committed to replacing obamacare the same day it is repealed? cnn newsroom starts now. hello again. thank you for joining me. i m fredricka whitfield. we have distressing new video from inside that ft. lauderdale airport. showing when the gunman opens fire in the baggage area. this video is difficult to watch. it is crucial in understanding the context of this shooting. this is a freeze frame, now, of what appears to be security camera footage, obtained by tmz. the man in the blue shirt is believed to be accused gunman, esteban santiago. we will play the video one time throughout this hour. it is silent. and it is security footage. and it is disturbing. pay attention to the left side of your screen, where the man in the blue shirt enters the frame. he is due in court. he is facing serious charges. all of them eligible for the death penalty, fred. boris sanchez. at ft. lauderdale airport. i want to bring in matthew haras and paul shmek. good to see you. your reaction to the video? i think to understand it, we have to two back to november 1st, 2013, when a gunman walked into l.a.x. terminal three, opened fire, proceeded through the checkpoint and got into the sterile area of the airport, which is not a good situation, because there s so much access at that point. law enforcement took some time to get on the scene. what we can see from the video, is baggage claim area is typically a very safe area. people come and go. people in that area, are typically happy. they just got off a safe flight. family and friends are there to welcome them. there are also shuttle buses and things of that nature in this area. it s difficult because of that 2013 incident, law enforcement, from the tsa, and public reports, was really putting pressure on law enforcement to put their resources at the checkpoint. and i think it s a perfect example where a vulnerability was identified that police can t be everywhere. matthew, how do you evaluate what we ve seen. we deal with the reality of the condition. he shows a disregard. there s no regard for humanity. clearly, mental health. but nonetheless, cold and calculating. but it s confusing, too, because we don t see what precedes the imagery we saw. just the first couple of frames blending in. just seem leg to be like everybody else. paul, what do you see in terms of the vulnerabilities, that may be magnified as a result of this? the tsa has 20 layers of aviation security. it s from canines to protection. there s two layers that come to mind when i review that cctv or surveillance footage. he was on a death march, really. and what we have to look at, there s two layers that come to mind when i think about this. there s the intelligence layer, what did we know before he came to the airport? and the no-fly list, much more in depth where you would prevent him from flying. intelligence has a ceiling on what they can do in terms of stopping individuals like that from flying. and i m sure as the days roll out, we ll hear more about what was known before he embarked on an airport. earlier, i spoke with the broward county sheriff, this is how he sees precautions to be tragedy often times to promulgate change. hopefully we see hard-core change here. something to change. thank you, gentlemen. appreciate it. we re also learning more about esteban santiago s past. assault charges involving a girlfriend, hearing voices in his head. and asking for help. dan simon traveled to santiagoss town in anchorage to learn more about his past. reporter: his troubles began after serving time in iraq, relatives say. esteban santiago spent ten months in the war-torn country. his brother said the changes in him were apparent. translator: they had him hospitalized for four days. and then, they let him go. how are you going to let someone leave a psychological center after four days when he s saying he s hearing voices. that the cia is telling him to to shoot someone. reporter: despite the interaction with santiago, he was not placed on a no-fly list. there had been concerns raised why he was not placed on a no-fly list. i want to be clear, during our initial investigation, we found no ties to terrorism. he broke no laws when he came into our office, making disjointed comments about mind control. reporter: why would someone who is disturbed get his gun back? the u.s. attorney in alaska says there s no legal basis to prevent him from having it. a judge would have needed to declare him mentally defective to deny him his second amendment rights. we re learning new details about the victims in the ft. lauderdale airport. most were on vacation. michael oehme of council bluffs, iowa, was about to go on a cruise with his wife. e was killed when the shots rang out in the area. his wife was shot in the shoulder and is expected to recover. he leaves behind one adulter. olga woltering, was also about to go on the cruise with her husband, ralph. according to wxia. the couple is from marietta, georgia, and had planned the trip to celebrate her husband s 90th birthday. he was not injured in the shooting. the wolterings were married for 64 years. and terry andres was a shipyard employ, in ft. lauderdale on vacation with his wife. the couple was celebrating andres upcoming 63rd birthday, a friend tells cnn. an trace and his wife had been married for 40 years. he leaves behind two daughters. three other people injured in the shooting are in critical condition. we ll be right back. this is your daughter. and she just got this. ooh boy. but, you ve got hum. so you can set this. and if she drives like this, you can tell her to drive more like this. because you ll get this. you can even set boundaries for so if she should be here, but instead goes here, here, or here. you ll know. so don t worry, mom. because you put this, in here. hum by verizon. the technology designed to make your car smarter, safer and more connected. put some smarts in your car. sign up for free today. isjust wanna see ifa again? my score changed. you wanna check yours? scores don t change that much. i haven t changed. oh, really? it s girls night they said business casual. i love summer weddings! oh no. yeah, maybe it is time. maybe i should check my credit score. try credit karma. it s free. oh woah. that s different. check out credit karma today. credit karma. give yourself some credit. in jerusalem, a horrific scene when a truck rams through israeli soldiers standing together after getting off of a bus. three cadets s s a and one offi was killed. the attacker may have been an isis sympathizer. the attack was caught on video. and a word of caution. the video is disturbing. the driver, not only plowing into the group of soldiers, he turned his truck around and then appeared to drive over some of the victims. israeli officials say it was over when the driver was killed. orrin lieberman is in jerusalem. how can you tell us about how the authorities are assessing this? reporter: this goes on to who knew this was taking place? in addition to i should say, police have made nine arrests, as part of the investigation. five are family members of the attacker, as you said, was shot and killed at the scene. i ll walk you back through what happened. about 1:30 p.m. local time. right along the walkway a particular walkway, not only for security forces and soldiers, but for pedestrians and tourists because it as a beautiful view of old city of jerusalem. a number of soldiers had gotten off of the bus as a tour, and that s when the attack happened. the truck driver drove straight for a group of soldiers getting off of the bus. and then, it seems he reverses his truck and drives back over some of the soldiers there. the horrible outcome is that four were killed. three women and one man. and a number of others were injured, all in their 20s. benjamin netanyahu who visited the scene and said, what they know fromty a tacker, us was from a nearby neighborhood, that the attacker was a supporter of isis. we hear from the police spokes pen pern saying there was no isis cells in jerusalem. but it points to a lone wolf attack. and that is what security forces are trying to pinpoint and figure out how to prevent from now on. how do you stop this attack from happening again? it s a struggle for forces here and in yurm, in particular. that s the focus as they try to figure out, was there advance notice? could they have prevented this one to better prevent the next one? are authorities revealing anything more about why they believe he was a supporter of isis? what s the impetus for that statement? reporter: little information about that. it was a statement from netanyahu when he said he was a supporter of isis. it surprised us because you don t hear about isis in israel, jerusalem or the west bank. as police pointed out, isis doesn t have a foothold here. it s not something you hear about. israel has quietly cracked down on isis supporters. people spreading propaganda or trying to fight for isis in syria. but it s not a major terrorist organization here. they don t have a foothold. and it s not something you hear about very often. and that s why we need to keep in mind the police spokesperson, when he said this is not new rye sis terrorist cell. there are none of those. and it s critical as they try to prevent the next from happening. turning a truck into a weapon is something we saw in berlin and niece, as well. devastating effect in all three incidents. coming up, the gop vows to repeal obamacare. president barack obama says if they have a better alternative, he would support it. can republicans come up with a cheaper and more effective plan? cheaper and more effective plan? we ll discuss, next. i discovered a woman my family tree, named marianne gaspard. i became curious where in africa she was from. so i took the ancestry dna test to find out more about my african roots. ancestry really helped me fill in a lot of details. parenthood. president obama says if republicans have a better plan, he s for repealing and replacing it. it is true, theoretically, all of the progress can be undone and suddenly 20 million people are or more tonight have health insurance. but as i think republicans now are recognizing, that may not be what the american people, including everyone trump voters, are looking for. and my hope is that the president-elect, members of congress from both parties, look at where have we objectively made progress, where things are working better? don t undo things just because i did them. joining me now is tammy lubey. would it be able to take advantage of obamacare and take care of costs with a repeal? it will be difficult. health care is expensive for everyone. obamacare has provisions that are intertwined, aimed at reducing the costs of health care in general. but republicans want to change the plans and give tax credits. but it remains to be seen how generous they make the new plan. the approach of repeal first, replace later, could bleed the health care system that all of us depend on. quoting him. what would happen to the economy if republicans do repeal obamacare without a plan to replace it? obamacare sends money to insurers and states. and this trickles down to hospitals and other providers. that trickles down to hospital workers and vendors and other people. there was a recent study that said, if key provisions of obamacare were repealed, 3 million could lose jobs. state and local governments can lose billions in taxes. health care is an important engine in our country. what you re underscoring, it s not just the people on the plan. but a lot of people who would who are either directly or indirectly involved in the plan? yeah. a lot of people think that obama care is only for people on the exchanges or people who are getting coverage through medicate expansion. a lot of people don t realize it has many tentacles. it made some revisions to medicare. used to have the doughnut hole, where seniors had to pay for prescriptions. seniors will pay less for prescriptions. now, everyone can get prescription everyone can get contraceptives for free and mammograms on the employer plan. people on the job have benefits, if they have cancer or hit by a car, insurance is not going to set a limit as much it will pay for the care. it s quite wide ranging. tami, thank you very much. next, a top aide for donald trump speaks out about russia s hacking of the u.s. election and its impact on the vote. plus, the red carpet is rolled out and ready for the golden globe awards. a live report from hollywood coming up. your insurance company [vo] quickbooks introduces he teaches lessons to stanley. and that s kind of it right now. but rodney knew just what to do.he got quickbooks. it organizes all his accounts, so he knows where he stands in an instant. ahhh.that s a profit. which gave him the idea to spend a little cash on some brilliant marketing! ha, clever. wow, look at all these new students! way to grow, rodney! know where you stand instantly. visit quickbooks.com. election. she spoke to jake tapper this morning and would not criticize vladimir putin. even after president-elect trump received a briefing from top intelligence officials, outlining the case for russian hacking. as he been persuaded that they carried out cyber campaign against hillary clinton and what is he prepared to do about it? he makes clear that russia, china and others, have attempted to attack businesses and organizations and others over time. he mentions the democratic national committee. that s why we re having this conversation. i don t want any of your viewers to be misled thinking that the kremlin and the republican party that they had the kremlin was dealing with any of the hackers and bringing that information back to moscow and somehow that anybody who allegedly attempted to influence our elections actually did. if you read the full report, they make very clear. mr. clapper in his testimony made clear on thursday, under oath, that any attempt, any aspiration to influence our elections failed. they were not successful in doing that. it is a very important point. we are talking about this because we had embarrassing leaks from the dnc e-mails. there were no fireworks because there was no firewall. rnc, there was an attempted hack on the rnc. but they had the sufficient firewalls in place. cnn s own reporting showed that the fbi asked the dnc to have access to its information, to its server and to the information. and the dnc refused to turn that over, according to cnn s report. this highlights the fractious relationship between russia and the u.s. president-elect trump vows to change that. jill dougherty explains what that could mean. reporter: donald trump has been tweeting about improving the relationship between the united states and russia. and together, solving a lot of the big challenges, the big problems that the world encounters. that, of course, is music to vladimir putin s ears because he has been saying all along, he wants the u.s. and russia to work together on things like fighting terrorism. but when you get down to the specifics, that s where the rubber hits the road. and it becomes more difficult. after all, previous u.s. presidents had said much the same thing. here s one example. the iranian nuclear deal. the united states and russia helped to negotiate that agreement. and both countries support it. but donald trump does not. does that put him in opposition to vladimir putin? it would appear that it does. unless he changes his mind. these are some of the details that make that relationship much more complicated. essentially, vladimir putin has defined what he believes are the interests of russia. and donald trump will have to do the same. what he believes are the priorities and the best interest for the united states. the question will be, will those interests align? jill dougherty, moscow. thanks so much, jill. confirmation hearings for president-elect trump s cabinet pick, that begins this week. and also this week, trump holds his long-awaited press conference. we ll discuss, next. so i went onto ancestry, soon learned that one of our ancestors was eastern european. this is my ancestor who i didn t know about. i m phil mickelson, pro golfer. my psoriatic arthritis caused joint pain. just like my moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis. and i was worried about joint damage. my doctor said joint pain from ra. can be a sign of existing joint damage. that could only get worse. he prescribed enbrel to help relieve pain and help stop further damage. enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal, events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma, other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders, and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for. heart failure, or if you have persistent. fever, bruising, bleeding, or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. joint pain and damage. can go side by side. ask how enbrel can help relieve joint pain and help stop joint damage. enbrel, the number one rheumatologist-prescribed biologic. youthat s why you drink ensure. sidelined. with 9 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for the strength and energy to get back to doing. .what you love. ensure. always be you. all right. a red flag being raised about the schedule of the confirmation hearings of president-elect donald trump s cabinet picks. those hearings are set to start this week. but the independent office of government ethics said several nominees have not been properly vetted. that s causing concerns among top democrats who say the rush to confirm is, quote, unprecedented. joining me to discuss this and other aspects of the trump transition, is cnn contributor, sale sale salena zito. also with me, errol lewis, ooh commentator for spectrum news. good to see you, as well. salena, you first. chuck schumer has accused the transition team to colluding through these hearings. is there any evidence to back that up? not that i know of. in 2009, when president obama took office, i believe i think i m correct on this, on the same day he was sworn in, the day of his inauguration, seven of his cabinet members were sworn in. mcconnell and everyone else didn t like that. there was some moving around. the process is swift and you know, went pretty well. president-elect trump has, i believe, eight that are up for confirmation process. part of the challenge with trump s picks are that they are outside of the washington, you know, sort of set. right? so, they re outsiders. they have more complicated finances. and you know, they have more complicated entanglements, financial entanglements. but i suspect at the end of the day, this is all of these nominees are probably going to go through. mainly because they have the votes. potentially nominees have potential conflicts. that s why some on the hill have concerns. we understand that, you know, there are some nominees who are in question in terms of whether all of the paperwork has been filed. there s conflicting reports about this, by the way. john kelly, for dhs, betsy roth for the information of the ethics office to move forward on the confirmation hearings? it s a process. it s not just filling out a piece of paper and disclosing it to the senate. the idea is to have a process where people learn things about their own finances, their own conflicts of interest that they might not have known before. famously, there are nominees that discovered they had a quote/unquote nanny problem. and it was only through the vetting process they realized that somebody they had been paying to work in their home had supplied them with a fake social security number. that s what happened to bernie carrick when he was nominated for homeland security. you have a process that s supposed to, according to mitch mcconnell himself, by the way, in the past. he said, you should not schedule the hearing until the information has been given to the office of government ethics, has been delivered to the senate and that the senators have had a chance to look through it. that s what the process is supposed to be about. not simply, you know, voting for them just because it s inauguration day. if that s true, according to the senate democratic source that some of the people have not filed the proper paperwork, then, salena, you know, how unusual would it be if the democrats were to do this or there were some movement to say, let s delay some of the hearings or confirmation for some of the candidates until after inauguration? right. well, you know, the republicans hair would catch on fire if that would happen. and it was a democratic cabinet nominee. the ethics office is saying one thing. the transition team is saying another the we ll find out on inauguration day. i do know they are really preparing a lot of these cabinet nominees for some intense, you know, grueling questions, on the hill. these are people that have never, ever had their lives peeled back in the way that they do in these senate confirmation hearings. i know they are getting prepared. but you know, we are dealing with a different kind of cabinet. and it s going to be, probably, a different kind of process. meantime, errol, there s been many delays. there was a mid-december late. and the latest date is wednesday. and it happens to be the second day of the confirmation hearings. will there be a conflict here? we ll see. you know, we re talking about five months now. this is almost clintonesque if you go back to the last real press conference. i hope it would be a true press conference or not a gaggle or swift questions followed by departure. we have to hope it is not intended as a distraction, a bait and switch, where something is thrown out to grab headlines, while the real action is on capitol hill, where the cabinet nominees are being questioned. the transition team, you know, to their credit, they ve acknowledged they re doing more work faster than they planned to because they didn t think they were going to win on november 8th. now that they are sort of the team that has to kind of put together a government, they have a backlog of questions. and every day they refuse to answer questions or to hold a press conference, i think the backlog got bigger and bigger. i hope that the reporters get a chance to throw out questions during this press conference. do a good and efficient job of getting to the heart of many, many of the conflict of interest questions and others that have been brewing for five months. and questions about conflicts within his own family. having family members working for him with the business dealings, et cetera. and then, the tax returns. donald trump promising that after elected he would reveal those. so, i m sure he will be pepper ld with a lot of questions along those lines from reporters. salena, errol, thank you very much. coming up, one of trump s national security picks facing questions over plagiarism. kay file broke this story. we have details, next. family road trip! fun! check engine. not fun! but, you ve got hum. that s like driving with this guy. all you do is press this, and in plain english, coolant , you ll know what s wrong. if you do need a mechanic, just press this. thank you for calling hum. and if you really need help, help can find you, automatically, 24/7. because you put this, in here. hum by verizon. the technology designed to make your car smarter, safer and more connected. put some smarts in your car. so we know how to cover almost alanything.ything, even mer-mutts. (1940s aqua music) (burke) and we covered it, february third, twenty-sixteen. . . seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum president-elect s cab me picks, monica crowley has been picked for the detector of national communications. in her book what the bleep just happened found dozens of examples of plagiarism. that is almost identical senior editor of cnn s k-file andrew kaczynski. how many of incidents are we talking about of plagiarism? this is 60 incidents of plagiarism. it includes wikipedia, a lot of times we saw monica crowley taking, basically wholesale this work of other columnists, changes words, changing the tenses from have to has. and even throwing on some of the same conclusions of these people in their columns just in slightly different words. how did you find this when her publishers did not? a lot of the cases that she said existed in the stimulus were very obviously copied. something interesting we found was this big listing of things that were very outrageous that existed in the stimulus package were not listed in the stimulus package at all. when we went look for where these came from, a podiatrist, of all people dating back to 2004. basically the first example about tattoo removal was an example of the stimulus and the other 20 were from this podiatrist s website. so some. so some of the inaccuracies were red flags, have you heard from the trump team about this? the trump transition standing by crowley, they have basically said our article is a politically motivated attack. they actually cited this body of work as part of the reason for why she was hired saying, you know, this was her manifesto for taking back america. the publisher has oddly not issued any statement or responded to any of our e mail ors phone calls requesting comment and crowley herself has not responded either. and then we have several instances of plagiarism, including melania trump s convention speech. basically we have melania, e were a lot of people that have written a lot of words, for all we know, there could be a lot of examples like reporters and people like us are going to be looking into. andrew kaczynski, thank you very much. for more on andrew s article about crowley s credibility you ll find on cnn.com. we re back in a moment. with lubriderm. absorbs in seconds. moisturizes for hours. lubriderm. every body care. a nutritious formula with no artificial flavors. made specifically for indoor cats. purina cat chow. nutrition to build better lives. why are you checking i want to see if it changed. credit scores don t change that much do they? 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reporter: every now and then you got to clean up for tv, right? so it is great out here, fred, thank you, because it rained yesterday here in los angeles, and it s supposed to rain tomorrow, so it s actually quite warm. but right now they re getting, everyone is preparing, people are looking around us, people are taking their pictures, because we can still stand on the red carpet right now until celebrities get here. people are lining up, the fans are in the stands, a lot of people are hoping to see their biggest stars, and i don t know how many of these movies and shows you have seen, this is the biggest party of the awards show because folks get to eat and drink while they are there, watching the show, while the program is going on, and also the golden globes looks to offer the best of television and film, so it looks to see the hollywood foreign press, they are saying are the shows of 2016, that s what makes this one a little bit different than the other ones, a lot are talking about two movies in particular, la la land, and the same story from the drama side is moonlight. it also has a lot of nominations so people waiting to see how they do and how maybe moonlight measures up to manchester by the sea, which a lot of people are talking about those performances as well. a lot of people are getting in place, looking around. hairstyles should be okay. it s all about the hair and yours looks fabulous, i love it. i have seen nothing, so all those movies you have mentioned, i know them by titles, but maybe afterwards. it s been a busy year. it s hard especially when you re working and have kids, it s hard to go. lots of fun, we ll be watching this evening. the next hour of the cnn newsroom, begins right now.
protection from the law. a good country, right? we will be watching him monday. have a good weekend, everybody. bill o reilly of next life. see you monday bill o reilly up next life. see you monday. bill: the o reilly factor is on tonight. we can confirm now that the u.s. has lost tomahawk missiles at syria. the action by president trump has caused worldwide reaction. did the usa did the right thing by attacking the brutal dictator assad? we will have multiple tonight. it doesn t make sense for assad to make these decisions. bill: there is some on the friends you will not support american military action the matter what. we will take a look at that situation. the nomination of neil m. neil m. gorsuch to be an associate justice of the supreme court of the united states is confirmed. also ahead, the usa has a brand-new supreme court justice. is that a good thing for you? caution. you are about to enter into the no spin zone. that the factor begins now. hi max, i m bill o reilly. thank you for watching the sniper the usa attack syria, that is around nine eastern time, 50 missiles were launched from american warships in the eastern mediterranean sea. 59 missiles hit their targets. the goal is to destroy an air base from which syrian planes recently dropped sarin gas on civilians, killing 30 children. 30. and 20 women, according to the syrian observatory for human rights. according to reporting based on a variety of cities, this is the fifth time, at least, the fifth time, syrian dictator assad has violated the geneva conventions and use poison gas to go civilians get back in 2012, president obama threatened assad. the use of chemical weapons is and would be totally on acceptable. and if you make a tragic mistake of using these weapons, they will be consequences and you will be held accountable. bill: but assad is not held accountable. but instead, , the obama administration did what it always did, talk, and announced a deal with the dictator. a fascinating footnote to that is susan rice was on point alongside john kerry. we were able to find a solution that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known in syria in the way that use of wars would never accomplish. with respect to syria, we struck a deal where he got 100% the new president on the ascending a message to the worl world, the united states will not tolerate war crimes from syria. the action is a reaction, so security has tightened here in the usa as we become a bigger target for evildoers. summing up, america was justified in destroying the syrian air force. the lone superpower has a responsibility. even most of the trump haters in congress agree that if we can stop children from being gassed to death, we should do so. and that is the memo. the top story reaction at this hour, joining us from palm beach florida where he s covering president trump s meeting with the chinese leader, john roberts. understanding that president in china has departed from mar-a-lago. what s going on there now? he left this afternoon, just having a typical friday night. he s having the rest of the week and here. the president, bill, i m told is feeling pretty good about what happened last night. he thinks that the military did a terrific job while one cruise missile fell into the sea, 59 of the 59 remaining hit their marks and he is facing praising the military to his staff and his friends that they performed marvelously here. and he s happy to see you in the most part with the international reaction is, he does know there are a couple of numbers in congress saying he should ve come today, but he feels like he s an absolute firm ground here because as he pointed out last night this was a matter of urgent national security for the united states because i m told the president believes that if bashar al-assad was able to do this and not suffer some consequent support this, that would normalize, at least in the area of the world, the use of chemical weapons and therefore might come back to bite the united states at one point if somebody decided, well, if bashar al-assad can use weber chemical weapons, will use the weapons. bill: i.d. rapid fired answers. the chinese foreign minister said they shouldn t have done it. everyone should come down. was there anything coming outside of the president talking with mr. trump today on the missile attacks? anything at all? any utterance? spent well, there wasn t any public utterance, but i m told, bill, that the white house believes it was pretty impressive show of force that the president went out last night to his chinese counterpar counterpart. and that will be taken back to beijing and sort of turned into that whole pot with north korea where it might give them something else about leaving mara longo and president trump s request to lean on north korea. if they do it in syria, but they do it in north korea? bill: did we get anything in north korea, any pr better cooperation in china? did they say anything? bill: they didn t say anything there was an agreement to deal with. it was discussed. bill: but we don t have any joint statements? no concrete joint statement on that. no. but the secretary of state rex tillerson he s very disappointed with the russian response to all of this. according to rex tillerson, he said that this means russia is still in the camp of bashar al-assad. he says he s disappointing, but he s not surprised to hear what he s heard out of russia. he look, this is how we ll deal with these guys in syria. if you want to deal with bashar al-assad, it s going to put you on the wrong side of history. bill: john, we appreciate it very much. let s bring in catherine harris joining us for washington. doesn t seem to be any chinese reaction in the sense that sometimes after a meeting, a day and a half meeting, there is a joint statement that we didn t get any joint statements. putin postures behind the scenes. is there any serious, serious reaction tonight? i wouldn t say serious reaction, but i would say the leading edge of this investigation right now is into whether russia had some kind of role, bill, in this chemical attack earlier this week, and whether a second strike on that town in syria was really an effort to destroy evidence and be part of a larger cover-up of that crime. and that is really where military intelligence is focused tonight. bill: they had a drone, i understand! correct. bill: russian drone over the area where the chemicals dropped and killed children. and a russian bomber bombed the hospital where civilians were taken. is that what we are talking about tonight? that s right. there was a drone immediately over the site where the sarin gas was released. and then about 4-5 hours later when the victims have been taken to the hospital, another drone showed up. shortly after that, there was a military strike on that hospital. the people i m talking to tonight say that fits a patent that they have seen before with the syrians especially and possibly this case the russians that they wanted to destroy evidence at that hospital compound. bill: we can i.d. drones anyway, so they were russian drones in that area. is that correct? that is correct. bill: okay, now. the ron pauls of the world say, oh, no. how solid is the evidence that assad killed these 20 kids with sarin gas? i was told by my contacts that we have very high confidence and there were multiple streams of information from overhead imagery to radar, from information gathered by our partners in the region. and today they release a graphic that showed radar information. and you can see the syrian government chats over the site of the attak twice within a nine minute time slot which is exactly when the sarin gas was released. there is really no doubt. bill: okay. there was always doubt among those who will not believe, no matter what you present, through them. i iran has been strangely signed about this. i haven t heard any saber rattling. have you? that s a little bit more worrying. what you don t know. bill: right. one of the possible plans for retaliation that they considered when they were planning this whole thing out is that syria and iran would use their proxy hezbollah to launch an attack, that third party retaliation. we have not seen that yet, but that is an idea that was on the table, bella. bill: do we have any information on the swedish attacks, again, president trump made that a centerpiece that sweden was destabilized by all of these muslim refugees pouring into the country. the country reacted vehemently against president trump, but we now have it will take a terror attack in stockholm, right? that s right. a truck was hijacked and then it was driven right into this department store in central stockholm. really, at the height of rush hour, people were getting ready for the weekend. this sadly fits a profile that we ve seen mostly with isis or self radicalized al qaeda followers. and they are using trucks and cars bill: to kill people speak . today, they took one cost suspect into custody, but we have not been able to verify his claims is accurate. but these are the types of plots as you know, bill, that are almost impossible to disrupt. and they go right to the heart of the economy and also people s sense of morality what is right. i mean, it s so offensive. bill: we appreciated as always, thank you. next on the run down from a senior u.s. military officials effective? it was effective in two ways. number one, punishing bashar al-assad for the use of chemical weapons and reestablishing u.s. military credibility in the region. a lot of people talk about political solutions, they talk about the poetic solutions. there is never been at the poetic solution or political solution in the absence of military credibility. we can t predict where president trump is going from here, but in the narrow entrance for punishing bashar al-assad for using chemical weapons, and setting an effective deterrence for future use of chemical weapons, this attack was a success. bill: you heard of the talking points memo that the obama administration trotted out susan rice and john kerry a few years back to say, no, we negotiated with assad and he gave up all of his chemical weapons. of course, that turned out to be false. do you see this as mr. harmer does as an effective use of military power that will inhibit future chemical attacks? um, i think it was a very effective attack. i think it was smart to uses with cruise missiles. there are still russians at the base to attest the accuracies of the weapon systems. i do not think it will guarantee it won t be used again. i think there is a very limited message being sent to assad, a very powerful message, overwhelming force. it was as our friend already said, a narrow message well delivered. but no. i don t see this guaranteeing. i think assad will trot this out again. and if we got the russians involved bill: why would he do that though? if you trotted out again, that doesn t make any sense to me. he knows that trump is going to up it, because trump is not going to say, okay, i m not going to do anything after you spit in my eye after i give you a warning. the next time instead of it being 50, it will be 150. it will devastate the whole infrastructure of syria. don t you believe that? don t you think donald trump is going to back away from a punk like assad if he uses gas again? i didn t say anything about the president of united states backing up. you asked me if it s going to stop it bill: why would he risk his own neck? okay. we are dealing with a crazy man in the middle of a war with a thousand different factions, and he still has, i believe, he destroyed 1300 tons of that stuff back in 2012-2013 and he still got it. i think you could use it again in a few months. in small doses. i wouldn t be surprised at all if he uses it again. bill: mr. harmer, would you be surprised if this guy because it again knowing that the next time, going going to be ten times worse? i would be surprised if basher assad uses chemical weapons again for two reasons. number one, he cannot afford direct conflict with the united states. he can survive with al qaeda and isis. what he cannot do is cross a redline that has been firmly established and a penalty is being affixed to that. second of that, bashar al-assad s military is on the narrow margins of survivability. the air force and all practical purposes barely exist anymore. the syrian air army no longer desists. that is why they need conscripts and mercenaries from afghanistan, he the syrian people will not fight on the behalf of bashar al-assad. he does not have the bandwidth to risk conflict. bill: doesn t he have the iranians he didn t have it before, guys! bill: let s not allocate our coverage. doesn t he have the iranians helping him out, though? absolutely. he s got the full support of the iranian government, the islamic revolutionary guard, the full support of hezbollah and russia. with that said, bashar al-assad has a very narrow definition of success right now and that staying alive. there is no fallback option. those under to bill: you mentioned this last night. it russia. is russia stupid enough to get involved with poison gas? bad drones, as you talk about with catherine. i don t think i don t think, i know. assad is not doing anything without russian approval and russian involvement. this country was gone and lost until the russians showed up. assad is absolutely dependent on bill: if you were putin and you knew the world is horrified at poison gas killing 20 children. why would you i mean, why? i m not sure, bill. look. why would a former kgb lieutenant colonel say okay to use sarin gas? bill: this kind of attention to syria because i think this hurts assad. his survivability rate just went down. of course it does. the russians the russian involvement in this, they haven t stopped. again, i say this. they have been in syria, assad killing his own people. which got everyone obviously upset about this is the 20 kids, babies, that were killed. bill: yeah, the gas. i get it. but he s been doing this for 5-6 years. i don t see any reason that they gave him gas. putin would say, don t do that. bill: do you think putin would okay a gas attack, mr. harmer? i think it s a dispute that the russians weren t aware that syria was resuming its chemical weapons capacity. i don t think the russians suggested this for there s a big difference between assad being dependent on russian help, which he is, and assad functioning as a mercenary for the russians, which is a stretch. bill: the warships that putin is moving into the mediterranean sea, is that just for show? yes, that s part of the counteraction package. they send their ships in close proximity edge, it s is an easy way to show that they are viable, they can still stand up to us without risking escalation. it happens in the pacific, atlantic, mediterranean, it s not a big deal. it s just a show of force. bill: do you agree with that? yeah. this ship has been coming in the mediterranean a lot. bill: check out colonel hunt s new book without mercy about nukes in the hands of terrorists. directly ahead, security tightened all over the world after the attack and another alleged terrorist incident in sweden, as we mention. now judge neil gorsuch shea supreme court s to justice. what does that mean for you? those reports after these messages. white house security council under presidents bush and obama. do you see any unintended consequences from this attack in syria? um, there s always a possibility for unintended consequences. i feel like the demonstration would not do this if they had not gamed out the potential side effects here. there s always a risk wherever the united states undertake military action abroad, whether or not we have come under direct attack or not, there will be risks here. this is not offensive action, as you know. that the united states was very have taken. the russians shows a side in the syrian conflict a few years ago when they decided to insert themselves under it under the false pretense of fighting isis. this is a smart move and a brave, bold move on the part of the u.s. but really defensive. bill: you were in the obama white house, i will play two sound bites with kerry and susan rice. we didn t negotiate it, we didn t need to go to war, that was the mantra of president obama eight years, we can negotiate anything. and we saw, he probably destroyed some stuff, but he did destroy all stops, and that is when babies are dead. when you are in the obama white house, did you notice there was a reluctance to do what donald trump did? well. i don t think you had to be at the white house to notice the reluctance to do it. bill: you are on the outside looking out. did you notice that when you were there that reluctance? i will go with yes. i think it would be hard to not see, you know the decisions that the folks made in the administration in 2013 when i was already gone from the white house, i did not see firsthand. but the results of the conversations they had were seen all around the world. and the effects are felt up until today. so it s obvious there was rekay. colonel wood, when you saw the missiles hit the airfield in syria, did anything pop in your mind like a ron is doing this and put in is going to do that? that s what we mean by unintended consequences. i think there will be unintended horizontal consequences where putin will not see whole opportunity to up the game in syria, especially if he doesn t want to go to war in the united states. but he can do that in other theaters, ukraine continues, dismembering that country. much more provocative action against the baltic states. very concerned about what they are doing in the baltics and the are tics. there are a lot of other places where putin can play a strong hand to stymie u.s. efforts, dismember alliances, and certainly with a veto power on the u.n. security council, they can create all kinds of havoc. anything to do with israel or u.s. efforts to get sanctions against north korea. reactions in the south china sea and against china i think it s a pretty broad playing board and putin will move his checkers where he thinks he can get an upper hand in other areas. bill: but i can t imagine that val ida between you and cares about assad on a personal novel or any other the chinese were interesting because the foreign minister came out and he didn t really condemn the action. he just said that everyone should calm down. that s why i was looking for a joint statement of any kind by the chinese president and donald trump, but today we didn t get anything. all they did is they had snacks at mar-a-lago i guess. i don t know what else they did there. they sidestepped out of the resort. got on the plane. bill: there wasn t any we will settle on out of here. it was strange. i can t imagine how awkward, like, you know on the protocol level that must ve been for these two leaders the first time they ve ever met face-to-face? so many issues between them and meanwhile there is this huge elephant in the room, which is that the president is going back to his room at night and, you know, dropping bombs in syria. it s a little bit i don t think it was awkward for max trump at all. he saw this as a big advantage. comes in big and bold, taking military action against a bunch of vile people, dropping sarin gas on davies at all. it came from a competitive advantage in any bill: the chinese never show their hand. they never let you know what they are thinking. the chinese bureaucrats i m talking about. sure. bill: so you don t know, you know. there is a s face they put on. i was looking for something out of president xi, we don t even know if you like the food or anything. is that what you want to know, bill? how were the burgers ? it was very aggressive, no warning, he just acted. and ten hours later, the chinese government is trying to figure out with that. i m not surprised by the silence or having to recalculate their interest in north korea. keeping mom was probably the best course of action for the chinese. bill: they would do that anyway on american soil. but it was fascinating to see donald trump oh, resident xi past the pipe. by the way, in 3 minutes, 60 tomahawk s launched into syria. would you like a little bit more tv? during the dinner, that s where they all went. i thought they would wait until factor would finish. we will talk to the white house advisor, dr. sebastian gorka about the world reaction from the missile attack. now the judge gorsuch is on the court and liberal americans are not happy! stay tuned for those reports. gorsuch is is this good for the folks? professor, cut through the nuclear option and all the stuff. the regular people, the regular americans, many of them who don t even know who judge gorsuch is or what he does. is this man going to improve the country for the folks? i think he s going to improve the court. i think this country is better off when you have people who are intellectual leaders. too often we select nominees because they have never had an interesting thought in their lives. we really need people who see a horizon that can describe where the law should go. this is a conservative president that has the right to nominate a conservative bill: but how conservative is mr. gorsuch? he is conservative. he is a textualst.t she s very conservative when looking at the original content. none of those things should bar him from the court. a lot of people share those views. bill: you ve testified for judge gorsuch. i did. bill: what did he say? what did you see. i sense that gorsuch is something of a departure, welcome departure in that he has a long record. he s not a blank slate. we know what type of justice he will be. he will be a very good one for people might not like his conclusions always, but i think he s an honest intellectual and that honesty may take him across the ideological spectrum. bill: that s what i said last night. there is a chance in some of these rulings that conservatives will be angry if it is not like scalia. scalia was a i ve never seen gorsuch promote that. that s the key people conservatives, i ve said for months, you should be not trying to replace a conservative with a conservative, but an intellectual with an intellectual. that is what gorsuch is and that is what scalia was. bill: okay. do you believe that judge gorsuch will be sworn in monday morning got caught up in the trump hate campaign! honestly i don t see a basis to oppose gorsuch, so i hope he doesn t carry a lot of baggage into this. a lot of democratic senators didn t feel they could vote for him, which i think is a terrible shame. bill: why? why didn t they think they could vote for him? three did. but why do the other things they couldn t? what you are saying is true. honest man, very smart, forward-looking, respects the constitution above all. why couldn t our democratic elected senators vote for him? i think it s an incredible of the ploys of to we can no longer separate people from the politics. yet in honest good faith jurist that judge neil gorsuch is. bill: senator feinstein said she couldn t vote for gorsuch because she didn t believe the constitution was a living document that evolves as society evolves. i guess it s a living document. you have to feed it, walk it. that s why she couldn t vote for him, no matter how brilliant or honest, it had to be a justice who believes in evolution of the constitution. you your head must ve blown off. i thought that was a particularly sad moment, because i have great reservations about the cause of a living constitution because i don t know how it s been defined and i ll tell you bill: is defined by your ideology, whatever you think is the right policy. there is this broad spectrum that includes now with justice gorsuch on monday that people often separate originalists from living constitutions. there is this medal, good faith jurist that try to get it right. in the case of judge gorsuch, he starts with this original sense of the to present that move out of the main screen is the czar. bill: you see two more things really quick. second amendment is now bolstered by judge gorsuch. i think he would agree with that. second 11 religious people. they bill if there is a major case that he s going to hit the court just in time to hear the trinity lutheran church case. it has a huge case. bill: tell me what that case is quick to make this was a church that was denied funds to a repay their playground because they are a religious organization. other nonfor profits that were given their funding. the church said that is not fair. just because we are religious groups, we are still nonfor profit. this is a case that could have far-reaching implications for how they handle the religion clauses of the first amendment. bill: i think religious people should be celebrating over the weekend, it s palm sunday and everything. that was a good discussion there, professor. thank you. bill: you didn t come across as a pinhead. [laughs] bill: i even understood it. you did a great job. we appreciate it. thanks, bella. bill: when we come back, missile attack defense. some people think president trump s actions were flat-out wrong. we will go to white house advisor to find out what could come next as president trump sending messages to the world. we will be right back. dr. nick gillespie, , and emma ashford who works the cato institute. you know, a lot of people say if you are going to kill babies with poison gas, somebody s got to take care of you. and that somebody was president trump and the united states. you oppose it. why? well, i think that is frankly a false argument. i think that the attacks that president trump undertook does nothing to resolve the syrian civil war. it does nothing to prevent the further killing of syrian civilians. it makes the isis campaign more difficult, and it risks dragging us a larger conflict in syria. those are big negatives that we should be paying more attention. bill: that s why we have you on the air. so let s walk through and we will get to talk to gillespie. he uses poison gas, assad. that s against the geneva convention. the united nations is not doing anything because i never do. so donald trump, i am personally going to write this wrong and i m going to hit him, and if he doesn t again i m going to hit him and take them out completely. you don t think that is an inhibitor? you don t think that s going to stop assad from using the gases? i don t think these tracks we undertook will do much to dissuade assad. bill: you expect assad to drop more poison gas on the civilian people? it s a distinct possibility. and even if he doesn t use chemical weapons, we have done nothing from this waiting him using barrel bomb s and other very nasty weapons to kill the people he s killed. bill: i want to wrap up the first round with you. so if you were the president, you would not have taken any action against assad for what he did? i wouldn t have taken military action like president trump did. i would have tried to restart diplomatic negotiations bill: like the obama administration and you her john kerry and susan wright say we got it all out there, but they did not. let s go to dr. gillespie. the emotional you are the president, and you do nothing to assad after he does that? first off, it s not up to the united states to enforce the geneva conventions. bill: cool would that be bill: who would that be? we are coming out of 15 years in the middle east where we have accomplished very little other than destabilizing the entire region and creating a iran bill: say on this no. bill: whose responsibility is this? the united states could start to build a coalition in the area. it s up to them to deal bill: if saudi arabia launched a few tomahawk s, you would be okay with a? it wouldn t be the united states. as a citizen of the united states, it s not our business to police what syria is doing in its civil war. if that carries forth to other countries, you have a water barbarity so nobody is going to support the geneva convention that is a leap of you know, a leap of judgment that is not borne out by the facts. bill: weight. we all see what s happening in north korea, iran, do is what s happening in libya, after we dropped bombs in the name of humanitarian intervention, bill: you would hope that this is not an occupying situation. it s the beginning of one. bill: i m going to go to dr. ashford. 30 seconds each. how would you deal with assad. specifically, dr. ashford? i would try and push for a diplomatic solution. i know what you are saying, but the obama administration try to do this, but president trump is in a much better situation for far better relations with the russians, taking a harder line on iran bill: so you say diplomacy? i do say diplomacy because it s the only way civil war ends. bill: dr. gillespie, how do you deal with assad? we do not have to dealassad. our interest in iran right now or in the middle east has to do with islamic terrorism, not the assad regime which is a disgusting regime. you go after the terrorists. we are not in the business of policing what the assad does. bill: we are going after terrorists. we are doing two things here. very good discussion, appreciate it. sebastian gorka on next. we will get the white house. it what severity as it stands tonight. that as the factor continues around the usa and all the worl world. bill: let s go back to washington and bring in sebastian gorka, deputy assistant to mr. trump. we assume that you are happy the missile attack was successful. you are a strategist, dr. gorka. we heard a lot tonight that this is not going to dissuade assad from using gas, he will use it again. number one, i don t believe that what i could be wrong. if he does do it again, have you guys been game planning for that? oh, absolutely. there are people inside the of the pentagon, people on the national security council, my good friends, they have gamed out the possible scenarios. unfortunately, i don t want to disappoint you, mr. o reilly. unlike the last administration, we are not going to give those away in advance because that is very, very unwise. bill: sure. i think everyone understands that. except penn had a journalist who except pinheaded journalist who goad you into doing that. you will have a plan, there are other things that may happen. am i correct on both of those? absolutely. bill: here s a key question. would you, you being the white house represent in the white house, tell assad if you use poison gas again, something worse will befall you. will that message be delivered personally to you? that message, i think, there are many ways to communicate strategic narratives. what you have seen in the last 48 hours is president trump being more decisive than obama was in the last eight years. messages can be given directly or indirectly. again, we are not going to give away how we communicate it. bill: would you give it directly because you could if you wanted to? yes. it s completely within the mandate of the president, secretary to listen, or even secretary mattis to do that. bill: you don t love assad, you want to be on this planet, you better not do it again because it s not going to be pleasant. iran, we haven t heard much from them. usually, they ve got a lot of people in syria doing bad things. can you tell us anything about their reaction? yes. i think is very interesting in the past eight years, they have been very, very loud, they have been very offensive in their comments even after events such as the hostage taking of our naval personnel and other other very dangerous things that they have done. i think their silence is a very positive sign because as the sponsor of the regime in damascus, they have to draw conclusions as well. this is about messages that are sent to nations like russia, china, and iran. bill: let s take russia. if putin condemns the act and sends a warship into the mediterranean, saber rattling a little bit. you take that seriously or do you think that is where short? that is a classic standard operating procedure. we are the most powerful nation in the world has ever seen. this is just classic classic showmanship. it s not even brickman ship. they don t have the capacity to do something with our naval basil. it standard kgb kind of tactics coming out of moscow. bill: as he mentioned we did not get any chinese reaction at mar-a-lago. we did get a statement from the foreign minister that he wants everyone to calm down. that channel, do we know anything about how china processed the attack? if i did, i wouldn t be talking about it in front of your huge audience, i m afraid, mr. o reilly. bill: can you give me, again [site] looks, we are all americans. we want safety for this country. we don t want to tea them off. do you think they were upset that we did this to syria or they don t care? i think they are incredibly strategic. they play for the long game. if there is one nation out there that understands the long game, it s china. look at history, look at sun tzu, look at everything they publish and classify domain. i think they understand. i think the bigger part of this is a new, really, this is proof that we have a new president and they are going to have to draw the right conclusions with regards to countries like north korea. i think it will have a positive effect because they are not irrational, bill. they are not irrational. bill: so you can reason with the chinese food that s what you re saying. yes. bill: what s the deputy assistant do, what do you do? whatever the president, whatever jared kushner wants me to do. bill: would you read that and give us analysis, is that what you do? it can be. i meet with delegation with our allies, our partners. i work with counterterrorism issues, i was asked for my opinion on the first eos, including the immigration ones. i am your general player in the national security field within the white house. bill: you are the utility player. i am. bill: you play every position in the infield. that s it. bill: is a pleasure to have you on tonight, doc. factor tip today. would you like to meet jesse watters? if so, why? the tip moments away. number one, killing the rising sun right behind number three after seven months in the marketplace we believe that the first ever in the american publishing world. but you remain remember that killing kennedy s number one, while killing lincoln was number two in 2012. i know some of you won t believe me but there was a time when i wanted to a bookstore saying i won t never get a book published, it s true. but i persevered, the key to life. thank you all for supporting the books. prior to pearl harbor, the world atrocities all over the globe. are we going to sit idle while iran, russia, china, and north korea plan our demise? nuclear weapons have changed war strategy, countries cannot launch a large scale attacks anymore, war is now. if the liberal democrats are decrying the syrian bombing are condoning the use of chemical weapons on babies which is why the liberal community really isn t decrying it, a few, not many. the attack is justifiable on a human rights basis the liberal community is on human rights, that their dilemma. if missoula, montana, where is the u.n. help on that syria, where it always is, being discussed in meetings. mr. oh, you let lois lerner off too easy, what she did at the irs was criminal and she should have gone to prison. this may come as a shock to you but i do not have the power to incarcerate. if i did, prison overcrowding would be a far worse problem that it is now, i would open alcatraz, i would get to devils back from france. am i rambling here? i believe i am. dan kaiser omaha, nebraska, what makes people think that even if susan rice is guilty, if director called me will not prosecute clint and he will not go after miss rice. i am so tired of congressional hearings that go nowhere, me too. if roger ellis, north hampton england, your interview with ambassador bolton was just brilliant, certain questions and excellent responses, the segment should be used as a teaching tool for college courses. i appreciate that. if killing the rising sun is amazing, although today s american warriors are just as brave, the jodi s home and on campus don t have the necessary love of country to win a war is brutal against the japanese. i ve thought about that a lot and you are most likely correct. america s kids raised during the great depression during the 1930s, much tougher than modern young people. here s the thing, future wars as i mentioned will not need millions of infantry, there will be high-tech driven. the weapons today make world war ii tactics obsolete. after reading old school, i am rooting for global warming, it will melt the snow flakes. read old-school, you and bruce fiercely and had me rolling with laughter. we have loads of snow flakes down here, it s a white out. old-school life in the same lane is a great combination of wit and wisdom, i think you and if you re staying for running it. finally tonight factor tip of the day, i want to thank everybody who is purchase tickets to the spin the stops here live shows. your humble correspondent will see everybody in baltimore, maryland, at the royal farms arena friday, september 22nd. the next night we scurry on down to tampa, florida, a nice venue down there. december 15th, friday will be at caesar s palace, always be a great time, waters will be parted. finally, saturday december 16th, great early christmas gift. we ll be at the honda center in anaheim, california, that show almost 40% sold out after one day. waters does most of our show in the audience you might get a close look at his world. ticket info on info on billoreilly.com, shows will sell out so we hope you check it out, make great gifts for all occasions. factor tip of the day, that is it for us tonight please check out fox news factor website which is different from billoreilly.com. if we would like you to spout off about the factor, name in town if you wish to opine, word of the day, do not be s holisti holistic. that s it for us tonight on this
burgdorf. while rescue efforts are still under way, mexican crews race to save people trapped beneath the crumblings. the u.s. geological survey said yesterday s quake was centered near the town of san juan roboso. officials have lowered the death toll to 217 after initially raising to over 250 overnight. dozens of buildings were reduced to rubble or severely damaged in densely populated parts of the city. the president says roughly 40% of the capital is without power. meanwhile officials say at least 25 children and adults after their school in mexico city has collapsed. 11 people have been rescued. still others unaccounted for. this is video from our colleagues at telemundo of their office in mexico, shaking during that earthquake. you see them bracing themselves agency the tv monitors begin to sway. president trump tweeted his support. writing god bless the people of mexico city. we are with you and we will be there for you. steve, good to talk to you this morning. just an incredible tragedy following this earthquake. what are you seeing on the ground? reporter: incredible tragedy. loss of life. where we are right now, we ve just gotten on to a seam. it s one of the buildings which you probably see, the video that s been playing and looping all day long. what it is, a massive humanitarian rescue, sort of in the middle probably maybe about hundreds of workers with masks trying to get into the seam here. trying to pull people out of the rubble. i can t get a look at the direct operations but i can tell you it s massive seems like we re having some technical difficulties with you, steve. are you there, do we still have you? reporter: do you still hear me, yasmin? yeah, go ahead. reporter: just incredible work efforts, incredible rescue efforts. we re having problems out here, obviously with the cell, and workers are pulling people from the rubble. that s what s going on right now. we ll come back as soon as we can. yeah, clearly, the cell service is being knocked out by the earthquake. and the power being out of the city as the president was saying. steve patterson, thank you. we continue to track hurricane maria lashing the caribbean with the warn to puerto rico, get out or die. bill, bring us up to speed. the small eye has become a larger eye, it s caused a little weakening so now we re down from a cat 5 to a high-end cat 4. instead of 175-mile-per-hour winds we re at 155. still, the top end of the category 4 is still going to cause extreme damage throughout the area. you can ski where the eye is, this is the incas here. bringing the center near umakao. the eye should be over san juan or the northern area. that will cause extreme damage to the most highly populated areas on the northern side of puerto rico. let s go to san juan. we have nbc news news correspondent tammy leitner. tammy, i imagine things are quickly deteriorating? reporter: yeah, you know, i can see the storm changing and increasing ever ten or 15 minutes it just seems to pick up impact and pick up speed. the winds have gotten so strong. we re starting to see debris flying by us. tree branches. we ve seen shutters ripped off of buildings. people on this building have been told evacuate or die. that is the message given to locals here. i can tell you not everybody has evacuated. there are about 500 shelters across the island with 50,000 people in them. we ve spoken with a lot of them who said they are going to ride out the storm in their homes. they have boarded up their homes and they ve hunkered down. we ve also spoken to tourists who are trapped on the island. i can tell you where we are here, this is where fema has set up their headquarters. this is where all the first responders are, there are about 300 of them, standing by, waiting for the storm to pass by so they can go out and make rescues, inevitably, there will be rescues to be made. we spoke with some of those first responders and they told us they re ready to do this. back to you, guys. tammy, we wish you the best. you have about two hours before that northern eye wall gets to you. we ll check back with you. hearings the radar, the northern wall is there, and now getting that western eye. you can see where san juan is located here. the stronget storm they ve seen. there s the eye. and now the eye is about 16 hours from how. and it will go through the island for the next eight hours. praying for puerto rico right now. turning now to the u.n. general assembly, president trump making his first remarks there yesterday, as expected the president held nothing back regarding the ongoing crisis with north korea. take a listen. now, north korea s reckless pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles threatening the entire world with unthinkable loss of human rights. no nation on earth has an interest in seeing this band of criminals arm itself with nuclear weapons and missiles. the united states has great strength and patience. but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea. rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself. and for his regime. the president went on to praise the united nations security council for the latest rounds of harsh sanctions against pyongyang, specifically thanking china and russia for joining the unanimous wave. for also calling on the united nations as a whole to step up. the scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the united nations is based. if the righteous men do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. the united states is ready, willing and able, but hopefully, this will not be necessary. that s what the united nations is all about. that s what the united nations is for. let s see how they do. it is time for all nations to work together to isolate the kim regime until it ceases its hostile behavior. so, an important note for you, north korea s ambassador walked out in protest before trump began his speech. if you re wondering because a lot of people are, a senior official telling nbc news that trump added his nickname for kim jong-un rocket man into his remarks yesterday morning and that he coined the term himself. joining us live from beijing on how all of this plays out, correspondent janet matthews. tell us how the remarks may have been perceived in seoul, south korea, and across the region? reporter: well in this part of the world, people are trying to figure out if it was a threat, a message or a bluff, this vow to totally destroy north korea so far has been downplayed in south korea, half ignored here in china. in china, it seems to be well received. we have to remember it has flown over japanese territory and their prime minister shinzo abe is talking to the united nations today. here in china, the response was preable. they again called for adherence in resolution. there is the sense is that perhaps this message was meant as much for xi jinping southwest kim jong-un. that china using all of it intellers of oil to top itself as far as nuclear weapons. xi jinping was not in the audience at that u.n. speech. the most intriguing from the speech is from the regime itself. there s the sense that perhaps president trump provided the perfect sound bite for the north korean audience. not as a threat but for the pursuit of nuclear weapons used against north korea. we re going to cross over to nbc news to ali arouzi who is going to join us with hard hitting action on iran and the iran nuclear deal. president noted his america first doctrine while addressing how that policy can co-exist and are not necessarily separate entities. as president of the united states, i will always put america first. just like you, agency the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first. [ applause ] but making a better life for our people also requires to work together in close harmony and unity to create a more safe and peaceful future, for all people. as long as i hold this office, i will defend america s interests above all else. but in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we also realize that it s in everyone s interest to seek the future will all nations can be sovereign, prosperous and secure. joining us in washington is white house correspondent rosca. thanks for joining us. in the past the president has been critical of the united nations. now he s making this speech with the first first mantra, what s the reaction we re hearing across the world in this regard? well, i think it depends where you look, you have the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu who said this is one of the best u.n. speeches he had heard and that it was tough and on point. but then you have the swedish foreign minister saying this was the wrong speech, the wrong time and the wrong audience. so, i think it depends on where you stand on the world stage. i think it did rattle some world leaders, to focus on america first. and sovereignty, there wasn t really an explanation of how that works cooperatively. and if everyone is looking out for their own interests, then how do you come together on these kind of big issues like north korea, et cetera. so i think that it was kind of mixed reviews. and i think there was some take-away from some world leaders that the u.s. might not be willing to get involved in kind of any big projects. yeah, it s pretty interesting, ayesha. let s switch gears and in reuters first to report yesterday that the republican national committee is using funds from a legal proceedings account to actually help president trump pay for his russia-related legal fees. what more can you tell us about this? and more importantly, is this unprecedented? well, it s unprecedented. now, it s not illegal because president trump did not use public financing for his campaign. he privately funded it. so, he is allowed to use campaign funds and rnc funds for legal investigation. but it is unprecedented in this day and age, to have a president using his campaign funds for a criminal investigation. and not only do you have the legal implications, but you have the optics of a billionaire president using campaign funds to fund his response, his legal response to the russia investigation. while there are many on his staff, kind of lower-rung staff members who are struggling to pay their legal bills. yeah, you have michael flynn s family making that plea to help with support for his legal fees. right. all right, correspondent for reuters, ayesha roscoe, thanks. still ahead, jimmy kimmel weighs in on the health care debate and calls out one leader who said lined his face. plus, we re tracking the path of the category 5 storm. those stories and more when we come back. democrats are sounding the alarm now that the graham-caskey bill seems to be picking up steam. he feels the momentum, this as the senate leader is in the white house to shore up obamacare exchanges. republicans are racing for that deadline. they need 51 votes. one major obstacle, they won t know the plan s cost because they won t get a full cbo score until after the vote. and a bipartisan group of governors who came against the bill yesterday including bill walker whose pin could affect lisa murkowski s decision. meanwhile, senator cassidy is catching flak from late night host jimmy kimmel, take a list. a few months ago after my son had open heart surgery which is something i spoke about, a politician bill cassidy, a politician was on my show doesn t seem to be very honest. he seemed honest, when it came to health care for coming up with something he called, i didn t name it this, he named it, the jimmy kimmel test which was, in a nutshell, no family should be denied medical care, emergency or otherwise, because they can t afford it. he agreed to that. he said he would only support a health care bill that made sure that a child like mine would get the health coverage he needs no matter how much money his parents make. and this guy bill cassidy just lied right to my face. do you believe that every american regardless of income should be able to get regular checkups, maternity care, et cetera, all of those things that people who have health care get and need? yep. so, yep, is washington for no, i guess. [ laughter ] by the way, before you post a nasty facebook message saying i m politicizing my son s health problems. i want to you know i m politicizing my son s health problems because i have to. well, the senator responded saying in a statement saying, quote, we have a september 30th deadline, let s finish the vote. there is someone s whose preexisting condition will be addressed through the bill. we ll hear from senator cassidy later this morning. let s get to bill karins with a check on the weather. bill, you re tracking hurricane maria, it s a category 4 on puerto rico s door step and could potentially be delivering a severe below in san juan. right now, roofs are being torn off homes and a lot of people in their safe rooms. so that s what they re waking up to in puerto rico. again, the eye, went through a wall replacement cycle last night and that did bring it down just a little bit. that is weakening it but instead of ten miles wide, it s now 30 miles wide. that means the devastation is through a larger area but not as extreme. this red circle shows you, san juan got to 78. that s when it does structural damage, trees are falling down, power is going out. and there s the center of the storm, about an hour, hour and a half away from landfall of a strong category 4 hurricane. they haven t seen something like this since 1932 in puerto rico. here s the eye. you can notice that the innerportion of the eye which was really pronounced kind of is falling apart. and this wider eye is taking over. that s what i mean, we were tracking a ten-mile wide eye and now it s 30 miles wide. that means the wind field is expanding, too. hearings the center of the storm. notice now starting to get into the eye near the coast. from the center coming on shore there near humacao. you can see san juan getting in that those northwestern eye wall in about an hour or hour and a half from now. the worst of the damage is now beginning, the flash flooding is beginning. and extreme winds. a lot of people are with their children in their houses scared right now for good measure, this is a very serious storm. it s going to be a critical hour for the folks in puerto rico. still ahead, baseball s all-time home record record falls and in the nba, one of the biggest stars apologizes for going after his former team, where else, but on twitter. sports is next. that knows the weather down to the square block. this is a diamond tracked on a blockchain - protected against fraud, theft and trafficking. this is a financial transaction secure from hacks and threats others can t see. this is a patient s medical history made secure - while still available to their doctor at their fingertips. this is an asteroid live-streamed to millions of viewers from 220 miles above earth. this is ai trained by experts in 20 industries. your industry. hello. this is not the cloud you know. this is the ibm cloud. built for your business. designed for your data. secure to the core. the ibm cloud is the cloud for enterprise. yours. yours. it s not just a car, it s your daily treat. go ahead, spoil yourself. the es and es hybrid. experience amazing. every year we take a girl s trip. remember nashville? kimchi bbq. kimchi bbq. amazing honky tonk?? i can t believe you got us tickets. i did. i didn t pay for anything. you never do. send me what i owe. i ve got it. i mean, you did find money to buy those boots. are you serious? is that why you don t like them? those boots could make a unicorn cry. yeah, tears of joy. the bank of america mobile banking app. the fast, secure and simple way to send money. but their nutritional needs (vremain instinctual.d, that s why there s purina one true instinct. nutrient-dense, protein-rich, real meat number one. this is a different breed of natural nutrition. purina one, true instinct. we are the tv doctors of america, and we may not know much about medicine, but we know a lot about drama. from scandalous romance, to ridiculous plot twists. (gasping) son? dad! we also know you can avoid drama by getting an annual check-up. so we re partnering with cigna to remind you to go see a real doctor. go, know, and take control of your health. it could save your life. doctor poses! dad! cigna. together, all the way. welcome back. time now for sports and major league baseball s new all-time single season home run record. while barry bonds original park is stage, alex gordon slugged a 5,694th home run of the 2017 season in last night s 5-2 loss against the blue jays. a solo shot at the top of the eighth breaks the record at 2,000. we ll see how high tell goes. to atlanta, max scherzer makes an entry into baseball s history books as well, matching 250 strikeouts for the fourth season in a row. scherzer is just the fourth pitcher in mlb history to post such a streak. perhaps more importantly for scherzer, he gets a win as his nationals beat the braves 4-2. and kevin durant has apologized following backlash over critical comments over his former coach and teammates. on sunday, he responded to a fan who questioned his reasons for leaving the oklahoma thunder last summer. since the tweet, durant replied saying he didn t like the organization or playing for head coach billy donovan and added that the roster wasn t that good. the mvp spoke about the incident while on stage yesterday. take a listen. i went a little too far. and i don t regret clapping back at anybody or talking to my fans on twitter. i do regret using my former coach s name and the former organization i played for. that was childish, idiotic, all of those type of words for doing that. and i apologized to him for doing that. reacting on social media can cause a problem. yeah, what s interesting in that story there was some reporting to suggest he was using a fake twitter account to post those responses of people who were critical of him and accidentally tweeted that out. that s a big mistake. yeah, interesting. still ahead more on president trump s speech to the general assembly, including harsh words for iran. plus, we re follows the massive earthquake that shook mexico. ok can we. sfx: (balloon squeals) i m being so serious right now. i really want to know how your coffee is. it s. sfx: (balloon squeals) hahahaha, i had a 2nd balloon goodbye! oof, that milk in your coffee was messing with you, wasn t it? yeah. happens to more people than you think. try lactaid, it s real milk, without that annoying lactose. mmm. good right? yeah. lactaid. it s the milk that doesn t mess with you. our home team will help you every step of the way. still not enough? it s smaller than i d like. we ll help you finance your dream home. it s perfect. oh, was this built on an ancient burial ground? okay. then we ll have her cleanse you house of evil spirits. we ll do anything, (spiritual chatter) seriously anything to help you get your home. ally. do it right. it s a warm blanket. it s a bottle of clean water. it s a roof and a bed. it s knowing someone cares. it s feeling safe. it s a today that s better than yesterday. every dollar you can spare helps so much more than you can imagine. please donate now to help people affected by hurricane harvey. your help is urgently needed. burgdorf. it s the bottom of the hour. we re following that breaking news out of mexico where rescue efforts are still under way following that massive 7.1 earthquake. the u.s. geological survey said yesterday s quake was centered around the town of san juan roboso. mexico s federal government has declared a state of disaster in mexico city. dancing s of buildings were reduced to rubble or severely damaged in densely populated parts of mexico city. the president says up to 40% of the capital is currently without power. meanwhile, officials say at least 25 children and adults have been killed after their school in mexico city collapsed. 11 people have been rescued though another 30 are still unaccounted for. such a tragic situation there. joining us from mexico city, nbc news correspondent steve patterson. steve, good to talk to you once again. we re seeing dramatic videos coming out as crews are searching to find survivors that the level. what s it like for you. what are you seeing on the ground, in regards to rescue operations there? what s the plan? reporter: yeah, yasmin, that s exactly what we re seeing right now. i want to show you a rescue operation that s in progress. we re on scene with an office building collapse. just as typical as you could possibly get, this upscale neighborhood, it s about 1:00, shortly before lunchtime. workers are in there, just working, building is packed with people. you can see that collapse. you can see workers that have kind of made progress. and the top levels of that building collapse. what they re trying to do, they re trying as hard as they can to find anybody who may be trapped in there. any survivors who may be able to make a noise or some sort of sign that they re alive inside there to try to pull those people out. so, what we have here is basically humanitarian crisis. you have police here joined by military. joined by local, state, federal. all law enforcement on scene here, to try to help as best they can to get people out of there. and part of that work is to identify who s already been found in this crisis. you can see back here, some of the relief workers with their helmets. people bringing food and relief supplies. but also you see signs up here, these are people that have been discovered in the rubble. and so that work will continue, the help of identifying family members who may be trapped inside there. that will continue throughout the morning, throughout the day. and the next few days, toward the foreseeable future, yasmin, as we continue here on scene. a very tough scene to see here. but progress being made to try to pull people out. you do not want to see your family member s name up on that list. it s a painstaking time for people looking for loved ones. hopefully, when the sun comes up, it s a good feeling even if you find one person. steve patterson, thank you. now to another natural disaster, puerto rico is getting larked right now as a monster storm, hurricane maria makes its way to shore. joining us from puerto rico, nbc news correspondent tammy leitner. tammy, i see the conditions are getting worse. reporter: yeah, ayman, things are starting to deteriorate here. we actually had to move because of debris falls from trees. it s changing very quickly. everybody on the island has been warned. they ve actually be told evacuate or die. it s too late for anybody to do anything. people are hunkered down. there are about 500 shelters here across the island. we re told about 50,000 people have taken refuge in those. there are also some tourists here who are trapped on the island. i can tell you we re outside of fema where they have set up their command post. there are about 300 first responders, firefighters, emts, rescue personnel from across the united states, and they will be heading out as soon as this storm passes and making rescue, inevitably, there will be res e rescues that will need to be made after hurricane maria passes through here. ayman. tammy ligeitnerleitner, thany much. we also want to get the latest of the storm s path as it moves over puerto rico from bill karins in just a few minutes. in addition to going after north korea, the president took on another one of his foreign policy targets, iran. it is far past time for the nations of the world to confront another reckless ra week, one that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing death to america, destruction to israel. and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room. the iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship, behind the false guise of a democracy. it has turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports violence corruption and chaos. it is time to join us in ghanding iran s government end its pursuit of death and destruction. president also reiterated his hatred for the iranian nuclear agreement. take a listen to this. we cannot let a murderous regime continue these destabilizing activities, while building dangerous missiles and we cannot abide by an agreement, if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program. the iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the united states has ever entered into. frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the united states, and i don t think you ve heard the last of it. believe me. some strong words there from president trump about iran. let s cross over now to thehran. we re joined by ali arouzi. reporter: ayman, the speech hasn t gone down well, the diplomatic ambassador said trump s ignorant hate speech belonged in medieval times, not the 21st century. u.n. unworthy of a reply. today senior iranian officials follow suit calling trump ignorant. the strongest message coming out of tehran is the nuclear deal is not up for renegotiation. that s what the trump administration seems to want to do anyway. secretary of state rex tillerson saying that changes have to be made for the deal in order for america to remain part of it, changes that include the ballistic missile program and the deal were sanctionses on the nuclear program expired by 2005. this may be an attempt by the u.s. to get its european allies to pile on iran to return to the negotiating team but i m fairly certain iran is in no mood to address. iran s president rouhani addresses the general assembly. yesterday with lester holt, he said said america will lose all ce credibility if it pulled out the deal. we have to see if he has strong response to president trump s speech yesterday. and also there s a meeting with secretary of state rex tillerson to meet his counterpart for the first time along with other foreign ministers from other powers that negotiated the nuclear agreement with tehran. back to you. lots to watch out there, ali, thanks for joining us. as ali alluded to iran s president rouhani sat down with lester holt just prior to president trump s speech at the general assembly. president ruhan nir perhaps predicting his nation would be a target, preemptively responding. translator: the exiting of the united states from such an agreement would carry a high cost, meaning that subsequent to such an improbable action of united states of america, no one will trust america again. and there is no higher price to be paid than this. because after a possible scenario, which country will be willing to sit across the table from the united states of america and talk about international issues. and president trump s speech to the u.n. has drawn polarizing responses both abroad and here at home. surprisingly, japan and south korea have applauded parts of his remark s as benjamin netanyahu as applauded the speech. he said in over 30 years in my years with the u.n., i have never heard a border or more correspond ravens speech. yet, trump s speech also had his share of critics including dianne feinstein of california who labeled the knocks as, quote, severe disappointment that president trump used that international platform to threaten war. let s go back to ayesha roscoe. good to see you once again. what do you make of the president s speech overall? we just heard mixed reaction coming from world leaders everywhere. well, i think that s what s most interesting about this speech, is that he definitely played to his base. he played to almost an american audience, instead of an international audience. but for those that were looking for tough talk, this was good for them. you know, people in the middle east, countries in the middle east, israel, who are mad about the iran deal, he spoke to their issues. he also spoke even, it was interesting in the beginning, he talked about how great the american economy is doing, as if he was kind of giving a rally in ohio some place. instead of at this international body. so, he really was very pointed on making sure that, as always, that he s laser focused on his base when he was giving a speech, even though it was supposed to be kind of nor international more international audience for this. ayesha, there s this i want to ask you, does the president s sharp words actually help try to resolve some of these ongoing conflicts? are they just going to fuel further tensions and provocations with north korea and iran? well, it depends on who you ask. some people say this is long overdue. and that people need to take a tough stance with iran. and you need to say this tough words. but now we have had president trump say we re going to unleash fire and fury on north korea. and it has not changed their actions thus far. so, we ve had tough talks from president trump but north korea hasn t responded. they ve continued on the path they ve been on. so, you have people who are concerned this type of saber rattling is not working. you have chancellor angela merkel saying she s going to do everything she can to make sure there s a diplomatic resolution, to north korea, because anything else would be a disaster. thank you, good talking to you this morning. still ahead we re going to get the latest on hurricane maria as the storm barrels towards puerto rico. and bill karins will have the very latest for us, to give us a sense of how bad it s looking for the people in puerto rico and where the hurricane is moving to next. stay with us. kevin, meet your father. kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin kevin trusted advice for life. kevin, how s your mom? life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. i needed something more to help control my type 2 diabetes. my a1c wasn t were it needed to be. so i liked when my doctor told me that i may reach my blood sugar and a1c goals by activating what s within me with once-weekly trulicity. trulicity is not insulin. it helps 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effects include nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite and indigestion. some side effects can lead to dehydration, which may make existing kidney problems worse. once-weekly trulicity may help me reach my blood sugar goals. with trulicity, i click to activate what s within me. if you want help improving your a1c and blood sugar, activate your within. ask your doctor about once-weekly trulicity. welcome back, everyone. we re following the very latest on hurricane maria as it makes its way across the caribbean islands. let s get the latest on the math of that storm. nbc meteorologist bill karins joins us. when do we expect it to make land fall, bill? anytime in the next hour. we re watching it closely. some are out of outer eye wall and getting into the clearing so that will be happening shortly. these bands of rain, that area, we re seeing the extreme winds. san juan already to 92 miles per hour. they re 50 miles from the center. that shows you how long the duration this is going to be. i want to show you some of the pictures of san juan. yeah, you get the idea. this is what the equivalent of a category 1 or category 2 will to. when it gets closer, they will get the gusts. possible san juan, 140 to 160-mile-per-hour gusts. picture a city that has almost 500,000 people, in the general area, it s about 2 1/2 million. wind gusts, 140 to 176 miles per hour that s why we think it s subpoena a crisis. let s go in, we re getting close to that landfall. and humacao, and right now, that s right now in the western portion of the eye wall. there s two eye walls, by the way, this is the inner one right here. then this big red is the new one that s taking over. so the official landfall will be on this portion of the coast right now humacao and yabbakoa. we re getting close to that landfall. here s the wind field. the red shows the hurricane force winds. when that comes out, that s when the power goes out. and that s when the destruction begins. all the way back to st. thomas. the timing of it, by 2:00 p.m. this afternoon, the center of the storm is already off the north coast of puerto rico and the winds will be coming down. by the time the sun sets all of the strongest winds will be gone. we should know by the end of the day if any areas have power where we stand on the storm. focusing on the winds, too. but the rain is going to cause a huge problem in the mountains of puerto rico. up to 15 to 20 inches of rain. mudslides, life threatening, the infrastructure of bridges are going to be destroyed. it s going to be a very dangerous situation. bill, you were talking in the next hours, as it moves off puerto rico and do you think it can gain strength as it goes over the waters and heads through puerto rico. it doesn t look like, something called shear is going to start increasing. it should weaken over puerto rico further through the day today. and next for the next five day, it s going way to close to the people of dominican republic. they are under a hurricane warning. notice, 140, close to turks and caicos, closest, not on top. and then to category 2 by the time it gets to monday. still to the east coast, so we re not going to ignore it. but it looks like a jose kind of thing. large waves, battering surf, more problems like that. so incredibly bad for the islands that are going to get hit. as it makes towards puerto rico it shouldn t make any more direct landfall. good news i guess there. still ahead, russian investigators with the meddling on elections pulled the plug on president trump s with the long-time lawyer. and details on the talk with senator collins and when we ll be back on the hill to talk. fly me to the moon and let me play amon (ding) (bell mnemonic) what s the story behind green mountain coffee and fair trade? let s take a flight to colombia. this is boris calvo. boris grows mind-blowing coffee. and because we pay him a fair price, he improves his farm and invest in his community to make even better coffee. all for a smoother tasting cup. green mountain coffee. the strikingly designed lexus nx turbo and hybrid. lease the 2017 nx turbo for $299 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. want sure!ck? alright, looks like we ve got chips, popcorn, pretzels? pretzels! plain, sourdough, spicy, sesame, honey mustard, chocolate covered, peanut butter filled, this one s in german, it says, reindfleisch? plain. great. so what are we gonna watch? oh! show me fall tv. check out the best of the best hand-picked fall shows on xfinity x1, online, and the xfinity stream app. thirsty? welcome back. senate investigators have postponed a meeting with long-time lawyer michael cohen. cohen was to meet privately with staff. prior to that meeting, cohen circulated his opening statement which denied any collusion with russia. a source tells nbc news neither cohen nor the law maker were to speak with media after meeting with staffers for an hour t. meeting was cancelled and postponed. why was it postponed? the next question you have to ask. was it your request to postpone? or was it on the committee? what were you doing here today if you weren t meeting. the senate intelligence postponed. i ll be back and i look forward to getting all the information. what was the message you wanted to send to michael cohen? i didn t send a message except what we do is behind closed doors. cohen is set to testify behind closed doors on the 25th. paul manafort is calling on the justice department to investigate that he was previously wire tapped by the fbi. open monday, the fbi has been interested in manafort as far back at 2013. they claim he was wire tapped both before and after he ran donald trump s company. cnn saying the reported eavesdropping has been authorize under the foreign under surveillance intelligence act. jason malone, manafort s spokesperson says, if true, it is a felony to reveal the existence of a fisa warrant, regardless of the fact that no charges ever emerged. . and as the russian investigation continues the republican national committee has confirmed with nbc news it is using money from illegal proceedings account to help pay for president trump s russia-related legal fees. reuters first reported trump is using campaign funds and money from the rnc to pay for his own legal advice. according to multiple reports, the rnc spent more than $230,000 fees in the month of august. john dowd reportedly paid $100,000. another $121,000 went to where john sekulow is a partner. coming up next on morning joe, the devastating earthquake in mexico, rescue crews race to find survivors. plus, we are tracking hurricane a maia as it rips across puerto rico and bat mexico. joe and mika will have madeleine albright and homeland secretary mike at chertoff. morning joe everybody moments away. your old magic set? and this wrestling ticket. which you still owe me for. seriously? $25? i didn t even want to go. ahhh, your diary. mom says it s totally natural. $25 is nothing. abracadabra, bro. the bank of america mobile banking app. the fast, secure and simple way to send money. you wof your daily routine, so why treat your mouth any differently? complete the job with listerine® help prevent plaque, early gum disease, bad breath and kill up to 99.9% of germs. listerine® bring out the bold™ but their nutritional needs (vremain instinctual.d, that s why there s purina one true instinct. nutrient-dense, protein-rich, real meat number one. this is a different breed of natural nutrition. purina one, true instinct. the uncertainties of hep c. wondering, what if? i let go of all those feelings. because i am cured with harvoni. harvoni is a revolutionary treatment for the most common type of chronic hepatitis c. it s been prescribed to more than a quarter million people. and is proven to cure up to 99% of patients who have had no prior treatment with 12 weeks. certain patients can be cured with just 8 weeks of harvoni. before starting harvoni, your doctor will test 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and reduction in poverty over the last 25 years. bill and linda gates will be there. all right. that does it for us on this wednesday morning. morning joe starts right now.
caps mortgage interest rate deductions at $750,000. and caps the state and local tax deductions at $10,000. now, on the tax brackets that we ve been talking so much about, this actually, this proposal, this bill that they are voting on keeps 7 personal incomes tax brackets. lowest stays there with 10%. but lowers top individual rate. down from 39.6% to now 37%. so a lot of details with massive massive tax overhaul. but again at the end of the day today, republicans looking for a win. sunlen, thank you so much. we ll ta in close contact with you and keep your eyes on the screen here on the house floor as the vote is set to get under way. and after the fact a massive victory lap over at the white house. before we get there, i have with at all. and so that s going to be really interesting to watch next year. you know, especially in those districts where you have vulnerable republicans and the hillary clinton won in 2016. maybe this is the message to help some of those republicans, abby, i saw this tweet from bloomberg to sa quill. he said if it passes he will have repealed, and cut tax, opened up awr judges, killed a lot of regulations. this is not a trivial agenda. abby? i this i that s pretty much right. like we got to the and of this year not exactly sure how taxes would go. because we ve gotten so close on health care, and those other votes did not go through, so it was unclear whether they would finally be able to get something. because i think the judges issue is important to sort of movement on conservatives, washington conservatives. but this trump white house understands what they need to do is deliver something that people can see in their homes and at their kitchen tables. and that s what tax reform has the opportunity for them to do. i think this white house is feeling pretty good right now, because they are closing out this year having done at least one big thing. they had hoped to get two. they got one. and they got the repeal of the individual mandate. they are feeling pretty good. and you ll hear in a couple of minutes a little bit of that from sarah huckabee sanders. they are waiting until this vote happens before she comes out so that she can tout this really important moment for this white house. so abby made a great point, jim, how this is a way for folks to see how this translates around their own kitchen tables. we saw the roll out at the white house and how effective that way pr strategy wise when we saw all the families come forward and saying thanks mr. president, this is how it will help me and my family. but here s the but, two thirds see the bill as doing more to benefit the wealthy than the middle class and almost 4 in 10 americans say in the bill becomes will you their own family will be worse off. yet this is what paul ryan said earlier today. when we get this done, when people see their withholding improving and jobs occurring, and see bigger checks, a simpler tax code, that s what is going to produce the results, results are going to make this popular. so, jim, for all of the americans watching and wondering how does this affect me, how much do i really benefit? and i mean not just next year, but longer term, who stands to benefit the most? well, if you are watching this and you are american you are probably getting a tax cut from this. the simple truth in the first year is tax cut for almost everybody. not everybody, there are millions of families, particularly middle class, upper middle class families who will see tax increases especially in high tax states. but in the first year it is a tax cut. not a huge cut for a lot of folks but it s a substantial one. now what happens over time in the bill is those tax cuts fade for a lot of people. particularly in the middle class and for lower income people by the end, if the bill stays as written, by the end of the ten years, the bill calls for all of the tax cuts go away. and so then you might actually see, actually you would see, tax hikes on basically everybody. so in the first year republicans are betting those benefits will be so great that people aren t worried about what comes down the line. and what we have seen in polling and you are seeing as well is people having a lot more concerns, perhaps looking farther into the future. i m trying to pull up this tweet. l.a. times editorial board, this is part of what they wrote, republicans haphazard approach to tax reform feels like a long weekend of bing drinking, should be ahead splitting fiscal hangover. one group s opinions. please let me ask all of you to stand by. any moment now voting is expected to begin on the house floor for this republican tax bill. we will take that live. stay with me. i m brooke baldwin. are you watching cnn special live coverage. pop that in there. hit strong. press brew. that s it. strong. bold. rich. i feel like you re toying with me. show me how strong you are. (screams) lift me up! dan! lift me up! for her compassion and care. he spent decades fighting to give families a second chance. but to help others, they first had to protect themselves. i have afib. even for a nurse, it s complicated. and it puts me at higher risk of stroke. that would be devastating. i had to learn all i could to help protect myself. once i got the facts, my doctor and i chose xarelto®. xarelto®. to help keep me protected. once-daily xarelto®, a latest-generation blood thinner. .significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. it has similar effectiveness to warfarin. xarelto® works differently. warfarin interferes with at least 6 blood-clotting factors. xarelto® is selective, targeting just one critical factor interacting with less of your body s natural blood-clotting function. for afib patients well-managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® compares in reducing the risk of stroke. don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase risk of stroke. while taking, you may bruise more easily, or take longer for bleeding to stop. it may increase your risk of bleeding if you take certain medicines. xarelto® can cause serious, and in rare cases, fatal bleeding. get help right away for unexpected bleeding, unusual bruising, or tingling. if you ve had spinal anesthesia, watch for back pain or any nerve or muscle-related signs or symptoms. do not take xarelto® if you have an artificial heart valve or abnormal bleeding. tell your doctor before all planned medical or dental procedures. .and before starting xarelto®-about any conditions, such as kidney, liver, or bleeding problems. it s important to learn all you can. .to help protect yourself from a stroke. talk to your doctor about xarelto®. there s more to know™. you or joints. something for your heart. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally found in jellyfish, prevagen is the number one selling brain-health supplement in drug stores nationwide. prevagen. the name to remember. we re back. you re watching cnn. i m brooke baldwin. watching live pictures of the floor. to begin voting on this republican tax plan. it is expected to pass, right. so this is the house and goes onto senate. but keep in mind as we are watching these numbers flash up on the screen, ultimately we are watching for 217, good enough for the house to pass this thing. i have my panel back. and david, take us onto the floor of the house and walk us through what is happening and what to watch for. as you said we are going through a procedural vote now. then on to the real vote. and here s what is key. you already heard from paul ryan, that sort of the messaging around this, they ll have the vote to tout. we ll hear from sarah huckabee sanders. and if the senate is able to finish its business tonight and gets on the desk of the president tomorrow, the key here is going to be president trump, how he marks this moment in time, visually from a message point of view before people are fully immersed into the holiday break. he really is going to try, as you saw him start doing yesterday in his speech, to end this year with some better spin on the ball here. you read that list, brooke, i thought it was a good list of all those republican accomplishments that the bloomberg reporter had tweeted. i would also add to that people in america are feeling much better in about the economy then they have in years. obviously the president touting on the regular basis stock market numbers. and yet, and yet. his approval rate something low. is hanging so far low. so his behavior in office is spree preventing him from reaping the rewards, usually that helps a president, that is not helping him right now because he s get inning his own way. jim, what do you make of that? normally you have these two data points, right, you have economy that s doing well, very well, and then you have a president who typically does very well. they are linked. and in this case with the new numbers on the president s approval rating all down to 35%, again, you know, one of our numbers here cnn, yet you ve seen the boom on wall street and beyond, how do you reconcile that? well, we have done some polling with survey monkey throughout the year. and what we found is that the president s approval rate something highly correlated with economic optimism. in fact, number one in all of the poll. which tells us two things. one the president is helping to lifted people s assessment of the economy among people who like him. but also that his rating would probably be a lot lower if people weren t so optimistic about the economy right now. so in a weird way that interplay is really helping the president on one side of this equation. on the other side, i this i we are seeing with people who don t think this bill is going to help them, the tax bill, some of that is proxy how they feel about trump. and if they continue to not like the president, they may be less inclined to credit his tax bill, signature tax bill for any improvements they see in their own paychecks. once this bill wraps and presumably pass, as david says could get to the senate tonight, and lands on the president tomorrow for autograph, abby to you we will then see sarah sanders. what do you expect from her? this is white house keenly intent on keeping promise, you ll see this for the rest of the week. in a doigs what you will hear from sarah huckabee sanders, you can pekt the president today having a major unveiling of this new policy that he s been able to put on the table. because the white house believes that their supporters are less focused on the nitty-gritty and ups and downs and more focused on whether trump is doing what he said he was going to do in the campaign and whether he can drive that home. you ve seen a lot in the last week about that on a number of issues, not just on taxes, but on national security issues, on immigration. this white house wants to be able to say if they go into january 1 this is a president who keeps his promises. now, you know, i think jim and others have mentioned a little bit of this, but i think that when it comes down to the approval rating of this tax bill, it will be interesting to see how that fares long-term. it is possible that people are reacting to what they heard about the bill in the back and forth, horse trading. and that there is a possibility that once they see a little bit more money in their paychecks, they ll be happy with it. but it s also possible that it s not as much as was promised. you ll hear the president say they will get a very big christmas present. if january, people are seeing a sma small christmas present, it s unclear how they will feel. maybe big promises and what they delivered to them was smaller than that. so it s interesting, i think you are totally right, it will be from sarah sanders and from the administration, see we promised this tax cut for you, and we are delivering, and oh, by the way that individual mandate obamacare, bye-bye, it s gone. so my question to you in how it translates, fast forward to the midterms in 2018, how will that translate for those republicans? specifically in the rust belt states, will be that enough to help them along? that s a huge question we can t answer. because as you know so much can change between now and then. anything from the russia investigation, if that captures people s interest more, make them more concerned about stability in the white house, how the economy is doing next year, right before the election, that will have so much to do with how they vote. and really the question, you know, that democrats are trying to sell to people is you want a check on trump s power. so let us move in and take control of either one chamber or the other. trump is making you weary. his tweets. his behavior. that s what they are selling to people. and will a tax cut be enough to balance that out? we don t know yet. that s the question. i got you. just again, quickly, just play by play what we are looking at now, we are still waiting for the official tax vote to begin. they have this procedural vote. they are still in the middle of that. five votes waiting for the procedural vote to wrap. then we will move on. okay. i m being told that they are voting on it now. shall we dip in for a moment and listen? let s listen. members will record their votes by electronic device. this is a five minute vote. there they go. they are now officially voting on this massive tax bill that the republicans are planning on having this be a huge win. that number 217 that is the number of yea votes they need for this massive tax vote to pass. and david, just over to you, we have some sound lech. let me play this. because the focus is on the house then moves onto the senate. so we have some sound on on paul ryan from selling this bill. here he was. as you ve heard all my colleagues say the facts are not irrelevant. so we are beginning to make the argument to the american people. and they are going to see, as senator blunt pointed out, they do get more on average. and i think the argument is still out there to be won. look at all the indicators of optimism. look at the, although i don t want to over emphasize quarterly growth rates, but i think quarterly growth rates of 3% are pretty significant. look at the stock market and look at the optimism. i think the american people are going to begin to feel that the country is moving again after eight years of relative stagnation. thank you. okay. so that was senate majority leader there. and you heard key words. stock market. optimism. we have another voice mark preston, let me bring you into this conversation as we are watching this house vote on this tax bill. we hear language like this. we hear language we saw paul ryan on recapturing our destiny. this is about promises kept. this is about follow-through. what is your assessment as we are just about a minute into this? well, a couple of things. one, i think what you said at the very end, promises kept and follow-through. if you go back through the past 11 years of the trump presidency, there hasn t been any successes, there hasn t been any follow through. there has been a lot of mistakes made by the administration and on capitol hill as well. not strg all their ducks lined up. but as we talk about this tax cut right now, and republicans will talk about spurring economic growth, and in the long run that will offset the additional money that it s going to add to the deficit. the fact is we are headed into 2018 right now, and this is the kind of vote i believe that is going to energize the liberal left. it s not necessarily going to energize the republicans. how so? because what they ll say, and we have seen some people pulled out of the house chamber screaming down there, because what we are going to see from the liberal left is that republicans in power are going to continue to try to do these types of things that they are against. so it s a lot easier to try to get your grassroots activists charged up to oppose something as opposed to getting them charged up to say hey great job in getting that done. so this vote while taking place in 2017 will have great, great influence on what happens in 2018. that is exactly what i was asking mave about. but i realize a lot can happen between december 19th and next november. david, just to you on democrats. what s the democrats move once this passes? there is it the vice president there, brooke, he s going to preside and be part of the messaging operation from the administration today even if he s tie breaking vote isn t needed in the senate. well, looks like you are over the margin there, brooke, 224 yea votes. so the bill looks like it has enough votes that it s passed. let s listen in, david. okay. a little bit of nothing. there was applause. you are right. 226. all they needed was 217. plenty of opportunity to get applause, no doubt. i think the speaker is up there. is that the vice president at the top there? no, i don t think. go ahead. question on your democrats, you ll hear the democrats make the argument that so far has been the winning argument that sees the tax bill that favors the wealthy. so they ll make a class argument. i am very curious to find out and i asked a lot of democrats this, i wonder if next fall this bill is going to be something in their ads or something they ll be more focused on health care, trump, investigations, and all things donald trump more than this bill. it s hard down the road, necessarily, to run against a tax cut. it s a little easier to run against tax hikes. do we know we ve all been pouring through these numbers. and 73% of americans all part of the cnn polling want president trump to release his taxes publicly. right. this is all germane, once again because people are wondering how this this go for the trump family. how does president trump benefit from this? because we hear over white house this is good for middle class america. but you heard from jim tax cut and be surprised maybe not as big a chunk of change. but after that first year, it continues to get smaller and smaller. and so still that thirst for tax returns, i guess, reign supreme. it is a thirst that the president will ignore. and even though three quarters of americans would like to see him release tax reforms, i doubt he ll feel any public pressure from majority of americans who would like him to do so. so all we have to go on is one of his tax returns we have seen a little bit of to say he s not right when he says he is going to get hurt from this bill. and indeed the american people also in our polls say, as you were suggesting, that they think he s going to be ha lot better off because of this tax bill personally, his family, then he will be worse off. okay. what are we waiting for, david, i m picking on you? are we waiting for the final gavel? we are waiting for the vote to come to an actual close. clock has run out. looks like speaker ryan is getting instructions from them. there it is. there it goes. there was the gavel. let s listen. have all voted? anyone want to change their vote? on this vote, the yeas are 227. and the nays are 203. the conference report is adopted. without objection the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. [ applause ] to suspend the rules and pass hr 23 as amended. the clerk to report the title of the bill. hr 4323 the bill to veteran and stem education, computer science and scientific research and further purposes. the question is will the house suspend the rules? you heard it the gavel thrown and the house speaker saying specifically 227. so 227 they needed just ten less to pass. they got it. you heard soma applause and i think a little bit of booing from the house floor as this republican tax plan has officially passed the house. and mave reston, over to you, heads on to the senate, and i asked abby, but i ll ask you the same question because we know the white house press briefing has been waiting to begin contingent on this vote. it passed. what sort of messaging are you expecting from the white house this afternoon? well, this is such a rare moment for this administration where she can come out and give good news. what s been so remarkable about this bill is that the messaging around it has been really quite terrible. i mean the stories that you see are constantly about how this is going to help the trump family or his quote unquote crodonors. and she has the case to come out here and say american people are better under the trump administration. that they have delivered on a major piece of legislation finally. the fact that they accomplished so little throughout this year with the exception of the regulatory agenda and loosening regulations is just been a huge struggle for the trump white house. and now she can come out here and gloat and walk through the ways in which they think this will help the economy. which is already doing pretty well. but they really have a lot of convincing to do today, obviously, as we are seeing from these poll numbers. and i think you are hearing mitch mcconnell we are just sta start go to make the argument. so far the messaging has been terrible. mark over to you, you ve seen the polling, according to the cnn polls out tonight, opposition to the bill has grown 10 points. so 33% of the americans say they favor this. despite all of that though, just reading phil mattingly from this morning, it looks like it s been full barrel ahead for these republicans, go, go, go, let s pass this thing. why take that gam snbl. well, because, look as paul ryan had said in the floor comments last hour, they had to, they gave a promise and said they would follow-through on it. and in fact they have done so. but i do think what s important about the numbers as we do talk about the lack of support for the bill, over all there is lack of support for the bill and we have seen a drop of 10 points as you noted from november to today, which is amazing, right, that s a huge drop. however, if you look at the republican support for the bill, that actually went up over the past month. and right now it is 76% of republicans support the bill h so if you are a republican congressman right now, if you are republican senator, and you look at that support from amongst your base, that s actually a pretty good number given the fact as mave was pointing out messages around this bill has been incredibly bad. and i think that have you to look at the white house and say that the white house hasn t necessarily been a great wing man for congressional republicans in all of this. so as we have been saying and been talking about, this vote today is going to have ramifications in 2018. i think david is right when he says i don t think it s going to be the ad that is done. however, you will see democrats and liberals try to excite their base by noting that this tax cut is actually going to help the wealthy much much more than it would help the middle class. david, we have some live pictures there up on the hill and waiting for the white house briefing to begin. i don t know if weem hear from some of the members momentarily in this win with what was it, 227 yeas to pass it. nice 10-vote cushion there. yeah. we saw the vice president passing by. what s his role? he is the president of the senate, that s where he gets his paycheck from. so he is the presiding officer of the senate. david, forgive me. here s sarah sanders. that brings us one step closer to the president making good on his promise to deliver tax cuts for christmas. we are looking forward to the senate vote later thissing eveni this evening. as december winds down i thought it was a perfect opportunity to look back at on a historic year. nearly 1.7 million new jobs and unemployment rate has fallen to 4.1% lowest rate in 17 years. stock market reached a record high more than 60 times and closed above 24,000 for the first time in history. we have rolled back 22 regulations for everyone new regulation, saving taxpayers over $8 billion and liberating america s economy from the bloated government. we have withdrawn from or renegotiating the trade deals that once threatened to destroy american industry and ship our jobs around the world. we finally set up our nation on a path to not only energy independence, but energy dominance. we approve the keystone ex-i ll and directed epa to end the coal, and will have opened up exile. the president has protected communities. we have seen the least border crossings. we have ended obama catch and release policies, restore law both on the border and interior. and designed and built 8 wall prototypes for the border wall. we have taken unprecedented steps to tachling the opioid ep deppic and peace through strength. unl der the president s leadser ship isis has lost all of its territory and important strongholds in iraq and syria. we have restored old alliances, forged new ones, begun rebuilding our military and no greater ally than the united states of america. we have reshaped the american ju judiciary for generations. justice gorsuch was confirmed to the supreme court and record setting 12 circuit judges. we protected life by reinstating and expanding the mexico city policy that protects $9 billion in u.s. taxpayer dollars from being used to fund abortion. and this evening hopefully upon passage of the tax cuts and jobs act, the president will have delivered the most significant tax cut in the history of the nation and a peeled the obamacare individual mandate. president has delivered on promise after promise, issue after issue, time after time. and we are just getting started. as some have seen yesterday disney world debuted president trump. in the president remark for the exhibits that he recorded in the white house earlier this he said, from the beginning america has been a nation defined by its people. it s why our founders began our great constitution with 3 very simple words. we the people. in the coming days, political analysts will right and talking heads will discuss what this year means. what it means are the president. what it means for the republican and democrat parties. and for the never ending political theater in washington d.c. but i would encourage everyone to take a step outside of the beltway bubble and consider what this year means for the american people. to the forgotten men and women around our country, you are forgotten no more. this president is with you 100%. and as this year has already proven he will never let you down. and with that, i ll take your questions. john? two questions on tax reform if i could. first of all, what s the schedule for signing? i understand this may not happen until after the christmas break? look, still working on the details. the signing. but first we want to make sure it gets passed is helping we make sure we finish it to the senate and announce what assigning would look like and where it would take place. second question, carried interest provision, this is a loophole that president trump promised again and again and again to close, carried interest loophole is still there. why did the president not insist? he laid out what the four biggest principles were. that he wanted to make sure we are part of any piece of legislation. we feel that the piece of legislation where it is now certainly answered and addressed that. that has been our focus all along. and what we have continued to talk about consistently here and every time we have talked about taxes. the president has said tax bill will cost him a fortune. actually not the case. how does he figure this is going to cost him a lot of money? look, we expect that it likely will certainly on the personal side could cost the president a lot of money. again the president s focus hapt been necessarily at all on himself. but it s been on the four principles that we laid out. number one, and priority number one, being that it helps the american middle class. we know that this bill does that. and that s one of the biggest reasons that the president has supported it, been engaged, and will look forward to signing it in the coming days. pass through deductions, top rate tax deductions, state exemption is doubled he ll make money on that? look, again, this sa tax plan that we hope benefits all americans. priority number one is middle class americans. that has been this administration s focus. we feel like that is certainly addressed. and been prioritized in this legislation and very excited to sign it hopefully in the coming days. earlier reports are state that the fatal amtrak in washington, similar to 2016 philadelphia could have been prevented from positive train control which congress said would be on all lines in 2515 and that s been pushed back. is this white house considering any steps to speed up train control to stop these kinds of accidents? right now we are continuing to investigate what exactly took place yesterday. and once we have more detailed determination on that is correct we can take steps to prevent things like this from happening in the future. john? thanks a lot, sarah. you ticked off a number of accomplishments that you say the president has made in the first year in office. why are his approval ratings in the upper 30s despite the accomplishments? i think oftentimes because while the president and this administration has been focused on how we can better help the american people, i think oftentimes the media is focused on other things, certainly not talking about the growing economy, certainly not talking about the crushing of isis, not talking about the creation of jobs. if you look at the amount of time that is spent on negative coverage of this president, 90% of the coverage is negative about this president, when as you just said i listed off a number of things that have been pretty historic in nature in this first year, and if people were focused a lot more on those things in the media, i think his numbers would be a lot higher. we anticipate his approval rating will go up. and more hand more people start to feel the impact of the booming economy, the tax plates that will take place later tonight and go into effect the first part of february. i think those are things that will help boom the numbers. and just if i may, matthew peterson since we last met, withdrew his judicial nomination, there has been a viral media of his inability to answer some basic legal questions when he went up before his confirmation hearing. how did he slip through the cracks? why he was nominatesed? and are you doubling up your effort here at the white house over a doj to make sure that your judicial nominees can answer those basic questions when they go up to the con dpir mags hearings? look, the president haste jushl selection process has lead to historic pace of confirmations including 12 sir yet court justices. and administration has individuals that don t go through all the process. we have 60 nom fees and only 3 that didn t go through the process. that individual has withdrawn. and we ll make sure we fill that strong with a qualified candidate. where was the president watching when the house voted? and did you see his reaction? what did he do? i m not sure. i ll have to circle back with you on that. i was getting ready to come out. watch to go make sure i didn t make you wait too much longer. nominations can you explain now we are near the end of the year why the president has submitted far fewer names then his predecessors? look, we have been focused on filling positions but at the same time the president has said before he doesn t think every single position needs to be filled. he is going to cutback on some of the positions. we have focused on top priority. and continue filling out individuals. but also seen a massive slow down and obstruction by the democrats. hopefully they ll continue to push our people through. particularly in individuals that were held up, whether it s in the judiciary or something that falls under the national defense profile. let me ask you a couple of questions where john roberts left off. he said it fell within the president s four main principles he laid out. how is keeping the car rid interest loophole or a portion of it good for the middle class? look, the priorities, make it fair, win again, bring it home. we feel this tax legislation certainly does that. provision that is put in place that help and benefit the middle class. this he see more of their money come home. they see child care tax deductions double. there are a lot of things going to impact the middle class. and we feel like those things address the need to really help give them that boost. and we think this absolutely will. let me ask you this, an individual who makes roughly $83,000 would pay about 24% with their rate. somebody who benefits a millionaire, tens of millions, if not more, still might pay 24% on that money. does the white house believe that somebody who makes $83 versus somebody tens of millions, do you think that is fair? look, again, i m not going to get into back and forth hypothetical situation i don t have in front of me and i can t quickly do the math on. but i can tell you we feel this plan fully addresses the middle class giving the majority of middle class americans more of their money back. and that s what we ve been focused on and feel confident in that. i wanted to ask about ufos. [ laughter ] . several media reports this week disclosed sorry i was going to say, i don t know if that s a cohenincidence not. i feel like i want to not answer. secret pentagon program, funding ran out in 2012. does the president believe in this ufo and interested in restoring funding? somehow that question hasn t come up in the back and foertd last couple of days but i ll check into that and be happy to circle back. does the president make sure they have the irs to implement the new rules? we understand they are fully prepared to take action immediately and people will see the benefits of this tax package start at the first part of february. . and we have confirmed that with the irs. follow up on a couple of questions. were you saying this particular judiciary nominee after this video didn t properly go through your preparation and vetting process? no, i didn t say that i said that we have been focused on pushing forward good candidates. we have put forward over 60 nominees. we have had 3 individuals that had to withdraw. that individual was one of them. and we are focused on making sure we fill that position with somebody based on your process he thought he was prepared? we, again, are look tg always for the best and brightest. and when we felt like that wasn t necessarily the right person for that position, he has withdrawn his nomination. we haven t continue to go forward. that is pretty standard in most administrations. in fact, every administration prior to us has had to withdraw nominees. we had to withdraw three out of 60. look, i think a lot poof people are focused just on those three, and not the overwhelming number. the president has had his nominees confirmed historic pace. and many of them with bipartisan support including the 12 members of the circuit court and the supreme court justice. you don t disagree with what she said about the personal benefits that will a crew to the president based on provision ns the tax cut bill? i said that we expect benefit him personally? look, i said in some ways, particularly on the personal side, the president will likely take a big hit. but on the business side he could benefit. but the biggest focus for this white house has been to make sure all americans are better off today after this tax package passed then they were beforehand. we really focused on invigorating the middle class and making sure they got more of their hard earned money and we think this will happen in this package. sarah, you said the focus is on the middle class. why was one of the last provisions put in lowering the top bracket? and did the president support that? and if he did flot support it why did he not insist that not be added at the end? look, some of the back and forth we respects td the process, a lot of that took place in the house and senate. we have been engaged in that process, but we laid out what our four priorities were and wanted to make sure that happened. that was our focus. and we felt those priorities were made. would that help the lower class to lower the bracket for the top earners? some economics think it does. and i d be happy to refer you to them. congress has passed in decades to help the american worker to help grow the american economy. this is profound change. and this is change that is going to put our country on the right path. for all those millions of men and women in america who are living paycheck to paycheck struggling to get ahead, help is on the way. for all those businesses that are tied with one hand behind their back in this global economy strg a hard time competing, help is on the way. i want to thank chairman kevin brady and all the men and women who made this possible. this has been a long work in progress. and what this achievement marks is a promise this majority made that is a promise that this majority is keeping. we said in 2016 it would take real tax reform to get the american economy growing. and the american people placed their trust in us. and today we are making good ton that promise. we are fulfilling that promise. and this promise, being kept today, is one of the most important things we could do to get the u.s. economy growing faster, to help people get bigger paychecks, to have a fairer tax system, and simplify the system so people could have more peace of mind. so kevin said it the right way, on january 1, americans are going to wake up with a new tax code. in february they are going to see withhold tg go down so see bigger paychecks. april 15th will be the last day they have to comply with the old bad system. this is a good day for america. this is a good day for workers. this is a great day for growth and very excited about this moment. thank you. questions? so you have said that you ve spoken often about the tax cuts that families will see in the first few years of the plan. what can you say about the tax cuts that individuals will see in the end of the next decade? because the jct announced. we have every intent to make those permanent because of the senate rules you know why that sunset is there so it is obviously our intent like times past to make those permanent. so impact will be bigger? casey? congress doesn t have the greatest track record of planning to do something later and then follow-through. how can you guarantee americans they are still going to see the benefits of this tax cut? look at what we ve done right now. we were planning on doing this tax reform bill all year long last year. worked on it all year. ran on in it in 2016. spent 2017 working on it. and here we are getting it done. this was a promise made and a promise kept. last quell. lack of democratic support mean this tax overhaul is vulnerable the same way that the affordable care act was vulnerable and changed? i think the comparisons are nonexecutive. because affordable care act proved to be unpopular. to raise premiums to make health care unaffordable. this is going to do the opposite. this is going to grow the economy and increase paychecks and increase take home pay. and that i believe is going to be very popular. thank you very much, everybody. i appreciate it. comments that the governor has made previously, that every time they ve asked the federal government has delivered. we want to continue to be partners with them with this and make sure we rebuild. that s what we are doing. that s why the president has sent two members of his cabinet directly to deal with that and be on the ground in puerto rico to further assess and see what other actions we have that we can take. you are getting a lot of questions what will benefit the president and won t benefit. i get he doesn t want to release taxes. that would put all of these questions to rest. so can you stay for 2016 president can t release his taxes? why can t he do that back up what you are saying, prove that what are you are saying is correct? as we ve said many times before the president as taxes are still under audit. and until that is completed, then we wouldn t move forward on putting his taxes out. john? i understand the president wants to wait until after the audit. i don t think it s that complicated as long as they are under audit won t release taxes. taxes are under audit so won t release taxes. john? thank you, sarah. i think we have addressed this a number of times. i m not sure my answering it another time will make the answer any different. john? i have two questions on russia. first, the kremlin has recently threatened twitter with complete shut down throughout russia if it continues to carry the twitter account of what they call undesirables, notably the disside dissident, and to youtube recently. what s the straksadministration reaction when they want to shut this down? certainly, generally speaking, we would not support a government shutting down american businesses. and i don t know why this would be different. but i would have to look into details on that specific action and request that they ve made. the other thing on russia, senator rubio has introduced legislation to name the street in front of the russian embassy here after the slain russian dissident boris, senator corker has blocked it. does the administration have an opinion on this? not that i m aware of. i wanted to ask you about the export import. now that the senate is saying scott harris name shouldn t go forward, does the white house think that it needs to name someone else to run? we are going to work with the committee on path forward that hasn t yet been determined. we are certainly very disappointed in the senate banking committee missed an opportunity to get the export import banking fully functioning again. we are going to work with them to determine the next steps. on his name or someone else? more generally speaking, just a path forward. we ll let you know if it s going to be with that individual or a different plan. just a couple of quick follow ups. first mat hthew was asking abou amtrak. there was a budget request from the president on reduction on amtrak routes. because of the accident, in washington, do you plan on revisiting that issue? on matthew peterson, it s my understanding they had close ties to the white house, are you trying to change the vetting process? and finally on the ufo. let me start with the first one because i won t remember all those questions. we ll see if we can get to all of that. the first one was on judicial nominees? well first one was on amtrak. this is why we didn t let you take three. amtrak as i told matthew a few minutes hag we ll wait until that investigation is complete and there is more thorough review and we ll talk about next steps once that is done. in terms of the judicial nominees i ve walked through that a couple of times now. we have put through, nominated 60, only three withdraw or not gone forward in some capacity. and that s pretty standard for any administration. every administration ahead of us has had similar challenges where they have either withdrawn or not gone forward. because it s looked as those are friends of the white house and they got that nomination. are you going to change the vetting process? i think if we were focused on friends in the white house they would be moving forward and not having been withdrawn. calls out russia for using subversive tactics. why didn t the president use that kind of aggressive language in his speech yesterday? look, the president has weighed in on russia and his feelings on that a number of times. the policy and the strategy put forth in that very detailed paper was that of the president. and it reflects his views. and he didn t read every single page of it word for word. i m sure you are thank you full for that because we could have. maybe we ll do that for the next briefing. but, look, the president has been clear what his position is. we have been tough on russia. we ve put sanctions on russia. we ve imported energy. and impacted them in a big way. the president has not been soft in this process. he chose to focus on different things in the speech. but those things were included in the national security strategy because they are important and they are part of the administration s view points. jill? two things. first i wanted to go back to the scott era issue. does the president regret nom natding someone who was going to get rid of the export import? not that i m aware. one more question. spoke with may today. do they have any potential visits? that invitation has been extended and accepted and working with them to finalize the details which we expect to announce soon and keep you posted on that once it s final eyesed. finalized. last question. that tax bill would cost a fortune. that was false, right? no, because on the personal side this could impact the president in a large way. balance out the corporate versus personal? i m not sure if he s done a side by side. but i know a number of provisions that would negatively impact the president personally. and so we contend those comments are consistent. however, like i ve said our focus has been on the middle class. and that is what we think is delivered in this tax package and very much look forward to seeing it passed later today. and signed a day soon hand be sure to keep you posted on that. thanks, guys. okay. jim acosta there, senior white house question with the last question. let s be precise what they were talking about with regard to president trump and how he benefits and we won t totally know because the man hasn t released tax russians, and an according to polling today 73% of you would like him to. she says now that the tax bill could help president trump on the business side, but that the primary focus of the white house, you heard her, is to make sure all americans are berth off today than they were beforehand. all of this coming off the heels of the big win for republicans. so far on the house side the
comes in mark meadows and xerox may live when he thinks. a follow-up the stories i hear. potentially dozens of criminal cases that languished. shannon: we will talk to a former dea agent in the middle of investigations. said the obama administration undermining critical task force to target hezbollah as a president pursued a nuclear deal with iran. hello and welcome to fox news @ night. i m shannon bream in washington. newsnight: fox news confirming that the justice department is opened a new inquiry into the clinton foundation. fbi agents in little rock, arkansas, taking the lead, focusing on one of the clinton foundation engaged and pay to play politics and other illegal activities while hillary clinton was secretary of state. fox news has also learned investigators are looking into whether the clinton foundation violated tax laws. also new details tonight on special counsel robert special counsel robert mueller s inquiry into president trump firing a former fbi director. former chief of staff reince priebus has handwritten notes about how president trump called comey to urge him to say he was not under investigation. also went to lengths to prevent jeff sessions from recusing himself. we ll have more with congressman mike meadows, calling on sessions to resign among the growing number of leaks like it appears the new york times is gone. more news on the book fire and fury, featuring explosive statements from steve bannon. bannon talking about running for president himself. and much more. it appears to be too much for his allies. one g.o.p. donor and influencer appears to be breaking with the antiestablishment star of the g.o.p. kevin corke is working late. great to be with you. yesterday, the president had died out. any talk of imitating the clintons are hillary clinton. both things can be true. you would know this. we have probably 98, 97 districts, federal district court to the united states. each of them has united states attorney. the one in the eastern district of arkansas has been a hotbed of this kind of stuff for decades. where the clintons have been and where the clintons i m gone, controversy and scandal has always followed. the u.s. attorney out there is named cody highland, i believe his name is. he s a mike huckabee veteran. he was working for mike huckabee when the clinton machine was trying to take him out as governor. old blood feud stuff. deep down arkansas delta business. what you see is this u.s. attorney s office, this fbi field office has the whatever the justice department wants to do our base it has to be approved in washington, but if this prosecutor out in little rock wants to take good look at with the clintons between what was going on, i don t think there s probably much to stop it. you and you think it goes anywhere? we been told before there s nothing to it. there s no smoke, no fire. if you love america and i m told reliably you do, even though you beat me at trivia today. shannon: we are not going to talk about it. too soon. still smarting. it s reasonable to want complete answers about what went on with the trump campaign and also complete answers about how the clinton machine, the operation clinton incorporated, how it operated, what he did, what was going on. we remember peter schweizer s book. the new york times reported on it, it had a lot of stinky stuff in it. if people thought they were paying for favors from the secretary of state when she was in office, that something we ought to want to know about and we should be able to hold those two thoughts and our minds concurrently. shannon: the daily beast is reporting the doj, they have information and are reopening a look into hillary clinton s email heard we ve seen and judicial watch reported that they have pressed for information and have uncovered there were more classified information, documents, emails, on anthony weiner s laptop. his wife huma abedin, close confidant of the clintons. sounds like there may be some interesting reopening, whether she mishandled classified information. may be, there is a rabbit trail here. this has more thickets around the maybe the other one, these questions been explored. people think james comey did it wrong. people think the fbi did it wrong. we have two or three investigations into the investigation of the investigation. presumably we will get to some clarity on this but that will come as one unit, not some specific pull aside about huma abedin. shannon: i want to talk about the quotes and speculation in the michael wolff book. it s gotten ugly between bannon and the president. they were once very, very tight. although the presidencies to be downplaying that at this point. [laughs] accurate. steve and i will classify that as a go far. michael wolff, author of this. he tweets you can buy it and read it tomorrow. threaten us with letters and losses but your drawing more attention to it. in the copy we ve gotten, it bannon was telling people something else. he steve bannon was going to run for president in 2020. he talked about the present was negative peach, resigned or barely make it your winter. is much as it pains me to spend any of their syllable my life discussing steve bannon s theses about power, he was talking if trump didn t runner wasn t running, he was going to challenge trump. the bannon stuff here is basically a comeuppance for a guy who over stated, hyped his own game, with the help of the press who loved to make him into this svengali behind trump in controlling trump. there had to be more to it. it could just be red hats and rallies. the need to be some intellectua intellectual, and bannon audition for that part and was granted that by the press and now he goes kablooey. the interesting stuff isn t about steve bannon. it s about how that white house worked in the opening months and what it means about john kelly, what it means about the level of confidence the staff has in the president. i will say, after all the allegations in the book, donald trump needs to give a real interview or hold a real press conference or do something soon to demonstrate to voters that the allegations in this book that he is senile or incompetent are untrue. he needs to get out and lay those dressed quickly or it will stick. shannon: there s always an open invitation for them to come. interview with us on fox news at night. it can happen. we will make it happen. good to see you. you may not have heard but there s good economic news happening. dow jones industrial average hitting its seven 1,000-point milestone closing above 25,000 for the first time. this began after president since president trump took office. a new report says private sector job creation surged, companies they will give workers pay raises. president trump weighing in on twitter saying: for days and to the new year their showdowns brewing in washington. a battle looming over immigration reform and democrats continue to insist on a daca deal before funding the government. the trump administration opening up new political battle fronts with plans to expand offshore drilling and ramp up enforcement of marijuana laws. with a rapid pace of initiatives and controversies, the trump administration is keeping all monikers on their toes while entering the democrats and even a few republicans are down right angry. first off, as you said, legislatively is daca. mr. trump invited a handful of republicans, john cornyn of texas and tom cotton of arkansas and lindsey graham of south carolina show at houston health crafton immigration policy. any legislation on daca must secure the border, the wall, give immigration officers the resources they need to stop illegal immigration and also to stop these overstates and crucially the legislation must end chain migration. many democrats say they can t support such an immigration bill, both the house and senate will need some democrat votes before they can get this thing across the finish line. separately today the department of interior announced plans to open up 90% of the u.s. outer continental shelf to oil and gas leases. most of the florida congressional delegation including republicans and other atlantic state lawmakers are deeply opposed, fearing what could happen to tourism if an accident happens. tweeting the plan is extremely alarming and unacceptable. attorney general jeff sessions rescinding obama euro marijuana enforcement guidelines. sessions is leaving it up to federal prosecutors and states allow legal pot sales with her to crack down on the trade. advocates who witness the benefits of medical marijuana and states rights conservatives are livid at this decision. colorado republican senator cory gardner said sessions promised him during his confirmation hearings he would not interfere with these state decisions. i believe what happened today was a traveling of colorado s rights, its voters, and that s why i will be putting a hold on everything the nomination from the department of justice. until attorney general jeff sessions loads up to the commitment that he made me and my confirmation, preconfirmation meeting with him. sessions it s also catching flak from conservatives on a different issue. mark margo s writing that sessions has no control over the premier law enforcement agency in the world. that the time for a new attorney general is now. stay on all right. doug mckelway, thank you very much. republicans will control the house of delegates in virginia and they have got the look of the draw to thank for it literally. it all came down to a single contested state host race which had flip-flopped back-and-forth after recount and raider trickle razor-thin margins. a panel refused to hear shelley night court s arguments. that left it in a tie. state board of elections met today to choose the winner. they pulled a name out of a bowl. david yancey was declared the winner after his name was selected. simonds says she is not ruling out seeking another recount. we will hear from congressman mark meadows in a moment on this call for the attorney general to resign. plus president trump s fitness for office. according to political, lawmakers talk to a psychiatrist who claims he s falling apart. remember the bombshell politico report alleging the obama administration sabotage the dea s investigation into hezbollah? we have an exclusive interview with a former dea special agent in the middle of the controversy. he will be here live to separate fact from when a cold calls. achoo! .answer it. with zicam cold remedy. it shortens colds, so you get better, faster. colds are gonna call. answer them with zicam! zicam. get your better back. now in delicious fruit drops. and for fast acting nasal relief, for up to 12 hours, try zicam extreme congestion relief and zicam intense sinus relief. for colds and allergies, get your better back with zicam. that s why, at xfinity, we ve been working hard to simplify your experiences with us. now, with instant text and email updates, you ll always be up to date. you can easily add premium channels, so you don t miss your favorite show. and with just a single word, find all the answers you re looking for - because getting what you need should be simple, fast, and easy. download the xfinity my account app or go online today. stay on republican senator cory gardner blasting attorney general jeff sessions today, threatening to block all of the president s nominees for the justice department and it s all over the administrations to end and obama era policy which allows states legalization of marijuana to thrive despite a federal law that bans it. senator gardner who want to post the legalization of marijuana supports the decision made by colorado voters. he points to the economic benefit of legalizing marijuana. listen to this clip from a segment about business in seattle. 2018 brought to golden state in line with other west coast dates for marijuana retail shops and products. the even playing field may expand the number who want to buy but could undercut any attempt to make seattle a special destination for pot tourism. an add-on rather than a main attraction. a lot of the participants want a count of his tour of some sort to be part of their seattle visit. shannon: now i multiple state options. a diverse group of critics worried about so-called marijuana normalization. they are praising sessions for allowing the feds to enforce federal law despite states who decided to do their own thing. former obama administration drug policy advisors has doj s move will stop the massive infusion of money going to fund pot candy, cookies, ice creams, and other kid friendly edibles. a mom who lost her daughter to a driver high on pot says marijuana is seen as benign all too often. i hope those days are over. former democrat congressman says the memo had been waved around by pot executives for years. searching for legitimacy among investors and banks. it s time to put public health over profits. the public seems divided. states rights versus doing what they believed to be the right thing. joining us now, mark meadows. we have many things to talk to you about tonight. we ll start here. gray to have you with us. what you make of this? i want to read it more of a statement we got from senator gardner s office. optical reports that the justice department will rescind their current policy on legal marijuana enforcement are extremely alarming. in 2016, president trump said marijuana legalization should be left up to the states and i agree. what do you think? think of here s what we have inl law. this president has been consistent. he said if there s along the books, let s make sure we do it. just like we are having to deal with daca because we had president obama overreaching on the deferred action, he says it s time for congress to act. i think on this one it really is for congress to rescind the federal law, not an executive agency. cory is a good friend and i understand he is representing his state but there comes a point where you allow states to affect federal policy and set of the other way around, and i think that s troubling. i support attorney general sessions in this move. it really takes effect of congress. now is the time for us to act. if we want to address this issue. shannon: other criticisms you have of the attorney genera attorney general. jim jordan, you wrote a piece and say you are tired of leaks happening. no evidence of collusion in it are leaks all the time from places like the new york times. we have another piece out tonight where they cite multiple anonymous sources with all kinds of of inside information from the mueller investigation from people either in the white house are briefed on things that happen at the white house. you say it s time for the leaks to stop. if sessions can t address it, there s one final question. one of the time for a new attorney general? sadly it seems the answer is no now. no one has lost their job yet. the fbi and doj leak more than a 60-year-old boat. we have more leaks coming out every day. critical importing that we address it but not just that. the attorney general needs to do his job. when he recused himself, where it is his recusal start and sto stop? there s a big frustration on capitol hill. we have investigated this russian collusion for 16 months. there is no collusion. there is no evidence of collusion and yet here we are in a situation where we know that leaks are happening. we know based on these reports that he have used a dossier in an inappropriate manner. yet we can t get the very documents to have proper oversight. we are tired of stonewalling. i talked to chairman nunes this evening. he s going to get some documents tomorrow. that s a good step in the right direction. but we have seen this before. listen, i ve been an oversight for over five years. what happens is they promise you they are going to get it to you. they give it to fully redacted so a page of just blacked out lines. it s time that we get to the bottom of this and it s time that we hold the fbi and doj accountable to the standard they should be held accountable. shannon: we have talked about this. do you think it s a deep state problem. are there people in the administration, opponents of the president, who are keeping you from getting the information ine congress is legally entitled to? we don t have to look much further than the text messages between peter strzok and lisa page to see some type of bias. whether that carries over into the investigation, we need to look at all the text messages. we need to fully look at that. in my conversations with others, are there people within the higher ranks of doj and the fbi that certainly are not wanting to come forward with some of this information? i believe that s the case. i m not a conspiracy guy. at the same time, give us the documents. we requested some 15,000 pages of documents. shannon: the obstruction, stonewalling, leaks, are you calling on the attorney general to resign? i m calling on him to do his job. if you will do his job immediately and right away and quit making excuses, you had part of the lead up to this, you had attorney general session saying well, it s not time for special prosecutor. when we see the text messages and emails we ve already visited, there seems to be some at least appearance of impropriety. it s time that we actually get to the bottom of it and so he s got a very short fuse from my standpoint. if he can do his job, more power to him. we welcome the information. shannon: congressman mark meadows. great to have you. lawmakers questioning president trump s mental health. we re going to tell you what one psychiatrist had to say. president trump street blame for unrest in iran? vice president pence says europe and the u.n. are not doing enough to help people there. stay tuned. former u.n. ambassador john bolton joins us. when dr. bandy lee finished up more than six teen hours of private meetings, she apparently convinced some it was time to invoke the 25th amendment saying the president was mentally unfit to fulfill the duties of the office. she indicated that getting republicans to sign on would be trickier. dr. lee acknowledges it s unethical for a psychiatrist to diagnose from afar but she believes it s her duty to warn the public about their leaders psychological instability which is why she and 26 of her liberal colleagues wrote the book the dangerous case of donald trump. the president is compared to an american hitler, showing signs of impulsivity, recklessness and paranoia. here is dr. lee. when silence contributes harm to the public health, we have a duty to speak out. and the duty to warn and the duty to protect is pervasive in our practice. not all mental health experts feel that same sense of duty. in fact some say the dangerous case of donald trump is nothing but in fatuous, tawdry tabloid psychiatry. fox s doctor says it s highly unlikely that you are saying dr. bandy lee is either an opportunist or a fool. he makes it clear he is not diagnosed her. should be noted the stock market hates uncertainty and instability. today the dow crossed 25,000. shannon: it did. joining me now, townhall.com columnist and radio host derek hunter and leslie leslie marsh. assuming we are mentally healthy enough to have this debate, i want to talk more about this. bandy lee admits she has not met the president. she says we feel that the russia tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress. trump is going to get worse and will become uncontainable within the pressures of the presidency. derek, seems like he s been the same guy we ve seen. we ve known. ration bold and off-the-cuff. do you think he s changed? no. i have been a fan of the apprentice since the apprentice. it s a weird thing and washington, d.c., that no one speaks their mind. i have to give her credit for her willingness to violate the ethics of her profession in order to sell books. i think a book could be written about the violation of ethics for her profession. spewing she came here in brief people over a two-day period about what would happen. there s been a discussion about the 25th amendment that provides a way for the vice president in the cabinet members to step in if they think the president is unable, incapacitated. to that discussion, alan dershowitz who has not been a conservative ever, says this the 25th amount would require a major psychotic break. this is hope of reality. if we don t like someone s politics, vote against them. we don t use the system. i think it s dangerous to sound like you re making a diagnosis when you haven t actually seen a patient in any area of medicine. i think it s important for the american people to be aware of what s going on with their leader. it s important for this or any leader to have proper medical treatment. for congress to be briefed by somebody who hasn t seen him, to me is not ethical and quite frankly even know i m a democrat. i ve set up before. you ve heard me. this is not how the removal of donald trump happens. this is not how it s going to come about because you don t have the vice president. you don t have the cabinet, the republicans. even the one republican that sat down for the meeting. i think this is a waste of time because this individual has not seen him. having said that though he has some tweets that are very similar to north korea leader who many people think is a wing not. he needs to stop some of that behavior. can we talk about shannon: we know he s not going to change his behavior. any she s not going to change his behavior. he feels like by using twitter, that s why he won. the left knowing it s highly improbable that any this could happen, the 25th amendment et cetera, do you think it s making them feel better to talk about. this is further based. you have members coming out and talking about how the president seems unhinged from afar through somatic admits they are violating the ethics of their profession. it really is scared to go crazy, advocating for policies that have failed the world over. the u.k., their national health system, they have canceled nonemergency procedures because their system can t handle it. many members met with dr. lee who had vacates to bring that sort of system here. i would take 180 characters and crazy over a nationwide policy over 16 of the u.s. economy. shannon: leslie, what do you make of derek s assessment that a lot of people just aren t used to plain spoken, straight talking people in d.c. everybody here is a spin doctor. this precedent doesn t do that. is it such a shock? no. but i do think that one individual talks about the ability to start a nuclear war which could kill millions of people .. if somebody threatens on twitter that my button is bigger than yours and i can press it and it s right here, ts dangerous talk when you are dealing with a very dangerous and unstable leader overseas like we have in kim jong un. that s the type of behavior i think people on my side of the aisle question the stability of with regard to the president. shannon: we ve got to leave it there. derek and leslie, we will close this out. thank you both very much. as the death toll rises in iran, president trump s tweets are being blamed for the unrest in the streets of tehran and other cities. north korea testing more missiles. we will tell you where to get the latest reaction from john bolton. .. take away tumor related symptoms and prolong life. and lower the psa. my psa is under control. ctca gave me an opportunity to accomplish my goals and my dreams. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. shannon: knew tonight from the stand off in the korean peninsula. officials from north and south korea will meet next tuesday to discuss a possibility of north korean athletes participating in next month s winter olympic games. moon jae-in sees a groundbreaking chance to improve relations. will keep you updated. iran s leaders planning president trump on the twitter habits for the deadly protest. they aren t the only ones. vice president pence slamming our european allies in the u.n. nikki haley requesting a security council meeting on iran. former u.s. ambassador to the u.n. john bolton joins us. this meeting ambassador haley called for. it s important to continue the discussion about why the people of iran are rising against the regime. i think that s quite significant. i don t expect any substantive action out of the u.n. i think russia and china will block any meaningful new sanctions. honestly i have to say that our friends in europe haven t exactly stood up on this issue. the discussion will go ahead but i don t see anything coming out of it. shannon: the vice president said the united states has spoken clearly and unequivocall unequivocally. unfortunately many of our european partners as well as the united nations have thus far failed to forcefully speak out on the growing crisis in iran. it s time for them to stand up. who are recalling out? the european union. germany for, france, great britain unfortunately partners in the deal with iran on the nuclear question. it shows the iranian strategy, the obama strategy work. they sucked us into being able to trade and invest with iran. europe sees the possibility of profits. they are blind to what s happening in the streets of iran. i didn t write that article for mike pence but i wish i had because it s exactly the right point to make. shannon: what about pakistan? we got word today from the state apartment we are going to freezing substantial security students we get to that country. a lot of talk talk from this administer ration about the fact that they haven t been reliable partners in the fight against terrorism. i remember george bush after 9/11, what he said with respect to terrorism. you are either with us or against us. people said it s terrible. you shouldn t hold nations to account. i think it was the right thing to say then and i think president trump is really going back to that. freezing this assistance i think he is incredibly important to signal to pakistan. we have to remember that in this unstable political environment, civilian government not being all that strong, military in pakistan increasingly infiltrated by radicals. they are a nuclear weapon state. if you push them all the way over to the other side, you risk having those nuclear weapons being dispersed to terrorists who could take them anywhere in the world. that s something we ve got to focus on as well. leaning on pakistan, it s about time. shannon: looking back on the last demonstration. we are getting confirmation that there s an investigation looking into the clinton foundation, whether there was pay to play, favors done for countries and any connection with bill or hillary clinton. i think these questions need to be answered. i am very disturbed. as a justice department alumnus myself, disturbed by the politicization of law enforcement, intelligence. investigations cut off that should ve been allowed to go forward. i believe this investigation which is being conducted by the u.s. attorney s office for arkansas is exactly the right way to do it. you don t need a special counsel. this, i trust the career prosecutors and i think we ought to let it go ahead. there s so many things about the foundation that look like tammany hall. let s see what it looks like. shannon: all right, ambassador. great to have your thoughts. massive snowstorm following the east coast from blizzard conditions and bitter winds to coastal flooding in some parts. a bomb cyclone update coming our way. first, next was of interview with a former senior d.a. official at the heart of politico s report that the obama investigation derailed investigation into hezbollah s drug shannon: a bombshell report by politico alleging the obama administration interfered with the federal investigation into how iran backed chair groups hezbollah turn profits on illegal drugs and weapons trafficking. according to the report the previous administration didn t want anything to get in a way of a nuclear deal with tehran. you remember we spoke with the investigative reporter who broke the story. federal investigators were watching in gathering evidence of hezbollah sort of transforming itself from a political power and terrorist organization to one that was trafficking in drugs. they were doing it to raise money to help rebuild after the israel war and help in expansion they were doing globally. they gathered evidence, designated a couple dozen super facilitators as people that were connected by this conspiracy but when they tried to delve deeply into the people, they got shot down. shannon: we are bringing you an interview with the former special agent in charge of the dea special operations division quoted extensively in the political report. great to have you with us. i want to read a little bit of what he said. you said there s no doubt my mind now that the focus was the iran deal and our initiative was kind of like a fly the soup. we were like the train that went off the track. at what point did you realize all this until you ve you gathered about the millions that hezbollah was laundering even through this country and around the globe, wasn t going to be prosecuted. i found it very odd fit in our backyards all over america they were sending used cars back into west africa to sell and the profits of these used cars and drug trafficking money was going to support hezbollah. i found it kind of odd that we didn t have unity of effort to shut it down. i found it odd we didn t have leadership in the administration that would enforce and hold people accountable to bring the agencies to gather to ensure that we can protect the american public. shannon: you were in a meeting with attorney general eric holder who seemed to be interested in this. you were told there would be a follow-up, they would be getting back to you. what happened? eric holder was very supportive of the special operations division. i was fortunate to be in charge of that for almost ten years at a most every operation he approved and was supportive. in this particular case, we proved eric holder. he was alarmed by the findings of this particular investigatio investigation. the magnitude of money and drugs moving around the world. eric holder was pretty serious about having follow-up meetings with national security team members and the briefing never happen. it was very strange for me sitting there listening to the attorney general of the united states directing his people to have a meeting to get more information from the dea and our interagency partners about this global trade based money laundering scheme and they weren t interested. shannon: in the meantime the administration is working on a deal with iran over its nukes. josh meyer, who did the political piece, came to this idea that it s possible that s what this is all about. they didn t want to go heavy on hezbollah because they wanted to get the nuke deal done. is that your impression? look, i don t have any information on what was going on behind the scenes on the oral new deal. honestly from my perspective you have this magnitude of money and drugs moving through our country and the banks, that should ve been something our government enforced full accountability on all the agencies. it didn t happen. we had significant successes. we had tremendous response from the u.s. attorney s office and southern district of new york. we did a $400 million civil seizure on the bank and 30 businesses. we put 30 businesses in this action but there were hundreds of businesses still operating today. cars going to west africa, car parks are lined up and they are booming. the wall street journal article at the end of 2016 talked about how the car parks are exploding all over west africa. they are coming from our backyards. shannon: you are saying this is how the money is being laundered. it is being laundered. they are supporting hezbollah. they are buying weapons. criminals, terrorists are turning to criminal networks for funding. state sponsorship is down. they need funding to operate, to corrupt government officials. drug trafficking and other criminal activities helping generate hundreds of millions of dollars. the u.n. estimated drug trafficking a few years ago was generating $400 billion a year on the world. terrorists are taking advantage of this opportunity financially. they need the money to operate. shannon: i want to let you to reply to a couple obama administration officials who had shot down. she used to be at the state department. we will play her. marie harf. the politico stories just false. there is no evidence in the story to backup the allegations. they quote a couple low-level ideological sources who clearly don t like the iran deal. low-level sources? i was head of the special operations division for over ten years. 30 agencies, three countries, the nypd. that lady didn t work on the operations. she worked as a bureaucrat in washington talking about policy and stuff, but she wasn t involved day today in the operations. she didn t see what we saw every day on the streets of america and in europe, west africa, and so i have a problem with her referring to the low level sources. the folks that spoke about the story were intricately involved in every aspect of the case. as a matter of fact, david asher was the expert in the first action against north korea and helped us put together the patriot act in this case to shutdown the international trade based money laundering scheme. shannon: thank you for all of your work. thank you for coming in. i would just like to say that this particular photo right here is why we were trying to shut this scheme down. shannon: we both tweeted out so people know what you won t see these folks at the post office. they have businesses to run. they have passions to pursue. how do they avoid trips to the post office? stamps.com mail letters, ship packages, all the services of the post office right on your computer. get a 4 week trial, plus $100 in extras including postage and a digital scale. go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again.