more notorious than the meeting in december of 2016 with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn and gore kof. It was during that meeting there would be proposed a back channel, private back channel between the trump team and russians using russian infrastructure to avoid u. S. Surveillance. So thats going to be of interest to the prosecutors, not only what was discussed but why. Why did the campaign, why did the Transition Team at the time find it necessary, or at least convenient or valuable to have a potential back channel with the russians that would be able to evade u. S. Surveillance. Of course Michael Flynn was also there during the first 24 days of the administration itself. And he could shed light on whether there was any quid pro quo in the first policy decisions that the Trump Administration put forward visa vie russia for anything that happened during the election or transition itself. Youve written about being the two parallel legal tracts in the america. And i want to ask you americas cognizance whats going on here. This is complicated web whats happened here. Twlas a cultural change when this happened . Is this somehow easier for americans to get their arms around . I think one level yes. I think anybody who has watched law and order and the mob get chased down and flipping up and what a roll up looks like says, yeah, i kind of know what that looks like. At another level i think that, and this was why i wrote this piece, that i think we need to be honest about the fact that a lot of people dont understand whats going on, a lot of folks are in media bubbles in which this has been dismissed as fake news. We saw the white house saying not only that obama hired flynn and this is all obamas fault, but also this whole thing is going to be wrapped up by christmas. And i think there is an awful lot of folks who see this piece with a larger sense the whole thing is a witch hunt as trump keeps saying and about to go away. So its hard to say whether this breaks through any of that. Tan particularly i think this in tandem with the tax bill yesterday meant there was so much crazy to contend with. I think at the end of the day, people do understand that something serious is going on. Great piece. Thank you very much. Thanks to all of you. Up next republicans mark a make are victory in the effort to overhaul the countrys tax code. The tax cuts and jobs act as amended is passed. But will the Russian Investigation over shadow his progress as he approaches a major milestone in office . Do stay with us. Les event is he. I can guide you in. No, thanks , santa. I got this. Santa uh, it looks a little tight. Perfect fit. Santa needs an f150. Thats ford, americas best selling brand. Hurry in today for 0 financing for 72 months across the full line up of ford cars, trucks and suvs. For a limited time, get an additional 1,000 cash back on top of 0 financing for 72 months. Get these exclusive offers during the ford year end sales event. Live binge dvrd shows,te sport, while painting your toes. Get these exclusive offers on demand laughs, during long bubble baths. Tv on every screen is awesome. The Xfinity Stream app. All your tv at home. The most on demand, your entire dvr, top networks and live sports on the go. Included with xfinity tv. Xfinity. The future of awesome. We got no democrat help and i think thats going to cost them big in the election. Because basically they voted against tax cuts. And i dont think politically its good to vote against tax cuts. But what we are doing, if you look at it, we are going to grow the country. We are going to grow jobs. We are going to be growing everything. President trump and fellow republicans in a celebratory mood on capitol hill passed a massive tax reform bill. That bill passing without a single vote from democrats, 51 senators in favor, 49 against it. Only republican to oppose the legislation, long time bob corker of tennessee, also not running for reelection. Majority leader Mitch Mcconnell called this a victory for the American People. Now to make america more competitive and keep jobs from being shipped offshore, and provide substantial relief to the middle class. Joining me now is tim philips president of americans for conservative group. Great to speak to you. I want to play a little bit of video. John test tear from montana saw this bill fort first time around the time that i did it, a little over 10 00 last night and this was his reaction. This is the tax bill. See how thick it is. This is what it looks like. Oh, no, l