across, not roads, but more like rivers with a few bags in their hands. th they just grabbed a few snacks, pillows. in many cases they were carrying pets. as we talked about last night, still one of the big issues is power. 100% of the island not having power right now, only those that can get to generators, also, the first thing people still ask me is, do you have signal. people desperate to find out the condition of loved ones who they can t get to because of flooding many because of debris? and loved ones who can t get out, because of that same reason. the government has announced that fema has critical supplies right now enroute to puerto rico, and that is via ship. anderson. what are some of the main priorities now that the storm has passed? power for the government. i mean, they have already before maria even came here, the government said that they believed that it would take not days, not weeks, but rather months to restore power. remember, this is a power system that lacks maintenance and infrastructure. so power is going to be a big deal. and the communication issue, not just for puerto ricans on this island. for tourists on this island, but also, as i spoke to emergency management officials right now, just trying to work logistics, just trying to get to the poem who need help. even they are dealing with a communication issue. so many factors, debris, floods, roads that you can t use. major roads, interstates, communication, power, it s just a combination of factors that for many puerto ricans on this island tonight, it s a nightmare. leyla santiago. earlier tonight i spoke to san juan s mayor, she said the city she knew no longer exists. people at home are elderly, they don t have their insulin, they lost their heart medications, they lost their blood pressure medications. and if we don t get to them in ti time, it is those that i cannot get to that really worry me the most. san juan s mayor tonight. joining us by phone, carlos ramos. what can you tell us about the extent of the damage to the power grid? well, anderson, the whole island has been devastated and so has the electric power system. you know, we have expect it today on two of the transmission lines, and we found over 40 transmission line towers completely crumbled. and on other areas, we found conductors down. and we still have no communications with two of our power plants. so it s devastating. i mention in some areas, there s still flooding, even beginning to work on that is going to be difficult. how long do you foresee taking to get power restored. well, you know, we re working on priorities first and foremost. the same level of priorities, we have the hospitals and water system, water treatment plants and pumping stations. we have a plan will shortly bring power to at least the central medical center, which is our largest public facility for medical services and where the federal government and the health aid is going to be operating from. at least that center should have power within the next three days. so those hospitals, do they have i assume they have generators now? they do. but those are emergency generators, they need to be stopped frequently for oil and filter changes. and some of them are somewhat outdated. even before the hurricane hit, i know your company was facing serious issues, including, but not limited to needing $4 billion to update outdated power plants. is that fair to say? you were facing big struggles before this? well, in preparation, title 3 under the law, which is basically a title a bankruptcy scenario, and we were requesting liquidity of close to $1 billion per year, for the next 10 years, in order to update the power generation system. and it s completely outdated. but, you know, this administration with the governor, our plan was to modernize it as quickly as possible, and make it a utility of the future. possible, of course, keeping our people safe. you have a big job ahead of you, i appreciate your time tonight, thank you. just ahead, the earthquake, the latest from mexico, areas closer to the quakes epicenter. i count on my dell small business advisor for tech advice. with one phone call, i get products that suit my needs and i get back to business. sfx: t-mobile mnemonic sfx: t-mobile mnemonic sfx: t-mobile mnemonic t-mobile s unlimited now includes netflix on us. that s right, netflix on us. get four unlimited lines for just forty bucks each. taxes and fees included. and now, netflix included. so go ahead, binge on us. another reason why t-mobile is america s best unlimited network. sfx: t-mobile mnemonic i am so busy. so i ve asked chase sapphire reserve cardmembers to scout the world to find my next vacation. dija, where is that? 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[fbi agent] you re a brave man, your testimony will save lives. mr. stevens? this is your new name. this is your new house. and a perfectly inconspicuous suv. you must become invisible. [hero] i ll take my chances. the death toll in mexico climbed again today. it s approaching 300. it will most likely climb because people are still unaccounted for or trapped in the rubble. natural disasters not only caused by changing destruction, they also bring chaos and confusion. the chase in point the school in mexico city, a girl believed to still be trapped. that turned out not to be the case. part of the fog of war in these circumstances. in addition, we re just now getting access to areas beyond the capitol, in the state southeast of mexico city, the quake damaged a church killing a girl who was being baptized as well as 11 others. 9700 homes, 100 plus government buildings were damaged in the tremors, elsewhere it s even worse. what s the damage where are you and what s the damage like? i m in a town here called this. street lamps are working right now, there s some electricity here. and what s remarkable is in the two days since the destruction and death and the shock of the earthquake. a lot of the roads have been cleaned up. i know on your journey there, you encounter a lot of people who were volunteers, who wanted to help? that s really something that s incredible about this. and you may be hearing applause, this is from volunteers who are in the area here helping clean up. on our drive from mexico city, we passed convoy after convoy of people driving, passenger vehicles with handwritten signs saying they re bringing assistance. and everywhere you turn in this town and in the surrounding areas, you see volunteers who are distributing everything from medical supplies to food to drinks. a woman came up offering me water just now, there s an incredible grassroots mobilization, not just in the capit capitol, but it s spread out into the countryside. it s not just ordinary mexicans, it s international as well. i came in on a flight today from tokyo, with japanese disaster relief, with a team of helmeted uniformed police officers. when they arrived at mexico city airport, they were greeted by applause, cheers and tears of gratitude. as everybody comes to try to help mexico in the wake of this deadly natural disaster. just in terms of the noise we re herring around you, is that an area where people are being searched for? what is the applause about? is it encouraging searchers or what? there are volunteers who are helping clean away some of the rubble. i m not sure what they were cheering about just now, there s also a great deal of pride i m hearing from volunteers. i talked to a 15-year-old high school student who had been out helping clean things up. one of the things the volunteers say they need is basically port-a-potties because the sewage treatment is messed up right now. people who can t be in their homes right now, that s one of the things people say they need on the ground right now. again, i don t think i ve ever seen quite such a mobilization on a grassroots level of volunteers as i ve seen here in the wake of this natural disaster. ivan watson, appreciate that report. just after the earthquake in haiti in 2010, i had the honor of watching fire and rescue. one of the people we talked to on the ground as they worked, was captain jason vasquez, part of his team is now in mexico. he joins me now. thanks so much for being with us. when you see the destruction in mexico, and you see the huge crowds of people working on a site. is it is there a challenge with having so many people on one site? is there benefit to having fewer people or is it is just more hands better? well, they sent us down to haiti, we had a search team looking for worksites with rescue teams to follow us up. and rescue those victims. we break it up into a search component and a rescue component. as one site is being worked on, we ll have a small team out looking for other worksites for our guys, so we re not wasting any time. i was with your team when a woman came up to your team on a street, a mother who said her daughter was trapped and we re showing some of the video from back then. and your team spent i mean, just heroic hours combing through that wreckage, putting in sensors, sending the dog in, you believed you heard something, people believed the dogs seemed to indicate life, and then sadly after many hours, there was no more sign of it. i m just wondering, in terms of how much does is this like technology dependent, having those sensors, the microphones you can put down, those listening devices, cameras and the dogs. each one of those components in itself is equal to its worth. listening devices can listen through concrete up to 20 feet. the rescue you re talking about, was actually pretty interesting, that one we had half our team working on that site. we went walking distance probably a city block. the next morning that s when we rescued three victim the. we were still in that fast light mobil stage. we maybe stopped the search around 10:00. then we did some more searching that evening, and our crews went to work that morning. that s incredible. how long have you seen someone pulled out of the wreckage still alive after an event like this? i can t remember i remember in haiti, there was an elderly woman pulled out more than a week after, what have you seen in your career? i believe the max i ve seen is about 10 days. but that s not saying somebody can be stuck, just stuck somewhere with food and water, that can extend their life span. also, depending on the condition of the person. are they trapped. the one we were talking about, that lady was pinched and it was close to 7 days, we got her out. am i right in saying you create a grid of an area, and each team is responsible for that grid? one of our trainings is set getting the area in sectorizing it up, a grid. we ll focus a heavy team on each one of those grids, so we re not wasting time. right now, time is our enemy right now. captain vasquez, i appreciate you taking time to talk to us. i ve never forgotten the hours i spent watching your team, extraordinarily professionals doing their job, and as you said, moving on to save other lives. thank you for that, thank you for talking to us tonight. thank you, sir. have a good night. coming up next, the russian investigation, and major change of face, when it comes to providing possible evidence from facebook. we ll have details when we continue. integrate any part of your business, and have your systems work as one. the ibm cloud. the cloud for enterprise. yours. what twisted ankle?askse. what muscle strain? advil makes pain a distant memory nothing works faster stronger or longer what pain? advil. i enjoy the fresher things in life.o. fresh towels. fresh soaps. and of course, tripadvisor s freshest, lowest. .prices. so if you re anything like me. .you ll want to check tripadvisor. we now instantly compare prices. .from over 200 booking sites. .to find you the lowest price. .on the hotel you want. go on, try something fresh. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices. advertising, fake accounts. we re seeing efforts to try to drive people to rallies, i wish that facebook would be more transparent and forthcoming. most americans want to know if foreign based paid advertising is coming into our elections. most americans are going to ant to know if fake accounts by foreigners are driving content and we ought to be able to take a look at that content. let s talk this over with our panel. should they be giving over that s there s obviously a desire to protect their advertisers, protect people who do business with facebook. we ve seen this before, we ve seen technology companies be caught in a bind. they don t want to be seen as compromising their users. that s been a huge quagmire for facebook in the past. they re sensitive on that side to want to not provide internal information to the government. but then this is a different matter, and this is something that they haven t had to grapple with before this issue of propaganda. i think we re very much seeing this play out in realtime, as they try to make these calculations and figure out where their values are. a russian propaganda used facebook to organized more than a dozen pro trump rallies in florida last year. it s fascinating the degree to which. i don t think five years ago, anyone would have thought that facebook would have such a role in a u.s. election? yeah, i mean, some people believe the 2016 election was the facebook election. the number of people who use their news feed to get all of the information for the day is huge. the total spending was $6.8 billion. they ve identified $100,000 in facebook ads. proverbial drop in the bucket. it s important to identify it, and do what facebook has said they re going to do. be transparent, crack down on bad actors and work with congress. i wondered about how we should view facebook today. and i m thinking about the way we view other telecommunications platforms. if someone were to abuse automated telephone call, we don t get mad at the phone company, we get mad at the bad actors. it s interesting to me, are they a telecommunications platform or a news organization. what do you think it means for the investigation? if facebook is handing over how important do you think it could be or not important. i want to make one point of clarification. $100,000 versus the 6.0 billion. buying ads on facebook are incredibly cheap, compared to buying television spots. it sounds like it was nothing. but that isn t nothing. $100,000 out of 6 billion is still a small amount. you re minimizing. they re more targeted to an audience than an ad running i think that s a little trump spin to keep things down, and that s all we know of it. look, i think there s an interesting parallel in this to me, if you look back a couple years ago, when really the issue of online bullying and online sexual predators started to get more attention, maybe eight years ago or so. and facebook and the other platforms said, there s nothing we can do. we have to be hands off, all we can do is help train parents. that perspective evolved, and they knew they had to had a responsibility. i think we re seeing this here too, they re saying they have a responsibility. but and i think we ll continue to see that evolution from social media. from an investigative perspective, the sense that this was going to be a narrow focus on just one aspect relating to russia, that sean spicer and others called fake news, that s blown out of the water, we re now bringing facebook into it. they re part of the investigation. if you believe this is going to happen again in the next round and the next round, it s only going to increase with sites like facebook and others. they built this gigantic machine, and it s eye little ironic, but perfectly appropriate that it s now through that social network they re being called to account. people understand that $100,000 is pretargeted and can do all kinds of fancy stuff is an enormous amount of money, if it was a radio station, if it was a television station, that was like pumping out stuff to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, with targeted messages, we would all be pretty clear there was something seriously going on. a violation of the laws that problem hit foreign interfere e interference. they are taking zuckerberg on this tour, as if he s going to be a national candidate, and they still might be. you can t get that deep into politics and then say, we re just the phone company. facebook is really facing the unintended consequences of having two billion users, from a business perspective, everyone was in awe with how this company grew. i was surprised, that as soon as people started questioning facebook s role. we had absolutely no involvement in this election at all, all we are is a social networking site. the fact that they re complying right now, it could be a catchup on zuckerberg s i recently saw this piece on 60 minutes about brain hacking and how companies target people. the people that said to me, a guy that works in this. we think we re the customers of facebook, we re not the customers of facebook, coca kwoel la and the advertisers, they re the ones that are paying nobody s paying for facebook. publicishers are the customers of facebook. the vast majority of our traffic comes from facebook. that s where so many people get their news. we re at the mercy of this sort of opaque machine that controls what people get to see. they tweak the algorithm and it changes the economics of the news business. they ve always wanted to have that power without the responsibility. we ll have more from the panel. including a possible new catch of documents from sean spicer. details on that next. just like the people yet up to 90% fall short on getting key nutrients. let s do more. one-a-day 50 plus. complete with 100% daily value of more than 15 key nutrients. one-a-day 50 plus. the whole country booking on choice hotels.com. four words, badda book. badda boom. let it sink in. shouldn t we say we have the lowest price? nope, badda book. badda boom. have you ever stayed with choice hotels? like at a comfort inn? yep. free waffles, can t go wrong. i like it. promote that guy. get the lowest price on our rooms, guaranteed. when you book direct at choicehotels.com. book now. my time on the campaign, i was not aware of any contacts or any collusion with russian officials. i stand by that. during his time on the campaign, not aware of, that s not a wholehearted denial. i want to bring back in the panel. the idea that sean spicer was keeping these detailed notes makes sense. does it make sense? you shouldn t write everything down. that s inadvisable. if you re in the white house or you re about to go to work there. this is what happens you write everything down and an investigation starts. this is how these things unravel. i was disturbed when i heard that today. the advice you would get from probably lawyers and others who had been around before is don t do that. the reason to write everything down, if you don t trust the people around you, and you want to protect yourself. think about why james comey was writing everything down. if he was accused of something, or might forget something that he felt weird about, he thought wassicy, he could point to notes from that time. i m not saying that s what happened here, that would be one reason other than writing a memoir. this could have been his m.o. he was a meticulous note taker it may not be specifically trump related. it is something that every single person that knew him seemed to be aware of. people will wish they were nicer to sean, he was in a lot of meetings. you do get to settle some scores. the grand daddy of all of these situations is richard nixon. who sets up a wiretapping system, so his advisers and generals could not later say the president didn t follow my advice on vietnam. he invents the machine that is the engine of his destruction. you ve got to really be careful with this stuff, if you want to settle scores, fight with people, make sure that everybody knows you re right. if you want to maybe protect yourself legally, it creates a much better problem than you might realize. we asked jeff toobin whether spicer s notes would be covered under executive privilege. he said the key issue would be whether the information is central to the functioning of the executive branch against the competing need from law enforcement or congress. i think it would be very unlikely, this would end up getting covered by i have never worked in the white house, my thought was like, everybody must be taking extensive notes. no, i don t think that s the case. somebody everybody does do though is e-mail. in addition to writing everything down, people tend to e-mail everything back and forth to each other. there s a whole separate record that will have to get sorted out. i was stunned when i heard there was a line by line diary. when you re working do people e-mail each other in a casual way? can you believe that meet something. yes. or do people have a sense this is best talked about over coffee at the starbucks down the block? yes, people e-mail each other casually. i was interviewed for some investigations and all the casual banter gets brought up, because you might be having casual banter and three e-mails later, by the way, i forgot, i wefrn the to this policy meeting, now all of that is in the matrix, and so i would think in this day and age, given everything we know about how no e-mail is ever private, people would be doing that less. i m stunned by e-mails i get from people thinking, why did you put that in an e-mail. it s better to be discrete and less is more. . the thing about the spicer interview. the phrase he used over and over and over. that is the way somebody who is under investigation and has lawyered up. answers questions. you can t say he s under investigation. you can t say just a wise way to answer. there s no doubt he s probably a witness, you can t say. i said those questions were answered in the way somebody who has lawyered up would answer them. a way that somebody who is either under investigation or part of an investigation and has lawyered up answers questions. if there are you know there are investigations going on, whether you re going to be called in or whether you have been called in or the focus of it. it s probably just better to say, i m not going to reresponded to that at all. or maybe not to give interviews at all. clearly he s looking for a gig, you know. everyone should agree to go on television. i don t know why you take that call. it underscores the fact that mueller s not conducting some sort of broad hypothetical academic inquiry, he s looking for evidence of crimes, looking to find if there s somebody that can be put in handcuffs. everybody is lawyering up for that reason. there s hammering upstairs, i m not going to raise my voice about it. everyone stick around. the latest on senate republicans effortses to repeal and replace obama care. what one gop senator is saying about the political realities when we come back. t-mobile s unlimited now includes netflix on us. that s right, netflix on us. get four unlimited lines for just forty bucks each. taxes and fees included. and now, netflix included. so go ahead, binge on us. another reason why t-mobile is america s best unlimited network. sfx: t-mobile mnemonic over the course of 9 days sthe walks 26.2 miles,. that s a marathon. because he chooses to walk whenever he can. and he does it with support from dr. scholl s. only dr. scholl s has massaging gel insoles that provide all-day comfort to keep him feeling more energized. so he even has the energy to take the long way home. keep it up, steve! dr. scholl s. born to move. we are not here to sit idly by. we are here.to leave a mark. experience a shift in the natural order. experience amazing. if you have moderate to severe plaque psoriasis,. .isn t it time to let the real you shine through? 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at this point no. most people know how popular this bill is. the question is, do they make a short term decision now that could end up biting them in midterms and years to come? you re going to see a lot of their constituents actually suffer if we re to believe these numbers that we re starting to see. we don t have a cbo score yet. is this about politics or policy? i think the politics are important here. the senators went home in august and got an earful about why they failed to keep their campaign promises. i think keeping campaign promises is important. i think one of the most compelling arguments is the concept of federalism. returning power and money to state governments. putting health care decisions closer to the patients. i read a fascinating article by a guy named bernie belvedere. state governments can t print money. if you re a fiscal conservative and you want fiscal restraint in our national health care system. the government can print money to make up shortfalls. the argument was, fiscal conservatives ought to get behind this bill. i m a proponent of keeping promises i think politics is important. you know, republicans made this repeal and replace promise, right? there were other promises made. by candidate trump and president-elect trump he promised there will be no elimination or reduction of coverage for pre-existing conditions. so i don t what the senator said was, although not surprising, terrible. a clear example of why americans hate congress. if you re going to go with that theory, why does that one matter? repeal and replace, and pre-existing conditions out of the president s own mouth, why doesn t that count we heard that the legislation does not mandate it. and to track with your state s argument, which i don t over all agree with the legislation that will give states the power to wave out of any pre-existing conditions in the bill. basic health essentials is a broad definition that we don t know the full purview of. it gives them the power to keep it. i m glad you brought up the concept of promises. the law we re talking about repealing was also sold on promises. keep your doctor if you want to. your premiums are going down by $2500. it was sold on a millar of lies. promises are important, i agree with you. the law we have right now was sold on a bunch of broken promises. if you don t like obama care, that s a debate. we re debating what it needs to be replaced with. pre-existing conditions are critical in getting people health care in america. i don t disagree with you. i think this, whatever. i m not even going to go there. you know what? if you have cancer and you have cancer and you need health care, i don t think you care at all whether a senator wrote the bill, a state senator, a city council member. what you want to know is that you have coverage. if your child has leukemia, you want to know when you put him down in his bed that when he wakes up and it s, you know, the next day or next week after september 30th that he can get the same coverage he could have got two months ago. that and this bill, by your own admission, does not rock solid mandate that. under this if a state does decide to waive it or a state decides to not have that they can charge as much as they want to cover pre-existing condition, is that okay? because it s a state s decision. well, the state needs to design the healthcare system that works best for that population. i think these states are drastically different and we ve seen that in some of the medicaid spending levels. you brought up the concept does politics matter here, yes. when you can run into your state representative at the grocery store when you can run into the people that make these decisions, i think politics will probably do what you want at the state level, which is keep a lot of these protections because you can actually get to the people making the decision. you can t get to any federal but when you get to them what do you say to a state that flamboyantel rejected medicaid expansion. we don t want it, we don t need the federal government. keep your dollars. you re going to bust all of our taxes wide open. and then a couple years later say you know what? take from the states that did the expand. now we ll gleefully accept the money. that s also a broken promise and it doesn t look like a very good way to sort of handle an issue that states already made their decision. and let s be clear. we re talking about putting very sick americans in a place with no coverage, and that, quite frankly, is a disgrace. we ve got to leave it there. coming up, sean spicer gets asked whether he lied to the american people. the ridiculous is next. keep your insights from prying eyes, so they won t be used by anyone but you. the ibm cloud. the cloud for enterprise. yours. the cloud for enterprise. [fbi agent] you re a brave man, your testimony will save lives. mr. stevens? this is your new name. this is your new house. and a perfectly inconspicuous suv. you must become invisible. [hero] i ll take my chances. well that wasn t so bad at all. that s how we like it. aarp medicare plans, from unitedhealthcare. did you know slow internet can actually hold your business back? say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet that s 10 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. say hello to faster downloads with internet speeds up to 150 megabits per second. get fast internet and add phone and tv now for only $34.90 more per month. call today. comcast business. built for business. time now for the ridiculous. have you sever wondered what kind of hole gets punched into time and space when somebody lies and then pretty much admits they lied. much like a prayerry dog in the grass lands sean spicer popped up again today. have you ever lied to the american people? i don t think so. you don t think so? nope. i don t cheat on my taxes. unequivocally you can say no? look, again, if you want i have not knowingly done anything to do that, no. all right. you can take the man from the podium, bt you can t take the podium from the man. he was asked have you ever lied to the american people. that, my friends is kind of a yes-or-no question. his answer, his third answer, by the way after i don t think so and i don t cheat on my taxes was i have not done anything knowingly to do that. that answer is to washington, d.c. it should have its own reflecting pool just a nice calm place where you can sit down with your word salad and think about what you ve done. did sean spicer lie to the american people? yeah, he did. he lied about the trump tower meeting being about adoption. remember the president s claim about 3 to 5 million people voting illegally. not true but sean spicer said it was. he lied about the president getting the most electoral votes of any republican since reagan. and the list goes on and on. i m kind of sentimental so i have a soft spot for the fist time. you never really do forget the first time. i remember it was right after the inauguration when spicer spoke about president obama s and president trump s inauguration crowd and said you shouldn t believe sources like yeah eyeballs or your brain. this was the first time in our nation s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass in the mall. that had the effect of highlighting any areas where people much want standing. this was also the first time that fencing and mag that tom ters went as far back on the wall preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the mall as quickly as they had in gnawing ragsz past. no one had numbers. these attempts to lesson the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong. this was the left armest audience to witness an inauguration, period of time, both in person and around the globe. that s not mels ka mccarthy. that actually was sean spicer actually at the podium in the white house. that was his first time at the podium and it s clear he got his mring orders from on that one but he sure did commit to it, didn t he? if that wasn t pushing a line in an obvious that was almost coimmediateic, then why did this happen at the emmy s? this will be the largest audience to witness an emmy s, period. both in person and around the world. see, he s making a joke of the fact that he lied. i guess the idea is if you let some time pass, lies become funny. oh, by the way, the morning after the emmy s spicer told the new york times that he of course absolutely regrets criticizing accurate news reports that bum s inauguration was bigger than trump s? but was he telling the truth? maybe that was a lie too because two months ago on sean hannity s show said this. i no regrets. i can t think the president
reporter: the white house defending the government s response. the federal response has been anything but slow. in fact, there s been an unprecedented push through of billions of dollars of federal assistance. reporter: but the president has spent the last three days tweeting repeatedly about nfl players who kneel during the national anthem. mr. trump, continuing to fan the flames on twitter monday night. sources tell cnn that the president appears pleased with the firestorm he has created, telling a private dinner of conservative leaders it s really caught on. i said what millions of americans were thinking. administration officials tell cnn that chief of staff john kelly is not happy with the public feud but the retired military general, who lost a son in the afghanistan war, agrees with the president on the substance of the debate. meanwhile, nfl teams continue to show solidarity against president trump s comments. the entire dallas cowboys team and team owner, jerry jones, taking a knee before the anthem at last night s game, then voted for donald trump. there s nothing been like puerto rico to the same degree. partly because, unfortunately, these folks are not trump supporters and they are not top of mind. i m not talking about fema, just to be clear. fema is on the ground there. he has to please his bosses as well. they are there in earnest. it s a very difficult situation. the president, i m saying the president gave a speech to the u.n. talking about sovereignty. these are americans on that island. they are without power almost a week. combined damage total may be more than harvey and irma combined. everybody is concerned but the president is tweeting more about nfl and hillary clinton than he is about the island and when he is, he seems to be dis ing the infrastructure. is maria donald trump s katrina? abby, when the president did finally tweet about puerto rico, he obviously focused more on their economic crisis, failing infrastructure, which are true, but tone deaf. wildly tone deaf while 3.5 million americans are in dire straits down there. and wasn t that what john kelly was going to crack down on, making the message more pala palatab palatable? how do tweets like that, so roundly criticized as being insensitive, how do those sneak out? i think john kelly has not successfully cracked down on anything on the president s twitter account for over a week now. i guess you could argue over eight months now. the president is doing what he wants on social media and revealing his true feelings about the situation. i agree with john. it s really asounding that instead of a show of solidarity or sympathy for the people who are actually genuinely suffering right at this moment, the president sent 2 1/2 tweets about the failures of the puerto rican government and the debt owed to wall street. that s really not anywhere near what was happening at the federal level when it came to the other storms. maybe the president has storm fatigue, but one of the challenges of leadership at this moment is that he has to kind of continue on. when there are all of these natural disasters happening at the same time, yeah, he has to focus on all of them with the same degree of intensity. it also doesn t help that, i think, over the weekend with all this focus on the nfl, you know, the president is feeling pretty combative right now, as you can see from his twitter feed and the comments he made at dinner last night with conservatives. he s feel iing in a fighting mo. he has a great foe, chris, if he wants to fight, right? maria just about destroyed something that is under his responsibility as president of the united states. yep. he could have thrown on his khakis, got on a military transport, jumped into puerto rico and ridden around like teddy roosevelt if he wanted to. he could own that situation. he could fight that need. he could fight that distress and show i am the builder. %-p. i will show you how it s done in a time of need. and he seems to have all but ignored it. what was his twitter feed full of during hurricanes irma and harvey? where did he go visit? he was quick to go to those places. he sent out lots and lots of tweets about those places. that s the issue here. john makes this point. there s clearly a difference in the way he approached those two storms. which, by the way, in our polling he got very high marks for. two-thirds of people said he handled it quite well than the way he s handling this. when abby was talking, the thing i remember when it comes to trump, the twitter feed is him. right? everything else that comes out of the white house is sort of the form al mechanisms of government. his people, his aides. twitter feed is him. during hurricanes irma and harvey tons of tweets about those hurricanes, very focused on it clearly. it was taking up his mind space. now nfl, luther strange, that vote being today in alabama. nothing on the hurricane until last night. let s be honest. donald trump is a consumer of television. the criticism of him was starting to ramp up and so out came a tweet that was to counteract that. if you look at his tweets up until last night, there were 14 or so about the nfl and zero about puerto rico. that tells you what you need to know. there was also criticism on twitter. people reacting to his tone deaf tweets. marc anthony, famous singer, j.lo s ex. mr. president shut the blank up about nfl. do something about the people in need in puerto rico. and then hey president trump you can t wait that long. there will be a lot of american deaths if you wait that long. he was talking about the presidency measure, that it might not happen until october. 10,000 federal fema employees helping out. there are 3.5 million people without power who need help. right. still without power. an airport is basically shut down with people trying to get out. massive devastation at a scale greater than harvey and irma. it s this problem that it doesn t seem real to folks. and it does require there s the opportunity for leadership, as chris expressed. be the builder. this is a new yorker, who should understand instinctively that pewter reekians are fellow americans. it s great that the federal government is there. more needs to be done. he has been distracted by these other things speaks, as chris said, where his head is at. and, abby, he has a great year for cultural divide. whey wooi do you think he dived is it dove or dived? dove. dove into the situation? the lack of understanding as to why he did this. this is a no brainer. he loves the culture war. he always has. of course he s going to look at this nfl and say this is easy, especially with the luther strange situation going on. i will take care of that right now with the nfl. it has to be working for him. i was in the crowd in alabama friday when the president gave that speech and he was right. they really ate it up. they loved it. it tells you everything you need to know about why the president did it. he was in a mostly white crowd acres state that has a long history of racial tensions where he knew that a message like this would resonate and would resonate loudly. it all teed up to this moment in which he went really farther than he has ever gone before with the rhetoric on this issue. the president is in situation where he needs to shore up his base. he talked about this as a candidate. he talked about colin kaepernick needs to find a new country if he doesn t want to stand for the national anthem. he has talked about all of this stuff. cultural wars were part of this campaign. he was delivering on that promise friday night and at a time when health care is stalling, when he the wall is not built. there was a build the wall chant at that rally in alabama. frankly, it was kind of awkward, because the wall is not built. and the president needs to deliver for his base in one way or another. and this is a really easy way for him to do it and do it quite effectively. go ahead, john. look, the president has an instinct politically for the divisive, for the culture-war theme. he knows it. he goes after t the execution, the follow-through almost always there s major blowback. this will blow back in ways he hasn t expected with the base and with other folks. this was a fairly isolated protest that didn t have an enormous amount of sympathy. let s be honest with that. with the president weighing in, attacking individuals and statements of conscience all of a sudden you have a broad coalition of players, owners and people who care about the nfl that say they re identifying with the kneel and elevating this issue. the blowback will be something he doesn t expect. i also think very quickly, to add to john s point, look, abby is completely right about the point scoring. he looks at the nfl and sees things. rich, in his mind, entitled, and mostly black. so, in the culture wars, that s a hanging curveball to hit. the problem is, if, as president, you are primarily focused on dividing the country via issues yes, you can do it. yes, it will work for some people. it will be motivational for a group of people. the problem is, you re the president of the united states. your job is not to find ways in which to divide the country. it is, theoretically, to find ways in which to unite the country. sara sanders, the head shaking moment for her yesterday was this is not about what he s against. this is about what he s for. straight faced when she said it. i don t know how a reasonable mind can come to that conclusion. i m not saying he s not right on the issue. when the polls come out, when you ask the american people that s not the point. but that s all he s thinking about, chris. of course. that s where his head is. people will say, yeah, you should stand and that s good enough for him. it s been very telling that the white house has not been able to find any nuance whatsoever in the protests at the nfl, whereas there was all the nuance to be found after charlottesville. stick around till 7:30 eastern time, everybody. you will hear our latest trump voter panel weigh-in on all of these things. they all voted for president trump and, to a person, they are upset with him talking about this with the nfl. so you ll hear their rationale. i was surprised by that. i thought we would see camerota take off the heels and be chased around. it s just a question. but it s a little counterintuitive today. worth the watch. big day this was supposed to be do you know what this week was supposed to be about, right? health care. remember, the window is closing for the republicans to get through a bill with just a simple majority, but nothing is simple now. is it dead, this health care bill? if so, will the battle go somewhere from here? we have answers, ahead. when i look in the mirror everyday. when i look in the mirror everyday. everyday, i think how fortunate i am. i think is today going to be the day, that we find a cure? i think how much i can do to help change people s lives. i may not benefit from those breakthroughs, but i m sure going to. i m bringing forward a treatment for alzheimer s disease, yes, in my lifetime, i will make sure. can i get some help. watch his head. i m so happy. whatever they went through, they went through together. welcome guys. life well planned. see what a raymond james financial advisor can do for you. about to see progressive s new home quote explorer. where you can compare multiple quote options online and choose what s right for you. woah. flo and jamie here to see hqx. flo and jamie request entry. slovakia. triceratops. tapioca. racquetball. staccato. me llamo jamie. pumpernickel. pudding. employee: hey, guys! home quote explorer. it s home insurance made easy. password was hey guys. for it. do you know what the most popular health insurance program in america is? it s not the private insurance industry. it is medicare. medicare, yeah. my good friend, bernie, obamacare is a place holder for bernie care. bernie care is socialism full born. he is a nice man. if you want medicare for all, you re going to wind up with medicare for nobody. you ll have a card without a real choice. a lot to discuss. let s bring in our political panel back. chris cillizza, abby and john avla. i could watch them debate all night long. it was nice to see people with very different ideas, they do not agree fundamentally. i got that. but how they disagreed is how democracy that s how it should work. there s no you re crazy. get out of my face. you re crazy but i kind of like you. it was about ideas and let people digest it with their own argument. it was refreshing. it really was. that s not the way the washington, d.c. has been working. that was a good moment. deeply disagree on the issues. nobody called an s.o.b. who would have thunk it? will there be a vote on gr / graham/cassidy? i m not sure that mitch mcconnell will want to put something up for a vote that doesn t have the support. based on the folks who are a no and the options that are available to them to mullify both sides. if they do anything to target collins and murkowski at this point, rand paul will be even more staunchly a no. then you might lose folks like ted cruz and mike lee. i don t think the cards are there. frankly, you know, president trump has been, for two days now basically, been saying i ve moved on. let s get on to tax reform. one more beat on how they disagreed last night, how they voiced descent. john mccain has, once again he has been a big nail in the balloon for this, okay? and this was very tough for lindsey graham to take. listen to how lindsey graham discussed john mccain s descent on this bill. dear friend. he is one of my dearest friends in the world and john mccain can do whatever damn he wants to. he has earned that right. [ applause ] john, if you re listening, if we fall short we ll try to have a better process. nobody respects you more than i do. so to any american who has a problem with john mccain s vote, all i can tell you is that john mccain was willing to die for this country and he can vote any way he wants to. and it doesn t matter to me. [ applause ] that s touching. yes. look, it was real. it was human. and also, cillizza, please, tell me if i m wrong. who would come out and bash mccain for his vote? right. the president of the united states is going to come out and bash him for his vote. it does seem we re in a weird space where people don t want to take trump on directly. they don t want to take the beating and the backlash. trump is an active enemy. it was a huge and stark contrast we saw from the men and women on that stage versus what we re seeing out of the white house. but this, again, goes to sort of the one way he has one speed. he just does. his speed is full forward and attack, whether it s the nfl, whether it s crooked hillary, whether it s john mccain, jeff flake. we only have show is only three hours long so i m not going to list everybody. but that is what he does. it s what he feels most comfortable doing. and he doesn t seem to grasp the difference. again, i feel like we could talk about this every day. there s a difference between being a candidate for president and being president. we saw that very clearly in charlottesville, that it was, well, on many sides and then unwillingness to admit that he was wrong. we see it again, in my opinion, with the nfl versus the puerto rico disaster. he is focused on something he believes can score him political points. what will he focus on tomorrow if his chosen candidate doesn t win? he will almost in alabama? he will almost certainly attack mitch mcconnell and senate republicans because also, by the way, they are not going to get health care done. abby was nice about it. i ll be less nice. it seems i would be stunned if somehow 50 votes came out of this thing, that these people are against it and they re going to stay against it. they re already sharpening the knives to go after mcconnell inside the white house. yep. and let s be real about this, though. the president rails against people when health care fails. when it s a critical period he s off talking about anything else. this is someone who makes richard nixon look like a uniter not a divider. lindsey graham, ability to disagree. that is lacking. the white house is without moral leadership and the president doesn t seem interested to try to play in that space. last point? the president also seems to keep attacking people that he needs to vote for his policy, attacking john mccain, susan collins, lisa murkowski, rand paul, whoever it is, is not going to work. frankly, that s the one thing that he keeps doing that is very counterproductive in this process. let s talk about something astonishing. you were just going to spit it out there. you realized how much trouble that would have given us. it needs a qualifier. six white house advisers to the president, some before the president got into the white house, some current, have been using private e-mail accounts to do government business. they include ivanka trump, steve bannon, reince priebus, gary cohn. and jared kushner. here is the pushback. we ll jump to the chase. sure. no server. to give it more context, hillary clinton, obviously, was the poster child for this issue of what was disclosed and not disclosed. she spoke about this, right? do we have sound from her on this? here it is. and the hypocrisy of this administration, who knew there was no real scandal, who knew that there was no, you know, basis for all their hyperventilating. and now we re finding, as with the latest revelations, that they didn t mean any of it. right. it s just the height of hypocrisy. first, admit, you were about to huff and puff on me about the server thing but when hillary clinton comes on and says it, it takes the wind out of you. when hillary clinton comes out and says it wasn t a big deal when i did it. it s going to reinforce all the people who believe it was so bad. but what s the difference between what clinton did and these six people? because there actually should be some continuity. right? situational ethics is killing our politics. server or no server, there were e-mails. i don t care what he said. there were e-mails. this is something, imagine people close to the president would have some internal check to say, you know what? let s not use the private e-mail, server no, server. this will resonate as hypocrisy even if hillary clinton doesn t help in the overall situation. it would normally be a huge deal. in the context of the self-inflicted scandals it s going to seem small. if it was about bad judgment for hillary clinton. that s right. do we learn nothing? how can they be no. using private e-mails? the reason that the hillary clinton e-mail thing hit so hard it reinforced this idea that the clintons, broadly speaking, didn t think that the rules applied to them. so, i mean you know, this would suggest another well particularly ivanka and jared kushner, well-to-do family. they re going to do whatever they want to do. that s hugely problematic. as a substantive matter it s important because there are ongoing investigations right now. these e-mails just become a whole new treasure trove for mueller and his team to play in, for the congression investigators to play in. the revelations about these private e-mails were probably the most important thing that happened in the last week. it s a pandora s box. we don t know what s in them. investigators are going to want to find out and that could pose a lot of problems going down the road in the same way it did for hillary clinton. it opens up a doe door that is very hard to close. it may be a practical problem. politically, being able to lean back on clinton destroyed the e-mails, with the hammer and the bleach, that s going to get political cover. the president doesn t agree with me. what he has chosen to tweet about oh, please. piping hot. crooked hillary. with everything that s going on in puerto rico and health care. what does he tweet about? nfl ratings are way down except before game starts when people turned in to see whether or not country will be disrespected. that s great, nfl and ratings. it s a two-fer. it s what he cares about. remember, the twitter feed is him. he cares overwhelmingly in the last 72 or 96 hours about the nfl and ratings. and i think a lot of that has to do with the fact that he is placating a base. rich, entitled, primarily black. those are three things you can t change. those are three things that will get people angry and resentful. twitter trump is the real trump. we all know that. it s nice to know what s going across the brain waves of the president this early in the morning. he retweeted a fake missile launch from iran, a guy who has access to all the intelligence in the world. that s not even near the top of the stack of things to talk about. in any other administration, that would be a scandal to talk about. he he s tweeting fake dangerous news. that s right. bloodshed at the border between israel and the west bank. we have details about what happened. these situations are always a concern as being a flash point for more conflict. the news, next. who knew that phones would start doing everything? entertaining us, getting us back on track, and finding us dates. phones really have changed. so why hasn t the way we pay for them? introducing xfinity mobile. you only pay for data and can easily switch between pay per gig and unlimited. no one else lets you do that. see how much you can save. choose by the gig or unlimited. xfinity mobile. a new kind of network designed to save you money. call, visit or go to xfinitymobile.com. following breaking news out of israel. there s been a shooting at the crossing between israel and the west bank. a 37-year-old palestinian man opened fire at the back gate of an israeli settlement that is opened every morning to allow palestinians to enter israel for work. this is a very big security controversy. police say the shooter was also killed. north korea is beefing up its east coast defenses after claiming that president trump declared war on them. the white house calls north korea s claim absurd. president trump s tweet warned north korean lawyers they, quote, won t be around much longer. north korea says that gives them the right to retaliate to shoot down u.s. fighter jets in self-defense. jets flew along the coast in a show of force this weekend. iran s claim that it tested a new ballistic missile last weekend appears to be false. u.s. intelligence radar systems and centers picked up no indication of a launch. yet president trump actually tweeted about the suspected launch right after the iranians released footage saturday. it s not known if the president was briefed before tweeting. a spokesperson for the national security council declined to comment. the president did tweet that iran launched a missile. as far as u.s. intelligence is concerned, they did not. i know that s confusing but that s the reality. president trump facing intense criticism for tweeting about puerto rico s financial and infrastructure problems as the island is facing a growing humanitarian crisis because of hurricane maria. millions of americans there still have no power. cnn s bill weir is live in san juan, peter reuerto rico for us. tell us what you ve been seeing. reporter: alisyn, we ve taken a 20-mile, as the crow flies, excursion south into the country. this island is experiencing potentially the biggest crisis in a century. maria absolutely wrecked puerto rico. it looks like bombs went off in these mountain valleys. every tree laying on its side. homes sliding off of the hillside. mudslides, a big concern there. mostly it s the humanitarian crisis. even if someone s family s house stood. the official death toll is about 16. it will go much higher than that as they continue to do search and rescue. it s the basic necessities that do not exist. food, water, power, obviously, but also movement and information. people cut off. and so many folks stateside, wondering how people here are doing. so many people wanting them to know they re doing okay. that will be impossible. this antequated grid system here is completely shot. downed power lines. huge high towers that came down crashing. you can t fix those with a bucket truck and a couple of guys. it s going to take engineers and helicopters. what they re worried about most right now after talking to the governor is security, as people get more anxious and more angry as that relentless tropical sun beats down and people wait six hours to run a generator. they re going to get desperate. they ve only been able to find 15% of the drivers they need to bring the diesel up into the country, into the interior. and most of the other 85%, either they re dealing with their own crisis at home or don t want to ride without a security guard, without a policeman with them. it is a complex, perfect storm of human misery down here. it is so complex. chris and i were talking about how hard it is to get aid there. ships can t arrive. airplanes can t land with all the needed supplies. are folks there aware that fema and federal officials trying, or do they feel abandoned? what s the situation about when they ll be able to get the aid they need? reporter: well, they don t know. nobody knows. the mayor has been given a satellite phone. i ve heard stories that village also gather together waiting for news and sometimes there is none. what happens when you re in those dire straits, your mind goes to the worst places. we ve met many people who are incredibly warm, gracious, tough. the puerto rican people, they re used to hardship, austerity. they put a brave face on it. it s a matter of days and weeks before that turns. it is human nature. they would love any information, anything to get them through to the next day. bill, it is so important to have you and the team down there. you let us know what angles to pursue, what needs to be told and we ll get you back on and get the information out as soon as possible. thank you for being there. look, it s not easy to be where jen rivera, alisyn s producer is down there. they re going to live in those same conditions. you also have a volume issue. u.s. virgin islands got beat up and others, bad. but the population density is unique in pewter reuerto rico. so you have 3.5 million people there also in dense, but also spread out. you ll have every kind of problem. 1,000 miles away. you can t get around. not great infrastructure of roads and stuff. the power grid can t be jumped the way we do in the united states because you can t take the power surge. months, according to best sources, before you get back to a basic standard of living. months. and transmission lines are down. they have to rebuild their what was a failing power grid already. they have to rebuild. i think we were mentioning something like 10,000 fema officials already there on the ground. that s good. but they need a million. they need hundreds of thousands. they need so much more help because people are in remote areas and haven t had any help there. they re without medication. it goes on and on. you are spot on. that s why the need for leadership is so great. people must be reassured that there will be an end. that what s being done can be done. we have carl levin custom and jim colston, fema battalion chief. let me start with you. give people here an understanding of why we need to be focused on puerto rico. well, i think puerto rico right now is an isolated disaster area, and that s one of the reasons why we are here and assisting with the local government in the puerto rican search and rescue team to make sure we can get out and get a fair assessment of the needs as well as to any quick rescues and provide information for the long-term recovery. carl, as a task force leader from california, you go into situations, you understand search and rescue. how big is the challenge on the ground there? well, we actually had an advantage, over 270 of our personnel were here post irma. we kept our assets here when maria spun up. we hunkered down with the community here. so we had great ground troops even though puerto rico did not receive the kind of damage that the u.s. virgin islands did in irma, we preplanned puerto rico and used that information to really be aggressive, literally as soon as the storm broke and began rescue operations immediately. we had to cut our way out of the hotel we were in. we affected and immediately went after the areas. the only problem was that central eoc and the information we normally get from all the other regions in the area, this place got hit so hard, there was no contact. so, literally, we ve been working feverishly to get out to these areas, get contact, get information back home to the families to let them know that we are here. we have been here and we are here to get them that information and take care of the people here in puerto rico. not knowing. 3.5 million people there, so many of them tied to the united states. obviously, they re a commonwealth. they have citizens rights but they have family here. what are you finding, jim, in terms of that need to communicate? people here not knowing if their family is still well, family there wanting to communicate it back. how big of a deal is that? it s almost a tremendous deal. right now with over 90% of the cellular communication down throughout the island, communication outside of the island is extremely difficult. i know our troops on the ground getting out into not only the major communities but in the smaller areas are able to meet with local officials there to provide them some information as well as, you know, do some spot checks on high-target hazards. and then also provide them some information so we can go back and try to make some of those connections for them, since they re not currently able to do so. what s your best sense, carl jim, of how long it will be until the basics are in place for most of that population? well, we have different layers of support that fema is providing. the group we re responsible to and work with is the fema search and rescue program. we re actively removing people from hazardous conditions, that are ill, that can t move on their own. and these are areas that are very hard, inaccessible to get to. nonstop since the storm. they re continuing until we can get to those areas. our footprint, we have a huge, huge effort of people that are connected to this country. being here and how well we ve been taken care of people that have lost everything. you have to know that we are doing everything possible and we will not stop until we get that information and try to reassure everyone back home that we re doing everything we can to get to the people who are cut off, get them information. if they need to be removed, taken care of medically or rescued from those environments, that s what we re doing. we are hearing you say it go ahead and finish your point. the infrastructure, it s going to take a long time to get power and communication back up throughout the island. so, we re seeing some recovery now but to answer your question for the long term of what we ve seen in our disaster experience, unfortunately the puerto rican people have a long road ahead of them. we want them to make sure they know they re not alone in that recovery process. jim, carl, you re there to do the work. there s nobody better than the first responders that america puts on the ground in these situations. thank you for what you re doing. we will echo that urgency every chance we get. you let us know what information, what needs the american people back home can help the puerto ricans with there. let us know. be well and be safe. alisyn? chris, now to health care. now that the graham/cassidy bill appears that it will fail, is there any way that congress can fix the nation s health care crisis? ezekiel emmanuel will join us next. if he d taken tylenol, he d be stopping for more pills right now. only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. aleve. all day strong. when we love someone, we want to do right by them. what is this? 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(loud snoring) now the answer is right under your nose. introducing theravent anti-snore strips, clinically shown to reduce snoring with the power of your own breathing. nice try! there are always things that are hard to let go of. now snoring isn t one of them. theravent. the answer is right under your nose. -ahh. -the new guy. -whoa, he looks -he looks exactly like me. -no. -separated at birth much? we should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. jamie, you seriously think you look like him? uh, i m pretty good with comparisons. like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if we re not the lowest. even if we re not the lowest. whoa! wow. i mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. look at us. does he go forward or admit defeat? they don t seem to have the votes to pass it, even with a simple majority, 50 plus one, because three republicans have come out against him. let s discuss with dr. ezekiel emmanuel, one of the architects of obamacare. zeke, let me put it right to you and what we hear as a defender of graham/cassidy. there are people not the majority but about 7% of this country who gets insurance through the individual market, who believes that the mandate and paying for all of the weak are rocketing their costs. the big premiums have gone up for them. the deductibility has gone up for them, in terms of what they have to pay out of pocket. and something like graham/cassidy, that releases the ownness, the responsibility of having to have my insurance be a function of everybody else s will lower their costs and they like this idea. what do you say to that group of people? well, typically, there were a group of people who, before the affordable care act and if you repeal the mandate and exchanges in the affordable care act would be better off. they tend to be people who are healthy, young and fairly well off. so, actually, making a good income. their insurance premiums would go down because we do what s called experience rating there. they pay based on what their anticipated costs are. but the whole point of insurance is to pool a big group of people and lower everyone s costs because it s more predictable and you know what the costs are, chris. and the best thing is not to do what graham/cassidy tried to do, which was to slice up the pool, the group of people you insure, but to people putt as many people as possible into one pool, healthy, young, and older and sicker. and that will actually lower, on average, the costs for people. but, you know, it also goes to a larger point. health care costs have moderated. we heard that last night. you, being one of the architects, obviously, of obamacare, i wonder what your reaction was as you hear this one audience member talk about how much they ve been hurt as obamacare and how it was not as it was billed. can you tell my daughter tonight how you plan to absolutely guarantee her that she will never be subject to exorbitant premiums? obamacare was a huge lie to the american people. if medicaid expansion is cut what dying from addiction would continue to have coverage for treatment? considering the marketplace options in my state, what would you do for health insurance if you were me? zeke, hold on a second. that was not the one i was hoping for. the one from the woman that said obamacare was a big lie. she goes on to talk about how it was misrepresented. maybe we have that one. listen to this. obamacare was a huge lie to the american people. our insurance premiums did not go down. we did not get to keep our insurance plans. we did not get to keep our doctors and our taxes did not go down. have you taken the time to listen to us, who are trying so hard to convey our message? we can no longer afford to pay so much so that so many can pay so little. doc, what do you say to her about all those broken promises? first of all, about all those broken promises are accurate. the affordable care act has done some remarkable things for people. first of all, it limited total out-of-pocket costs that people would have to pay. those are high limits but it does prevent people from going bankrupt and that is, i think, an important protection. and that s true for everyone. the second thing i would say is, look, one of the problems of the affordable that has emerged after we passed the affordable care act, we needed some fixes. we recognized we needed to fix some things in the marketplace and the exchanges to bring premiums down and cost-sharing subsidies to have reassurance so if an insurance company had super high expensive people it wouldn t affect everyone s premiums and get more insurance companies in rural areas and uncovered counties by reducing their taxes from the affordable care act. there are a lot of fixes that can be done. unfortunately, we could not do that because republicans would not pass some fixes. everyone hurts for people who are paying super high premiums and we need to keep health care costs, doctor costs down to actually reduce those premiums. those are essential elements. hopefully, we can now focus on the very practical measures to actually save money and that will reduce premiums and address that lady s concerns. if graham/cassidy fails, it s up to congress to fix the things that are broken. my worry is we ve got to move on now. we can t do health care. we need to do something bipartisan and not rush it. do it behind close doors the way mitch mcconnell did. five hours of hearings by the republicans. democrats had many more. we can actually work this out if we try to work in good faith. i hope that senator alexander and murray actually make progress on shoring up exchanges and bringing premiums down. they have some ideas and they should push forward now.
9:00 in the east, 6:00 a.m. out west. here s what s happening. taxing situation. the battles that lie ahead, the gop gets ready to rewrite the u.s. tax code. we re going to tell you about one idea that could keep high earners from getting a big break. gone but not forgotten, the lives of four american soldier were remembered this weekend while the search for answers intensifies. new insight into why so many troops are in africa and what their mission is. you knighted front. for the first time in years, five former presidents gather on stage at the same time. what prompted the gathering and how it helped so many in need. but we begin with politics and president trump s ongoing feud with democratic congresswoman frederica wilson, entering the sixth day with the president ramping up his attacks in a tweet again this morning saying wacky congresswoman wilson is the gift that keeps on giving for the republican party, a disaster for dems. you watch her in action and vote r. in a series of tweets last night, president trump focus ed error. as josh said, he could have handled this so much better by saying, if i was misunderstood, i apologize, i respect the service. and instead he s elevated it into this national week long fight that has no end in sight. he went after a gold star family on the campaign, this is territory he s gone down before and knows it doesn t end well. he s incapable of restraining himself and admitting any kind of error, apologizing in any kind of way. to the tweet about the dossier, the president again asking the justice department to interfere in the russia investigation, which is centered on him and his campaign. is this another sign of president trump feeling the heat or do you think these tweets feel a little different to you? the strange thing to me is that the president seems a lot more focused on the dossier than almost anybody else. it is really it seems to have shaken him through the whole investigation, unprompted and insisting that what is in the dossier is not true. time, similarly to the conversation about the johnson family, he s incapable of avoiding making anything about himself. and in terms of people paying for things, these tweets came out less than an hour after the washington post put out that report on the president pledging $430,000 to help pay the legal fees for some of his aides. is that what the tweets are all about, what can you tell us about the pledge, $430,000 seems like a small amount for legal fees. in this line of work it is not much at all. this pledge comes after the rnc paid roughly that amount in legal fees. there was controversy about that, people giving money to the rnc doesn t know the money goes to lawyer and not campaign activities. but you re right, it is not very much money. i talked to somebody in the clinton white house wrapped up in that scandal there. they were not directly connected to anything close to the millon and says you can have a tax cut that leads up to $1.5 trillion in deficit increases over the next decade. and then following that, it has to reduce the deficit or not increase it. that creates the box in which they have to write the tax reform bill. they have to argue about what to do with the space inside the box. there is a lot of competing interests, even among republicans on the hill. rand paul has been out there attacking the plan for the fact that it raises taxes on many middle income families. the plan needs to be substantially changed to hold the families harmless. john mccain skeptical, people sometimes forget he voted against both of the bush tax cuts. senator bob corker, retiring senator from tennessee, has been saying he doesn t want a tax plan that raises the deficit at all. people can change their minds about things, can compromise but also a number of other people like senator mike lee from utahed are voluntary cautah ed advocating a larger child tax credit. the plan as written according to the tax policy center would lead to more than $2 trillion in deficit increases. you have people saying they want to give out new goodies, you have people who want a bigger child credit, you need to take stuff away to fit things in the box. so that s going to be the really hard political part, making those decisions about who wins and who loses and that s what i think makes it really difficult to actually get a tax reform done, if you did the plan as it is now, you have 25% of american families actually paying more taxes than under current law by 2026. that would be very unpopular, the changes you have to make to avoid that unpopularity. the way this will potentially squeeze 401(k) plans, that will be a huge discussion point. your concerns as well on this? i think they re trying to thread a very thin needle here. passed with the thinnest of margins, the budget before we get to taxes. the president and the white house have been reaching out aggressively to democrats that are up for re-election in states that trump won. so far no real success there. so it looks like they have to do this almost entirely with just that 52 vote republican majority. very, very thin, they already lost rand paul. it is going to be really tough. josh and alex, good to see you both. thank you. to the investigation in niger, new attack there, saturday left 13 paramilitary police officers dead, gunmen on trucks and motorcycles crossed the border and fired on a security base. hans nickles is in washington with more with what officials want to know about that attack. good morning. reporter: good morning. the families continue to mourn, congress is preparing to ask some hard questions next week, not only about this specific mission, but the overall strategy this that is putting american troops at risk in africa. army sergeant la david johnson was laid to rest saturday near his home in florida. his pregnant widow kissing his casket as she held an american flag. johnson was killed in an ambush in niger earlier this month with three of his comrades, his body found one mile from the ambush site, 48 hours after the deadly attack. there was hope he was still alive with his beacon emitting a signal. the new york times reports that some nigerian officials say the army convoy spotted and chased insurgents until they crossed into neighboring mali. the times adds that the american soldiers did not mention giving chase. and they claimed they were ambushed and surrounded by insurgents outside a village. possibly tipped off by tribal leaders who they were meeting. all week, pentagon officials have insisted that u.s. forces aren t in niger to hunt extremists. our missions are advise and assist, we are not directly involved in combat operations. reporter: a senior congressional aide tells nbc news the ambush stemmed in part from a massive intelligence failure. congress now demanding more information on counterterrorism missions across africa. have to keep us informed so we can make good decisions about do we want 1,000 soldiers in niger? if we don t want them, the way to deal with it is to cut off funding. reporter: the commander told congress earlier this year he had only a quarter of the reconnaissance flights he needed. the readiness of the airplanes has gotten better. but when you go from 12 to 6, the capacity is cut in half. and the impact, we have to do a better job coordinating and sharing assets because the continent is extremely large. yes, sir. reporter: there are roughly 800 u.s. troops in niger, most of them building a drone base, which will serve as a hub for a drone network across all of africa. thank you so much for that. he called on voters to reject the politics of division and fear, but there was another reason former president obama returned to the campaign trail this week. i ll speak with democratic congressman jeffries about that next. up to a gillette shave. and at our factory in boston, 1,200 workers are starting their day building on over a hundred years of heritage, craftsmanship and innovation. today we re bringing you america s number one shave at lower prices every day. putting money back in the pockets of millions of americans. as one of those workers, i m proud to bring you gillette quality for less, because nobody can beat the men and women of gillette. gillette - the best a man can get. t music) - [announcer] imagine what you wear every day actually making your body feel better. that s exactly what tommie copper does for people everywhere. they call it wearable wellness, and tommie copper has infused it into everything they do. why not experience the difference tommie copper can make in your life? visit tommiecopper.com to see the entire line of wearable wellness compression. go right now and find out how you can save 25% on your first purchase plus free shipping. life hurts. feel better. of new york, he sits on the judiciary and budget committees. with a big welcome to you, sir. does the white house have a point there? is there a line that should be drawn when it comes to topics like this when they re so personal. a line that should be drawn and the one that broke through that line and highly inappropriate way was donald trump, the president, as well as the white house. i m stunned that the white house chief of staff would make the decision to engage in character assassination against congresswoman wilson, a long-standing, well known civic advocate, activist, down in south florida. i m stunned that to justify that character assassination the white house chief of staff would functionally lie about the speech that congresswoman wilson delivered back in 2015 during the building dedication and stunned at the fact that on the same day that sergeant la david johnson would be funeralized that the commander in chief, donald trump, will be at the not at the white house, will be playing golf and attacking congresswoman wilson who is sitting at the funeral. would you be appeased, would you think the majority of americans who take offense to this whole tit for tat back and forth, would they be appeased if general kelly were to say i misremembered what happened in that speech at the fbi build ing dedication and i apologize for my mistake? that would be the right thing to do. doesn t appear that the white house has ever had any interest in apologizing or clarifying misinformation or misstatements that have come out of 1600 pennsylvania avenue. we all assume that the adult in the room is general kelly. and he would be the one to take that type of mature step, hopefully we ll see it in the week to come. we have a whole host of issues that we need to get behind in terms of this particular drama that has been inflicted upon the american people, we need to deal with tax rae foeform, strengthe the affordable care act, protecting the dreamers, the white house has us mired in conflict, controversy and confusion. i want to ask you about a political report saying that the president is personally interview ed two candidates, this for jeffrey berman and ed mcnally. the white house is saying it is the president who is making these nominations. so since they re candidates, he has the right to speak to them and figure out and try to decide for their position on things. but it has been raising concerns. can you chalk this up to political novice on behalf of the president or more? i doubt it. it seems to be of concern to a lot of people who are interested in good government and the even handed administration of justice. these u.s. attorneys functionally focus their energies as a chief law enforcement officer for their particular jurisdiction. manhattan happens to be the home of donald trump. and what is troubling about it is this evidence of an effort to help shape the mentality and the mind set of the individual who will be eventually confirmed as the top law enforcement officer, because the president is concerned about the investigation into his campaigns possible collusion with russian spies, interfering with the election, it will be best just to leave the process alone, make sure that it is not political, as every other president in the history of the republic with the possible exception of richard nixon has done. it is my understanding that president obama never conducted any of these candidacy interview s, is that correct? that s correct. as far as i understand it. neither did george w. bush or george h.w. bush or ronald reagan or bill clinton. house is gearing up for big legislation. you mentioned it. tax reform. top of mind of many certainly. in the coming weeks, look, there will be a lot of debates about this idea of a fourth tax bracket we heard about. house speaker paul ryan says the idea is to put that in place to make sure high earners don t get a big drop in their income tax requirements. so is this something you are on board with? well, i m on board with focusing on trying to create better jobs, better wages and better future for the american people and part of creating that better future which is what house democrats are all about is making sure that tax reform is done from the middle out. if anyone deserves a tax cut in america, it is the middle class. what appears to be happening is that president donald trump, republicans in the house and the senate, continue to put forward this failed theory of trickle down economics. where there is an argument if you cut taxes for the wealthy and the well off, everyone else will benefit. the problem is that there is no evidence of that having happened. if anything, what you do is you explode the deficit, the wealthy and well off save the money, put it into things other than creating jobs for middle class americans, and wages will remain stagnant. that was the record of george w. bush, that was the record during ronald reagan s tax cuts and if it happens again, it will fail again. we ll do everything we can to stop it. i want to ask you about former president obama on the campaign there in the gubernatorial race in virginia. among the theory that or concerns that black voter enthusiasm is waning, they say the sentiment goes beyond that of virginia, and new jersey, and more should be done by the party about all of this. what are your thoughts? well wi, certainly in the context of president barack obama s historic eight-year tenure, he was always going to be a very difficult act to follow because he would naturally be a vehicle to create a great deal of enthusiasm among african-americans, people of color, young people and many others across the united states. jackie robinson who broke the color barrier was a tough act to follow. but that said it would be issue that i think will be important in driving african-american turnout moving forward and we can all do a better job of speaking to the concerns of the african-american community, higher rates of unemployment than anyone else in this country, the mass incarceration phenomena, the voter suppression, the rise of the alt-right and the white supremacist movement in america, all issues that we re going to be sensitive to, speak to, with a laser like focus, and in the aftermath of president obama s tenure in office, those will be the issues that will drive african-americans to the polls, to turn things around in this country. thank you so much for the conversation. i appreciate it. still ahead, bill o reilly firing back at a new york times report of a multimillion dollar settlement and the amount will make your head spin. it started on a field of accomplished dreams and continued into the locker room, the houston astros last night celebrating their game seven victory over the upstart new york yankees with more than a little bubbly. now advancing to the world series as underdogs against my or the los angeles dodgers. sorry. today, the new new york is sparking innovation. you see it in the southern tier with companies that are developing powerful batteries that make everything from cell phones to rail cars more efficient. which helps improve every aspect of advanced rail technology. all with support from a highly-educated workforce and vocational job training. across new york state, we re building the new new york. to grow your business with us in new york state, visit esd.ny.gov. to grow your business with us in new york state, when it comes to strong bones, are you on the right path? 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that s coming up. these friends were on a trip when their windshield got chipped. so they scheduled at safelite.com. they didn t have to change their plans or worry about a thing. i ll see you all in a little bit. and i fixed it right away with a strong repair they can trust. plus, with most insurance a safelite repair is no cost to you. customer: really?! tech: being there whenever you need us that s another safelite advantage. singers: safelite repair, safelite replace. now that we have your attention. capri sun has four updated drinks. now with only the good stuff. do you know how to use those? nope. get those kids some new capri sun! finding the best hotel price is whoooo. now a safe bet. because tripadvisor searches. .over 200 booking sites - so you save up to 30% on the. .hotelock it in. tripadvisor. injuries. back to politics, and the white house remaining optimistic about its timeline for tax reform. here s what omb director mick mulvaney said in an interview moments ago. we re hearing now that the house may go ahead and either take the senate amendments or move very quickly to accept the senate amendments and we may save as many as 10 or 12 legislative days, a big deal, sounds like not much when you re here the end of october, but in the congressional calendar, that s a long time and it really does buy us more time and more opportunity to get this done before the end of the year. okay. and let s go to the controversy that started with president trump s condolence call to a gold star widow earlier this week. and joining me now, republican strategist robert trainer and marjorie clifton, welcome to you both. robb robert, you first here, would you say the president got off on the wrong foot with this call to start la david johnson s family? these are tough calls. clearly the family is grieving. they frankly some as i read, the president for the decision to send the loved one into a theater of war. these are really, really tough. however, a family that is grieving always has the upper hand. a family that is grieving gave the ultimate sacrifice and so for anyone, whether the president of the united states or any elected official to criticize that or to question that goes beyond the pale, no question about it. there is a great story about not great, but very indicative story of how difficult it is for president george w. bush, when he had to make a condolence call, he came away from marine one and had a tear rolling down his cheek and said they hate me he because the family just yelled and yelled over their pain. to your point, these are very difficult calls to make. but marjorie, once the criticisms came in, couldn t the president have taken the high road, are his whispers telling him that attacking a congresswoman who happens to be close to a gold star family in mourning fires up his base or what is it? well, i feel like the president brought this upon himself when he started politicizing it from the beginning, criticizing the way obama well, obama didn t call everyone the way i did. he opened the doors to a conversation that should have never been had. these should be intimate moments between a president and grieving families. every president has handled it differently. and by opening that door, he already takes away the intimacy and the care that came from that moment to begin with. absolutely it is problematic. it shouldn t be talked about in this way. it makes me sad that we re parading these people s grief around and that the president can t, you know, act like an adult and just be gracious and let the moment ride. we have to talk about the privacy of the phone calls and the fact that the congresswoman, she was in a car, with the family, with whom she s very close to. the widow of la david johnson got the phone call, put it on speaker, so her mother and the congresswoman who i believe was riding in the back seat as the story goes could hear what was being said. so she made a lot of this public. did she not? yes, but i will say that the conversation around how calls were handled which started when the president talked about i call everyone and president obama didn t call everyone and, again, these calls should have stayed private and became public, and in the same way that when, you know, president trump offered $25,000 to one of the fallen soldier s fathers, and then the money never arrives, he goes to the press, so he s made what were private moments very public, which has invited the recipients to also bring that to the press. this has become a media storm where it wasn t one before. that in itself is a sad, sad state of affairs. one that he brought on himself. yes, robert. just very quickly, if i was the white house press secretary or senior adviser in the white house, this is what i would have done. i would have said, mr. president, the widow and the family has the right to do whatever they want with that call. that s their call. we will be silent on this. this is a family that is grieving, please be quiet, don t say anything at all. okay. i think he should sign up for that press secretary job. no, no, no. he s like, not right now. don t want it. let s move on to with you marjorie to president having praised and then trashing a health care proposal. now he s pushing for a rightward shift that would get rid of the aca mandates. do you think he ll get his way? it is a daily flip-flop. i think it goes to the core of understanding the health care policy, which is just cost driven. the mandate was absolutely fundamental to making sure that cost was spread out among the sick and the healthy. and that s what it was in place for. republicans were at the inception of the aca bill. until everyone s covered, we don t have an even marketplace. it rattles the core of the affordable care act. so dare we try to predict and look in a crystal ball to understand what trump will do next. the subsidies they were proposing had to do with keeping it afloat, keeping costs afloat. it is how do we fund this, and nothing about the way trump has approached this has made us feel like he understands the core of how the markets work around the affordable care act. so then, robert, is the president just setting himself up for another health care failure? well, i don t know if it is a health care failure from his mind. he did in fairness to him, he did campaign on repeal and replace, he did give republicans in the house and the senate three opportunities to be able to repair and replace this. and they failed in that regard. what he s doing here, and i agree with what she said a few moments ago, this is the fundamental foundation if you will, the affordable health care act. you need a pool of healthy people in the system to subsidize the sick people. that s the reality in the marketplace and how it works. the question becomes do you take the heart out of the affordable health care act, does it collapse? i think it probably does under its own weight if in fact the president is successful. all right, well, thank you so much for weighing in on all of the topics. see you both again. word of another huge settlement involving sexual harassment allegations against bill o reilly. a new york times report not verified by nbc news goes into detail about the $32 million settlement with a long time fox analyst. nbc s morgan radford has details. cautioun, you are about to n enter the no spin zone. reporter: according to a new york times report, o reilly paid a $32 million settlement to lis wiehl, often seen on his top rated primetime show. the report alleges o reilly had a nonconsensual sexual relationship with wiehl, in a statement that fox admits they knew there was a settlement in january but was informed by mr. o reilly he settled the matter personally, adding the terms were confidential and not disclosed to the company. one month later, fox extended o reilly s four year contract for $25 million a year. at the time fox re-signed mr. o reilly, it knew about the settlement, it was also trying to make the argument to the public, its employees and its board that it had cleaned up workplace issues that had arisen under roger ailes. this was the sixth payout made by o reilly or fox to settle allegations against him. the company says the anchor s latest contract included a clause, saying it could fire him if other allegations came up, which, in the end, fox says it acted on when he was ousted in april. o reilly continues to maintain its innocence, his attorney is calling today s report a smear campaign. last month, o reilly speck to matt lauer. you said at the time you did absolutely nothing wrong. you stand by that? i do. i never mistreated anyone on my watch in 42 years. that was nbc s morgan radford reporting. in the state, o reilly s lawyer claims the new york times story ignored evidence taken under oath, adding the reporting was based on unsubstantiated allegations, anonymous sources and incomplete or stolen documents. president trump claims he contacted almost all of the gold star families of military personnel this year. but reports say an e-mail from the pentagon tells a different story. later this morning, joy reid talks to frederica wilson about the condolence call that has become so controversial. i m ginny and i quit smoking when you try to quit smoking, with or without chantix, you may have nicotine withdrawal symptoms. some people had changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions with chantix. serious side effects may include seizures, new or worse heart or blood vessel problems, sleepwalking or allergic and skin reactions which can be life-threatening. stop chantix and get help right away if you have any of these. tell your healthcare provider if you ve had depression or other mental health problems. decrease alcohol use while taking chantix. use caution when driving or operating machinery. the most common side effect is nausea. thanks to chantix, i did it. ask your doctor if chantix is right for you. many insurance plans cover chantix for a low or $0 copay. an exclusive report from roll call is revealing a scramble at the white house, sparked by comments that president trump made last week. they obtained an e-mail in which the white house asked the pentagon for information about surviving family members of all service members killed after trump s inauguration so that the president could be sure to contact all of them. the e-mail was apparently sent after president trump said in a fox news radio interview he had contacted the families of, quote, virtually everybody in the military who died in service to the country since he took office. the associated press found that to be inaccurate. joining me now is chris, welcome back to the broadcast. what does this tell you about how the white house is operating behind the scenes? well, it is just more fallout from a terrible week for john kelly. he really this was a terrible blunder on thursday, a self-inflicted wound, when he went on that tirade against representative wilson. and got all of his facts wrong. but, you know, in fairness to kelly this is what happens to almost everyone in the orbit of this death star known as donald trump, who diminishes and tarnishes everybody around him. this should have been an easy thing to do. with any other president, you call the widow back, you apologize, end of story. but this president is incapable of empathy, incapable of apology, and that has to be hugely frustrating to john kelly. speaking of kelly, he opened up about his own experience, you talk about empathy and sympathy for him, i don t think there was anybody whose heart didn t go out to him as he talked about having lost his own son in afghanistan. that notwithstanding, do you get a sense of how much influence he has or doesn t have in this white house? first of all, you know, he was eloquent on the subject of his son, he was eloquent on the subject of the fallen soldiers. but, again, he veered off and lost control when he went after representative wilson. and i think that, you know, as for whether how much influence he has on donald trump, i talked to denis mcdonough, president obama s last chief of staff, who told me that he s been on the business end of some phone calls from general kelly and there is never any doubt that in his mind that he speaks hard truths. another former republican chief of staff told me, okay, if that s the case, how did rocket man get on to the teleprompter of the speech before the u.n. general assembly? that s malpractice by the white house chief of staff or evidence that donald trump isn t listening to kelly. so, the comments by frederica wilson, the ones which john kelly has gone after, they have been proven to be inaccurate. he didn t speak the truth about what she said, whether intentionally or not. is it in his makeup as a four star marine general or as a chief of staff in a white house to issue an apology or do you think that is something that just is part of the either within this white house, the fact that everyone says this president is incapable of issuing apologies. well, it is certainly part of the ether. i think we learned a number of things about john kelly this week. one thing we have learned is that he s out of his depth politically. the jim bakers, the leon panettas, the denis mcdonoughs, the really good white house chiefs of staff understood when you stand in front of a camera, you re not speaking as a marine, you re speaking as the white house chief of staff. you have to stay above the fray. even dick cheney, when he was gerald ford s 34-year-old white house chief of staff, his views were described as being to the right of ghengis khan and yet cheney was able to stay above the fray. he was always an honest broker, never would have known what his politics were, he never got into the trenches to fight the partisan battles. and that s a lesson that kelly, you know he, is apparently unequipped for. he doesn t have political experience. the white house is still firmly defending general kelly as you know. you ve got a top white house official telling axios that kelly made himself the moral core of the trump administration. do you agree with that assessment? that remains to be seen. i think another thing we learned about john kelly this week is a lot of people thought he was the nonideological grown-up in the room who would take the edge off of donald trump s excesses. well, maybe not so much. i think in that tirade that he went on against representative wilson, we got a sense that he may share more of donald trump s view s than we realized up to this point. it may not be a safe bet that he s always going to be the grown-up in the room here, taking the edge off of trump. okay, chris, thank you very much. we ll see you again no doubt. it has been 32 days since puerto rico s been without power and a majority of the island, but the drinking water situation there is also dire. my next guest will explain just how dangerous it is. and the home of the brave you see it there. all five living former presidents appearing last night at the one america appeal concert at texas a&m to help raise money for hurricane relief. the presidents jimmy carter, george h.w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush and barack obama all united in their call for americans to do what they can for the victims of the disastrous hurricanes. as heart breaking as the tragedies that took place here in texas and in florida, in puerto rico and the u.s. virgin islands have been, what we have also seen is the spirit of america at its best. when ordinary people step up and do extraordinary things. president trump made an appearance in a video praising the relief efforts of the former presidents and vowed that america will recover and rebuild areas hit by the hurricanes. since the one america and rebui hit by the hurricanes, more than $31 million has been raised and you can go to oneamerica.org if you want to make a donation. maybe too affordable and fast. wbut they are buying them to protect their secrets?!?!, hi bill. if that is your real name. it s william actually. hmph! affordable, fast fedex ground. what happens to the factories if there s sustained damage, what happens to the people that live near them? the environmental impacts of the aftermath of hurricane maria are tough to even determine whether it s industrial pollution or animal pollution. what we are seeing is that at this point there s very little monitoring, and what we know is that unfortunately a lot of the chemicals and contaminants end up in peoples drinking water no matter where you are, and when you add the extra layer of the ca catastrophe brought on by maria, and a weak infrastructure, it could be a disaster. 18 superfund sites there in puerto rico. what is a superfund site and what do they pose to people and the threats in the environment? there s a superfund site location is could be a long-term contamination of soil and water and other resources, and they recognize this could pose a serious threat to human health, and those are sites basically slated for cleanup, and what we know is that even some of the recently designated superfund sites are still being used as sources of drinking water, so we can only begin to imagine the magnitude of risks we are taking there. the truth is, unless there s continued testing, we are potentially leaving a lot of people very vulnerable if these sites are even considered from spots where people can draw any drinking water. cleanup and ultimately getting puerto rico back in shape from an environmental perspective, how long is that going to take? it s anybody s guess, alex. it s likely to take a tremendous amount of time, probably years. in the immediate future, what i think we can look forward to and hopefully will have the epa s support and funding for the epa to get in there and duty work, to test and to analyze whether it s soil samples, drinking water, and to really assess what happened to a lot of dangerous industrial sites, coal, ash, et cetera, and even landfills after the hurricane, and how those might be affecting human health and the population because until we really know what we are dealing with, we are guessing and leaving a lot of people in really, really a really p precarious situation. thank you for providing that information to the show. in just a few minutes, nancys will be joy s guess on the future of obamacare. e. we re talking to you, cost inefficiencies, and data without insights. and fragmented care, stop getting in the way of patient recovery and pay attention. every single one of you is on our list. at optum, we re partnering across the health system to tackle its biggest challenges. at breathe freely fastring awmy congestion s gone. i can breathe again! i can breathe again! vicks sinex. breathe on. ever had hepatitis b, a liver transplant, other liver or kidney problems, hiv or any other medical conditions and about all the medicines you take including herbal supplements. taking amiodarone with harvoni can cause a serious slowing of your heart rate. common side effects of harvoni include tiredness, headache and weakness. ready to let go of hep c? 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thinking isn t a guns situation. when all in starts right now. good evening from new york. i m chris hayes. one week after we learned robert mueller had brought indictments against two top trump officials, announced a guilty plea for a third, all eyes on a former high-ranking official in the trump administration itself, michael flynn. a man who spent 24 days in the white house as the president s national security adviser. nbc news exclusively reporting that shmueler now has enough evidence to file charges in the investigation into flynn and his son michael flynn jr., according to multiple sources familiar with mueller s investigation. to be clear nbc news is not reporting who might be charged, only that there is sufficient evidence to file charges in that investigation. three sources tell nbc news that investigators plan to soon speak with multiple witnesses to gather more information about flynn s lobbying work, including whether he laundered money or lied to federal agents about his overseas contacts. that news comes as the two former trump campaign aides facing indictments that would be paul manafort and his deputy rick gates were back in court today. the federal judge ruling they must remain under house arrest with her movements tracked by gps as they continue to negotiate a possible bail package. the president weighed in on manafort in combination with sinclair broadcast group. the reputation i felt was good. i had him for a short period of time. he was only in there for a finite period of time. but, you know, i feel badly for him. i always found him to be a really nice person. were mueller to file an obstruction of justice charge against the president, it would likely be flynn at the center of it. former fbi director james comey says the president pressured him to drop the investigation into flynn over flynn s conversations with the russian ambassador during the presidential transition. remember, flynn denied discussing u.s. sanctions against russia with the ambassador during several exchanges, including, according to the washington post, during an interview with the fbi. but intercepted communications reportedly contradicted flynn s account. now comey says he refused to drop the flynn investigation. shortly afterwards, trump fired him. which led to mueller being named special counsel. do you think he would ever consider trying to have mueller removed? or have you pledged to just stay out of that? well, i hope he is treating everything fairly. and if he is, i m going to be very happy. because when you talk about innocent, i m truly not involved in any form of collusion with russia, believe me. after the presidential campaign last year was over, flynn, just like the now indicted paul manafort, retroactively went on to register as a foreign agent. during a period when he was attending secret intelligence briefings with then candidate trump, flynn was being paid more than half a million dollars to lobby on behalf of the turkish government. even had the audacity to write a pro turkish government op-ed in which he called recep tayyip erdogan chief antagonist, a muslim cleric living in exile in pennsylvania who erdogan blames for last year s failed coup. a senior law enforcement official tells nbc news s ken dilanian that in the weeks after trump was inaugurated, they were asked to extradite guillen. it s not clear whether the request came from flynn. i m joined by the national security reporter who has been doing some amazing report thong story. let s start with that we learn head got half a million dollars to represent turkish interests through an intermediary. do you actually think about expediting fethullah gulen which is a key goal of erdogan. what do you know of this extradition that would have happened after flynn was actually in the u.s. government? just the very, very basics, chris, just what we said in the story, which is that the fbi was asked during the trump administration while mike flynn was the national security adviser to take another look at this. and they had no reason to reexamine it because they had already looked at it during the obama administration and had no evidence to fulfill turkey s extradition request for fethullah gulen who lives in the poconos and is like public enemy number one for turkey. mike flynn at one point in the wake of the turkish coup actually gave a public statement saying the turkish coup could be a good thing. and then he completely 180 changed when he began being paid on behalf we now know by the government of turkey. and he published that op-ed on election day, which basically had turkish government talking points. it wasn t even disguised. a lot of people look at that and said obviously mike flynn didn t think he us going to win the election. because why would he publish that on election day? that s one of the really important things about this story is we are now saying that mike flynn s conduct as national security adviser is under scrutiny by robert mueller in connection with this gulen arrangement. be a little clear there and then we ll move on to the reporting about sufficient evidence. because to impact that the key there is this is an unregistered foreign agent that is established to represent turkish interests writes a op-ed. and there is some question about whether that overlapped while he was in the white house. we don t know. i m not saying that s the case. but it seems to me that that s a road investigators are looking at. that is absolutely at issue according to our sources is what official acts mike flynn took that seemed to align with his financial interests in terms of orchestrating the extradition of gulen to turkey. which, i should noted a big deal. and as law professor steve vladeck pointed out, if the case were to be proven a felony. let s talk about the idea sufficient charges in the flynn investigation. explain that reporting a little bit for us. yeah, chris. and we re not trying to be cute here. obviously both of these men, mike flynn, the former national security investigators and his son appear to be in serious criminal jeopardy. we just don t have the precision of sourcing. we re not saying charges are eminent against both men. what we re saying is mueller has the evidence sufficient to file charges. charges could come. charges may not come if they are negotiating a cooperation arrangement. right. if they reach a deal to cooperate, we may not see charges, chris. all right. ken dilanian, thanks for being with me. former federal prosecutor renato mariotti, a frequent guest on the show. let s talk about flynn jr. and the behavior of flynn and flynn jr. this is flynn jr. who was it s not just that he is his father s shoefnlt was a partner in their business enterprise. he was his adviser. he was originally going to be brought in to get security clearance as a staffer to his father, national security adviser. him this morning, flynn jr., the sjw route, the disappointment on your faces when i don t go to jail will be worth all your harassment. i believe that was yesterday. he also retweeted something accusing robert mueller of having conspired with hamas. what do you make of this as behavior from someone currently under investigation with possible criminal exposure? it s unbelievable. it s something i have not seen before in my experience as federal prosecutor. not only in my cases, but observing other cases. typically when people are facing a federal indictment, they re crapping their pants so to speak. they re very concerned. it is a big deal. it s a scary thing. usually you are not trying to upset the prosecutor. you re usually trying to see if you can convince them not to indict. so this sort of thumbing your nose at the prosecution, it tells me that either these people are extremely foolish or they are angling for a pardon in some way. or maybe they think they re totally innocent, and the government has nothing on them. you know, that s really hard to believe. i m sorry. i don t really believe that. i think that, you know, they ve got smart lawyers. michael flynn seems like to me he s had a very intelligent lawyer, i mean, the father does. i think that they re very soberly explaining this to their client. if not, they re not doing their jobs. mueller and his team have amassed significant evidence. if this reporting is accurate, which i presume it is with all the sourcing, they re telling people either flynn or these lobbyists that they re potentially trying to get to cooperate, that they essentially have the goods on flynn. they re going to be pursuing indictments. we should note, it jumped out to me that there are two things that reporting indicates flynn has done, which is lie to federal investigators when they asked him when the fick first questioned him about the conversations he had with kislyak about sanctions. and also didn t register as a foreign agent. right. both of which are, you know that s what george papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying, and not registering as a foreign agent is one of the things that manafort is being indicted for. and the second one, not registering as a foreign agent is a very straight forward thing for a prosecutor to prove. that s the sort of charge prosecutors love. because either you register order you didn t. it s the sort of thing, maybe there is some way in which flynn could say i wasn t really a foreign agent. but if that s something that mueller can prove. when you go and retroactively register, it hurts your case. either you did or you didn t. things that require intent or the intent to defraud, that can be complicated or corrupt intent we ve talked about on the show before. something like this is a fairly straight forward thing. how does mike flynn intend to beat that charge? it s hard to see. one of the dynamics that is at issue here is the idea of pardons. because the person at the center of this is the president of the united states who has this incredible power under the article 2 of the constitution to pardon. federal crimes. and the signals being sent back and forth, i want you to listen to what he said about manafort and get your reaction to it in this most recent interview. take a listen. what was it that convinced you he had to be let go? well, i think we found out something about he may be involved with certain nations. and i don t even know exactly what it was in particular. but there was a point at which we just felt paul would be better off. because we don t want to have any potential conflicts. and if there was a conflict, i don t want to be involved any conflicts, even though it was i could have kept him longer, i don t think anybody would have complained. but we don t want to have any potential conflicts of interest at all. no potential conflicts of interest. it s kind of weird, right? it s not at all what we ve seen from this president so far. we had the head of the ethics walter shaub leave because he was so concerned about the conflicts in the administration there doesn t seem to be much interest in clearing that up. in fact i think his assets have not yet been moved to really a blind trust like they should be. so that s hard to believe. you know, i think a lot of the things we re hearing from the president right now are hard to believe. he has been going around saying he is not under investigation. which anybody with two eyes can see that he is. i mean, if his lawyers are telling him that he is not under investigation, they re committing malpractice. one thing i would just remind people of, the original sin here that started all this was that phone call between flynn and the ambassador that they lied about. if they hadn t that got the ball rolling. so there is something at the beginning of this, it s useful to come back to remember where flynn was. renato mariotti, it s great to have you here in new york city tonight. thank you very much. joining me now conservative washington post columnist jennifer rubin and independent presidential candidate evan mcmullin. and jennifer, it s striking to me that the american first campaign appears to have had a number of high level officials who were essentially secret foreign agents. yeah. it s very peculiar. and most of them are connected to russia, which is even more peculiar. you know, if you talk to people who have been on presidential campaigns democrats, republicans, they have never seen anything like this. there weren t people communicating with the russian government during the bush campaigns or during any other campaign. and then you have on top of that the financial web that entails jared kushner, entails trump s son, entails trump himself. now we learn that wilbur mills has a connection. so it s a lot of coincidences, if that s what it is. but we ve never, i would suggest, had either a campaign or certainly an administration that was this intertwined with a hostile power after an election in which that hostile power intervened on their behalf. and that just stinks to high heaven. well, and that that pertains to russia, which is sort of true to the bulk. but evan, one of the things that is interesting to me here, because i think it sets a it gives you a sense of the general atmosphere around this campaign is the turkey part of it, right? there is no reason to believe that turkey did anything like russia did in the campaign and intervened. but here you ve got a guy who is one of the senior advisers to the presidential candidate of one of the major parties. and on election day, he is using that opportunity to write an op-ed on behalf of essentially his foreign client. it s hard to conceive of that in another presidential campaign setting, or am i wrong? no, you re absolutely right, chris. what you have here is an example of how much leadership really matters, both good and bad. and when you have a presidential candidate who sets the tone in the way president trump did, not releasing his tax returns, encouraging russia to interfere in our elections, then the signal is received by especially his team. and indeed it was. and not only, by the way, that signal received by his team, it s also received by interlocutors around the world, foreign governments, especially authoritarian or dictatorships that people are for sale in washington, at least in that campaign and potentially in the administration in the case that president trump won, which he of course did. so it s a signal that goes out far and wide. and it sells out country out, our integrity, our interests. most importantly, the sovereignty of the american people to choose their own leaders and have them serve in their interests and their interests alone and have them be accountable to them, the people. that s what is for sale now under this administration. not only, that jennifer, i am reminded of the fact that a central campaign theme was that hillary clinton was essentially a foreign agent, that she essentially had outsourced american interests to whoever had given cash to the clinton foundation or something like that. and meanwhile we ve got paul manafort. these are guys who are at the very, very top of this campaign, which was small campaign and not that many people. you ve got two people at the very top who are functioning literally cashing checks on behalf of representing the interests of foreign governments. and that tells us a few things. first of all, it reminds us that they had no competent people on that campaign, and very few people in the administration. because he was toxic. most of the foreign policy professionals on the right or the center right really were writing letters, correctly as it turns out, saying he is unfit to serve. so he didn t have quality people. second problem you had is apparently no one was vetd. it was well-known that paul manafort represented all kinds of horrible people, dictators, authoritarians, thugs. so did trump not know than? was there any vetting process? and third, there is a question as to how much they knew about flynn during the transition period. yep. were they told? did they know? did they not know? who exactly was told? and that also involves the vice president and governor christie. evan, there has been some interesting speculate of polling recently in the wake of the mueller indictment that reflects actually awareness of what happened with manafort s indictments relatively high. people who think the president committed a crime is quite high. it s interesting because people thought well, this is not really mine. polling has changed a bit. i wonder how central you think this is, at least for republicans or conservatives that you know, how central is their understanding of this story to their evaluation of the president? well, i would say among republicans, it s still it s still the case that most republicans are supporting the president. i mean, you see that i think 64% of americans are now saying that they believe the russia investigation is important and that i think there may have been a serious wrongdoing there. but then there is 32% that are in the camp that say no, we don t think it s that important, and it shouldn t be investigated. my hunch is that that 32% is also 32% that supports president trump. these are probably people who are consuming conservative media that is not just conservative media, but conservative media that has really become trump media. it s less conservative. it s just trump media. and so they re receiving a steady diet of lies and misinformation about the importance of this and about the progress of the investigation and they re receiving disinformation about the alleged wrongdoing of trump s political opponents. it s very hard. those people will still skeptical. i think what happens, though, in moderate districts that are held by republicans, it s a problem there. and it s a problem for republicans there. they re going have a hard time i think increasingly. yeah. holding on to those seats. and those seats are the majority makers. so at a certain point, first republican leadership will say hey, wait a second, we have a problem. i don t think they re going to be able to dig out of it for 2018. but you re still going to have members from deep red districts who have are supported by constituents who are unfortunately being misled by other outlets. and that s going to present an ongoing challenge, i think. all right, jennifer rubin and evan mcmullin, thanks to you both. thank you. next, the trump s latest surprise disclosure on russian ties. new revelations that a top member of the trump administration has shared business interests with the family of vladimir putin. that story after this quick break. when you have a cold stuff happens. shut down cold symptoms fast with maximum strength alka seltzer plus liquid gels. i enjoy the fresher things in life.o. fresh towels. fresh soaps. and of course, tripadvisor s freshest, lowest. .prices. so if you re anything like me. .you ll want to check tripadvisor. we now instantly compare prices. .from over 200 booking sites. .to find you the lowest price. .on the hotel you want. go on, try something fresh. tripadvisor. the latest reviews. the lowest prices. we create machines that make every experience more real. because the best feature of a pc gaming machine is the power to make you forget it s there. get $200 off at dell.com/gaming. ( ) if you re keeping track of trump associates who have got undisclosed connections to russia, you can add commerce secretary wilbur ross to the list tonight. thanks to the leak from the paradise papers which are making a splash around the world. we now ross retains to this day an interest in a shipping company that makes millions of dollars a year from a russian energy company whose owners include vladimir putin s son-in-law. and nbc news found that ross, quote, failed to clearly disclose those interests when he was being confirmed for his cabinet position. in a statement, the commerce department said that wilbur ross recuses himself as secretary from any matter regarding transoceanic shipping, which would seem like something maybe the commerce secretary should not be eare cuesed from. in an interview with cnbc today, ross denied there was anything wrong. there is not anything wrong at all. it s just an example of the press trying to find anything they can however remote or silly to attack the president and somehow link him to russia. this is nonsense. however, the new york times pointed out, quote, while several trump campaign and business associates have come under scrutiny, until now no business connections have been reported between senior administration officials and members of mr. putin s family or inner circle. ross does share something in common with those previously discovered ties. we only seem to learn about these connections once the people in trump s orbit have already been found out. only then does the administration come clean. congressman eric swalwell of california on the house intelligence committee is conducting one of several vexes into russian election interference and potential trump campaign ties. congressman, secretary ross says it s nonsense, that this is essentially you re look the press is looking for these connections and manufacturing them no matter how tenuous. what do you say to that? good evening, chris. what s nonsense is he was asked about his business connections to russia by the senate and did not disclose these business ties to putin s family. and, you know, just add him to the growing list of people on donald trump s team or in his family or from his businesses who had prior business or personal or political relationships with russia. and they all failed to disclose it. i should list those. the washington post did a really good job of sort of running those down. do you have an hour? well, i ll do a quick version. we have paul manafort. we have michael cohen. we have donald trump jr., carter page. we have jared kushner, michael flynn, george papadopoulos, jd gordon, who is in that infamous meeting we ve all seen pictures of, and jeff sessions. that is the nine people who had some kind of connections that they did not disclose or they denied that later came to light. and now you have wilbur ross as well. senator richard blumenthal has called for ross resignation or an ig investigation. do you agree with either of those calls? yes. absolutely i do. i also think he should be a part of our investigation. as a side note, chris, this week incidentally, you can t make this up, we re debating tax legislation that would make it even easier for businesses as the tax policy center says to offshore their profits and use shell companies like this, making it harder for us to expose these types of relationships. there is also some we got some of the transcript back from carter page s marathon session with your investigators. i don t know if it was in front of actual members or committee staff. i want to read first what he said. i want to play what he said to me about denying any official meetings or meeting with any officials when he was in russia. take a listen. again, i had no meetings, no serious discussions with anyone high up or at any official capacity. let me ask you this. it s just kind of man on the street, you know. circumstances that true? no, false. completely false. i can t believe he lied to me. i know. i know. chris, this was a member in an interview. and we were able to corroborate a number of allegations in the dossier. so he in july 2016 met with the deputy prime minister of russia. he met with officials from gas prom and rosneft, energy businesses in russia. sam clovis asked carter page to sign an nda. and a few months later he told sam clovis he was going to moscow. he did not tell him not to go. when he got back, he briefed sam clovis, as well as a number of other officials on the campaign about his trip to russia. what you make of carter page? you know, carter page is another team member who was eager to use his relationships with the russians to help the trump team. and he even was asking the trump campaign what he should say when he was over there in russia. and just like george papadopoulos, he was trying to arrange a meeting between donald trump and vladimir putin. now this is a theme that we ve seen throughout the campaign team. not just papadopoulos. remember, felix seder back in december 2016 is telling michael cohen if we can get donald trump and putin together, we can engineer this and make our boy president there is a theme of trying to get dirt on hillary clinton, trying to connect donald trump and putin. and of course failing to disclose it to anyone. there is a reporting today saying there is a bit of a split in the diplomatic corps about the president s upcoming meeting on the side lanes of a summit with vladimir putin. they re scheduled to meet face-to-face. obviously there are some who feel that obviously this is a nation that we have a lot of different issues with. we have to talk to them. there is others who feel that it will send the wrong signal. do you have a strong feeling on that? i have a very strong feeling on this, chris. what have we gotten out of this relationship with russia? they have received all the benefits. until the president wants to speak straight with vladimir putin and tell him we know what you did, you re going to pay a price for it. and until you stop because i don t think they have stopped we re not going to welcome you at the stable of responsible nations. all right. congressman eric swalwell, thanks for your time. my pleasure. next, the horrifying attack on the texas church that killed 26 people. and the president s very telling reaction, after this quick break. parents aren t perfect, but then they make us kraft mac & cheese and everything s good again. more! i love you, droolius caesar, but sometimes you stink. febreze car vent clip cleans away odors for up to 30 days. because the things you love can stink. yesterday a gunman identified as devin patrick kelley used a gun to murder 26 people at the first baptist church in sutherland springs, texas. at least a dozen of the victims that he murdered with that gun were children, and the deceased ranged in age from 18 months to 77 years old. people that were worshipping on a sunday. the mass shooting comes just one month after what was the largest mass shooting in modern american history, and that was when a lone gunman used multiple firearms, apparently all legally acquired to shoot and kill 58 people and wound more than 500 people who were taking in a concert. and so horrifyingly, here we are again. president trump in japan today on the first leg of his five-nation tour of asia said that the massacre that occurred in texas is not a gun issue. i think that mental health is your problem here. this was a very based on preliminary reports, very deranged individual. a lot of problems over a long period of time. well have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. but this isn t a guns situation. i mean, we could go into it. but it s a little bit soon to go into it. this is a mental health problem at the highest level. it s a very, very sad event. these are great people, and a very, very sad event. but that s the way i view it. in the wake of mass atrocities, the president appears to have two modes. if the assailant is muslim, the president hardly waits until the bodies are counted to politicize and to criticize and to hector and to blame. and if the assailant is not, well, then, nothing, or something like that. compare his rhetoric this morning to his reaction to last week s violence in new york. we need quick justice and we need strong justice, much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. because what we have right now is a joke and it s a laughingstock. mr. president, do you want the assailant from new york sent to gitmo? mr. president? i would certainly consider that, yes. i would certainly consider that. send him to gitmo. i would certainly consider that, yes. senator kirsten gillibrand of new york joins me next. wakey! wakey! rise and shine! oh my gosh! how are you? well watch this. i pop that in there. press brew. that s it. so rich. i love it. that s why you should be a keurig man! full-bodied. are you sure you re describing the coffee and not me? even if you re trying your best. a daily struggle, along with diet and exercise, once-daily toujeo may help you control your blood sugar. get into a daily groove. let s groove tonight. share the spice of life. baby slice it right. from the makers of lantus, toujeo provides blood sugar-lowering activity for 24 hours and beyond, proven blood sugar control all day and all night, and significant a1c reduction. toujeo is used to control high blood sugar in adults with diabetes. it contains 3 times as much insulin in 1 milliliter as standard insulin. don t use toujeo to treat diabetic ketoacidosis, during episodes of low blood sugar, or if you re allergic to insulin. get medical help right away if you have a serious allergic reaction such as body rash, or trouble breathing. don t reuse needles or share insulin pens. the most common side effect is low blood sugar, which can be life threatening. it may cause shaking, sweating, fast heartbeat, and blurred vision. check your blood sugar levels daily. injection site reactions may occur. don t change your dose of insulin without talking to your doctor. tell your doctor about all your medicines and medical conditions. check insulin label each time you inject. taking tzds with insulins like toujeo may cause heart failure that can lead to death. find your rhythm and keep on grooving. let s groove tonight. ask your doctor about toujeo. share the spice of life. wow! nice outfit. when i grow up, i m going to mars. we re working on that. some people know how far they want to go. a personalized financial strategy can help you get them there. see how access to j.p. morgan investment expertise can help you. chase. make more of what s yours. earlier today senator ted cruz of texas described the church shooting as an act of evil and gave what has become by now a well rehearsed response by republicans when candidate about gun safety policy. we don t need politics right now. you know, i would note in new york we saw a terror attack just this week with a truck. evil is evil is evil, and will use the weaponry that is available. joining me now senator kirsten gillibrand of new york. senator, your colleague ted cruz was down in sutherland today. he was quite passionate that democrats and others shouldn t be politicizing this, angry that people would be invoking guns or talking about guns in the wake of this mass shooting. what s your response to that? well, i think he is wrong. our heartbreaks keep breaking over and over and over again. we cannot keep allowing this to be the new normal. and i think it is outrageous that congress has done nothing, has done nothing over the months and months that we ve seen gun violence, you know, terrible, unbelievable, heinous crimes being committed, and literally done nothing. what do you say to people who are watching this who just feel defeated and despondent on this issue there is the ritualization of it, the ritualization of the reaction to it, the ritualization to the backlash to the reaction. people feel like politics are just not functional, right? there is nothing that can be done. what do you say to someone who is feeling that way right now? well, i hope they speak out. because nothing ever changes in washington unless regular people speak out and demand action. i think this whole country should be crying out for common sense gun reform. the reality is that you don t need another disaster like this to happen to know what has to be done. we should be banning assault weapons. and these military-style magazine clips. we should be banning the kinds of guns that are being used in these crimes. we have to snake sure we have universal background checks. we have to make sure we have an anti-trafficking statute. these are the kinds of things we should be doing regardless of today s news. it s something that i cannot believe the congress has failed to do anything. in the five largest mass shootings in our nation s history, three have happened in the last 17 months. why could you think that is? what is your understanding as a legislator, as someone who has to think about solving policy problems? what is your understanding of that? i can t tell you, chris. i don t know. i just know that congress is doing nothing. because they lack the courage to take on the nra. they simply lack the courage to stand up and say this is about our communities. this is about safety. this is about what s important to us as a nation, and that we are not going to be beholden to an industry that puts profits first. and that s what we are up against. too many members of congress do not have the courage to stand up and say no. you represent you came up in politics in an area of the state of new york, the state you now represent where there are a lot of gun owners and where the nra is quite powerful. i wonder what your relationship is to them as an organization and to gun owners as a constituency? well, you can have the second amendment and you can protect hunters rights. but what i would urge all americans to understand is that is not where the american people are today. they want to make sure we end this kind of gun violence. and you ask nra members, you ask citizens across this country, overwhelmingly they support this kind of common sense gun reform. and just as advice to someone who doesn t necessarily see the issue this way you just need to talk to someone who lost a family member to gun violence. you just have to open your heart for a minute and feel for a second what it is like when someone is taken away from you because of gun violence. when you meet a mom whose child was killed in a park in brooklyn who is 4 years old you, have you to do something. it is time past. it is not about hunting rights. this is not about the second amendment. this is how do we keep our communities safe? and all of us should be fighting for it together and demanding these members of congress to do something. while i have you here, i want to ask you about a distinct but in some ways related issue as we learn about the shooter s relationship to domestic violence, violence against women, a common thread we have to say in many of these mass shootings, committed almost without exception by men. the sort of daunting awareness about sexual harassment and sexual predation that we ve seen sweeping across a variety of places. the ap reporting capitol hill in particular. and something that you ve talked about i think quite honestly and talked about sort of trying to approach legislatively the environment that you yourself work in congress. well, right now congress doesn t have a good set of policies either. and what we ve seen, chris, over the last several months, whether it s hollywood, whether it s news media, whether it s the nfl, whether it s college campuses, whether it s the u.s. military, we do not have transparency and accountability for sexual harassment or sexual violence. and we need to speak out and do better. i think the me too campaign is one of the most powerful campaigns we ve had because it s giving men and women the courage to tell their stories so people can understand this is pervasive. and it is prevalent. we have to do something about sexual assault, sexual violence and sexual harassment in society in all places. i m working to make a bill that congress does a lot better than it does today. the policies that we can follow up on at some point are sort of opaque. senator kirsten gillibrand, thank you for taking time. my pleasure. thank you. still ahead, what we now know about how senator rand paul ended up with five broken ribs after a dispute with his neighbor. that story coming up. plus, tonight s thing 1, thing 2 starts next. what powers the digital world. communication. that s why a cutting edge university counts on centurylink to keep their global campus connected. and why a pro football team chose us to deliver fiber-enabled broadband to more than 65,000 fans. 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. american hands, american labor. tonight we have a brand-new very special jobs report for you specifically from mar-a-lago. and that s thing 2 in 60 seconds. should, should, should can you dance like you should can you dance like you should make the rules while dancing you could dance like you should can you dance like you should make the rules while dancing can you dance like you should buy american and hire american. right? we re going do it. atter what it. or where he is. and pain doesn t hold him back. thanks to dr. scholl s running insoles. the only ones proven to relieve and prevent pain from runner s knee, shin splints and plantar fasciitis. dr. scholl s. born to move. senator rand paul is recuperating at his home in bowling green, kentucky tonight after sustaining serious injuries on friday. it looks like he will not be in the senate for an extended period of time. on his facebook page, he gave a somewhat vague explanation of what happened. kelly and i appreciate the overwhelming support after friday s unfortunate event. thank you for your thoughts and prayers. the unfortunate event in question is that while paul was riding his mower at his home wearing sound-muting earmuffs, mr. paul s next-door neighbor, mr. boucher, came on to mr. paul s property and tackled him from behind, knocking him to the ground, which according to the senator s chief of staff resulted in five broken ribs and bruises to his lungs. boucher was initially charged with fourth degree assault, released saturday on a $7500 bond. but given the extent of paul s injury, prosecutors are reportedly considering upgrading the charges. meanwhile, the fbi is now involved as an assault on a member of congress is a federal crime. what possibly could cause boucher to attack rand paul, sitting u.s. senator, a man he has lived next door to for 17 years? a statement, boucher s attorney said, quote, it has absolutely nothing to do with either his politics or political agendas. it was a very regrettable dispute between two neighbors over a matter that most people would regard as trivial. the new york times jonathan martin reports that two kentuckians tell me rand s neighborhood fracas stemmed from a dispute over some sort of planting or flora issues around the properties. one big question now is how long paul s recovery might take, and whether five cracked rib others a flora issue might affect the outcome of, say, a tax reform. meanwhile, in virginia, there is is a vote tomorrow. the big question there can the trump playbook work on a candidate who isn t named trump? that s next. i ve been thinking. think of all the things that think these days. businesses are thinking. factories are thinking. even your toaster is thinking. honey, clive owen s in our kitchen. i m leaving. oh never mind, he s leaving. but what if a business could turn all that thinking. thinking. endless thinking into doing? to make better decisions. make a difference. make the future. not next week while you think about it a little more. but right now. is there a company that can help you do all that? i can think of one. somesend you and your family overwhelrunning. y can. introducing febreze one for fabric and air. no aerosols. no dyes. no heavy perfumes. it cleans away odors for a pure light freshness. so you can spray and stay. febreze one, breathe happy. but can also loweresterol, your body s natural coq10. qunol helps restore this heart-healthy nutrient with 3x better absorption. qunol has the #1 cardiologist recommended form of coq10 qunol, the better coq10. so we know how to cover almost almoanything.hing even a swing set standoff. and we covered it, july first, twenty-fifteen. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we ve seen a thing or two. we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum on the eve of perhaps the most significant election since donald trump won the white house, the democratic party heads into tomorrow s governor s race in virginia facing many of the same challenges they did facing donald trump on election day last year. according to the latest polling average, ralph northam holds a thin lead over ed gillespie. going into this race, the expectation on paper is that this should be a win for democrats. the president has a 35% approval rating there and gillespie previously ran for u.s. senate in virginia in 2014, losing to incumbent senator mark warner. by running a campaign in which he s managed to weaponize immigration and challenging his democratic opponents on things like confederate monuments, gillespie has, according to steve bannon, closed an enthusiasm gap by rallying around the trump agenda. if that s the case, democrats better be very, very worried. tom perez is the chair of the democratic national committee. i guess, tom, a lot of people watched gillespie run this race and white identity politics and the monuments and the question is, what has the democratic party figured out in the year since donald trump was elected about how to successfully counter that message? it s all about getting out there and talking to people, chris. we made a massive investment in organizing. we ve got to be talking to people in every zip code and that s exactly what we re doing and what we re hearing is very simple. i want to keep my health care because i have a relative who s opioid addicted. i want to make sure public education works for everyone. i want to continue the progress that tear rry mcauliffe has brot to this state and i want a america that we can be proud of. that s what i m hearing day in and day out. i put 700 miles on the car just this weekend. that s what i m hearing and why i feel very, very good because the energy is everywhere. you know, you talk about competing in every zip code and there s been a big investment in democratic challengers. a lot more than in years past. but in everything you re ticking off there sounds a lot like what the clinton campaign ran on and i wonder if you feel there s an enthusiasm issue that the democratic party facing in getting its voters out in an off-year election like this. well, we always have to make sure that we re turning people out in these off-year cycles. and you mentioned something a couple of minutes ago, a couple of seconds ago, chris, that i think is so important. i think it s not a secret weapon but i think it s an enormous weapon in this race and that is the number 88. there are 88 democrats running for the house of delegates. now, in an ordinary cycle, if you go back the last four or five cycles here in virginia, there s been 40 or 45 democrats that have won. to put it differently, we have seeded half or more of the house of delegates. no opposition. and not only do we have 88 democrats running and i have spoken to almost all of them, all of the challengers, they re spectacular and they are out there. there s a candidate down in roanoke whose fiance was tragically murdered in an incident she was a local broadcast journalist and a disgruntled employee came in and shot her on the air. it was just a horrific incident. remember it. her fiance is running and he s running a spirited race. we re poised to elect the first two latinos in the state of commonwealth of virginia to the house of delegates. and i ll tell you, the energy that is generated and i was out with elizabeth guzman who is running here in northern virginia and you have the dnc and we re all in. with that sort of energy, it s a secret weapon. i want to ask you about something you just said, when you talk about seeding or not running anyone in half the house delegate races. this year there was this real effort to be competitive everywhere and it dovetails with the critique of the party that is in it donna brazile s book and which is essentially that the party institution was bankrupt financially, that it was not doing the things it should, it wasn t doing the things like helping to field candidates in every race and it was essentially busted out. is that an accurate characterization of the dnc that you inherited basically less than a year ago? well, the old dnc was about electing a president every four years. the new dnc is about electing democrats up and down the ticket from the school board to the oval office. we re all about making sure we take off year out of the elects lexicon of the democratic party. we made voter contact via phones, texts and other social media with another 500,000 people. we have to do that because today s school board member is tomorrow s mayor, is a decade from nows president. we re doing it now. i want to talk about the messaging stakes for tomorrow. gillespie barely dealt a primary against corey stewart. corey stewart ran hard on preserving monuments to the confederacy. gillespie has adopted that. kneeling during the national anthem, sent out mailers about that. what message has said that if that message works in defeating democrats tomorrow? . well, that message isn t going to work. phil murphy is going to win going away and we ll make history with the first
too small. reporter: now that sense of ownership is gone. the trump organization which no longer runs the building says it had no hand in vetting the people who financed, sold or bought it. now that president trump is in the white house. uh-huh. reporter: do you think the trump organization and the trump family are trying to distance themselves from you? i wouldn t say that they re trying, because i don t think that i can harm them. reporter: it took months to track alexander ventura down and persuade limb to shim to sit wi interview. he asked we disguise his appearance, he s on the run in panama wanted for fraud saying he sold hundreds of united nations in the trump club to hide their identities. banks weren t asking questions where the money was coming from? no. never. reporter: sounds like nobody was asking questions. not you, not the trump organization, not the banks, not the developers? nobody. nobody. reporte nobody checked anybody out. people were buying, spending millions 5, 10, 20 units at a time. the money would go to ventura. reporter: if you want to know about the flow of dirty money through panama, monty freezener is the man to ask. in 1992, he was convicted in federal court of 20 counts of money laundering and fraud. he still knows all the players and all the plays. do you think it s possible trump didn t know the kind of people buying in his building? he didn t know. reporter: how could he not have known? because you don t walk up to somebody, hey, are you russian mafia? reporter: is it fair to say trump didn t ask because he didn t want to know. would you want to know? reporter: i would want to know who s buying a building with my name on it. because it s you. most, no. they don t care. reporter: a team from global witness, an anti-corruption watchdog often critic al of businesses and their connections to government officials spent reporter: take the cocaine and turn it into a building? yeah. reporter: how do you know. i saw it happening. reporter: this booming market the trump organization was entering plans seen in this marketing el strags, tallest in latin america at the time with a mix of hotel rooms and high-end condos all on a plot of land owned by a small time local businessman, roger kafif, the buildings main builder. ivanka met the team. my company would be selling the united nations art according to ventura, ivanka was planning to pre-sell units around $120,000 each. ventura said he could tell them for a lot more. reporter: what did she say? happy with that, but can you sell it at that price? i said, yes. the agreement, i had a week to sell 100 units. reporter: how did you them them in a week? easy to stell in fact with his name. reporter: the name of the most famous man in real estate also the building salesman in chief. one of the great things about panama, not only the beautiful building but incredible views. the name trump was magic. and he came down. donald trump came down. he has a great presence. he s a fabulous marketing person. reporter: but according to ventura, it was ivanka trump who handled all the details. what kinds of things did ivanka do? meeting with the architects, deciding the the finishings of the project. and the prices. when is going to be released. when it not going to be released it. everything they did with the project, because according to the contract, trump organization has to approve everything, because his name on the project anyway. reporter: sounds like the trump organization, specifically ivanka, was deeply involved? yes. she was the person responsibility for the project. reporter: ventura, had a small real estate agency, now selling the trump brand. he had made the big leagues. he became overnight a mover of money. reporter: who was it that ventura and the firm homes were targeting? russians. russians that had dirty money. reporter: specifically? specifically. and then the russian mafia came in. a guy called alexander sasha ocho. reporter: what was he doing in panama? came down made a proposal to ventura and made him an offer he couldn t refuse. reporter: he became a partner in ventura s marketing firm but we can t verify his connection to the russian mafia because although the allegation has been repeated in several court cases, he seems to fend off the charges every time. another partner, stanislav bought several units in the building and since accused of running a prostitution ring in canada but the case was dropped when both key witnesses disappeared. the firms representative in kiev later found by a ukrainian court guilty of people smuggling. one of the customers who bought units in the building was an ex-convict who served time in israel for kidnapping and those are just the ones we managed to identify. claiming he didn t know it at the time, ventura admits he was selling places in the building to russian customers. i can some customers with questionable background. reporter: what does that mean? i mean you know, i fund out later. not in the beginning from like belongs to mafia. russian mafia, things like that. but, anyway, i was not getting paid in cash. reporter: that is not the story we heard from freezener. they used half a dozen lawyers, would come pick up $1 million in a satchel. reporter: happening at the trump ocean club? yeah. reporter: so ventura was marketing the trump ocean club as part of a real estate portfolio where corrupt people could park their money? you got it. reporter: and they did. yeah. but they didn t just park the money. the money was turned over consistently. reporter: how does a luxury tower become a money laundromat? the buyer uses dirty money to buy unit 1605 in the unbuilt to you perp sometimes just two weeks later unit 1605 gets resold. the money coming out of the building is now clean. the proceeds of a legitimate real estate deal. the only way to trace its dirty origins would be to go back to the beginning, and identify the original buyer. and that should be relatively easy. but not in panama. our investigation led us here to panama s public registry. after going through a lot of paperwork a pattern started to emerge. tushs out many of the condo units aren t owned by individuals but panamanian corporations, often with generic names like ocean trump 1605 investment corporation. so why would someone use a corporation to buy a condo? often to hide the identity of the real buyer. one of the things we, with these shell companies is, you can simply transfer the company, the buyer s share, to anybody you want. reporter: you set up a shell company. nobody knows who s the actual owner, and then you buy the unit. get a piece of paper saying you own the unit. you re the owner. reporter: and do what you want with that? you re holding money. holding $1 million. not even a check. in a bear s share. you can transfer it to anybody. reporter: fold if and put it in your pocket? correct. reporter: you were coming in with hundreds of buy jers did the trump organization want to know who these buyers were? where the money was coming from? no. not that i m aware of. you know? no. not at all. reporter: did they ever ask you? no. reporter: were these buyers planning on living in these units, in these apartments? most of them, no. reporter: that never raised alarm bells with you? somebody buying 15 units, doesn t want to live in the place, from from russia? no. because that was normal. they had laundry money, that s their problem. reporter: and it wasn t just russians. one of the most famous money launderers in the world, davide guzman bought units in the building too. we met a former panamanian prosecutor who worked on the guzman case. [ speaking in foreign language ] translator: the guzman investigation was a vast case and as part of it we had information that alexandr ventura was the partner. reporter: we heard the same thing from freezener. guzman and ventura. reporter: was their relationship between both business partners. they became, after a couple years business partners. reporter: how did they work together? how did that collaboration work? david would bring the money in and the money would get distributed. reporter: what about guzman? ventura, they basically slept in the same bed. reporter: guzman is in u.s. custody convicted of laundering millions of dollars for mexican drug dealers. reporter: were you guzman s man no, no. i had 45 days with him and we never talked about anything illegal. you know? reporter: but he did admit he and guzman did some business together. reporter: so you moved some of guzman s money into the trump ocean club? yes, i did. yes. reporter: how many units? well, not many. i think maybe maximum ten units. reporter: did you investigate ventura and translator: yes. alexandr ventura was in the investigation for fraud reporter: did you find out? translator: at the time i was working four, five fraud case he was involved in. reporter: fraud, because ventura seems to have gotten too greedy. after a while, collecting a 3% commission wasn t enough. he started selling units on paper, in several buildings to more than one buyer at a time. eventually his peer mid-scheme collapsed. he was arrested and charged with fraud. somehow he managed to get bail and escape the country. in a statement to nbc news, a spokesman wrote that the trump organization was not the owner, developer or seller of the trump ocean club panama project, and that the trump organization was not responsible for the financing of the project and had no involvement in the sale of units or the retention of any real estate brokers. the spokesman said the trump organization had no relationship with ventura or knowledge of the allegations against him. we also asked ivanka trump for comment, but her team referred us back to this statement. i believe this is the picture of you with president trump? yes, that s correct. that s mar-a-lago, yes. reporter: meeting with him, stop, pose for the photograph. yes. reporter: ventura didn t mind showing us old pictures as long as we didn t show what he looked like now. reporter: and you re interaction with him is good job? keep up the good work? keep selling? keep selling. that s it. reporter: how many units did you personally sell? i believe between 350 to 400 units from the project. reporter: worth how much? over, a little bit over $100 million. reporter: over $100 million? yes. when the trump organization goes into a licensing deal, sells its name and brand, on one side the trump organization is deeply involved. the family involved. so they can be very hands-on. very, very interested when they want to be. when it comes to problems, like there might be dodgy money involved, dodgy clients, they don t want to know. that s the developer s responsibility. not our responsibility. look, you spent your life around criminals, or investigating criminals? i was a criminal. reporter: being a criminal. yeah. reporter: what do you think about the kind of business trump was lending his name to? i m not trying to protect him, but he is not the one that s doing all of this. he simply has a name. a corporation. that s what it is. reporter: do you think people should be judged by the company they keep and the businesses they run? erch definitely. 100%. if i was somebody like trump i d do a background check and want to know who they buy their underwear from. so there isn t any connection to any form of crime. reporter: as a former money launderer, the trump ocean club. how would you trait? in its quality? for money laundering? oh i d say aaa. reporter: there is no suggestion that the president or his family were directly involved in any of the illegal activity it that went on here. as we said, they were just licensing out the trump brand. and initially managing the building. it s just that this building was magnet for dirty money and we found no sign to flaect brand, which is perhaps now our nation s most prominent brand from being tarnished by association. the building was opened in 2011. [ applause ] and onstage were three men. our future president, the developer, and panama s president, who was then a close friend. thank you very much for being here today. and you re my friend. reporter: martinelli is now awaiting extradition decision in a jail cell in a federal detention center in miami. we ll tell you that whole story next. more people shop online for the holidays than ever before. (clapping) and the united states postal service delivers more of those purchases to homes than anyone else in the country. ( ) because we know, even the smallest things are sometimes the biggest. welcome back to panama. since completed in 2011, that building, the trump ocean club we told you about has seen hard times. the develop company went bankrupt and seems most everybody who invested in the building lost money. except, of course, for the trump organization. it was forced out of the building s management s but still runs the hotel side of the business. and even we found when we stayed there recently, the building seems almost empty, the trump organization continues to collect a licensing fee, just for the use of the name. financial filings suggests that by 2010, those fees added up to more than $70 million. ricardo martinelli, former president of panama, he didn t do as well. the man who helped the trump ocean club get off the ground is now in a federal detention center in miami feeling a lot less presidential than he did when he helped inaugurate the building. [ applause ] reporter: a billionaire with sharp elbows and political ambitions. ricardo martinelli a perfect match for donald trump. i want to just thank you very much for being here today, and you re my friend. [ applause ] great honor. reporter: and martinelli was first to realize his political ambition two one by the time the trump ocean club opened in 2011. he was president of panama. his very presence sent a message. this was a well-connected project. martinelli liked to mention every time that he has a very good business relation with trump. reporter: law professor miguel antonio is an opposition member and outspoken critic of martinelli saying the trump building could not have opened its doors without the blessing of the president. did martinelli help get this building off the ground? sure. because panama, you can do this kind of thing without the president advice or the president s agreement. [ cheers and applause ] reporter: ricardo martinelli, whom a u.s. diplomat described in a leaked cable having a limited attention span and making strong impulsive decisions had much in common with the future president of the united states. like trump, martinelli also built himself a lucrative real estate empire. owned panama s largest chain of supermarkets, but money wasn t enough. martinelli wanted power, too, why he decided to run for president. and this man is head of the panamanian branch of transparency international. finding many similarities with candidate trump. lack of experience in government management, campaigning on the ticket of the outsider. reporter: in 2009, martinelli ran a colorful campaign. [ applause ] his antics earned him the nickname, loco the crazy one. a name he embraced. created a slogan during the campaign. we the crazy people are the majority. reporter: and they were. martinelli won by a landslide on the promise of a better future for panama. for a while it seemed he d kept his word. the economy boomed, unemployment dropped, martinelli oversaw expansion of the panama canal and opened a sub swaye systway soon allegations of corruption started to surface. martinelli was bhmore than a president. an absolute monarch. former mayor of panama city and leader of the opposition accusing martinelli of running the country like his own business. he ruled not only the executive branch, he had his hands in the legislative branch. he had his hands in the judiciary. he broke the law. he broke the constitution, violated every possible rule. and got away with it, for a time. he really was a person looking out for his own interests and not the interests of the country, and during his time, what happened in the country was without precedence. it was the largest scale robbery of our treasury. reporter: not long after his term ended, martinelli quietly boarded a private jet and disappeared. days later, panama s supreme court charged him with embezzlement and illegal wiretapping. reporter: what did martinelli do to you? violated and tapped conversations i had with my wife. my kids. and my entire staff. my professional staff. also with my campaign manager. and all of my campaign team. reporter: martinelli ended up living in the lap of luxury in miami. but eventually, the law caught up with him and he s now sitting in a federal dissension center awaiting a decision on his fate. panama is demanding his extradition and he s appealing to the courts, but ultimately the decision will be made by the state department raising the question of whether there could be interference from the white house. if you would have asked me in january before mr. trump took the oath of office, i would have said, no. but with everything that we ve learned since january to now of how there are very blurred lines regarding the business interests of the trump organization, and the business of government, my answer would be, i don t know. i would be outraged if mr. trump intervenes and overrules the lawyers and the legal department at state to help his friend mr. martinelli stay in the u.s. and avoid justice. reporter: whether or not the president would still call martinel afriend is now anyone s guess. and that s not the point, really. what this situation shows is how sticky the whole issue of conflicts of interest, real or perceived, can be. so how do we frame what we ve uncovered here? do we see it through the lens of corporate responsibility and ethical standards? or are there also legal issues to consider? we ll be talking next to a former prosecutor about that. us. it s what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying. how do we get back to us ? the y fills the gaps. and bridges our divides. donate to your local y today. because where there s a y, there s an us. well, it sonce again.eason yeah. lot of tech companies are reporting today. and, how s it looking? i don t know. there s so many opinions out there, it s hard to make sense of it all. well, victor, do you have something for him? check this out. td ameritrade aggregates thousands of earnings estimates into a single data point. that way you can keep your eyes on the big picture. huh. feel better? much better. yeah, me too. wow, you really did a number on this thing. sorry about that. that s alright. i got a box of em. thousands of opinions. one estimate. the earnings tool from td ameritrade. to help us answer that question, we turned to arlo devlin brown who s prosecuted his share of money laupderring cases. mr. brown, thank you for joining us. thanks for having me. first off, should we be concerned about this? well, any u.s. real estate company that makes a decision to do business in a high-risk jurisdiction will money laundering occurs needs to be careful. needs to take a number of precautions. does it seem to you those precautions were taken or do we not know at this stage? i don t know based on your reporting but i can tell you what the real risks are in a situation like that. basically, the u.s. company needs to be careful both in terms of going into the deal and on the way out. going into the deal you need to worry a little bit about whether money is going to grease the skids for any foreign politicians which is a violation of u.s. law and then, of course, when it s time to sell the condos, you do have to be cautious about whether the people buying those condos are criminals looking to wash their money. so here s the issue. the statement we received from the trump organization made a clear line saying that it wasn t directly involved in sales. so, therefore, doesn t really take responsibility for who was buying, who was selling, but does the fact that the trump organization was getting a piece, getting a percentage of the units that were sold, does that make a difference? well, the fact it was licensing its name really doesn t make a difference at all in terms of how u.s. money laundering law operates. the only issue, really, that s i m talking about getting a piece of the units sold? every unit sold, the trump organization got a got a check for it? well, that may or may not matter. the critical question is, did the trump organization or any similar organization know that the money coming in was criminal from criminal activity or did it turn a blind eye to it? you ve prosecuted cases like this. what would it look like, if talking about company that was operating here in panama, but wasn t directly controlling the buying and selling, but it turns out, and our investigation has shown, that the people buying and selling were dubious. does that parent company, the company lending its name, bear any responsibility? yes. it s all going to turn on, not the technical niceties, not the formalities of, were you licensing, were you not? it s going to turn on nitty-gritty facts in the end of, what did the u.s. company know about its panamanian partner and its conduct and what didn t it know? and that s a very fact-intensive thing that is very interesting here. it s about intent. really. if they knew what was going and and didn t do anything, it s a problem. didn t know, they can claim they didn t know. right. that s that s exactly right. arlo devon-brown, former public corruption unit chief, southern district of new york. thank you for joining us. thank you. up ahead, we look at the bigger picture of the global trump brand, and ask, is the president s business getting in the way of the business of the presidency? i just got my cashback match, people are fighting type 2 diabetes. with fitness. food. and the pill that starts with f. farxiga, along with diet and exercise, helps lower blood sugar in adults with type 2 diabetes. lowering a1c by up to 1.2 points. do not take if allergic to farxiga. if you experience symptoms of a serious allergic reaction such as rash, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking and seek medical help right away. do not take farxiga if you have severe kidney problems, are on dialysis, or have bladder cancer. tell your doctor right away if you have blood or red color in your urine or pain while you urinate. farxiga can cause serious side effects including dehydration, genital yeast infections in women and men, serious urinary tract infections, low blood sugar, and kidney problems. stop taking farxiga and call your doctor right away if you have signs of ketoacidosis which is serious and may lead to death. ask your doctor about the pill that starts with f and visit farxiga.com for savings. if you can t afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help. welcome back to on assignment. we re in panama city taking a step back from the news and there seems to be always a lot of news these days, to take a closer look at our president s business empire around the world starting with that building behind me. reporter: donald trump rose to national prominence as a casino mogul. opening day in what donald trump in typical understatement is calling the eighth wonder of the world. the trump taj mahal. reporter: then the casino business caught up with him. midnight, witching hour for donald trump if he can t make an interest payment of $47 million or work out a deal with creditors. his casino in atlantic city faces bankruptcy. reporter: a series of those financial troubles resulted in him filing for corporate bankruptcy six times. so he got out of the casino business. he expanded his business interests overseas. the panama tower is just one of many international business ventures he dabbled in. the trump business empire now spans across five continents and nearly two dozen countries including licensing. according to the washington post, donald trump has licensed his name to at least 50 different licensing or management deals. take, for example, argentina where donald trump licensed his name for a 35-story trump tower. when the president of argentina called president trump to congratulate him on his win, local reports in argentina surfaced that president trump reportedly asked the president to help him get approvals for his project pushed through. throws reports were denied by the argentine president s office. the city also denied the permit. in uruguay, trump has a licensing deal for a residential tower that is currently under construction. earlier this year, eric trump traveled to uruguay to check on the building s progress. his trip cost taxpayers close to $100,000 in hotel bills for the secret service. in canada, in toronto, trump struck a deal with a russian-born canadian billion mayor to license his name using a russian state run bank to finance the project. a bank under u.s. sanctions. in the former soviet republic, in as you azerbaijan, built in m of a sale. donald trump s partners in the deal a powerful family with ties to iran s revolutionary guard pap few weeks before taking office, trump canceled the deal, leaving an almost complete never opened hotel. but not before earning nearly $3 million from the project according to his financial disclosure forms. in turkey, trump has licensed his name to trump towers istanbul. his partner comes from a wealthy, well-connected family in turkey, but more recently the turkish president has gone after trump s partner. some experts suggest by going after his partner, the turkish president is exerting political pressure on trump. turkey s leader asked the administration to extradite a cleric turkey wants who was living in the united states. and those are just some of the deals. there are many more. most of these business deals are with foreign heavy hitters and with the president refusing to divest ownership of any of his businesses, some experts argue they are potential violations of the emaulments clause of the constitution prohibiting the president from xep p accepting payments or anything of economic value to foreign governments. in fact, we re going to have one of those experts on next. she said something that really struck me, because i ve been traveling the world for a listening for quite some time, and lately, i m hearing what she s hearing. what s distressing to me is people laughing at us. they re laughing at us. . and the united states postal service delivers more of those purchases to homes than anyone else in the country. because we know, even the smallest things are sometimes the biggest. even the smallest things you give us comfort. and we give you bare feet, backsweat, and gordo s. everything. i love you, but sometimes you stink. soft surfaces trap odors. febreze fabric refresher cleans them away for good. because the things you love the most can stink. and plug in febreze to keep your whole room fresh for up to 45 days. 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[ glass shatters ] property damage? that s what general liability s for. what?! -injured employee? -ow. workers comp helps you pay for a replacement. what s happening? this is carla. how s it going? and if anything comes up, our experts are standing by. boo! the morning walk until. it. wasn t. don t let type 2 diabetes get between you and your heart. even if you reach your a1c goal you are still at risk for heart attack or stroke. talk to your health care provider today about diabetic heart disease. and find out more at heartoftype2.com. your heart and type 2 diabetes. make the connection. more people shop online for the holidays than ever before. and the united states postal service delivers more of those purchases to homes than anyone else in the country. because we know, even the smallest things are sometimes the biggest. that got us wondering is that a fair suggestion? so we decided to look at all of the countries we could find which the trump organization considered as possible locations to expand into and run them against the annual ratings published by transparency international. a well-respected anti-corruption campaign group. the results are pretty telling. take a look at this. out of all the countries where the president has explored or closed deals, more than half are in countries that get a score below 50. that s out of 100. in school we used to call that a fail. take azerbaijan, one of the most corrupt places on earth, transparency international gives it just 30 points. the philippines doesn t do much better coming in at 35. argentina and indonesia, scored just a little better at 36 and 37 respectively and the country we re in panama gets 38 points. compare that with our own national average. which stands at 74 out of 100. that s quite a difference. so does the fact that president trump has so many businesses in places with a bad reputation harming our national reputation? are we all now a little bit guilty by association? we all n guilty by association? i spoke to one person who has been thinking about that a lot lately. i thought the american system was supposed to be designed differently. i thought we were not supposed to look like the philippines or others. she learned about corruption the hard way. she lived in afghanistan for nearly a decade where she exposed dirty officials. a risky thing for american women to be doing. he is using his power. she provides testimony to congressional hearings and now a court case in which the president himself is a defendant of the will. the president of the united states is receiving money, fees, just a flood of items of value from a variety of different foreign governments without ever having consulted congress or congress ever having made a statement as to whether that s legal or not. that according to the liberal watch dog group that filed the lawsuit is a violation of the foreign emom umts clause. no person holding any office of trust shall without the consent of congress accept whatever from any king, prince or foreign state. she believes it has a modern day application. if you choose the shoulder the honor of serving the people of the united states of america as their president, you can t simultaneously be serving yourself as a businessman. choose. one or the other. why not let congress pursue this? why the lawsuit? this is a clear violation of a constitutional provision. congress has shown no interest in defending that constitutional provision if we can t test the constitution in the courts, where can we test it? she wrote a brief for the case, identifying specific examples of overseas business interests the president has that may be a violation of the emoluments clause. high on the list, the club in panama. that is not the only problem. what does that tell that you this was the first project he chose to do internationally? it is of concern to me. because what it suggests is that this was a business operation seeking easy money. that often means illegal money. it means dealing with a government that is bent on self enrichment, rather than bent on serving its own people. it is a bad sign. before he took office, the president tried, some say unsuccessfully, to draw a line under his past by putting his business empire into a trust held by his sons. his lawyers also dug deep into the statute books and pulled out a get-out clause which exempts a president from prosecution over conflicts of interest. the president he will braced it immediately. i have a no conflict interest because i m president. is the president above conflict of interest laws? in terms of the integrity of our government, america has been relying on a tissue of norms and expectations. it turns out that a determined person will blow through norms and expectations. so the current laws were not built for the trump administration. the current laws were not built to withstand the trump administration. but chase who wrote a book thieves of state about the threat to global security believes as a nation, we are on a slippery slope. the united states is showing really concerning signs that i recognize from some of the most systemically corrupt countries in the world. so when the united states starts doing things, it is like a green light. it sets the example for other countries. what does that do to america s standing in the world? i think it significantly dents american standing. what is distressing to me is people laughing at us. similarly, in other countries, where governments really are bent on maximizing private gain, they seem similarities between how they want to run their country and how president trump is running the united states. in a district court in new york, the president s lawyers argued for the case to be thrown out. claiming the interpretation of the clause was flawed. the group s chances of winning appear slim to none but he says whatever the outcome, speaking out is what counts here. we are americans. should we be responding any less, expecting any less than guatemala mallans are demanding of theirs? we don t get a democracy because god handed it down from the sky. we get a democracy because we demand on it and we defend it and we insist on it. and i m really struck at how passive, frankly, the american people seem to be at the moment. when our very system of government is in danger. when you hear sober thoughtful people start talking about our system of government being in danger, it is time to start paying attention. you re watching on assignment in panama city. to our story already. ranging from a democratic congressman calling for an urgent investigation into this story by congress, the justice department and robert mueller to on the other hand a viewer who wrote in to tell me, go, trump. my 401(k) is doing great. media is still mad at losing the election. this isn t about politics. this is about what you think of the responsibilities that apply to an american company that comes to a place like this to do business. should it uphold standards that we expect back in the states? or should it play by whatever rules the global market or the local market play by? we already know which side of the argument president trump is on. he told us himself. in 2012, donald trump called in to squawk box cnbc to express a very clear opinion about the law that forbids american companies from bribing foreign officials. now, every other country goes into these places and they do what they have to do.