Happen to be republicans, because were having no help its only obstruction from the democrats. The democrats are destroying health care in this country. We have had no help. We will get no votes. No matter what we do, if we gave you the greatest plan in the history of the world, you would have no democratic vote. Its all going to be republicans or bust. And the republicans are working very, very hard on getting a Great Health Care plan. So now its the senates turn to act, and, again, i hope that theyre going to act in a very positive manner. I can tell you the republican senators are trying very hard. The democrats are really in our way. We want millions of americans like rea and dan to finally have the quality and Affordable Health care that they deserve. Theyve been unfairly penalized for too long a period of time. Were working very hard to fix this big problem. I want to thank you very much. And to these two great families i want to thank you very much. Thank you. [ applause ] i have never felt pressured in any way, or in relationship. In the three plus years that ive been the director of the National Security agency, to the best of my recollection, i have never been directed to do anything i believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical or inappropriate. And to the best of my recollection, during that same period of service, i do not recall ever pressured to do so. Just a few moments ago, the ranking democrat appeared before reporters with this to say. This is mark warner of virginia. There was no denial about the contents, at least that i heard, about the contents of the post story. So many more questions to be asked. All right. We have a number of reports now. We have this story covered from all angles. Kasie hunt on the hill, Pete Williams on the nominee for the fbi director. Kasie, this hearing, again, nominally about the reauthorization of the fisa, of the foreign Intelligence Surveillance act. A lot of trumprussia, too, though. What are you hearing from lawmakers . Reporter craig, this story, of course, changed dramatically after that Washington Post report about dan coats and this reported request from the president to talk to jim comey about the russia investigation. That of course we have seen republicans and democrats focus on throughout the course of the morning during this hearing. An democrats, of course, at times agitated about these intelligence chiefs refusal to basically say anything, to provide a legal justification for why they werent answering questions, whether this conversation took place, whether there was executive privilege, et cetera. So i think here what you saw broadly from these intelligence chiefs was a refusal to answer questions or give details about this. John mccain on the republican side called the difference between what they said and whats been reported to have happened as orwellian. Senator marco rubio pressing very hard and an gus king, the independent senator from maine who sits on the democratic side, really pressed the nsa director rogers on this point. Take a look. Why are you not answering these questions . Is there an invocation of the president of the United States of executive privilege, is there or not . Not that im aware of. Why are you not answering . I feel its inappropriate. What you feel isnt the answer. The answer is, why are you not answering the questions . Is it an invocation of executive privilege . If there is, lets know about it. If there suspect, answer the questions. I stand by the comments i made. Im not interested in repeating myself. I dont mean that in a contentious way. Well, i do mean it in a contentious way. I dont understand why youre not answering our questions. Reporter its importanto note this level of contentiousness with intelligence chiefs very outside the norm for a hearing like this. This sets the sage for jim comey, very highly anticipated testimony tomorrow before this committee. There is an expectation he will be more forthcoming on some of these questions than these intelligence chiefs were today. Again, the kind of expectation from members of the committee who i have talked to and their aides, is that he wont get into the details of the fbis investigation, into whether or not there was collusion between Trump Officials and russians throughout the course of the campaign. But that he might be willing to answer more questions about this potential obstruction of justice. Why do they expect him to be more forthcoming than the intelligence chiefs we saw today . I think partly because there has been a sense privately and publicly that the former fbi director has really changed his approach in the wake of his firing by the president. And i think theres been a little bit of expectation lowering in recent days. Theres been reports hes not going to say that President Trump obstructed justice in this case. But then again, hes essentially a witness in this special prosecutor, mr. Muellers investigation of all of this. So the question is, what are the facts of his interactions . And he has been interacting with if senators on this committee, hend the chairman richard burr. They talked o saturday. Burr has been relatively open for this committee to usually completely nail down a lot of these things. He told reporters he doesnt anticipate that jim comey has been told theres anything he cant say. That fbi director mueller has been cleared for takeoff essentially. So the approach to that hearing and i think there was a question about what the dni, coats and the nsa director rogers were going to do here today. They got their answer there. But it was really a total unknown going in here. I dont think theres a sense of that with jim comey. I know youre still gathering up reaction from lawmakers. Kasie hunt for us on capitol hill. Pete williams, the president in ohio. Hes just made one speech. We expect another. Flooding the zone, if you will, in terms of counterprogramming. I believe thats a term Kristen Welker used earlier. Via tweet a few hours ago, the president announced his pick for the fbi. What do we know about Christopher Wray . Reporter quite a it wibit. He has experience in federal law enforcement. He served as a u. S. Attorney in atlanta, where he worked with local fbi officials and he had a number of different positions up here in washington, at the Justice Department headquarters, from 2003 to 2005 he was the assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division. And when he was there, that was the only dion that dealt directly with the fbi on a daytoday matters. So he knows the fbi from both the street agent level and the headquarters level. Hes been in private practice, representing Chris Christie during the bridge gate controversy in new jersey. He knew Chris Christie, because when they were both together as federal prosecutors. And he also knows james comey. When he was the assistant attorney general, he reported to the Deputy Attorney general who at the time was james comey. So hes getting generally positive responses from republicans on in the senate. Theyll have a confirmation hearing in another couple of weeks. They have not scheduled it yet. Hes been through this background clearance process several times before from his other positions in the government. The announcement itself seemed a bit odd. Typically when a president trots out his new person to run the fbi, is there not a ceremony . Reporter ive been back and looked at the previous four all the way back to reagan, in terms of the modern times of the fbi, when you were expecting to appoint an fbi director to serve for a tenyear term, that certainly was the practice, to have a rose garden ceremony. Pete williams, thank you. Toward the end of the hearing, kasie hunt just mentioned this, john mccain and directoroats exchange. Ry interesting the crux of it that the Washington Post story. Take a listen. I guess if i understand you right, director coats, is that in a closed session, you are more than ready to discuss this situation. Is that correct . I would hope we would have the opportunity to do that. I hope we can provide you with that opportunity. You know, its just shows what kind of an orwellian existence that we live in. Michael mcfall is a former ambassador to russia and msnbc contributor. And ari melbourne, msnbcs chief legal correspondent. The senator from arizona went on to say what was orwellian is that you can pick up the paper and read these details about conversations that mr. Coats wouldnt deny happened. But his point was, these are privileged conversations. If theres a conversation with the president about stopping the russia probe, would that be a privileged conversation . The short answer is the white house isnt exerting executive privilege right now. So they should have been free to say whatever they wanted. Even if this were a , its not even a position the white house has yet asserted. Thats why the witnesses looked so awkward. They referred to potential reasons not to talk, and there may be valid ones, but they didnt invoke them in a legal sense. Theres no legal reason they could not have spoken out . Not yet asserted, which is bad for the white house and these witnesses, even though there was good news for the white house, namely a kind of a vague blanket denial. This is senator angus king, senator from maine, known for being fairly even tempered. He was visibly angry at one point. Here it is. Its your position that the special counsel is entitled to ask you questions about this but not an Oversight Committee of the United States congress . It is my position that i have to be particularly careful about not stepping into the special counsels lane. Where does the special counsel get defense, is there some legal basis for that . Its a straightforward question. Its not involving discussions with the president but with mr. Comey. What is the legal basis for your refusal to testify to this committee . Im not sure i have a legal basis. Your take . He seems honest there at the end. Theres an old song whoop, there it is. Whoop, there it was. That is damning from the director of intelligence. Im not sure i have a legal basis not to answer the question. You are under oath, you are appearing before the congressional committee. Yo need to answer unless you have a legal reason not to answer in typical course. So he could have just said, i dont feel like answering the question. Thats why this hearing is more of a beginning than an end. It may be that later a legal reason is given. What if anything new did we learn today . Well, nonanswers are also answers. The fact that theyre not disclosing facts that they know that they think would be good for the president in and of itself says something. Theres a lot more to this story. This is really the beginning. I think all of the gentlemen today didnt want to say things before the testimony tomorrow. And the last thing i would remind you of, remember, the dni and the nsa, their area of responsibility is not investigations of the russians. They do a different job. And i think therefore to be pulled into that is something they feel uncomfortable, irrespective of who is the president. Thats just not a job they are signed up to do. Theres also this Interesting Exchange between senator marco rubio and admiral rogers. Again, we should note here that marco rubio, one of two senators last night who apparently had dinner at the white house with tom cole and President Trump. This is admiral rogers saying hes never been directed to do anything illegal. Senator rubio wanted to know if he had ever been asked. Take a listen. Has anyone ever asked you, now or in the past, this administration or any administration, to issue a statement that you knew to be false . For me, i stand by my previous statement. Ive never been directed to do anything in my three plus years not directed, asked. That i felt to be inappropriate or pressured to do so. Have you ever been asked to Say Something that isnt true . I stand by my statement. Director coats . I do likewise. What was marco rubio getting at . I think he was getting at the phenomena that weve been discussing since this hearing today, namely that these witnesses were eager to discuss their feelings and their impressions. But not the facts. In other words, they were happy to discuss what they felt was directed at them, not what the president said, not what the president actually asked them to do, namely the words that came out of his mouth. And that was especially surprising, given that as ari said, the white house has not invoked executive privilege, but the witnesses also made clear, bob mueller did not ask them to withhold any of their comments, and i should note that a request like this on the part of the president to a National Security official would not be classified. So they cannot also rely on an argument of classification. So as ari was alluding to, there is no justification not to relay the facts. But instead, they use their feelings as a crutch here. Ambassador, youre someone who has likely had a few private conversations with president s over the years. Did these gentlemen have a point at all about not relaying private conversations with the president of the United States in an open public forum . Again, im not the lawyer on your panel here. Obviously, executive privilege has not been invoked. I worked for president obama for five years. Most certainly i would not have been eager to talk about our private conversations unless compelled to do so. Thats important to say. But the second point i want to emphasize, if theres no smoking gun here, if theres nothing to hide, of course, we would have heard a lot more from them than we heard today. So their nonanswers to me suggest that theres real facts that we need to know, and i suspect in the coming days, maybe even starting tomorrow, well begin to know those facts. We most certainly need to know them. Lets talk about tomorrows hearing. Director comey set to appear 9 00 a. M. Tomorrow morning. If today is any indication of what we can expect tomorrow, what is to say it is, what do you think we can expect to hear from the fbi director, former fbi director, and perhaps even more importantly here, what wont we hear . I would expect jim comey to speak in some detail about how President Trump addressed him, the nature and structure of those interactions and whether theres anything to be inferred thats negative, for example, asking people to leave the room or trying to create a lack of witnesses or other people that can be negative. And the words that President Trump used himself. I dont think jim comey will seek to characterize or add his opinion above and beyond the facts that are here. We will not hear any details i would expect about whats going on inside the russia inquiry. You mentioned a structure of those conversations. Why is that important . We are speaking, we have microphones on and other people in the room. If we speak in this format, its very known to be public. If i say one more thing i want to talk to you about, craig, i want to take off the mike and have a side bar with you, that tells us something, from an investigative stand point. It may say we want to have a private conversation. Thats not always bad, but it could be something worse. All right. President trump has made his way a few miles from where we just saw him on the tarmac, in cincinnati, ohio. Hes expected to talk infrastructure. Lets listen in. The very magnificent ohio river. Were here today to talk about rebuilding our nations infrastructure. Isnt it about time . Spending money all over the world except here. We dont spend our money here, we spend it all over. And well do it using american labor, american energy, american iron, aluminum and steel. [ applause ] we believe in the dignity of work and in t greatness of the american worker. No worker like our american worker. I want to thank secretary purdue, secretary zinky and administrator pruitt for joining us today. You saw what we did with our great administrator. You saw what happened last week with the socalled paris accord. We will we will keep our nation so great and so strong. And we will never have outside forces telling us what to do and how to do it. [ applause ] that would have been a huge anchor on our country. Im also grateful that the governor, his wife and family could be here along with Lieutenant Governor janeane hatchton, from kentucky. Great place. [ applause ] where is janeane . And Lieutenant Governor mary taylor from ohio, thank you, mary. Thank you very much. [ applause ] were also very excited to be joined by top labor leaders in the United States. I have negotiated with these people for so long. Theyre tough. But they get the job done, right . Together, were goingo put our skills and trade people back to work. Shawn mcgarvey is here with us today, president of the North American Building trades union. Shawn took part in one of our very first meetings at the white house. That was a great meeting, shawn. And was there with us when we issued the longawaited approval for the keystone excel pipeline, which has started. [ applause ] after years and years of stagnation, they said thats never going to happen. We got it started. Its going to happen and its about 48,000 jobs. Its a big job, and thats just the beginning. We have many other things happening, including the dakota pipeline, also moving along and very rapidly. We will also welcome eric dean, president of the united iron workers, and Terry Osullivan of the labors union of north america. I will say to you all today what i told you and told our labor unions two months ago in washington, as long as i am president , americas labor leaders will always find an open door at the white house. We had a great day. [ applause ] we love our workers. Were also pleased to be joined by executives from marathon petroleum, cf industries, pea body energy, alliance coal, a. K. Steel,ew cours steel, you like that company. Scotts miracle grow, and many others who are ready to help us build the roads, the bridges, tunnels and waterways of tomorrow. And theyre currently working very hard. In fact, i brought a couple of the greatest buildings, steve roth, ri