factor here is the restoration of calm and direct dialogue. what we need now is on all sides in this matter, cool heads and really a calm approach to this. yes? thank you, martin. there are some reports that the leader of the radical opposition on the ukraine called for leader of chechen terrorists to support ukrainian opposition against russia. does the secretary general have anything to say on this development? look, there are all kinds of reports, some more credible than others. floating about in cyberspace. and i think that we continue to monitor these developments closely. we re aware of various reports but we re not going to comment on every individual one that pops up like that. yes? one follow-up. this is official. the governor of belgrade region in russia reported that there ar are thousands of ukraine fleeing into this region of russia. does the secretary general plan to discuss this issue with vladimir putinputin, maybe some support for the refugees from the united nations? i think the secretary general wants to speak to president putin directly to express his concerns. but also to hear directly from president putin his assessment of the situation. now, with regard to refugees, this is something that if substantiated would be for the refugee agency to look at. i would then reeffer you to the refugee agency. okay, if there are no other questions, thank you very much. so there he is, the spokesman for the united nations secretary general ban ki-moon, speaking on behalf of the secretary general, saying that ban ki-moon is gravely concerned about what s going on right now, a it s the hope that cool heads will prevail, there will be a calm approach, it is said that ban ki-moon will be speaking to the russian president vladimir putin to discuss what s going on. we re following the breaking news out of ukraine, tensions developing now between the u.s. and other countries, it s a serious situation. let s bring in our united nations correspondent richard roth. richard, you re over at the u.n., as we have been pointing out, ban ki-moon can make all sorts of statements, the u.n. security council can there s a limit to what actually is going to emerge other than a few statements. russia would certainly block any significant action by the u.n. security council however they did meet, russian met the u.n. security council yesterday, despite what they could say publicly to the press, and we don t know what goes on behind closed doors. they re meeting here on saturday in an urgent session, ban ki-moon has issued statements on concern on many countries in crisis over his six year office. there may be an open formal meeting where there could be angry opening speeches. the first meeting will be closed doors here at the united nations. there are articles in the u.n. charter that say that the u.n. security council has the right to get involved when international peace and security is threatened. this is at the heart of what the u.n. was originally set up for over 65 years ago when one country moves forces into another. things have changed a lot with terrorism and offstage actors as they re known. we ll see if the security council has any power in this issue, wolf. we ll see what happens if the security council issues statements. the members of the security county still are there right now getting ready for this emergency meeting. the ambassador relishes the spotlight, he gives the most spontaneous, candid comments pointed as they are at the u.s. security council stakeout. he kind of dismisses the secretary general s envoy to ukraine and says it s still a serious matter. but he says russia has the right to do what it wants to based on previous agreements with the ukraine. i assume the u.s. ambassador powell is there. she s found herself in a lot of crises, in her short time in office here. this is old style u.n. emergency sessions involving two different countries, with widespread impact should something happen on the ground. i remember covering a lot of those meetings in the 80s during the so-called battle days, the height of the cold war. we had a 1:00 a.m. meeting on a august 9 of 2008 when russia went into georgia. that was a true emergency meeting overnight. we don t know what s in store in the days ahead. we certainly don t. thanks very much richard roth at the university. so we heard the spokesman for the u.n. secretary general issue a statement saying the secretary g is gravely concerned about what s going on. how is this playing in moscow? i don t think that that s one of the main, sort of, areas that moscow is looking at right now. certainly vladimir putin is going to be speaking to secretary general ban ki-moon, but i don t think that s going to significantly change the course of rush shasian politics. right now what the russians are trying to do is they re trying to decide for themselves what sort of end game they have in mind here. it s interesting that you were talking to diana before about what exactly could be the future for this crimea region. what exactly is russian trying to achieve there? does it want to separate itself from the ukraine? does it want to become more autonomous? those are the real questions that the russians are going to be asking right now. what we have been able to see is that what s going on there on the ground, it s hard to imagine that that is anything else but orchestrated by moscow. if you see the forces that came out there, the way they were disciplined. the interesting thing was, the earliest check points that were set up there were set up by a biker gang were set up by vladimir putin. all of a sudden they surfaced in that area and they started setting up checkpoints together with the local police. clearly the russians have been planning this for a while. this has been going on for a while and it s now come to this stage where we re seeing this overt military action that they have now waved through that you are own parliament. so the u.n. is one of the place where there will be talking going on, there will be statements going on, vladimir putin is going to be talking to the secretary general. but the decision making is something that happens at the kremlin as to what the russian strategic interests are in crimea. those are the real issues that the russians have right now. that s the real planning of what they re thinking about right now, wolf. don t go too far away, let s go get some perspective now on what s going on, some context, angela is joining us, she s the director of the center for russian studies for georgetown university in washington. so you heard the spokesman for the united nations secretary general make a pretty strong statement saying that ban ki-moon is gravely concerned about what s going on and will be speaking to putin. putin, you have met with him on many occasions, professor. putin believes that the russians are right, that the rest of the european union, nato and the russians are all right. this is his upper most priority to make sure that this region is either completely separate from ukraine or at least much more autonomous than it was before to try and exercise as much influence as he can, russia can over the former soviet states. we have to understand that there s very little leverage that we have. and even if people don t go to the g-8 summit, it s clearly much more important for putin to make a stand with the ukraine is much more important than if someone attends the g-8 summit. none of these things amount to great leverage that we have over russia and russia has, as all your correspondents have said, a very direct and a very strong interest in crimea, in ukraine and it s much greater than any other country has. it seems to me, and i want to take a quick break, professor, but it seems to me in the old days of the cold war when there were these kinds of tensions there was a hot line between moscow and russia, that phone, that red phone as it was called, the leaders of the united states and russia would get on and talk. is it a possibility that the president of the united states would have this kind of conversation with putin? well, we do still have a hot line and we know that president obama spoke for an hour with president putin last week. but frankly, ever since the russians granted political asylum to edward snowden in russia, the u.s.-russian relationship has really deteriorated, they don t talk very often. there is a hot line, i m sure they ll use it. people would like to deescalate the tensions, but we have now the worst relationship we have had at least since the russia-georgia war and it doesn t look like it s going to get much better. that happened in 2008. we re going to continue to follow the breaking news out of the ukraine, this is a fast moving story, we saw the president s national security advisors emerge from an emergency meeting over at the white house. we ll resume our coverage right after this. life could be hectic. as a working mom of two 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secretary general making sure he wants to reiterate his call calling for full respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the ukraine. clear, direct message to the russian president vladimir putin. russian troops are already in at least small numbers are already in crimea. christiane amanpour is joining us from lontd right now. christianne, it seems that the president of the united states issues a strong warning, now the unsecretary general, there s been emergency meetings involving the president s top national security a advisers in the white house. we anticipate a statement coming from the who is very soon. this situation seems to be escalating very dramatically and not in the right direction. wolf, you re absolutely right, it s absolutely alarming what russian is down, and direct warnings from the u.n. secretary general, from all the western and security council governments direct warning not to intervene in ukraine, a sovereign nation under which 1994 treaty, russia is bound not to intervene and bound to respect his territorial integrity. they haven t taken a decision on whether to accept the clearly staged russian parliamentary vote to call for intervention in crimea to protect russians there. but it doesn t really matter because everybody believes that a certain amount of russian forces, whatever uniforms they re dressed up in are in ukraine right now, this violates u.s. and russian laws about invading other countries. it s the very thing that russia is always on about in the international community, that no, we can t see any other countries invading, it s all about what s going on in syria and everywhere right now. so it s absolutely unbelievable that russia would be doing this right now and there is no legal basis for it. so the united states needs to leave all the other countries in the security council in the west, like minded countries need to put their maximum pressure on and there is pressure, there is leverage. trade leverage, things that could affect the ruble, things that could affect the russian economy and also the ukrainian government now, the interim government need not, repeat not to launch any kind of military response, if they do, just like what happened in georgia, they will be crushed by the russians and they need not to do that. and beyond that, the ukrainians need to figure out how to reassure russia that it s rights will be respected because naval fleet will be respected. and they need to again reassure the russians in crimea that their rilings will be respected. so maximum diplomacy and maximum leverage right now from all who have it needs to be exerted. yes, there are small numbers of russian troops already in crimea, the russians have port facilities there, a warm water port. but there s 150,000 russian troops engaged in military kp exercises right now. they could move into ukraine very, very quickly and that would dramatically, dramatically escalate this crisis. and all of this that i was just suggesting needs to happen so that that does not happen. it s very alarming, it s alarming because clearly russia is not speaking with one voice, if we re to believe what secretary of state kerry has said, what the british and the fench officials said, they were assured boy ty the russian fore minister that there would be no military intervention. then you have the parliament taking action you ve got the forces that somehow seem to be aligned with russia, militias that do their bidding there, and they re more sophisticated than just militias, they re there violating a promise that they made that they wouldn t be there. russians have told the world that they would not be intervening militarily. they ve got these military exercises that they say were co-incidental as you say, not only 150,000 troops, but hundreds of tanks and aircrafts and dozen of artillery and other kinds of weaponry that s happening there. they are flexing their muscle, the question is how hard are they going to flex and how far are they going to take this flexing and will robust diplomacy go to work right now to use all the leverage possible and to stop, you know, sort of i m sorry, but not standing up to russia s moves which russia has been pulling these kinds of months for a long time now, whether it s over syria or whether it s over all sorts of issues and they need to be told where the red line is. the problem is credibility. as you know, christianne, does the west, the nato allies, the european union, the united states, do they have that kind of credibility with putin that if we were to take such action there would be a response? because presumably, he s saying to himself, you know what? they can cancel the g-8 summit in june, what s so much more important to putin is having control over at least the crimea area of the ukraine. unfortunately, under international law, the russians don t have that right, it is a violation of international law and everybody knows it. we have been talking since monday when all of this started with all of the officials and interlo interlockutores who tried to make this deal to try to resolve the crisis what happened last weekend and they told us it is this 1994 law that spells it out in black and white enshrined by the united nations, the effort torl integrity must be respected. russia signed it along with the united states. and i know you ve been discussing this a lot over the last 24 to 48 hours, and this is because the in return, they were guaranteed these protections. at the same time, the rights and the protect shung of the ethnic russians need to be protected and presumably, russia s long-term having this black sea fleet also needs to be respected. all of that has to happen by diplomacy and not by military action. if russia moves in, this is going to be a multi-year problem to get them out again. and it puts russia then outside the realm of international law. and russia of course is the country that s always preaching to the rest of the world, as i say, syria, the most recent example of not intervening in other countries and not invading other countries do it s a very serious situation right now and very serious and creative diplomacy as to start and presumably it s under way and the u.s. and its allies have to be there to support it. they were going through other diplomatic options when they were meeting in the west wing in the white house moments ago, the president s top national security advisors. the point is, a all of us are alarmed that just yesterday the united states and others were saying we see no preparations, no sort of, you know, the preparations i guess for russian invasion, and then we hear all these developments today. now there hasn t yet been a major russian invasion, but clearly, by sleight of hand, they can do a lot of damage in terms of putting troops, personnel and people in there. everybody needs to take a step back and resolve this situation diplomatically, there was no it the kind of attacks against ethnic russians in crimea that in any event required any kind of emergency action by russia of a military sort whatsoever. i want to show you some video, this is from crimea, these were pro russian demonstrators in russia and remember the crimea area, that was actually in new york. here s the video from crimea, christianne, here s what the russian argument is, and this is what i have heard from various sources close to the russians, they re saying, look, they re inviting russian help because this is what they re arguing, i m just giving you the rush shank argument that they still recognize the ousted ukrainian president as the duly elected, democratic president of ukraine. he s obviously got limited authority, limbed power. he s now seen by the ukrainian parliament in effect a war criminal. but the russians are arguing he s still the president of ukraine. he wants help from russia, the ethnic russians in crimea want help and that s why the russians are justified in doing what they re doing. that is the russian argument that putin will make. reporter: probably. and probably those self-appointed officials now in the crimea region are making the same argument, as we know they are making that argument. the only problem with that is that it lies outside the bounds of international law and it does not seem to be any major reason for that to happen. there have not been mass killings of people in crimea like there were in kiev which presip tated the fleeing of coe vich and the arrest warrant that s being put out for him now. the fact that he s on the lam, yes, he s saying he s still the president, but they have an interim government in kiev, it s supported by the west, you have conversations between vice president bidening and the interim prime minister, yatsenyuk yatsenyou have a date new elections, again, crimea has a certain amount of autonomy, but it is not an independent state that can call for a foreign country, a foreign country to invade it s borders, no matter what russia believes about it s near broad or it s atmosphere sphere of influence and this has brought major problems between russia and the west for the last many, many years. as you can see, what happened in georgia, of course russia does have the military might. and if the ukrainians try to take on any russian intervention, they will be crushed. so again, the interim ukrainian government needs to assure all those in crimea plus russia, it only has the crimea interests at heart, it will allow it to keep its flee for so many number of years, however they decide to deal with this in the future. at the same time, the international sovereignty of the ukraine, under law, signed in 1994, by the united states, britain and russia is the law, and i m afraid, under the current law, unless i m mistaken, crimea has no right to invite another country? we re going to continue the breaking news coverage out of ukraine, and i anticipate there will be a statement coming from the white house fairly soon, much more of our coverage right after this. 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mean it. car stereo blowout blitz. communications on sale now! crazy eddie prices are insane! like i said, his prices are insane! starting in 1975 and running through the end of the 1980s, there were more than 7,000 of these various, deliberately manic screaming crazy eddie ads. they all end with that tag line, his prices are insane! the guy who actually appears in those ads was not crazy. he was an actor. there was a real crazy eddie. there was a real crazy guy named eddie running the company. his name was eddie antar. i think it s fair to call him crazy not just because of the name of his business but because eddie and his cousin cooked the books at that company really terribly. they ripped off something like $100 million in cash out of that company. crazy eddie, according to court documents, he would tape wads of cash all over his body and then fly overseas and stash the money he was stealing from the company in cash in all sorts of various foreign hidey holes. they were ripping tens of millions of dollars out of the crazy eddie stores for years. in the end, the worst thing about it for crazy eddie himself, when they got found out, when their scheme was uncovered, when they got caught, eddie fled the country but his cousin did not. the cousin with whom he had been stealing all the money, the cousin stayed behind and the cousin ultimately went state evidence against crazy eddie. he also found time to do this crazy eddie s crazy cousin interview on cnbc. it was one of the most successful electronic chains in the u.s. blowout prices are insane! crazy eddie, controlled by the brash eddie antar dominated the market. but there was a dark side. built on deceit. behind the scenes, eddie s cousin sam antar was cooking the books. what i did was pure evil. i m probably going to fry in hell for many years before i get upstairs. they scammed shareholders more than $100 million. eddie fled with the cash. sam turn s state s witness. you turned around and turned on your family? yes. i put them all in jail. he did put them all in jail, including crazy eddie himself, his cousin, who got seven years in the pokie. now, speaking of pokey, stick a pen in that for a second. you know how donald trump s sister is a federal judge it hasn t really been a big point of discussion in this campaign but his sister is a federal judge. it came up a little bit during the republican primaries. he asked who he wanted to put on the supreme court and the first name suggested was his sister and then we all had to check to see if he was joking. he said he was joking. but his older sister is a well-regarded moderate federal judge on the circuit court of appeals. donald trump s sister, the federal judge, was married to the man who was the lawyer for crazy eddie all through the crazy, crazy eddie scandal. his name was john barry. he did white collar defense and corporate litigation. he s passed away now. but he was crazy eddie s lawyer through the wads of cash, taped to crazy eddie s body and the cousin narking them out and the whole thing. crazy eddie s lawyer was married to donald trump s sister. crazy eddie s lawyer was also donald trump s personal lawyer for years. and on top of all of that, john barry was also the lawyer that is freaking out the party right now. new jersey is one of those states that holds its statewide elections in off years. their race was not in 2012. it was in 2013. the next one will be in the fall of 2017. they hold their statewide elections in odd number of years. new jersey has been that way for a long time. virginia is the same way. there aren t many states who do that. one of the consequences of being an off-year election state is when they elect their governor in these weird, odd numbered years, they don t have a lot of competition for attention, right? there are not a lot of big ticket races going on to compete for everybody s dollars and the national parties to get involved. just by virtue of the weird schedule. they can get a bunch of national attention and that s what happened in 1981. so in context, that was a year after ronald reagan was elected to the presidency in 1980. the year after that, november of 1981, new jersey had its governor s race. and in that governor s race in 1981, the national republican party newly energized from that huge win with reagan and how they took the seats in congress and the senate, republican party decided they had another shot to go for another big race and they decided to basically flood the zone in that new jersey governor s race in 1981. the republicans flew in national political operatives. they launched this very aggressive scheme where they challenged the registration of thousands of new jersey voters who turned up to the polls in newark, camden and trenton. and in about 75 minority heavy precincts across new jersey that year in that race, they put up these four-foot tall warning signs. when i first saw images of these signs online and in old newspaper articles and stuff, i thought these were like flyers and the piece of a paper and put them on telephone poles or something. they were sandwich board posters, four-foot tall signs that they put outside of polling areas saying, warning, this area is being patrolled by the national ballot security task force. it s a crime to violate election laws. and they were not bluffing. the rnc did actually invent something called a ballot security task force and put these guys on patrol in minority heavy precincts. it s interesting. nobody had advanced warning that they are coming. they just showed up on election day and nobody knew to expect it. they had off-duty police officers and sheriff deputies carrying walkie-talkies wearing ballot security task force arm bands. many were openly carrying guns and they stalked around polling places in minority-heavy districts while they demanded that election workers strike these people off the election rolls. several of these signs were reported at polling places at newark s fourth ward. poll watchers, some of them off-duty policemen wearing guns and arm bands were also near the polls as part of the task force set up by the republican and national state committees to guard against fraud but democrats charge it was a scare campaign to intimidate voters primarily in minority neighborhoods. yeah, you think? who knows how many people were blocked or intimidated from voting in that election in new jersey in 1981. but as voter suppression schemes go, this one clearly worked. both parties would claim that it definitely worked. there were 3 million votes cast in that governor s race. it was decided by less than 1800 votes. and the republican won. and then the democrats sued. the democrats sued the republican party over this ballot security task force stunt. and you know who the republicans used as their lawyer to defend them in that case? donald trump s brother-in-law. the crazy eddie guy who was married to donald trump s sister. he was the lawyer for the republican party in that case in new jersey. and he got creamed in court. i mean, the damage was already done in terms of that governor s race. the republicans won that election by this many votes, right? and the democrats weren t going to be able to get that election back. but what the democrats did get was something called a consent decree, which bans the republican national committee from doing this kind of thing again, from doing anything like this, that problem hib bits them from being involved in any poll-watching shenanigans that targets minority voters. and now today, in 2016, now the snake starts eating its own tail. in 2016, it s not donald trump s brother-in-law, it s now donald trump who is losing that exact case all over again for the republican national committee. go down to certain areas and watch and study and make sure other people don t come in and vote five times. so important that you watch other communities because we don t want this election stolen from us. so go and vote and then go check out areas because a lot of bad things happen. when i say watch, you know what i m talking about, right? you know what i m talking about. take a look at philadelphia, what s been going on. take a look at chicago, take a look at st. louis. every time he says that, you can go ahead and picture reince priebus hiding under a desk, because that s a really dangerous path for the republican party to be on legally. the republican party is still bound by that consent decree from that case in 1981. that case that was lost by donald trump s brother-in-law on behalf of the republican party. because of that case, the republican party has promised they are legally bound to not do the kind of racially charged poll watching they got caught doing back in the battle days in new jersey in 1981. they ve promised not to do it. they are legally bound not to do it through the end of that consent decree and that consent decree was put in place by one way or another since the early 1980s. it is finally set to expire next year. in 2017. the republican party would desperately like to get out from under that consent decree that they have been under since the 1980s but they will not get out from under it if they get caught violating it. they won t get out from under it if they get caught doing racially charged, racially targeted poll watching again like they used to do and that they got caught for. they will not get out from that consent decree if they actually do what donald trump is now asking all republicans to go do now on his behalf. go down to certain areas and watch. watch other communities. go check out areas. when i say watch, you know what i m talking about, right? you know what i m talking about. take a look at philadelphia, chicago, st. louis. or don t. or don t. or don t. thanks to that old case, lost by donald trump s brother-in-law in the early 80s, one of this year s more unexpected freakouts within the republican party is now officially under way. the republican party has issued a special request to all rnc members to please not do what donald trump is asking them to do, to please not gather around polling places in philadelphia and st. louis and chicago or anywhere no matter what the republican presidential candidate is saying on the stump. the national party sent a whole the whole rnc a memo to, quote, remind you of the restrictions placed on the rnc by the consent decree. quote, you are encouraged not to engage in ballot security activities even in your personal state party or campaign capacity if you elect to do so, please be aware that the rnc in no way sanctions your activity. i mean, right now, as it stands, the republican party is legally bound to not do any racially specific poll watching through next year, through 2017. if they get caught doing it, though, the consent decree gets extended until 2025. and the republican party does not want that. they really do not want that. crazy eddie s lawyer is now long gone. but it is kind of amazing that it is now his brother-in-law, the republican nominee for president this year who s the one screwing up that big case, that john barry lost for the republican party back in the 80s. i mean, in the waning days of these elections, in the last two weeks, donald trump is telling his supporters that he doesn t trust the polls anymore and neither should they. he tweeted this this morning. we have not edited this in any way. see if you can figure out why i m saying this. major story that the dems are making up phony polls in order to suppress the the trump. we are going to win. democrats are making up phony polls to suppress the the trump. is that the the so? anything could happen. election day may be a hulla-ba-loo. if they do go try to have a task force or what have you, anything could happen. but right now, the new york times probability that the the trump will lose this election is 93%. the 538 probability is more conservative. they put it at 86%. those are pretty high numbers. it may be that the actual drama in this case is moving down. 538 says there s a 74% chance. the democrats are going to take the senate. new york times puts that probability slightly lower at 67%. because of those kind of numbers, democrats are thinking about long term, right? democrats are thinking about how they can make this a big win for the democratic party beyond winning the white house for hillary clinton. we ve got a bunch of interesting reporting on that subject still ahead tonight, including one race that the democrats are really screwing up. on the other side of the aisle, though, republicans are also thinking long term. republicans are looking at donald trump and thinking about what else it is that they have to lose this year besides the presidency. the republicans basically know now that picking donald trump to be their presidential nominee has almost certainly cost them the white house. what they have to worry about now is whether that s it, whether the price of choosing donald trump might actually be sort of insane. we ve got more ahead tonight. stay with us. his prices are insane. hit me, hit me. ha, ha. whenou he cold, you just want powerful rief. ly new alkseltzer plus fr oarfici dyes d presvative liquid gels delive towerful co symptomelief you needithout thennecessa dives you don t. store manager: cln up, aie alkaeltzer plus liquidels. on this show a couple of days ago. i ll correct it this evening. there s something that i think the democratic party is currently getting very, very wrong but in that case i have no expectation that they will correct it because i don t think they think that they are wrong. but i do. and that story is next. ing 60,000 points from my chase ink card i boug allhe frark. wire. and plants needed to give my sh. a face. neededno oneill forget. e what the power of poin can do forour business. learn more at chase.com/in e t the best place toren castart is in the forest. ku: i y somethin beginnin e t the best place toren castarbeetle: snow.orest. kubo: . etle: snow covered trees. monkey: nothing to do with snow. narrator: head outside to discoverncredible animals and beautifuplants that come together narratorto can outside to diunfoettae adnture.imals kubo: wow! and beautifuplants that come together narrator: so grab your loved ones monkey: n t even. narratorand explore a world of possibilities. ku: comen, this way. narrator: visit discoverthorest.org to find the closes forest or park to you. he thinks that because he has money, that he can call women fat pigs and bimbos. he thinks that because he s a celebrity that he can rate women s bodies from 1 to 10. he thinks that because he has a mouthful of tic-tacs he can grope any woman within groping distance. i ve got news for you, donald trump, women have had it with guys like you. [cheers and applause ] and nasty women have really had it with guys like you. yeah. and get this, donald, nasty women are tough. nasty women are smart and nasty women vote. and on november 8th, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever. elizabeth warren i think coining nasty feet for the first time in political history. we keep saying things are unprecedented and then we keep saying, oh, yeah, in the 1860s. i think nasty feet is first. i think that was a first. elizabeth warren on the campaign trail with hillary clinton. this is the first time they have campaigned together in the same place since the democratic convention. as you saw there, elizabeth warren scorched donald trump but she saved some of her other best bolts for one of the senate colleagues for kelly ayotte of new hampshire who is up for re-election who may not survive. donald trump, call latinos rapists and murderers, trump stayed with him. trump called them thugs and kelly stuck with them. trump attacked a gold star family and kelly struck with him. trump even attacked kelly ayotte and called her weak. and kelly stuck with him. i mentioned at the top of the show that the chances of the democratic party taking control of the senate are pretty good right now. that s 67% from the new york times, the highest probability the times has put on that yet all year long. and that is just one number for an overall probability that the democrats will win control of the senate. but it s not just one election, right? taking the senate doesn t happen in one fell swoop, it happens race by race and candidate by candidate. that s why the top campaign events now sound like this. marco rubio said donald trump is a con man and donald trump is dangerous. therefore, i support whoa, whoa, whoa. wait a minute. how can that work? if he won t stand up against donald trump and there are plenty of republican who is are standing up against donald trump and calling him out. marco rubio won t. and patrick murphy will be a great u.s. senator. tim kaine taking some shots at republican senator marco rubio who is up for re-election in florida. senator kaine there also talking up the democratic candidate in that race, congressman patrick murphy. and you would think things would be going reasonably well for patrick murphy right now. the polls have definitely tightened in that race. the latest poll in florida shows him within two points of marco rubio. last week, patrick murphy got the endorsement of marco rubio s hometown paper, the miami herald. he s been endorsed by all four of florida s largest newspapers, three of which backed marco rubio when he first ran for the senate. also, the prevailing climate looks good for democrats in florida. hillary clinton leading trump by about four points at the top of the ticket. democrats running a huge ground operation in that state. and so, mystery, here s the mystery. why is the democratic party just pulled its money out of the senate race? last week, the campaign arm of the senate democrats canceled millions of dollars of florida ads they were going to run against marco rubio and for patrick murphy. that followed by a couple of weeks the biggest democratic super pac doing the same thing. why is that? i mean, i know that the democrats have to make choices. i get that, obviously. democrats want to win as many seats as possible advertising florida as expensive. the amount of money it takes to advertise a week in florida, you could spend the same amount of money and advertise in two or three cheaper states, states like north carolina or missouri. the timing and strategy of this is still weird. florida would really appear to be a winnable race for the dems. these are the last three polls. they ve either shown a tie or it s within two points. early voting has started in most florida counties. democrats are psyched with where they are. they believe they are ahead of where they were four years ago when romney beat obama in florida. the latino vote in florida is up, oh, i don t know, 99%, from this same point in the race four years ago. 99% increase in the latino vote. how do you think donald trump s going to do with the latino vote? by all objective measures, marco rubio would appear to be beatable in florida in a race which could determine control. he got shellacked there in the presidential primary. now, he s going to win there while donald trump likely loses the state? really? why are democrats giving up on this race? does it make sense? joining us now is steve, former state director for the 2008 obama campaign in florida and senior adviser in 2012, now a democratic strategist. mr. shell, it s really nice to have you here. thanks for having me on, rachel. do you think i mean, first of all, am i describing the democratic calculus here right, that it s so expensive to spend money in florida that maybe you re better off spending that money in the same states in is that basically the map that they are doing here or have they got other factors? they viewed this very anti-septically. the reality is, patrick murphy shouldn t be standing and i think they were right in september when down 7 or 8 points to slow walk the race. but the last four polls have shown even two and down one in two polls and down in another. we re basically in a dead heat. 14 days out, it s like it was and i don t understand the decision at this point. well, and is this the sort of thing where in these last two weeks money from the democratic party is what he needs? obviously you think that he s in shooting distance but in terms of what he needs to do to win, would tv ads and radio ads be the sort of thing that would make the difference here? yeah, absolutely. there s an old saying in florida that the win state you have to lose statewide and it comes from name i.d. or without money. murphy really shouldn t be standing. he s out 4-1 since the primary but he is. and what he needs is help with hispanics, which the president has cut an ad in spanish for him and needs help with name i.d. and the i-4 corridor. places li places like tampa and orlando and i think with the clinton turnout operation, today the early vote numbers and major i-4 counties are phenomenal for us. i mean, really almost shockingly good. i think he s right in this thing. in terms of the more personal picture here, it s also not that it s just any senator. it s marco rubio. yeah. and i wonder, within florida, having been beaten so badly in his home state primary, i mean, he lost the republican presidential primary badly but he really lost at home, what s marco rubio standing in the state and what are his long-term prospects as a politician coming from florida right now? well, i think there s two ways to look at it. first of all, if you look at our u.s. senate races, in the same term as presidential elections, our democratic nominees are usually within a point or two of the top of the ticket. the only exception is bill nelson who outperformed president obama in 2012. marco rubio is no bill nelson. he didn t get a majority of the year when he ran and, you know, we go into this thing and republicans acknowledge it s a race at this point and, again, i don t really want to have this conversation with you in 2019 and say, wow, if we had only spent 4, 5 million more, we could have taken him out when we had the chance. senior adviser, 2012, democratic strategist, steve, thanks for being with us. nice to see you. thanks again, rachel. all right. still ahead, some surprising and slightly nauseating news from a person who i think is the most surprising senate candidate of the year. that s ahead. stay with us. miles per ho. to wboth on the track matters. d thousands of miles away. wi t help of at&t, red bull racing can sha critical information about every inbrakes a gettingarm.tually anywhere. coirmed, daniel you need to cool your brakes. vi tm the agility to hek 2ally spee& precisn. becae no one knows & l at&t. 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[applause] woman: ahh. ndistinct conversation] announcer: a full lifemeasus starts with the righ early on. car crashes are a leading iller of children 1 to 13. learn how to prevent dehs and juries bysing the right c seat for yourhild s agand size. the ku klux klan. despite being a well-known, full-on white supremacist, proud racist, wearing a bed sheet with arm holes, david duke really did win a seat in the louisiana state legislature in 1989. he served just a single term. since then, he s been to prison for a good long stretch but now he s back in politics and running for a united states senate seat in louisiana this year. it s the race to replace republican senator david vitter. there s a giant field of 16 candidates in that senate race. david duke, for his part, says he has benefited in this race from having donald trump as the republican nominee at the top of the ticket. he says trump voters are duke voters. naturally. well, now we have news that david duke, former imperial wizard of the ku klux klan and republican hopeful, he has qualified to participate in the next debate for that louisiana senate seat. he needed to clear 5% in a statewide poll to make the stage. he made it with 5.1%. that debate is going to happen next wednesday, including the klansmen. if your stomach is turned by that news, it s about to turn further when you hear the rest of it, which is at the location of that senate debate is an issue here. that senate debate is going to be held at dillard university in new orleans. dillard is an historically black university. michelle obama gave the commencement speech there a couple of years ago. now it s 2016 and the former klansmen is on the way to the black college that did agree to hold the debate but honestly they did nothing to deserve this. this election is going to be over before you know it this year, but in a lot of places, its stink might last longer than a few weeks. watch this space. wh powers the digital rld. communicatio at why a cutting ed university counts on centuryli keep eiglobal campus nnected. fiber-enabled broadband to more than 65,0 fans. ve and why a leadg r and countsn to ep thr dealer network streaed fiber-enaband nimble. d to more than 65,0 fans. ve business cntn counicationdomnication counts on centurylk. if you re former speaker of the house john boehner, retirement looks a little bit like this. this is the coolest wine opener ever. i don t remember the last time i did an interview with a glass of wine. [ laughter ] cool. he s pouring like fish bowls full of red wine there. the key to a happy retirement, everybody says, is to keep busy. now that john boehner has escaped washington and floor votes and object stin nant caucus goers, he can drink wine and take care of his lawn. also, hitting the open road in his rv on his youtube channel he says he s out in freedom one in this clip, that s the name of his rv, freedom one. he says he s, quote, somewhere upon america s asphalt prairie. retirement looks different for everybody, right? president obama is about to have his own political retirement, forcibly thrust upon him as of late january. we ve now got word that his retirement is apparently going to involve a lot more politics than what john boehner has been doing. we ve got some of that reporting ahead. stay with us. have fun with your replaced win. run away! [ grunts ] leave hi leaim! [ music continues ] brick and ar, what?! [ music continues ] [ tires screech ] lahs ] [ doorbell rings ] when you bundle home and auto insurance with progresve, you get more than a bigiscount. that s whayou get for bundling home and auto! jamie! u get sneaky-good coverage. thanks. we re gonna live forever! i m one unluckyuy. the chance of being involved in a robbery is 1 in 757. the chces ofeing struck by lhtning. [thuder] [coughs] 1 in 750,00 [ding] woman p.a.: please fasten ur seatbelts for uxpected tubulee. the chces of being iold in a carrashre far greater than lightning strikes and plane crashes. and if y are texting ile driving, no i may be an unlucky guy but i don t have to be part of that statistic, and her doou drive reonsibly. 2008, republican political operatives started a project they called the redistricting majority project, red map for short. the idea behind red map was to flip as many state legislators from blue to red. and the timing was important because every ten years when they do the census, state legislators get to redraw election districts. in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm election, red map starting raising money to flip districts, to flip legislative seats, to approach that whole problem systematically. they raised a little over $30 million and that s a lot of money. it s not a ton of money for a political project. but here s the genius. instead of pumping that $30 million into high-profile senate and congressional districts and all of the big races, instead, they put all of that money into states where the legislators would have the most control over the redistricting process that was going to happen after the census. they focused scientifically on finding flipable seats in key legislatures around the country and because they were obscure races, they had to spend very little money to flip these seats. they flipped a bunch of these seemingly obscure seats in places like new york where they ended up losing control at the new york state senate and alabama, where they flipped the house and the senate from democratic control to republican control and they picked off these key seats that they targeted around the country, they executed this plan that basically had them strategizing all the way down the ballot, specifically so they could get control over redistricting. so by doing that in that low-profile way out of that one election, they were able to impact the results of their congressional districts for at least a decade, until the next census, in 2020. you want to know what everybody keeps saying, the way the house districts are drawn, even if the democrats have a huge night on november 8th, this is why. because the districts are drawn in the way they are drawn and they are drawn that way because of some genius political strategizing went in to who would be in power to redraw those districts. at a certain civic level, you probably hate this, right? redrawing congressional districts along party lines feels flat-out wrong but it is, in most cases, how the system is built and republicans really did pull off this amazing trick in 2010 with very little money and no hoopla and republicans have had nothing equivalent to this in their toolbox. after president obama won in 2008, republicans mobilized this little thing, they were able to mastermind it and execute this plan. it was political genius. mr. jankowski, welcome to genius week. i think you were a genius. president obama has 87 days last in office. he s almost done. we have now learned a little bit about what he s going to do next after leaving office. and so, behold, the national democratic redistricting committee. he s going to be focused on redistricting reform for democrats. they are going to organize initiatives and legal challenges to redistricting maps and push for democrats winning in down-ticket races. president obama s former attorney general eric holder is going to chair the group and president obama has decided he wants this to be the main political focus of his post-presidency life. redistricting. what a better time to start than now. and as of right now, president obama is taking his first presidential jab at those key down-ticket races. he s doing something he s never done before. this week, president obama is endorsing 150 candidates for state senate and senate assembly across 20 different states. he specifically is targeting state candidates who win might flip a state legislature. this is a huge effort. this is something that president obama has never done. it s something no president has ever done. but what does this mean for democrats down-ticket in this election cycle and in election cycles to come? is this a good answer which republicans did so effectively after president obama was first elected in 2008? how effective will this be? joining us now, steve kornacki, host of the 4:00 p.m. hour here on msnbc and an all-around smart man. how you doing? president obama is am i right to say that president obama is doing something that presidents otherwise haven t done? we ve never seen this kind of an effort systematically. yeah. we ve entered into a new era. it s on people s radar in a way it hasn t been before. it s a strategy and on the minds of democrats and they feel they need to do something. there s a structural component of this, too, where republicans can come up with a plan they came up with and they are sort of running downhill. they are at an advantage when you start talking about redistricting, when you start talking about congressional district lines or state legislative lines. this is the legacy of the obama era, how the two political coalitions have evolved. the democratic coalition right now probably has the numbers to win a national election. you talk about it all the time. it s young people, single women in particular, nonwhite voters, white collared professionals. those people more and more ever are packed more and more tightly into cities in metropolitan areas. the geographic reach, if you re talking about square miles, if you re talking about land mass, area, the geographic reach arguably has never been smaller. so the numbers are there but they are increasingly packed into smaller and smaller really into smaller numbers of districts. uh-huh. it s much easier, if you re a republican and want to draw lines to give yourself control of the state legislature or congressional map, it s much easier to do that because you don t have your voters aren t in these rural areas, you might not have 90% but you ve got 60%. democrats are sitting on 90% in a lot of here s the stat that i think explains the evolution of politics better than anything else. go back to 1988. michael dukakis got wiped out in a landslide loss. a solved victory for barack obama. he wins 690 counties. the gentlemen graphic share shrinks that much that in a big win they lost ground. if em democrats don t want to concede, that geographic is destiny. if they want to roll that stone up that hill, is this the way to do it, to try to be strategic about winnable seats, to try to flip legislatures in a way that s advantageous? absolutely. it s a longer-term question and the best news for democrats on that front is, look, in 2010, which is the legislatures that were seated is a result of the 2010 election. it was an off-year election and a mid term election with a democratic president. this is a democratic president. that recipe is the best thing republicans could ever hope for. . the next time that s going to happen, 2020, not a mid-term year. they have maybe more of an opportunity in 2020 than in 2010. and maybe by starting it in 2016 they ll get their training wheels on. exactly. lots more to come, stay with us. and i could take him behind the gym, that s what i wish. i westeish we were in high sl and i could take him behind the gym. apology presumably coming from the vice president s office in three, two let s check it. for saying on friday that he wishes he could take donald trump out behind the gym and teach him a lesson, joe biden would soon issue an apology. was that true or was that false? very false. not only did vice president joe biden not apologize for saying that, he said it again today in toledo, ohio. i ll get myself in trouble and say something like i d like to take him behind the gym if i were in high school. all kiddin aside, wouldn t you? i mean, for real. can you imagine a guy in the locker room talking that way and your sister s out there watching the game? not a joke. if i were in high school. i want to make it clear. i understand what assault is. i m not in high school. if i were in high school. i ued to be, i used to have a temper in high school. i don t have a temper anymore. i don t ever, nothing ever bother the me. look, folks. i get it, no. no. vice president clearly working it today, restraining himself, having a little fun, but in no way apologizing for saying that he wants to take donald trump behind the gym to teach him a lesson. our playfully pugilistic vice president. i was very wrong about that. we don t know who the next vice president will be. but tomorrow night we will have a chance on this show to get a really close look at the leading contender. democratic vice president nominee tim kaine will be joining us exclusively here in studio. senator kae eoe eor kaine has b before, but we ve not talked to him since he s running for vp. i m very much looking forward to that. that s tomorrow night. stay with us. using 60,000 ps fr my cse ink card i bought all the framework. wire.. and ts a face. no one wilforget. learn more at chase.com/in no one wilforget. esurance does auto insurance a smdiscnt.. they offer a claime beuse ferivers cost less to iure, which saves mey. and when they save, you save. th s auto home inscefor the mod. esurance, an allstate company. ance does auto insurance a smarter way. like tir photoims ol. hpsete your claim quy, whh sas timewhh ves money.d when they save, you sav. that suto and home insuran r thmodern world. esurance, an allstate company. ick or cal from the creatve galaxy in my idea box would yohelp me make a each one of our journeys eeps us youn y, i have an idea! wear: go be amazngder. amazing! announcer: give your caboard box another life. trust number oneoctor recommended lcolax constipated? use dulcolax tablets for gentle overnight relief suppositories for reef in minutes and stool softeners for comfortable relief of hard odulcolax, desied for dependable rie we ve been keeping track here at the show of newspaper endorsements in the presidential race. it s been a weird year for that. the names listed on the left are a selection of hillary clinton s formal daily newspaper endorsements. she has a lot of them. the last time we reported on trump endorsements, he had three, one each from tiny papers in santa barbara, california, waxahachie daily light in texas. you guys have been super helpful at tracking these endorsements, particularly, when they re really tiny papers. send us tips, please. it s been very helpful. tonight thanks to you guys we can add the times gazette. there s also for the first time, a big one. shelton adeleson, a big league republican donor, funded the gingrich campaign all by himself in 2012. this winter, when a paper got a mystery owner, it was the las vegas review journal s own staff who was forced to ferret out their own owner. that was sheldon adeleson. it s not at all weird for super rich people to give money to political candidates nor weird for them to buy newspapers. it was weird that he tried to buy and run a newspaper anonymously, but his reporting staff caught him. he went into this election cycle planning to donate $100 million
if the administration was standing by that tweet which sean spicer said the president is, then why could congress then need to investigate if this information already exists? the press secretary talked a little bit about the issu i have to listen to the vshage again, the transcript, but he talked about credibility and the idea there is a separation of powers as well. we also talked a little bit about the idea that hey we are in tax season, tax day is just over month away. will the president release his returns from this most recent year? the president secretary said he would got back to us. and then is the president still under audit for past returns? the press secretary confirming he indeed is. a separation of powers, and they don t want to be perceived as directing congress to investigate in a certain way. harold ford is this going to dog them much longer? it will. the question by halle and the other young lady spelled i out. i think the health care the governors will be the ar about iters, where the rubber meets the road. the republicans and moderates and conservatives alike, but governors will have the phone say in what happens here. two major stories. first health care, the other what exactly is going on with wiretapping. both of those dominating the white house press briefing. and both of those things that my colleague kate snow is going to be talking about in just a moment. i m katy tur. that will do it for me. kate take it away. i feel like i m crashing the party. great discussion. we will take it from here. good afternoon, everyone, i m kate snow. our top stories this hour. seven years in the making, republicans launching a full-court press to promote their new obamacare replacement plan. party leadership, even the white house now getting involved. but not convinced, a big chunk of the gop. this hour, in about 30 minutes from now the house freedom caucus as long with tea party senators will faulk about why they think this isn t the right way the repeal and replace. later on, the carson controversy. in his first address to his new department, housing and urban development, carson referred to slaves as immigrants. a lot of blowback over his comments. we have a lot to get through. our team is in place. chris jansing, kasie hunt, perry bacon, nice to see him again. let s start off with a hard look at what is in this obamacare replacement plan. before we get started here i want to run through the basics of the new bill. no more individual mandate. coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions is still in. young people can remain on their parents coverage until age 26. the expansion of medicaid that happened under obama, that gets frozen in 2020. and people who let their coverage lapse could see their premiums go up by 30%. finally there is still a system of tax credits to help pay for health care on the individual market but those credits are now based on age. that is something we will really dive into. you are going to want to sti with us for in a, what does that look like, how does that work? let me start with our panel, chris janszing at the white house. this hour we are expecting senator rand paul and the freedom caucus from the house who have concerns about this bill we are expecting them up on capitol hill. is the white house feeling confident right now about getting this through congress. when you heard them talk about it, and we finished this briefing that called secretary tom price they said that they are going to work this through and just didn t seem to be concerned about what the obvious problem is with this, and that is that on both side of the house and the senate you have republicans in numbers that threaten this bill who are against it. you mentioned for example, that you have this press conference that is coming up. i talked to rand paul on friday. for him and other like minded conservatives this is nothing more than entire entitlement program. it doesn t accomplish why they wanted to get rid of obamacare in the first place. that was the cost. you heard the acknowledgment they don t have any kind of estimate from the congressional budget office. when mick mull vinny went out for the white house today to talk about it he acknowledged they didn t know what the cost is. and on the senate side you also have four members of the senate who sent a her letter because they are concerned about medicaid expansion in their states. they are worried about people losing coverage. so even though you have this situation where the president it sunds like is completely all in. as sean spicer put it there is going to be a very aggressive laser like focus on this it has involved tweeting, heating with health care people,nd it looks like he will be in charge with when i spoke to him a couple minutes ago. hi mr. vice president. is this plan conservative? i m sorry? this health care plan is it conservative? this is the right plan for america. it is a framework we believe will repeal obamacare which has been a disaster. heritage says it doesn t do that, heritage action. and we ll replace this with a plan that will handwritings the power of the free market, will give states resources and flexibility to reporm medicaid, will help americans be able to purchase health insurance but the cost of health insurance will go down. we are looking forward as i told leaders in the senate today 50i78 going to be meeting with members of congress this afternoon, we really do believe this is a historic opportunity the repeal the failed policies of obamacare and replace it with the kind of reforms that will lower the cost of health insurance en while we insure that the most vulnerable have access to better coverage through medicaid and greater state flexibility. where are conservatives so opposed? i think we are early in the legislative process. and the president has made it clear we are open to ways to improve the bill but we believe the american health care act is the right framework for replacing obamacare. in the days ahead the president and i look forward to making that point the members of congress and the people of america. thank you, i appreciate it. of course the key there they are very early in this process, they seem to be open to making changes or adjustments. but at this point it is becoming more difficult to figure out how they square getting it through the house of representatives where you have pressure from conservatives and then sending it over to the senate where you already have a group of four senators writing letters saying look if you end this medicaid expansion it s going to be really tough on state budgets and potentially hurt low income americans. so that s very difficult. and any one of these political calculations can make something like this completely fall apart. you remember i covered the beginning to the end of passing the affordable care act, obamacare, back in 2009. and that was something that took an incredible amount of arm twisting from nancy pelosi who of course was speaker of the house. she was question that is something that dpemts and republicans agree she is very good at. you had a president who was at the height of his popularity right after the election. those things do not necessarily exist right now for republicans on capitol hill. speaker ryan is dealing with a caucus that s much more kind of fractured. the way he has dealt with them has been to kinds of devolve some power. it s unclear if that strategy is going to work this this case. president trump doesn t have the same popularity nowhat president obama had at the time. and all of that could really put all of thisn jeopardy, kate. perry bacon, you wrote on 538 about all of this, about the seven groups that could complicate gop plans to repeal obamacare. i want to run through your article. you said older americans because they could be charged more than younger people. you said conservative lawmakers, because it doesn t go far enough in getting rid of medication expansion for some of them. you said governors, you say you think some governors think it s stingy on medicaid. another group you are looking at is people getting affordable care act coverage particularly those with low incomes because they might not get as much help as they did. voters, democrats who don t want to see changes to the law because they like obamacare as it is. and people who support abortion rights or planned parenthood because federal plans are cut off to planned parenthood for a year through medicaid. which is the biggest challenge? we are talking about a process in congress. the biggest problem i would say is that moderates in the senate thinking it s too conservative, house members thinking it s not conservative enough. i would say older people. the aarp is organizing against this bill bus it lets you charge older people more than younger people. aarp is an influential group. i think it matters lot, too. one thing in favor of the bill passing, the republican heeders and white house view it this way, custom is that most republicans in congress ran on repealing obamacare. republican leaders view this as we dare you to go on the floor and vote against obamacare after what you promised your constituents. they have with one advantage which is that the republican voted to changing and revealing obamacare and most members don t to vote against an obamacare peal. chris jansing a the white house,ore he took office, president trump said he had an alternative vision, alternate vision for health care reform. he made promises, weapon on 60 minutes and he was asked would it be universal health care, he said yeah i really want to take care of everybody. those were his words. he even said he didn t care if it got him votes or didn t. now he is tweeting he is going to negotiate with congress. mike pence saying this is the beginning of a process. is this a shift away from the big promises he made on the campaign trail? yeah, i mean this was a central focus of his campaign. anybody who went to or saw any of his rallies saw this was one of the bige cheer points. this always got a huge reaction, that he was going to get rid of obamacare. and that he had a plan. i mean, remember, he also gave a newspaper interview where he said he had a plan that was going to cover everybody. in january he talked about that plan. now it looks as though that plan doesn t exist. he is adopting this. and we have heard really, about sort of the genesis of how this all came to be today with the hhs secretary tom price who was asked about his support for this. let s play what he had to say as the voice of this administration right now for this health care change. do you support everything that s in the bill sitting on the table. this is a work progress. it is a legislative process that occurs. we will work with the house and senate. another way to look at it is, kate, this is reality sinking in for this white house that has so few people who have ever been through this process before, that they are realizing how complex this is. you know, there were a lot of people who either laughed or mock the fact when the president said he didn t real how complicated that was going to be. there is no doubt this is one of the most complicated pieces of legislation that we have seen in recent years. and by the way, if it does get repealed, it would be unprecedented. we have never seen a major program like this that affects millions of people that then has been taken off the table. and obviously, that s part of the concern that we have been talking about for some of the lawmakers. chris jansing, kasie hunt, perry bacon, thank you all so much. appreciate it. up next we are going to kick in on one of the fine points in that stack of papers that you saw at the white house. that s the house s obamacare repeal bill. the bigger stack is the old obamacare. we are going to talk about tax credits, which existed in both plans, and what does it mean what they are trying to do now? what exactly will those tax credits look like? how will they work? when we come back. but our past is just that, past. we are pioneers. so our greatest achievements can t lay behind us, because our destiny lies ahead. that s what it means to drive the world forward. that s what it means to dare. parts a and b and want more coverage, guess what? you could apply for a medicare supplement insurance plan whenever you want. no enrollment window. no waiting to apply. that means now may be a great time to shop for an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. medicare doesn t cover everything. and like all standardized medicare supplement insurance plans, these help cover some of what medicare doesn t pay. so don t wait. call now to request your free decision guide. it could help you find the aarp medicare supplementlan that works for you. these types of plans have no networks, so you get to choose any doctor who accepts medicare patients. rates are competitive, and they re the only plans of their kind endorsed by aarp. remember - these plans let you apply all year round. so call today. because now s the perfect time to learn more. go long. will your business be ready when growth presents itself? american express open cards can help you take on a new job, or fill a big order or expand your office and take on whatever comes next. find out how american express cards and services can help prepare you for growth at open.com. you are looking live at a shot outside the capitol building. war going to see the freedom caucus there and also conservative senators talking about the white house bill and their reservations i should say representatives. the new republican bill krnly introduced in the house provides tax credits. i want to bring in ali very well shy. you get them up front. a refundable tax credit is generally something you have to file a tax return for. right, you get it litter. this is called an advance refundable tax credit. under obamacare when you sign up for insurance you could apply the tax credit immediately. we haven t gotten the nuts and bolts but this is an advance refund. you get it at the front ends. that s how it s supposed to work. if you are 20 years old you get $20,000 as you get older it increases. now at 20 i ve been looking around. it s hard to get a full $2,000 . of the at 60, there is zero chance you are getting a policy for $4,000. it might be a catastrophic policy but not going to cover nearly everything of as you earn more you will start to see them decrease. for individuals earning $75,000 or couples earning $150,000 they will not get the same size of tax credits. here s the interesting part. under obamacare for a 27-year-old let s say, healthy, earning $20,000, on the low end they had they would get $3325 a year in sub sid sees under obamacare. that person is now going get $2,000. if you are making $20,000 and 27 years he would. $20,000 for a 27-year-old assuming you are relatively healthy. under obamacare you were getting 3225 in subsidies and credits. to put towards health care. right. under the new plan you get 2:2,000. what this leads one to understand after studying it if you are ill don t earn much money or if you are old this is not going to be great for you. there is stuff we haven t touched on yet, medicaid changes that s going to affect a lot of the poor. this is not a great thing for people who don t earn much money are sick or are old. it s hard to generalize because the a lot of the devils are going to be in the details. there are going to be outliars on all sides of this thing but when you generalize this is what you can come up with. this is instructive. just seeing an example of one particular kind of person. ali thank you so much that helps me get my head around it. earlier in the show in fact, now teleprompter is wrong right now. let me talk about who we are going to join next. it s tim live isser who knows a thing or two about one particular group of people that might be affected by this new health care plan. that i people with disabilities. he of course is with the special olympics and joins me now. tim, nice see you. thanks for having me. let s talk about the group you work closely with. people with disability. when you saw this new house plan what was your first thought? are there some good things? are there some concerns? we are all learning. i think it s very early days. i think one of the great things that this president has done is inspired so many people to take an interesting in the legislative process. i suspect this draft will be the most read draft of a piece of legislation in the last ten years, especially by people under 30. we are welcoming the process of elevating the needs of people with issues in abilities in this process. from what we can see there are reasons for concern. when you see caps on medicare expansion. when you see restrictions on some of the benefits that will accrue with people with disabilities you start to get concerned. frankly i think all americans would be concerned by this. they are respectful and decent people they want to look at a person who has down s syndrome and they want their country to be a place where they can get health care. where are you getting those concerns specifically? you mentioned caps, right, potentially on is that what you mentioned? i would say i m not a policy expert in its early days. we are seeing the potential to restrict medicare funding after 2020. medicare funding do as lot of things. you are talking about medicaid. excuse me. i said medicare. medicaid. my mistake. the caps there, some of those services include school based health care services, transportation and early childhood supports that come under medicaid. these are critically important for people with disabilities. they have been expanding in recent years with bipartisan support and we would not want to see those rolled back. let me ask you this. they have preserved key things in obamacare, right, which is if you are 26 up to age 26 you can be on your parents health care plan. and the key thing i would think for the commune of people with disabilities is that preexisting conditions don t count against you when you are treeg to get insurance. that s right. and that was a huge i mean, i consider that one of the great legislative achievements that follow a long list of achievements, ford signing the bill integrating our schools. bush, signing the bill for the americans with disabilities act. deinstitutionalizati deinstitutionalization. this notion of deexcluding people with preexisting conditions opened up this to the world of people with disability. although i don t think most people understood when that was passed it was part of the affordable care act. i think most americans would degree it s important the keep it. there is concern about these families. i think about the caregivers. i have done reporting about people for example, of people with autism, who after 21 they are out of the health care system and their parents have to take time off of work, they have to dedicate their lives to helping their kids. medicaid be that a life line for those families. there is enough fear in the culture already. there is enough bullying in our culture ready. there is enough uncertain for people who have intellectual and developmental challenges and their families. i would hope this process would make sure their stories are told. in the special olympics we have launched a 15 year campaign to develop supports for people with disabilities. extra support from foundations. bipartisan. this is not a right left, red, bluish you. these are americans, donors, volunteers, who want to expand and make the world safe for people who have struggles and challenges but who also have gifts and capacity to give. our hope is that this process won t increase the fear but elevate their stories and make sure they are included in the discussion so that the people on the right and the left will protect the decent and respectful way in which most appearance would want the see them treated. tim schreiber great to see you. up next, ben carson s first full week as secretary of housing and urban development is off to a rough start as he face as flood of backlash for comments he made likening slaves to immigrants. and live shot from outside the capitol where we are waiting for members of the freedom caucus to come to the micro pony with their response to the repeal of obamacare. we will bring you that live as soon as it happens. knowing where you stand has never been easier. except when it comes to retirement. at fidelity, you get a retirement score in just 60 seconds. and we ll help you make decisions for your plan. to keep you on track. it s your retirement. know where you stand. to keep you on track. everything your family touches sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. let s look at our big three stories at the half hour right now. more than two dozen reports of tornadoes touching down across the central u.s. yesterday. hundreds of homes from damaged and destroyed. several people were hurt. none of the injuries are considered life threatening. the threat of severe weather stretched from oklahoma and arkansas northward into minnesota and wisconsin. threats against jewish community centers continued today. facilities in new york, florida, wisconsin a illinois all forced to evacuate following bomb threats. the anti-defamation league also says several of their offices received threats. meanwhile, all 100 u.s. senators urged the trump administration to take action against these threats and vandalism. they send letters to the homeland security deputy the department and the fbi calling for swift action. on friday a former journalist was arrested and charged with at least eight of the threats. however police believe he was a copycat trying to get back at former girlfriend. chance the rapper is being praised after announcing he is donating $1 million to chicago public schools. the rapper, whose real name is chancellor bennett is from the windy city and criticized the governor of illinois after he vetoed funding for public schools. the money is coming from concert ticket sales. and he says he will add $10,000 for every $100,000 raised. ben carson set off a firestorm after referring to slaves as immigrants during his first speech to hud employees on monday. take a listen. that s what america is about, a land of dreams and opportunity. there were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder, for less. but they, too, had a dream. for more now i want to bring in roland martin. he is host and managing editor of news one now on tv 1. roland, always good the see you. likewise. i do not need to tell you this has exploded on line. it has blown up. a lot of people are not happy about what he said. your take? well, it s stupid and as nine. the bottom line is ben carson, as politico is reporting has said this for couple of decades, using immigrants, it s simply flat out lie. it is a false. and you simply can t compare the two. i can tell you last night when i heard his interview when he tried to clarify those comments on armstrong williams radio show on sirius xm radio i heard those as well and those were idiotic as well. on his personal facebook page he posted an explanation that made more sense. this is bigger than ben carson. you have seen the efforts in texas to change the textbooks where mac grau hill published the book describing the slaves as workers brought in from america. the tea party wanted to remove that farm owners were slave owners as well. there is this of the by conservatives to somehow soften or redefine slavery. and that s why people are offended by what the secretary had to say. roland, i would ask so many more questions but i think we have to go to capitol hill right now. if you can pause for us. okay. we are expecting republicans now speaking out. this is members of the freedom caucus who have had concerns about the health care bill. let s listen in. campaign with president trump all across north carolina and one of things that he talked about was repeal and replacement. now when he said that, it took on two different meanings. repeal, to many, meant that we would repeal the entire obamacare plan. all the taxes, all the mandates, the medicaid exchanges. and when he talked about replacement, it took on another meaning to others, which it meant that we needed to cover the preexisting conditions, making sure that people didn t get kicked off of their health care plan, making sure that there was an adequate safety net. i can tell you that those two things are still the focus of not only the house freedom caucus but my good friends senator lee, senator rand paul, and senator ted cruz. as we look at this today, we are going to be talking about a number of scores in the upcoming days. cbo scores. and what score, that this means and what does it mean for the american people. i can tell you there is one score that the american people will pay attention to. and that is, does it really lower their health care costs and their premiums? that s the only score that really matters. and if this doesn t do it, then we need to make sure that we find something that does do it. and with that i m going to turn it over to the gentleman from ohio who plans to introduce a piece of legislation that really repeals the affordable care act the gentleman from ohio, jim jordan. our goal is simple to bring down the cost of insurance for working families and middle class families across the country. in an effort to do that, we think you have to get rid of obamacare completely. tomorrow i will introduce the bill that every single republican voted on just 15 months ago, the bill that actually repeals obamacare. our plan has always been repeal in one piece of legislation and replace in another. that replacement we talked about a few weeks ago is the bill sponsored by dr. paul in the senate and mark sanford in the house. there is three plans out there. collins plan, if you like obamacare you can keep obamacare. there was the leadership plan that was brought forward which i believe when you look through it is obamacare in a different form. then there is our plan, the one i think is consistent with what we told the voters we were going do. repeal obamacare, replace it with a market centered patient centered doctor centered plan that brings down the cost of insurance, brings down the cost of health care and prois affordable insurance opportunities for all americans. that s what we are focused on doing. think about this, he put on president obama s desk a bill that repealed obamacare, got rid of every single tax, got rid of the mandates, and now the first thing republicans are bringing forward is a piece of legislation that we are going to put on a republican president s desk that says we repeal it, but keeps medicaid exexpansion and actually expands it, that keeps some of the tax increases. th is not what we promised the american people we were going to do. our plan, repeal it clean repeal, just like we all voted on above. separate legislation to replace what we currently have with a model that we think will bring down the cost of premiums for the hard working people of this country who sent us here to do just that. with that i want to turn it offer to the sponsor of our replacement plan in the senate, dr. rand paul. today i will introduce a companion bill also to congressman jordan s plan to have complete repeal arc clean repeal. we ll be doing this in the senate today as well. there is one thing that has united republicans in 2010 when we won the house, in 2014, when we won the senate, and in 2016 when we witness to white house. this doesn t divide republicans, this brings us together. and that is complete repeal. clean repeal. as congressman jordan said, we voted on this last year and every republican voted for it. that s what we should do again. but we are divided. we have to admit, we are divided on remaysment. we are united on repeal, but we are divided on replacement. what s the best way to get past this impasse? let s vote on what we voted on before, a clean repeal. let s separate out the replacement plans. conservatives have a replacement plan. house leadership has a replacement plan. i m sure democrats would like to go back and vote on the aca again. vote on all the replacement plans and see what happens. let s vote on clean repeal. the only way i think this gets done is to separate the issues. separate out clean repeal from replacement. let s got get it done. repeal unites us. i think we can get tha done. with that i ll intro senor mike lee from utah. what s been introduced in the house in the last 24 hours is not the obamacare replacement plan. not the obamacare repeal plan we have been 40e7ing for. this is instead a step in the wrong direction. and as much as anything it s a missed opportunity. look. we ve seen what happens when congress decides to put forward a plan negotiated behind closed doors where members are told you have got to pass this bill in order to find out what s in it. it s usually not a good product. on this topic i m not speaking about anything that s necessarily inherently democratic or republican or liberal or conservative. this is just a common sense vauchlt that what we ought to have in congress is an it rative process one week start with basic grounding principles. the two parties are in widespread disagreement when it comes to obamacare itself. but there is one plan and only one plan that has so far passed a republican congress. it s this plg plan being reintroduced today. that plan passed with the support of every republican in house of representatives and every republican in the senate. and it did so just in the last 14 months. so i think we ought to put this forward. we ought to got it passed and then let s move the ball forward in an it rative process, a process in which people can propose different ideas that will benefit the american people. that s what we want to do. and that s what this process, this bill, the 2015 repeal bill, would do if we were to pass it right now. it s now my pleasure to introduce my friend and counter-part in the house, congressman mark sanford from south carolina. thank you. about hf an hour ago, maybe less than that, about half an hour ago the produce wrapped up its daily press briefing with the press. in it it was spruinstructive int sean spicer said the health care plan being introduced is a work in progress. it s interrog that secretary price said the same thing at the beginning of the press conference. it is a work in progress. if we liken this sort of to donald trump s world of everything is a negotiation, what we have now is an opening bid. and i think what conservatives are saying is okay that s the opening bid but based on some thing that happened whether in 2015 or principles that conservatives have long advanced might not we constructively look for ways of refining what s been introduced? that s what ultimately this press conference is all about. i think respectfully it s about asking this simple question, which is, do we need to lower the bar in what we believe as conservatives simply because a republican is now in the white house? so the bill that congressman yorn is going to introduce is all about simply not lowering that bar, of saying wait a minute, to their point, 14 months ago something was in there with unanimous accord with republicans on the house and senate side. let s stick with that plan. it s prospectively as well, in looking forward let s not lower what we believe or lower the bar on what we believe simply because a republican is in the white house on new ideas. so you look at the idea of a cadillac bill. cadillac plant that s based in the current bill that s being talked about. i don t know. is that a lowering of the bar? you look at something like the refundable tax credit. is that lowering of the bar? it was ron reagan who said that the closest thing to eternal life is government program. guaranteed eternal life in government is an sbilg men. when we are talking about here is a new entitle men. for a variety of different reasons this is simply about going back to things and principles that long worked on the conservative side and things that republicans espoused and grabbed hold of here within the last 13 months. i m louie gobert, the newest member of the freedom caucus. we are told we re known by our enemies and known by our friends. i m proud to be known by this group of friends. i m glad we finally got a bill out. it is not 2500 pages. it is a starting point. some people asked what i told president trump when he came down the aisle for the state of the union. one of the things i said was you are going told we can t do some of things we did two years ago with obamace. and it was true. it is still true. so as long as we re ae to get amendments to the floor that will fix some huge problems with the bill that s now been filed, then we ll be okay. but there better not be a rule that prevents amendments that are badly needed to fix this flawed bill. that would be a major problem. we don t need as mark said we don t need to start new entitlement programs. and we certainly don t need to have the bottom line effect, what mark meadows was talking about that prices of insurance don t go down. so there are things that have to be on the that have to be included. but we have got a starting point. i think amidst the horse extreatment we can find a upony around here somewhere. that s what we are looking to have, we will have a race horse as long as we can get in good amendments when we re done. aunk all. i think it s helpful to reflect about eight years back in how we started to do health care reform eight years ago. i think you her the heads of the insurance companies walked into the white house looking at their shoes. and something was wrong there. and so eight years later, the head of aetna says we are in a death spiral. and so the health care system they arranged eight years ago obviously didn t work. and so central government, top down government control, especially at the federal level, does not work. we ve seen that. now, interestingly the press comes and says the car is in the ditch, how are you guys going to fix it in two weeks? right. the answer would always be, we should have done free market economics and free market health care in the meantime, over the past, 20 30 years. last time what did we focus on? we focused on 18 million coverage. we didn t focus on prices or the cost of health care. now you have health care costs going up at 25%. the speaker, health insurance premiums, prices cost up 25%. the speaker said the gol is to shift the cost curve hold. all of you in the press corps can hold us accountable to that. what that means is not a reduction in the rate of increase not down to 15% growth in costs. a reduction in bending the cost curve down means costs go down by negative 1%. that s what the american people are dieing to see it. happened in every other market. it happened with cars, cd players started at $300, and now down to $30. if we are lowering costs a $100,000 heart procedure here costs $15,000. that s a radical difference in costs. that s easier to solve if we would have addressed the fries and the cost issue. we currently have $100 trillion unfunded mandatory spending program in this country. we promised $100 trillion to the next generation in programs. the federal government has created that problem. medicare is insolvent, social surt is insolvent. now we are creating another entitlement on top of $100 trillion. i think your reporting needs to be clear. when we create another entitle men in the next generation. one goal we have is i want to push as much of this down to the state level as i can. the federal government has a unique ability to print money and put it on the next generation. the states have to run a balanced bum. i trust them more in the governance to be more fiscally responsible. those are some of the major ideas. it s not tinkering around the edges. there is a philosophical difference what it means to do free markets. and we want to put in the mechanisms to ensure that that becomes reasonable. thank you. thank you, tom garrett from verge s fifth congressional district. i want to thank congressman jordan, senators lee and paul, my cohorts in the freedom caucus for having me here today. this is simply too important to rush through. the proposals that came out yesterday were shrouded in a cloak of secretsy that denied well over half of the house and well over half of the senate the ability to essentially participate in the process. so the debate must be had to fit within the framework envisioned by our founders. would know that historically freer mark don t get me wrong, i understand that health care is not a commodity like sneakers, but freer markts lead the lower costs. and we can do this withoutet contracting a new sboolgt men. about a month and a half ago i believe objection familiar s research came out indicated that the eight wealthiest individuals on the planet earth controlled as much wealth combined as the bottom 50th percentile. that s 8 people, plus 376 billion people had as much welt as 3.6 billion people. to put the united states s current debt, imagine if you will that we can extract every dime from the entire 50th percentile and down of wealth and then the eighth wealthiest people and then apply that to the current standing debt, not unfunded liability, current standing debt. folks, it would pay off under 10%. we hear the usef e word unsustainable again and again and again in this town. and some things really are. and new entitlement programs and spending on top of spending truly is. we can turn the cost curve down ward and do so without encumbering future generations. it s as simple as that. i heard this characterizing this as lot of people playing a game of chicken. we are resolute and we will stand here and do what is right not just for today but for posterity. thank you very much. we ll take some questions. john parkinson, abc, go ahead. i heard you guys using the optimism ahead, you know, the president will negotiate with you. today he had a tweet that said you early theed this as a wonderful bill. do any of you want to use that term, wonderful, and if so, what parts of the bill do you think are wonderful? no. and there are some improvements in the legislation from the leaked draft. but there was a wonderful bill that every single republican voted on just a few months back. and tomorrow senator paul and myself will be introducing that same piece of legislation. and that is exactly as i said earlier consistent with when we told the american people we were going do, repeal obamacare. how about using the bill we all supported? and then replacing it with something we actually believe is going to lower health care costs. mr. jordan, can you talk for a minute, mr. jordan and mr. meadows here about you said mr. meadows you met with the vice president. he said he is open to negotiation here. and the vice president was over in the senate, and he said this is the bill when i hear all of you talk, it sounds like you were trying to get somewhere where you can support a legislative product here at the end of the day. but as you just alluded to, mr. jordan, you said and mr. garrett said this, the wrote this in the dead of night, so on and so forth. so why would you trust them? chad, of course we are trying get somewhere to repeal obamacare. we know what a disaster it has been for the american people. the people spoke loudly and clearly on november 8:. comment right on target. doing it right s important, not just doing it, doing it right. and that s what today s about. that s why we re going to introduce our legislation tomorrow. that s why we think the two pieces of legislation that mode of getting it done is the proper way to proceed, and that s why we re introducing the bill tomorrow and why we have the bill we introduced weeks before. trust what the vice president said of course. this is the bill. yeah, the vice president is an honorable man and we trust him. i think what there s some difference in the context of what s being said is i think the president and the vice president is saying that the foundation there is a good foundation. we might disagree on that, however, we re committed to looking at that foundation and seeing how we can modify it, how we can make sure that we look at really repealing fully and replacing the affordable care act in a meaningful way. and so i don t know that those are mutually exclusive issues as we look at that. we re going to pause just for a moment here to show you on the right side of the skraen. president trump meeting at the white house there and talking a little bit about his health care plan that s come out. let s take a listen to this. we re going to have a lot of victories, a lot of wins, but we have a great team. together we re going to do incredible things for the great citizens of our country. as i said during my joint address to congress, and i think you mostly like that, right? love that. like it a lot. we re witnessing a renewal of the american spirit, a surf optimism and a new national pride which is sweeping across the land. i see it. there s such spirit. whether it s for the business things we re doing or whatever. it that s spirit that we haven t seen in the country in a long time. jobs are pouring back, you saw what happened with exxon where they just announced a massive jobs program. we re going to have fun. we have to remember, obamacare is collapsing. and it s in bad shape. and we re going to take action, there s going to be no slowing down. there s going to be no waiting and no more excuses by anybody. we re all now, i can probably say i m a politician. okay. i am a politician. but we re going to get it done. and you re the leaders that really will get it done for all of us and for the american people. obamacare is in very bad shape. i believe that if we wait two years, it will totally implode. it s really pretty much imploding now, steve, when you think. but it ll implode and people will be like please help us, please help us, and that ll be the democrats asking for help. they already are asking for help in the true sense of the word. because it s a disaster. the insurance companies are fleeing. some states are up over 100% in costs. the deductibles are through the roof. you don t even get to use it. we re going to do something that s great and i m proud to support the replacement plan released by the house of representatives and encouraged by members of both parties, i think really that we re going to have something that s going to be much more understood and much more popular than people can even imagine. if it follows the guidelines i laid out in my congressional address. a plan that will lower costs, expand choices, increase competition, and ensure health care access for all americans. this will be a plan where you n choose your doctor, this will be a plan where you can chse your plan. and you know what the plan is. this is the plan. and we re going to have a tremendous, i think we re going to have a tremendous success. it s a complicated process, but actually it s very simple. it s called good health care. so i want to thank you folks for being with us today, ladies and gentlemen and we will do something really, really important and really good for the american people. i think it s going to go very quickly. i hope it s going to go very quickly. as you know after that we work on the tax cut. we re going to be planning a major tax cut. i know exactly what we re looking at. most of us know exactly the plan. it s going to put our country in great shape and we re going to reduce taxes for companies and for people. and i can use the word again, massively, it s going to be a big tax cut. the biggest since reagan, maybe bigger than reagan. i look forward, i really look forward to working on that. we can t get to that unfortunately because of the way your system works. we can t get to that until we take care of health care. so, we ll take care of the health care. i appreciate your great support and let s get it done. thank you. thank you all. fantastic. thank you. mr. president, thank you for having our deputy whip team to the white house. and thank you for your commitment on following through on what to most americans is probably one of the most important promises that were made not only by you, but by all of us in getting this majority vote in the house and senate and the white house. and that is rescuing the american people from the failures of obamacare. we ve heard the message for years. we ve seen the dramatically skyrocketing costs. double digit increases every year in most parts of the country in health premiums for families. many families are seeing deductibles that rise above the $10,000 range. which means people don t have acce to hlth care. people don t have the ability to choose their own doctor. you talked about this the other night, and just one of the best speeches i ve heard from a president standing out that well in the house chamber when you addressed the joint session and gave an inspirational speech to the country laying out the things that need to happen and that you re going to do to get this country back and track and secure america. but one of the things you talk abouted is how it s wrong that unelected bureaucrats in washington have the ability to tell you what you can and can t buy for your family in health care. one of the most personal decisions families make. this bill finally starts the process of not only repealing obamacare, but also replacing it with reforms that put patients back in charge of their health care decisions. that lower costs for families. let them actually choose the decisions between them and their doctor which are so personal. and so as we start this process, the people in this room, the chief deputy whips are the ones that are going to be working directly with members to ultimately pass this fwoil your desk so that we can quickly provide that relief from obamacare to the people of the united states. and i know we are honored to have our former house colleague and now our vice president of the united states whose been involved in this fight from the beginning as well, vice president mike pence joining us too. thank you, vice president. thank you very much, steve. and again, we re going to work quickly. it s a great bill. we re going to have tremendous i really believe we re going to have tremendous support, i m already seeing the support not only in this room, i m seeing it from everybody and i m seeing it from look now old news i got elected to a certain extent. pretty good little chunk based on the fact, repeal and replace obamacare. and many of you people are in the same boat. very important so let s get it done. thank you all very much for being here. thank you. okay. thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you. okay. let me walk you through what we just saw. that s president trump at the white house meeting with members of the republican house leadership. they call them the whips office. those are the folks on capitol hill who are noent kind of whip up the votes and help pass legislation through the house. you heard from steve scalise, he s the house majority whip and you heard from the president saying we have a lot of support saying that this is a plan that we can back. i m proud to support the replacement plan released by the house were the words of the president just before that though, i would note that we were hearing from members of the house and two senators, members of the freedom caucus, conservatives who have a lot of concerns about this health care plan. we heard them speaking on capitol hill, eight of them spoke before the cameras. i want to bring in now nira tandem. she served in the obama administration as a senior advisor in the health and human services department where she worked on the affordable care act in the beginning. bill ystal, founder and editor of the weekly standard. bill, i want to go to you first, that was quite a jux position what we just heard. members of the house and senate saying we have some problems here. we re not ready to support this, it s too important to rush this through and the president saying everything s fine. a lot of republican members in the house especially are going to have indigestion tonight trying to figure out they don t want to derail the first major piece of legislation tabled by the speaker of the house and supported by the republican president. they had deep concerns about the bill that was just unveiled monday night being rushed through in this way. mark-up is tomorrow, one of the most effective criticisms of obamacare which seems to be all these deals under the table and late at night and rush votes. i wonder what s going to happen. this is a big moment though and you saw serious members of the house, jim jordan and serious senators for the first time breaking with their republican president, president trump. and let me get your take on this, you worked on obamacare, you know how hard it is to make the sausage, right, to get something through. republicans would say, look, they ve got the majorities, they can do this. it might take a while, but they can do it. yeah, i think what you ve seen over the last 24 hours is how difficult this process is. i mean, we passed the affordable care act and there was ewe nam anymorety on the divisions. and it was not an easy feat. it is really hard. but we did not have this level of disagreement. there is not just disagreement between the trump administration and the trump white house and
canceled it? on friday, the new york times wrote the following. quote, a senior white house official told reporters that even if the meeting were reinstated holding it on june 12 would be impossible given the lack of time needed. president trump 1307bded on twitter with this false accusation. quote, the failing the new york times quotes a senior white house official who doesn t exist, use real people, not phony sources. the source was, in fact, a senior white house official speaking to a large group of reporters in the white house briefing room. we journalists try as hard as we can to always identify our sources on the record so that we can tell you, our viewers, watchers, listeners, why you should trust our information. sometimes we agree to allow people to speak anonymously. we ll refer to that as talking on background. nbc news does know the identity of this official, although we re not identifying him because we agreed not to. we, however, do not invent people. if we did, we would and should lose our jobs. but i digress. this is one small example of a phenomenon, really a strategy of president trump s to undermine the press. here s 60 minutes leslie stahl explaining a conversation she had with the president before he had taken office. at one point he started to attack the press. and i said, you know, that is getting tired. why are you doing this? you re doing it over and over and it s boring and it s time to end that. you know, you ve won the nomination. and why do you keep hammering at this? and he said, you know why i do it? i do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you. he said that. so, put that in your head for a minute. indeed. so, what does this strategy, these attacks on the press and more importantly, the attacks on the credibility of the information that you are able to learn through the press? what does this strategy mean for our democracy? consider what dan balls at the washington post wrote in this morning s paper. quote, if the president s goal is to poison the reception to whatever bob mueller s findings turn out to be, as seems evident from what he and his allies have done, he is making progress. here s the president s lawyer rudy giuliani spelling it out even more clearly. giuliani was asked if his comments about the mueller probe are part of an intentional strategy to undermine the mueller investigation. they are giving us the material to do it. of course, we have to do it in defending the president. we re defending to a large extent remember, dana, we re defending here, it is for public opinion because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach, not impeach. remember the congress, democrat and republican are going to be informed a lot by their constituents. our jury as it should be is the american people and the american people, yes, are republicans, largely, independents, pretty substantially, and even some democrats now question the legitimacy of it. to impeach or not impeach. i d like to welcome my panel to talk more about this. white house correspondent for reuters jeff mason. associate editor and columnist for real clear politics amy today art. former deputy secretary of defense msnbc analyst evelyn. and former congresswoman of maryland, donna edwards. thank you for coming in on this memorial day weekend which has not the pace is not what we re used to in the trump administration despite the holiday. jeff, i want to start with you because as i understand it, you were in that background briefing at the white house this past week. were you i m not even sure i feel like i should ask if you were surprised this is a tact the president decided to take with regards to this. it is a little jarring for him to deny the existence of his own aide. it is jarring. i remember even very early on in his administration he would encourage or tweet or say reporters need to use sources with their names. i printed it out and hung it up in a little office that we work in behind the white house because so often white house officials who do speak to us very frequently white house press officials speak to us, say i can tell you this on background, which as you identified to your viewers means not with attribution to their names. they do it all the time. we, of course, would also prefer to use names. it always makes the story stronger, makes the package stronger. but that s not always the rules they play by. you at one point ran the white house correspondents association. we ve been talking about this now several days. we were just showing maggie haberman s tweet on screen, of course the new york times reporter involved in this. what is the steps the correspondents association can take in a situation like this? that is a good question. i mean, i don t speak for the correspondents association any more, but i do think it s important for reporters whether we are all covering the white house or covering other aspects of washington or other beats around the country to stand up for truth, to call it out when something like this happens. in this case the president obviously saying something that is untrue. i think we can band together on that. and then as i repeated over and over again when i was president of the correspondents association, i think the best way we fight back is by doing good work. a.b. todstodardt, we want it be about the things we re writing. if we have sling ands arrows, that s part of the job. there has been a lot of republican criticism of the media over the decades. newt gingrich, we were not a favorite of his. but this does seem to be different than the kind of criticism that oftentimes politicians have thrown at the media in the past. well, leslie stall laid it out. president trump made it clear as a candidate. he made it very clear as the nominee. and then as president-elect and then as president that he is going to run against the media because it works. it works with his base. it works with even people who aren t even really trump supporters. republicans who believe that the media is too liberal, is biased. and then independents which are skeptical of the whole process. and giuliani there was claiming oh, there are some democrats who feel this way too now. it is a very obvious strategy. they re not trying to hide it. giuliani made it very clear he is not a legal counsel right now to the president. he s playing his spokesman on tv basically about the mueller investigation whenever he can get the chance. and it makes trump happy and he fights back and says things like rigged and illegitimate and that s what he s doing. he s making it very clear. what s frightening obviously is that it works. and what dan balls is talking about today is just how much this has become sort of tribal gladiators and the way that trump and his spokesman and sort of the pro trump media and his members of sort of this group on the hill of members of congressmen who speak for him trash anyone who defends bob mueller, he s brought his numbers way down to the point republicans don t believe anything mueller will come up with. i m glad you brought up dan s column. i have more i want to share. the gap between the jeff flakes of the republican party and what increasingly is a pro-trump majority is how the president has been successful shaping opinion ahead of whatever judgment is levelled by the special counsel and his team. here s majority whip in the senate john cornyn talking with hugh hugh et about what the president has termed as spygate. can you explain the difference between a, quote, confidential informant, close quote, and a spy? well, you really can t. i mean, spies typically i think of in terms of foreign powers. but here, the fbi was involved in a counter intelligence investigation, i presume, and used somebody who had contacted various subjects of their investigation to communicate back to the fbi what they found out. i guess for all practical purposes, for most people it wouldn t be any different. donna edwards, i m kind of going back in my head to that clip of rudy giuliani we showed at the top of the show where he said, look, this is going to come down to impeach or not impeach question. he was acknowledging at its core there is a legal framework, but impeachment is a political question. democrats in your party have been saying they can t get ahead of the american public. they need to let the investigation take its course, have the findings come out. and then perhaps if the political will is there, there might be a way to move forward. but it does seem as though the president and his team are swaying public opinion without much pushback necessarily from democrats. what s your take? well, without pushback from republicans either. and i think that part of what s happening fair. it s a one-sided argument because obviously bob mueller can t and won t come out and say, no, this is what we re looking at, this is the direction we re headed in. the president out there who is able to and i would say the press should stop using two and three sill balanyllable words at a lie. john cusack. it s much easier to understand, the public will get that. and the president has lied repeatedly because he has an intent to confuse the public. and i think by not calling it that, what happens is that the president is able to characterize things so that the american public is confused and you can see that in some of this recent polling. but it s a one-sided argument. when bob mueller comes out with his final report as we all expect that he will, and more, perhaps more convictions, but certainly more indictments than then the public will have an opportunity. republicans cannot continue to sit on the side line while the president really dismantles the system. evelyn parker? i agree with that. i spent seven years working for the senate arms services committee, one of the most bipartisan committees in the senate probably on the hill. and, you know, we always believed that nobody has the right to their own facts. and you get the facts together as republicans and democrats. so, the other thing we saw earlier this week as you well know was this attempt to get facts just to republicans. again, about the spygate thing to amp it up. right. you re talking about the meetings at the department of justice and information that those republicans on the hill were asking for. correct. and i mean, in and of itself meetings to get information, fine. but they should be bipartisan, especially when it is about an investigation of the executive branch. so, i think the biggest problem is this not calling a spade a spade. certainly falsehood is okay, but lie is even better. and then bipartisan, the republicans need to speak out and defend the institutions, the truth and the process. we didn t even touch on either the fact that there were white house officials at the beginning of those meetings who may or may not have had the right to see that information. through all of this, of course, the president maintains that he and kim jong-un could still meet for an historic summit in singapore on june 12. the president confirmed on twitter today that a team of u.s. officials has arrived in north korea to, quote, make arrangements for the summit. and here s what the president had to say about it last night. a lot of people are working on it. it s moving along very nicely, so we re looking at june 12th in singapore. that hasn t changed. and it s moving along pretty well so we ll see what happens. those comments came after a surprise meeting between kim jong-un and south korean president moon jae-in yesterday. afterwards president moon said north korea remains committed to holding talks with president trump and to completing the denuclearization of the peninsula. evelyn, i want to get you to weigh in on this broadly, but first, jeff mason, are you going to singapore on june 12, or are you staying home? i m so confused. the fact that the president last week so very clearly canceled the summit it was a letter. not even the tweet. later also in his remarks that day at the white house, he said, who knows, maybe it will still happen on june 12. he s been leaving the door very wide open for that despite the very dramatic cancellation letter. he wants to go. he wants this to happen. and so, how did the letter evolve, then? obviously somebody convinced him this is the right thing to do or is this another impulsive, i m going to send this because i want them to know i m willing to do it? i think they were responding to a comment marc made the night before and which we ll either meet you for a summit or a nuclear showdown. the president and others decided we can t have a meeting under these circumstances. but he still wants to go. and so the key question there is whether or not they can agree ahead of time that denuclearization will be the outcome of that meeting. and that seems to be where the south koreans and the north koreans have discussed a little bit and what the u.s., no doubt, is pushing for in advance. evelyn, i want to give you the last word here. what is your i was honestly surprised at the way some of the comments in the wake of the cancellation of the summit broke down on capitol hill. i was up there talking to republicans and democrats. it actually seemed to be a pretty universal feeling that going forward with the summit, assuming that denuclearization is on the table, was really the right move. i mean, do you see an area where there is a nobel peace prize in donald trump s future if he can pull this off? well, i mean, in a very distant future because the north koreans as we know, their goal is not to denuclearize, to give up their nuclear weapons program. they say very clearly we want to denuclearize the peninsula and that s a whole nother ball of wax because that probably means removing u.s. forces. it means more than nuclear things when you ask the north koreans face to face. right. but it s a process and this is the whole problem. everyone is for a dialogue and a discussion basically opening a negotiation. and getting to some kind of freeze and then, sure, great. if one day we can get the north koreans to give up their nuclear weapons, fine. i think the president, this back and forth, isn t very helpful. first he got spooked, to answer the question you asked jeff, he got spooked by the north koreans not showing up for some working level meetings and i think he thought maybe they re not going to show up at my meeting. right. so this meeting between moon and kim the south korean and north korean leaders respectively was basically to test, okay, you guys are coming, right? trump doesn t want to show up yes, i think there was also there were also comparisons that involved breaking up with the girl before she can break up with you. anyway, of course we would be remiss if we did not note that the white house issued a historic coin for this event featuring the likenesses of the president and kim jong-un. the initial coin offering was $24.95 on the white house gift shop website. now if you want one, you only have to pay 19.95. so, not the strongest start for that commemorative decorative coin. who knows. maybe one day it will be worth a lot more than that. anyway, just ahead, my exclusive interview with republican senator james lankford. we talk about whether the president s favorite #spygate is a fair description. his answer is no, at least, not yet. and as we go to break, a state of emergency in maryland. this is dramatic video of brown waters rushing down main street as flash floods strike ellicott city, not that far from where we are here. emergency rescue is underway. 13 miles from baltimore, it was devastated by similar flood waters in july of 2016. we are going to be watching this story. our thoughts and prayers are with our neighbors. we will keep you updated on that. kasie d.c. is back after this. , stuck down here between your seat and your console, playing a little hide-n-seek. cold. warmer. warmer. ah boiling. jackpot. and if you ve got cut-rate car insurance, you could be picking up these charges yourself. so get allstate, where agents help keep you protected from mayhem. .like me. mayhem is everywhere. are you in good hands? powerful skincare,s now light-as-air a breakthrough moisturizer whipped for instant absorption feel a light-as-air finish in a flash new olay whips ageless and help you feel more strength & energy in just 2 weeks. i ll take that. ensure high protein, with 16 grams of protein and 4 grams of sugar. ensure® with 16 grams of protein heartburn and gas?ar. now fight both fast new tums chewy bites with gas relief all in one relief of heartburn and gas tum tum tum tums new tums chewy bites with gas relief the department of justice this week showed highly classified documents to members of congress at the demand of the house intelligence chairman devin nunes. they are, we are told, documents that involve a top secret intelligence source. you are a member of the intelligence committee. we hear all the time about the need to protect sources and methods. was this something that hurt national security, these demands? if it gets out, yes. otherwise it s normal. there is a group called the gang of 8 you hear talked about. so, they have access to a lot of information that typically only the president has access to. so, it s not uncommon for them to have access to sources and methods. democrats are upset that emmet flood, the white house lawyer, was included in this meeting. do you think his presence was appropriate? i don t think it s appropriate if he saw the classified documents. my understanding was he was at the beginning of the meeting when they were setting it up, but wasn t present when actually the documents were shown. those documents need to be highly classified and kept in very close hold. if you re affecting sources and methods that is long term national security issues. do you think the department of justice acted 100% ethically and a politically in launching this counter intelligence investigation into president trump? interestingly enough, that is actually one of the questions we ve had for a while. it is a basic question to say how did the investigation begin? what started it? now, we have a set of answers from the justice department for the past year basically to say, this is how it began. now there is a question for the first time in a while to say, is that really how it began? because the time line is not matching up. what s helpful in these documents and i haven t gone through them yet, i m not in the gang of 8, we will go through some of the these documents in the days ahead. but as we go through these documents we are trying to answer the basic question, how did the investigation begin, when did it begin. the president of the united states is accusing the fbi of spying on his campaign. do you think that is an accurate characterization? i don t think it is a good characterization yet. i think they were doing an investigation. from what i ve seen they were asking questions and trying to get additional information. my concern is why were they asking questions at that moment, why were they engaged. was there enough information to say, yes, they should go to the next level to get additional information. should he be calling this spygate, or is that misleading to americans? i would say the president can call it whatever he wants to call it. he always has a unique name for everybody and everything. that s just his way. you don t see this as potentially dangerous or injecting politics into the mueller investigation? we re actually asking the questions to be able to find out why and what. this may end up being entirely normal at the end of it or may be a bigger issue. if the time line is different now and we find out when this investigation was done and when this informant was planted, if it was done at a time different than what we were told by the fbi in the past, that is a pretty big issue. why was he planted before they started the investigation. that is an entirely different issue. there are great people at the fbi. that s why it gets lost in this. there are tremendous number of patriots that work for the fbi all over the country and alameda over the world. i don t want them to get bechimeb besmirched. we have to separate out the thousands, 35,000 plus great folks of the fbi from one or two bad actors that might have been there that made an unwise decision. but we don t know that yet. do you still have confidence in rod rosenstein? i do. i think he is continuing to be able to make hard decisions. he has a lot of hard decisions in front of him. the president won t say he has faith in rosenstein. a shame. it s a tough call. the has been clear he doesn t like the investigation he, he wants it to move on. he sees it as a distraction in the white house. i m sure there are conversations about this. he s been passionate from the beginning, he didn t do any collusion, nobody around him did any collusion. he wants this to be resolved and go away. i said over and over again i think it s best for the president and the presidency to have a full good investigation and settle this for the american people one way or the other so we can move on. do you think it is sufficient for the d.o.j. to use the inspector general to investigate the origins of their investigation or do they need to go further? some of your colleagues in the house on the republican side have called for a special counsel to investigate the investigators. i think the first step is an inspector general. if the inspector general michael horowitz has been a nonpolitical person. if he comes back and says, hey, i ve got some things i m not getting access to, not getting answers to, then we have to be able to push to the next level. let s let the i.g. do his work and get that resolved. i have confidence in michael horowitz and he ll do a good job. i want to ask you about somebody from your home state of oklahoma, scott pruitt, the epa administrator. do you have any concerns about the ethical decisions he s made, the spending? you re a fiscal hawk. he spent $43,000 on a phone booth without asking congress. he was supposed to ask if he spent $5,000. i ve known him a long time just as the attorney general in oklahoma. this is not a random stranger i just met. i know him, i know his family. scott walking into government, i don t think did everything exactly right, but the office of government ethics is going through and looking at every single detail. to be able to make that evaluation. they are going to get the report back as well as the inspector general as you know, to be able to walk through and give the report to the president and decisions be made. there s a lot he has done right. an interesting conversation there with senator lankford. evelyn farkas, you were watching and had some reaction to what he was explaining about spygate, this fbi informant and the origin of where this all might have started. yes, i was trying not to jump out of my seat during this because, look, the spy issue was we were spying on the russians. and if you remember, you think back to the summer before the election, what was happening? we had media reports about the russians and their interactions with the trump people. i don t know this for a fact, but my guess is it began with the cia with other our foreign intelligence agencies saying, hey, these russians are meeting with people. these russians are talking about this, that and the other thing, right? we picked up on it. it takes a little while before that gets solid enough where people want to say to the fbi, okay, step in now and look at americans. i mean, it s not an easy step to go from looking at russians to looking at americans. you re saying you think this originated with our foreign intelligence services. in every bone of my body, i believe that our people who were watching the russians, maybe other countries, i don t know. i know very well what our source ands methods are vis-a-vis russia. we had excellent infell jensen all the way up until i left in october 2015. and i didn t change as far as i know. so, we would have known we could have, we could have known, i should say, we could have picked up on something. so i don t know for sure, but in my gut, i believe that we, the american government, saw this first emanating from overseas. a.b. stoddart, i spoke to some folks on capitol hill every day, who are frequently skeptical of the president. who say they want know more about the origins of this investigation and this decision, and that there is something that the justice department knows or perhaps that they did act incorrectly. what is your sense of i ve had those same conversations. i think what people need to do is look at the reputation of the inspector general horowitz and of bob mueller and they need to go to the internet in 2018 or have someone print the report out for them when each one comes out and they need to assess it on their own without watching the narrative and the pro-trump media or from congressman devin nunes or from the mainstream media if they distrust it because both of those men have excellent reputations and everyone is waiting for their sort of honest untainted assessments of what went on. the interesting thing people have to remember is paul manafort was acting for years as a russian agent. paul manafort was on our intelligence radar screen since 2013. the reason you come in with wfb, the idea they had informants having conversations is how you would act if you were trying to protect the political health of that campaign. it s really hard to make the argument it was politically motivated in the end, brought down donald trump and elected hillary clinton. when we continue, we re going hear more from senator lankford on why he doesn t see the president as a role model for his children. plus, last week we brought you kiersten gillibrand who said they should stop dragging their feet and pass sexual harassment legislation. of course hollywood still reckoning with its own problems and that can make for some awkward television. just ask the cast of arrested development. we re going to talk about all of that up next. - he s got legs of lumber and arms of steel he eats a bowl of hammers at every meal he holds your house in the palm of his hand he s your home and auto man big jim, he s got you covered great big jim, there ain t no other -so, this is covered, right? -yes, ma am. take care of it for you right now. giddyup! hi! this is jamie. we need some help. woman: i stay active by staying in rhythm. and to keep up this pace, i drink boost optimum. boost optimum with 5 in 1 advanced nutrition helps support muscle, energy, bone, normal immune function, and vision. boost optimum. be up for life. boost optimum. if his denture can cope with. a steak. luckily for him, he uses super 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all. energy lives here. senate passed a bill to overhaul its sexual harassment policies, including a provision that will force lawmakers to pay back taxpayers if settlement they are found good morning of harassment. joining us now from new york is culture writer for the new york times. he had an interview with the cast of arrested development that made big headlines and i think is indicative of where we stand right now. it s great to see you in your new context, not strictly on the trump campaign bus. i sleep a lot more now. i m jealous actually just a little bit. but, no, you re doing wonderful work as always. and i want to touch on weinstein briefly, but then i m very interested in this interview you did with the cast of arrested development. the weinstein images, though, did stick out to me, it does seem as though this me too movement and the sea change in our culture when we saw bill cosby finally convicted, now we are seeing this, when there wasn t any before. it is remarkable on many levels. harvey weinstein was a towering figure both in the film industry and also in politics. and so there s way more left. he s under investigation in l.a., london, the wall street journal broke earlier this week he s facing federal investigations. so there s way more to be told of the harvey weinstein saga. but on top of that, just this week we talked about the arrested development cast. we talked about morgan freeman which cnn broke a couple days ago. it opened the floodgates, right? louis c.k., all these names ensnared because harvey weinstein, the women that came forward, opened the floodgates for an entire industry several industries including as you mention congress, to reckon with how women and men and gender i am balances, how they are reckoned with in the context of work. so, i want to talk also about your interview. jeffrey tambor, one of the actors of arrested development. he was accused of sexual harassment by a fellow cast member. he denies that claim. so, it was a remarkable scene that played out during the interview. here is a piece of it with the cast of arrested development that has been getting so much attention and we ll talk about it on the other side. it is a very amorphis process, this [ bleep ] thing. it is a breeding ground for atypical behavior and certain people have certain processiones. that doesn t mean it s acceptable. i just realized in this conversation, i have to let go of being angry. he never crossed the line on our show with any, you know e sexual whatever. verbally, yes, he harassed me, but he did apologize. i have to let it go and i have to give you a chance to, to, you know, for us to be friends again. absolutely. it s hard because obviously jason says this happens all the time in like almost 60 years of working. i ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set and it s har hard to deal with. i m over it now. i just let it go right here for the new york times. and so jason has apologized for the way he conducted himself in that interview because i was floored when i read this, that he was essentially sitting there, jessica walter is across from him saying, no, actually this doesn t happen all the time, this isn t normal, this isn t how it s supposed to be. and jason says this happens all the time. we certainly weren t the only one that thought that. what is telling to me, i asked a question to jeffrey tambor, he had given quote to the hollywood reporter a week or two before i ve yelled at assistants, i ve yelled at directors, i ve yelled at such and such. in the middle of asking the question, jessica walter chimed in with jessica walter. and i didn t even have to ask the question. she chimed in. it seemed to me that she really wanted to talk about it. and it was very striking that her narrative was incredibly different than the narrative that jason bateman was putting out there. it wasn t just jason bateman. tony said we ve all had our moments. what was clear from jessica walter, her perspective, this was not just a moment for her. it was clear to me, especially after the interview ended that this was not i don t know how much of an arrested development fan you are, we picture cast as this kind of family. everything is kind of hunky-dory. what was clear to me after the interview was that everything was not hunky-dory. in fact the next day david cross gave an interview. i want to say it was to the gothamist. elliott shock hat went up to him after and expressed how uncomfortable she was with how the interview went. i think it goes to show you the emotions are still very raw over, again as i said, harvey weinstein in many ways opened the doors for us to have these types of conversations. yeah. donna edwards, it strikes me that what we re talking about here is the normalization of certain types of behavior and the refusal or shift away from those behaviors being normal. you were in congress and i don t want to put you on the spot, of course, but we ve had private conversations about what it s like to deal with these kinds of harassment issues, kind of day in and day out. it seems as though whether it s in hollywood or in the context here in politics, there are people who felt like oh, this is just normal. this is every day. it s fine. and people are now being able women in particular to draw lines and say, no, that s not fine. that s not normal. it is. you can also see how difficult it is still that even when you re trying to point out that it s not normal, that there become then the protectionists who say, well, you know, it is. and so i think what you saw in congress, you know, the senate passing its sexual harassment bill, the house having already passed one, we ll see if those come together. but it is a way to say to all women and to employees in the house and these others who are cultural institutions that this is really not acceptable. you know, i look at the hundred women that have accused harvey weinstein. it s not like it s just a handful. and the stories seem remarkably similar that the me too movement has gone well beyond hollywood and crossed over into any number of places now. yeah. during my conversation with senator james lankford, i asked him to respond to some recent comments by one of his republican colleagues about the morality of president trump. senator jeff flake gave a commencement speech. he said, quote, our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division. he goes on to say, our article 1 branch of government, the congress, is utterly supine in the face of the moral vandalism that flows from the white house daily. what is your response to that? pretty good vocabulary for jeff to be able to throw that out there. it s been no grand secret that jeff has been incredibly frustrated with the president, doesn t like his style. i have been one that have said several times i don t consider the president a role model for my kids. i don t want my kids to speak the way he speaks or make some of the choices and has been the challenge for quite a bit of time to say, how do you balance this out between policy and personal behavior in the way he has his own unique style. i don t speak that way. i don t tweet that way. i don t interact with people that way. i don t treat my staff the same way he treats his staff. but that is who the american people selected and that s who we re going to be able to work with. do you think that people should consider the character of a person when deciding to vote? what s interesting when you say that, the me too movement that s happened, i think for the first time in a generation has caused americans to think, does it matter who says my news, does it matter who is in my movie or in my television show, does it matter who is in politician and wh politics and what they say in your personal life. it s what you do professionally that matters. the me too movement has awakened people. people s personal lives do matter. bill clinton s personal life mattered to a lot of people. certainly to republicans, evangelicals, prominent evangelicals who said you should look at his personal behavior and condemn him for it. those same people, many of them are saying this president, we should overlook it. what is interesting is the democrats said the president s personal behavior doesn t matter. it s flipped during the time period. i say the same thing i say now. a person s individual life does matter. it shows you evidence of what they re going to be like. if we can hold alltel of us to our higher standard it helps our families, our kmuntsz, we want our businesses to be ethical. we want our leaders to be role models. it is ace positive thing to say. i would love to say the people you see on television, people serving in politics are a role model for your kids and your families. has anything the president has done in office or anything you learned about the president s past behavior say with stormy daniels, these payments, have they made you reconsider whether you could support him in 2020? that shocked me. it was pretty clear during the campaign there were moral issues and we have different life-style choices we have made personally. it s something that the president has been pretty outspoken on. he s not tried to be able to step out and say that he is a role model in those areas. he said he s more of a role model in business and do deal making. i get that. i have to be able to look at policies and what we re going to try to get done at the end of the day. same thing people had to do during the clinton administration, to be able to determine what are we going to actually get done for the american people. a.b. stoddard, i was struck in that interview, first of all, he did say and you heard him say right there, what i have to overlook this because i agree with this person on policy, but i have asked many of these many of those people i cover on the hill every day, do they view the person as a role model for their kids and they don t answer. james lankford did answer the question and he said no. he was honest and showed his discomfort with this challenge of trying to put his policy priorities first while having real trouble with the president s character and whether or not leaders should provide a moral example and be role models. i thought it was pretty brave of him to say what he did. sopan, jeff mason, evelyn, everyone, thank you, we re switching out. we re going to get a sneak peek at the john mccain documentary. the president loses a major court case whether he can block people on twitter. the woman who filed the lawsuit joins us live in our next hour. do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet? do you want $4.95 commissions for stocks, $0.50 options contracts? $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it s time for power e trade. the platform, price and 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art. thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight. first i want to say congratulations on a beautiful film. i had a chance to see it at the capital when you screened it for mccain s colleagues. i want to show you a little bit of the interview that you did where john mccain is really reflecting on you can tell that he understands that he is reaching the end of his life, has been told that. let s take a look and then i ll talk to you about it. okay. you know these doctors keep talking to me about people who keep telling the truth and then they just give up and die. that you really want i keep saying to them, just tell me, just tell me. that s all i want to know, you know? some say, well, it s not good. i say, well, it s just [ bleep ]. it really drives me crazy. but then i talk to other dr. friends of mine and say that most people, that s not what they want to hear. why wouldn t they want to hear it, you know? why wouldn t they want to spend a few more days here, you know? yes, honey, i d throw the ball in a minute. was it explicit when you were shooting this film that senator mccain understood that he may not be around when it came out? definitely. i mean, look, we read all the press and the average life-span is 12 to 18 months with this type of cancer. so, i think that he knew that there was a good chance that this film was going to come out after he did die, but i think that he was in the middle of writing his memoir with mark salter and he was already in a reflective place. and having this news of his diagnosis allowed him to be even more reflective. so to him, when we were walking around his his ranch in sedona, two things to tell you guys i hope you can achieve. first thing is, don t shy away from my failures. i made plenty of mistakes. i am a human being and hope this film will bring me down to the human being level and allow people to see me warts and all and he said secondly and most importantly, i want my colleagues to see that bipartisanship is worked in the past and it needs to work again and they need to stop the fighting and work together. and he said, if you can achieve those two things, that s good with me. glad you raised the idea of warts and all. one thing that stuck out to me when i saw the film. you touch on difficult chapters in his life. dissolution of his first marriage, and the keating five scandal. how did you decide which of the episodes you wanted to look at and how to handle the negative aspects of this life in the context of twilight? basically made a huge timeline of senator mccain s life on a wall. we call them pods, and in each pod, it reflects a different section of john s life, and we knew we wanted to do the ups and down, the highs and the lows in order for the audience to truly understand the quote man behind the maverick, unquote, and break his life down and see his transition from boy to man to now elder statesman. i think we achieved it, and when we were speaking to john about his first wife he really he said, look, the responsibility lies with me. it was my fault. that was the end of it and he couldn t go further emotionally. he s not such an emotional guy that he couldn t go there, but he wanted us to speak with carol, and he s the one that said, these guys want to come speak to you. will you participate? and same with president bush. i was surprised about that, which was, you know, after seeing what the bush campaign did in 2000, i was getting ready for sort of a tense interview with president bush and it wasn t the case. he pulled me aside said, look, i don t do these interviews often but i ll do anything for john. they are good friends. the hbo documentary john mccain: for whom the bell tolls debuts tomorrow night, monday night, 8:00 p.m. my thanks to you. kasie dc back after this. but what a powerful life lesson. and don t worry i have everything handled. i already spoke to our allstate agent, and i know that we have accident forgiveness. which is so smart on your guy s 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controversial stand your ground law. the lawyers who represented trayvon martin and george zimmerman are here. plus, for the president, it was the best of weeks and the worst of weeks, depending on your point of view. michael cohen again dominating headlines claiming trump knew in advance of the heating with russian representativeles. meanwhile, the longstanding accountant gets a federal subpoena. amidst the legal woes came more economic news. the president lifts the gdp above 4%. mid-terms on the horizon, is it still the semi-stupid? and this pennsylvania 5th and 6th grade teacher has been moonlighting for years. suddenly it s endangering his day job? because he plays a bad guy that does the nazi salute and shouts z zig heil. there are no charges in florida because of the florida stands your ground law. it s the same one much discussed in the killing of trayvon martin. now, federal lawmakers are calling the doj to investigate. so how did we get here? after finishing her nursing shift, brittany jacobs and her boyfriend wanted to grab snacks and drichgs. so they took their kids under the age of 6, they parked in the handicapped spot, despite none of the people in the car are disabled. mclaughlin and her 5-year-old went inside. also in the lot a regular at the circle a whose pet peefb was able bodied people taking that reserve spot. after inspects their car for a haent capped permit owe handicapped perm and drew none. mclaughlin noticed, came out of the store, confronting the man threatening his girlfriend and kids and he takes out a gun immediately and shoots him. after the sheriff declined and charged him, there were public calls for the sthat enate to do otherwise. they asked the doj to investigate the case with signatures from corey booker, kamala harris and ac hastings. joining me to discuss this issue, benjamin crump, who famously represented trayvon martin s family and mark o hara who defended george virm. the sheriff said the heater is said having been slammed to the ground, he was going to be slammed again is that the right question this. i don t think so, michael. you can watch the video. it s clear when he pulls that gun out. we have to remember he s the initial aggressor. this is a australian him man who approaches a mother in the car with her two toddlers in the back seat. just imagine that for a second? how you feel tore that. but after he comes out to defend his family and defend his property, if anybody should have the right to stand your ground it is him. when he pushes him back and he falls, he pulls the gun out. watch the video. marquise mclaughlin takes four steps back, four seconds elapsed, he is not in intimate fear. there is no on theive threat. there is no justification for him to shoot marquise mclaughlin in front of his infant children. as i watch that and eval wait the tape myself. is the sheriffs analysis incorrect or is the law at fault? i m not comfortable with the outcome of this case. i should say out front. am i to blame the law or the way in which it s being applied? i think the sheriff is incorrect, the state attorney bernie mccabe should know that there is enough evidence to charge this killer with cold blooded murder. less troubling for many in communities of cover that you can pick a confrontation. you can be the initial aggressor. you killed an unarmed black person and then you say, oh, it was self defence. i was standing my ground. you get to go home and sleep in your bed at night. we think the law is a bad law that encourages people to take the law into their own hands. it s a license to kill black people and people of color, because many times when black people make their stand your ground argument, it s behind the bars of a jail cell but white moo people make their stands your ground arguments a week later after they have been sleeping in their beds comfortable the law is applied racially. we feel it s a terrible law that florida needs to address. they were the leader for stand your ground. hopefully they can have laws about rights. we have little laws about gun responsibility, if any. thank you so much for being here. let me shift to mark omar. reporter: was this a case of retribution or self service? well, you know the way ben said it is a good analysis of it. the sheriff had a problem with the stand your ground law because the sheriff could, in fact, be liable if he arrests without good reason. so to answer the question, when you look at that tape, when you look closely at it, mr. mclaughlin did, i disagree with ben, mclaughlin was the initial aggressor in that he started the physical confront axe, having said that he also backed off after. that i don t think the shooter tant gets to shoot as you say, as i said in retry buchlths i have a tough time believing even though he was on the ground he was in reasonable fear of imminent great bodily injury. everything else aside, we do need to look at it from his perspective, are you in reasonable fear at that moment of ongoing imminent great bodily harm and quite honestly, i don t think the tape shows it, even presuming the way a person looks, reacts and interprets things when they re in the middle of a physical confrontation. in other words, if we can za bruder the tape the man who shoved him is towering over him. the question, what s in his head and is what s in his head a reasonable fear of imminent great bodily harm. boom. right there is the question. that s absolutely correct. the only analysis i would add to it, we do need to look at it as the statute requires from dresda s perspective. what what he is going through. you get thrown to the grounds, you have a dutch of adrenaline into your body. we know from cops telling, you get tunnel vichlgs you don t hear things, interpret things the way. sounding like a criminal defense attorney at a moment, dresda is in a position where his Michael Smerconish tackles the American political and news stories of the week, offering only one kind of talking points: his own. just backed up like four stems, few watch it again, pardon my interruption, we can all see this. he absolutely did. again, florida tried to pass almost did pass a warning shot statute that would have said, you are allowed to take out the gun. you are each allowed to shoot it to let the person know, i m armed,ly use it. thatt the theory behind it. but the idea with a two, three, four step back in two minutesing up, and a two, three, four second delay, i think that if you are going to exercise your second amendment rights and we have them. we will always have them. that you have to do it responsibly. and here s the problem. someone like dreska who used their weapon unreasonably really affects the rest of us and our ability to properly utilize our second amendment rights. he used it improperly, now focus is again on that. great observation. we will dig deep into that. in the meantime, i m asking this, which will have more impact on how long donald trump is the president? go to my website and cast a ballot. which will more determine president trump s longevity in office? a strong economy or the mueller and southern district investigations? to most people, i look like. most people. but on the inside, i feel chronic, widespread pain. fibromyalgia may be invisible to others, but my pain is real. today! so why is donald trump so popular with his supporters, despite being so tupd on so many fronts? simple, it s the economy. if elected the u.s. groat product would hit 4%. a lot of people mocked him. it s the best showing since the third quarter of 2014. remember unemployment remains at a near record low. joining me now is steve cortez just named as an ad advisor to president trump s 2020 re-election xavenl he was a wall street trader for 20 years and head strategist of a company that had advises banks and head funds, i m giving 30 seconds to take a victory lap. then i want to play devil s advocate. go ahead. sure. we should take a victory lap, by the way. not just for team trump, but for team america, more importantly. we ve endured a long slow growth. the lion s share went to the top of economic heard. we re seeing the opposite, accelerating growth and broadening growth, meaning it s going to more people, for example, african-american and hispanic hit all time lows. the economic underdogs are doing well, for example, people without a high school degree, by definition underdogs the lowest unemployment since 2000. we are seeing fast growth because of tax and regulatory relief. there is an optimism pervasive and real and its tangible. all right. let me be debbie downer. at least for the purpose of this conversation. john harwood, cnbc, put this in perspective, which will this rank for presidents? fifth under obama, tied for fifth oundz under george w., tied for fifth under herbert walker bush. this would be the 14th best under rannal reagan. doesn t sounds so impressive when you put it in that context. sure, that s a great point. i m be the first to say, we have more work to do. this is just the beginning. i believe. that we can t have one great quarter. we need to have many great quarters and in succession. i believe we will. i think the government is creating the conditions for success in our country and small business is responding. optimism, it s an all time high or multi-decade high, consumer confidence is soaring. i agree, there is more work to do, we have more wood to chop. we won t be satisfied with a single quarter growth. we need many of them. how about this one? it s all about the soybeans, buyers seem to have stocked before tariffs. this is actual lay reaction to trade wars. right. i think that s an important america grow again. this was the key issue he was elected among many, the economic anxiety particularly for working class people in this country who haven t seen their wages grow and seen expenses grow. they ve reacted with their vote. now i think donald trump is starting to deliver. we re not done, not even close, starting to deliver. steve, thank you. appreciate you being here. you bet, thanks, michael. let s see what folks are saying via social media? what do we have? smerconish why dun they@real donald trump for the success? that was a hit piece that was no hit piece, that was me saying we got great economic news, there are some critiques and let me let the trump spokesperson run through them and respond to them. go look for bias elsewhere, my friend. so this relates to the survey question at smerconish.com. i hope you are voting. which will more describe president trump s longevity in office? please go vote. still to come the latest developments on the other half of that question, michael cohen s claim that donald trump knew in advance about that notorious trump tower meeting with russians. it could mean the president was personally willing to accept russian assistance or cohen is asserting himself. it s another trump employee just subpoenaed who really knows the president s secrets, including his tax returns. who is michael weiselberg and what might he ends up revealing. finally, when does a teacher get in trouble after trying to earn extra main after hours. as he is moonlighting as a nazi-themed wrestler. i ll explain. fish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. it s a high-tech revolution in sleep. the new sleep number 360 smart bed. it intelligently senses your movement and automatically adjusts on each side to keep you both comfortable. and snoring? how smart is that? smarter sleep. to help you lose your dad bod, train for that marathon, and wake up with the patience of a saint. the new sleep number 360 smart bed, from $999. smarter sleep will change your life. a blockbuster report from cnn this week said the president s former lawyer michael cohen is claiming the candidate donald trump had advance notice at trump tower with russian nationals. if it can be proven it s a game changer. the lawyer rudy guiliani said it s a game changer and this means cohen would be critiquing to two congressional meetings. his current claims weren t mentioned in special reports on the house intel committee. nevertheless, as is often the case with president trump, partisan s quickly took sides based on instinct and not everyday. my legal experience tells me such binary reviews i don t have look nuance. i m wondering if the truth lice somewhere in between. it is strange credulity of a desire to obtain dirt on hillary clinton and vice-versa. such as the nature of a hard fought campaign. i m not holding my breath of a smoking gun evidence of the president s knowledge of this one particular meeting. if it existed, i think we d know by now, instead, this will come down to inference and interpretation. joining me is michaelikchael is. where cohen didn t say this, in his congressional appearance, my suspicion is he will be much more vague than prosecutors this week. look, there is a lot of reasons to be cautious, but there is also a lot of reasons to hear michael cohen s account. first of you ll, the significance of this should not be understated, if the president then candidate was informed of the trump tower meeting, it would clearly bolster any obstruction case that robert mueller was, is preparing because it would give a clear motive for the president, himself, to shut down the russia investigation. there is plausible reasons to believe the president might have been informed. there is that blocked phone call that donald trump jr. makes after speaking to a person about the upcoming trump tower meeting. the democrats on the house intelligence committee clearly believe that may have been a phone call to his father. there was the rmps that the campaign was going to give a major speech about hillary clinton just at the time that the e-mails setting up the trump tower meeting was taking place. but, you know, we don t know exactly what michael cohen has to say. as you ve pointed out, he s testified twice before the house and senate in private. in his public statement he said he had no hint of any collusion by president trump with the russians the house intelligence report says all witnesses were asked if trump was aware of the trump tower meeting and denied it. so michael cohen may well have to cop to lying to the house intelligence committee when he privately testified because, you know, that, it would be a false statement if he didn t disclose this before. so, you know, we got to be cautious. i do have to say, it is a little odd the way we re learning about this. normally, if you wanted to get a deal with robert mueller. you wouldn t go running to the press. you would get a proffer to mueller s office saying, here s what we got. and michael cohen s legal team for whatever reason didn t go that route. what other observation? is this not going to extend, all these recent developments, however they pan out, this not going to extend the mueller probe, not into the mid-term but into the 2020 election? look, it could, we don t know exactly where robert mueller is. there is a lot of reason to believe he is moving forward. we may see more before labor day, there is an assumption he will not want to do anything during the election season. so, i know, there is an expectation that there could be more coming from mueller. but loose, one of the most frustrating things ability all of this is, you know, michael, yeah, every major political scandal for the last half century, whether it be watergate or iran contra or white water resulted in public hearings in which witnesses testified before under oath before the tv cameras so the public can hear or learn them. none of that has happened here, michael cohen like everybody else has testified behind closed doors and then each side spins and cherry picks those aspects of testimony that they want the public to learn about. that s to way for congress to have investigated. you know if if michael conwants this out there. richard burr and mark warner tomorrow or sunday, monday, could subpoena him, have him testify in public this week before the senate intelligence committee and we could hear what he has to say and what he doesn t have to say. michael issiqoff appreciate it as always. sure enough. he s been called the most season person in the trump organization, he s not a trump. he s been subpoenaed. alan weiselberg, this week we learned, he was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in the probe of trump s personal lawyer, michael cohen. cohen referred to him on the infamous tape to play mate karen mcdougal the wall street journal is saying he could have ar testified. since weasel berg knows where all the financial bodies are buried and his tax problems for sure. could it lead to more problems with the president? joining me is the senior writer, he wrote this wall street journal profile of weasel berg under the headline donald trump s loyal numbers man. richard, give me some insight. who is this gentleman is this. well, alan weiselberg has been with the trump organization for literally decades. he actually worked tore fred trump before donald trump going back into the 1970s. he s been involved where so many of the transactions. his sons, baerry works for the trump barry works for the trump organization. another son, jack, works for ladder capital. which is a mortgage company that s closely involved with the trump organization. so he is there dealing with some of the minutia of running a large organization. he signs checks. he s the money man as you mentioned, he knows where the money is going and he is very, very close to donald trump. let them show that he is an integral organization. he is key to the organization and the big surprise as well, why is it taking so long to subpoenaing him? you portray him as i was seeing him as anen thit sis. he is a quiet guy, he eats in the lunchroom, married to the same woman for 46 years. opposites attract in this instance. he has one attribute by i think plays well to less longevity, he tends to fade into the background, into the wall person as one person zreebd it to me. he doesn t upstage his boss, never has, and he seems to agree we his boss that you might understand disagreeing with donald trump is not great for career longevity. so he s been very good at that. he s also been accorded an enormous amounts of trust. remember, he is on or was on the board as treasureer of the donald trump foundation. he was on the board of the miss universe pageant, an organization close to donald trump s heart. so he s really been, oh and actually he was connected to the casinos, themselves. so he s been a part of this very sensitive portfolio of duties at the trump organization. who knows more where the bodies are buried pertaining to the president? michael cohen or alan weiselberg. i placed my money on alan weasel berg. he s the person that s closest. thank you for being here. i appreciate it, richard. a pleasure. let s check in on your tweets and social media, from twitter, smerconish, whether or not the president knew about the meeting, nothing came from it. it s not a crime to listen to what people have to say. everyone is making a mountain out of a mole head. elaine, how do you know nothing came of it? we know the d this c server was hacked, we think we know, it s not been proven, we know from the indictments there was meddling according to mueller s articulation of the chronology. so how is it that you know there was no connection between the two? i don t know that. i don t know what mueller knows. i m eager to find out and my view of this is going to follow the evidence, not the politics. i want to know what you think, go to customerconish.com answer smerconish.com. answer this question. still to come arc school teacher here in pennsylvania trying to pick up some extra bucks in his off hours, playing a bad guy pro whesleer character. now his job might be in question. the character he place is a nazi sympathizer. is that fair? theaters, exercise and swimming pools, public cafes, bars and bistros even pet care services. and there s never been an easier way to get great advice. a place for mom is a free service that pairs you with a local advisor to help you sort through your options and find a perfect place. a place for mom. you know your family we know senior living. together we ll make the right choice. chicken! that s right, chicken?! candace new chicken creations from starkist. buffalo style chicken in a pouch bold choice, charlie! just tear, eat. mmmmm. and go! try all of my chicken creations! chicken! this is not a screensaver.game. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body s own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn t exist until now. and today can save your life. . you know, teaching is a tough job, often for not enough pay. now one middle school teachner pennsylvania is in hot water for moonlighting at another gig. during the day kevin bean teaches fifth and sixth grade at the middle school. a mom called my sirius xm radio show sang his praises as the faculty adviser of her son s cress club. at night he becomes blitzkrieg the german juggernaut. what s the minor leaguef wrestling in a junior match in quakeer pennsylvania. he comes in, shouts signatuzig and raises his arm in a nazi sa light. ryan satton, who used to work at tmz and presumably knows a goodstogood story, waved the flag and said this video watch me second. watching the guy do nazi salutes while children cheer him on as a good guy is terrifying. you can guess what happened next. local school officials were unaware of the other guy after they launched an investigation, they released a statement saying they were made aware of a video featuring an employee participating in an amateur wrestling event. they acted immediately to conduct an internal investigation. the actions portray in this video do not represent the core values of the school district. full confession, i m a product of the 1970s, a product of my youth was spent watching pro wrestling. we watched in our rec room with panelling from k-mart all around us that looked at a tv set that only got seven channels. when we watched it, we were watching pro wrestling. these were the days when vince mcmann was a geek an there was no in between. you knew you were for one side or the other. my personal favorite was pj strongwell. after wrestling, i could do his dance. there was a long cartoonish for a crowd to boo. like the sheikh a syrian character that enters the ring wearing a head dress, before matches, he would nail on a prayer rug. maybe the teacher played the role too well for some the post pointed out the issue here may have been more about the audience than the teacher performer. quote, blitzkrieg appeared to elicit more cheers from the crowd than his opponent one man could be seen extending his arm in a nazi salute. a young boy held up a sign blitz reeg rules. another that translated means blitzkrieg, ruler of all people. he entered the wing and trups of usa and trump s america fill the room some is that the real issue here? let us not forget in an earlier life, the president made a famous cameo in pro wrestling as well, is kevin bean a part of the crowd turning a villain into a hero? when a teacher wouldn t lights as a nazi sympathizer is unfit to teach? two-thirds said he s fine to have both jobs. absent evidence the teacher harbors and act on such appalling views. let me be clear, there is none of that evidence here, he ought to keep his job and young minds should continue to boo his character. still to come, your best and worst tweets and facebook comments, like this one from twitter. he d be best served moving on. he shouldn t lose his gig for it. i hope you answered the survey question at smerconish.com. i m about to give you the answer. paying too much for insurance you don t even understand? well, esurance makes it simple and affordable. in fact, drivers who switched from geico to esurance saved an average of $412. that s auto and home insurance for the modern world. esurance. an allstate company. click or call. terms of truth and accuracy. i guess a reflection of the fact that carter page testified without a lawyer and full transcript was made public with very minor redactions. what else came in during the course of the program this hour? what have we got? let the president do his job. he got full credit for the economy. we brought on a spokesman and i posed critique questions to him, that s acknowledged, but i m not going to ignore what s going on relative to mueller and southern district probes. wouldn t be doing my job if i did that. what else do we have. smerconish, what if the trump tower meeting was innocent. did the lies start immediately after it was revealed? did the lies start immediately after it was revealed. sarah, i don t know. i wanted to add a nuance to the black and white analysis i was hearing this week as to whether michael cohen knew that president trump was in the loop, that he was president when president trump was told of the upcoming meeting in trump tower with russian nationals. it did happen or didn t happen. my hunch is that it is more in a gray area, right? it stands to reason there was plenty of conversation about the fact that both sides wanted dirt on the other. maybe in the end, michael cohen s story will be that he believes the president was probably in the loop on that one meeting because he had been present for other conversations about collecting political dirt generally. and why do i say that? i say that because that would preserve the honesty of testimony that he offered twice before congress. then it could all line up. right? that he can t say well, it was that meeting but there was general discussion. again, catch up with me anytime at cnn go and on demand. see you next week. chicken?! chicken.