so much brian kelly. you know i love you, genuinely one of the kindest people i have ever met. i love this show love, we will see you online, foxnews.com/outnumbered, now happening now . jenna: we start with a fox news alert, the trump administration is expected to address breaking developers on pending votes in the house for spending and healthcare a short time from now when the daily white house briefing begins. jon: we will take you there live. we also anticipate hearing about the crisis with north korea. we re covering all of the news happening now . congress reaches a deal to fund the government through september. are we seeing a new bipartisanship in washington? and new science of g.o.p. unity on healthcare, do republicans have the votes they need? plus, the u.s. sets to test another interdental intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear capability as the pressure on north korea he thought. it is all happening now . jenna: to begin with a fox news alert and a fresh display of bipartisanship on capitol hill, advancing vote on the spending bill while we are also seeing signs perhaps of g.o.p. unity on healthcare. had to add that disclaimer because you just don t know these days. welcome to the second hour of happening now, i am jenna lee. jon: i m jon scott. as we learn about the big boats taking place in congress we await reaction from the other end of pennsylvania avenue, the white house daily briefing will kick off about 30 minutes from now. follows a busy weekend with the administration and the president touting the first 100 days of the trump presidency. let s begin with chief congressional correspondent mike emanuel live on capitol hill with more on the latest going on there, mike? good afternoon. the serious effort to get things done in congress this week, finding the government through september, also a serious push to get the final book 8 vote to push healthcare reform on the house floor. that has long been our priority, unfortunately, because of obamacare, we continue to see premiums increase, co-pays, 1 out of 3 counties in america only have one plan available to them, so we need to be taking steps to ensure that everyone has a better healthcare future in this country. on the new government funding bipartisan agreement, speaker ryan says america will be stronger and safer because of this government funding bill. it acts on president trump s commitment to rebuild our military for the 21st century and bolster our nation s border security to protect our homeland. there is no funding for the border wall, no money for a proposed deportation force, no cuts to stationary cities and no cuts to planned parenthood. one sticking point that has been resolved was health benefits for retired coal miners and lawmakers from coal country states like west virginia, kentucky, and ohio are pleased that issue will be resolved when the legislation is passed. it means thousands of coal mining families, retirees, widows of coal miners can rest assured that there won t be every four months of your healthcare coverage expires. imagine that. you get a letter in the mail every 3-4 months to say six weeks from now, your insurance is going to expire. this is a group of people more likely to have health problems than your average 40-year-old so this is really, really important. when you take a look at the $1.07 trillion government funding package, there s always something folks can like and certain aspects folks do not like. it is called a compromise. jon: that does not happen very often in that building where you are. mike emanuel, thank you. this has been a big priority for the president but also republicans in the house could we have known obamacare is simply unsustainable. it s collapsing under itself, and we have to take drastic action to repeal and replace it. one of the big things that is being discussed and is currently in the bill, i know the controversy you mention with pre-existing conditions, that is in the bill, but there also gives some sensibility to the states so that was an important obamacare assembly one-size-fits-all which we knew would not work. what always works in california may not work in florida or south dakota, so this bill offers some choices in with tha that, hopefully will give some lower cost in again choices for consumers. jenna: that was deputy white house secretary sarah huckabee sanders earlier on our program talking about what was the thinking was, that bipartisan agreement to keep the government up and running in the agreement when it comes to healthcare. that would be strictly with the republicans. let s bring in fox news contributors, former campaign manager for president ronald reagan. great to have you here, while we watch this drama play out, we don t have anything yet when it comes to healthcare but you hear from the white house around else without knowing the details is a hard sell. i think at the end of the day here on the bipartisanship, this is a short term, five-month budget fix, everyone got a little piece of something. the big budget comes in october. the defense did not get what it want to, the president promised, he made a lot of compromises which is very positive in the supplement of but not willing to make, rises at this point in time. jenna: i m curious about your thoughts on this final question with president trump that if we do nothing, this is going to collapse, and everyone is going to have to be brought to the table. is that feasible still? we certainly do not want to see that for our viewers or ourselves. what are the different scenarios? here is other scenario. senator schumer hasn t said if you just take obamacare and do some fixes to it, we democrats will participate. ed and i have both been involved in bipartisan legislation. it is tough to do. but there is no willingness if it is the republicans so committed to repeal and replace that they cannot do bipartisanship. the problem is they do not have a bill. you can repeal, vote tomorrow to repeal, it is the replacement that is the big problem. equally important, a lot of people don t believe it s going to crash and burn. they still think it s going to work and like it. traditionally when you do a big piece of legislation, you give people something in this case, you take something away. jenna: would you say the president should sit back? if i was in the white house, i would let it go and let the tax bill go and work on the budget. if i get votes moving forward, i would do it later. jenna: interesting, see what sean spicer leads with to see what their priority is. i think they are pushing this through and it is at their peril. jenna: great to have you both, interesting conversation. it is healthcare, it is pretty serious. quick programming note on two new shows premiering on the fox news channel later today. fox news specialists airing for the first time at 5:00 p.m. new contest that could come at any time. and congress takes action tomorrow debating a new round of sanctions against the rogue nation while the trump administration reaches out to asian allies in an attempt to contain kim jong-un. rich edson live at the state department for us now. good afternoon. the u.s. congress and house tomorrow will debate a new round of north korean sanctions, that is coming up tomorrow, bipartisan bill that tightens existing sanctions, economic sanctions, it also targets those who employ north korean slave labor, north korean shipping and requires the administration to determine whether north korea is a state sponsor of terrorism. this is working in concert with the administration strategy which is essentially to get other countries, namely china, to further enforce existing sanctions and to also isolate north korea economic and diplomatically. one analyst says the key to pressuring north korea is to get china to commit. koreans have seen so many sanctions imposed on them by the u.n. that they are sort of blase by now. but indeed, if china actually starts to enforce them, then i think they sit up and take notice because that would be new. this is after the secretary of state on friday held a special meeting to the u.n. security council, it was designed to figure out ways to discuss pressuring north korea all part of the initiation effort to get the rest of the world s sense of urgency behind the north korean issue. the secretary called out china specifically as china makes up about 90% of north korean trade, however, china s response to that was that solving the nuclear issue on the korean peninsula does not lie in the hands of the chinese side. this very much continues to be an effort from this administration to push china. state department says it wants to see changes in north korean behavior within the coming months. secretary of state says he is willing to pursue this strategy of pressuring north korea who wrote an unsubstantiated dossier on president trump. a lab report from our nation s capital coming up on that. ere we are awaiting their daily white house briefing such a start moments from now, we will bring it to you life and it begins. didn t recognize our grandson. 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(avo) ask about namzaric today. manait s a series of is nsmart choices. and when you replace one meal or snack a day with glucerna made with carbsteady to help minimize blood sugar spikes you can really feel it. glucerna. everyday progress. nosy neighbor with a glad bag, full of trash. what happens next? nothing. only glad has febreze to neutralize odors for 5 days. guaranteed. even the most perceptive noses won t notice the trash. be happy. it s glad. that to you, but an active shooter situation from what is being described in dallas, texas, . jon: this fox news alert, a san diego pool party comes to a horrifying end. the gunman opens fired on a quiet due my credit event, killing one woman and wounding six others before police shot and killed him. his victims, all minorities. authorities say the motive is still unclear but they are not ruling anything out including a possible hate crime. and we are learning more about the condition of the victims now. we are told several people underwent surgery, some are still in critical condition, one man also broke his arm while running away from the scene. jenna: some new information on the russian investigation as the chairman of the senate judiciary committee chuck grassley says the fbi provided inconsistent information regarding its ties to crist do my christopher steele. he s a former british spy who apparently wrote that dossier claiming that they collected, rising information on president trump. this comes just two days before fbi director comey is set to testify before that committee. our chief intelligence correspondent catherine herridge live in washington with more. thank you, head of this week s highly anticipated public testimony, the republican chairman of the powerful senate judiciary committee sent this letter to fbi director james comey, accusing him of making inconsistent statements about the bureau s relationship with former british intelligence officer christopher steele. he wrote the anti-trump dossier and steele said it contain unverified information but was still published by buzzfeed and is the subject of legal action paired the fbi used the same dossier to justify surveillance warrants of a trump advisor during the 2016 campaign. senator grassley in the ranking democrat committee member dianne feinstein met with james comey for a closed classified briefing earlier this year and new documents provided by the justice department to the committee s conflict with that briefing. he writes, there appeared to be material inconsistencies between the description of the fbi s relationship with mr. steele that you did provide in your breathing and information contained in justice department documents made available to the committee only after the briefing. some democrats say the allegations in the trump dossier have a lot of merits be of the raking democrat on the house intelligence committee adam schiff ran them into the record during the march 20 of russia hearing where comey testified along with the nsa director. is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? yes. it is possible, but since it is possible, may be more than possible that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated. in a new seven-page declaration, steele told the british courts that large sections of the dossier were unverified and said they were never meant to be public in any form. jenna: thank you. jon: so we are awaiting the white house daily briefing. it is such a start about 9 minutes from now. when sean spicer stepped to the microphone, we will take you there live. whoa, this thing is crazy. intuitive one touch video conferencing is a reality. and now it s included at no additional cost with vonage business. call now and see why 3,000 companies a month are switching to vonage. business grade. people friendly. on a perfect car, then smash it into a tree. your insurance company raises 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do something? we do have to do something. we have to do something with partners in the region and globally. that involves enforcement of the u.n. sanctions that are in place. it may mean ratcheting up this sanctions even further. it also means being prepared for military operations of necessary. jon: that is h.r. mcmaster, the president s national security advisor. with all the options on the table to deal with north korea s growing threat, the u.s. is preparing for a new test of an intercontinental ballistic missile two days from now. it comes as the house moves to vote on a new round of sanctions on the rogue nation as the effort to contain kim jong-nam testifies. joining us now is a senior research scholar at columbia university, weatherhead east asian institute, former cia senior north korea analyst and managing director for our group asia. it is great of you to be here. the missile test that the u.s. is conducting, clearly we are trying to get kim jong-un s attention. is it working? to see pay attention to that kind of thing? i think kim jong-un is playing due to my paying attention, he s very paranoid and concerned about washington and controlling washington so when the trump administration says all options are on the table in week test icbm missiles, we will get his attention. jon: we are apparently getting ready to ratchet that sanctions even tighter on north korea. vote that be helpful and effective? i think it will be effective. sanctions have been in place for a couple years, but they re only about a year, so around took three years, but north korea has not been affected before because of enforcement issues. don t have enforcement on the ground. secondary sanctions is important, but this means probably going after chinese banks and entities doing business with north korea which would then cause strain with beijing. jon: the chinese have indicated to president trump the fact that they are willing to get a little tougher on north korea. do you see active signs of that other than blocking the cool shipment? i think we need to see, that is something that will take time. if china is really serious this time around, they did unfortunately say many times in the past they would do it and enforced sanctions but we know that china has not been active in that. so we have to see where china really is if they are being serious. jon: the president has held off declaring china a currency manipulator, for instance, because he wants their help with this very problem. is that a fair trade-off in your view? i understand what trump administration needs to do is try to put maximum pressure on china and also give some incentives, economic incentives, but i am not sure. again, i am not overly hopeful that china will actually follow through, so i think the trump administration might be disappointed down the road. jon: do you see the north koreans testing and other nuclear device? they have been trying to test missiles. those test, as chris wallace was saying, they have not gone well. but another nuclear device, do you see them taking provocative steps? absolutely. i think north korea has to follow through with my missile test and even a nuclear test. what they might consider or reconsider, the key question is will they test icbm s? that is the critical threshold for the united states, whether they successfully test an intercontinental listing muscle that can reach mainland united states. jon: they have said they are going to bolster their nuclear force to the maximum. they really are maintaining this bellicose attitude. that it would not seem is warranted on the part of a country that is really not all that strong militarily. what they have is nuclear weapons, and that is why it is really hard for kim jong-un to keep that up. i don t think he will give it u up. he is seeking legitimacy and spending the time tube perfect this that his father and grandfather have pursued, it has cost billions of dollars, and kim jong-un said himself that this is his mission. we are in for a long road ahead, i think. jon: it sounds a little writing, some of the prospects, thank you very much. jenna: a bill is one step closer to becoming law in texas that would penalize sanctuary cities in the state and punish local officials who do not enforce immigration law. our legal panel takes it up. we are awaiting the daily white house press briefing such a start any moment from now. we will bring it to you live when it begins. jon: all kinds of issues on the front burner when sean spicer begins the daily white house briefing just a few minutes from now, at least that is when it is scheduled. you have tax cuts, perhaps replacing and repealing obamacare. you ve got this north korea situation. all of it is on the table. press secretary scheduled to be she s already running a few minutes late, but we will take you there live when it begins. jenna: to texas now, and they are one step closer to passing a ban on sanctuary jurisdictions in the state, that would hold local police chiefs and other officials accountable for not enforcing immigration laws. doug mckelway is life in washington with more on that. they have one of the toughest policies of any state regarding illegal immigration and this winter instituted a policy that denied states grant money to any texas city that provides sanctuary to illegals. now texas is on the cusp of a tougher policy with expected passage of sb 4, 8 bill that would allow for the finding and even jailing of shares, police chiefs and mayors who do not follow federal immigration policy. one, and expose them to very high fines, about $25,000 per day, it could expose them to jail time for any sheriff or other official who adopts the century city policy, it can also subject the county or city or whichever political body it is to legal action in the event that they released somebody. the liberal enclave of austin, texas, is a sanctuary city, and it is right in the crosshairs of that legislation. to be clear, somebody that is in this country undocumented has committed a crime to the next civil violation, not a criminal violation, a civil violation. and our police, our local law enforcement personnel, their job is to go out and apprehend people who are violating or suspected of violating criminal laws. the texas bill would also allow law enforcement to question any detained person about their immigration status. opponents of this essay it is the show me your papers bill, but supporters note it is not allowed police to question just anybody for the sole purpose of determining their immigration status. the texas senate and house have passed different versions of this bill and will likely be reconciled, passed and signed by the governor by the end of this week. it will be taking effect by september. supporters already expected it to be challenged in court. jon: for more on this, let s bring in our legal panel, john is a criminal defense attorney and a former prosecutor and criminal defense attorney. it sounds pretty astounding, the idea that the state could actually prosecute local officials for failure to uphold the law. astounding or genius because this should have happened a long time ago. the state is now doing its part and saying, listen, it s not just up to the president of the united states to stem the tide of illegal immigration. the states can do their part, too appeared to make it a crime to fail to obey or cooperate with federal immigration authorities is a smart way to g go. jon: listen for a second to governor abbott, he says essentially we are a nation of laws and that is why he supports this bill, listen. when you look at the function of a government whether it is federal, state, or local, our primary function as government is to keep our people safe. it is an x usable for travis allen to do what he has done which is to release from jail people who have committed crimes against her alleged of committing crimes of sexual assault, sexual assault of minors, and many of those people back out on the streets, that is contradictory to the function of a government is supposed to do. jon: how do you what is your take on what the president has to say there, does he have it wrong? but he is not considering is someone s fourth amendment right, and i have said this before, i will say it again. this is less about immigration and more about the constitution. what this bill is doing is forcing local law agencies to make a choice, either to comply with this bill or to comply with the constitution. if they don t comply with the bill, they are looking at being jailed up to a year or if they don t comply with the constitution, then they could be held liable for millions in a civil suit. it is not fair. the law enforcement, local law enforcement already have a toughen up job by having to try to get rid of violent crimes, real crimes in their areas, and now in addition to that, they are going to have to spread the resources, limited resources that they do have are going to have to now spread that and now try to advance immigration laws, federal immigration laws that the federal government should be paying for, not local government. jon: specifically, how would they be violating the constitution? here s the thing. if they want an undocumented immigrant to stay in jail, then what they need to do is get a warrant fear what were just going to lay out as probable cause to believe that they are undocumented. that would give the local law agencies no choice but to comply, but what you have with an un-dump do and documented immigrant whose case is then suspended or dismissed or whatever the case is disposed o, there is no way you can hold somebody beyond the time that the law actually allows you to. that is where the constitution comes in. jon: joanna, what do you think about that? i think i have a constitutional right just like kate steinle did not to be killed by a violent longtime criminal, illegal alien in this country who was let go numerous times. let s also remember, the feds are not just plucking people off the street willy-nilly. if you come to the attention of i.c.e. authorities it is because there is a reason. if we don t work hand in glove together, we will never solve this problem, that is what i think. this new bill is going to allow officers now to make up a reason to stop people then question them about their legal status. that is actually wrong. number two, yes, i agree, don t let undocumented immigrants who are violet out on the street, but if it is so important, get a warrant. get a warrant. get a warrant if you have an issue. if you think cops have the time to make up reasons to stop people instead of just stopping people because they do that now. they do that now. it is called racial profiling. jon: you can see why this issue is browsing so much attention in the state of texas. we will continue to keep an eye on this story and let our viewers know what happens there. thank you both. jenna: in the meantime, back to the breaking news out of texas today. in an area of dallas, southeast area of dallas where we are getting reports of an active shooter situation. as this has unfolded over the last 40 minutes or so on our program, what we ve been watching as this. the news initially was that a first responder or firefighter was shot by somebody that we don t know is the person that placed the call for the first responders to come, so we still have a question about that. was it the person that called that was also shot? we don t know and we do not know where the suspected shooter is. we do know authorities are looking for a man, and that is about all we know at the time. according to the dallas police association, officers are pinned down and from what we can see from our vantage point where you are seeing as well is that it looks like all of the emergency responders as well as police are focused on one particular home in the area. right now, according to our local fox affiliate on the ground, you have a firefighter in surgery at baylor hospital in the area. also our understanding of this neighborhood that there is some sort of training facility for firefighters, that may or may not be relevant. we are trying to piece together what we are learning so far. still police have an active shooter and dallas, and looking for the suspected gunman who apparently has a rifle. that is all we know. we will bring you more as we get it. also in the area of texas not far from there, there are severe storms that hit over the last 24 hours and throughout the south this weekend. this system is heading east now, want to give you a heads up on the weather you can expect. also awaiting the daily white house briefing set to start just moments from now. we will bring it to you live when it begins. .this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain. .and protect my joints from further damage. humira has been clinically studied for over 18 years. humira works by targeting and helping to. .block a specific source. .of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. it s proven to help relieve pain and. .stop further joint damage in many adults. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas. .where certain fungal infections are common and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flulike symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work. storms across the south and midwest killed at least 15 people, that system now on the move which means you need heads up on this. adam klotz is live in the foxworth dude mack weather center with more. the very system you re working on talking about is working through the eastern midwest, stretching down into the south east, as of now, not particularly severe weather but still pretty good thunderstorms wrapped within the system. couple areas we still need to pay attention to. this is looking back off to the left, portions of southern indiana stretching to arkansas, 12-8 inches of rain, as a result, still flooding issues that take a little while for some moisture and rain to run into the creeks and rivers. as a result, we have flood advisory stretching across portions of missouri up into illinois and farther toward the west. still an area where if you re in this area even though we are not expecting more rain come you can see additional flooding so something to pay attention to. future radar with the system that continues to track this direction, here it is moving through the evening hour continuing to descend on the east coast. eventually, we will see some thunderstorms with this one as well, really hitting some of the major cities along the east coast in the night hours running into early tomorrow any wood neck morning. we see some really highlighting areas from syracuse, new york, down to the appellation mountains, but those are areas where we can see at least an isolated tornado, definitely very big rain, and this is going to stretch further to the south, maybe not severe weather far to the south, but these thunderstorms are sunday we will pay very close attention to throughout the rest of the evening and into tomorrow. tornado possibilities. not the highest on our list, just elevated but still looking for portions of pennsylvania up into portions of new york and down into the virginians, all areas where we put will pay very close attention. it is all being fueled as you know from fairly warm temperatures, we are seeing some cool air settle this way so temperatures will drop when the rain finally moves through the area. jenna: adam, thank you. jon: here s another look at what bad weather can do. turbulence on board one flight. 27 passengers injured on a flight from moscow to bangkok. some of those people thrown out of their seats. it was a boeing 777 that hit what pilots called clear air turbulence, meaning there was no warning that anything like this was coming. thankfully, none of the injuries, we are told, is life-threatening. jenna: want to know why, we do stores like that i remember the rest of my life. jon: keep your seat belt on. jenna: good advice. we are watching the white house pre-doing a press briefing room, should be a host of topics for them to speak on and we will bring you there live hopefully after a quick commercial break. we will be right back. that s cool. i got a new helmet. we know steve. it s good to be in (good hands). manait s a series of is nsmart choices. and when you replace one meal or snack a day with glucerna made with carbsteady to help minimize blood sugar spikes you can really feel it. glucerna. everyday progress. hello, everyone, i am sandra smith. we are awaiting the white house press briefing with sean spicer where he is expected to get questions from everything from north korea, healthcare, the gas tax and even civil war. a head on america s newsroom hq . jenna: fox news alert, back to dallas where we are watching this developing situation, see a large police presence. this is because a firefighter was shot responding to a call earlier in this dallas neighborhood. what we have learned from our local affiliate is that the shooter is on the loose. we don t knowut the shooter other than he was described as having a rifle. the firefighter is in the hospital, apparently in surgery at this time according to sources on the ground. we will keep you posted as we hear more, but the suspect that inside the house as we previously thought and on the loose, so more to the story as we get it. back to washington, d.c., now where we are awaiting the daily white house press briefing set to start if you moments from now. a lot of big news to watch, we will bring it to you live when it begins. jon: thousands of immigrants and blue-collar workers are key mayday with demonstrations across the country. many of them protesting president trump s tough stand on illegal immigration. allison barber live in washington with more. people are starting to gather here right now, the group actually is not going to all be here until about 3:00, and an organizer tells me they expect to have 10,000 people show up here to protest this administration s immigration policies from this area where we are stating now, dupont circle. they will make their way over to the white house and hear from people like dnc chair tom perez. he s expected to be one of a fairly long list of speakers over at the white house. there are other protests similar to this one happening all across the country. if you began early this morning in san francisco. one took place outside of the immigration and customs enforcement building. this group right here in d.c. says they are speaking out on behalf of immigrants and immigrant workers, not only do they want their voices heard, but they also say they are demanding action. they are calling on congress to withhold funding for some of the key things this administration has said. they wanted to do when it comes to immigration, they want congress to withhold funding for the border wall as well as additional money to pay for i.c.e. agents. jon: allison barber covering that protest in the d.c. area, thank you. jenna: as we mentioned, awaiting the daily white house press briefing such as dart peered we keep saying any moment from now, but that is what we thought at 1:30 eastern time 25 minutes ago. we will just keep waiting, that is the truth. sean spicer set to hit the podium with big issues including the spending bill as well as healthcare reform. we will bring you there to the podium as soon as it happens. we will be right back. so when it comes to pain 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cheating while our manufacturing and defense industrial base suffers. he also signed a third executive order over the weekend establishing the american technology council which would be led by chris ladell which is dedicated to modernizing the federal government information technology so that it works more
election, haven t provided anything to lead me to believe or should lead you to believe, and i continue to see reports coming from media sources saying when they checked in with law enforcement or intelligence community sources. there s nothing more than has been previously reported over and over again. so at some point you do have to ask yourself what are you actually looking for? how many times do you have to come to the same conclusion before you take the answer? that s what i m saying. mara? just to follow-up, did you personally reach out i m not going to say what we discussed internally. we did our job about making sure that when people had reporters had questions, we let them know what subject matter experts were available to discuss the accuracy of a newspaper story. mara? i m sure people will come back to the budget question, which is during the campaign, the president said he was not going to touch medicare, social security. treasury secretary repeated that. sounds like the director was leaving that as an open question. no, no. i wonder what s the state of the promise? he won t touch it for current retirees? anyone paying in? what the director made clear is how it works. the budget is dealing with the top line discretionary numbers. policy decisions are not part of the budget. that s what he was being asked. i just want to be clear. what s the promise? it is clear. as you point out, he had made the promise. he stands by the promise. what is the promise? current retirees? i will follow up specifically on that. the president made clear it is not his intent to do. he wants to focus on the discretionary side. entitlement reform, with respect to the programs he mentioned, he stands by his word. brett lucas? an executive order on religious freedom. will that still come? if it does, will it extend beyond the legislative i m sorry, what? will it extend beyond the johnsons? i think we ve discussed executive orders in the past. for the most part we re not going to get into discussing what may or may not come until we are ready to release it. i m sorry. just one more. the issue of tax reform. is there any concern there won t be enough reserve for that? i m not gonna get into specifics of tax reform today. the president has made clear that we ll have an outline of a plan very soon. what i will say, he talked about the concerns that he has with current and regulatory tax policy that benefit people from moving out of the country and shipping products back in while shedding american workers. he will continue to fight for policies that promote manufacturing and job creation in the united states and supports american workers. so i don t want to get ahead of the exact nature of policy. he s been seeking a lot of input. he s going to talk today with speaker ryan and senator mcconnell. i know that both the joint session, state is repeal and replace. i m sure some discussion of tax reform will probably come up. we re continuing to move forward and meet with them. on the isis strategy. can you get to the timetable now that you are receiving it, what happens. there s a report you re asking for $30 billion on top of the 54 in the budget for defense spending. is that true? does that cover the new exit strategy? thank you. right now literally that principles meeting that i mentioned is happening as we speak. secretary madis was coming over stpargs the isis plan. part of it was to make sure that he fully discusses the recommendations that he s making and seek the input and feed back of the other principles downstairs. that can help guide where we go, how we go. right now the focus is on the budget. then we ll go from there. thank you. two brief questions. first i read your statement thursday briefing to governor malloy of connecticut. he said, quote, sean didn t read the thing that i said. he said in connecticut they are already working to get criminals who are in the country illegally out. his objection was to going into warming centers and schools where officials might frighten the children. your response on that? again, i was asked specifically what the comments were with respect to sanctuary cities. i would reiterate, that i m not here to pick a fight with the governor. the reality is that there s a difference. whether or not what he wants to do with state funds, maybe without knowing the exact nature of what he s funding, it s difficult. the question i was asked at the time was on how we would be handling it. the answer, whether it s connecticut or california is that the president s executive order and the president s commitment is to make sure that tax dollars are not used to support programs that are helping people who are not in the country legally and who are not citizens entitled to them. one more question, sean. 58 years when presidents have gone to rome they ve always met the pope going back to when president eisenhower met the pope. one year ago this week candidate trump had a disagreement with this pope and an exchange of words. when he goes to rome in may for his first european trip, will he meet with this pope? that s a great question. i would be a huge fan of that. but i m not gonna i don t think we re at that place in the planning process to make an announcement on any visits with the pope. two budget questions. mr. mulvaney said it doesn t add to the current budget but did say it wouldn t significantly drop from that. is the administration comfortable putting something forward that might rack up deficits of potentially hundreds of billions of dollars? i m trying to understand the question, if you can help me with it. he said it wasn t going to add to it. he didn t necessarily say it was going to cut from it either. if it doesn t cut from it, it could potentially be hundreds of billions in deficits. correct me if i m wrong, he said it doesn t add to the baseline deficit, right? that continues to be the goal. as we continue to work through the process, it can work both ways. we can identify further savings and reductions working with the agencies and departments. but we re going to make sure the top line number we maintain as close to that as possible. this is the beginning of the process. we send the kwrub to the department or agency. give them some ideas of how we came up with it. then they come back to us and either justify why a particular program or office or what have you needs to stay in existence or why maybe not the reduction that is offered. it s a back and forth process that will occur over the next few weeks. let me ask you to what nancy pelosi said. she put out a staple and said, five weeks into his administration president trump has not introduced a single jobs bill. your reaction to that would be what? we ve created a lot of jobs. he s continuing to work with congress on repealing and replacing obama care, tax reform. fundamentally both of those two items alone i think can help spur a lot of economic growth. the meetings we ve had with the ceo s, the health insurers, there s so many things that are job killing and it can be done to promote a better regulatory and tax climate that leads to job creation. that s one of the biggest problems. people in washington aren t necessarily talking to job creators. what is the impediment that you have to hiring more american workers? to manufacturing or to building here? the meetings and the actions that the president has taken on both regulatory and other matters have helped spur creation. you heard these companies come in over and over again, the automakers, the airlines, sprint. the list goes on and on. of people saying to the president because of your agenda, because of your vision, we re willing to commit to hiring additional people to manufacture more. that s how jobs are created. it s not through the government. too often it s the government regulations that stifle and prevent job creation. i think president, as a businessman, fully appreciates and understands how this works and what some of those impediments do to creating jobs and to growing the economy. i would just say that you haven t seen anything yet. it s going to continue to be the case. is the concern of the administration that a large scale military buildup will lead to some sort of arms race with other countrys? no. i think when you look at the state of some of the infrastructure of the age of some ships or planes or hardware that exists, you recognize that we need to rebuild a lot of these things. the size of the navy has gone down significantly. there are new needs and new planning. when you look at the commitment that you have to make not just in one year but several years for a lot of these programs, ships and tanks, even weapons systems, they don t get built in a month or a day. you have to make a commitment to make the investment because of the time that it takes to procure them, to build them, the research and development that goes into it. i would suggest to you that this is the first step in making sure we make the commitment to our military that especially over the last few years has not got the funding it needs to get off life support. there are a lot of things being taken care of in the military where they re just continuing to they re not putting the systems and the projects in place to allow the military to keep up with the times. that s the problem. said the government owes my son an investigation. on behalf of the president of the united states, is the president open to an investigation into the raid in yemen and the father of ryan owens called that a stupid mission. is it something you d like to communicate to him about that mission that might persuade him otherwise? yeah, thank you. let me walk through it slowly. first of all, i can t possibly imagine what he s going through in terms of the loss of a son. i can tell him on behalf of the president, his son died a hero. and the information that he was able to help obtain through that raid, as i said before, was gonna save american lives. it s going to protect our country more. he made a sacrifice for his country. he was on his 12th deployment. i know his wife, when she spoke to the president, knows that he did this because he loved it. he cared about our nation. and the mission was successful in helping prevent a future attack or attacks on this nation. it obtained a lot of information that will help keep us safe. with respect to his request, it is standard operating procedure for the department of defense to under go what they call a 156 review. that review in this case is three pronged. because there was a fatality and loss of life, there s that. because there were civilians involved, that s another. then third is because there is hardware, helicopter, that was damaged. that is separate. in fact, there will be three reviews done by the department of defense because of the nature of this. but again, i can t stress enough that on behalf of the president, on behalf of the nation, we express our condolences, extend our prayers to him during this time. you said it is standard procedure. is there anything in particular that the president is curious about in this mission, in that it was brought to him, he authorized it. does he believe there is nothing that he s particularly curious about in the way either of the helicopter was damaged, fatality, civilian casualties? well, number one i walked through the timetable previously. in terms of how long this had been planned for. dating well back into the previous administration. their recommendation at the time was to wait for a moonless night. that night wasn t going to occur during president obama s administration. when general mattis got into the department of defense, he was briefed up on the status, made aware of when the next night would be. we went through the process to make sure that we continued to believe that the mission, the way it was going to be conducted and the results of the mission would be worthy of action. the conclusion continued to be as it was prior. that we should move forward. as i mentioned before, i think you can t ever say when there s most importantly loss of life and people injured that it s 100% successful. when you look at what the stated goal of that mission was, it was an phoergs and intelligence gathering mission. it ap achieved its objective. i would express our thoughts and prayers and condolences to all of the people and chief owens family and friends, his ship mates, but it s something that, as a seal who has been deployed 12 times, he knew that this was part of the job. he knew what he was doing. so we were very comfortable with how the mix was executed. we ll let the department of defense go through that review process. see where that leads us. i think to get ahead of the three separate reviews being done by the department of defense would be irresponsible. real quick. as you are aware, to the defense sequester you to get 60 votes in the senate because you have a separate domestic sequester number. are you confident with these numbers and this heavy discretionary spending proposed you can get to 60 votes to change the law? without that change in law the proposal is just that. it doesn t become law? i think that when it comes to our nation s security specifically our nation s military, i don t think that it s a partisan issue. i think senators from across the country, whether you re talking about florida, whether you ve got an army installation or navy base, you understand the state of repair that many of our planes, ships and other hardware are in. i think there s a bipartisan commitment to give the military and its members the equipment and the tools it needs to succeed and protect this country. so i do feel country. april? sean, i have a couple of budgetary questions for you. one, at the press conference, president trump talked about the six states. what is the investment when it comes to that? that s a good try. i think the director part of the process was to start that process where we re going to the various departments, whether hud or dot and giving them that top line number and then hearing back. i don t want to get into a specific number with you before we get too far down the process. i think that s a conversation that we re going to have with the agency and then we will have subsequently with congress when they start drafting their resolution. he talked about health care. he talked about education. he talked about, continues to talk about chicago and law enforcement. so you don t have any kind of budgetary numbers? health care is one of the line items for this budget. that s right. i m not saying we don t have numbers. i m saying we re not giving them out. that s a big difference. you re going to do a good job frying. as the director noted on this, they have come up with top line numbers based on their going through each of these agency s budgets saying hey, there s a program here. in some cases maybe they give them more, maybe less. part of it is to begin that process with the departments and agencies to figure out what those investments are. maybe it s repurposing existing funds in a different way. it s not necessarily a zero sum game. there is a way the department can reallocate money to a program that might end up benefitting because there s an out of date program or office that that savings could be applied to something. but i don t want to get ahead of the process right now, only to say that we are at the very beginning of it. president is going to seize 80 plus presidents with the vice president. some are very concerned as to what this executive order looks like. they are waiting to hear the commitment before they say i m all in. what is the commitment that this president is trying to make when it comes to ensure i guess the future or deal with some funding, research projects or moving it out of the department of education to the per view of the white house. what is the commitment he is going to give? i don t generally speak about executive orders until they are finalized. i will just say that one of the things i think there s a commitment from this white house to do is to look at the various resources throughout the federal government that support hvcu s. for example the department of defense has rotc programs. are they being properly is that funding being properly executed and spent? there s programs within each of the departments, department of education, department of housing and urban development, that affect grants or programs or direct funding that go to hpcu s for various things, whether it s construction projects or teaching programs or mentorship programs. whatever it is. they expand throughout the entire government. i think that what we are committed to doing is ensuring that there is a high level understanding and commitment that goes straight to the president of how we harness those resources within the government and make sure that they re doing what they re supposed to be doing. it s one thing to have them, right, spread throughout the different departments. it s another thing to make sure that there s a direct pipeline to the president of the united states that those programs are being executed in a way that s benefitting the future of hpcu s and the various projects and teaching that goes on there. so what are you saying? there s going to be a piece that will go through the agencies to make sure there is some kind of commitment to hpcu s and contract like let s say engineering for some schools or research for other schools? i think i m going to stick to waiting until we announce it. i anticipate it very soon, how s that? i want to give myself a little wiggle room. budget related question but on infrastructure. the president has repeatedly, including today again, called for major infrastructure plan to the tune of a trillion dollars, roads, bridges, tunnels. can you explain where that money will come from? how it fits into the budget that s under review right now and what the timeline for that project would be? that would be part of a longer term discussion that we re having with congress. the president got in office 30 some odd days ago. the idea of getting a budget referred to as a skinny budget to get the government to continue be if funding. i understand your point. the president continues to talk about the state he said it was a priority for him. it is. we have to make sure that it s done right. that we work through congress. there s obviously a funding mechanism to this. we ve already talked about things like comprehensive tax reform that could add to that discussion. and so i just i understand what you re asking, in terms of how this will be funded and when it will be coming and the pay for it, but we re working with congress. that probably comes outside the budget. how does he square that with the need to tighten the belt? in the same manner that we re presenting the budget. we re talking of adding $54 trillion, billion dollars. thank you. appreciate the help. but we re looking to add that to defense. so what it means is that we have to fine reductions in savings. that same kind of discussion would have happened with respect to infrastructure. not necessarily the savings piece but the funding piece. there s several ways. i know there s a lot of discussion private/public partnerships that he has started to have a discussion with in terms of the funding mechanism. all i m trying to get at is there are various ways to do this funding without just relying on the american taxpayer in terms of additional taxes. there are spending reductions, there are other funding mechanisms. i think in due course we will get around to that discussion. he mentioned today that as he drives through the queen smith town tunnel and the lincoln tunnel, he worries about ceiling tiles falling. is there a specific incentive he was talking about where people have been injured or is that just a fear of his? i don t know. i ll ask him. i m sure secret service will take care of that. alexis? sean, question. first one health care. because the director was signaling the complete budget would be maybe ready early may and the president today describes how complicated he s discovered that the health care repeal and replace has become. can you describe when it is that the president would present his framework for an overhaul of health care? is it going to be included in the budget so that we can see it before stphaeu i don t think you re going to see it in the budget. that s not the appropriate vehicle for it. i think you would drive or at least the leading option before i get locked into something, is to add obama care to the fy17 budget process and put it through reconciliation. i think he has also been very clear that he wants this outlined within a matter of weeks and that we continue to have these discussions with house and senate leadership, ways and means and similar finance on the senate side. so when he talks to speaker ryan and leader mcconnell today, i m sure that conversation will continue. just to follow up on health care. is not every ingredient in the affordable care act happen in reconciliation? that s why i was asking about theme the elements of it. there are several pieces of obama care. some can be done with executive care, some with 50 votes. there are certain things that have to be done certain ways legislatively to create a comprehensive and wholistic approach. we re aware of that. we re working with the house and senate to make that happen. all right. the immigration executive order, travel ban. is the president going to address the american people and congress in his speech tomorrow night and specifically describe and defend the immigration ban? and when will we see the revised executive order? we re not going to i would not anticipate the speech being a defense of legislation and executive orders. i don t think many previous presidents have gotten through and used that as a legislative walk through. but you will hear about his commitment to immigration and his desire for border security and what it means not just about keeping the nation safe, but what impact it s having on the economy. so you will hear a lot about immigration tomorrow night. he will talk about why it matters and the goal we have and why we should come together. hold on. caitlin? next order i think we should have it out probably middle of this week. looking towards the middle of the week. we ll have further updates as we get through the schedule. our goal today was to prepare for the joint session. caitlin? gerald ford in 2015 identified $125 billion in wasteful pentagon spending. how can you justify adding $54 billion to the defense budget? is that going to go to hiring soldiers or contractors? is the president concerned with wasteful spending at the dod? of course he is concerned. i think there s a big difference between rooting out waste and fraud in various programs and offices and understanding that when you re talking about adding to the fleet or increasing airplane costs, that can t be driven just through those. the commitment you have to make to purchase some of those very needed upgrades to our infrastructure and to our arsenal and to planes, ships, doesn t just come through that. because even if you could start to really identify it you wouldn t make the financial commitment that needs to be done to build the ships and planes in particular that need a substantial investment on the front end. john? if i could follow-up on alexis question. 9th circuit court of appeals just in the last few minutes. do you plan to continue defending your first executive order in court? what s the purpose of doing that as opposed to simply rescinding it and then rendering that case moot? i haven t been able to read my phone while this has happened. i appreciate it. with all due respect, i would ask that i be able to get back to you tomorrow after we consult with the counsel s office and it goes through the reading of what the court has said. give me a little time, let me get off the podium. the question still standing. i understand that. i think the president has made a commitment to continue to defend what we did. hold on. because this is the strategy that he believes that we have the authority vested in u.s. code. i talked about this extensively in the past. i think that if you allow me, once we get done with the briefing, i will follow up. some of us are trying to understand. if you have a new order that addresses the concerns of the many courts that have weighed in on this, why continue to defend an executive order? because we were right the first time. it s not a question of proving a point. it s that the manner in which it was done in the first place was what we believe and continue to believe was the right way to address this problem. while the second executive order attempts to address the court s concerns that they made, the goal is obviously to maintain the way we did it the first time because we believe that the law is very clear about giving the president the authority that he needs to protect the country. so, just dropping that is not necessarily a prudent thing. part of it is for us to recoupe, figure out what the court has said and assess the strategy. i don t want to get ahead. you re reading it to me now. i would like the opportunity to read it and have a lawyer read it. go ahead. thank you. is there anything [ inaudible ] when can it be lifted? i think we have to go through the process to lift the sequest sequester. some of the things we have seen at jewish cemeteries, look, we have to work with law enforcement at the local and state level. i will leave to it the justice department to comment further on what additional steps can be made. as has been pointed out, one of the things we can do is speak from this podium to make sure every american understands what our values are and that that kind of behavior and activity is wrong and won t be tolerated. and the highest levels of government denounce it. so i think it starts there. i think there s a law enforcement component that i would ask you to touch base with. on the budget i understand this is a blue print. i understand the president has previously said he doesn t want to touch entitlements. but why does he think it s the right move to break with years of republican orthodox, house speaker paul ryan has said any sensible long term budget needs to include i think the president understands the commitment that was made to seniors in particular. and that s a sacred bond and trust. mara asked this earlier. let me get back to you on the specifics, but he made a commitment to the american people. one of the things the president continues to get high marks on is regardless of whether you voted for him or not, he is a man of his word. he has followed up on the promises that he made to the american people. i think that s important. i think we will continue to work with congress. but the president understands that we have commitments that we ve made on the entitlement side in particular. especially on the senior side with respect to social security, that need to be maintained. so he s gonna keep his word to the american people. saying social security, medicare won t be there in a number of years? for right now i think the budget we re laying out deals on the discretionary side. you heard the president s priorities and commitment, especially when it comes to protecting this country. one more. is there an internal leak inquiry right now? not that i m aware of. thank you very much. i have two questions. when president trump took office, first official [ inaudible ]. what is the white house expectation of his visit? so the state counselor and for those not schooled in chinese government, is the basically the equivalent of our nsa director, nsc director, right? correct. the ambassador and the state counselor came today. they are meeting with hr mcmaster, and some others stat in on the meeting. they had a delegation of six people here. after the meeting ended, i believe state counselor was taken and had an opportunity to say hi to the president before he left. this is an opportunity to begin that conversation. hold on. everybody else got two. just this morning president trump mentioned about his pick for ambassador to china. governor has really positive view on china. how confident is the president on the governor s mission to get support in the senate? i think he ll receive tremendous support, bipartisan support. senator graham is a true he has huge ties on both sides, one of the longest serving governors in iowa. i think that he has tremendous respect from both sides of the aisle not just for how he s handled himself as a governor in iowa, but his deep understanding and ties to china and china s economy and the chinese officials. i think he s going to do a phenomenal job representing our nation. he starts with an understanding of the chinese government. that will serve our nation well. mara? lot of people voted for donald trump because they agreed that the u.s. was getting ripped off my china. after the election he made the call to taiwan. then he told fox news he said i don t know why we have to be bound by a one china policy unless we make a deal with china. then he reaffirmed the one china policy. so what did he get in return from china for doing that? he had a conversation with president chi. i m not going to get into details. president chi s request. after a discussion, the president reaffirmed the one china policy. the president is not one to discuss hi negotiating tactics. did the american people get something? the president always gets something. what was it? follow-up. i noticed earlier today, not of republican governors but not many democratic governors. is this administration trying to reach out to the other side of the aisle and compromise? absolutely. you saw the remarks during the pool opportunity. the president talked about some of the conversations he had with governor mccall from virginia in particular. they were here last night. they had dinner with their lives and husbands. it was an opportunity to talk to the cabinet and get to know each other and talk about priorities. it s interesting. i mentioned obama care. when one of the things that was brought up by the governors and i have to be honest, i wasn t picking which governors and thinking of party, but several commented on how they appreciated in terms of him seeking their input on not just health care, but infrastructure and medicade in particular and health care, other areas that fall into their wheel house. so i think just so we re clear, the dialogue that exists between this administration and this president and governors i think is a very refreshing move forward. i want to clarify something that happened thursday and friday about the public enemy statement. are you saying that all of the press is public enemy? people who didn t vote for the president? just the people in this room? just bill maher and maybe warren beatty? i think the president made clear what he was referring to, the fake news and people who ascribe to pushing fake stories is where his target was. more than 60 democrats either boycotted or skipped president s inauguration. what kind of reception do you think the president will get tomorrow evening from democrats and the house and senate? i hope a very robust and applause filled reception. the speech, as i mentioned, breaks down a lot of barriers that had traditionally been, political barriers in terms of areas where i think we should find agreement. that reaffirm the president s desire to unite the country and unite our parties that share common ground. the things that he s talking about, increasing the support for military, veterans, helping children get an education, those are things that, hopefully, we can all come together and think are shared american values regardless of party. i hope that we see a tremendous amount of support for the president and his policies and his vision tomorrow night. he recognizes the problems that our nation faces, but he also charts the vision forward. i think it s one that, if people are honest, that they will agree that it really isn t a political agenda as much as an agenda for the country, and one to move us forward. i think that we ll have to wait and see, but i can tell you that i think it will be a positive move forward. couple follow-ups to the question about the isis review. day 30 of the memorandum the president signed. can you give us more timeline when specifically president trump will be involved? i know you mentioned the principles today. separately you mentioned secretary mattis is presenting the principles to the committee. just the military includes public diplomacy, efforts to tie it back. what got us here? where do we go from here? thank you. let me, if i phaeurb get briefed on who and what occurred in the meeting to the extent that it s available and i will be glad to get back to you tomorrow on that. i just don t have that information available. [ inaudible ] is the president taking any steps to ensure that tax payers aren t saddled with tremendous cost considering he was so critical of his predecessor in that matter? well, gabi, the security for the president and first family is set by the secret service. as you know, they determine the security measures that need to be taken to protect the president, frankly, any president. so i m gonna leave it up to the secret service to decide what security measures and steps are taken to protect the president. as you know, depending on transcending administrations. wherever the president goes they need to make sure the president and first family is safe. something that i think we rely on the secret service to make those determinations. they continue to do a phenomenal job making sure the first family and the president and vice president are protected. we have full confidence in the decisions they make. so, thank you very much. we ll have a briefing later today on the what s that? i would look into the 6:00 hour. here? yes, here. i get to see you here again. i would plan on around 6:00. we ll have further guidance. i don t anticipate it being long. i think we re just going to walk through, off camera, the themes of the speech, take any questions and then try to get some additional information, depending on where the president is in his read through. no briefing tomorrow? no briefing tomorrow. if you don t want one, you don t have to have one. you said you would get clarification we will have something for you, i promise. i will get it back to you. i m sure you will see my face tomorrow. thank you very much. see you guys tomorrow. sandra: all right. that was sean spicer wrapping up his daily briefing. lot of stuff covered there. i m melissa francis. right now though we want to point you at another news conference that is currently under way. see that there? that s the house intelligence committee ranking democrat member adam shipp. he is speaking on the investigation into any ties with russia. you heard sean spicer talk about this as well. he was responding to calls for a special prosecution on that subject. listen. is there a license call for a special prosecuteer? my question would be a special prosecutor for what? here s my it was part of the campaign. sessions was part of the campaign. jonathan, we have now, for six months, heard story after story come out about unnamed sources saying the same thing over and over again. and nothing has come of it. melissa: in other words, is there anything there? this is after push back after the white house asked the intelligence committee to squash reports of contact between russia and the trump administration. chief intelligence correspondent katherine harrige is live with more. what have we learned? reporter: reporters were told that he has seen no evidence that any of president trump s associates had phone con tack with russian intelligence. congressman nunes said nothing he has seen from the agencies indicates that former trump campaign manager paul manafort who resigned, political adviser roger stone, who also left the campaign or businessman jeff carter had contact with russian intelligence. nunes was pressed on the issue this morning and whether those connections exist. there s investigations that the executive branch of government does and there s tphfations that the legislative branch of government does. as of right now we have no evidence, but we will continue to ask an look for evidence not only on the three americans named in that story but also any other american that has contact with rush officials. reporter: nunes did not rule out calling president trump s associates to testify on the hill. as you see at this hour the ranking democrat on that very powerful committee is giving his own news conference. he said earlier today that he felt they hadn t had a full briefing from the fbi so it was premature to make any conclusions about what may or may not be a connection between the associates and the russians. melissa: in the midst of all of that did we learn anything new about the resignation of national security adviser mike flynn? there are a lot of questions there still unanswered. reporter: we did learn some new details. chairman nunes said a phone call was picked up as part of routine monitoring of the russian ambassador. he said there was no evidence that there was an order from the previous administration to listen in on flynn s phone calls. however, he said there was a decision taken by the obama administration to unmask flynn s identity because americans have special protection when it comes to surveillance and phone calls involving american citizens. the congressman said only a very small number of people have the power tounmask him. there should be a record of who in the government knew about general flynn talking to the russian ambassador. from there we should be able to know who is in the realm that we need to talk to. we should be able to find out who within the executive branch knew about the initial conversation and then who went to who to get flynn s name unmasked. that should be a relatively small number of people. reporter: when we say small, we re talking about less than half dozen people. in that category you have to think ab things like the fbi director or the attorney general, or the president himself or those closest to him. also on the issue of the leaking of transcripts between president trump and foreign leaders, the congressman said he this major crime has been committed, though he did not provide any details ability an on going leak investigation, melissa. melissa: great reporting as always. thank you. another huge pass today. obama care. let s bring in a democratic strategist an senior director of research for bustle.com. mercedes slap is a former spokes person for president george w. bush. mercedes, sean spicer said, guess what? it s gonna take awhile. americans don t want to hear that. yes, the american people are impatient. they want movement quickly. that s one thing president trump wanted to push forward quickly as well, which is let s get washington moving. the problem is, in the gop, they are still trying to figure out how they re going to handle the differences. two top areas are, of course, medicade expansion where some governors want to keep it, even republican governors want to keep it in place, others don t. next refundable tax credit that is unpopular among conservative republicans. these republicans have to be bold, united and they don t have a choice. they have to succeed. melissa: jessica, we heard the insurance ceo s today with president trump. they were all saying hey, guess what, this whole thing is about to implode. at the same time our viewers are saying how is that possible? i m paying more, i m getting less. my premiums are huge. this is a mess. it s a mess that people like now if you look at the polling. melissa: i don t know about that. if you look at the pew polling, it s more favorable than it has. melissa: i can feel the audience screaming at you. sorry. it s true. i can show you the data. things are changing this way. more that donald trump, president trump, i know they hate it when i just say donald trump, says we re going to repeal and replace it, but there is no replacement plan, americans get more scared and more angry. they show up at those town halls. there are concerned americans. the problem is republicans had what seven years to come up with a plan that would meet these expectation and they haven t done it. melissa: mercedes, the problem is he wants to keep everything that s good, get rid of things that are bad. that costs money. where is that money going to come from? well, i think that s one of the fundamental questions is where they re going to get the money to pay for this. i think that s why you are seeing discussions occur around the obama care tax which could be up to whether they keep it, what are they going to do with the savings of it. that s about $1 trillion. so i think for the republican party, they re focused on making sure that there s increased competition, that you re able to lower the cost of these premiums. also the bigger challenge for them is ensuring that people aren t just dropped off of their health care. that s going to be those obstacles that republicans will need to fix. melissa: it will be tough. i have got to cut you off. we ve got some breaking news. congressman is talking about his side of the argument on what is going on in this back and forth with russia. is there an investigation needed? where do you start it? that s what they re talking about here today. why hasn t the fbi given up the information to you yet? secondly, have you asked the senate if they want to do a joint investigation? well, i have certainly raised the issue of a joint investigation. and at this point, while nobody has exclusively ruled it out, neither have they welcomed the idea, there may be a few reasons for that. it was a formula that worked very well post 9/11, given the mismatch we have had vis a vis the agencies and vis a vis the size of the agencies. we are seeing these massive agency. it would help if we did this jointly. the other part of your question? has the fbi been dragging their feet on getting you the information? you mentioned it several times here. you haven t gotten anything? you ve asked? the chairman and i are requesting the director brief our full committee as he apparently did. certainly the chairman and i have preliminary discussions with the director. but beyond that, we need really to get a full debriefing on everything that the fbi has looked at. what have they investigated? and at this point, i m not clear we re going to get that. i don t have the assurances that i d like to have from the bureau. now, i ll give you a sense of why. in an ordinary course of events the bureau doesn t talk about pending investigations. and the bureau doesn t talk about closed investigation. now, obviously, with respect to the clinton investigation, that policy was departed from and violated in extreme as we got closer to the election. so among other think, it s insupportable for the bureau to take the position we can t talk about any position from the trump campaign. at the same time, there is a strong institutional reluctance to discuss on going investigations, not on publicly, but even with congress. but here we have a bipartisan investigation into the establishment, it s been agreed to by the house and senate. it has the vast support of the republican leadership in the house and senate. and if we re gonna take responsibility the fbi is going to have to, have to, be wholesome if their discussion of any investigations they are doing or have done. i haven t gotten that commitment yet from the director. we re gonna need that commitment in order to do our work. yes? earlier today chairman nunes was saying that if it turns out flynn in this discussions with the russian ambassador did say, you know, hold off on response to the sanctions that came from the obama administration right after christmas. he said we should be thanking him, not going after him, for having deescalating a bad situation. i wonder what s your take on that and how that affects going forward. hopefully having conversations with the committee. my perspective is this. again i goes back to the context in which flynn was talking to the russian ambassador. russia has just hacked into our elections. they have just dumped information that was helpful to the now president of the united states. and in the period prior to the new administration coming into office, the obama administration levied sanctions against the russians. and then you have a conversation or conversations between flynn and the russian ambassador. what was the subject of those conversations? now, i would like to i have had a briefing. i have not seen any transcripts yet. ultimately i would like to view whatever transcripts exist, to be published, so the american public can see, given the american public was misled about that conversation. but the significance of that conversation is that, if it was of a nature to assure or reassure the russians that they didn t need to respond because the new administration would take care of it, then you have incoming administration affirmatively under minding sanctions imposed by the current administration, the current being the obama administration. that s a serious business. when you add to it that the national security adviser flynn was dishonest about the nature of those conversations, that certainly shows at least i would say as a former prosecutor some consciousness of wrongdoing. if there was nothing to be concerned about, then why not be open and honest about the course of those conversations? why did mike pence go out on tv and find the need to reassure the country that they had not been engaged in under minding sanctions imposed by president obama. the final point i would make on this that i find deeply disturbing is, it s bad enough that mike flynn wasn t truthful with the vice president. it s even worse that the vice president then unknowingly misled the american people. but what is most troubling to me is the president was aware of
both mccain and james khomeini, though he was given the green light to share it on tv. i have talked to the highest level of intelligence officials, and they have assured me that the new york times story about constant contacts is grossly overstated and inaccurate. the president went off on the fbi for yet another leak, tweeting, the fbi is totally unable to stop the national security leakers that have permeated our government for a long time. they can t even find the leakers within the fbi itself. classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on u.s. find now. in between fighting political fires, the president got some business done, signing another executive order on regulatory reform. this one directs agencies to establish task forces to identify and rescind regulations the president claims are stifling economic growth. donald trump. we are not afraid of the opposition because we are going to unify, come together, and kick some ass, we are going to take names. with seven candidates buying two replaced donna brazile, the leading contenders include tom perez, who enjoys strong support from the democratic party establishment. says he plans to support perez. this is a generally centrist country. mainly in the center, got to have a message that resonates across the board. the other front runner, minnesota congressman keith ellison, an early supporter of bernie sanders. but ellison has had to defend himself against accusations of anti-semitism because of his now severed ties with nation of islam leader and comments he allegedly made in graduate school. these are false allegations, and that is why i have 300 rabbis and jewish communities supporting me. with many dnc voters still uncommitted, the other candidates have a fighting chance. i like all of them. i have really narrowed it down to four, and i am intending to remain open to persuasion right up until the vote. political scientist saying that the young mayor there is a mother another candidate to watch. he points to successes in his party and state legislative races. he wants to not be totally progressive or totally establishment but try to figure out a way to bring all types of people together. and that is really the delicate balancing act democrats hope to achieve. on one hand, they want to capitalize on strong anti-trump sentiment among the parties younger, more liberal base. at the same time, they hope to win back their reputation as being the party of working americans, a group that, in the last election, came out and large support for president trump. jonathan, thank you. the government will begin accepting bids for work on the president s border wall next month. customs and border protection says it plans to start awarding contracts in april during his cpac speech this morning, president trump set the ball is ahead of schedule. a federal judge in brooklyn is ordering government lawyers to work with attorneys representing people stopped from entering the country during the first hours of president trump s first executive order and travel ban pete senior correspondent rick leventhal was in that courtroom today. when president trump s executive order went into effect temporarily banning travelers from seven predominantly muslim nations from entering the u.s. it sparked protests and lawsuits. it also affected far more people than originally claimed by the administration. speak with the white house, the president said that there are only 109 people who were minimally inconvenienced by the executive order, and for the first time, the government has revealed that there are over 700 people who had some contact with customs and border protection under the executive order. and we don t even think that that number is complete. in a hearing friday morning, attorneys said they were simply handed a list of names but no other information to help track down the 746 people who may have been wrongly barred from entering the country in the first 26 hours after the ban took effect. we are trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle. the government already has that puzzle together, and they could disclose that tomorrow if they wanted to. in court, the judge ordered the two sides to work together in sharing information. but there are still questions about how a new executive order, expected next week, might impact this and other cases. what we are working with is like a 26 hour slice of a much larger problem which begs the question of what the government is hiding and why they re hiding it. at the justice department declined to comment on the specifics of this case, but in court, a u.s. attorney told the judges they cooperate by giving giveaways additional information on all of people who were turned away. this issue is not raised during today s off-camera white house press briefing, but it is expected that next week when the new executive order is issued that will allow anyone holding a legal visa to enter this country, no matter where they are coming from. bret? bret: rick leventhal tonight. thank you, expecting that sometime next week. a white house spokesman is dismissing a security report saying there is insufficient evidence that citizens of seven muslim majority countries including president trump s travel ban pose a travel threat to the u.s. the spokesman calls it an open source report, says it does not contain high side classified intelligence, this source calling it incomplete at best. we are learning more tonight about what may be in the republican plan to repeal and replace obamacare. one crucial point, medicaid expansion. correspondent peter doocy has the latest. fans of obamacare like to point out that more than 26 million people got coverage through the law, but a majority got covered through expanded state medicaid programs which cover low income americans. 31 states and the district of pe tab with expanded funding from the feds that republicans suggest will be reduced. but the g.o.p. should be aware, because 84% of those surveyed by the kaiser family foundation want congress to keep the expanded funding in place. and g.o.p. leadership isn t just under pressure from the public. they are hearing it from house speaker paul ryan s predecessor. fix obamacare. i shouldn t call it appeal and replace. that s not what is going to happen. he was during dozens of successful votes is off-base. i sure hope he is wrong. we need to do that, it is a commitment be made. . a 106 page documented published today by political reportedly contains the gop s long-awaited replacement in terms of plans to talk cut oute individual mandate. dr. sica manual has been warning against this. it would be a disaster. the first thing is, and the first year, 18 million americans will lose their health insurance paid democratic governors now probably make protesting. i think what congress would love to do is push all those costs on to the states. republicans lawmakers hope that even there if there is les funding they will have more flexibility. the federal government wants to be involved in who gets covered, get the money to me and let me figure out if i can do it better. one of the 16 republican governors who took money to expand medicaid coverage in his estate, john kasich, was at the white house today, and he is heading back tomorrow to meet with hhs secretary to explain my he thinks the feds should keep sending states like his money for medicaid. bret? bret: think you paid the gal rallied late, posted its 11th reset my consecutive record close. the nasdaq gained ten, the dow was up about a percentage point. the s&p 500 gained two-thirds. the nasdaq finished i heads about one seventh every percentage point paid up next, a special fox news investigation into a tax text taxpayer funde. it is a story you will only see here. first, what some of our fox affiliates around the country are covering. fox 13 in tampa, officials say a prayer that damaged this tampa area mosque overnight was arson. calling it terrorism and offering up a reward. the fire was extinguished quickly, but the facilities sustained significant water damage. fox 5 in new york where bill de blasio was interviewed as part of a public corruption investigation, at issue, or that a democrat broke the law to benefit his 2013 campaign or his shuttered nonprofit. the mayor s office says it is confident everyone acted appropriately. and this is a live look at the long beach, california, from our affiliate, fox 11, one of the big stories there tonight, and i m police are maintaining watch on a neighborhood where a raucous demonstration erupted after an off-duty los angeles police officer scuffled with teenagers and ended up firing a gun shot into the ground. the anaheim police chief is suspending these decision defending the decision not to arrest the officer. tuesday s confrontation was the result of an ongoing dispute between the officer and teens who have reportedly walked on his lawn. tonight s live look outside the beltway. for special repopopopopo it advertises as military friendly, helping vets complete new and advanced career. that same day, agents raided the home of umt president. she is watching agent searcher home. 3 1/2 3 1/2 years later, here ss speaking at the 2016 graduation. we are excited for our students. the school has received upwards of 6 million taxpayer dollars from the defense department but school officials didn t want to talk to fox news about how umt is run. it is a bad bill for the soldiers, and is a bad deal for the taxpayer paid he is stepping forward for the first time. absolutely disgusts me. it needs to stop. he says he worked at umt recruiting vets when they approached him in 2012. documents reviewed corroborate key elements of history paid where you asked to be an informant in a case? how long did he do that? about three years. documents reviewed suggests there is another side to umt s leadership. in this solution, he suggests that paid one of the first things she ever threw out, i was a colonel in the army. yanping told her she was a member of the chinese military? absolutely. the a west point graduate we one of the definitive books about the chinese military. this picture from the mid- 80s appears to show chen before she went to george washington university. if someone was wearing that uniform, i would say there is a great likelihood that they were in the people s liberation army. what can you tell me about that uniform? this is a pla officer s uniform, between 1987 and 2007, and from the epaulets, you can see that this three stars and two red stripes would be a full colonel. after the 2012 raid, chen denied being a colonel in the chinese military, and she checked no on this form when asked, are you now or a few ever been in any way connected or associated with the communist party? chen became a naturalized citizen. fox news asked an expert to review the form. if she has marked no on the petition but if, in fact, the answer is yes, that we have a false statement, and where that comes into play most assuredly is in the arena of passport fraud. the answers she provided on these immigration documents ultimately ends up being her approval to become a naturalized u.s. citizen. with no laws preventing a natural u.s. citizen running a school like umt cannot rose remains concerned about the security of vet records. got uploaded into a drive, personal military bio, where they were trained, how they were trained, how that could be remotely accessed. during its investigation, the fbi discovered the contractors in the umt beijing office have access to the student database. she was very interested in wright-patterson air force base paid a technology hub, their crests apparently went further. she wanted me to go out to these remote reserve and national guard centers to get the information. how did she react? oh, you don t tell him anything. we don t know each other. you don t know what you don t know was her buzz phrase. was the fbi aware of that? they were. these emails show rhoads and at least one fbi agent alerted the office, yet confirming another multimillion deal was signed. how much money was you into getting from the defense department and the va every month? between $200,000.300000 a month. the eastern district of virginia, got the case, but it stalled after a disagreement with the fbi over how to proceed. neither the bureau nor gillis would comment to fox, but separately, the naval criminal investigative service, ncis, confirmed the case is an ongoing investigation but said nothing further. after repeated interview requests, fox went to umt where we were told chen and dr. frame were in the office. but both refused to come out after learning it was fox news. according to umt s web site, graduated 1700 students, contact by fox news, a spokeswoman said they are reviewing the deal which runs through 2019. and fox news put a series of questions to the chinese embassy here in washington but there was no immediate response. bret: we will see if there is any follow-up on capitol hill. we will definitely follow up. bret: thanks. the help wanted sign us up at virtually every federal agency here in washington, but the matter of actually getting those openings filled has become something of a political football. chief washington correspondent james rosen tells us how and why. as his deputy, rex tillerson picked a veteran who has written a book about the israeli-palestinian conflict, then someone in the white house, and abrams has his suspicions about who it was, red flag that had characterized president trump as unfit for the presidency, just like that, till or since joyce was out. they are called political appointees for a reason. the idea that people who come into this government should want to support and enact the president s agenda that he campaigned on. and aid to the secretary designate was escorted from the building after his october op-ed in the hill resurfaced last week. you would hope when the president is in this time of reflection and learns more about the critiques toward him by people in the community. and the nsc s new latin american chief was sent back to national defense university after off-camera remarks last week critical of the president reaching the white house. political reports political reports they are starting to reach them in the filling of the sub cabinets 400 jobs while supporters of abrams stated white house is hardly applying a consistent standard. nikki haley. donald trump is everything i taught my children not to do in kindergarten. the candidate fired back, the people of south carolina are embarrassed by nikki haley paid since then, haley has been confirmed as the president s ambassador to the united nations paid supporters of the administration contended is not just loyalty that is slowing down staffing. the approval of the trumpet nominees. of the 4,000 positions, those who make the executive branch run, upwards of 1200 require congressional confirmation. as of this week, the trump administration has just over a dozen confirmed nominees. bret? bret: james, thank you. there are signals coming out of the white house tonight that he trumpet administration may take enforcement of federal laws against recreational marijuana use much more seriously than its predecessor. but with recreational pot exploding into a multibillion-dollar industry, some are asking, is it too big to jail? white house press secretary said the marijuana industry and the in the states i think that is a question for the department of justice. i believe you will see greater enforcement of it. in 2013, president obama s doj said it would take a hands-off approach to states approving recreational use. no questions abound. in california, which recently passed recreational use, many medical marijuana dispensaries are making plans to expand their customer base. we have taken all of the preparations that we possibly can, and we are ready to face that music. recently, a cannabis industry representative said it is going to be difficult to unwind these laws. if the federal government starts to pull the rug out from under these businesses, i think you are going to see, obviously, business owners being very disrupted, but also you re going to see state and local leaders speaking up and saying, you know what, our voters chose this. eight states in the in and e district of columbia have legalized medical marijuana. last year, the three states combined collected nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenues from recreational weed. confusing matters, comments made by then-candidate trump on the campaign trail. then i really believe you should leave it up to the states. it should be a state situation. during a confirmation hearing, jeff sessions put the ball squarely in the court of lawmakers. if that something is not desired any longer, congress should pass a law to change the rule. in a pull out this week, 71% of americans said they support against states that already legalized medical or recreational medical marijuana. when asked by fox news, the department of justice declined to comment on spicer s comments. alicia, thank you. in international news, and syria, isis car bomb suicide bomber killed people a day after the town was liberated, meanwhile, syria peace talks resumed in geneva today. serious u.n. ambassador says his delegation is considering details of an unspecified paper presented by the u.n. envoy for syria. malaysian officials say the people who assassinated the estranged half-brother of north korea s dictator used a powerful chemical warfare agent banned by international treaty. senior foreign affairs correspondent greg palkot has more disturbing implications. the north korean regime of kim jong-un unleashed a weapon. the dramatic new claim by malaysian authorities investigating the death of kim jong-nom. the tocsin was apparently applied by two young women, one who was nauseous after the attack. experts say north korea has some 5,000 tones of chemical weapons, and the small amount needed could have been smuggled in. while there was only one person who died in this, we have to be fairly clear that the north koreans are willing to use the world s most destructive weapon on a regular basis. seven north koreans being sought, the one under arrest, also a chemist. officials there continue to deny involvement. malaysian foreign minister shot back. the investor has been formed of the process involved, but he continues to be delusional. in fact, experts say this public killing could be pyongyang s way of sending a message. like the former number two who recently declared the regime s days are numbered. he is now reportedly and hiding. it could be a message to a longtime ally china as well-paid north korea criticized this week new rules beijing against pyongyang in the wake of a recent missile watch. saying kim jong-nam had long been protected by beijing at his home in a chinese territory. back in the 90s, domestic terrorists used this to kill. it could be first time that north korea north used it. bret: president trump takes a victory lap in front of adoring conservatives at cpac then drops the hammer on certain hi. i m dave nemeth. hair club provides exclusive technologies and proven solutions for every stage of hair loss. at hair club, we understand what it s like to lose your hair, and we understand what it s like to get it back, and we would like you to have that experience. based on my need for immediate results, hair club customized the right solution for me. it s called xtrands. it s new and only available through hair club. i walked in with a bald spot, and that same day, walked out with a full head of hair. just call or go online now to receive your free information kit and dvd at no obligation. you ll hear more about our full range of solutions, including exclusive non-surgical xtrands and xtrands plus. now i look in the mirror and i just can t 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(echo) with quicksilver from capital one you ve always earned unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. welcome to unlimited. what s in your wallet? and i love the first amendment; nobody loves it better than me. nobody. so i m not against the media, i m not against the press. i don t mind bad stories if i deserve them. but i am only against the fake news, media or press. they should put the name of the person. you will see stories dry up like you ve never seen before. bret: president donald trump at cpac, and rock star welcome there. he spent a lot of time talking about, as he does, the media and fake news . sean spicer hadn t on the record off-camera gaggle, it is called, were not the press pool, what he called an expanded pool. he did not include some networks and some organizations, and that caused quite a kerfuffle. the white house correspondents association said the wac a board is protesting strongly how it is being handled. organizations that were allowed into share information and were not. the board will be discussing this further with white house staff. fox joined the complaint in the pool to the white house staff as well. but the material was accessible. it was put out by the press poo pool. let s bring in our panel. byron york, chief political correspondent of the washington examiner, charles lane, and charles krauthammer. i want to get to the overall message that president trump continues to hit on here. and the specifics of this gaggle and why it caused a lot of people to question access. i think you were like when you called it a little arcane. i think that is probably true. i think the first thing you should say, all of us in journalists should be in a favor of access. that said, i don t think this was the worst thing in the world. the white house has had briefings for limited numbers of journalists for quite a while. as you point out, not only did they get a cool report pull ret a recording of the whole thing. my guess is, you won t see it again, and if the white house wants to stick it to organizations, they will find more subtle ways to do it. i think the bottom line is, we should be in favor of more access for everybody. bret: that is a key, the excess. i guess on a day when he is out saying he is going to do something about it, then this happens, this expanded pool that includes the washington post, the new york times , time, others, cnn, that kind of send a message that sent set off alarm bells. denial of access wasn t random. it was selective and targeted at various media that have been sort of, you know, on his blacklist for some time. and he has been complaining about them specifically on calling them fake news. i have to say that what struck me about his remarks though, there was a hint of defensiveness in and for the first time. he took pains to say, no, i wasn t really saying all the media is the enemy of the people, just a fake media. nobody loves the first amendment more that i prayed in the scheme of things for donald trump, that sounded like kind of a climbdown in the sense that it seemed like some of the criticism he had been getting for that awful enemy of the people remark had started to hit home. you remember the admiral said it was one of the most dangerous things he has ever heard or words to that effect. what the president is trying to do in a time when conservatives have a lot of internal disagreements amongst themselves, one thing they can agree on is that they don t like the mainstream media. he is trying to use that in addition to pursuing his own little quarrels with particular media, trying to strike this one theme that all conservatives agree on and take advantage of that. bret: here is another little part of the speech. somebody said, a poll came out, and i say, what network is it? and they ll say, a certain let s not even mention names, right? we have a lot of them. look, the clinton news network is one. we have to fight it. bret: charles, a popular message with his supporters, what steve bannon talked about. is it working, does it work long-term? it works on the base. he will get the cheers and applause. i don t think it works anywhere else. i think people are rightly somewhat concerned. they may not be alarmed. what happened today was symbolic and minor, as a real thing. nonetheless, the symbolism is alarming. the president uses a phrase from lennon, enemies of the people. if you were an enemy of the people in lenin s day, you were dead. these are serious historical terms that shouldn t ever be used, and you are sending a message that you are hostile to certain media outlets. as you say, on the same day, you explicitly, and subtly exclude them from any gaggle. in the scheme of things, that doesn t matter, but i am glad to see that fox joined with all of the others, we being a favored outlet for trump, remembering that when obama excluded fox from access way back when, everyone rallied around us and said, if you don t include them, we re not going to be there. it is the only way to do it. the press can t allow itself to be bullied. and i m glad it s not. bret: but i can hear middle america in my head, i can hear them say, god, they are obsessing about this white house gaggle, and their heads were exploding about the words he is using. i can hear it, i can hear it on social media. it is important though. it is important but i will speak for middle america. i went to the speech day. trump comes out and talks for a long time about the press, 10, 15 minutes. then he says, in conclusion, and you think, is that all he s going to talk about today. then he delivered a long speech, the speed you thought he would give about his agenda, talking about what he has done and what he intends to do. i counted a dozen bullet points, border security, violent crime, tpp, lots and lots of stuff. so in an alternate universe, you could cover the, say, two-thirds of trump s speech that was about his actual agenda. bret: i should point out to command the was included, new york times , and the l.a. times were not. on the other hand, he took a shot at the washington post in his speech, talking about the story with the nine sources. you know what we re not talking about today and every network is not talking about today, this whole fbi deal and whether reince priebus talked to the fbi about getting the story straight about the new york times reporting create the white house put out a very detailed kind of background on what priebus says happened, that the new york times story was wrong. but we re not talking about tha that. as in many other cases, it s hard to decide whether this was a deliberate act of misdirection or whether it just happened to turn out this way. i always tend to not believe in intentions and conspiracies because it gives anybody that you talk about, even washington, too much credit. they couldn t organize a two car funeral if they tried. i would assume it was random. but it did actually take attention away from an odd story and one that seems to imply that even though the impetus came from the fbi, there was the white house political sort of operatives trying to persuade the fbi to make them look or to help to dismiss a story about russian influence, and those kind of interactions completely pushed back on that. president trump tweeting the fbi is totally unable to stop the national security leakers that have permeated our government for a long time. they can t even find the leakers within the fbi itself. classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on u.s. find now. he says. to your point, byron, he did come on to talk about the travel band that s coming up, as well as repeal and replace of obamacare, at house speaker john boehner says is not going to happen. there was substance in there. here is the important thing about the speech in that room, the conservatives in cpac. it was very well received. it was not below the roof off well received, but it was well received. and the people who love trump, they left all of it, but the people who really didn t love trump, about that supported ted cruz. most of them had come around to support trump, some of them not completely, they left parts of it, the part about cutting regulation, tax reform, increasing military spending. and they loved the part that cpac with clinton. came to cpac, hasn t happened in a long time. bret: democrats choose a leader, what is going on with leader, what is going on with north korea, plus winners a a aa hillary clinton. i believe i could pull people together so we can come together as a party and we can win elections so we don t have to go through this thing anymore. tom perez and keith ellison actually leading in the hunt for the dnc chair. there are seven candidates still up for grabs voting tomorrow in atlanta. a couple of the candidates have dropped out. the question is, which may what does the democratic party go. we are back with a panel. byron? the interesting thing is how little it has to do with why democrats just lost. and why they have lost so many seats and so much power and influence across the country. it started basically as kind of a real fight of the hillary-bernie fight with tom perez being the hillary stand-in and keith ellison being the bernie stand-in. now it seems to be a heading trump contest. bret: what is clear, either one, chuck, going to take the party, it seems, towards the elizabeth warren-bernie sanders wing. or even further to the left. all of the energy now is on the left. so much so that chuck schumer has actually, through pressure from the base, been forced to endorse keith ellison. this has been described in some of the press as group therapy for a defeated party still trying to make sense of novembe. the question i think a lot of people are saying privately among the party, if we brand ourselves so far today left coming out of this, will we be able to recover in those battleground states? bret: quickly to north korea. you have this strange story that continues to get more strange, the assassination, which now they are saying was a chemical nerve agent that was used on this half-brother of kim jong-un. and you have north korea threatening missiles and launches and tests to come. outlook, the vx agent that was used is very rare, very sophisticated, and probably the deadliest agent on earth. it is not something you pick up at walmart. it clearly makes this an obvious part by an obsessed and paranoid leader in north korea who happens to control some nukes and is working on missiles. i think this is sort of the signature of a regime plot, and it just reminds people, including the chinese, of how dangerous this regime is. this one lightning, winners or losers, winner first. winner, mike pence, putting pressure on nato to spend more money, saying, i want you to expand your plans to spend more, if you don t have a planned, get one. bret: loser? andrew mccain, the second guy who s managed to get himself involved in both scandals. republican saying he was in the tank for hillary clinton, democrats complaining he is in the tank for the trump white house. there is no winning. bret: winners and losers? my winner, teresa may, favored her candidate in an ancient labor constituency, in another district, her enemies on the right were defeated. she commands the center and the political high ground in britain as a result. my loser is milo yiannopoulos. it seems like ten years ago, but it was this week when his career crashed and burned for some comments he made about how great pedophilia is. i say good riddance to him. bret: winner and loser? kim jong-un is the loser. so enrich that the chinese have cut off outgoing exports out of pyongyang, 40% of their exports. my winner, of swords, julian assange, the weekly wikilea. apparently has been visited with increasing frequency by pamela anderson who says that she spent more time with him than with her three ex-husbands. family show. i ll leave it there. slow and that was worth the extra seconds i gave you. i needed all three. brerererere president s war on fake news: yes. no accountability. fire heather? no i do not agree with it. the press is supposed to call out those in authority. if they don t, who does? also asked if the democrat party would move toward the center. gary harden running to the left as fast as leadership can take them. leaving much of mainstream leadership behind. during alicia acuna s story that should enforce president rules against it none your business, no. if he was smart like he claims, he would start collecting tax revenues from it and make it federal. casey kelly, yes, because it s illegal. i don t care about the facts of its benefits. he i actually agree with the studies i have read bottom line drugs equal illegal. that s your friday feedback thanks to all of you. on twitter @ bret baier very close to 1 million followers. if you don t follow me at bret baier. thanks for inviting us into your home tonight. that s it for this special report, fair, balanced and
that s all the time we have left this evening. please stay with the fox news channel for all night, continuing coverage of this breaking news. the president firing the fbi director james comey, bret baier is next. we will see you back here. an important show tomorrow. bret: a massive political shock wave hits washington. i was flabbergasted, to say the least. the president did not fire the entire fbi. he fired the director. speak with the goal was to act on recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general. the administration has to answer the question why now? bret: president trump writing the letter that he believes comey cannot lead the fbi. essentially puts the nail in the coffin for president trump to fire him. bret: tonight, new questions. did the president hint at comey s firing a month ago? we will see what happens. it s going to be interesting. bret: what happens next in the russia investigation? catastrophically compromise the investigation. the investigation going on in the intelligence committee. bret: we have all of the angles covered. a special edition of special report starts right now. good evening. welcome to washington. i am bret baier. the reality tv star billionaire businessman who made you are fired a catchphrase used it this afternoon and what is turning out to be one of his most controversial moves yet. president trump s dismissal of james comey has rocked washington. democrats tried to link the action to the investigation of a possible connection between the trump campaign and the russians before the elections. demands for a special prosecutor are louder tonight and democrats are jumping to watergate comparisons. john roberts starts us off from the north lawn. good evening. fbi director was fired for usurping the authority of then attorney general loretta lynch, but he announced the results of the investigation into hillary clinton s emails last july. the president s opponents were quick to make the firing about him and not the fbi director. there were handshakes from his police escort on the tarmac in los angeles as james comey boarded the fbi jet for the final time. while it was the president who fired comey, white house or the state was the newly minted deputy attorney general rod rosenstein who had lost confidence in comey. sources say rosenstein, confirmed 14 days ago, assessed the situation and determined that comey should be replaced. democrats who had recently praised s integrity, could not question the man, only the timing. the first question the administration has to answer is why now. if the administration had objections to the way director comey handled the clinton investigation, they have those objections the minute the president got into office. but they didn t fire him then. why did it happen today? exactly when comey s tenure became a problem is unclear. in this march speech to boston college, comey seemed to think he was safe. you are stuck with me for about another six and a half years. testimony last week appeared to seal his fate. director comey had lost the confidence of the rank and rank-and-file within the fbi. he certainly i think lost the confidence from members of both sides, republicans and democrats in the house and senate. most important, he lost the confidence of the american people. the president s attitude toward comey has been a roller coaster. last july, he was incensed at comey s decision not press charges against hillary clinton. today is the best evidence after that we ve seen that our system is absolutely totally rigged. it s rigged. after comey reopened the investigation in late october, president trump did an about-face. it took guts for director comey to make the move he made. when the two men met after the inauguration, got a warm handshake and a pat on the shoulder, and whispered words from the president. three hours before the firing, press secretary sean spicer was asked about comey. does the president still have full confidence in fbi director james comey? i have not asked the president. the president showed no reluctance or regret in firing company. in his letter writing while i greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that i am not under investigation, i nevertheless concur with the judgment of the department of justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau. some democrats, pennsylvania senator bob casey called the firing nixonian. others claim that president was trying to derail the russia investigation. insisted rosenstein appoint a special prosecutor. the ink was barely dry on the termination letter, and white house officials were saying it s time to get past the notion that the trump campaign colluded with russia. we have heard that time and time again. we heard it in the testimonies earlier this week. we ve heard it for the last 11 months. there is no there there. it s time to move on. white house feels that has plenty of political cover and its firing of james comey, pointing out that the recommendation came from a man who was recently praised by democrats. bret: john roberts, thank you. by all accounts, very few people in the fbi saw this coming. but james comey had become a magnet for controversy with another serious blow to his credibility just to coming a few minutes before his dismissal was announced. catherine herridge has that story. half-dozen former fbi agent told fox news tonight that the bureau was blindsided by the decision including the fbi director who was traveling in los angeles. if comey had known, at the agent said, he would ve sent a personal email to the workforce. the agents said comey had become a polarizing figure and his testimony before the senate did not help his case. two sources tell fox news the unmasking scandal was part of the white house calculus to fire the fbi director james comey. republicans accused comey of slow walking records through congress about americans swept up in foreign intelligence. there should be a record somewhere in our government for a request to unmask regardless of who made the request. while there is an extensive paper trail showing who made the request to unmask trump campaign associates, including mike flynn, the director only acknowledged in march the fbi probe began nearly a year ago. that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the trump campaign and the russian government. and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and russia s efforts. multiple sources told fox last week s senate testimony showed comey refused to acknowledge his mistakes in the clinton email case, specifically his public statements where critics that he took on the role of prosecutor, insisting investigators must find intent, which is not in the criminal statute. although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. comey told senators he would do it all over again, including the decision to reopen the clinton email case 11 days before the election. i stared at speak and conceal. speaking would be really bad. there is an election. concealing in my view would be catastrophic. not just to the fbi but well beyond. explaining comey s dismissal, the deputy attorney general wrote the fbi never conceals investigations. it is not publicly discuss them. in his hearing, rod rosenstein was nine to metal on the russia probe. it s an issue of principle that as a nominee for deputy attorney general, i should not take action. acting fbi director andrew mccabe. in 2015, his wife ran for a pistole. he spent 27 years at the fbi, rising to deputy director. he was at the heart of the post-9/11 investigations. he most recently served as tsa administrator. becoming the president of anderson university in indiana. he is said to have a strong personal relationship with the vice president. tonight he was not returning phone calls praised you one thank you. let s get some analysis now from ron haas, former assistant director of the fbi. he works with the law enforcement legal defense fund. you spent almost 30 years at the bureau. you worked alongside james comey in your last year there. your reaction tonight. shocking. of course, i work in the d.c. area, so i am subject to the hypocrisy on capitol hill, the politics that have swirled around the clinton investigation and the russian influence on the investigation. i am not totally shocked. i knew there had been voices within the fbi, friends and associates of mine outside the fbi who have been critical of how far the doctor went last year in july. some of his comments. and they agreed with rosenstein s assessment that the director went too far. but i will tell you, having worked with jim comey, he has the heart of a boy scout. he has a moral compass. i think jim comey has slept well with the decisions he s made. i think we heard some of his justification for those decisions in his testimony last week. i don t think the director has missed a lot of sleep because he things he did wrong. my experience with him, i was the director of criminal. i tens of thousands of cases under me, and this director is not one that s ever going to come to you and say here s the result we want in this case or in any given case. it s about finding the truth and looking at the facts, understanding how the fax line up with the law and doing the right thing. the fortunate thing i think for america is this institution is bigger than jim comey. i do think he was widely respected and appreciated for his service to the organization, but the fbi is bigger than one person command the organizational contingent move forward. their work is to keep america safe and to get to the truth. you and you are part of the crew who believed he was boxed in essentially by loretta lynch s action with former president clinton? i look at hillary clinton s own decisions as being the original sin. the timing of the clinton investigation was entirely owned by hillary and her staff who kept it quiet for as long as they did. it gave the fbi a limited amount of time to investigate during the run up to the election. he knew he was under a clock, and then went loretta lynch met with bill clinton on that tarmac, it casts for the shadow on the ability of the department of justice and the fbi to come in the american public s eyes, run a thorough investigation. bret: do you buy the layout of the administration s actions saying it is tied to rosenstein s assessment that he was just approved. he looked at the details and it points back to the original july event as the explanation why he s getting fired. do you buy that this is the reason he s getting fired? i don t buy that. i think the timing lines up fairly neatly against that, but if jim comey committed a mortal sin in his position as fbi director, loretta lynch could have asked the president last july to fire him. she could have said i m going to fire you. i m going to make the recommendation for because last summer. could have done it again in the fall if they were inclined to. president obama could have taken this step if that much faith was lost. i think this was just an opportune time. bret: using this administration you think this administration was looking for that time? i do. bret: you are not happy and how this happened? not at all. jim comey traveling to the west coast. if this is your assessment, call him into a face-to-face meeting and give him his due. he is a good public servant. we heard reference to it in one of your warm ups, he saw the fbi is the pinnacle his career in public service. he certainly left a job that was paying a lot more for a lot less pressure than this job to come back and run the fbi. i think he did that as a true blue american and true and honest public service in his time there. he wanted to finish his tenure. bret: he didn t answer a quet testimony about the investigation into russia and the possible connections. in the letter that president trump sent out today informing him that he was firing him, he said, the president, while i greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that i am not under investigation, and he continues on. if that happened on three separate occasions, isn t that the wrong thing for somebody to do to tell somebody they are not under investigation? yes, generally. we are not exposing to anyone who the subject of an investigation is. the facts are the facts, they may change from tomato tomorrow, and so what i may reassure you about today may change entirely tonight. that is a mistaken path, assuming it happened. i think that is a big assumption. bret: thank you for coming in. when this special hour of special report continues, more on james comey, his firing an hour we got to this point. stay with us. do more. add one a day women s complete with key nutrients we may need. plus it supports bone health with calcium and vitamin d. one a day women s in gummies and tablets. and why a leading car brand counts on us to keep their dealer network streamlined and nimble. businesses count on communication, and communication counts on centurylink. got to this point. before james comey became the seventh director of the fbi, he was born in new york, raised in new jersey and married to his college sweetheart prayed he prosecuted martha stewart while serving as the u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york and in 2003, the 6 8 comey was nominated by president george w. bush to be the deputy attorney general. the next year, colby had a showdown with top administration officials because they tried to get a hospitalized attorney general john ashcroft to reauthorize an nsa program from his hospital bed. i thought i witnessed and effort to take advantage of a sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general. comey admits he was a registered republican for years but ended up being nominated to lead the federal bureau of investigation for a 10-year term by a democratic president. he doesn t care about politics. he only cares about getting the job done. comey confronted the rise of isis, telling 60 minutes he preferred the term loan rat to a lone. lone wolf. although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. comey revisited the server investigation. clinton has placed blame on-call meet for trump s win. the relationship with the winners seemed cordial enough. james. he has become more famous than me. comey s testimony about russian interference was not satisfying many in the g.o.p. because he wouldn t say for sure he would probe damaging leaks the white house police came from the last administration. can you assure them that if it s going to be investigated? i can t. but i hope people watching know how seriously we take leaks of classified information but i don t want to confirm it saying that we are investigating. as recently as march, comey thought he would be around a lot longer. you are stuck with me. comey testified last week that late in the presidential campaigns when wrestling with whether to speak to congress about the clinton investigation or conceal details, he prayed for a third door, but it wasn t there. today comey was shown the door. bret: thank you. brit hume has seen a lot. he is our senior clinical analyst, joins us tonight. good evening. get your reaction to the day and the reaction to the reaction. it s been quite a storm, which i fully anticipated the minute i heard it. politically, there would be hell to pay. the democrats have attacked the timing of this. it is hard to attack the substance since so many of them didn t like comey. trump suggested he ought to be fired a long time ago. the second thing is that he views it as a basis for calling for an independent prosecutor, which has been their mantra. they are all saying it. there s a handful of republican senators misgivings. richard burr of north carolina. this firestorm may involve republicans as well as democrats, in which case the travel for the trump administration is likely to be prolonged. bret: we have seen a few administration officials out in defense, and a short time ago we got the presidents tweet. i m sure it s not not the last, but he says: cryin chuck schumer stated recently, i do not have confidence in him james comey any longer. then acts so indignant. #draintheswamp that was a short time ago. he is right on the facts, that is what chuck schumer said. somebody mentioned it to him when he had his comment tonight, a reporter mentioned it in a prelude to a question which i thought would end up with the question being why did you change your mind? it went somewhere else but he slipped away without having to deal with it. that s true of a lot of democrats who have been critical of this. bret: senator schumer has called all democrats to be in their seats in the senate at 9:30 tomorrow morning for some announcement and i m sure a call for a special prosecutor will continue. does that have more heft now today, considering this action, even though the administration is trying to decouple and point fact the hillary clinton email investigation in this review by the deputy attorney general? it may, but it s not something that congress can force, and it s not something likely to be the subject of legislation which could presumably for such a thing. they can make noise about it. the pressure may become so intensely firestorm so flaming that the administration would feel compelled to go along. it would certainly help the democrats because in that regard if there were a shred of hard evidence that there had been collusion between the trump campaign and russians to defeat hillary clinton. so far, that hasn t arisen. there is plenty of evidence that they tried to interfere, and that is something that would be easily subject of a bipartisan investigation and there s no real reason to believe an investigation of that by itself would not be supported by the trump administration or any investigative agency. bret: quickly, the administration and maybe even the president are going to meet with russian officials tomorrow. what wonderful timing. [laughs] bret: as always, thank you. what s your reaction? let me know on twitter. at @bretbaier. use the hashtag #specialreport. on facebook at facebook.com/bretbaiersr. coming up, we ll talk about this day, the surprising firing of the fbi director, james comey, and what s next. an expanded panel jointly after the break. with roundup precision gel®, you can finally banish garden weeds without harming precious plants nearby. so draw the line. just give the stick one click, touch the leaves and the gel stays put killing garden weeds to the root with pinpoint precision. draw the line with roundup precision gel®. and be sure to check out roundup® with sure shot wand. another good-for-the-garden product from roundup. say no to this because of my bladder? thanks to tena. not anymore! only new tena intimates has pro-skin technology designed to quickly wick away moisture. to help maintain your skin s natural balance. it goes beyond triple protection from leaks, odor and moisture. so you can 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control medicine, like an inhaled corticosteroid. do not take breo more than prescribed. see your doctor if your asthma does not improve or gets worse. ask your doctor if 24-hour breo could be a missing piece for you. learn more about better breathing at mybreo.com. the mission. upholding the constitution. the fbi can the the presiden fire an fbi director. i would be sad to leave this mission and businesspeople. boston college as a leader on thinking and educating on these issues. it s a great place to have it. hope you will do it many more times. you are stuck with me for another six and a half years. i would love to be invited back again. bret: well, no. james comey, fbi director, fired today by president trump. he was in l.a. about ready to give a speech, a recruiting speech, talking to fbi agents and found out he was being fired watching a television inside the office. he got official word from the fbi here in washington. let s bring in the panel. james james rosen, a.b. stoddar, syndicated columnist charles krauthammer. let s start with the first panel about why, why he was fired. james. james comey was fired because, due to many sets of eyes, in the congress, within the ranks of the fbi they are in the great american public, and most notably at the white house and in the department of justice, james comey had become a law unto himself. this was most clearly demonstrated in this series of times where he gave congressional testimony where james comey seemed to make up comey s rules as comey went along. as to what he was free to disclose about different investigations and when he wasn t free to disclose things pretty would tell lawmakers he had special authorization from the department of justice to confirm that the fbi is investigating alleged contacts between the trump campaign and the kremlin. but if asked about unmasking or asked about leaks and other issues come he would say i m not authorized by doj to say anything on those matters. way back on july 5, he told us nobody at doj knows what i m about to say, and then he launched the extraordinary moment where he sought to impeach hillary clinton rather than proceed with an indictment. bret: the administration points to the new deputy attorney general, rod rosenstein rod rosenstein, a memo that s attached to the letter that president trump put out. saying i cannot defend the director s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of secretary clinton s emails and i do not understand his refusal to accept the judgment he was mistaken. as a result, the fbi is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a director who understands the gravity of the mistakes under pledges not to repeat them. the director cannot be expected to implement the corrective action. that is a direct response to his testimony on capitol hill in which he said he felt nauseous about what happened. but he wouldn t change what he did. the agency had to correct a statement he made huma abedin s emails. everything james said about james comey s credibility problem is. i think in the days to come the why is going to be blurred if there is reaction within the fbi if we learn that inside the trump white house this did come from trump and not come up from president trump himself and not a recommendation made on the basis by the deputy attorney general. bret: if it was top-down, not bottom up. there are indications this might have come from trump. we are going to have to wait and see what happens. there is a lot we don t know tonight, but it s the timing, obviously that s more in question tonight then the why. spewing democrats putting out all kinds of statements. chuck schumer saying senators need to be seated at something tomorrow morning. democrats are united they want a special prosecutor. i think they are going to bang the drum on this for weeks if not months. the republican statements are more interesting for you don t have anyone defending call me. what you do have those questions about the timing. richard burr has questions, senator ben sasse, you re getting statements saying we don t understand why he did it now. if president trump had a problem with the director of the fbi, why didn t he get rid of them on day one or week one? i think this goes to your point, was it rosenstein who believed this or was it trump? trump was praising comey on the campaign trail eight days before the election. he said comey had real guts re-invoking the hillary clinton email scandal. it will be interesting to see if trump can explain that now and give a different answer. bret: president trump now, then candidate trump. take a listen. is it too late to ask him to step down? no, it s not too late, but i have confidence in him prayed we ll see what happens. it s going to be interesting. that is why i am asking for i want to give everybody a good, fair chance. it took guts for director comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had trying to protect her from criminal prosecution for you know that. it took a lot of guts. i really disagreed with him. i was not his fan but what he did, he brought back his reputation. he brought it back. bret: charles. well, now he lost it again. what is so striking is how on both sides, we have heard situational ethics. this is situational sensibilities. when what comey was doing was hurting trump come he was a bad guy. then when he did what he did come he was a good guy. the democrats are even more critical. the reaction tonight. if mount st. helens exploded at midnight tonight, you would get, within an hour, 18 democrats demanding a special prosecutor to look into the issue. everything leads them to demanding a special prosecutor. i wouldn t take them seriously. again, what they are talking about is smoke. after six months, eight months, a year? no hard evidence whatsoever of collusion. i think the reason comey is gone is because generally speaking we say if you make enemies on both sides, you must be doing something right. with him, he made enemies on both sides and he was doing a lot wrong. he had no one to stand up for him. in the end, he had so angered the two sides so many times switching back and forth that he was left without any allies. you can interpret this as rosenstein coming in and thus that is the timing, or as suggested by a.b., trump doing it. you would get the deputy attorney general to draw up the document which would be the execution documentary that s how you would do it. we still don t know. bret: the reason the deputy attorney general will be doing it is because the attorney general recused himself from the russia investigation because of meetings he had with the russian ambassador. we will be back with the panel after a quick break. ort and diarrhea. ort i tried lifestyle changes and over-the-counter treatments, but my symptoms keep coming back. it turns out i have irritable bowel syndrome with diarrhea, or ibs-d. a condition that s really frustrating. that s why i talked to my doctor about viberzi. .a different way to treat ibs-d. viberzi is a prescription medication you take every day that helps proactively manage both abdominal pain and diarrhea at the same time. so i can stay ahead of my symptoms. viberzi can cause new or worsening abdominal pain. do not take viberzi if you have no gallbladder, have pancreas or severe liver problems, problems with alcohol abuse, long-lasting or severe constipation, or a bowel or gallbladder blockage. pancreatitis may occur and can lead to hospitalization and death. if you are taking viberzi, you should not take medicines that cause constipation. the most common side effects of viberzi include constipation, nausea, and abdominal pain. stay ahead of ibs-d with viberzi. does the president still have the full confidence in fbi director james comey? i have no reason to believe i have not asked him. i have not asked the president since the last time we spoke about it. last time he did have confidence but you re not sure. i don t want to start speaking on behalf of the president without speaking to him first. you and that is one way to answer it. sean spicer at 2:00. democrats pounced with a familiar line. this is senator leahy. the president s action in the way it s been handled is shocking. no one should accept president trump s absurd justification that he is concerned that fbi director comey treated secretary clinton unfairly. this is nothing less than nixonian. we have adam schiff from the house intelligence committee to take this action without addressing the profound conflicts of interest, it hearkens back to a similarly tainted decision by president nixon. a lot of tweets. we are back with the panel. our resident historian, particularly on water kate coming watergate, james. hillary clinton probably wishes she enjoyed some nixonian lock. he ran five times in the national ticket, something only fdr also did. nixonian should mean more than watergate. here, if these comparisons are apples to oranges, when president nixon fired that special prosecutor, archibald cox, watergate was already 18 months old. it had begun with a definable crime, breaking and entering at the dnc headquarters and there had been convictions. quite incriminating. here we have, this alleged russian occlusion story, not a single crime yet established. in the investigation has really got no place that the public can see. so it seems to me to do a disservice to president trump to liken this firing to president nixon s. i would say this president, donald trump, especially for a new president, is discharging presidential power in a very assertive way, and a way that theoretically should cheer conservatives who bemoaned the erosion of presidential power. bret: 109 days paired he has fired his national security advisor, moved out his deputy national security advisor, fired the acting attorney general. he has fired the fbi director. he, as most presidents do, fired the 46 u.s. attorneys. he did it in a different way, kind of sudden. a lot has happened. he s the most unorthodox political figure in modern american history. he acts on a whim. that s why the statements from the press secretary at 2:00 can never be relevant at 5:00. he makes decisions very quickly on his gut, and i would say with this move, he played some political jujitsu. for regular americans not in washington and not following every single light of our james comey and sally yates, they know james comey is a guy who cost hillary clinton the election. that is how he s defined. i think trump smartly knew that and knows that now democrats who put out all the statement saying we don t like comey. he cost hillary the election. we lost confidence in him. now they have to say why did you dump him? they put chuck schumer in a tough spot when he was asked why in october did you say you lost confidence in comey but now you say the utter hypocrisy on comey. the other part of this is, again, as opposed to what nixon and watergate invoked every minute and a half by democrats, this is a scandal in search of a crime. after all of this time, show us the evidence of a crime. if there were any of that, i think there would be a real firestorm over real stuff. right now, it s a firestorm gotten a lot larger. again, over allegations of collusion that nobody has been able to demonstrate actually occurred. bret: to be fair, sally yates was asked about that and said there s a classified investigation going on. in the former director of national intelligence, clapper, said he reported up to his point. democrats are acting as if it s been shown, as of the way the only way to understand that is that it s a cover up of a crime. they haven t produced any evidence of a crime. bret: final thoughts, a.b. after a quick timeout. allergies with nasal congestion? find fast relief behind the counter with claritin-d. [ upbeat music ] strut past that aisle for the allergy relief that starts working in as little as 30 minutes and contains the best oral decongestant. live claritin clear, with claritin-d. hi..and i know that we have phonaccident forgiveness.gent, so the incredibly minor accident that i had tonight- four weeks without the car. okay, yup. good night. with accident forgiveness your rates won t go up just because of an accident. switching to allstate is worth it. comey go. bret: looks like the oj drive from l.a. his former fbi director james comey and ellie headed to the airport. the administration s point of view from sarah huckabee. a.b., what s next? the white house as to expected name soon. what does that look like? back to the previous discussion, what s next is grand jury subpoenas issued for associates of michael flynn. the fired national security advisor. this is actually not a joke of investigation. it s not smoke looking for a fire. put the democrats talking about mixing over here talking about nixon over here. there are multiple and visit multiple investigations into russia and the election. real investigations going on within the fbi. until and unless those are concluded, in your words, we don t know what we don t know. donald trump never acknowledges, in fear of the potential political peril of the collusion suggestion to which there has, you are right been no evidence presented part of an ongoing investigation. he refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the political interference by the russians. here, in brexit, in france, anywhere. it will continue to happen. everyone of these committees says so, all the experts say so. this investigation. we are going to learn whether or not he decided on impulse to fire james comey or it was truly the recommendation of the deputy ag. what is coming next is that the russia thing isn t over with. bret: meantime, the russians are meeting with the trump administration tomorrow. when jim comey came out in july of 2016 and announced they would be no prosecution of hillary clinton, the clinton email server investigation was 14 months old. after the new york times broke it in march of 2015. think how much evidence about hillary clinton s conduct in the server case, including the memo where she ask someone to send her something classified nonsecure was in the public domain by the time mr. comey announced the decision. almost a year into the legend of russian collusion case, how little information there is in the public sphere toward a judgment of yes. are going to have a confirmation hearing on fbi director. can president trump choose anyone who is respected by the other side that can continue this investigation? is going to be a tough sell. there is going to be a war on capitol hill over this. it s going to be the number one issue. the number to reach was going to be when did the president decide? was it his decision or not? what s impressive is that this story did not leak into that happen which is very unusual. the tick-tock will depend on a leak which we haven t had yet. bret: special report was interesting at 5:55. we will wrap it up for you after this break.
tonight. this is one of the backward and nasty executive orders the president has issued. also today thousands of anti-abortion protesters gathered in washington for the annual march for life. mike pence told the crowd the president would announce a supreme court nominee soon and trump hinted strongly at the person he s choosing. the person i pick will be a big, big i think people are going to love it. i think evangelicals, christians will love my pick. and we ll be represented very fairly. jeff zeleny begins our coverage tonight out front at the white house. trump signing a flurry of executive orders this week, up to 14, but these on immigration, do they really have teeth? reporter: indeed they do. the ones that he signed late today, they do sort of play out exactly what he talked about in the campaign, extreme vetting. it should come as no surprise, but they are going at the heart of refugees coming here to the country, particularly syrian refugees. the white house just moments ago actually released some of these orders. we are looking through them right now. but they do specifically focus muslim majority countries. this is all coming on a day when here at the white house he opened his doors for the first time to a foreign leader. i m not as fresh as you might think. reporter: president trump welcomed british prime minister theresa may to the white house pledging to uphold the special relationship with the you can you can you c united kingdom. great days lie ahead for our two peoples and our two countries. reporter: the world was watching for the first meeting with the foreign leader. yet it was the more challenging diplomatic test he s facing with mexico and russia that took center stage, the president taking steps to cool an escalating standoff with mexico. he spoke on the phone for nearly an hour today with mexican president enrique pena nieto, who cancelled a trip to the u.s. over trump s demand that mexico could do it without congress. something congress is likely to take issue with. it s something i have the right to do, something i can impose if i want. we are getting along actually very well with the mexican government. we ll see what happens. reporter: a week into his presidency, he said it s too early to say whether he will lift sanctions imposed by president obama against russian president vladimir putin. he s set to talk with putin by phone on saturday. after being criticized for his praise of the russian leader, mr. trump took a more measured approach today. how the relationship works out i won t be able to tell you that later. i ve had many times where i d thought i d get along with people and i don t like them at al all. and i ve had some i didn t think i would have much of a relationship and it turned out to be much of a relationship. reporter: the president said he believes waterboarding and other forms of torture work but would follow the lead of james research that the there are far more christians than muslims. this year the number of muslims ticked up because you had so many leaving syria and the vast majority of refugees leaving syria are muslim. specifically syria, the percentage of religions coming out of there and into the u.s. 99% muslim, less than 1% christian. to be clear, the population of syria sl almost not exclusively but the vast majority of people are muslim. latest numbers we have, 93% of the population is muslim, 5% christian. i should note that in recent years many of the christians have fled that country because of the dangers that donald trump is talking about. and most of them are concentrated around the damascus area. so donald trump is implying actually more than implying, saying in a statement the u.s. made it more difficult for christians to come in than muslims. the fact is the u.s. does not look at religion, does not give christian or muslim a benefit. it looks at the status of the refugee. the reason you have more muslim refugees coming from syria is there are more muslim refugees trying to flee syria, not because the u.s. has imposed some sort of advantage on muslim versus christian. jim sciutto, thank you very much. laying out those facts there. democratic senator jeff merkley sits in the senate foreign relations committee among others. you heard president trump say he will give priority to christian refugees. what do you think of that? i think it goes against the fundamental nature of freedom of religion in our country. it s a foundation we don t discriminate on the basis of religion. when it comes to refugee, chiselled into the foundation of the base of the statue of liberty, it says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the oppressed and afflicted of the world, not those of one religion or another. i m particularly concerned about the second half of his order addressing basically being a muslim registration operation. so i want to ask you about that. you re talking about a muslim registry. we have the order now so it would be a temporary ban on visas from a group of muslim majority countries. when he signed this executive order earlier tonight he spoke about what he wanted to accomplish. i m establishing new vetting measures to keep radical islamic terrorists out of the united states of america. we don t want them here. we know the san bernardino attacks were carried out by a woman who had come to the united states from pakistan. better vetting may have stopped her. she and her husband killed 14 innocent people. isn t trump right to establish new vetting procedures? we had this model in place and it didn t produce a single prosecution because those who would do us harm are going to circumvent that basic process. but what this does do is it feeds right into the isis message to recruit terrorists, which is that america is conducting a war on islam. so we ve had this before. it didn t work, and in fact it caused a lot of hatred towards the united states, feeds into isis rhetoric, and that makes us less safe rather than more safe. when you look just at that case as an example, they didn t check social media, didn t do certain things. i think we could all look and say we wish they had. maybe you re saying extreme vetting wouldn t accomplish that, but is he wrong to say that those processes need to be looked at? listen, the we had this exact model in place. it didn t catch the situation that occurred in california. it didn t catch anyone, not one, but it did feed a lot of the hatred of folks who felt the united states was treating muslims as second-class citizens both inside of our country and treating muslims poorly around the world. and so if you want to add to the risk to the united states, this is a good strategy. if you want the united states to be safe, absolutely, vet our folks coming into this country. we do it. but don t do it on a religious basis. so today the president, in addition to those orders he signed today, haeld press conference with the british prime minister. he talked about the weight of the office and how it has turned him towards god. this was in an interview with the christian broadcasting network. i ve always felt the need to pray, and you know that, so i would say that the office is so powerful that you need god even more because your decisions are no longer, gee, i m going to build a building in new york or i m going to do these are questions of massive life and death. there s almost not a decision that you make when you re sitting in this position that isn t a really life-altering position. so god comes into it even more so. when you hear him talk about god, does that make you more comfortable he s assuming the weight of his office or make you less comfortable? i ve been hoping as he assumes the mantel of leadership he d step back from a lot of the conspiracy and hatred of groups and start to represent all of our nation and understand how important these decisions are. i was very concerned about his comments about nuclear weapons, nuclear arms race, because if you take someone who has a massive ego and isn t taking a decision seriously, we could make mistakes that could harm the entire planet. so that s a very thoughtful statement and seeking spiritual guidance. that is a good thing. i must say, however, though, i hope he ll bring much more of that concern as he nominates people for his administration because what we have seen as a man who campaigned, he campaigned against wit wall street, he campaigned for worker, and he campaigned for draining the swamp, but we re getting the swamp cabinet of big oil, big banks, and billionaires who are very poor fit for running the departments that he s assigned them to. senator merkley sh, apprecia your time. you re welcome. next, president trump says one man has proof of massive voter fraud. who is he? and what is his evidence? plus why were the president and british prime minister holding hands at the white house today? and our special investigation series on president trump s border wall. tonight inside the vast network of tunnels under the u.s./mexican border. depending on the resiliency of the digging crew, they can go really fast really far. tiki barber running hambone!a barber shop?t hut! yes!!! surprising. yes!!! what s not surprising? how much money david saved by switching to geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. who s next? wion your certified pre-owned mercedes-benz, you can drive as far as you want for up to three years and be covered. so no matter where you go, your peace of mind and confidence will be as unlimited. as your mileage. visit the certified pre-owned sales event, now through february 28th. and learn more about our unlimited mileage warranty, only at your authorized dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. president trump not backing down on his claim of voter fraud in the election. he tweeted look toward to seeing final results. greg phillips and crew say at least 3 million votes were illegal. we must do better. so who is greg phillips and why is trump citing him as a source? drew griffin is out front. reporter: where does donald trump get his information of massive voter fraud? not from study after study, report after report, analysis after analysis that has found no evidence but from a nonprofit group that has released no evidence. its leading voice is the former executive director of the mississippi republican party. he s now ceo of a health data company based in texas and a conspiracy theorist, and this morning on cnn s new day greg phillips wouldn t say what his proof actually is. you said we know 3 million illegally voted. we didn t name a soul, a person. will you? yes. do you have the proof? yes. will you provide it? yes. can i have it? no. why? we re going to release everything to the public. when? as soon as we get done with the checks. president trump apparently can t wait either. after greg phillips appearance, the president tweeted, look forward to seeing final results of vote stand. greg phillips and crew say at least 3 million votes were illegal. we must do better. votestand is greg phillips mostly empty app site with no proof of anything. it s affiliated with true the vote, a nonprofit that raised a million dollars in 2014 according to its latest tax filing. paid half of that amount in salaries including $120,000 to its director, who raises money by hiring private fund-raisers and posting frightening but vague youtube posts like this. is election fraud a real problem? yes. how bad is it? well, we have over 800 convictions listed in our online convictions database, but that number does not scratch the surface because for every case of fraud that s actually run through the multiyear gauntlet of litigation that s generally necessary to get a conviction, another hundred cases are never prosecuted at all. how does she know that? good question. here are the facts. there is no proof of widespread voter fraud in the united states. in study after study, republican-led, democratic-led, independent-led, academic led, going back years and years, no one has been able to prove there is systemic vote fraud in u.s. elections. and we ve been down this road before. in 2002, republican president george bush with his republican attorney general john ashcroft launched the ballot access and voting integrity initiative to crack down on election crimes including vote fraud. after six years, the total number of people convicted for voter fraud, less than 150. a rutgers professor who analyzed data from the initiative concluded the percentage of illegal votes was statistically zero. and as for the elected secretaries of state who actually run elections in their states, not one, republican or democrat, has voiced any concern about massive voter fraud in the november 8 election prompting the national association of secretaries of state to say we are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by president trump. apparently not enough evidence for the president. drew griffin joins me now. also with me our washington bureau chief from the daily beat, david chalian. drew, you ve gone through the facts. we re hearing these assertions they say they ll come forward and have names. is it possible there s any way, that there s some evidence the secretaries of state have missed and everyone else has missed and there are millions of illegal votes? no. i don t know how else we can go over this but no. the people in charge of the elections are secretaries of state. that was a powerful statement. house speaker paul ryan has said i ve found no evidence. in a december 1st file big trump s own attorneys, all available evidence suggests the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud. some people, erin, are going to watch this and think we re all involved in a conspiracy, a media conspiracy, to hide the fact that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in this election, but that s a pretty big and growing conspiracy of conspirators now involving 32 republican secretaries of state i guess. pretty stunning because you have to realize that there would have had to have been coordination. this wouldn t have randomly happened sporadically all over the place. david, president trump is citing greg phillips and drew just showed us who he is. he has shown no evidence of voter fraud. you heard him there. he ll put it out when he s going to put it out, has no credibility on this issue. how dangerous is this that the president of the united states put out a tweet citing this guy by name? well, i mean, it could be dangerous. it s certainly not a wise move for the president of the united states, the leader of the free world, to be highlighting and spotlighting conspiracy theorists with no proof of what they re claiming. that s not a good thing. but i think there are two ways to think about this. if this is just donald trump smarting over the fact that he did not win the popular vote, that s one thing. and then this could be sort of a personal mission for him. but if this is donald trump as i think some of his critics fear laying the groundwork to put more strict voting regulations and rules into place to try to limit people s access to the vote, then that could become a much more serious problem. jackie, to push his unproven voter fraud allegation, trump told a story this week. he had this cocktail party at the white house and told a story about a german golfer. he said this golfer went to vote, i don t know why, but he went to vote in florida and he was turned away. latin-americans, hispanic who is he says were not citizens voted. turns out the story is not true. but trump apparently was told the story, running with it, telling people, using it to bolster his claim. what does this mean about how he s going to govern? this is governing by anecdote. i hope this isn t how. it s like an episode of gossip girl. it s not usually what comes out of the oval office. a guy told a guy who may have been that guy s cousin that there was voter fraud. it doesn t make sense. it doesn t inspire confidence. one would hope that, you know, perhaps he would get his sourcing a little better before he makes these kind of wild very serious allegations having to do with the electoral process. but, yeah, once you started digging into this, the daughter of that german golfer said trump and this golfer aren t even friends. so the whole story was sort of blown up with a couple phone calls. drew, this happened before president george w. bush ordered an investigation into voter fraud. it took six years. you report fewer than 150 people were criminally convicted. that was after six years of investigating. a lot of money spent on an investigation. trump is looking for 3 million to 5 million convictions. i just don t know where he s going with this, how he would possibly get the money to do this. obviously the republicans in his own party are just, you know, holding their nose and hoping this all goals away. but to jackie s point, you know, i heard the same thing out in the street. i was in fayetteville, north carolina. you hear these stories. a guy comes up and says a bus driver told me he drove around black church members to voting place to voting place. they believe this stuff. you start asking questions like oh, really? do you know the bus driver? no. do you know the bus company? no. do you remember the cloud cover of the bus? no. but they believe it and this is the kind of conspiracy theorys that keep driving these issues. one other point. if there are 3 million to 5 million illegal votes, why is it only donald trump who is complaining? there are other people on the ballot. and even if the white house recently pointed to california and new york, don t you think that if you were somebody on the ballot in california and new york and you lost that you would be raising nobody else is raising this concern. if those votes came in certain states it would have flipped the election so if hillary clinton thought there was anything in this, she would be yelling loud and clear. thanks to all three and drew for that amazing reporting. next, president trump s threatening a massive tax on mexico. my guest is the founder of patrone tequila. he says americans will pay that price. and our special series takes you to the u.s./mexican border. footage from inside tunnels used by smugglers and immigrants. the imagination of people trying to illicitly trying to come north is something i don t second guess. they re incredible. (vo) do not go gentle into that good night, old age should burn and rave at close of day; rage, rage against the dying of the light. do not go gentle into that good night. in the largest heart failure study ever, entresto was proven to help more people stay alive and out of the hospital than a leading heart failure medicine. women who are pregnant must not take entresto. it can cause harm or death to an unborn baby. don t take entresto with an ace inhibitor or aliskiren. if you ve had angioedema while taking an ace or arb medicine, don t take entresto. the most serious side effects are angioedema, low blood pressure, kidney problems, or high potassium in your blood. tomorrow, i m gonna step out with my favorite girl. ask your doctor about entresto. and help make the gift of tomorrow possible. back along the southern border. this time in california with incredible access to an underground network of drug smuggling tunnels that stretch from mexico beneath the existing border fence into the united states. here s ed lavendandera with the story you ll see only out front. reporter: for years the vigilance along the southern border has been growing. border agents kriz crossing the remote terrains and urban streets, ground scenters and high powered cameras keeping constant watch. now smugglers go where the cameras and eyes can t see them. we are in a tunnel underneath otay mesa, california, south of san diego on the border with tijuana, mexico. this is a tunnel that wbr id= wbr19680 /> stretched about 7650 feet from tijuana into a warehouse or would have stretched into a warehouse on the other side of the border and we re about 70 feet underground /b> right now. that s one of the deeper tunnels we ve found. reporter: lance is part of a specialized team of border patrol agents known as the tunnel rats. they work underground, 1/2 gaiting newly discovered tunnels and sewer systems. reporter: do you think these tunnels started appearing as a response as more fencing went up in this area? oh, i m sure it probably did. but we re also still talking there s a lot of stuff they have to move. reporter: homeland security officials say in the last ten years nearly 30 tunnels have been discovered just in the san diego area alone. they will continue to go on between the u.s. and mexican border, yes, it will continue. there s a way that these drug trafficking organizations can stay undetected and it s by tunneling, they will. reporter: this is usually a wbr-id= wbr20280 /> high-dollar, high, you know, risk/reward enterprise. it s a lot of stuff that they ve got to move in a relatively short amount of time. reporter: he says the tunnels are used to move large packs of marijuana and cocaine and often lined with electrical power and ventilation. this one had a rail system in it. reporter: how long does it take to build something like this? depend ong the resiliency of the digging crew, they can go really fast really far. is it by hand, by shovel? basically almost exclusively by hand with power tools. reporter: when these things started popping up, what was your reaction to that? the imagination of people trying to illicitly come north is something i don t try to second-guess. i mean, it is they re incredible, some of the methods they use. reporter: fighting this ingenuity below ground has fundamentally changed life on the border above ground. alycia and chris martin spend their lives straddling both sides of the border. they own organic farms in mexico and a produce distribution business and one of the most unique restaurants in mexico. the restaurant is called the rock. yes, it is. yeah. la roca. reporter: because your uncle built this into the side of this mountain. that s me. reporter: as a child she remembers freely crossing the border into mexico. this is our farm. we d come down in our bathing suits as kids, get the popsicle, get the ice cream and go back. reporter: with immigration controls tightening on the u.s. side and the fear of cartel violence, the restaurant has struggled to keep its doors open. it was all of a sudden somebody came in and hit the light switch and there was nobody. there was nobody in town. there was nobody on the street. they re difficult problems to solve, throwing up trade barriers, putting up a wall. there s such harsh approaches to the problems. once again you re treating a symptom and you re not going after the root cause of the problem. reporter: perhaps no place symbolizes the impact of tightened border security quite like this place. this is one of the smallest legal border checkpoints you re going to find. this is the crossing in big ben national park. literally two little boats and a guy who rows you across. it s a small town of 200 people. its lifeline is the tourists that venture across the rio grand for the tama lays at jose falcon s restaurant. it s very nice to live here. reporter: lilia runs the restaurant her father opened in 1973, but after 9/11, the united states closed the border crossing and the town slowly started dying. falcons had to close. the entry point reopened almost four years ago and falcon s is back. but lilia falcon worries about donald trump s crackdown on immigration and border security. if that border crossing goes then the town again will be dead again. it would be hard, very hard again. we wouldn t like to go through it again. reporter: it s the chance of taking this rowboat to tore side that just might be the best $5 you ll ever spend. ed, you ve travelled the length of the entire southern border, almost 2,000 miles. you ve seen the wall that exists, seen where it stop, seen the mountains, seen the rivers, the tunnels. what has stood out the most? reporter: there s little moments like that in south texas where we saw a stack of ladders that had been abandoned next to one of the border walls, clearly left by migrants who had used these ladders to scale over that wall. full of moments like that. but overall what has really struck me this week reporting this series is the sense that you get from people that the changes they expect to see here at the dawn of the donald trump administration is very similar to the changes that were sparked in the years after 9/11. and there s that sense from these border communities that the changes will be that dramatic here in the years ahead. all right. ed lavandera, thank you for that incredible series that i think has opened the eyes for so many watching. out front now, i want to go to the former arizona sheriff. thank you, sheriff. i appreciate you taking the time. of course. ed lavandera has spent the past month on this special series traveling across the american/mexican border. tonight you saw the massive tunnels. i know you re familiar with those. yes. one where we see ed right now 70 feet underground. right. underneath the existing fence that exists. so do you still think a wall is the right answer? i mean, you can t put a wall 70 feet below the ground. if you do, they go down 80, right? they ve got ventilation, electricity. they ve got it wired for rail. right. well, i could tell you that largely what we re looking at, there s the illegal immigration issue, there s the drug smuggli smuggling issue, which are largely these tunnels are used almost exclusively for, and then there s the larger issue which i think wasn t eve an part of this conversation, is the national security threat posed by an unsecured border. look, if we had over a half a million just basic illegals, people who wanted to come here to the united states for a better life, for a job, for health care, whatever purpose, far more never were apprehended. so it stands to reason that if basic illegals can come in here in that volume, that people that have terrorist intentions with military training and deliberate plans could sneak through as well. i understand your point. this has been raised by middle eastern leaders and others. fair point. i m getting at would the wall stop them or anyone else that wants to come in? yes, it would. why? and the reason i say that, i served as an army officer commanding up to 1,100 soldiers in yuma. there not only when you had 14-foot-tall corrugated steel, no-climb fence, far more important than the fence is enforcing the law. when there s real consequences behind it, and that s what we haven t had, under both democrats and republicans. there s a lot of blame to go around. donald trump is going to enforce the laws currently on the books. that s one thing but isn t that different than the wall? we went through the tunnel issue, 70 feet underground. a wall doesn t help with that. he found the stacks of ladders. the wall in many places ed went, it s 10 to 20 feet high, easy to scale or use a ladder. eld was able to go under the wall, slither underneath it in a couple places. i see your point about consequences and all your points there s a proof of concept it does. in yuma that i point out 94% reduction in illegal entries. that s a secure border. that s what it looks like. and it s because you have physical barrier but you also need the enforcement. there s nine sectors of the border patrol along the southwest border an very few were actually enforcing what was called streamline. an actual consequence if you breached that barrier, that wall, you were deported and there were consequences behind it. most of the border there was disparate enforcement. full catch and release was happening and so when there s no consequence and no enforcement, of course, my deputies have arrested people 16, 22 times. they keep returning. and hay whooi wouldn t they? because there s no consequence or punishment. that s what s really been the issue here, far more than a wall, far more than any other issue that people think is going to solve it. it s going to be enforcement of u.s. laws. all right, sheriff. thank you very much. i appreciate your time. thank you, erin. anytime. next, my next guest is the founder of patron, the tequila. he ll tell you exactly how much more it will cost you to buy a bottle of patron if trump enforces his tax. and donald trump echoing steve bannon, calling the media the opposition. untains, and racetra. and now much of that same advanced technology is found in the audi a4. with one notable difference. the highly advanced audi a4, with available traffic jam assist. 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if it comes into effect, unfortunately with all due respect, the mexican government doesn t pay for it, the u.s. consumer does. if the tax comes across, we have to raise our prices. we can t make the tequila in the united states. our quality tequila has to be made in mexico by law, can t make it here, so it s passed on to our distributor, onto the retailer, which will pass on o e the consumer. when that happens, will people stop buying patron? probably not because people want to treat themselves to the quality, but will it affect the mexican government? i think it will affect the united states citizen more than the u.s. government, i really do or if the mexican government. in your individual case, a few dollars more with that tax? it will be a few dollars more a bottle with the tax but the consumer in the united states will be paying for it, not the mexican government. i think we have to take a different look at that. when you talk about that, this tax, that s what it means for patron. we buy auto parts, car, truck, a lot of oil. it s the fourth biggest supplier of oil to the united states. trump was asked about the point you re making, he said the tax, whether it would be passed along to consumers here in america. and i want to play for you his answer and get your reaction. sure. well, i think some of it may get passed along but it also creates jobs. so i m not against something like that but with respect to mexico something else could happen which would be much more positive for both mexico and the united states. he says i think some may get passed along but it also creates jobs. fair? well, you have to not quite. we have to really think this one out a little bit because oil, for example, and food is a commodity. if you raise the price by 20% because of whatever taxation there is, the consumer at the other end is going to pay for it. they re going to pay for it across the line. so i think they may want to think that one out a little bit. you ll be paying more for vegetables, more for gas that comes from mexico, and if such a large percentage that we use comes from mexico, it only makes sense that the only gas companies have to charge more money. so the u.s. consumer s going to pay for it. mr. trump is a smart fellow and i think mr. trump wants to do what s right, but i do think they have to think this out a little bit more. now, when it comes to renegotiating maybe a trade pact, that s different. i know when i ship into mexico for paul mitchell hair care products, we have a duty of 16%, so we have to charge a little more money to the mexican people. they pay it because the quality of the product. so going both ways it definitely affects one another. but i know that going down there, we get charged 16% going down. which i think is actually an important point because people may conflate the wall with nafta itself. and off lot of issues with that. but you re saying as part of ngata, when they sell here, they there s no tariff, right? that s why he s talking about putting one on. when you go down there, you re paying right now 16% tariff. that is correct. that is correct. that s correct. there s no question about it. but going back to mexico paying for the wall, the way it s stated right now, i m sure they ll review it and change it a little bit, the u.s. consumer pays for it, not mexico. i think they ll look at it maybe a little more seriously and figure out what may work and won t work. i think across the line a 20% tax i don t think will be advantageous to our people or jobs. it won t affect our jobs as far as i know one bit. unless he only charged people that were u.s. manufacturers that ship it right back to the united states, maybe that s different. i don t know. maybe it will equalize what money they re saving so they ll hire more people in this nation. i don t know. but when it comes to things like products made in mexico that can t be made anywhere else or commodities like food, it s the american citizens that pay for it. they may want to rethink that. john paul, thank you very much. for all of that information. appreciate it. pleasure. and next, we re going to go inside the white house to find out who is closest literally because we have a seat map, people, to the ultimate seat of power. who s d closest to trump? sara murray is out front. reporter: donald trump s west wing is packed with a team of advisers with often sharp elbows. in the midst of a tumultuous first week in the west wing, it appears trump is adopting the management style that suited him in business and helped him win the white house. and trying to apply it to washington s bureaucracy. put me into the boardroom as your representative and i will deliver for you like no politician has ever delivered, believe me. believe me. reporter: previous presidents have churned to their chief of staff to ensure order in the white house. trump has lavished praise on him. reince is fantastic. reince has been an unbelievable leader. reporter: but he s given reince priebus equal authority to steve bannon, trump s chief strategist and senior counselor. they re joined in the white house by counselor to the president, kellyanne conway, someone trump holds in high esteem. there is no den she will not go into. when my men are petrified to go on a certain network, i say kellyanne, will you absolutely, no problem. and she gets on and just destroys them. reporter: rounding out is jared kushner. i sort of stole her husband. he is so great. reporter: his influence grew throughout the campaign and trump trusts him completely. when it comes to the prime white house real estate, priebus claims the office traditionally reserved for the chief of staff, complete with a fireplace and conference table. kushner snapped up the spot closest to the oval office and bannon is sandwiched between them. conway is settling into a space on the second floor previously inhabited by obama senior adviser valerie jarrett. money, money, money trump has a penchant for competing power centers and a variety of viewpoints. in his view, that means the strongest proposal wins but it can breed turf wars and internal rivalries. david axelrod, who worked in the obama administration, served up even stronger warnings, noting a model chain of command and staff spats can lead to severe kwepss. there is a big difference between running the trump organization or even a campaign and running the white house because the decisions and statements and actions a white house takes can have grave implications, mortal implications, for people here and around the world. reporter: sara murray, cnn, washington. thanks to sarah. with the xfinity tv app,